The Tell-Tale Crow

 A couple of weeks ago I ventured out to my field, I mean garden, to put in the first round of green bean seeds. I bought a pound of green bean seeds (Blue Lake Bush beans...the only ones I'll ever grow!) with the intent of selling them by the bushel to my grandparent's farm later this summer. At least the ones I don't can since I didn't can many last year as we are still eating beans from 2012.

 Anyhoo, it was later in the afternoon before I could get outside while Carl took his nap. It was hot, muggy and thunder could be heard in the distance. I was humming Wouldn't It Nice as I loaded up the seed planter and dropped the bar into the dirt to mark off my rows. I gave the seeder a push and watched closely as the kidney shaped seeds dropped into the row before being covered with dirt again. A thrill of excitement coursed through my veins for two reasons:

1.) Using the seeder is 100 times easier to plant a garden with versus making a furrow with a hoe, dropping in the seeds (making sure they make solid contact with the dirt, as it helps with the growing process, as per Dan's advice) and then taking the hoe and closing over the furrow. The only benefit to this planting method as far as I can see is that it provides a good ab workout. Using the seeder gets the job done in minutes; and

2.) A few days before I planted beans I had tried to use the seeder to plant my corn by for whatever it wasn't working. I spent over a hour in the muggy sunshine fighting it. I'd load the seeder, push it through the dirt, and not see any seeds dropping in because they were backing up in the tube they go down before landing in the dirt. I probably loaded that seeder up 4 or 5 times, dumping corn into my yard (I'm sure I'll get a few stray corn stalks in unwanted places), banging the thing on the ground (sorry Mike!) and shoving scissors and drill bits through it to unclog whatever was keeping the seeds from dropping through. At last my time was up, the baby monitor told me so, and I had nothing in the ground to show for my hard work. Of course the dumb thing worked for Dan when he got home and made me out to be a liar.

Back to pushing the device through the dirt, waddling along like I was pregnant again because I'm looking down at the seeds and not thinking I can actually step on the rows, nor am I looking where I'm going, so now I have crocked rows, singing in my mind, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up, in the morning when the day is new..."

 Out of the heavy air, I heard a strange noise. I had to hear it several times since I didn't really notice it at first. I wasn't expecting it. A strangled, alien-like sound. Like a sick animal. I made it to the end of one of my bean rows and I looked towards the barn. The creepy noise came again.

 Wait a second! I thought to myself, interrupting Brian Wilson's falsetto. I've heard that noise before...it can mean only one thing. We have a new rooster! My shoulders sagged in disappointment. Are ever going to get a group of chicks and NOT get a male in a package that promises all females? Four years in a row we've obtained at least one rooster from the new flock.

 Dan and I had had our suspicions about an Araucana that looks like a mini-version of Chicken Hawk, so much that I'd tempted to name this rooster "Mini Me". (Though we haven't settled on a name for him yet.) If he's the only rooster we have, I think we'll be ok having two now that my beloved Fumm is gone and lost forever. I do like only having one though, and Chicken Hawk is a great rooster. So far he hasn't gotten mean and he's relatively quiet throughout the day. I want to do some research to see if the Araucana breed is one that has less aggressive roosters.

 It's still too early to tell if this new guy is only rooster from Flock 4. We have had late bloomers ion the past (remember Chaz??) so it won't surprise me if we were to discover weeks from now yet another one. It's also disappointing we will get one less blue egg now...

 Worse than a preteen boy band, it's as if his short comings are displayed to the world for everyone to know, but I really wish everyone could hear a young rooter find his crow. It's truly an awful sound until he gets it perfected.

More Than Just a Pretty Place

 Every spring I try to deck out the Shawhan farm in beautiful flowers. I like to get a few perennials each year along with numerous annuals. My goal in time is to establish a lot of perennials so I only have to buy a couple of flats of annuals. It's a slow process because I tend to get overwhelmed at the greenhouses as I browse the perennials, thinking to myself, This would look good there, but what if I find something even better? Or my personal favorite, I'll buy that and it'll end up dead. (Which happened to a few of the perennials I planted last spring thanks to the harsh winter we had.) Flowers along the house, a couple of planters, my ginormous garden and some hanging baskets later, I must say the Shawhan farm looks pretty nice these days.

 My flower planning starts early since I roll up all the spare change we've collected over the year and take it to the bank. I always feel like a nerd carrying in my paper sack and asking them to cash in my coins. I try not to use car washes for this very reason. I can wash my car at home for free and save the $8 for flowers. This year I felt like a millionaire because we took some scrap metal to the recycling place and I had a decent wad of egg money to spend in addition to my cashed in mint.

 I think I did a pretty good job in selecting blooming buds and I'm happy as to where I planted them. I got two hanging baskets that I will religiously water all summer long. Even last summer as I was cooped up in the hospital recovering from my C-section, I strictly ordered Dan to go home every day and water my hanging baskets. The two I got this year, I had trouble deciding which one I wanted, so I just got both of them. They are beautiful and come from a Mennonite greenhouse that have amazing prices on all their flowers.

 The first few evenings in taking down the baskets and watering them, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Then just a couple of nights ago, I noticed something in one of my baskets...

Someone has decided to have her babies in my flowers! At first there just one egg, and now we are up to six! Every night there is a new egg inside the nest. I've carefully watered around it, but I'm not sure what's going to happen once they hatch and the nest is over packed with baby birds. I am honored the momma bird has picked my hanging basket to bring her chicks into the world in, but there is a selfish part of me that is afraid my basket of colorful blooms will eventually die. I also don't want the mother to abandon the nest, since I'll continue to water it.

 To the unknowing eye, this particular basket looks like any ordinary front porch decoration, but to me and a silly little bird, it's more than just a pretty place.

Mo' Minks, Mo' Problems

 A diabolical force has once again been plaguing the Shawhan farm. When the weather began warming up I expelled a big sigh of relief thinking we escaped a winter (finally) with no murdered chickens...the first winter ever! I thought to myself, Maybe this winter was just too cold for slaying varmints. And for awhile, it seemed to be true.
 
 Then one day... a nice, warm beautiful day... the nightmares began again. One of our Buff Orpingtons was found dead in the next box, all the clues surrounding her death pointing to the Mink family. Ms. Orpington was a nice young lady, a devote member of Flock 3, so she wasn't very old and probably in her prime egg laying year. My heart goes out to her since she was in a place she considered safe enough to lay her egg when she was killed.

 After that we began keeping the chickens locked in the coop. I really hate doing that since I know how much they love to get outside and peck and scratch around. After several days of confinement, we began letting them back out again. Then one day, Dan and I heard a loud ruckus, a more dramatic than the ladies make after they've triumphantly laid an egg. Upon rushing out, the mink was spotted in the coop! Dan tried to corner it and stab it with the pitch fork, the little devil was too quick and made it's escape, but thankfully that day, no chickens were harmed.

  Once again, we began to keep the ladies and gents locked up in the coop. We figured during the day they were sitting ducks in the nest box. Eventually in the later afternoons I'd go out and let them outside, figuring they were done laying eggs and no one would be caught off guard in the next box. This tactic seemed to work for awhile, and of course, we all settled down into an unsuspecting routine again.

 Just the other day, the first chilly day we had, (so our door was closed and it took me awhile to hear all the commotion) I heard all kinds of craziness coming from the barn. The chickens were going nuts! It was about 5:00 P.M., so I knew something was going on, as all the hens were probably done laying that late in the day. I ran outside and sure enough, the mink had struck again! What was worse was that I saw it!! The little son of a gun had scrambled under the coop itself (it can't get to the chickens from under there) and peeked its head out and LOOKED at me! LOOKED at me! Taunting me! Push the knife in a little deeper why don't you!

 On this day we lost a Golden Comet.

  The barn was FULL of drama! All the chickens were worked up, scared for their lives, looking at me, begging me to keep them safe and make the killer go away. The chicks across the aisle way had witnessed their first chicken slaughter and were begging me never to put them over with the rest of the flock. Charlie was standing in the back of the barn looking at me and begging me to feed him because he is always starving, despite his obesity...it was a stressful evening.

  Back to confinement for a few days. We let them out today after we got home from church since we will be outside and will be able to watch for the suspect. Our first mink was identified as Jason Mink Voorhees. I'm suspecting this killer is his mother, Mrs. Voorhees. I'm also beginning to wonder if Fumm and Stupid Bantam couldn't take the pressure anymore and high tailed it out of here to a place where minks don't exist.

Farewell Fumm

 It's been a sad few of days here on the Shawhan farm, as we have come to the realization that our mighty, cocky and larger-than-life Bantam rooster, Fumm is gone. We didn't notice it right away...there was no evidence of a struggle or chicken-slaughter, we just noticed how QUIET things were.

 One evening a couple of days ago, as I was locking in the chickens for the evening, I didn't hear (as one would hear Fumm more than see him, thanks to his dwarf size) him anywhere. He always made his presence known, especially strutting across the entrance to the barn even when all the other chickens were confined to the coop and kennel areas. There was no chitter chatter from my little blond boy.

 I immediately knew something was wrong. Fumm was always so predictable. I looked everywhere, even though I knew it was no use. Even if Fumm was out in the yard, he always managed to get back into the coop at night (he was a sneaky little thing), so the fact that he wasn't in the coop that night was a dead give away he was gone.

 Like I said, there were no feathers littering the yard, there was no dead body stomped to death in the steer lot. I began to blame our new neighbors (they are weird) in that maybe they wanted a chicken dinner one night. Dan just laughed at me since 1.) Good luck actually catching Fumm, and 2.) There wasn't any meat on his microscopic bones anyway. So the only thing I can think of is maybe a hawk got him at some point.

 Or he ran away...

 There is SOOOOOOOOOOOO much gossip in the coop right now that Bravo TV is calling me asking if they can do a reality show. See, Fumm had a steady girlfriend, Jane Doe, a Barred Plymouth Rock, from I don't know which Flock. They were always out in the yard together going on hot romantic dates. At about the same time Fumm went missing, so did one of our Stupid Bantams (curtsey of Blooms and Berries). Blooms and Berries gave us 3 Bantams last fall, two hens and a rooter, who didn't last long. They are black with white poofy feathers on their heads that fall into their eyes, and I think impairs their eyesight. Those chickens are easy to sneak up on and catch, so we always refer to them as the Stupid Bantams. One of those is missing too...

 So, now the questions still remain, 1.) Did the weird new neighbors steal a couple of our chickens? 2.) Did a hawk or some other predator have itself a chicken dinner? or 3.) Was Fumm courting a Stupid Bantam on the side and they ran off together, leaving Jane Doe heartbroken?

 Rumors are flying (hahaha) all over the place around here! Charlie Percheron said he saw Fumm and Stupid Bantam running down the road towards the Old Order Amish community, both carrying knapsacks. Buzz (one of the Beefy Boys) says he saw them hitch a ride on a buggy with Samsonite carry on bags. THEN Chicken Hawk told me he received a post card from Fumm that was postmarked from a Five Star resort in Punta Cana.

 Whichever of these rumors are true, I don't know. All I do know is that I miss my little mighty Fumm and his larger-than-life personality.

 The Shawhan farm just isn't the same without him.

The 'Thing'

 A few days ago, as I was collecting the eggs, I discovered a mystery object in the second nest box. It was well hidden under some straw, so well that I almost missed it. Even though it was buried beneath the covers and barely visible, I could tell right away that it wasn't just another egg. In fact, I gasped at first and stood there staring at it, not even wanting to peel the straw back and take a look!

 It was pink, not brown, blue or those greenish/gray looking eggs we sometimes get. It also didn't have the smooth appearance of an egg shell, but something that looked more like skin. At first I thought maybe an animal had gotten in the next box and hunkered down, OR that one of my birds had squirted out an organ.

 Being the chicken that I am, (no pun intended), I got my trusty pink chicken herding stick and some gloves before I dared touch it or pluck it up. In my imagination, I pictured this little pink alien "thing" come to life as soon as I picked it up, snarling and flashing it's fangs. Did I mention little beady black eyes? In about two minutes, I had already given this creature a life of its own and I was scared of it.

 Finally I put on my gloves and slowly uncovered it and picked it up for a closer look.

 I know it looks like a tempting apple dumpling, but I can assure you its not! In fact, this picture was taken a few days after I discovered it, so it didn't look as pink as it did the first time I saw it. It also started to smell funny. I put it on the trash can where we store the chicken feed so Dan could see it, then told him not to mess with it because I wanted to take pictures (to share with you!) and so I sort of forgot about it.

 I'm wondering if it's a failed attempt at an egg. I really don't know what else it could be. The fact that it was so well hidden in the straw backs up my assumption. I can the poor hen who pooped this thing out, stand up and look at back at her craftsmanship. As her eyes widen with horror, her cheeks grow lobster red. She looks around nervously to see if anyone has seen her in the next box and that could identify her as the matriarch of this "thing". When she sees that she's in the clear, she hurriedly covers the reviling object with as much straw as she can, all the while trying not to draw attention to herself wildly scratching away inside the nest box. When she feels like it's buried god enough, she glances out the door of the nest box and looks around to see if she can get out without having been seen. Ba-gacking and flapping her wings, she jumps down into the coop and runs away like the devil is nipping at her heels.

 Poor girl...

 Before I laid this "thing" to rest in Manure Memorial Gardens, I performed an autopsy. After some examination, the results are inconclusive.

From Farm to Table Part 3: Buttermilk

 
Now that we have pasteurized our milk, skimmed the cream and churned our butter, it's time to get to the true gem of this whole entire process, the buttermilk!
 
 I can't even begin to tell you how many recipes I've been excited to try...I'll skim down the ingredients list and mentally tick them off in my head saying, "I've got that...and that one...Oh! we still have some of that..." only to reach "buttermilk" and have my heart sink. Toss the book aside and make something else! Since I live at least 20 minutes away from nearest convenience store, if a recipe calls for an ingredient I don't have, I'm not going to go and get it. I'm too lazy for that.

 Now however, thanks to our handy dandy home pasteurizer that has unlocked a floodgate of new possibilities, I can try these recipes that call for buttermilk and sour milk.

 I stated earlier that I called the liquid that was left over from the butter making process, "buttermilk"... it says in my butter making book that: "'true buttermilk', which is the liquid that remains after the solids have formed as cream is churned into butter. However, there is not really a consensus as to what true buttermilk is." (Helweg, Pg. 62)

 Whatever it is, I use the leftover liquid and it makes AMAZING pancakes! It's become a known thing in the Shawhan household...pasteurize milk one night and two days later we have pancakes for dinner. I found a simple recipe in a cookbook I already had.

Since I normally get about a quart or more buttermilk, I've been doubling the pancake recipe (though I could triple it I guess) since the instructions call for 1 cup of buttermilk.

 The recipe called for an egg too! Nothing like using your own eggs with your farms' milk!

 
 I like to make extra so I can freeze a bunch of pancakes. They freeze well and I just pop them in the toaster in the morning while I get Carl's breakfast ready. Nothing like a good hot breakfast that is ready in just a couple of minutes! Carl and I then both sit at the table and start our day together.

 This picture says it all. From farm to table. I'm not sure how else to say it or present it. A fresh glass of milk with buttermilk pancakes and homemade butter. (Complete with John Deere silverware!)

  So far I've only tried buttermilk in pancakes, but I can't wait to try biscuits and many other tasty treats!

I'm sure some people think I'm a complete fruit loop... why go through all this work when I can go to the store and buy everything? Well, that's part of my answer "buy"...why "buy" when I can get it for free? (Free of money anyway, there is a lot of work involved).

 The other part of the answer is that I'm weird I guess!


Helweg, Richard. The Complete Guide to Making Cheese, Butter and Yogurt at Home. Ocala: Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc, 2012.

From Farm to Table Part 2: Butter Making

 The coolest thing about having access to a dairy, is that we can utilize so many things besides the milk. When we pasteurize milk, about once a week to once every week and a half, I know I'll be doing a little more than plugging in the pasteurizer and waiting for the bugs to be killed.

 The day following an evening of pasteurization, I skim the cream off the top of the milk. (Sometimes I have to do this first thing in the morning if I want a bowl of cereal for breakfast!) Because cows milk is not naturally homogenized and the home pasteurizer does not do this for us, any milk taken from the dairy will have the cream separate to the top. I'm not sure how long this process takes...I know it isn't very long, but I usually wait until the next morning to skim the cream.

Here is a jar of pasteurized milk with the cream on top. My camera isn't the greatest, but where my finger is marks the point where milk and cream separate. Everything above my finger is cream.

Due to the amount of cream, we do lose some of "amount" of milk we pasteurize. Like if Dan brings home one gallon of milk and we pasteurize it, after the cream separates and I skim it off, we now have less than one gallon of milk.

 To skim the cream, I take my super fancy 1/4 cup measuring cup skimming tool and skim my cream off the milk.

 I put the cream into pint jars and leave the cream to set out until the afternoon, since cream needs to be at room temperature to make butter. (I'm not sure why... the book I have on butter making and the instructions that came with the butter churn said so.)

 I skim the cream off until it looks like I have gotten it all. In the end, I never get ALL the cream. There is always a thin layer of it in the jars of milk, so every time we pour milk to use, we have to shake the jar first to distribute it back out.

 There is more than one way to make butter. The two ways I have done it are by putting the cream into a larger jar with a secure lid and shaking it until the butter appears, or when I get the right amount of cream, using the electric butter churn. This way is so much easier with a 10 month old! I can just plug in the churn and go about my business. When you make butter in a jar, you have to constantly shake the jar. Butter can't be made with a little bit of shaking and a little bit of resting. There are good video tutorials on Youtube on how to make butter in a jar.

  When I make butter in the electric butter churn, I need at LEAST 3 pints of cream. This is because the arm on the churn won't reach the cream if there is any less inside. I think the butter churn I have can hold 2 gallons of cream! One day, I would LOVE to try and churn that amount.

  For the electric butter churn, all I do is pour in the cream, secure the lid with the arm and motor on top, then plug it in! After about 20 minutes or so, I can see butter forming!

From here on out, no matter how the butter is made, I believe the steps are about the same.

 I have read that after the butter forms, it's good to let it sit for 5 or 10 minutes to let the butter keep forming. After that, it's time to separate the butter from what I THINK, is the buttermilk.

 I do this step in the kitchen sink. I place a large bowl under a strainer so the strainer catches the butter and bowl underneath catches the "buttermilk".

After that, it's important to remove the bowl of "buttermilk" from under the strainer. I pretty much always forget this part. I say that because next, the butter needs to be rinsed with cold water. I was nervous doing this step the first time because when the butter come out of the churn it is very smooth and creamy. You'd think that if you ran water over it the butter would wash away. Now it's my favorite step because it helps the butter become more solid! (FYI - it takes a lot of cream for a little butter!)

Once the butter has been rinsed you have to press the remaining water out and get out as much water as you can.

 Now I was always under the impression that what you squeezed out of the butter during this step is the buttermilk, but you need a lot of butter to get any amount of buttermilk if this is true. I don't know for sure, so again, please don't use what I say as fact!

 This is when you can add salt to the butter, or honey, garlic, cinnamon, whatever you want! I sometimes add a little bit of salt because I read it helps it keep a longer shelf life.

  The only thing left to do is put the butter into a storage container! Fresh butter is good for a week or a little longer in the fridge! It's not recommended to let it sit on the kitchen table or something. I usually take whatever is left and freeze it to save for baking.

   There you have it! All that work for fresh butter! See how weird I am...I often wonder why I do things this way when the grocery store is easier! But I can't help but marvel how milk being brought home from the farm has turned into fresh drinking milk and now butter...and lets not forget that bowl of buttermilk!