Spring at the Farm

This past weekend we went up to Wisconsin to visit uncle's farm. It was nice to finally spend some time outside without having to be too bundled up in layers of various clothing. The temperature was rising and the snow was melting in front of our eyes. Kids were coming home muddy with huge smiles on their faces... and everything was the way it was suppose to be.

I thought I would share with you some Spring animal moments from our farm visit. 

Few weeks old lambs are getting into some trouble in the turkey tractor...

Mama goat is trying to see if she can get some treat out of me :-)

Her baby is soon to follow... coming closer but still keeping his distance...

All the kids behaving well because daddy is nearby watching (his head is behind the pole)...

Mommy with her little lamb... only one week old... 

So far we are still dreaming the dream around here and waiting what God has in store for us...

Happy soon-to-be Spring everyone and I hope these images brought you some joy and smiles on your faces!

Monika

Linking up with The Chicken Chick!

Feeding Eggshells to Your Chickens

Feeding eggshells to the chicken has been around what seems like forever. If you are like us, you don't like to waste any leftovers and you like to use as much as possible. Of course, you can compost the eggshells but if you feed them to your girls, they will provide some extra calcium in their diet, which they so badly need. Every egg contains a large amount of calcium and if the hen is lacking it in her diet, the rest of her body will suffer. 

Benefits of feeding the eggshells to the chickens

1. No wasting leftovers

2. Providing some extra calcium to the chickens' diet

How to prepare the eggshells

You have to dry the eggshells before you can feed them to the chickens. The reason for that is (as I heard it from our grandmother) that the chickens don't eat any of the actual wet part because that might promote egg eating in you coop. I have double oven and I mainly use the top part. I have a big cookie sheet ready in the bottom oven and every time I have some eggshells I place them on the cookie sheet. You can find any spot in the kitchen... I heard people keeping them under the sink, in an empty cupboard, or in their pantry. Just make sure they are in a place, where they can dry.

After you dry the eggshells, you would want to break them up into tiny pieces. Hens don't really have the brain capacity to realize that you are feeding them the eggshells from the eggs that they lay but they could visualize the round objects and connect it (like when people place golf balls into the nesting boxes to promote egg laying there... golf balls are very similar to the egg shape). Hens sometimes start eating the eggs they lay because they lack the calcium in their diet or they are simply bored. I have never have it happen but I sure heard a lot about it. You can avoid this problem by drying the eggshells and breaking them into tiny pieces - see bottom picture.

Now you are ready to bring them to your coop. I mix them with their regular feed and they gobble it up no problem.

Night Life at the LBF

This is just a fun post on the night life in our back yard. Some of you might have seen me post a picture of the fire bush that is in our side garden. In case you missed it, here it is.

Yup, it got trimmed by none other than Mr. Bunny... guess how I figured that out ;-)

My husband hunts and there for he has some equipment available... like for example this camera. He decided to install it so we know what is going on...

GOTCHA! 

I have seen him/her around... especially when he/she hopped in front of our dog's face while he was resting in the backyard. (I am rethinking the dog's job around the yard)

But we caught other visitors, which was very exciting especially for the kids. Take a look at who is strolling around while we sleep :-)

I hope she is here to catch that bunny ;-) 

And this one especially makes me cringe... See I don't feel like cleaning the dog if he gets sprayed ;-)

Fun Fun Fun!

Our new baby chicks arrived!

My husband and I decided to expand our Little Backyard Farm with some new addition - baby chicks! We currently have broilers, layers, and pet chickens. 

First, meet one of our pet chickens - Pingu. This is the first time we actually have pet chickens. We got three - Pingu is black, Brownie is brown, and the last one doesn't have a name yet because we are not sure if she is going to make it. She is acting a bit lethargic and we are trying to fix that. We believe these are Bantam chickens.

Here is one of our 10 Cornish chickens. We chose these to be our broilers. They will be ready in about 8 weeks. We still have to build the chicken tractor that they will move into. 

Here is the Rhode Island Red. We have these and one more breed we think is Americana to be our new layers. I really like my current layers - they are so friendly and calm. I hope these will be just like them.

At this point the new babies reside in our garage and they will stay there for at least the next three weeks. I will post a detailed description of their current home.

They seem to thrive and grow from day to day.

Feeding the chickens

Today was our girls' lucky day! We picked the best looking worms from our bin and brought them to the coop for the girls to try. Kids were super excited. Were the chickens?

See it for yourself...

We were throwing them down one by one and the girls were besides themselves. 

Who will get there first? We need to slowly make more space in our earthworm bin because new babies are being born every day. 

And since we are in the coop, we will pick some eggs.

Sorry girl for interrupting ;-)

Roasted pumpkin seeds

We are all such big fans of pumpkin seeds. Actually this was the first year when my kids remembered them from last year and asked if we could make them out of our own pumpkins that we carved for Halloween. I saved the seeds with all the goo in the fridge and few days after trick-or-treating we finally got to make one of our favorite treats.

For salty seeds we use:

garlic salt 

3 tablespoons of melted butter

Preheat your oven for 300 degrees

Kids helped separating the seeds from the goo. They did a great job!

After you separate the seeds, rinse them under cold water, sprinkle them with garlic salt, and pour the melted butter over that.

I had the kids help me spread the spiced seeds on a cookie sheet.

I left them roast in the oven for 15 minutes, then I pulled them out, mixed them, and put them back for another 10 minutes. I kept checking on them every 5 minutes to make sure they don't burn.

Let it cool and dry and then place in a bowl or cute container. 

And what did I do with all the goo? Well, I put that on a cookie sheet, slid it in the oven, let it bake for 30 minutes on 350 degrees and...

...fed it to the girls for breakfast! 

I whipped the whip cream by hand

My kids LOVE whip cream and so do I... except they love the one in a spray can while I L.O.V.E. a homemade whip cream made out of whipping cream. I usually buy the organic one in Costco and I use magic bullet to whip it up in a minute with zero force used from my side. 

But the other day we were nowhere near civilization, vacationing in a deep forest, and all I brought there was a whipping cream... and no magic bullet. And the kids wanted waffles for breakfast. And there is no waffle breakfast without a whip cream. 

That made me think about my grandma and what she used to do when I was a little girl watching her from beneath the kitchen counter... before there was a magic bullet. She used her own magic - her muscles. 

So here I was, starring at the bowl full of whipping cream thinking how possibly long can this take me. And I was not happy :-( But as always i realized that either I can whine here, looking at the bowl, or get to work. It doesn't take a genius to figure out, which way will get me closer to breakfast faster.

So I started whipping, and whipping (thinking about bootcamp workouts), and hoping that this will even work! After 10 minutes I took a well-deserved break, went to check on the kids, and continued to whip for another... 10 minutes. 

Wow, look at that consistency! It was perfect. I took a darker picture so you can see the texture of a whipped whipping cream!

And didn't it look yummy on our blueberry waffles? 

It is tempting to bring the bullet next time... but nah... 

Don't underestimate your garden in November

I FINALLY made my way to the garden this week... It is about time to close it up for the winter - but that is what I thought a month ago and look what I gathered now, at the beginning of November! It is unbelievable how much blessing came from my little backyard garden this year. I am still letting my peppers show what they can do. Well, if the weather gets any better of course.

Now, it's time to wash and store this in the fridge. See you all later :-)

Freezing summer squash

I have been spending quite some time in my kitchen preserving herbs and the last of veggies from my garden. Now I am sharing the way I freeze summer squash.

I wash and cut the heads in half. Then I scooped up the seeds from the middle and placed the halves on a cookie sheet. I put some olive oil on the cut halves and salted them just a bit. Then they were ready to be put in the oven at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes.

After the 40 minutes, I checked if they were soft enough to take out. Depends on your oven, you might check earlier. I took them out and let them cool down. Then I scooped up the flesh an pureed them in the blender.

Muffin pan would be the best to freeze them in smaller portions (by the way, this reminds me of making baby food for my kids - if you are doing that, don't salt the halves and put the pureed mixture in ice cube trays). I let it freeze overnight - don't panic if you forget about them... They will be fine until you actually need the muffin pan ;-) (you might want to cover it though)

Last step was bagging and labeling the squash for storage in the freezer! I can add this to my soups or simply spice it and use it as a side dish (cinnamon and vanilla sugar tastes especially good for kids' snacks - just saying ;-)

How to make lavender oil

Growing lavender in my garden was always on my bucket list (I bet it has something to do with my love of Tuscany). So now that I have four beautiful bushes in my side garden, I decided to put it to good use. I already showed you how to properly dry your lavender here and now it's time to learn how to make lavender oil. 

First I cut the lavender closer to the flowers.

Then I stuffed the flowers into a medium size mason jar and pour a good quality olive oil over, until all the flowers were covered.

I let it sit for a week by a window that gets hit for few hours in the morning by sunlight. I read that if you want it done faster, you can also boil it over in a safe pot. But this worked great!

After the week, I laid gauze over a larger glass jar (i double layered it), secured it with rubber band, and poured the oil through. 

This actually needed to be done only once because the gauze caught all the flower pieces right away. But if you find some pieces in your oil, repeat the last step.

Then take a dark glass bottle and pour the oil there. Keep refrigerated for up to six weeks or you can freeze part of it to last four to six months. 

How to dry lavender

This is the first year I can make use of my lavender. I was so excited to be able to harvest it and hopefully create some useful things that I can share with my friends and family. First I decided to dry my lavender in order to have it ready for some further use. So how do you dry lavender? Here are the steps to help you get the best out of this fragrant flower. 

Wait till the lavender is almost in full bloom and then get ready to cut it. You will need to cut the stems long in order to ensure the proper air circulation between the drying blooms.

When you are finished cutting them, take a piece of string and wrap the stems around as close to the cut end as possible. This will open up the flower heads and help the air circulate better between the flowers. 

Then tie a knot and hang them with flowers pointing down to the floor in a dark dry place for about a month. I put them in small bunches to ensure enough air will be able to come through them.