Eating Our First Chicken

September 10, 2008 - Round two for today. Our move isn't the only thing going on these days. There's quite a bit of other stuff for me to share with you today too.

You know by my title that we ate one of our chickens. No, we did not just decided we wanted to taste our little feathery friends. Two days ago one of our chickens was found lying in the yard with a hole in its side - clearly injured. At the time, we didn't know what had gotten to it, but since it was suffering, Joe killed it. A few hours later, a fox was seen wandering through our yard. Pretty strange for the town of Red Hook and there was suspicion that it could possibly have been rabid.

Needless to say, we couldn't let a good chicken go to waste. The fox hadn't eaten any of it - it seemed to have been scared away by something. So Joe plucked the chicken, gutted it, and last night we ate it for dinner (after confirming that it's okay to eat a chicken that was bitten by a possibly rabid fox). I am SO mad that I didn't think to take pictures before this stage because Joe did an excellent job cleaning it - but here he is diggin in to one of our little babies -

This was my first time eating something that I have raised from a baby and it's an interesting thing. On one hand, it was the most satisfying thing in the world. On the other hand, you do tend to picture the living, breathing, clucking thing as you're chewing it, which can be slightly awkward. As for the taste - it tasted like chicken alright, but there were some differences. The legs were extremely chewy - these birds run around A LOT compared to your typical broiler from the grocery store. So she had some serious muscle going on in the legs. But the breast was delicious - juicy, tender, really good. Here's a picture of the bird - a little late, since we had already sliced a bunch off her, but just to give you an idea.

The other thing that was cool about it is that since this was a laying hen, she had a bunch of unformed eggs inside of her. I had seen these before at the farmers market where they sell them in bags. But I never imagined how many there would be. There were big ones, but then there were tons of tiny little ones. They just look like little egg yolks. And yeah, they're tasty too.

Anyhow, the other big thing keeping me from regular blog posting is food preservation. Tomatoes never quit apparently. We've got them coming out our ears and I'm totally sick of them. It wouldn't be so bad if it were all big tomatoes, but it's the cherry tomatoes that we're really loaded down with. I can't do much with them, so all I've come up with is to wash them, cut them in half, squash them down with a masher, and boil them down a bit. Then freeze. I did try this out as a sauce one night and it was pretty tasty, even with the seeds. I have about 10 of these in the freezer at this point. By the end of the season we should never have to buy tomato sauce again.

Because I've also been canning the big ones. With these I do the real deal - peal, seed, dice, boil, and can. Here's a couple jars boiling in the water. And since I'm on the kick I've been going a bit crazy with peaches too. The first time I did peaches I made honey spiced peaches - delicious for a winter dessert. The second time around I just canned them plain, although I used a honey/sugar combo for the syrup. I just tend to think that honey is a little healthier for us. Here are the spiced peaches -I just got finished with another food preservation day today. First, since we had the chicken the other night, I boiled the carcass to produce about 17 cups of chicken stock, which is now in the freezer in various sized containers. Then I blanched and froze 6 cups of sweet corn. And finally, I made 3 batches of pesto from our very own basil. The freezer is already starting to fill up, and I'm just getting good at this stuff! I feel like a squirrel, stocking up for winter and I love it!

Fortunately for me, since I'm running out of hours in the day, some things will keep all on their own. Here is our squash harvest curing in the sun, which should now keep for months if we put it down in the cellar -

We harvested our first eggplant the other day as well. There are only two more out there now - it wasn't a great eggplant year for us apparently. It may not have been hot enough. Or the soil wasn't good. Who knows. I'll be spending the winter figuring out what went wrong this year, why it went wrong, and what to do differently next year. But here's what we DID get and it was super delicious -
The zucchini plants got some sort of disease and/or pest and so we sort of decided to abandon them. We picked everything and then Joe let the chickens in there to have at whatever was in there and dig up the soil. Here's them doing their thing -

Turns out they did a pretty nice job cleaning things up. We're even starting to get some new little zucchini forming!

All in all, we're still eating a lot from our garden. We still have tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, basil, swiss chard, collard greens, beets, ground cherries, carrots, green beans, and lettuce. We need to plant more lettuce so that we can put cold frames up around it and eat it all winter. The gardening never ends!!!

Jackie and Joe Get A Home of Their Own - With Walls

September 10, 2008 - Yes, it has been a while - again. But the wait has been worth it, because I have a good one for you today. We have finally gotten ourselves a home, and a respectable one at that.

Well... I suppose some people may still consider this living on the edge, but compared to camping and living with a parent, it's heaven on earth. We are subletting this tiny place (I've heard it referred to as 'the studio' as well as 'the gardener's shed' so let that fill in the pictures for you). It's about 300 square feet and consists of two rooms, only divided by a small step up, no wall between. One room is our bedroom, the other is the kitchen and dining room. We also have a bathroom. Spiderman lived here before us with all his spider friends. We were a bit busy for several days scrubbing, vacuuming, and preparing to make this our home. Then we had the big move, followed by hours of shopping by me and my mother.

Here is our kitchen -

Small but absolutely functional. It came with just a small two burner stove with a toaster oven to use as an oven. We were going to make do with that, but we have found a little apartment stove with four burners and real oven that runs on propane, so we will be installing that in the next few days. We brought our refrigerator from our demolished house. The sink leaks if you pour too much water in too fast - a quirk we can live with. There wasn't much storage space but the purchase of an extra white cabinet for below the counter solved that problem. And now I can cook!!!!

Here's our tiny little 'dining room' -

Really it's just a table and two chairs, but it's delightful. And the woodstove is right next to it. Off to the left is the bedroom - but I can't show you that. Afterall, some things need to stay private, right? But it's nice how the woodstove is right between the table and the bedroom - a good central location. We also have a propane heater, and will use that to maintain a base temp and wood to add heat when we're home.

The wood floors are one of my favorite features, and the deck we have out back is nice too. But by the far the best thing about the place is that this is what's out our front door -

That's the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge out there and we are directly across from this path that goes all the way down to the river. There's a little beach, places for campfires, and a little marina of sorts. Absolutely gorgeous. Plus this place is in a little community full of interesting people. We are hoping to make many new friends here.

So our house is not built yet - and I'm beginning to realize that things are just as they should be. We are meant to have this interim experience, for whatever reason.

It ocurrs to me that I started this blog in order to document our farming/house building adventures. But what I'm really doing is documenting our life. Of course I have refrained from discussing personal issues since this stuff is out there for the world to see. But I would like to take just one moment to point out that this is our first year of marriage. Our one year aniversary is coming up - one week from today in fact. And boy have we done a lot this year. Sometimes we look back through our posts and are just amazed at what we have done and that we have survived! It's always easy to paint a pretty picture when you're writing a blog that has, well, pretty pictures. But that's not to say that there haven't been a great many challenges and difficulties along the way. Life really is an adventure. And our first year of marriage has been an adventure. But even though many of the days seemed unbearable - now we look back at all of them with such pride. We have a tendency to make some crazy choices that have at times caused us to live uncomfortably - but at least we really lived. And continue to do so!

Getting Ready For Fall

August 27, 2008 - I love the fair. There's just nothing like it really. It has this very specific smell - okay, so it's the smell of fried food and animal manure - but it's quite special to me. Ever since I was a little girl I would spend not one day, but the whole week there taking it all in. Of course, there always had to be an excuse to be there every day - when I was young it was 4-H and when I was a teenager it was to work for the Hardeman Orchards cider booth. This year, I figured it would be a bit difficult to rejoin 4-H at such late notice, so I instead signed up for the cider booth. And I didn't quite get there every day (a real job tends to get in the way of such things), but I did get to spend 3 days there, which was plenty at my ripe old age. As usual, I had a great time, got to catch up with some old friends, do some business negotiating for the fall, and eat a lot of fair food. Yum.

Joe and I also had our first fair outing together this year. The highlight our our evening was of course, the agriculture building. We looked at everyone's vegetables and noted which categories we should have entered and vowed to enter next year. Here are the pumpkins. We definitely should NOT have entered this category, since ours still fit in the palm of your hand.

And then we spent a good deal of time with the chickens. We considered entering a chicken or two, but decided against putting them through the stress. They enjoy so much freedom at our house, we figured this would be like going to jail for a week. But we did get a look at some cute babies - we can't wait til we have more babies!!

As I mentioned last time, fall is quickly approaching in the Hudson Valley. The days have been in the 70's and 80's and the nights down into the 50's. It's beautiful weather, don't get me wrong, but it does seem a bit early. We're still in the tent, afterall, and it can feel down right Arctic at night. Here's Joe looking particularly 'fall' ish the other day.

Our tomatoes continue to come in like crazy. We harvested on Sunday this past weekend because my sister had some people she works with actually place orders for our tomatoes. Turns out we sent her with 9 pints of cherry tomatoes which all sold out, and we still had about 14 pints for our stand to sell, plus extra for our eating. It was quite the harvest. Joe worked out a cleaning and sun drying system outside, quite the beautiful sight -

So far we have made a fair amount of mony on our tomatoes, especially considering it costs us nothing to sell them with our honor system. And we still have so much leftover that just yesterday I started preserving. I planted romas specifically for making sauces, and we also have this one large cherry tomato variety that's best for cooking. So my sister and I got down to it and peeled, seeded, diced, cooked, and canned a huge basket of tomatoes I had. Turns out it only made two quarts - but they sure are pretty!

I also had a huge bowl full of yellow cherry tomatoes that split during our harvest. I wasn't quite sure what to do with them, so I ended up just cooking them down. I just cut them all in half, put them in a sauce pot, smashed them a bit, and cooked them til they were saucy. Poured it over penne, added some basil, olive oil, and mozzarella cheese, and voila! Quite tasty, highly recommend it. Seeds and all. Next harvest I'm going to do the same thing and freeze some.

Speaking of freezing, I finally remembered about the darn concept and got my butt in gear. We had a bunch of zucchini leftover, so I cut it all up, blanched it, and froze it - that'll sure be tasty in a stir fry in the middle of winter -

And then brought in all the broccoli to do the same -

Next on my list is peaches, pesto, and green beans when they are ready. Our seedlings are up! Will have to show pictures of that next time though...

Money, Money, Money

August 19, 2008 - One of my favorite things to do these days is harvest. I love coming home from work, heading out to the garden with a bag or a basket, and reaping the vegetables of our labor. There's usually so much stuff that I have to come inside to drop off a bunch of tomatoes, or else they'll start to squish on the bottom from all the weight. This is what a typical basket of goodies looks like -

I'm so glad we planted a pack of mixed cherry tomatoes because the variety is so beautiful. Of course, we have no idea which ones are which exactly, but I think we could figure it out if we tried. Right now, all I know is that they are all good. :)

Since we have so many, we decided it was time to start selling. Afterall, we definitely want to try to recoup some seed money, and start moving in the direction of making this a business. Here's what we put out last weekend -

After two days, all but four cups of cherry tomatoes were gone, and we brought those in for Axel's going away party. Most people in the family are annoyed that we're trying to sell them anyway. My mother says she could eat a bushel of 'garden candy' every night. I told her that would be an expensive habit. :)

I'll be putting another basket out today, this time with the addition of brandywine tomatoes!

In other news, things are changing again here at mom's house. The summer is coming to an end and Axel, Lorelai, and Elizabeth have all gone back home. It was a wonderful summer filled with lots of great fun, and we will miss them all. This week is fair week - always signaling the last few weeks of summer and the beginning of fall - my favorite time of year! It never used to be (probably because of school), but as an adult, I find fall to be the most beautiful season. I love the way the air changes, the bounty in the garden, the shift to heavier, cozy meals, the holidays, and the bit of rest that the winter promises! While through the summer I had to fight to want to cook interesting things, in the fall I could spend every minute in the kitchen. I'm thinking I'll finally learn to make bread this year too...

But it's not fall yet! And this past weekend Elizabeth and I took Natalie for her first day at the beach. She was completely fascinated by the sand and we all had a blast.

August In The Garden

August 12, 2008 - I took a walk in the garden just now, camera in hand, to see what I could take pictures of. Turns out there was quite a bit going on out there!

The cherry tomatoes need picking every day. The yellow ones really pop out at you when you're out hunting for them. My mom calls them garden candy...

And we have our first peppers coming along. We haven't eaten any yet because there aren't that many and I would really like to see how big they'll get and if they'll turn red. But it's a huge temptation to bit into one of these beautiful guys -

And then there's one lonely chili pepper (that I've seen anyway, there may be some more buried in the jungle of tomatoes) -

I think this little bed is just beautiful. In the back is collard greens, in the middle is basil (green and purple), and in front is celery. It's so pretty you'd almost forget they're all for eating!

Our first eggplant! Actually there's a couple growing now, but this is the biggest -

The broccoli is still putting out little heads of broccoli, but if we don't get to them in time they flower like this. We still eat the flowers and they're pretty tasty too -

The saddest news in the garden is that our cucumber season is quickly drawing to an end. We definitely enjoyed them thoroughly this year - we ate them plain as snacks, on sandwiches, in a variety of salads, mixed with yogurt, and in risotto. It was also the only vegetable from the garden that Axel enjoyed eating. There was one brief moment where I thought I was sick of them, but then when I went out to the garden and found that they were no longer popping up everywhere, I was devastated. They're just the perfect little crunchy accompaniment to anything and everything. And I'm sad to see them go. Some of the plants have completely withered up and died (hard to believe it could be a lack of water in this super wet summer...), and others are still producing little, semi deformed cukes, like the one below (looks dangerous doesn't it?) But the cucumber bounty has defintely ended.

Fortunately we have other things to keep our spirits up, like this slowly growing melon. Can't wait til it's time to cut into one of those.

What else... OH! We got our first Araucana egg!!! They are known for laying colorful eggs and our first one is green! I can't tell you how excited we are that our little baby chicks, that we raised from a week or so old, are now laying eggs! It's too cool.

As you can see, this egg is much smaller than the ones our bigger laying hens are producing. Not sure if this is as big as they get or if the hen is just getting warmed up, I guess we'll find out soon enough.

When we bought our babies, we got two different types - Araucanas and Plymouth Barred Rocks. The Araucanas look like this -

The Barred Rocks, on the other hand, haven't started laying yet. These are them below, and you can see that they clearly have more important things to do, like hang around on fences all morning. But it will be interesting to see what their eggs look like.

That's it for the garden pics. But for some fun - Joe and I took Axel to a rock wall the other day for some climbing. Joe and Axel are quite good - me, not so much, but I DID do it, and I have the pictures to prove it:

House update - we took our drawings to the building inspector and got really good feedback. There are just a few things that we need to put together to bring him and then we should be all set.

AND we have decided to take this apartment that we were looking at. We should be able to move in by the end of the month, so stay tuned for that. It's pretty rustic, so there should be some fun blog entries about that too. :)

We're Back

August 8, 2008 - 5 pm - Okay, let's get back into this blog thing, shall we? It's been over two weeks since my last post. One friend said, "it can't possibly be because there's nothing going on..." and she's right. There's been lots going on. I guess sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging.

Let's see. First of all, camping life is tough. Really tough. It's the little things - like making the bed from only one side of the bed, sleeping in moist sheets because there is no moisture barrier between you and the great outdoors (and it has been very VERY moist this summer), peeing in bucket nightly, and being uncomfortable going 'home' until you know exactly when your husband will be there to protect you from the miscellaneous creatures you share your dwelling with.

Then there are the things that are both miserable and wonderful - like listening to the rain pouring over your head all night (again, LOTS of rain this summer), cooking outdoors, and the whole sense of adventure thing.

And a few things, I must say, are just plain wonderful - looking at the stars at night through the gap in the tree canopy, sitting in front of a campfire, the peace and quiet, listening to the birds in the morning and the rushing stream after a good rain, being alone with your spouse, being alone with your spouse on your very own land, etc.

So there's a lot of conflicting emotions that come with this whole experience. All in all, I don't think either one of us would trade it for the world because we are growing and learning in many different ways, but that doesn't mean there aren't some tough moments. :)

So a few weeks ago I declared myself on a mental vacation and decided to only do what was necessary for a while in order to regain some sense of calm. Joe and I took a 3 day staycation (a vacation where you stay home) - we spent a day at Lake Taghkanic where we took a 5 mile hike, swam, and read on the beach, we spent a day in Millbook where we went to a horse show and an organic wheat growing demonstration, and spent a day at the Mohonk Mountain House spa. I definitely think that camping is best enjoyed when you're on vacation and don't have to get up and do something in the morning. But since this was a true vacation, I did not take pictures. Even taking pictures feels like part of my job these days, so I had to take a break from that too. Sorry. :(

And then there's just been a lot of family time. Our niece Natalie was baptized, Kelly was in town which always calls for a night of sushi and catching up, and then just lots of fun times with Elizabeth, Axel, and Lorelai, as we only have one week left to spend with them. Here's one thing I do have pictures of - Axel's play today was great - here's some of the many pics we took -

The garden continues to flourish. For Natalie's baptism I made a platter of everything available in the garden. We had green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, carrots, and broccoli. It was beautiful and we were very proud. Here's me doing some harvesting - I often use my shirt for collection.

Our tomatoes are coming in regularly now. We are just barely keeping up with them and I think they will overtake us soon.

Cooking has been more difficult this summer since I don't have a full kitchen. But I do cook at my sister's house and my mother's house a few times a week. Here's one of my recent concoctions - pink soup! It's a cold soup made with beets, cucumbers, hard boiled eggs, and milk. Very interesting...

One of my favorite things from the garden has been the ground cherries. I may have written about these in a previous post, but now we're eating them and they are sooo delicious, just like I remember. When they're growing, they have this green wrapper around the berry, but when they get ripe it turns yellow brown and the whole thing falls to the ground. Hence, ground cherry. The little yellow 'cherry' inside is sweet and tastes like nothing else I've ever eaten. My dad used to grow these but I have never seen them anywhere else. If you ever see seeds, definitely grow some. Here's what they look like when you harvest them -

Aaaand, one last random picture - we've been seeing tons and tons of mushrooms around our property. Here's one we saw this morning that Joe thought was particularly beautiful.

Now I'm sure everyone's wondering what is going on with our house. Joe finished taking down the rest of the deck, but other than that we haven't really done much. This past weekend when Kelly was here we worked on some finishing touches for the plans so that we can bring them to the building inspector tomorrow. Yes, we are sort of behind schedule, since we talked about having the house built by the end of the summer. Currently, we have no idea when it will be finished and find it's better to just go as we go and not get too concerned with timing. Either some miracle will occur and it will be built in the next couple months befeore the snow hits, or else we'll build it in the spring. We are looking at subletting an apartment nearby - it's very small but will keep us cozy and happy for the winter. What can I say, the adventure continues...

I'm Sorry!!!!

August 8, 2008 - Okay, I've now gotten a few complaints about my lack of blog entries. I'm really really sorry! There's a whole list of excuses - my mother's internet connection has been unreliable at best, I needed a mental vacation from all things productive, and Joe and I took a mini staycation. That said, I promise that I will write a new entry soon, with lots of pictures and more details on what we've been up to over the past few weeks. But for now I have to get going because our nephew Axel is in another play today and I can't be late!!!