Backyard Farmgals

Have you been lucky enough for your carrot harvest to winter over?  I felt very lucky as I dug the rest of our carrots from last year this morning.  I filled a giant golf ball basket with my surprise harvest.  By the way, the golf ball basket is super for harvesting and washing veggies.  (Don’t freak out Preston, I cleaned it and put it back!!!)  It has great big holes so that leaves and dirt wash out easily.  My new favorite thing, I will be buying a few of them in the future, I’m sure!!!  The thing about overwintering carrots is that you have to cover them with something to keep them from freezing.  I covered the rows of orange jewels with piles of leaves.  The leaves insulated and also made it easier to dig them out in the cold winter.  I harvested carrots several times during those dark winter months.   I was thrilled to dig, to get dirty and muddy.  I was excited when I turned the soil and found several giant earthworms, my first this year.  Will held the worms with the greates

This has been the week of the goat, literally!  We spent the week looking for a baby goat to add to our farm.  Tuesday morning, we headed to Willard with our family friend, Sherm, to attend an animal auction.  Sherm is the rancher that I grew up next door to.  I have to admit that I have been calling him with greater frequency these days with silly questions about horses, goats, barns, and a lot of other fun things.  I have great memories of Sherm and his wife Nanc from my childhood.  We have been to rodeos, camping and hunting with them.  We used to drive to “the hollow” where Sherm often kept cows in the summer.  My brother, Preston, and I would pile into the back of Sherm’s old blue truck with his Australian Shepherd “Bear”.  My mom and Nanc would sit up front holding boxes of hot pizza, and we would head up to the hollow across from Valley View Golf Course.  If my dad, “Leroy” as Sherm called him, happened to be home, he would come along for the ride.  The truck always smelled of

Sometimes a farmgal needs a salad...I mean a REAL salad...with bacon and eggs, tons of veggies and some really good homemade dressing.  Nothing gets me full, and still feeling healthy, like a cobb salad with everything under the sun.  Mine is pretty simple, but delightful at the same time.  It’s a full meal, no need to add on any extra cooking to the task of chopping all of the glorious and brightly colored veggies that top this salad.   I found a wonderful recipe in the April issue of “ Martha” for Buttermilk-Pecorino salad dressing.  (It’s on page 88 if you have the issue...along with several other tempting dressing recipes.)  I love making my own dressing because I know what is in it.  The only thing about making your own is it doesn’t last as long (no preservatives - BINGO - just what I want), so you have to eat it quickly.  This recipe makes a cup of dressing, which we easily go through in a week.  We eat salad like some people eat burgers and fries!!!  (Ha...my kids don’t ev

I love omelets, mostly because they are light and quick, but they also use up a bunch of eggs at once, which is a wonderful thing when your chickens are laying 24 eggs a day!  The best part of the omelet is that you can stuff it with anything that pleases your palate.  Mine is filled with baby spinach, sautéed mushrooms and garlic, sautéed asparagus, fresh tomatoes, a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, and sunflower sprouts.  YUM!!!  Stuff yours with whatever you want, have fun with it. I serve mine with slightly crisped prosciutto which is Italian bacon.  You can eat it soft without cooking, but I love mine crispy.  It takes about 2 minutes in a large skillet on medium high to crisp it.  The advantage to this over regular bacon is less fat and no nitrites or nitrates.  I feel so much better serving this to my kids, and they love it! Farmgal’s Spring Omelet From Four Happy Hansens makes 2 omelets Olive Oil Salt Pepper 6 farm fresh organic eggs, beaten 2 cups sliced porcini mushrooms 2 clo

We had a very interesting discovery this last week at the farm.  One of our beautiful chickens is blind.  Blind as a bat if you care to be cliché about it.  My mom found her in the coop one morning being pecked by the other chickens.  She was hunched down in the corner and shaking.  She was so scared.  My mom pulled her out of the coop and put her in a separate area and called me to tell me that she thought she may be blind.   Upon further inspection, it appears that she may have cataracts.  Her eyes are hazy and she acts like she is trying so hard to see what’s going on around her.  When you suddenly move your hand around her face, she doesn’t even react.     We couldn’t put her back with the other chickens, so we decided to bring her to ranch #2 (our house).  I had to quickly purchase a small chicken coop and assemble it.  Woodman has no time to make a coop right now, so the cheesy little coop is in the backyard, reminding him of all the things he wishes he had time for.  Putting t

Oh, it be so!!!  We have added a very cute new buddy to our little farm.  This is Cory.  He is a 6-year old miniature appaloosa.  We have been thinking about adding a pony to our party, but had heard some pretty nasty things about behavior problems with them (they BITE).  After doing some research and meeting a miniature horse up at the farm store, we decided that the mini was definitely a better road for us.  Our biggest problem was that we would have to train a baby to lead, to pull with a harness and teach it how to act around the kids.  I just don’t have time for all of that!   Someone that I work with mentioned that they had a miniature horse and because he is getting divorced, the horse had to go.  He was trained, had been around a lot of children (Dave has 8 kids...gasp), and had a routine that was fairly easy to follow.  So.......after a long talk with Woodman, we decided to go and meet this horse.   Of course we fell in love immediately, and the boys were completely smitten