I’ve become like a crazy cat lady, except for I’m a crazy turkey lady. I stand in the poultry pen and talk to Charlie, and tell him to show me what he’s got. And he does. So fun.
Thelma and Louise, seeking refuge on the top of a plastic 55 gallon barrel. I put them up there with a handful of food so they could eat in peace.
We reached down and grabbed a pair last night, and butchered 13 roosters. I’m actually very proud of this. Taking the step from believing in eating local and raising your own food, to actually dispatching a living animal is a significant one. This was not my first rooster rodeo. We probably butchered our first roosters 7 or 8 years ago. But there is always that moment of pause, as you stand with a living breathing warm-to-the-touch bird in your hands, where you think, “can I really do this”? Read the rest of this entry »
Having lived in Southwest Colorado for 10 years, we spent quite a few holidays, and a few long weekends in New Mexico, exploring Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos, and the landscapes in between. If you have ever been in this part of the world, you quickly learn that the local food is “New Mexican”, not “Mexican”. One of the questions you are asked in most every restaurant, if ordering anything with sauce, is “red or green”? By this they mean red sauce made with dried chiles, or a green sauce made with fresh chiles, smothering whatever you have ordered?
No, God no, not me! It’s Mary, one of my rabbits. All of our rabbits were free. The last two (a boy and a girl) came from a coworker of my husband’s. When they were brought to us, they were in the same cage, and both were consenting adults, and I thought, “better write down the dates, just in case”. So I’ve been watching her closely. Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote a few weeks ago about how farming seemed to be about 40% fencing. If you have animals, I think an additional 40% is about poo management. Today, if you haven’t guessed, I cleaned out the chicken coop, changed out the shredded paper under the rabbit cages, and chipped out the area in the duck pen where they spend most of their time at night. All of this was deposited, with a LOT of water, in the compost pile, using a shovel and a wheelbarrow. After all, the bedding is supposed to be absorbent, so it takes a lot of water to get it wet enough to get the composting process started. Read the rest of this entry »
This was taken looking in the side rear view mirror. That’s Loki (still alive – but getting uglier by the day), in the background. Thor LOVED to go in the truck.
When my husband and I first got married, we moved to Parker Arizona for my husband’s new job. Parker is on the Arizona/California border below Lake Havasu. We lived there for 2 1/2 years. From about May 15th to October 15th, it was over 100 degrees EVERY DAY.
My husband happened to work right next door to the tribal animal control office, and so over the course of that 2 1/2 years, we ended up adopting three dogs. One was a great dane/lab mix named Thor. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of owning or being around a Dane, you know that they are the sweetest dogs around. Thor was super sweet. He was also not super smart. And being 120 lbs and the darkest colored of all of our dogs, he suffered the most in the heat. He’d be standing there panting in the shade, and my husband or I would say in our “Thorbie” voice, “Gosh it’s hot”. We swore that he got about 10% smarter when we moved to cooler weather in Colorado. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not really much of a creamy dressing girl anymore. I could drink good balsamic vinegar right from the bottle, so putting ranch dressing on a salad kind of makes me feel like I’m 12 again. My step-mom made ranch dressing from packets of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix, using equal parts mayonnaise and sour cream. The packets themselves were always of questionable age, as she liked to buy in bulk. I probably ate ranch dressing on some sort of salad about 1,000 times growing up and I’ve kind of out grown it.
Well, summer is in full swing. I’m doing two farmers markets a week. The garden is coming on strong. The weeds and grass are high. It’s getting hard to tell the chickens born this spring apart from the older hens. The ducks are starting to molt into their final adult plumage. And the turkey…well, he’s just funny looking.
Do you ever have one of those days when you just feel crabby, for no apparent reason? Well, last Saturday was like that for me. Every little slight was like itching powder on my brain. I’m generally a pretty calm even keeled person, so this was a bit unusual for me, and I must say, I kind of embraced it. Sometimes, it just feels good to throw a shoe into your closet door. Grin. Read the rest of this entry »
Can you find the chicken in this picture?
Read the rest of this entry »
MilesAwayFarm
Miles Away Farm Blog 