Miles Away Farm Blog

Feeding the Birds

December 6, 2010 in Farm Life | Tags: Birds, Spokane, Suet | Leave a comment

This pheasant was a recent visitor to my feeders, cleaning up the spilled seed, along with the Junco on the right.

I have a background in Ornithology (the study of birds) almost by accident. When I went back to school in the mid ’90’s to get a degree in Biology, I was determined to come out of school with experience I could put on a resume (with my first degree, I had failed to do this, and I had learned my lesson). While looking for a summer job, I saw a posting for field research with the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, in the mountains of Arizona. The job was “nest searching”, that is, looking for the nests of birds, and monitoring them to see if they were successful. It paid a whopping $500 per month (it’s gone up considerably in the last 15 years) and we worked 12 days on/two days off (still the case today) while camping and living in tents. But most importantly, no experience was necessary. Sign me up. Read the rest of this entry »

Walking in a Friggen Winter Wonderland

November 29, 2010 in Farm Life | Tags: snow, Spokane | 1 comment

Our recently plowed field is now tucked in for the winter.

In the past, I have always loved snow more than I have hated snow. I love the way it transforms the landscape. I love the way it blankets and shelters the earth and all its growing things. I love that there are animals that are so well adapted to snow that this is the season when the thrive (I saw a great Nature special the other day on the Wolverine. What a wicked cool winter loving animal). Read the rest of this entry »

Where the Rubber Hits the Road

November 16, 2010 in Farm Life | Tags: butchering, Eid al-Adha, goat, sheep, Spokane | 2 comments

I woke up this morning and listened to a report on NPR about how the long-term unemployment numbers have not been this high since the great depression. Our house in Colorado has not sold. Our income is down considerably. I left a good paying job that I loved to move to the Inland Northwest to farm, but getting the farm going is slow due to limited cash. It’s cold and rainy. My husband is in Walla Walla most of the week. Was I nuts? Read the rest of this entry »

Fall – What’s Not to Love?

November 11, 2010 in Nature | Tags: fall, Spokane | 1 comment

I think if you asked 100 people on the street what their favorite season is, about 80% would say fall. Why is that? Is it just all the pretty colors? The nip in the air? Or does this time of year somehow hit an ancient chord with us, knowing that the harvest is in, the storage bins are full, and there is high hope that we will survive the winter (even if it is by running to the store)? Read the rest of this entry »

Bread Making 201

November 7, 2010 in Baking | Tags: bread, Pound of flour loaf, Spokane | 3 comments

My mother’s 1972 printing of the Joy of Cooking, opened to the page on Yeast Breads. This book literally taught me the basics of cooking. It’s a long story as to why I wasn’t taught by the parental units in my life, but thankfully, I’ve always been able to learn by reading! Not quite sure where the grease stain came from.

I’ve been baking bread since my early 20’s. One of my first attempts was a bagel recipe found on the back of the yeast packet. (I had no idea what I was getting into, but reading the bread section of The Joy of Cooking helped. My work mates scarfed them up like they had not been fed for days, but none of us were particularly picky at that age.) Being a small woman without a lot of upper body strength or height, hand kneading dough was (and still is) difficult for me, and so I only made bread occasionally until the bread machine craze of the late 80’s/early 90’s. Read the rest of this entry »

An Inspired Morning

October 18, 2010 in Preserving | Tags: apple, canning, chili, Chili-apple Jelly, jam, Spokane | 5 comments

My habit of late is to get up around 7:30 am, make a cup of tea, check email and Facebook, and read any interesting blogs. This morning, I saw a recipe for grape chili-pepper jelly. I wasn’t interested, both because I think grape jelly is mostly for people under the age of 10, and more importantly, I didn’t have any grapes.

Some of these dried chilies are well past their expiration date, but how do you tell, really?

What I do have is loads of apples. I’ve made apple-plum sauce, apple sauce, apple butter, and a lot of apple crisp. But still the apples keep coming. We picked the last of the tree just before our first really hard frost a few days ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Hooray for Apple Season

October 6, 2010 in Baking, Harvesting | Tags: apple, apple crisp, Spokane | 2 comments

A tree full of these beauties makes me feel rich!

I am living in apple paradise. How many times have I moved with boxes collected from the local grocery store, only to see “Washington Apples” on the side? Greenbluff, less than 20 minutes from my house, has a great selection of apples. We drove through one of the major Washington apple growing regions, Yakima, a few weeks ago, and saw wooden boxes of apples the size of a small cabin. Read the rest of this entry »

A Position of Trust

September 30, 2010 in Farm Life | Tags: cats, Malcolm, Spokane | 4 comments

Salem, the first cat of our marriage.

We have a new kitty. We’ve named him Malcolm.

I attribute a lot of my “back to the land” ways to my father. He loved to cook and garden and had a deep curiosity about how things worked and a willingness to experiment. But my love of cats? That I definitely get from my Mother. She was a cat lover, and taught me to be, early on. We almost always had a cat growing up, despite seven moves before I was 12.

My husband and I have now owned 8 cats in the last 13 years, not counting the kittens we found good homes for after adopting not one but two female cats who turned out to be pregnant. Salem, a big black beauty, was our first. We adopted him from the humane society in Parker Arizona shortly after we got married. Salem had climbed into someone’s RV in California, and accidentally ended up in Arizona before being discovered. Read the rest of this entry »

Huckleberries For Michael

September 20, 2010 in Harvesting | Tags: huckleberries, Spokane | Leave a comment

Like a blueberry…sort of.

You’ve heard of the popular children’s book “Blueberries for Sal”? Well, this is about “Huckleberries for Michael”. My husband grew up in and around Missoula Montana, an area of the country known for huckleberries. These small blue fruits, related to blueberries, have defied cultivation, and have a huge following in areas of the country where you can find them. They currently go for about $40 per gallon at area farmers markets, primarily because it can take two people way more than an hour to pick a gallon of huckleberries. These sweet fruits make you work for it, no question. Read the rest of this entry »

A Million Muffins

September 17, 2010 in Baking | Tags: muffin, Spokane | 2 comments

What kind of muffins to make today? The actual muffin is a banana walnut made yesterday. This silicone muffin pan clearly gets a lot of use. The jar of salt (blue lid) is an old fresh salad dressing jar that I’ve had for so long that I think something bad will happen if it breaks. I’ve literally had it since before I got married in 1998. That has got to be some kind of record for recycling a jar!

My husband loves muffins. Pretty much any kind. Whenever I ask what he wants for breakfast, the answer is almost always muffins. I eat two or three. He finishes the rest throughout the day.

So I’m always on the lookout for a good muffin recipe. But for me, a good muffin recipe must be reasonably healthy. I define this as having no more than 1/4 cup fat and 1/2 cup sugar or less per dozen muffins. We’re not talking 400+ calorie a piece, bigger than your fist, covered with icing, coffee shop muffins here. Read the rest of this entry »