Seeking Rainbows

I am sure my children are no different than others but...they oscillate between being incredibly helpful and being so exasperating that I consider checking Kijiji to see if they have changed their policy on selling kids.

Yesterday Liam placed our October grocery order online completely independently.  I provided him with a list of items and I paid but he did the rest.  So helpful.

This morning, Seamus helped me clean out the fridge in advance of restocking it with our new groceries.  He removed all the drawers, washed and dried them, and put them back.  So helpful.

This afternoon, Alistair swept.  He did a terrible job at the actual cleaning part but he occupied himself for a whole half hour.  So (well, at least moderately) helpful.

There were also times this week that I needed a second cup of coffee and three deep breaths to keep going.  Today I actually needed to call in a Grandma-shaped reinforcement to take Liam for the day since he was in a bad mood of epic proportions and was making the rest of our lives miserable.

We all have our ups and downs.  Here is hoping tomorrow is more rainbows than rain.

Post-Pear Self Care

We are finally done canning.  We finished up our 2020 canning season with a dozen jars of pears in vanilla cinnamon syrup.

My pantry is now better stocked than it has ever been.  We are well prepared for whatever may come our way.

Time to celebrate with an evening of "me time".  I splurged on a small selection of speciality teas for autumn and a new novel.  They arrived in the mail today.  Sigh of happiness.

This Vanilla Bean tea is divine.

Costumes & Cupcakes

It may still be a month away but Halloween preparations are in full swing here on Gael Glen Farm.  The boys are busy figuring out their costumes.  Alistair tried out Captain Underpants today.

The Halloween decorating is coming along too.  We spend some time working on the decorations each afternoon.  "Crafting" is not my favourite past time but the boys love it, and it is probably good for some sort of skills development, so I am making an effort.

Since we are sticking around the farm for Halloween, unconventional treats like cupcakes and candy apples are back on the table!  As such, the boys were adamant that we need to "practice" making the perfect Halloween cupcakes.   I have no doubt that same will need to be done with the candy apples at some point over the next month.  

Baking I can get behind; cupcakes and candy apples are much more in my wheel house than crafting, though I will readily admit that Christmas is my jam.  Anything scary does not float my boat.  These cupcake ghouls are a far cry from Jolly Old Saint Nick but at least they look pretty friendly to me!

Spoiled Farmer

I have been a spoiled farmer this summer with help from several volunteer farm hands.  This is the first weekend in a long while that I have not had an extra pair of helping hands in the barn yard.  I know, spoiled farmer!  

Luckily, I have some live-in farm hands ready to offer a helping hand when I need it.  During Ali's nap, the remaining four of us mucked all the barns, dug all the remaining potatoes, and collected all the unripened squash off of the pretty much dead vines.  

It was a solid morning's work and we would not have gotten nearly as much accomplished without everyone pitching in.  They say raising children takes a village, well, running a farm takes a family - and my family kicks butt!

Hearts?

Or butts?  You decide.

Portly Pigs & Plump Pumpkins

It was a much less eventful day here on Gael Glen Farm.  Thank goodness.

Ian went duck hunting in the morning and goose hunting in the afternoon.  I refilled the bees' sugar syrup.  Their buckets were completely empty!  There are still lots of flowers in bloom though, I noticed the ladies out enjoying my fall gardens.

Our honey bees on my autumn joy sedum.

The ducks - Emma and Abby, Callie and Kate - played in their pond.

We finally settled on names for our ducks. 
Emma (front left) in honour of our summer farm hand.
Abby (middle) because we like the name and it pairs well with Emma.
Callie (back left) because of a character on Paw Patrol.
And Kate (right) already had a name though Seamus calls her "Quack Quack".

Henrietta and Pecky Becky supervised all the goings on in the poultry run.

Henrietta is the pretty golden chicken. 
I think she is an Americauna and really hope she is not a rooster.

Ava stayed on her tether and managed not to eat anyone.  Everyone else behaved themselves, more or less, except Ham Solo.  I may have mentioned before that Hammy and Gloria are very hungry animals.  We are definitely feeding them enough but this morning Hammy decided that he simply could not wait for me to dump out the bucket of food.  He chomped down on my hand holding the bucket.  It was an effective manoeuvre to make me drop the bucket and hence gain him access to the food a second faster but ouch!

My first pig bite was all the encouragement I needed to get out the measuring tape and figure out if these two are ready for freezer camp.  Luckily Hammy is so immensely focused while eating that he does not move a muscle.  It was no trouble at all to take accurate girth and length measurements.  These indicated that he is close to 320 lbs.  This is a perfect size.  Next weekend has been earmarked in our calendar.

Since the farm animals were so well behaved today, Liam and I took the opportunity to escape for an afternoon adventure.  We decided that today was a perfect day to seek out a few gigantic pumpkins for carving.  We will not be trick or treating this year so I am thinking of ways that we can make Halloween night super special here at home; extra huge pumpkins for Jack 'O Lanterns seemed like a good start.

These are very large.
Liam was ecstatic.

Liam and I also decided to celebrate today's return of summer-like weather and the beautiful fall colours with what will perhaps be one of our last ice cream cones of the season.  We thoroughly enjoyed it.

On the whole, it was a relaxing and enjoyable Saturday.  I hope this gorgeous weather and today's exceptional barn yard behaviour lasts forever.

Our sugar maples.

Our horse chestnut tree.

A Bad Day to be a Goat

 You may have noticed that there have not been any naughty Ava posts in a while.  Maybe you, like me, figured that Ava is finally growing up and, at long last, is beginning to understand her job as a livestock guardian.  If you did, then you, my friend, would be mistaken. Gravely mistaken.

I just happened to glance out the kitchen window this morning during home school time to see Martha laying sprawled out on the ground like she was dead.  I raced outside to find Ava half on top of Martha chewing on her hind leg.  Yep.  Ava tried to eat Martha.  Why?  I have absolutely no idea.  Ava has been living with Martha since the second she stepped foot on the farm almost a year and a half ago.  As far as I know, she has never used Martha as a chew toy before.  Ava has plenty of food - she is not hungry.  She also has three chew toys - she does not need Martha's leg.  Ava is not even teething.  What the hell?!

Also, did I mention that our other goat Mellie is now missing a horn?  This morning she had two.  Now, she has one and a bloody stump where the other used to be.  Again, what the hell?  I have no idea what went on in the barnyard this morning when my back was turned.  I also do not know if Ava is somehow involved in the case of Mellie's missing horn but, if not, it is quite the coincidence for it to happen on the same day I caught her trying to eat Martha.  Now Mellie really is a unicorn goat.

Apparently, today was a bad day to be a goat here on Gael Glen Farm.  And Ava has just earned herself a one way ticket back on her tether for the foreseeable future.  Ugh.  She is the most infuriating animal ever.

After a very trying morning, I made sure to carve out some time in the kitchen this afternoon to try and resuscitate the day.  The barn yard is usually my happy place but when that does not pan out, I can always count on the process of transforming our farm produce into a healthy, satisfying meal to lift my spirits.

The boys and I harvested fresh broccoli, lettuce, radishes, daikon, zucchini, oyster mushrooms, and carrots which we paired with our onions, garlic and venison strips to make a "beef and broccoli" stir fry.  My homemade sauce was amazing.

Recipe: Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry Sauce 

(inspired by https://natashaskitchen.com/beef-and-broccoli/)

1 inch fresh ginger grated
5 cloves garlic pressed
1/2 cup hot water
6 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp corn starch
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 Tbsp sesame oil

2 Tbsp sesame seeds

I still think that it is pretty amazing that all these vegetables are still growing right here in our backyard!

We paired our main course with a fresh side salad with sesame dressing.  

Recipe: Sesame Salad Dressing 

(inspired by https://www.recipetineats.com/asian-sesame-dressing/#wprm-recipe-container-24857)

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 Tbsp sesame oil
1/4 cup white vinegar 

1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp sesame seeds

For dessert, we made pumpkin loaf with toasted pecans and dried cranberries.

Recipe: Pumpkin Loaf

(inspired by America's Test Kitchen)

2 cups flour (1 cup all purpose & 1 cup whole wheat)
1 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups pureed pumpkin (we used our Long Island Cheese Squash)

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup toasted pecans

1 cup dried cranberries

Bake at 350 degrees for an hour.

I will most likely remember today as "the day Ava tried to eat Martha" but at least it was not all bad.  I am so thankful that Martha is not dead.

A Slight Deviation

Today's lesson in our home schooling science workbook directed us to plant one pot of rocks and one pot of beans to observe how they grow.  

We ended up with six pots.

Pot 1: Beans with light, soil, water & air

Pot 2: Beans with soil, water, air but no light

Pot 3: Beans with light, soil, air but no water

Pot 4: Beans with light, air, water but no soil

Pot 5: Beans with light, air, water, soil & fertilizer

Pot 6: Rocks with light, soil, water & air

My five and seven year olds can now also explain the concepts: a control, a variable, and a hypothesis.  Oops?  We may have deviated slightly from the curriculum.

Signed,

Farmer Krystal PhD

Sweet & Spicy

 We finally did it!  We are out of jars.  Well, our usual supply of jars, anyway.  All homesteaders worth their salt have a secret stash of new unopened jars - just in case.  It is immensely frustrating to run out of jars in the middle of canning something so we stocked up a few years ago when they were on sale.

We made the final push with a last few jars of spicy pickled banana peppers and more pumpkin pie filling.  Looks like we will have to break into our secret stash in order to can the pears!  In the meantime, it is ziplock baggies and into the freezer for everything else.

The Magical Fruit

We finally managed to put up the last of our beans.  I swear, beans are the vegetable for the apocalypse.  If I could only save one seed - beans would be it.  They are so very easy to grow, they produce forever, and each plant makes so much food!  I love all these things about beans but I cannot lie, I am not sad to see the end of them in our 2020 garden.  We have just grown so many, eaten so many, and canned SO MANY!  Bye bye fresh beans until next year but I promise we will continue to enjoy eating you all winter long.

The Struggle is Real

Like the rest of us, Liam and Seamus struggle with Mondays.  I don't blame them; it is hard to forget the fun that was the weekend and settle down to another week of work.  Needless to say, they were excited for school time to be over today so that they could get to the good stuff, like potty training Alistair and making pumpkin pie.

We also prepped our last round of yellow beans and pickled peppers for processing tomorrow.  Liam and Seamus might be sick of school but I am getting pretty sick of canning.  On the bright side, we are almost out of canning jars!  I will have just enough to do a bit more pumpkin pie filling and the pears we picked last week (they are still not ripe enough to cut) and then I think that we can finally wrap up canning for this harvest season.  Woot!  Woot!

Productive, Fun-Filled & Crazy

We had a productive morning, a fun-filled afternoon, and a crazy evening.  After morning chores and goat pedicures, we pulled out all the veggies that did not survive the past few nights of frost and cleaned up the empty garden space for winter.  Our gardens are still looking amazing!  We have:

The main kitchen garden.

The box and pallet gardens.

Swiss chard.

Lovage and self-seeded borage.

Carrots.

Red lettuce.

Green lettuce.

Our second patch of chard, lettuce, dill and sorrel.

One of two patches of kale.

Daikon radish (earmarked for kimchi).

Purple broccoli patch.

Parsnips (will be harvested after a third heavy frost).

Parsley.

Broccoli.

Cabbage.

Chinese cabbage.

Turnip.

Baby breakfast radishes.

After lunch, we headed out for a forest walk to the tree stand.

For dinner, we roasted hot dogs in the backyard until Ian got called away for a work emergency.  The boys were exhausted, full of chips and sugar, and misbehaving big time by this point.  With Ali in the stroller and the big boys in separate time out spots, I rushed through nighttime farm chores and then put them all straight to bed after quick baths to wash off the oh-so-sticky roasted marshmallow ooze.  I had all three kids asleep within five minutes of tucking them in.

It was a crazy end to a very full but gorgeous and fun weekend.  This time of year is the best, though I could do without overtired, sugar crazed kids.