Unexpected Yet Lovely

Another day, another floral jelly. 

This afternoon's farmstead activity was supposed to be a family affair of Queen Anne's Lace jelly making.  Queen Anne's Lace jelly is delicious on crackers, toast, and tea biscuits.  Its delicate floral taste is really quite lovely, making it one of our family's tea party favourites.

Liam and Seamus helped me get started by harvesting two bouquets of blossoms - one from our yard and one from the field of wildflowers on the property beside ours.  I rinsed and de-stemmed them and then brewed them into two batches of floral tea.

It seems that instead of sticking around for the rest of the jelly making, the boys had other ideas.  All three boys treated me to a completely voluntary concurrent afternoon nap.  In a shocking turn of events, I ended up with two solid hours to make my jelly in complete peace and quiet.  It was incredible!

For each batch of jelly, I heated up four cups of the filtered tea, added two tablespoons of lemon juice, a box of no sugar pectin, and two cups of sugar.  I boiled, poured the mixture into jars, and water bathed them.  And voila, yet another floral jelly.  

The most interesting thing; however, is that the two identical batches (except for the picking location of the flower blossoms) turned out to be different colours!  The first batch turned out golden and the second ended up being rose coloured.  How unexpected yet lovely.

Batch 1

Batch 2

 

I think it might be time for a tea party.  I hear warm tea biscuits with fresh Queen Anne's Lace jelly calling my name.  Wait...you hear it too?  When should we expect you?

Succulent vs. Stinky

Today was a juxtaposition of succulent and stinky surprises.

We started the morning off by harvesting the most succulent CSA baskets ever. Prepare to be amazed - our Week 6 basket included: eggplant, raspberries, zucchini, cucumbers, beets, broccoli, lettuce, kale, borage, red onions, garlic scapes, parsley, basil, dill, chocolate mint, sage, clover microgreens, wasabi mustard microgreens, a dozen farm fresh eggs, a loaf of mocha rye bread, and a jar of cajeta (goat milk caramel sauce).  Whoa, right?!

Our afternoon was spent "treasure" hunting in preparation for our annual livestock fecal tests.  After the collection part came the delivery; we dropped off baggies of lamb, kid and donkey poop at the veterinarian's office.  Stinky!

You never know what we are going to get up to here on Gael Glen Farm.  We are full of surprises of all shapes, sizes and smells!

Game Theory for Tots

Everyone put in a hard day's work today mucking out the barns.  This is a big job but I was grateful to be doing it on a cooler, breezy day.  Mucking barns during a heat wave is brutal.

Liam really impressed us by mucking out the adjoining meat duck and layer hen coops completely independently.  He had to take a few "breathers" because it was "too stinky" but he did a top notch job - totally up to my standards.  He is growing up and I love that this means that he is able to help out more effectively on the farm.

We rewarded Liam's hard work with a trip out for fancy ice cream.  This was accompanied by a bit of a teaching moment involving a child-friendly explanation of a zero sum vs. a win win game when Liam was not initially very impressed that Seamus was going to get ice cream too but he eventually came around.

Liam picked the grossest looking eleven dollar "Peppa Pig" soft waffle cone with both birthday cake and s'more flavoured ice creams and absolutely smothered with pink sprinkles.   But he was kind and generous about sharing it with Seamus and Ali which is the important part.  In truth, I most enjoyed the normalcy of a family outing...oh, and the much more reasonable afternoon temperatures.  Now, if we could just have a little bit more rain...pretty please?

The Circle of Life

We finally got some rain and hopefully we will get even more overnight.  It was invigorating to do tonight's farm chores to a soundtrack of majestic thunder and the glorious pitter patter of falling raindrops.  I got completely soaked and loved every second of it.  I am so grateful that this rain will give new life to my pastures and a boost to my vegetable gardens.  This food for my livestock and family was absolutely parched.  Hopefully this much needed water will get everything green and growing again.

On the topic of growing, our meat ducks are about done growing.  Ian and I harvested our first two tonight as a trial run for our poultry processing procedure.  We are growing meat ducks and chickens for the first time and so need to figure out the most humane and effective way to process these into food here on our homestead.

Everything went mostly to plan except that it turns out that plucking duck feathers is really hard and very time consuming.  The hot water dip worked better than not doing it but Ian spent a very long time tonight cleaning the two ducks.  Needless to say, more research is required to refine our procedure before continuing with the next eleven ducks. 

On the whole, it was an excellent learning experience and, as usual, we worked really well as a team even though culling and processing is far from the most pleasant job on the farm.  Working hard for good, healthy food from the very start to the very end is, without a doubt, incredibly satisfying.  Now we get to look forward to Sunday night supper of farm fresh roast duck with garden vegetables.  I might even try to make stuffed zucchini blossoms; roast ducks seems fancy enough to warrant these.  I cannot wait!

Enough is Enough

On the bright side, according to our weather station, today was not as hot as yesterday.

This was the temperature during morning chores yesterday.
51 degrees C with the humidex. 
51 C at 9:30 am! 
That is ludicrous.

On the other hand, my animals have had enough of this heat.  I noticed that both Poppy and Abbott were out of sorts today.  When I checked on the sheep at 3pm, Poppy had her head hanging down and was pulling herself around on her knees.  What a terrifying sight for a shepherd! 

I carried her immediately into the air conditioned mudroom where Alistair and I sat with her inside until she perked up, took a long, cool drink of water, and looked ready to head back out to her family. 

I am not sure Ali is going to turn into a farmer; he was absolutely terrified of Poppy's loud "Bah!" calling for her Mama.  After we brought her back outside, Poppy nursed from Violet and thankfully stayed up on her feet.  She looked like she could handle the remainder of the afternoon heat so we left her in her Mama's care.  At my next check she was still doing well and so everyone made it through yet another day of scorching heat.

This heat wave has seriously gone on long enough.  I have tons of outside work to do that I simply cannot undertake in this kind of heat.  Let's all be reasonable here; this is not Death Valley, Nevada or the Lut Desert in Iran. This is Ottawa.  Enough is enough.

It's an Invasion

We are currently being overrun by footwear, cucurbits, and floofy bundles of joy.  What a strange combination; though, it is 2020 after all.

We have yet to overcome the shoe invasion, though at least they are now all in pairs.  I think it is safe to say that some boxes and a sharpie might be a large part of the solution to this particular problem.

I gave our very unruly cucumber/zucchini/squash patch a substantial leaf pruning. 

Before

After

  Ian and I also staked a few zucchinis to get them to grow vertically.  Hopefully this helps our problem of not knowing where to step at least a little bit.

As for the tiny, floofy bundles of meat chick currently occupying our chicken trailer - all I can say is the more the merrier.  These chicks are simply adorable as well as quite docile compared to our egg layers.  These sweeties happily tolerate snuggles from the kids, though I think we all know that they would rather be eating.

Dead? Nope, Just Sweltering

It is beyond hot today.  I cannot actually remember it ever being hotter.  I have muttered silent thanks many times over the course of the day that we decided to put in air conditioning two summers ago.

Not all of us here on the farm are quite as lucky as us farmers with our air conditioned living quarters.  Not only can Gloria Swinem and Ham Solo not sweat but they also do not have an air conditioned barn.  As much as I love my animals, I draw the line at bringing pigs inside the house.  They are huge and they really, really stink.  And so, our piggies have spent much of today laying forlornly in the shaded dirt or soaking lethargically in their wallow.  We have checked on them several times over the course of the day and they are fine but I can tell they are thinking, "It is so oinkingly hot I could just squeal!"

All of us here on Gael Glen Farm have pretty much had enough of this extreme heat. Oh, how we wish it would rain!