Butter me up

We've been milking cows  for 18 years.


Cream. Certified Organic Raw cream.

 But I didn't start making butter until 6 months ago.



Spinning around in a food processor for several minutes
until...

 I thought it was hard.
That it might require effort

It gets thick, really really...

Imagine my surprise

THICK. Stop the food processor. Scoop some whipped cream into a bowl
and add some sweetener. Now go take it into a dark corner
and eat it slowly and uninterrupted.

My shock and Awe




Press that "on" button again and wait..wait...for the

 When I realized all it took

For the fat, the BUTTER, to separate from the liquid, now the
buttermilk.

Was time



Squeeze out the buttermilk and swish the balls of butter
around in icy cold water. Do it again. Yes again
Pat dry. Add a little salt to taste
Cook with it
Saute with it
Bake with it
Eat it with your fingers (if you are 3)
Spread it all over your toast

 All good things take time and are worth WAITING for.

A bubbly sort of evening

I dream of soap. Its easier than dreaming about selling our farm, moving all our stuff, selling all our stuff, finding new places for stuff, finding new land, building a new house and on and on.

Tonight I not only dreamed but I created. Tried my first egg yolk soap being careful to temper the yolks with oil first to avoid curdles or cooking. Made my lye solution with a half frozen light  raw cream. Scented with Lime EO. It was so pretty pouring into my now famous diaper wipe mold

This is not it. This is my berrycream soap made 6 days ago pictured outside on our porch supports.I mixed 1/4 cup of pureed strawberries and  1/4 cup pureed raspberries in the soap just before molding and scented with orange EO. It smells fabulous and has a rosier color than this photo. I'm still playing around with soap photography. Plan to make one of those white boxes soon but in the meantime I like playing outside with farmy backgrounds.

While blogging, I am waiting for my lye water to cool enough to make a batch of pure lavender soap. Friend (and chef) Mustard and his friend Val were just here (hey !) and he admitted to buying some of my lavender soap.(Thank you)  He's not the first guy to do so so I thought I better stock up. I ordered some alkanet from Organic Creations but it is on back order. Could all your PROFESSIONAL soapers slow down on your alkanet use a little so we newbies can get a little.? Much appreciated. What other natural products can I use for blue and purple soap coloring. Anyone ?

I also perfected my wave last week

Very funny. I'm talking soap wave. See below your goof.

This was my coffee soap and the pink in the topping came from just a touch of paprika. The white Vinca's are some of the only annuals I planted this year and because I planted so few they are actually getting watered this year. Less really is more...except when it comes to soap

A new trick of mine is to take all my soap shavings, leftovers etc... and fill my office windowsills with them. Of course I put some paper towels under the soap, I'm not completely whacked. I'm just half whacked. When the cool breeze comes in at night my office smells heavenly.

And here we have my first attempt at coloring with red clay. I only used a 1/2 Tbs but I like the muted color. I scented it with patchouli EO , I think. All I know is when I sniff it It brings out the Jane in me. I want to swing upside down from our apple tree and yell Cow-A-Bungee !

Wouldn't Keith like that ?

A stroll Through the Gardens of South Pork Ranch...bring your rubbers.

My blog friend, I call him "Rare" was gracious enough to show me his English garden (Ya know 'cause he lives in England) via his blog several days ago.  http://rarelesserspotted.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-second-living-room.html   All I had to do was ask ! So now I must return the favor and show him our very Non-English Garden, although after seeing his I am dying for some order in mine. It used to have order. When I worked full time as a hospice director, my evenings and weekends were often spent in the garden. I had enough time to even keep ridiculous flowery notebooks about my gardens. Can you imagine ?

Now, I'm lucky to buy a pack of seeds, tear it open with my teeth and broadcast it in the yard hoping they will find a little dirt and grow something...anything. But soon, we hope to be able to get back to those things that give us pleasure. Have I mentioned lately our farm is for sale ?

So here it is. The Gardens of South Pork Ranch. Lets start off the veranda shall we ? As one steps out the front door and out onto our chipped, red painted porch you will see

a hail storm. See the little white specks ? Yeah hail at 0700 in the ridiculous am. In the top right corner are three rose bushes and two lily patches. You will not see any mulch. Never got around to that this year. If you look to the left you will see

more rain and to the left of center between the trees is our large hogcienda. This 3 sided abode houses 5
sows and one boar, Mad Max. They also have several acres around the house where they can come and go at will. On a clear summer's eve, if we are lucky, we can witness hog breeding, allowing us to dash into the hose and jot the date on our high tech piece of poster board.

Continuing left around the house you will see

an entirely different day ! The two fine young men in a heated game of horseshoes (it was very hot that day) are oldest son Colton on the right and youngest son Kyle on the left. Behind them through the overgrowth of untrimmed trees and carefully cultivated weeds you'll notice the barn red color of the red horse barn.

OK, I have lost the patience needed to find photos I've taken in my Kodak Photo Folders and put them in order as if I was really walking around tour like. So random yard photos it is. This next building is my favorite. A tiny brick garage that we believe was built when our home was,in 1895.

In front of it two raised beds. One filled with herbs and the other with salad items like lettuces and onions. They are my only planted vegetable garden this year. The red plastic container to the left is the gas can which is always out because I am always mowing or haven't you heard ? The back of that little cottage looks like this

Looking at this I am reminded how mush I love this shady venue. Why haven't I put a chair and table out here and taken more time to read a book or sip a mint Julep? Most likely because I am not found of mint

Dashing around to the way back yard is our largest barn, the "cow barn" which houses our dairy herd when shelter is needed (they are on pasture 90% of the day) or milking must be done. It also shelters  chickens, ducks, more hogs, dogs, whatever. Our 3 GK's and herd dog Fannie are very busy trying to round up those dang piglets who are loose AGAIN. Only if I greased those piglets ,could this event be any more fun.

Our little chicken house is directly off the back door making it convenient for snatching a few eggs for breakfast. Built by Keith and our sons it is one sturdy egg mobile. Behind it are the fields we went for pasture.

The chicken house also doubles as a  duck manor.

Abandoned by their mother several weeks ago and hand fed after that, these 3 Daffy's had no problem getting in view for their close ups. I was lucky I didn't lose an eye close as I was. See the grain flying out of the mouth of duck number one? Yup, I was close all right.

So enough. I'll end the walk with the front of the house which looked grand a couple of weeks ago when the roses were in full bloom and the weeds were still slightly behind.

Have I mentioned our certified organic farm is for sale ? I can't remember. Yes the mower is included in the sale as are the ducks.

Pride

I am extremely proud to be an American. I am also very proud of those in our family who have served on the military over the years. In our most immediate family I have a brother in law who was in the Navy,  a niece who is in the Air Force, one nephew who is currently in the National Guard, another nephew at boot camp in Fort Benning Georgia, a third nephew who will be leaving for the Marines any day now. I also have a sister who was a Marine (and recently lost quite a bit of weight and is looking like her lean mean years . Bravo Mary !) and a son Colton who served in the Navy for 6 years. A very loooong six years for this mamma.

So America, Land of the Brave and Home of the Free...Happy Birthday !

The Renegade Midlife Farmwife

I am very grateful to The Renegade Farmer who has published several of my articles this last month. The experience has been tremendous for me in regards to meeting a deadline (every Saturday) and staying focused in my writing. The deadline part is indeed the most difficult since I rarely know what day it is to begin with.

I've toyed with the idea of leaving a post-it on the side of my bed with the day of the week written on it in large letters, SUNDAY, for example but with my recent teen years flashbacks I'm worried I'll wake up, see SUNDAY in block letters and think I'm suppossed to find those day of the week bikini underwear. I'll spend 60 minutes rattling through my drawers, I mean my dresser, for SUNDAY before I remember they never made those dang things in briefs anyway so it couldn't be SUNDAY underwear I am looking for, here in 2011 could it ?

Where were you ? Oh yeah, if you've followed my blog for more than a post or two you are quite aware of my UNFOCUSED nature. It's really not intentional. I'll start on one topic but soon that ever haunting flight of ideas takes to the sky and I'm off rambling, rambling, like a rambling man.

I did a large number of back flips in my competitive gymnastics days (I did so!) and my brains are still partially scrambled.

This could too have been me....could too...could too...could...too.

So, this weeks article is about direct marketing to restaurants. A fair amount of folk ask us about how to do this, when to do this, and why did you do this ?   I thought an article on the topic might be helpful to other farmers who want to sell their farm raised meat to higher end restaurants without all the middle men like Tyson, to name just one we have no respect for. We're no experts but we've learned enough along the way to be completely aware of how clueless we really are.

A link ? Well I had a teacher named Mr. Link at Anna McDonald Grade School once., poor fellow, quite brilliant but he could not say his "D"'s for some reason so when he talked about The Mediterranean he said "Mefforanean" which gave us all uncontrollable gigg...what ? oh the link, here you go. http://therenegadefarmer.com/

Don't BEE crazy

When Keith came running up to the house the other night yelling for my camera, I was mildly intrigued. He's a laid back type of guy so this behavior was unexpected. All three GK's were present and accounted for so no worry there but the camera thing...how odd. He never takes pictures.

So I meandered out to where he was behind the machine shed and found these

One big group of SWARMING bees. Look at them ! Big and little had come from who knows where and were settling into an empty bee hive we had been meaning to fill with new bees to be purchased. Now most folks would not like this particular site but we were pretty happy. Happy from a distance I might add.

After a few minutes the traveling bees settled into their new home. It wasn't long before there was virtually very little evidence of their Swarm Dance 2011.  They are good tenants who will pay us soon in golden honey you will find in bottles in our farm store. Once again traveling a very short distance before it is purchased, it will go from hive to our machine shed for cleaning and bottling and back to our little farm store which sits approximately 30 feet from this hive. Now that's  LOCAL honey.

I hear its your Birthday. Happy Birthday to Ya !

On this day 49 years ago my best fellow was born. He really is the best fellow. 18 years together and still he talks to me each day and, AND he even pretends to listen. I don't just love him. I really really like him. Even if he is only 3 years younger than me and people still mistake him for my son at least twice a year. Its enough to make me stop curling my hair with bobby pins and covering my head with a plastic rain bonnet I tell ya !

We had planned to take the day off but hay had been cut and was on its way or so we thought we best stay home to welcome it into the barn. Instead this am we got lots of HAIL. This actually cheered us a bit as we thought there was no way the hay that was cut would be suitable for baling. We could maybe leave Dodge for a short time after all.

Wrong again Robin. Seems the hail was isolated. Pretty much just over our farm. So hay is still coming, sooner or later, one of these days. In the meantime we both were home all day. Sister Mary (No not SISTER Mary like in those goofy Bing Crosby movies, but MY sister Mary even took our GK's for the night so we had a child care break as well.

Which is grand but not so much 'cause we really have gotten used to having those future farmers with us on the weekends. Its our routine man. We consoled each other with...wait for it...food. I baked my hubbie a birthday cake and then made a great supper out of ground boar meat. A personal favorite around here. Added some mashed potatoes with freshly made butter and wowla' we got supper.

And now I'll finish the day by preparing for the Farmers Market tomorrow. I have soap to wrap and a wagon to load and seller sheets to print and an invoice form to complete and chairs to wash. What am I talking about ? I never wash those chairs.