Winterizing

I’ll start this by saying I hate winter, snow, cold and mud. So obviously this time of year is not my favorite and I frequently get in trouble because I procrastinate on my preparations. This year I am feeling rather ahead of the game. Water troughs have heaters, my mini stallion and sheep have their own heated water buckets and I have everything in place for the chickens to have their heated waterer and a light ready to go in their coop (okay…the light is overdue!). All of this really makes my world better as it should mean less work for me!

I also have one of my broodmares under lights so hopefully we can get an early start on breeding her and my only pregnant mare is ever so slightly starting to get a baby bump. Yes it is early, but I swear it is there!

My five year old gelding will truly be starting his eventing career this spring and my four year old Trakehner filly is currently at mini bootcamp with my trainer so she can hopefully do a couple dressage shows this year.

So when the weather gets bad I am hiding inside a lot and making plans for the better weather

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

Since a few of my friends have asked for the recipe I have been using I thought I would share it here!

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

1/2 cup butter softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup canned plain pumpkin

1/4 cup evaporated milk

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cinnamon

1/4 tsp powdered ginger

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1 2/3 cup flour

Streusel Topping:

2 Tbsp flour

2 1/2 tbsp white sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 375. Cream together the butter and brown sugar. Add the egg and blend. Mix together the pumpkin and evaporated milk and then mix into the butter/sugar mixture. Add the baking soda and spices and gently mix. Lastly, add the flour and stir; do not over stir!

Pour batter into muffin tins (12 regular) that are either lined or greased.

In small bowl, blend streusel ingredients. Sprinkle over muffins then bake for approx. 22 minutes.

Enjoy!

(Recipe from the Penzey’s Spice Catalog)

Newest residents of our farm!

 

 

Welcome to the newest residents of our farm! They are two Cormo ewes and are very sweet girls! So I am working on learning more about them! I am very fortunate to have a wonderful neighbor to mentor me in this adventure. I have learned that sheep are very talkative and are very good at following me around if I have a bucket of feed in front of their noses. These girls do need names! So any suggestions are appreciated. It has also been great fun watching my horses react to the sheep. Ears up and lots of snorting!

Adventures in meatloaf and the breakdown of appliances…

The saga begins almost two weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon when I decide to try a new recipe for meatloaf. Why did I want to do this? Well I am not crazy about meatloaf but I firmly believe that every farm wife should have a really good meatloaf recipe. So I have tried a few…but not with enough success that I really wanted to make them again. So while hunting around the internet I find The Pioneer Woman’s meatloaf recipe and truly felt that it had good promise. Of course I didn’t have all the right ingredients but I had close enough to make it work!

I began by preheating the oven to 350, locating an appropriate broiler pan and lining the bottom with foil because I would much rather throw that away then scrub the bottom of the pan!

I had a loaf of truly wonderful soft whole wheat bread from the Amish General Store so I took three slices and soaked them in 1/2 a cup of whole milk. After a few minutes I added a pound of ground beef that I had purchased at the farmers market from a local farm the day before, 1/2 a cup of parmesan cheese, 1/8 tsp of seasoned salt (I used Lawry’s), 1/2 tsp of salt, and fresh ground pepper. In a separate bowl I had beaten two eggs (thanks to my awesome chickie girls for the eggs!) and now dumped those in as well! Mixed all that together and formed the meat loaf which I then placed on the broiler pan.

To make the sauce I combined 1 cup of ketchup, 1/3 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 tsp dry mustard and Wild Turkey’s Habanero Sauce to taste.  The measurements for sauce ingredients are all approximate because I tend to adjust them to my taste as I make it! A third of the sauce goes on the meatloaf before baking (another 1/3 after 45 minutes of baking and the remainder on the side when you serve after the final 15 minutes of baking) and then into the oven the meatloaf went!

Or that is how it was supposed to happen…oven still had not heated up…what the heck?!?! So I try to turn the oven on again…still nothing. At this point I am running out of time because I need to cook meatloaf, serve dinner and be out the door in less then 2 hours. So I call my Super Neighbor Paula and ask if I can borrow her oven. She says no problem so over to her house I go! Thanks to her and her awesome oven my meatloaf gets baked and is served for dinner at my house! I have to say this was the best meatloaf I have ever had…straight up amazing! Which is why I had to share

Sadly the oven continued to refuse to preheat…which resulted in me calling the Sears appliance repair people…which I will never ever recommend to anyone! They wanted to charge a ridiculous amount of money to come and look at this oven and at the time I couldn’t find any other alternatives! So fine they can come next week…next week arrives and they call to reschedule since their technician called in sick…fine they can come the following week…but I am pretty irritated at this point because my washing machine has also broken and Sears would need to charge me a whole separate fee and send an entirely different technician because clearly it is IMPOSSIBLE that the same technician could work on both appliances…and then! I find a local company who can not only come out the next day but can also look at my ice maker that has been broken for awhile and I have just been to lazy to do anything about it…

So now today! I have a washing machine that works, and oven that works, and an ice maker that works! How awesome is life right now?!?! And by the way the meatloaf was totally amazing and you should make it and I really think the Wild Turkey Habanero Sauce is essential!

Progress!

A couple months ago I attempted to teach my 3 year old Trakehner filly how to lunge. This was an unmitigated disaster…the chickens, which are completely nonthreatening in the pasture and the barn, turn into carnivorous horse eating monsters if near the arena. What initially was a positive learning experience turned into meltdown tantrum of the century. After two days of rotten behavior I decided to take a break from the attempt at advancing her education. Today I decided her break was over and wow was I rewarded. While there were a couple “looky” moments at the previously mentioned carnivorous chickens overall my sweet well behaved filly was definitely center stage today!

August will be better!

This spring really started out wonderfully for me with both of my mares having beautiful healthy foals. Rosie and Kingsley are absolutely the sweetest foals I could have asked for and so much fun to have on the farm. This is one of my favorite pictures of them.

Since then however we’ve had a steady downward spiral…Of all four mares I am trying to breed, only one caught, and she slipped that pregnancy. After slipping the pregnancy she developed severe neurological symptoms and was diagnosed with EPM and a poor prognosis so we had to put her down.

Additionally we’ve had crappy horrible hot weather, raccoons decimating my chicken flock, my newest mare receiving a score two points shy of approval at her inspection (although the inspector did say to represent her in the future), and a variety of other things going wrong wrong wrong. Well it is August now, and I am saying ENOUGH!

August will be better! Mares will be getting in foal, our upcoming family vacation will be fantastic, and the horse shows coming up will go smoothly.

Here’s to a positive and productive August!

Cicada Emerging

I went outside last night to bring some dog food in and was pleasantly surprised to find a cicada emerging from its skin! What an incredibly neat thing to have the opportunity to see. So of course I run back inside to grab my camera only to find it was missing its memory card. No problem, go back inside and get the other camera…which has a dead battery and its memory card won’t fit to first camera. The cicada of course is emerging further and further and I am missing my opportunity…finally get my hands on the correct memory card and back out I go. Enjoy!

Farm wife?

I call myself a farm wife because obviously I am married and have a farm. However just to be clear…I am also the farmer! I do my (poor) best to maintain my house, the yard (seriously can I just graze some sheep in the yard?!?! this mowing is tedious!), the barn, the fields, and my favorite…the critters! The sheer amount of work can be overwhelming, but I am my own boss! I have little empathy with my friends with 9-5 jobs (and no farms to go home to!) that complain about Mondays and gleefully rejoice about Fridays…because I don’t get weekends off unless I am away from the farm and then I still worry. This is me, my life and my adventure!