Flashback Friday - And the Cows Came Hom

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On a cold and sunny day in 2010, the first cows purchased for the farm were delivered.

Top left - Angus Girl, Top right - Angus Boy (Bubbee) lower left - Jersey Boy, lower right - Jersey Girl

 

There was Jersey Girl and Jersey Boy along with Angus Girl and you guessed it, Angus Boy (a.k.a. Bubbee) – pretty original names, I know.

Our intention was to have these  two pairs of cows breed and once their calves were born, we would have of all the cow’s milk we could possibly want to make butter, cheese and other dairy products. Just an FYI – Angus are beef cows and Jerseys are dairy cows.

Oh, we were so naïve and had no clue what we were doing back when we started. We have yet to get milk from any of the female cows.

Well, to be fair, Jersey Girl and Jersey Boy were sold to a neighboring farm before they were mature enough to breed (or so we thought).  The day that trailer came to pick up Jersey Girl, her udder had dropped which indicated that she was pregnant.

Angus Girl and Angus Boy did breed, but we could never get close enough to Angus Girl to milk her after her first calf was born.  No one told us that Angus cows were so skittish, we learned the hard way … getting kicked by a ton of angry beef on hooves!

Angus Girl has had several calves over the past five years.  The first year, she had Half Calf, the next year she had Little Bit and the third year, she had Sir Loin.  Little Bit has had one calf so far and his name was Ribeye.

Yes, both Ribeye and Sirloin were tagged for processing.

In 2012, Half Calf became pregnant  for the first time and unfortunately died along with her newborn calf just days after giving birth. The short story,  Her Name was Half Calf, which is about this tragic event, can be found on Amazon.

We currently still have Angus Girl and Little Bit, along with Angus Girl's newest calf, Mocha.  Our dairy calves, Chai and Latte were added in the fall of 2014.



More to come in the spring of 2015.

Farm Girl Freak's Shrimp Scampi over Angel Hair Pasta

Ingredients

1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of unsalted butter
3  garlic cloves - finely chopped

1/2 cup red bell peppers (or orange or yellow peppers) - chopped

1/2 cup sweet onion - chopped

1/2 cup fresh grape tomatoes - diced
1/2 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
30 - 35 small or medium shrimp (about 1/2 pound) shelled and de-veined
1/4 cup of lemon juice
1/4 cup of chopped parsley

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon shrimp boil seasoning (I use Old Bay)

1 teaspoon salt

Directions

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil and the butter over medium heat.

Add the garlic and onion; saute' for about a minute.
Add the shrimp, diced tomatoes and peppers; saute' for 4 to 5 minutes, until the shrimp turn pink and are just cooked through.
Carefully stir in the lemon juice, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, shrimp boil seasoning and salt.
Follow directions on the pasta package to prepare pasta.
Serve immediately over cooked angel hair pasta.
Serves 3 - 4.

Flashback Friday - The Big Red Barn

When the property was purchased, it was an abnormally dry summer that year.  The barn looked good enough from an I.T. Geek perspective - it had solid four by fours holding up the structure, a tin roof that looked okay (but needed work) and it was painted red. You know, the normal barn that comes to mind when you think of an old red barn.

This is what it looked liked when purchased:

Well, looks can be very deceiving, especially if you don't really know what you are looking at.  Apparently the barn was built some fifteen or twenty years ago on a lower spot than the land that makes up the pasture. Not a huge deal, it only floods when it rains, right?  In Florida, it rains quite a bit. 

The dots were not fully connected until it actually rained for the first time as a farmer. After the initial hurricane-like rainstorm, it became abundantly clear that much work was needed on the barn and the land around it.

Seriously, the flooding was horrible! The fence that the tree fell on in the below picture was brand new fencing.

Had the true state of the barn been known early on, it would have been torn down and a new one built in another location out of the flood plain. 

To fix the problem in the near term, a canal was dug around the barn to shed the water away from the structure and several truck loads of fill dirt were placed inside and around the barn  to raise the height of the dirt floor.

Now, five years later, the barn is in use and stays dry (for the most part) when the torrential spring and summer rains come to North Florida. Cows, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys have made the barn their comfy home.

With all the work done to raise the dirt floor a couple of feet with fill dirt over the past few years, the time, money and effort could have been used to have a new barn built.

A new barn is still in my Farm Girl Freak dreams ...

Farm Girl Freak's Blueberry Crumb Cake

Ingredients

Cake:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk

Add to top of batter before the Crumb Topping:

2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

Crumb Topping:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F degrees.
2. Prepare bottom and sides of a  8x8x2-inch baking pan.
3. In a medium mixing bowl beat 1/2 cup of butter on medium speed for 30 seconds. Add the 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar.
4. Beat on medium to high speed until light and fluffy.   
5. Add egg and beat until well mixed.
6. In a medium bowl combine the 2 cups flour, baking powder and salt.
7. Add flour mixture and milk alternately to beaten egg mixture, beating until smooth after each addition.
8. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with blueberries.
9. In another bowl combine the 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar along with the cinnamon.
10. Cut in butter (with a fork or knife) until mixture is crumbly and coarse.
11. Sprinkle the mixture atop the blueberries.
12. Bake in a 350F degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.
13. Makes 16 small servings or 9 large servings.

The Current Major Project - Pond Maintenance

I am pretty certain that the pond in the front of our home has not been cleaned in over a decade or two.  Just a sneaking suspicion, but it has definitely not been cleaned in the last five years since we moved into the farmhouse. So, cleaning this lovely (not) body of water have been on my to-do list for quite some time.

Years worth of eutrophication has taken a toll on the ability of the pond to capture the needed amount of rainwater during the spring and summer months when hurricane season is in full swing.   With a solid layer of plant material on the top of the water, it is like walking on a water bed - the mat of weeds is so thick - more like a bog than a pond.

After draining the water out - which took two days, we went about trying to remove the tangled mess of water plants that had grown several feet in places. First, an attempt to remove the weed bed was made with the tractor, which was no match for the silt and mud at the bottom of the pond. Then, the tractor got stuck in the mud three times and had to be pulled out of the quicksand-like sediment with our pick-up truck.

No worries, the tractor is fine now -  just a little bit muddy.

Barring no significant rainfall in the next few days, the pond should be cleaned out, dried up and the bottom re-surfaced to level it out.  Keep your fingers crossed and wish us luck ...

Will post a follow-up in a few days.   

Farm Girl Freak's Chocolate Fudge Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 (1 oz) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
2/3 cup soft softened butter or margarine
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup cold water

 
Directions:

Combine first three ingredients - flour, baking soda and salt. Blend well.

In a separate bowl, cream together butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla until fluffy. Beat 5 minutes on high, add cooled melted chocolate.

Blend in flour, soda and salt mixture to creamed mixture alternately withcold water beating well after each addition.

Bake in 2 prepared round 9 inch cake pans or rectangular (9 by 13) pan in 350º pre-heated oven for 30-35 minutes. Let cool for 30 minutes, frost with below.

 
Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Blend on high the following ingredients:
2 tablespoons softened butter
1 package cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups confectioner's sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Flashback Friday - In the Beginning

 

Five years ago, my husband and I found a fifteen acre farm that was in foreclosure located within a short drive to both my in-law’s home and to my mother’s home in Florida.

Over the years of our marriage, we had always talked about having a farm, but it was mostly a distant plan sometime in the far off future.  However, this property was in a perfect location and had so much potential that we did not hesitate to purchase it for what we thought was a song.

Overshadowed by the euphoria and newness of home ownership, we did not realize that the property needed quite a bit of work done to the home and to the outbuildings in order to have a functional hobby farm. It was not anything too drastic, we thought, so we dove head first into our new farming lifestyle.

Shortly after closing was completed and all of the ownership paperwork was signed, we went through the house and the property with a fine-toothed comb to derive at the major projects that would need to be done.

The well pump that provided water to the home and properly only worked part of the time, so a new one was needed. There was an old barn/garage that needed to be torn down and a new one erected. There was a chimney and fireplace that was separating from the back wall of the house which needed to be removed and the wall re-bricked. The cement patio under the chimney was deeply cracked and needed to be replaced. There was a hole in the roof where the chimney had torn free that needed repair.

The list went on and on. It was a proverbial “house of cards”, waiting to fall down if the wrong part of it  was removed.

My husband and I were not working at “real” employment at the time and decided to undertake the projects that we were capable of doing. We estimated that the bulk of the work could be done within a few months. After a  few weeks of working on the projects and remodeling part of the home, it soon became apparent that the updates to the homestead were not trivial in either time or expense and I soon found myself taking on a computer consulting job to pay for ever expanding costs.

Thankfully the computer consultant position allowed telecommuting, so I worked from home. With my husband overseeing, we “farmed” out much of the heavy manual labor projects to building contractors and had no issues with getting the jobs completed on time and on budget.

The highlights of the major projects included a new well pump installed, the old barn/garage torn down and a new garage erected, new gutters installed on the garage and home, as well as a screened in porch added to the back of the house on top of the newly poured concrete that replaced the old, broken slab that once existed.

The projects  that we completed ourselves included interior sheet-rocking, painting and trim work along with constructing a knee-high tall brick wall on the back patio where the screened in patio would attach.   

How hard could laying bricks be?

Well, laying bricks is very hard ... Especially when you have never done it before.  But, we found some instructional video on the Internet and had also watched the masonry contractor who had torn down and rebuilt the back wall of the house.  So, we thought we were up for the task. A couple of days and a couple of false starts later, we successfully built a sturdy brick structure that the screened-in porch could attach to.

To this day, I am still very proud of our efforts and the work we put into our first brick-laying project.

The end result below was a nice new concrete patio on the back side of the house, with a screened-in section attached to the knee-high brick wall.

Not bad for an I.T. Geek who turned into a Farm Girl Freak.

Enter Our First Give-a-away!

One lucky winner will receive an autographed copy of "Chickens, Hawks and Grumpy Goats: Five Years on a Farm" by hobby farmer and author, S.A. Molteni.

Contest ends on Sunday February 22, 2015.

Description:

S.A. Molteni is well loved for her essays on hobby farming and animal husbandry - from the pain of losing a cherished pet cow and calf during childbirth to the sweetness of spending Christmas Eve in a manger with two Jersey cow babies. 

In this new collection of short stories, she poignantly and reflectively brings to the surface the highs and lows of living on a hobby farm and the deep connection that a farmer has to her animals. 

From predatory hawk attacks on her beloved chickens, to a goat with an attitude, to bottle-feeding a calf, along with a fictional tale based on Chicken Little, the narratives give a condensed version of the best times and the worst times during her past five years on a hobby farm.

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To enter, follow the instructions below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Farm Girl Freak's Roast Chicken and Hearty Vegetables

Since moving to the farm, I have had much more time to cook, bake and make so many things from scratch.  I plan to share some of my favorite recipes on this blog and hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.

This chicken dish is one of my all time favorites and is so easy to make.  The majority of the time is spent on cutting the vegetables.  It takes about 1 hour from start to finish to prep and bake this tasty dish.

Easy Ingredients:

• 12 ounces potatoes (skin on) cut into slices
• 1 large onion cut in half and then into slivers
• 1 cup of baby or petite carrots
• 3 stalks of celery - each stalk cut into several pieces
• 1/2 cup sweet grape tomatoes
• 1 cup assorted color peppers (red, yellow, orange)
• Add greens - kale, collards if desired
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped coarsely
• 3 teaspoons chopped thyme
• 3 teaspoons chopped rosemary
• 1 pound bone-in and skin-on chicken pieces (thighs work best)
• salt and pepper to taste

Easy Preparation:

1. Add oil, thyme, rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper into a large bowl.  Wash vegetables and cut as described above. Toss with your hands or with a large spoon making certain to coat all vegetables with the oil/seasoning mixture.
2. Place vegetables in a single layer in a rectangular baking pan (easy clean up if you first line the pan with aluminum foil).
3. Place chicken in the same bowl in the remaining oil/seasoning mixture. Add more seasoning if needed. Press the chicken pieces skin side down into the mixture to get the oil/seasoning to adhere to the skin.
4. Place chicken pieces skin side up on top of  the vegetables.

Easy Baking:

1. Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees. Leave pan uncovered while baking.
2. Bake for about 45 minutes, rotating the pan once at 20 minutes of baking. Vegetables should be browned and chicken skin should be crispy.
3. Test chicken to assure it is fully baked and for temperature - 175 degrees for thighs or drumsticks, 160 degrees for breasts. 
4. Transfer the chicken to large platter and surround it with the roasted vegetables. 
5. Make 4 servings. (The picture above is 2 servings)
6. Serve and Enjoy!