What's for diner dear??

Well over the past couple of weeks we have been eating a lot of veggies from our own farm. Along with this we have been trying really hard to make our meals as local as possible. Well tonight being a chilly evening I decided to make a hashbrown casserole. This is not in anyway a healthy meal it consists of hashbrown, butter, soup, cheese and cereal crushed on top. It tastes delightful though. So along with this meal we will be having a huge green cauliflower. This is the first coloured cauliflower that we have eaten all summer. I am very excited to partake of it.
Today was overall a busy day. I spent the morning on the farm thinning winter carrots, weeding beets, picking beans, and tomatoes. All of these things just add up and the morning zipped by. Lunch was of course full of veggies tomatoes, purple broccoli, chives, sweet pepper. I made it all into a very nice pasta salad that my father and I enjoyed. The afternoon was then spent freezing carrots and tomatoes for our winter CSA. Tomorrow will probably hold much the same.
On saturday I worked on saving some gourd seeds. We did not grow gourds this year but I plan on having them "on the menu" for next year. I think gourds are just fantastic even if you can't eat them. After I scrapped the seeds out i feed the gourd to our ducks. They seemed to like them.
Also included is a picture of a round bale of hay. These bails are large and the picture shows what a few sheep can do when they access over four days!

An Update on the Ducks

Over the past week or so I have been working on three pens for our ducks. The ducklings (21 of them) have been growing rapidly and were in desperate need of some more space. Each pen measures about 8x12' and are 6' high at the center. Today Amanda and I moved the last of them into the pens in the back field with the sheep so we will see how they turn out. The following are some photos we took of the building process. Enjoy!




We missed taking a few pictuers but after the plywood, tarps were installed over the plywood and chicken wire was installed on the rest of the cage. They have doors on both ends to make access a bit easier. At some point we will also be making some pens for the chickens, just a bit shorter.

So much to say so little time.

It has come to our attention that people feel we have neglected the blog over the past month or so! Well that may be true but it also means that there has been a load of stuff going on around the farm. A quick overview would include, the fact that we have enjoyed delicious lamb a number of times, the arrival of 100+ chickens (egg and meat birds), the arrival of some new ducklings, new duck pens, harvesting popcorn, the first lima beans, loads of preparation for the winter CSA and so much more. Hopefully over the coming days we will be able to write more detailed accounts of each event that has been going on.
Last night we enjoyed a wonderful local meal here at home with family from all over. There were a total of six of us. We had our third serving of lamb, this time a kind of stew which turned out really nicely. With the stew we had fresh carrots, lima beans, broccoli, spinach salad (with radishes), local bread, local pie for dessert. All of it was very good and made me wonder how you can even compare a grocery store vegitable to one fresh from the farm. Well you can't! I think everyone enjoyed the meal greatly and it is deffinetly something we try to do often (that being local eating and sharing local food with friends).

Hope that you continue to enjoy the blog
Amanda