Kale and Cheddar Quiche - Recipie Tuesdays

So in keeping with my new "days" I think that Tuesdays I will post recipies, mainly because I ran across this wonderful looking recipie. Since Daniel Klein at The Perennial Plate admited that the recipie is adapted from Thomas Keller’s Quiche Lorraine, I decided I would steal it from him.

Although I have not tried it yet, it is on my list, as soon as my Kale is ready for harvest. Here is the recipie: Kale and Cheddar Quiche If you try it let me know!

The Perennial Plate Episode 39: Frozen Chickens from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

Random Things Monday... Coffee

Since I am going to be trying to blog much more regularly I figured I might try to institute "days" to give myself some guidelines.

So the first of these is "Random things Mondays..." based around all of the Random Things I wish people had told me about Farming, but no one did!

This weekend I spent enough time outside for enough time to give me the first sunburn of the year, and while the sun was shining and it looked beautiful, at least on Saturday it was cold, especially on top of the hill in our back field, on top of a ladder. So I was thinking about coffee and farming. So here are Monday's Random Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Farming But No One Did...

1. Buy a coffee cup with a handle you can hook on things, either on a fence, your pocket, or the tractor you will find yourself in the field with a coffee cup that you really don’t want to set in the mud!


2. Buy BRIGHT colored coffee cups or water bottles… Then they will be easier to see when you forget it at the end of the row of tomatoes, or drop it as you are driving the tractor.


3. Invest in a good thermos. Few things make working outside on a cold rainy day more bearable then knowing you can have a sip of something hot whenever you want it. All thermoses are NOT created equal. Typically the more expensive, the better. We use an old Thermos brand metal thermos, which was my husband’s father’s. It sat with him on the Tarmac when he was working as an airline mechanic and now it sits with us in the field, in the hoophouse, and in the barn. There are few days between October and June that it is not filled to the rim before we leave the house in the morning.

Weather...

Days like this make me nervous, it is hard to remember we are not behind, just because it is beautiful outside.

Our starting schedule has dozens of more items being started in the next couple weeks, and our heated hoophouse has lettuce, turnips, onions, kale, and lots more either already in or just ready to go into the ground. Our unheated hoophouse should be fully planted within the next couple weeks and producing fully by May.

If the rains are reasonable we will be plowing and then tilling for our potatoes and onions the very end of March or beginning of April.

Our first week of our CSA is not until June. We still have more than 12 weeks. Our spring share starts in a little more then a month, but we do not have that many members for that season, and their first couple weeks will be heavy in the greens department and suplemented with some other local products.

Really, our frost free day is still months out, so DO NOT fall to the temptation to put your tomatoes out! A couple years ago I sat at Jacob's Field in the snow in late April, and a couple years before that I saw a farmer loose hundreds of may planted tomatoes when the low hoops they had over them collapsed under a May snow fall.

So enjoy the weather, but remember, it is Ohio, we are NOT out of the woods quite yet...

Little Peeps

Sometimes things seem like a good idea when they are NOT! So I saw a photo online of 4 little chicks sitting in a Peeps box and thought to myself... "I should do that! It would be so cute."

So I went out and bought four different colored boxes of peeps, came home, removed the peeps from the boxes and headed to the barn.

I set up a table all ready for my "photo shoot." And got a box with 4 inch sides and went to the brooder to grab the lucky 12 chicks. So I put the first 4 in the box and by the time I grabbed the next two two of the first four had jumped out. (Since the box was in the brooder no harm was done, they just ran towards the other chicks.) ((Brooder = incubator for chicks - nice and warm))

Now realizing that I did not want chicks to jump off a table, or be chasing them around the barn my original plan would not work. I would have to do it in the brooder.

The chicks wanted absolutely nothing to do with the box! This is an interesting pic because you can see the difference between our Amberlinks and Austrolops. The black ladies are looking at it, and the white ones hiding their heads. We were told the Austrolops were more "aggressive" which is a potentially good trait for pastured hens, but so is knowing when to hide! The first several times I got a chick in the box they jumped right out (notice the legs, she is on the move, and her mouth is open, so is protesting!)

These two were OK standing in the box for a minute, but would not face the right way, and when I went to put a chick between them they jumped out...

Finally I got two to stand still and look fairly cute.

Now, hubby pointed out that the photo I saw was most likelyPhotoshoped, so I am working on that and will post one when I get it looking right...

In any case, after a half hour of fussing and stressing out my chicks, the moral of the story is one you would tell your kid... "THEY ARE NOT TOYS, LEAVE THEM ALONE!"

Cute things chicks do... Really...

Adorable little fluffy balls. How can they do anything not cute?

These little ladies keep climbing INSIDE their feeder! And we are finding them with their little heads sticking out.

Tuesday morning I went in at 6:00 am to check them after their first night. There was a chick in the feeder. The evening before we had pulled several out, unsure if they were getting stuck. So when I saw this chick laying in the feeder, and I gently poked her and she did not move, I feared that we had lost her, stuck since 10 the night before, unable to get water. So I opened up the feeder and she popped up looked at me and looked around, and off she ran.

As of this morning there were no more chicks in the feeder, so I think they are getting too big...

It is amazing how fast they grow... Like children.

Cute things chick do...

Chicks are a lot like any other babies. They spend most of their time doing one of five things; eating, drinking, pooping, sleeping, and crying (cheeping in the case of chicks.) And wow can 150 chicks CHEEP!

I can hardly express to you the volume they can produce. When the post office called on Monday to tell us they were here the call went like this:

"Hello, this is Leon with the Peninsula post office."

"Hi, Leon, are they here?"

"Yep, they just came in."

"Great!"

"Are you coming to get them now?"

"I will have my husband come get them."

"Is he coming now, because we close at 12 for lunch."

I looked at the clock and it was 11:35. I am at my "real job" and have no idea
what hubby was up to that second. He could be at Lowes, or muddy, or in the back field. "He will come in the early afternoon."

"oh...." And it was a defeated and depressed "oh...."

When he got there at 1:12 he was greeted as he opened the door to the loud and happy cheeping of little voices. Leon looked up and pointed at the cheeping box next to him "Are these yours?" Hubby confirmed it and Leon looked very happy.

Leon said that they had another chick order this morning, it came in with the first truck. A small box, the person came for them right around 11:00. He said he was happy for the quite. As soon as they were gone though another truck came in and this one had our mega box of 150 chicks. Poor guy.

I understand the feeling, because when I was putting them in the brooder I was about to go deaf! I put the box in the brooder and one by one had to pick them up, and dip their beaks in the water to show them where it was. That can take a while with 150, in the mean time they all are PISSED and loud. EVERY one cheeping for their mamas.

Well buddies, I am your mama! But bending over with my head a foot from them for about an hour, I really thought my ears would never stop ringing!

So I guess that is not really a cute thing, you will have to wait for another post for that! It will give me something to post about tomorrow!

(There farmer-boy, 2 posts in 2 days!)

Chicks are here!

This year one of our big changes will be the addition of lots and lots of chickens to the farm. These ladies below (150 of them) will make up the base of our egg laying flock. At peak production we expect them to lay somewhere around 65 dozen eggs a week.

They will be raised on pasture and their feed will be free of any animal byproducts. But that is in the future. In the video above the chicks are just one day old. So they need to stay nice and warm, under heat lamps (about 90 degrees for the first week.) When they are four to six weeks old (depending on weather) they will get to try out grass for the first time.

In addition to these hens we are planning on trying some broilers as well this year. We are planning on a slower growing red broiler, in keeping with the French Label Rouge type and requirements (obviously not certified as this is not available in the US.) If you may be interested in preordering a number of these please let us know and we will get you details as we go forward with this second project.

This is looking like a year of Chickens at our Farm!