Merry Christmas

Blessings to you all.

Have Yourself a Yummy Little Christmas

Molasses cookies are my favorite kind - the soft ones, not the crispy ones. I usually only make them at Christmas time. Because I work from home, having baked goodies around is only asking for trouble. And weight gain. But at Christmas, who's counting calories?

Amish Ginger Cookies
(from Christmas-Cookies.com)

3/4 c. butter, softened
1 c. granulated sugar
1 egg
1/4 c. unsulfured molasses
2-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 t. ground ginger
1 t. ground cloves
1 t. ground cinnamon
1-1/2 t. baking soda
extra granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a mixing bowl, beat together butter and 1 cup sugar until creamy. Add egg and molasses; beat until combined. Add the remaining ingredients and mix until well combined. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and roll in the extra granulated sugar. Place balls on ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 5-7 minutes until barely turning brown. Allow to cool for 1 minute on baking sheet and then remove to wire racks to cool completely. Yield: 4 dozen

Spectacular

Mother Nature has given us quite the show this week. I'll send you over to The Farmers Wife to read her poetic description of the hoarfrost. Spectacular.

Popcorn

The pumpkin farm that gives us their unsold pumpkins for animal feed had another load of pumpkins for us last week. When Matt and Olivia went to pick them up they also came home with a box of popcorn ears and this nifty little sheller.

It sure makes shelling popcorn easier on the hands. And the popcorn, once popped, is the brightest white I've ever seen. The taste is superior. One of the girls commented, "This is even better than microwave popcorn!" Indeed.

Snow Chick

This snow chick has her purse and is all set to take the sled to town. She's one of Olivia's creations.

Winter Tree

Here is the winter version of my favorite tree. I snapped this on a frosty morning earlier this week, right before 8 inches of snow dumped on us.

Click to see the tree in fall and summer .

The pine trees were pretty impressive with their frosty showing as well.

Baby it's cold outside

I don't know that I've ever posted a picture of myself on this blog, so here's one I took of myself in the dining room mirror getting bundled up to go out and feed chickens.

I guess I finally reached the age where I care more about keeping warm than I do about hat hair.

New Venture

Edited to add: you can reach me by email: kmiller70 (at) osage (dot) net



One of the questions asked at the Grow Your Small Market Farm class was, what's your secondary market? Penny, our instructor, didn't like our answer of "the sale barn".

Of course she was right. And so we set about filling out applications, jumping through hoops, paying fees, getting inspected, and cutting red tape. All of this to be allowed to sell meat out of one of our freezers on the farm.

Of the 6 feeder calves we had for sale this year, we sold all but a quarter of one. So we had that quarter inspected and properly labeled by the locker, and now we have beef bundles for sale here at the farm, along with a few individual cuts!

Pretty cool to see our name and logo on a package of beef.

So if you're within driving distance from us and are interested in a beef bundle, shoot me an email for details.

Winter Cows

It snowed some more today. Just looking at the cows standing out in it makes me cold. The pigs stick indoors, only coming out to eat, but the cows prefer to eat their way to warmth. That crabby cow looking at the camera is Missus Hamilton.

The hay that's spilled on the ground around the bale feeder won't go to waste. Over the winter the cows will drop their "pies" on it, trample it, and mix everything together. Next summer Matt will haul it out of there and pile it up to compost. Come fall it will be spread on the garden.

Jimmy

A few of you caught sight of Jimmy a few days ago, so I thought you might like to see a close-up. His "hat" is usually even fluffier than this, but I guess the winter weather is giving him bad hair days.

We've had bitter cold here this week, with lows at 12 below and highs at 4 above. But surprisingly that's actually been good for egg production, I guess because the cold is driving the hens into the coop. From a low of 4 or 5 eggs per day a couple of months ago, I'm back up to 12 to 15 eggs a day. Still not where it should be for 45 hens, but it's improving.

Though it's been cold, the wind hasn't blown and the sun is out so it doesn't seem so bad. I can say that because I spend most of my day sitting at the computer, not outside working 40 feet in the air like Matt. I haul hot water out to the coop a couple times a day, and pick up eggs 3 times a day. Still I usually find a frozen egg ball or two.

The rest of the livestock seem to be faring well in the cold. They have shelter but they're usually found standing around the bale feeder or lying on a mound of cornstalks in the sun. In one of those wish-I-had-my-camera moments, I saw our sow today carrying around the huge hunk of ice that started out as water in her pan. She carried it into her shed and dropped it with a big clunk. She's goofy.

It's supposed to warm back up to around 30 by the weekend. Downright tropical.

Love this

Fedco Seeds drops Seminis line, after Seminis is bought by Monsanto.

To tell the truth...

we did buy something besides the Christmas tree last Friday. We bought 3 calves as well. Here's 2 of them:



Because we lost 3 calves earlier this year we had to buy 3 in order to make our goal of having 8 feeders for sale next fall, an increase of 2 over this year. That puts a big ouch in the cash flow. The white one is a Charolais-Angus cross. Never had a white calf before, so that's fun. I think I'll call him Whitey Ford.

My dad's cousin had some late-bred cows and agreed to sell us 3 bull calves. They were freshly weaned when he brought them over, which is good because they're presumably bringing some immunity with them. Calves are susceptible to "shipping fever" simply from the stress of being moved. You get it a lot when you buy bottle calves from the sale barn. So far no problems with these.

While Lyle and Tom were here delivering the new calves they helped Matt get our late-born calf, Spunky, away from his mother. So he's now weaned as well and in with the rest of the calves. So we endured some bellowing over the weekend, but nothing nearly as bad as last year when they kept the neighbors awake.