Just as beautiful as a bouquet of flowers.

Twelve

What to even say about this girl at twelve?

One year from officially being a teenager. Babysitting. Negotiating about the makeup wearing. Already thinking about a car. That time of a girl's life where the social aspects can be tough. But her solution to the sometimes pettiness (to put it nicely) of tween girls? "I think they've got too much time on their hands. They need some pig chores to do."

Cliche, I know, but I don't know where the time went. At age two she was so mature for her age, and already singing for her was like breathing - something she did all the time without thinking about it. And that is still true.

Not sure what she wants to do when she grows up, but the list includes teacher, cosmetologist, dog groomer.

Funny. A hard worker. Sweet. I can't seem to come up with the right combination of words. She is so loved and appreciated.

Seven birthdays ago

OLS Week 5

or, "The challenge of eating locally while traveling turned out to be so very challenging"

First of all, thank you everyone for your kind comments on the county fair posts.

And second of all, I did have a OLS meal for Week 4, but just didn't get around to posting it. I believe the week after the fair was mainly spent in recovery, lying on the couch and moaning a lot. Suffice it to say, the meal involved eggs and herbs from Madeline's "edible landscaping" project and of course meat.

Then we went on vacation, which further explains the 11 day absence on this here blog. As soon as I convince my camera and my computer to kiss, make up, and begin communicating again, I'll be back with pictures.

Which brings me to OLS Week 5. And our vacation. We spent the week camping south of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. And I was very excited to put together a local meal over there. But I ran into a few roadblocks. First, the farmers market in PDC is on Saturdays. We were there Sunday thru Thursday. Second, you would think, being in Wisconsin and all, that local cheese would be so easy to find. Not so much.

So our local meal ended up being Wisconsin cheese curds (oh, the teeth-squeaking salty goodness!) and a 6-pack of Fat Squirrel beer brewed in southern Wisconsin (pretty darn good!).

Fortunately we'd brought our own steaks, pork chops, and burgers with us. Matt also dug a bucket of potatoes, onions, cabbage and carrots from the garden before we left and we took those with, too. So despite our failure at procuring local fare, we enjoyed some darn tasty campfire cooking. I also brought home several bottles of wine from Eagles Landing Winery in Marquette, just across the Mississippi.

Fair Update - Swine Show

My dad has a nifty little portable hog scale, and the weekend before the fair he volunteered to bring it over to weigh Madeline's fair pigs. This was a big help, because when you get to the fair with your pigs you have to unload them in a specific order. Derby pigs have to go over the scale first, followed by market pig entries. So it helped her decide which ones to enter into which classes. It also gave us an idea which of the 3 were closest in weight to help pick which ones to use in the "Pen of 3" entry where you want your pigs to be very even and uniform.



Madeline had just made them a mud puddle about an hour before Dad came over, which made the whole thing a messy endeavor.



Once at the fair the pigs get a daily bath up until the day of the show. Madeline recruited her friends Emily and Jadee to help. Having livestock at the fair is one of the most fun things. Lots of waterfights occur at the hog and beef washing stations. Jadee plus their friend Anna also helped all day at the swine show, with cleaning and brushing and oiling. And Anna helped her show her Pen of 3.


Madeline showing her derby barrow

A couple of days before the swine show Madeline said to me, "I don't care if I get a red ribbon or even a white. I want to show pigs again next year just because I've had so much fun with them." That made me so happy to hear. I'm always reminding her that 4-H is not about the ribbons, it's about the experience and learning things.

We aren't able to winter farrow and therefore don't have piglets available at the right time for a 4-H swine project. So we purchased these pigs from my brother. They're a nice crossbred commercial pig. Because we don't pay big bucks for show pigs, and because we continue to follow a natural feed ration, we had prepared Madeline for the likelihood of receiving red ribbons on her pigs. And as more than one other "swine project dad" told Matt, "Just remember, there's two competitions going on in the ring - the show pigs and the regular pigs."

So imagine her delight when she was "side-penned" with her very first pig in the ring :) The show ring is lined on one side by 10 pens, indicating places 1 through 10. The judge looks over the group of pigs being shown, sends some over to the sidepens, releases the rest from the ring, and then takes another look at the pigs in the sidepens to determine final placement. She ended up with 7th and a blue ribbon for her derby barrow, a blue ribbon for her derby gilt, 9th and a blue ribbon for her market gilt, and a blue ribbon for her pen of 3.

For next year she's interested in ways to increase Lean Gain naturally. So if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments!

Final stats on her derby barrow:
Beg Wt: 58
End Wt: 267
ADG: 1.9
BF: 1.02
LEA: 8.94
Fat Free Lean.lb: 109.61
Fat Free Lean %: 55.47
Lean Gain: .87

Stats on the winning derby barrow:
Beg Wt: 56
End Wt: 342
ADG: 2.6
BF: .98
LEA: 10.81
Fat Free Lean.lb: 142.25
Fat Free Lean %: 56.21
Lean Gain: 1.11

Fair Update 2

So you can probably tell by the purple ribbons and the big grin on Madeline's face that she had a good night at the dog show on Saturday.

Dog workouts are held for 6 weeks prior to fair for the 4-H Dog project members. By week 5 Madeline was just very frustrated with how the training was not going with Ava. Knowing that this would be the last year she could bring Ike (because Olivia is going to bring him next year when she's in 4-H), she opted to compete in the show with him instead of Ava.

So when we got to the dog show, the gal in charge asked which dog she had brought. Upon hearing it was Ike, she bumped Madeline up from the junior group to the senior group. Which had Madeline freaking out a little bit, because it was last-minute and because there are some really good dogs & handlers in the senior group. (And also she was waaaay overtired at that point after a late night Friday, and a long day showing hogs that very same day as the dog show.)

But obviously it all turned out okay :) She won Senior Best in Show (which is high points in the obedience portion of the show for the senior group) and Overall Best in Show .

Soon I'll have some video of her and Ike's performance in the agility portion. They didn't win, but they won some laughs. I'll save that story for when I get the video on YouTube.



Backing up to Friday night was the "Share the Fun" competition, which is basically a 4-H talent show. She's competed in this event the last 2 years. The first year she was ineligible for the state fair. Last year she came close, picked as 1st alternate to state. So this year she wanted it pretty badly.

She performed "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree", sang beautifully, took her mother's advice and got the audience clapping along with her, and got picked to perform at the Iowa State Fair! I'll get video of her Share the Fun performance on YouTube as well. So we'll be heading down to Des Moines next month for her performance at the state fair.

More fair updates yet to come. These were by far the most exciting and I should have saved the best for last, but I know there are some friends and family reading out there that would want to know how she came out in these two events :)

OLS Week 3

or, "Swiss Chard, not sure I like ye"



This may not make the deadline this week, but here goes.

Another vegetable that's new to us this year is Swiss Chard ("Bright Lights"). I didn't know at what point you're supposed to harvest it, but we decided to give it a go this week.

I took the leaves off the stems, diced the stems and boiled them in homemade chicken broth. I rough chopped the leaves and sauteed them in oil with salt and garlic powder, then mixed the stems and sauteed leaves together.

The verdict... eh. The stems were tasty, tender and infused with flavor from the broth. But the leaves were pretty strong tasting and nobody liked them.

So not sure if Swiss Chard just isn't our vegetable, or I simply need a different way of preparing it. If you have a good chard recipe please leave it in the comments for me! I'm not ready to give up on it yet :)



We also made onion rings with some onions from our friend (and veterinarian and down-the-road neighbor) Dennis; SCF hamburgers; and steamed zucchini from the garden (can't get enough of that!)

Local Ingredients:
Zucchini, hamburger, chicken broth, Swiss Chard,
eggs for the onion ring batter - 0 miles
Onions from Dennis - 2 miles

Nonlocal:
Other batter ingredients for the onion rings, salt, oil, garlic powder

Wrapped up the county fair today, had a really great week, updates coming tomorrow!

Fair, Day 1 Report

All of Madeline's photos received blue ribbons! She also had projects in Visual Arts and Horticulture judged today. Both received blue ribbons and both were considered as state fair entries, but neither ended up getting selected. More on those projects later.

Still to come...hog weigh-in, and clothing, "Share the Fun", hog and dog judging. Stay tuned!

You be the judge 2007

Once again, it's county fair week. Last year I showed you Madeline's photography fair entries, and I thought it would be fun to do it again this year.


Everyone's favorite, my cutie pie niece.


Pansy, with a macro lens


I have no idea what this is, but the red berries against the blue sky is really pretty


One of her pigs, who is also off to the fair this week

You be the judge! Blue ribbon winners? We'll let you know the results tomorrow.

Rain, rain come this way

I hope those clouds are bringing some rain this way. We need it.



The corn is standing at attention, leaves reaching straight upward, showing signs of heat stress from the lack of rain and temperatures in the 90's. But as Olivia demonstrates, it was definitely "knee high by the 4th of July"...and then some!

4th of July parade

Time clocked: 90 minutes
Candy caught: 1.5 gallons

The fire department and military veterans and ladies auxillary lead things off.

Followed by...

Big equipment




Derby cars


and classic cars


Madeline (on the right holding the sign) marched with the North Iowa Humane Society of Mason City, where she volunteers.


Olivia helped out chucking candy for my cousin's business, "Mehmen Lawn Care".


Horses always bring up the rear. Make sure you've bought your playing pieces for "Road Apple Bingo"!


In between there's also the marching band, church floats, fair queen candidates, karate demonstrations, 4-wheelers and 2-wheelers...the list goes on. For 90 minutes.

The youngest members of the family were instructed to catch candy and share it with their sisters/cousins. As if.

OLS Week 2

Or, "Kohlrabi, where have you been all my life?"



"OLS" stands for One Local Summer, a project hosted by Liz at Pocket Farm. (More information here.) In a nutshell, you cook one dinner/supper a week using local ingredients and post about it on your blog. Each week there's a roundup of participants and their meals at the One Local Summer Blog. The goal is to get people paying attention to where their food comes from and to search out local foods.

You might notice that there was no "OLS Week 1" on this here blog. Could we consider concession stand food "local"?

Moving on.

I usually start my own transplants from seed. This year, however, my transplants just weren't terribly healthy for some reason (cough*neglected!*cough). So I perused the starts at local nurseries to fill in the spots where some of my own transplants mysteriously failed to thrive.

My perusings led me past some kohlrabi starts. I've never eaten kohlrabi, always skimming by it at the farmers market because of its strange appearance. I knew not what to do with it. But people I've known that do eat kohlrabi all seem to be rather passionate about it as a vegetable.

So into our garden it went.

Sunday afternoon I was wandering around the garden while Matt weeded and noticed that the kohlrabi looked like how they look at the farmers market. "I think those kohlrabi things are ready to eat," I pointed out. Because I'm helpful like that. So Matt cut them off and handed them to me. Uh oh. Now what do I do with them?

A consultation with Betty Crocker 1956 led me to julienne and steam them, and serve them with just a little butter and salt.

We are all now converts to the passion of the kohlrabi camp.

"This is my favorite food ever!" exclaimed Rafe (a notorious hater of anything outside of the bread or sugar food groups).

"Wow!" mumbled Madeline between mouthfuls.

"Kohlrabi, where have you been all my life?" mused Matt.

(Olivia was gone camping with a friend. Less picky than Rafe, but not as amiable to new foods as Madeline, we'll see where she sits on the kohlrabi verdict.)

A buttery, sort of cabbage-broccoli-caulflower tasting cross. And without having to pick out those pesky cabbage loopers!

To round out the meal, new potatoes and onions picked from the garden and boiled in salt water. And a Sugar Creek Farm t-bone steak, grilled. So other than the butter and salt, a zero mile meal!