Missing Willow Farm

Jessica’s gone from cowering under a tree in our pasture woods to this.  We had to deliver water to her for over a month while patiently working to train her onto a bucket.  Amazing what tasty treats will do for training both dogs and cattle.  She hangs with the flock now and sleeps by the hutch, although we’ve never seen her in it.  Or the barn.  Once the grass is gone, she should be eating hay in the barn like everyone else.  If we need to encourage her to go in there, we’ll lead her in with a bucket of sweet feed.  Oh, and we’ve named our chicken Edwina Scissorbeak.  Thanks Tiffany!  🙂

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Chicken grooming is not something we routinely practice.  One of our Americaunas has an overlapping beak.  You can supposedly use a dog nail trimmer to clip them or file them down.  Sounds stressful for both the farmer and the chicken!  She doesn’t seem to have any trouble eating, she hops on top of the feeder and digs right in whereas all of our other chickens eat from the bottom feeder opening.  She gives us pink-shelled eggs.  We haven’t named her yet, any suggestions?

Dinner on Saturday night was fried home grown chicken, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, bacon cheddar biscuits and this fantastic chocolate cake.  My friend and farmer’s market partner Lora brought it, she used to own a bakery and won a Food Network cake decorating challenge (for real).  Everyone has a good friend like that, right?  It’s chocolate inside, too, and is sooo delicious.  She also brought the mashed potatoes.  Her savory is as good as her sweet!

Spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes, peas and rutabaga.  That’s what we’ve got growing in our new greenhouse beds.  We started with one bed last year and ate our own cool season produce through the winter.  We’ve got four now, and they are packed with veggies.  A baby spinach salad with hard cooked farm fresh eggs, a sprinkle of blue cheese, crumbled bacon and a dijon vinegarette.  What’s not to love about that?

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Raising chicks in the late Fall evidently isn’t a terrible idea, these Buckeye chicks are thriving, despite nights below freezing.  We’ve got them in a brooder box in a room inside the barn under a grow light.  They’re getting in some beautiful feathers.  Look closely, that’s Jenna in the background of one of the photos eating poop off of the barn floor.  😛  Brian took these photos, I’m still gimpy.  Luckily I’m off of the walker for short distances, this is my 2nd day.  I’ve started physical therapy, which is torture in case you were curious.

  Beauty berry is in bloom again.  I love it!  It’s taller than I am now.  We purchase it in 2009 in the dead of winter.  We bought basically a stick in a pot that they assured us would bloom in the Spring and it did.  The leaves will fall with the freeze, the berries will stay and the birds will ignore the berries.  Same as it ever was.

October’s quilt square is a lovely purple and green combination.  Just two more to go for the year.  Then comes the hard part, putting it all together.  I took a class in something called Quilt As You Go over the summer.  Each square gets sandwiched with batting and backing, quilted, then you sew the squares together.  I already did January and February, guess I’m committed to finishing it with this method.