Missing Willow Farm

Our three little red hens are down to two.  We found one missing yesterday morning.  I am blaming the raccoon we let go free last week.   If we catch it again, I’ll shoot it myself.  We spent the afternoon replacing the back wall of the chicken barn.  It needed to be done, just happened sooner than later.  Originally built as a horse barn, it used to have a 5 inch opening at the roofline and a few rotting spots near the dirt.  We repurposed our old deck boards to make it secure.  Thankfully, everyone was accounted for this morning.

Here’s one of the recent pieces I made in our studio, aka the mobile home we bought next door.  It’s thrown on the wheel.  Brian mixed up the glazes, I got the effect by dipping the piece in oatmeal colored glaze then dripping blue down the side using an eyedropper.  I think it kind of looks like a peacock feather.  We’re so busy lately, we haven’t been able to do much with clay.  Right now we’re focused on honey, wiring our new deck for electricity, canning, brakes for my car, securing our chicken barn and we’re swimming in tomatoes!  Not a bad problem to have.

As soon as our tomatoes start ripening, I bring them inside so the birds don’t get them.  Lots don’t make it into the house because they get into my tummy.  These are cherry tomatoes.  I’ve already roasted and frozen a few quarts for a taste of summer when it gets cold out.

We caught our intruder.  He’s pretty cute.  After much debate, we decided to take him for a ride to the farthest part of our property, down by our stream.  We really wanted to take him further but it’s illegal in Virginia to make your nuisance animal problem someone else’s.   He reached out through the cage at me when I moved him to the Mule, which kind of freaked me out.  We rigged the release mechanism with a rope and stood on the back of the Mule in case he came out hostile.  He started up a tree at first, thought better about it, then swam away.  Who knew raccoons were such good swimmers?  We’re going to put the chicken food in a metal can overnight, at least until the barn gets better sealed.  There is always some large annoying project to do on the farm.

Our beans literally went from about a foot high to this overnight.  We dedicated a raised bed and some tomato cages to them this year.  Beans are new for us, this should be a fun experiment.  Can you tell we don’t use chemical pesticides?

We’ve got another nocturnal intruder in the hen house.  Stupid intruder!

Sort of… Cut a watermelon in half, pour some tequila on it and squeeze a lime on top of that.  Sprinkle with salt and put it in the fridge to chill.  Slice and enjoy!

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  Fried alligator!  My parents are friends with a nuisance gator hunter in Florida.  When I was down there recently, he hooked me up with some gator meat.  After much research, I cut the meat into chunks and soaked it in a mixture of 2 cups of buttermilk and a tablespoon of Tabasco.  The breading was a mixture of flour, cornmeal, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  The marinated chunks got shaken in a paper bag then straight into the Fry Daddy for just 3 minutes.  I made a remoulade sauce and a lemon dill yogurt sauce.  AIEEE it was good!

Let’s hear it for the red, white and blue!  Happy fourth everyone.  🙂

Our two little hives are going gangbusters this year.  We’ve harvested twice and will need to harvest one or two more times this summer.  It’s an exhausting, sticky process.  We don’t have a honey house so we extract in our kitchen with newspapers on the counters and towels on the floor.  The trickiest part is getting the honey frames in the house without any bees tagging along.