Missing Willow Farm

Neither one seems bothered by our recent weather.  One is much easier to spot in the snow.  🙂

We’ve finally been caught up in the big East Coast weather situation.  Everything is frozen.  The pond is solid, our Mule hasn’t started all week, our house water is a trickle, and all four yard hydrants are frozen solid out in our pastures.  This means schlepping water from the house trickle to the pastures in buckets.  Oh joy.  Thankfully, the goats, sheep and chickens all have heated waterers so it’s just a matter of topping their water off.  Lizzie needs fresh every day.  On the plus side, the snow is lovely and we haven’t missed one evening out in our hot tub despite the wind chill and record lows.  Cause that’s how we roll.

Drag out a small feeder and a square bale of hay and it’s like a piranha feeding frenzy.  Despite the fact that there’s a giant large found bale in the stock feeder right next to it…

This little guy is a week old now and hasn’t lost his little pink ears.  I think they might be here to stay.  He’s got a texel’s wooly coat, unlike most of our other lambs who are mostly kathadin, so are are soft as puppies.

We’re doing the low carb diet thing and it’s going really well.  I’ve started missing dessert a little bit (my kingdom for a cupcake) so decided to try something new for Valentine’s Day.   After searching online for inspiration, I came up with this.

I whipped a cup of heavy cream until it formed soft peaks.  In a separate bowl, I mixed together 8 ounces of cream cheese, 4 tsp. vanilla and 3/4 cup of peanut butter until smooth.  I then mixed the whipped cream a little at a time into the peanut butter mixture and set that aside.

I melted a Tbsp. of butter in the microwave then stirred in about a half cup of almond flour.  To that I added a teaspoon of unsweetened cocoa powder and just a pinch of stevia.  After that was stirred together, I sprinkled it onto a baking dish and put that in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes to dry it out a bit into a chocolate almond ‘dust’.

A spoonful of that went into a parfait dish, then a big dollop of the peanut butter mixture.  I grated dark chocolate and sprinkled that on top.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I took like a ton of photos of our critters this morning.   We have some of the most darling tiny lambs born this week.  I started my photo journey with Lizzie who, as always, was completely thrilled with my visit.  When I sat down to review the shots, I realized every single photo has a smudge on it thanks to her enthusiastic welcome (aka a nose print on my lens).  Lesson learned, visit Lizzie last  the next time I head out with my camera.

Those seeds I planted a week ago have started to sprout.  I’ve since put in two flats of cucumbers and am trying brussel sprouts for the first time.  Between garden starts and microgreens, our available space under grow lights is starting to get cramped.   Next up will be planting cool season crop seeds out in the raised beds and greenhouse.  Gardening with the seasons sure takes planning.  It’s really easy to decide you want to grow something way too late to start it yourself, like when starter plants start showing up in garden centers.   We learned that the hard way.

Our daughters and grandson visited us this past gorgeous weekend.  A super fun time was had by all!  The chickens got lots of extra feed tossed their way and shared a few cracked eggs with our dog Lizzie.  🙂

I planted a flat each of tomatoes and hot peppers today.  They’ll go under our microgreen grow lights and eventually be transferred into the greenhouse when they outgrow their indoor space.   As soon as I locate our peat pots, I’ll plant a ton of pickling cucumbers.  I went through all of our seeds today and have laid out 8 different planting dates from now until early June to get everything in the ground that we want to grow this year.  Zucchini, rutabagas, peas, sunflowers, radishes, lettuce, spinach, soybeans, carrots and many many varieties of pumpkins (a gal can hope) are a few things set aside.  I just can’t bring myself to plant beans again.  The deer ALWAYS break in and eat them.