Missing Willow Farm

Protected in our chicken tractor with a warming light and a tarp, our heritage buckeye chickens have moved from the brooder into their own spot inside the big barn.  They have all of their big girl feathers so the winter shouldn’t cause them any worries.

Despite the fact that our temperature has been below freezing overnight, our ghost and habanero peppers are happily growing beside beets, carrots, spinach and buttercrunch lettuce.  We’re trying some peas and potatoes in our indoor beds, too.  We harvested beet greens and rutabaga this morning.  I need to make a new batch of pepper jelly.  I’ve been dehydrating the peppers then running them through a food processor.  It makes hot ass pepper flakes!

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Our good friend brought the wine for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday.  A dozen of them, half with bubbles (including sparkling hard apple cider), all spectacular!  How many folks did we have for dinner?  Five.  We didn’t open every single bottle, but tried!  🙂

Thanksgiving’s bird was a 20 pound pasture raised (by us) bird that was too big for my huge roasting pan.  It was fantastic!  Happy Thanksgiving!

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I’ve been off for a few days because we’ve just had our first real vacation in two years.  My parents came up early for Thanksgiving to take care of our farm while Brian and I got away to Las Vegas.  A friend asked me if I was most looking forward to the shows or gambling and I answered, “Neither, I’m looking forward to the food!”  We started our culinary adventure at the fabulous Michael Mina restaurant at Bellagio and ended it with Bally’s Sterling Brunch, which is where these crappy cell phone photos are from.  It’s pricey but they serve unlimited Perrier Jouet champagne, sevruga caviar, lobster tails and cappuccino (among a hundred or so other things).   We’re foodies who live in a rural culinary wasteland, we have our priorities!

Sunset this time of year is fantastic, check out this view over our front yard pond.  We were in our spa on the back deck a few nights ago just after sunset and saw a red glow to our north.  We were a bit worried that there might be a fire nearby then heard on the news the next day that the Northern Lights had been visible as far south as Virginia, and that’s us.  This is a beautiful time of year for stargazing.  Check the sky for meteors tonight, it’s time for the Leonid meteor shower.  🙂

Football?  Not so much.  Both of our daughters were home last weekend, that happens just once or twice a year.  I always ask them what they want to do and the answer is always the same.  Request their favorite foods for Mom to make them and hang out.  Hanging out means games.  We drag out Yahtzee, poker and our new favorite zombie board game.   It doesn’t matter who wins, what matters is playing and laughing together.  I miss my girls already.

Jenna’s waiting for someone to toss the inside of a wubba to her after chores this morning, and it was me.  Today marks 4 weeks since my horseback riding accident and I helped with chores today.  I’m still on a  cane and in physical therapy three times a week but made it to the pasture to feed the chickens and give biscuits to the dogs.  Life is good.

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?