Missing Willow Farm

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Jenna’s food and water bowls are on the back deck.  She didn’t feel well yesterday so didn’t finish her dinner.  We forgot to bring her bowl inside, so, when our cat Bindi started freaking out about something outside the first thing I thought of was there’s something in Jenna’s food and there was!  It ran off as soon as it saw the flash. Kinda cute, eh?

  Temperatures are dropping both outside and inside, so Bindi is spending more and more time with Jenna.  She’d rather be snuggling with Brian on the couch under his sweatshirt but he kind of has things to do.  Jenna, bless her, doesn’t mind the intrusion.  Bindi totally dominates her but I think she enjoys the company and is gracious about having guests in her kennel.

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My friend Lora made gingerbread cookies for today’s mistletoe market which runs right before our small town’s Christmas parade.  She told me she enjoys the decorating but finds it tedious so I went over to keep her company.  It was amazing watching a master decorator at work.  It was so sad (not) when one broke… they’re as delicious as they are beautiful!

December is here, and so are blazing hot peppers!  Since we moved out pepper plants to the greenhouse a few months ago, they have been going gangbusters!  These are Habanero, Carribean Red Habanero, Joe’s Long, Joe’s Round, Thai Hot and Ghost.  I’ve got these in the dehydrator for hot pepper flakes.  Ghost peppers sell locally for $5 apiece, and seeds (for propagation) sell for $1 each online.  We eat ours!

Friday after Thanksgiving is the day we always cut our tree.  Luckily, Claire was home for Thanksgiving weekend so we got it decorated with her help.  The tree farm is about 20 miles from here, up the mountain.  It’s massive, but since I’m still using a cane, we pretty much parked and said hey, that one looks pretty good and were done with it.  Normally we walk all over the place.  Not bad for $28 (sorry too all of our relatives in FL who pay that for a Charlie Brown tree!)

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!