The Cycle of Life on our little farm....

On Sunday and yesterday, Monday, we experienced the "life" part, sort of, with our chickens began to lay their first eggs.  Total: two eggs.  This morning I looked out a window and saw that one of the girls was out of their fenced yard and seemed to be trying to get back in.  I went out and scooped her up without any resistance on her part, which is very unusual for her, and brought her back inside the hen house.  Along the way around the pen I noticed the other girls were all huddled up in a corner and there was an abundance of feathers everywhere.  With that sinking feeling in my gut I did a head count, then counted again, I must have counted them 6 times.... only 10.  Then I counted them by breed and two of our friendliest birds were missing.  One of whom laid the first egg on Sunday.

I began a search of our property hoping to find them hiding somewhere, but that was not to be.  I found the remains of the first one in the area we named "the love garden".  The other must have met her end in the front yard, there was a trail of feathers and then a flattened spot in the grass full of feathers and nothing else (except a fresh pile of scat form the culprit)

I cannot figure out how the critter got into the yard or how the terrified chicken escaped. 

Meanwhile, inside the hen house, while I was doing all this searching, another hen was busy laying her first egg.

Although an egg isn't exactly life, she has to start laying eggs so she can create offspring later.

Our chickens are our pets, as well as a means of putting food on the table, and we love them. 

Thanks for letting me share.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pie.....yum

I found this in a book of Amish recipes.  It made 36 little pies which disappeared quickly.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups cooked, mashed pumpkin
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 Tbsp.. cinnamon
1/2 Tbsp. ginger
1/2 Tbsp. ground cloves

Cream sugar and oil.
Add pumpkin and eggs.  Add flour, salt, baking powder, soda, vanilla, and spices.  Mix well.

Drop by heaping teaspoons onto greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 F for 10-12 minutes.

Make sandwiches from 2 cookies filled with a dollop of Whoopie Pie Filling.

*I added some chopped nuts from our black walnut tree to half the pies for a little variation.

Whoopie Pie Filling:

INGREDIENTS:

1 egg white beaten
2 Tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups confectioner's sugar
1 1/2 cups shortening

Mix together egg white, milk, vanilla, and 1 cup confectioner's sugar.  Then beat in shortening and remaining 1 cup of confectioner's sugar.

Spread dab of filling on the flat side of cooled cookie.  Top with another cookie to form a sandwich pie.

Our First Egg!

We are so excited!  The first egg from our first flock was delivered at 1:30 p.m. today.....  The poor chicken shrieked as though she was being attacked so Nick ran into the hen house just in time to see what was happening.

I realize probably only other "chicken people" will understand, but that's okay.
We now hope the dozen of eggs we just bought will be the last one we buy.  It's been quite a while since my last visit to a big super-market and I was in shock by how much the prices have risen since my last visit.  $1 each for bell peppers and $4 to $5 if bought by the pound! Next year I will be planting extra peppers, etc and set up a farm stand and cut the prices of the stores. (I wish)

Time to put up some relish and bake some bread......
Have a lovely day.....

Walmart cuts prices by cutting quality and shortchanging products

A week or so ago I ran out of pint sized canning jars during my canning and needed to run out for more.  The only place that had any at all at that time was Walmart.  I had planned to purchase Ball brand but they only had their own MainStay brand at $1 less.  I bought 2 cases of the MainStay jars and took them home to continue my canning project of the day.

Upon opening the boxes the first thing I noticed was there weren't enough lids for the jars.  One box was short 4 lids and the other was missing 1 lid.  The jars seemed okay when I examined them, but the felt flimsy compared to the Ball jars and they were imprinted on the bottom "China".  I try to buy American made as much as possible.

Well I needed the jars so I kept them and continued on with my canning.  Whatever I was canning that day I was canning cold so no need to heat the jars.  However I did wash the jars and rinse them with hot water.  Lost two jars right off.  They just broke apart.

I had enough Ball jars to almost finish the job, I did end up using 3 of the Walmart jars and luckily they didn't break.

I will keep the remaining jars for dry canning dehydrated food, but won't run the risk of any canning requiring heat.

Lately I have been reading/hearing a lot of negative things about Walmart products and how their suppliers must cut expenses in order to enable Walmart to offer the lowest prices such as using fillers, or cheaper materials and cutting steps to save money on production of goods. 

We get what we pay for folks, pay cheap.... get cheap.  I won't be taking any chances with the food I worked so hard to grow and preserve.