Things are starting to pop!

 Hello again!  Some how the actual results of the farm are starting to come in when I was under the impression I was still in start up mode!  When did that happen!  Don't get me wrong, I knew my plants were getting bigger and putting out blooms.   I've been dehydrating spinach, kale, and herbs.  My yellow squash and Zucchini were starting to come in, but never enough to can.  We were having squash with meals and such.  Then all of the sudden BAM! I had to pull out the canner today.  I ended up with 4 quarts of yellow squash and almost a quart of sweet peas.  It took an entire grocery bag of unshelled peas to get me that one jar.  I do have quite a few peas set aside to use for seed next year.  So hopefully next year I'll have many more jars.  I probably would have more if I wasn't picking and eating the pods before they developed peas. 

But that's not all!  I still have quite a bit of zucchini to grate and freeze, and just put up 2.5 quarts of sauerkraut to ferment.  That's those 3 wide mouth quart jars that look like funky baby bottles.  There is a glass weight holding the cabbage under the juices.  The juice is a combination of salt and juice from the cabbages.  Then there is the weird lid on top for the kraut to ferment.  This will ferment for 7-14 days and then be stored in the fridge.  This means hubby gets to have brats and kraut for fathers day.  I'm afraid that's all of the sauerkraut for now, though.  I had to pick what I could and pull up the plants due to cabbage moths/worms.  UGH!  Hopefully they won't get to my red cabbages for a bit.   I'll plan on planting cabbages again in the fall.  Actually I'll be planting cabbages, broccoli, peas and cauliflower in the fall.

Another thing that's new is the arrival of our 8 piece chicken nuggets!  Chick cam!

*** lost one more today, so we are now down to the lucky 7***

 Thru candling the eggs we determined 16 were fertilized.  12 of those 16  hatched so a 75% hatch rate.  Not too shabby.  Of those 12 that hatched, we lost now 5 as of the latest update.  So now we have 7 very active babies.  I sexed them yesterday and I think we now have 4 hens and 3 roosters.  The one we lost from the 8 was a hen.  The hens will replace some older hens we sold to folks wanting current layers.  The roosters are destined for the freezer.  

I have to say, all in all, I'm very happy with the incubator.  It was very easy to use.  It monitored everything, temp, humidity, and even turning the eggs.  I never had to open the lid until it was time to remove the chicks.   Things I will do differently now that I have a feel for this machine:

1)  Really stay on top of the water in the reservoir.  This incubator has a tendency to say the humidity is right until it all of the sudden isn't.  So I need to just plan on filling it a few times every day.  Full disclosure, since I didn't know it would do this, I was thrown off a couple of times.  This could have contributed to a lost chick or two.  

2)  No chicks come out until all chicks have had a chance to hatch.  Fluctuations in the temp and humidity can affect the outcome of hatches.  I should have thought of that.  It doesn't say that in the instructions, but I have heard that before.  So I think I'll have better results next time cause everyone stays put until I know all that are going to hatch; hatch.  

So there was some user error in the beginning that won't be repeated next time.  

Everything is getting big, blooming, and starting to vine up and get unruly.  Won't be long til I'm really cranking out the jars.  Looking forward to it.  Now if you ask me again after ....eh...well.  But for right now I am really appreciative of everything God is providing.  

So are you starting to see some output for all your input?  I'd love to hear about it or better yet, include a pic!  

Getting all I can from one whole chicken

 Hello again!  

I'm a little late in posting, but saving money can be busy work (smile).  I'm still watching pennies as we pay off hospital bills and try to recover from no paycheck during hubby's recovery.  He's doing great BTW.  Back at work.

Combine our own personal financial squeeze with price increases in gas, groceries, etc and it can get to be tricky.  As a result I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of good from anything I use.  Which brings me to today's topic: wringing everything I can from one whole chicken.

I got a really good price recently on a few organic free range ( all the buzz words) whole birds.  I froze many of them for later, but that day I came home and immediately placed one in the crock pot for dinner.  

I added no water to the crock pot, but just let it cook in it's own juices.  Once dinner was over I deboned the chicken for later meals.  The bones were placed back into the crock pot along with the broth from cooking the bird.  I added 2 carrots, 2 celery, 1 small onion, 1 tsp salt, 2 TBS vinegar, and water to cover it all.  This cooked on low for the next 24-36 hours.  Meanwhile the meat provided the basis for another dinner of chicken pot pie( heavy on the veggies), and a couple days of lunches.  

Once the broth had cooked, I strained the broth out, let it cool, then put it in the fridge for the fat to rise to the top.  The bones, veggies, etc. were mashed up and, to the doggies delight, doggie dinner for that night.  No need to worry about the bones.  The vinegar removes the minerals and leaves the bones soft.  Everything is mashed up to insure that all bones are soft and then the dogs get it.  They love it when mama makes chicken broth.  

When the broth is cold and the fat solid, I remove it from the fridge and scoop off the solidified fat.  This goes into a container in the fridge.  Whenever I'm needing a fat to say sauté onions to go into a chicken dish, I pull out that container.  It replaces a store bought oil I would normally use.  The broth is divided into pints or quarts and either frozen or canned.  I'll pressure can broth if I've done a large amount of broth.  One chicken usually gives me about 2 quarts, so that I freeze.  

                                                           

Now while I tell this story about a chicken, this process can be used for any type of bone in meat.  Ham, beef, even fish (although the idea of fish broth doesn't sit well with me, but some like it).  I save the fat in both beef and ham as well.  I can hear the collective gasps when people read this and think "All that saturated fat!".  I don't have a problem with saturated fat.  I have a problem with hydrogenated, highly processed fat.  Plus I'm not smearing the fat on toast (yuck).  I just use a small amount to cook with.  My over all fat intake is lower than your average person I'd guess.  

Sweets are my weakness.  That's still a work in progress.