Crazy ‘Bout a Sharp Dressed Heifer

I don’t know what the word for halter is in cowlish, but torture device comes to mind.  Especially when it’s complete with a subliminal message.  As if… a prima donna heifer would want a torture device halter for Christmas.  With barb wire, you got to be kidding!

Actually, it is my present.  Cows are headstrong and follow their nose.  Control the nose, control the cow.  Well sort of.  Did you know that a cow thinks anywhere her nose fits, she will too?  Sometimes the hole gets bigger when the cow tries to go through the hole, sometimes not.

I digress.  Mind you an off-the-rack halter would be cheaper, but it may not fit, and sometimes the buckles and rings aren’t user friendly, for the bovine or the human.  So Hangdog made me Jane the halter of my our dreams.  Leather, adjustable nose strap, rivets with smooth side to the cow, and nice roller buckles.  The barbed wire tooling was his idea to match her collar.  I Jane also wanted something a little less beige…

Sorry about the glare.

I was thinking something darker that matched my romeos.  Love the dark oil tack.   Hangdog would have preferred I told him I wanted it dyed before he made the halter, but I assured him, I’ll take full credit for the dye job.  After a few days in the pasture, I don’t think it will matter much either.  They don’t carry manure tone, so chocolate would have to suffice.

The Fiebings leather dye is inexpensive and very easy to apply.

In just a few minutes the halter was completely dyed and was hung to dry.

Much better.  Now the bos has to obey the boss!  Most of the time…

Sour Cabbage

If you plant a lot of cabbage – you gotta make kraut.   Cole crops like our climate, so it’s pretty easy to go with the flow.

My hubby is on a modified GAPS diet, so he eats kraut daily.  It’s easy to make, and is an excellent way to store excess cabbage between growing seasons.

This is my last batch for the year, and usually when the crock is done fermenting, I repack the finished kraut in gallon or 1/2 gallon jars and store in the refrigerator or in the basement.  Either works fine.

For this batch I covered the top of the kraut with whole cabbage leaves, dinner plate (lead-free Fiesta, of course) and water filled plastic bags for weight and as an airlock.  To keep out dust and ??? I covered the crock with a cloth.  I have to say this batch was as trouble-free as using my Harsch pickling crock.  I posted photos of the kraut making back in October in this post.  There is one gallon remaining from that October batch.  If you’re adventuresome, here is an old post too about sauerruben, which is usually our late winter fermenting vegetable.

Doggies love sauerkraut!

The reveal.

The taste test.

Delicious!  Time to transfer to cold storage.

Doo Diligence

The other day I was reading a thread on a site my friend’s husband calls Cow Talker, and the title of the thread was something like, “FINALLY BESSIE WILL START CONTRIBUTING.”  The topic was about the cow owners finally getting some milk from their heifer… .  Before that they figured all they had were figures in the expense column.  Purchase price, housing, feed, bedding etc.  Unfortunately so typical.  One of the most important things missing from agricultural these days, whether it be urban or rural, is animal manure and a reverence for that precious material. IMHO.  Jane has been contributing for some time now, and I haven’t got a drop of milk yet.

I started this blog to write about family cows.  And it has turned out I write mostly about manure.  No Shit!  Still working on the smooth family cow thing.  New readers will have to go back to the beginning and see how that has turned out the last 4 years.  Jane will write that next chapter.

I have a hard time defining what I think is more important about my baker’s dozen flock of chickens.  The eggs or the manure?  If it’s breakfast time, I would say the eggs, but if I am in the garden, I would say the manure.

Night soil from the flock.

My chickens are housed in a small greenhouse.  A morphed approach to having fresh eggs and ratcheting down from a large pastured egg operation.  We always wintered our hens in hoophouses to keep them off the pasture during the winter months, for predator protection and to gather more bedding for fertilizing purposes.

Daily chores with my hens consist of feeding, checking water, gathering eggs, and building up the deep bedding pack.

The bedding really builds up over time.  What a resource at all our finger tips, if we would just not be so tight with bedding.  And with chickens, they do the work of turning it and breaking it down for us.  No machinery, no stinky chicken houses to clean because we have added carbon and lots of it.

Every day I at least cover up the night soil area where the flock sleeps.  Weekly I bed the whole she-bang, replenish the nest boxes with new straw, and sit back and watch the chickens dig through the straw for tidbits of grain that escaped the combine.

Closed up for the night.

The greenhouse floor is soil, the  ground is damp around the edges, and earth worms migrate in from the outside to the rich manure pack, and provide treats for hens.  It’s a great system, the hens are safe, warm and dry, and I get copious amounts of light, easy-to-move deep bedding for my gardens.

Hen pecked deep bedding.

Can’t beat that!

Snow’s Gone, Time to Harvest

With the snow gone and finally a day without soaking rains, it was time yesterday to replenish the vegetable stores.  Despite our almost two feet of snow last week and the following foot plus of rain, our winter has actually been pretty docile.  Memories of long stretches of bad winter, keep us in the preparedness mode with food and firewood prep during the summer months.  If the weather is mild like this winter, all the better.  We can relax, and if we get a cold snap of some duration, our workaday systems allow us some comfort.

I pretty much know now what works in the winter garden and what doesn’t.  Red cabbage is one of the toughies.  With fall root pruning it holds in the winter garden during our cold snaps.  But remember, we’re in the maritime Northwest, so it doesn’t get all that cold.  Our lowest reading this winter has been 19°F.  Just mostly wet and raw.  I do have to say, though that my green cabbages that I left in the garden (except January King) have succumbed to our light freezes.  The red cabbage is right there next to the rotten cabbage heads, and it’s plugging away in its holding pattern.  My goal with our winter food supply is to keep it simple.  A minimum of care and purchased materials, just harvesting is my goal.

The root supply was getting low, first with snow, and then the rain, I hadn’t dug any roots for two weeks.  I was robbing roots out of Jane’s buckets.

Wha…?

 

The dirty secret of row run is probably a surprise to new gardeners who are used to buying vegetables at the store or farmers market.  It’s not all perfect.  My vegetable harvest each week is a culmination of all the choices I have made with my garden.   Besides being the produce manager, I am the grower too.  I see all the defects in my vegetables and my judgement.  Did I plant the right variety, at the right time?  Did I feed and weed timely?  Did I protect the crops from freezing or did I shrug at the weather reports?  Did I plant enough for the vole and mine?  All the questions get answered each week as the winter harvest calendar marches us right up to spring planting.

We have ready-made root cellar conditions here for root crops that like high humidity and refrigerator temperatures.  Basically the garden is a refrigerator without the electric bill.  There is another bill, though, that of varmints and the elements.  Clockwise, starting at the rutabaga with its haired over slug bites from summer; celeriac with vole damage; parsnip with canker; carrot with a split jacket; beet with vole damage, and lastly a carrot with vole damage.  All of these have edible parts, but will probably end up in Jane’s bucket. Voles are an ongoing problem, that are somewhat under control.  The slugs are the same.  There isn’t or shouldn’t be a garden anywhere with no pests, that’s just part of living in a biological world.  The canker on the parsnip could be avoided with choosing a canker resistant variety.  And the split carrot is the result of leaving a summer carrot variety in the ground after the fall rains have started.  There is no waste, damaged vegetables can go to Jane, or could be trimmed for house use if we were short.

The final list for harvest yesterday was:  carrots, parsnips, celeriac, rutabaga, giant kohlrabi, rutabaga, beets, and cabbage.  Lots of fodder for house and cow.

A Well Equipped Man Comes in Handy

I absolutely hate calling my hubby at work and telling him I got stuck!  Or having my kid backseat driving!  But alas, stuff happens   My girlfriend and I joke that we are a different kind of high maintenance woman…she has a barn full of horses, and I have a pasture full of cows.  Oh well, the driveway needed plowing anyway.  And I don’t get too much grief, because after almost 30 years we both have many memories of bailing each other out of predicaments.

The snow was only up to the label on my Muck boots, but it was wet and slick.  I just had to sneak over the hill a tad and the rest was history.  I was committed.  Luckily I know when to quit trying…

Of course, the cows have to come and watch too, and smirk.

We really lucked out, we topped out at 20″ of snow and by 3 am Wednesday it started to rain, no Columbia Gorge ice, it is forming east and north of here.  We are just getting rain, and our 20″ of snow is now about 3″ of slush.  All that rain combined with snow melt mean trouble downstream from us.  Our power was only out for a day and half and we consider a few broken fruit trees and one mildly stuck pickup pretty good for a storm system this size.  Others have not been so fortunate.

Snow Day and a Parsnip Cake

Gosh, so much for weather predictions, or maybe weather predictions for micro climates.   A few inches of predicted snow turned into a foot by noon today.  I called a friend down the hill in Springdale, and he had none…as I type this it’s still snowing, and piling up.

A good day for baking.  Parsnip cake sounded good, and I’m sure Jane won’t miss a snip or two.

I saved this recipe from the newspaper last winter, and never did anything with it until this winter when Hangdog needed a dessert for his Christmas potluck at work.  I’m posting the recipe directly from the article.  I simplified it by substituting all-purpose flour for almond flour, mixing it with a spoon (no stand mixer here), and I baked it in a 9 x 13 pan.  The cake was sweet enough without frosting, so I left that part out too.  The stripped down cake is delicious, but I have no doubt if you followed the recipe exactly it just might be stupendous   Here is the original article as it appeared in The Oregonian.

PARSNIP CAKE

Makes one 9-inch cake

To create this tender layer cake, Clyde Common pastry chef Danielle Pruett improvised on a carrot cake recipe from Sherry Yard, pastry chef at Spago in Beverly Hills. Pruett serves it with caramel sauce, candied walnuts and a gently spiced ice cream.

Ingredients

Cake

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup almond meal (such as Bob’s Red Mill brand)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled (1 1/2 sticks)
• 1 3/4 cups shredded parsnips (from about 4 medium parsnips)

Frosting

• 1 pound cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature (1 stick)
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon rum (optional)
• 1/3 cup whipping cream

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and position a rack in the center of the oven. Spray two 9-inch cake pans with nonstick cooking spray and line with parchment paper; spray the parchment with nonstick spray.

To make cake: Whisk the flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a mixing bowl. Set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, blend the granulated sugar, powdered sugar, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla together on medium speed until well combined. Blend in the flour mixture on medium speed until well combined. Drizzle in the melted butter and continue mixing on medium speed until well combined. Fold in the parsnips with a rubber spatula.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans and spread evenly. Bake until a tester stick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 to 30 minutes. Carefully remove cakes from pans and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

To make frosting: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and butter together on medium speed until well combined. Add the powdered sugar and mix until just blended, stopping the mixer and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.

Add the vanilla, lemon juice and rum, if using, and beat on low speed until just combined. Slowly mix in the cream on low speed until just combined. Once all the cream is incorporated, beat the frosting on medium-high speed for a few seconds. Use the frosting immediately or store in the refrigerator until ready to use. Allow frosting to come to room temperature before spreading.

To assemble the cake, spread cream cheese frosting between the two cake layers. Frost the sides and top. Depending on how thick you like your frosting, you will probably have anywhere from 1/3 to 1 cup left over.

Adapted from pastry chef Danielle Pruett, Clyde Common

Cooking Provenance

I don’t really think about cooking from scratch much, because that is how I learned to cook.  That’s how everyone cooked, although the modern world crept in with my mom working and trading recipes with her cohorts at the Grange potlucks.  What working mom doesn’t want a quick casserole recipe made with a can of soup and other canned ingredients.  The Grange organization celebrated their centennial in 1967, and my dad had died the previous year, so my mom joined up for something to do in her spare time (???)…bring on the casseroles, no one called them comfort food then, although they were comforting, to the cook and the kid.

The other day I was looking at the roasted chicken I had in the fridge, and thinking, “Gee, should I climb out of the chicken enchilada rut and  make something else?”  When you know your way around cooking, a recipe is but a suggestion for some dishes.  I was hankering for some comfort food myself, and the tuna casserole with celery, cream of mushroom soup and chinese noodles came to mind.  I rummaged through my mom’s grange cookbooks and pulled out the Meat edition from 1968.  These grange cookbooks have never let me down for  home cooking.  All the recipes are from grange women who were serious cooks, some recipes are old, some new-fangled, well, at least for the 60′s, and I love the contributors name and grange posted at the bottom of each recipe.  What I was wanting was a taste of nostalgia and some seasoning ideas, I wasn’t really interested in a tuna casserole, since  I don’t have tuna, celery or commercial soup in my pantry, but I did have some crispy Chinese noodles.  I’m weak, I admit it   And I had frozen sautéed chanterelles, celery root with crunchy tops, and the makings of a good béchamel, I figured the chicken could certainly stand in for Charlie.

I think I realized when I opened up the cookbook and a recipe written in my mom’s hand fell out, that the comfort of comfort foods stems from the memories of a meal and the cook as much as the meal itself.  My mom’s recipe had no title and was written how a scratch cook writes up a recipe.  Just ingredients with a few side notes.  Cut up 4# rabbit, 4 onions, 1/3 c vinegar, pickling spice, basil, sauterne wine, flour, butter, parsnips, carrots.  Place rabbit pieces in bowl with first four ingredients, add enuf water.  Marinate 2 days.  Dry rabbit, dredge, brown, arrange vegetables in bottom of dish, add rabbit, and 6 T of marinade.  Bake in slow oven.  Marie

I used to raise rabbits for 4-H and we ate this often in the winter when the parsnips were plentiful.  I never saw her with a recipe, and reading this I can see it came from the local Guernsey breeder, Marie.

I don’t know about you, but when I see a handwritten recipe, it has meaning beyond more than just a list of ingredients and the instructions to go with the list.  I quickly dug out my bunch of recipes that I keep separate.  It’s not because I use them frequently, but more because they are mostly handwritten recipes that have been given to me.  A gift.  A gift in this day of cursors, email and Epicurious.  I love Simply Recipes and other recipe sites in that they give me inspiration, but it’s not the same.  They don’t call it your signature for nothing, IT IS a person’s whole being that I see when I look at their handwriting.  I see our friendship, their skills and life leanings, I see relationships and I remember them instantly when I see the script.  Is cursive dead?  I hope not.

Looking through my recipe gifts, I see my neighbor who shared her granola recipe from the Shaker school in Ohio, she missed home,  the recipe was a connection after moving to west to Oregon with her husband.

I see a newly minted farming friend who shared a chicken recipe with me, she later was murdered on her farm by her own child.  We knew we were going to be fast friends when the first things she asked on a farm visit were, “Where is your milk cow?”  “Do you quilt?”

Some people have passed on in a more normal way, Mary my staunch, and sometimes silly neighbor gave me her roll recipe.  She and her husband performed the marches at Grange meetings in a way that made you want to march alongside.  She shared that being the oldest daughter in a large farm family at the turn of the century meant you always had to cook, clean and tend to the youngers.  My girlfriend and I would ride horseback to her house and snag a roll, and she would be wistful remembering wanting to ride the plow horses to the fields like her little sisters did.  One of the original blue hairs, I never saw her in slacks – ever.  Always a dress and an apron, something on the cookstove, and a quilt in the frame.

Some people just pass out of your life too, a co-worker doled out her French Dressing recipe sparingly.  I was glad to be a recipient.  She was Mormon and worked in the cafeteria, and she saved gallon jars and containers for me – which always brought on curious looks from those around us.  We both spoke pantry, it may as well have been a foreign language.

And there are recipes from the current people in my life too.  A Kahlua recipe from Hangdog written in his distinctive hand.  And my go to roll recipe from a friend I see only occasionally when we buy straw.  It’s not my roll recipe, it is Joan’s Rolls and I use it for everything roll related, and we all remember visits with Joan and her family when I use this recipe.

Cooking is a blend of old and new, tried and true, and spans decades of experience in each recipe that is passed down or shared with friends.  The tips each cook imparts is the passing of the torch so to speak that spans time and connects us all.  And I know even the ladies from another time would have been glad to have the world of recipes at their finger tips if that had been available to them.  I like the internet too, but I love my handwritten recipes, they are comforting.

Feeding Transition

We’ve went from freezing nights and sunny, cold days to snow.  And I have been feeding hay since the first of the month, no more grazing.  We’ll feed hay now until mid-April or whenever the grass is ready for turn out.

Not so cold though that the ice is hard to break on the troughs.  Usually I put a limb in the troughs and that is enough to keep the ice from forming so thick the cows can’t break it.  It hasn’t got cold enough for me to go hunt down the trough limbs…so I just break the ice in the morning if the cows haven’t yet.

I’m being lazy and still feeding outside.  It’s easy and the cows don’t mind, they get more freedom than when they are confined to the feeding shed/sacrifice area.  I will still have enough time to gather ample bedding for composting, and I have to interject here, we don’t really have pugging problems even if the cows stayed out all winter.

A couple of things on our side with outside feeding besides the non-pugging are:

♥  We live just out of the zone that receives the ubiquitous and I might say famous Columbia Gorge east wind, so the temperature reading is the temperature reading.

♥  We also have no babies born at this time, just so we aren’t subjecting birthing mothers or newborns to harsh weather.  Much easier on them and us – basically no worries.  This one factor really harks back to the SCAT post, going against nature is a major attitude problem.  Animals in the wild don’t normally have babies in the winter, unless it is the poor mustangs subjected to our “birth control” experiments.

Driver’s view.

Feeding outside means bringing the hay to them.  Downside – I’m using fuel, but it takes fuel too, to clean the feeding shed come spring.  Upside – I’m getting some nutrient cycling going via hay that doesn’t get eaten along with manure and urine supplied by the cows.

More driver’s view.

Feeder’s view.

I think flexibility is the key.  Planning chore management should include flexibility.  This is a simple way to feed and with a small herd can be done with a wheelbarrow if need be.  Building flexibility or resilience into your operation is a must.  We plan our calving for late spring, we make small square bales so anyone can handle them without equipment, and we go with the flow.  If the weather really turns I can put the cows in, if it stays mild a while longer I can still fall back on old outside feeding habits and enjoy the break.

Wonderful Weather

We’re in for a little snow this weekend, which if they’re wrong on this, I won’t be disappointed – the weather has been absolutely gorgeous.

The sky shows morning and evening have been amazing.

Wolf Moonrise from Chanticleer Point.

Winter Root Slaw

Jane isn’t the only one getting her roots around here.  As good as roasted root vegetables sound, it does get tiring.  I’m not missing lettuce yet, or leafy salads, but I am missing crunch.

Red Cored Chantenay carrot, Brilliant cand Superschmelz kohlrabi

I really like cabbage slaw which I posted about here.  But winter time is different.  Most of my green cabbage has been committed to the kraut crocks and we like red cabbage cooked like this.  But the root crops are abundant this time and year and taste very good made into slaw.

It doesn’t have to be complicated; a simple box grater, a few roots and your favorite vinaigrette  and you have the makings for a side dish, or meal.

I used cider vinegar, olive oil and a little honey for my dressing.  Topped with a few dried cranberries and it’s good enough for dessert!

Have root vegetables made their way to your table?  How do you prepare them?