llama Grove Groove » food

Growing Season Begins

kari — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:30:39 +0000

The rhubarb and garlic are growing already! We’ve had such warm weather that today I was sweeping wasps nests off the roof and found a wasp. The nights have been very cold, though. there is no cloud cover at night, so we have a real risk of frost taking the buds off the apple trees and killing the garlic and rhubarb.

Whole Lot of Cleaning Going On

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:14:18 +0000

With the start of our annual winter fear fest, we started pulling down the last of the hay from on top of the barn. It was there that we discovered what a fine and glossy-coated herd of mice we’ve raised. These were the fattest and healthiest mice you can imagine. In fact, they were living happily in our hay and eating our hormone-free, antibiotic-free feed. They opened several bags that we’d hoped would keep the cows over the winter, and a few bags of llama and general live stock feed. There was one bag that was eaten down to 1/2 of it’s original 50 pounds. Obviously we’d become lax since we’ve never had a mouse infestation of this size before. The answer is larger feed bins and barn cats, I’m afraid. The llama will stomp mice if he can see them, but he can’t reach the rafters.

Back in the kitchen we did a pre-winter cleaning and made gallons and gallons of no-fry re-fried beans. That’ll keep us from getting too lazy and eating in town. Also, there were 7 jars of dill pickles (we always give so many away) and some really great pure made.

Chicken Harvest

kari — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:20:34 +0000

Ray came home early today to round up the Cornish Crosses and the Australorp rooster for slaughter. He drove them down to another farm that has a plucker. We’ve decided plucking feathers by hand is for the birds. Minus driving and catching the rooster, the entire process was done in the time it would have taken us to pluck the feathers of one bird. To the right is a picture of some of the birds in the refrigerator. They will age in the fridge for a couple of days before moving into the freezer for use in the next year. You can really tell the difference between the rooster (middle) and the Cornish Crosses.

Berry Season

kari — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:26:41 +0000

We’ve been harvesting and hosting harvests for about a month now. The blackberries are spectacular this year. These are invasive Himalayan blackberries. The native species is a little sweeter, has a bit more seed in it and will be available all September. If we leave any for you!

Bounty

kari — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:54:57 +0000

Today we pulled in some of the harvest. The corn wasn’t as abundant as we’d have liked, but in reality, we don’t eat much corn. There are three tomato varieties, onions and a few cloves of garlic ready for storage. The potatoes did awesome.

On a frightening note, Ray crawled under the truck for a little look around. He’d noticed the trailer hitch sagging, so it was worth a look. The hitch was almost off on one side! The remainder of the afternoon was spent sanding, figuring and finally, welding the hitch back on. Thank goodness for safety measures.

Lettuce Seed

kari — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:33:59 +0000

Our friend Heather introduced us to the way that gardens are done these days. Even large scale farmers are doing this. It’s actually easier, so we’ll go with it for this year, anyway. So we won’t till next year, we’ll just put our compost on the rows we already established. We’ll put the shavings from the apple tree trimmings between our rows (either that or that’s where we’ll till to keep the weeds down). This way we’ll have walking paths and not be giving too many weeds our hard-earned manure.

Berry Time

kari — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:37:29 +0000

It’s that time of year again. Now we have raspberries that need made to jam. Lots of stuff in the freezer that will be great later.

This is the first time we’ve tried freezer jam. It feels almost like cheating. There is so little mess to clean up, so few dishes, no stove top heat. Hope it turns out!

Brave little tomato

kari — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:25:10 +0000

These little guys came back from the brink after being stepped on and having a small drought. Thank goodness for tastely little troopers.

Working on the Food

kari — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:26:44 +0000

While Ray went to our favorite organic dairy/farm to help out with their chicken slaughter/dressing today Kari started the first cauldren of jam. With a little help from the littlest memeber of the family, we’re well stocked on plum jam for the year.

Gardening

kari — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:16:47 +0000

Ray has begun getting the weeds out of the garden. It’s had to wait a little bit, but just look at these results. We have more lettuce than we can reasonably eat. ( I will not be making cream of lettuce soup. I’d rather give away a couple dozen heads. Cream of Lettuce soup tastes like chlorophyll to me, anywya.) There are new broiler chicks in the barn. We’re not taking pictures since they won’t be with us long.