Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #26

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Incoming!

I'm not quite sure where this past week went, so I'm not quite sure what all we did during it besides a whole bunch of laundry. I think we had some rain; I know we hoped for more.

We said farewell to the wet weather creek, which hasn't run this long in years. Hopefully we'll see it again before next spring.

There was lots of lawn mowing and weed whacking and mulching the raised kitchen garden vegetable beds with green gold (aka grass clippings).

I cooked a fresh ham roast and made a batch of Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Coconut Cookies and a batch of double chocolate chip cookies and baked three French daily baguettes (recipe hopefully coming this weekend).

We hooked the 16-foot flatbed trailer up to the '86 pickup and spent 11 hours out buying lumber and groceries and supplies while the new cat, whose name at this point is still That Cat, went to the vet to get tutored (my mother is probably the only one who will get this decades-old Far Side cartoon reference).

We ate big freshly picked Swiss chard and kale chopped salads most nights and had macaroni and cheese with leftover ham three times (I may have made a little too much).

Oh yeah, there were two (!) big black snakes curled up together in one of the nesting boxes in Rooster Andy's coop. Black snakes LOVE fresh eggs. The slithery couple was put in a cooler (which wasn't easy) and relocated to another part of the farm, hopefully far enough away so they don't make their way back. I actually snapped a couple of pictures, but I didn't think you'd want to see them.

And I guess that's about all—or at least all I can remember. The rest is in pictures.

18 more photos below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Heads Up: A Great Deal on My Favorite Farm and Garden Cart

Using some muscle last month on a neglected (and falling apart) raised bed in the kitchen garden.

One of the first purchases I made after moving to the country 18 years ago was a 7.5 cubic foot Rubbermaid utility cart, and to this day it remains one of the best things I've ever bought. We use it so much around the farm and garden that a couple years ago we bought a second one. (The cart pictured above is the older version; you can see our newer version in action here.)

The one-piece construction is incredibly durable and tough. They can be either pushed or pulled, are easy to clean, easy to dump, don't mind being left out in the weather, can handle rough terrain, and can haul up to 300 pounds.

Over the years we've used ours to transport everything from firewood to sick sheep. They're perfect for hauling manure from the barn, weeds to the compost bin, and grass clippings to the vegetable beds. I can't imagine gardening or farming without them.

We paid $189 for our second one several years ago, but right now they're available from amazon for just $139 each, with free shipping (just choose Free Super Saver Shipping when you place your order). They won't ship for 3 to 5 weeks, but if you're willing to wait, you can save a lot of money (the regular price is over $240).

I'm not sure how long this price will last, so if you've had your eye on one of these carts, now is the time to pounce. We're actually thinking maybe we should get a third one—that's how great they are.

P.S. These rugged carts can handle a lot of use and abuse, but I wouldn't, ahem, recommend throwing heavy pieces of firewood into them from several feet away, or turning them upside down and standing on them, especially if you're a very big guy. If, however, such a thing should happen while your back is turned, large cracks can successfully be mended with pieces of old metal license plates and/or metal strapping, preferably by the person who is responsible for causing the cracking.

Also, you can use your cart to move the generator, but take it out before you actually run the generator. Otherwise, the heat blasting out of it could melt a big ugly hole in the side of your brand new, shiny cart. Not that anyone would actually do this.

© FarmgirlFare.com, the rockin' and rollin' foodie farm blog where we haven't yet figured out how to put the donkeys before the cart.

Tuesday Dose of Cute: Meaty Dog Treats for Cats

More photos below. . .

Sunday Dose of Cute: Happy Mother's Day!

Eugenie checking on her four-day-old twins (taken February 2nd)

9 more mothering moments from the 2013 lambing season below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #25

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Hay inspectors back on the job.

It's been quite a while since I posted the last Friday Farm Fix, but the other day Joe and I were talking about how much we both miss this series. We love being able to look back and see everything that was happening around here during a specific week, and I confess to sometimes including extra photos especially for us.

This time I thought I would also a list of some of the things we've been doing around the farm, for those of you who are interested. If you've been missing your Friday Farm Fix, I hope you enjoy this cute-filled, spring green installment.

So what's been happening on the farm during the past week? We've been busy. . .

—Eating giant freshly picked kale and Swiss chard salads nearly every night.

—Splashing through the creek.

—Worming the sheep and trimming some hooves.

—Planting 10 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes (the 5 pounds of Pontiac Reds already in the ground and a few inches tall froze this week but should hopefully make a full recovery).

—Reorganizing the walk-in pantry (it looks and feels so much better in there!)

—Cracking up at our new farm cat (a proper introduction will hopefully be coming soon, maybe when he gets a real name).

—Getting invaded by armadillos (including one that almost dug its way into the shop, which is attached to the house, the other night at 10pm).

—Enjoying the unseasonably cool (mostly under 80°) and beautiful mid-spring weather.

—Locking seven wayward, disappointed donkeys back in Donkeyland (I told you they'd start misbehaving).

—Stopping to smell the lilacs.

—Trying to fix the broken sickle bar mower and the little antique diesel tractor so they're ready for haying season (with a minor head wound to Joe and a sledgehammer to my finger in the process—ouch).

—Celebrating the much needed rain and hoping it keeps on coming.

—Polishing off the third (!) batch in a row of these addictive (and almost too easy to make) Baby Chocolate Chip and Toffee Shortbread Cookies (hint: you can double the recipe).

—Loving all this gorgeous green.

16 more photos below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Thursday Night Quick Dose of Cute

More Evie? Here.
More donkeys? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com

Tuesday Dose of Cute: A Refreshing Dip (Not a Recipe)

More photos below. . .

Sunday Dose of Cute: Day of Rest

You don't have to tell them twice.

More donkeys? Here and here and here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, the longeared loving foodie farm blog where our seven donkeys (who provide priceless entertainment value while keeping down weeds in the fields that the sheep won't eat) have been temporarily released from Donkeyland and are currently out on the loose. They've been mostly hanging around up by the house which is nice. It's fun having them close by, though I give them maybe another day or two before they start misbehaving or wandering off (most of our property is wooded and really steep, and our perimeter fencing is non-existent).

In the meantime, they're conveniently located for cuddling. This morning even Dan wanted to be scratched (and hugged!), but Evie and Daphne kept cutting in. (Dolores and Evie were just outside of these photos, both asleep while standing up.)

Friday Dose of Cute: Farmgirl Fare on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter

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Note to Farmgirl Fare Facebook fans: If you're a fan of the Farmgirl Fare Facebook Fan Page but aren't seeing each new blog post announcement, it's because Facebook now wants people to pay to promote their posts. But it's easy to fix. To see all my new posts on Facebook, go to the top of the Farmgirl Fare Facebook page and under "Liked" click "Add to Interest List."

Note to Pinterest fans: You can easily pin any photo on Farmgirl Fare by using the 'Pin it' button (which is working again!) at the top of each post. You won't see the 'Pin it' buttons on the Farmgirl Fare home page, just on the individual post pages. (If you're on the home page, click on the title of the post to go to that post's page.) And thanks for all your pins!

© FarmgirlFare.com, where everybody loves that Beagle Bert.

Thursday Dose of Cute: Heading Out to Breakfast (and Another Farm Life Tale)

I was planning to post this series of photos with just a sentence or two about why the sheep were still spending each night in the barn, but then I realized some of you might look at the pictures and wonder where all the lambs are.

I haven't been up to writing about that just yet. I've been telling myself that the story wouldn't really be complete until we picked up our mail and got the check, but that was just an excuse. So I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you what's been happening.

More photos and story below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Sunday Farm Tale: Chickens and Eggs

Farm fresh eggs: they're what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Ever since a kind friend brought Whitey the Chicken a dozen fertile eggs to sit on six years ago when she went broody for the first time in her life at the age of seven, our chicken population has expanded each spring.

Whitey died last year at the ripe old age of 12 (when I checked a few years ago, the world record for oldest living chicken was 14), but her legacy lives on. She raised seven chicks during her one and only stint at motherhood, and we kept one of the roosters, which meant that we now had fertile eggs—and our hens have been taking advantage of that fact ever since.

I once read an alarming statistic that said something like 95% of hens in the United States have had the instinct to sit on a nest of eggs and hatch out some chicks—known as going broody—totally bred out of them. So despite the fact that we don't really need any more chickens, I've never discouraged a hen from doing what she's naturally supposed to do. Plus it's always fun having baby chicks around.

Last year, though, six of our hens hatched out a total of 40 live chicks. Lokey alone was responsible for raising 20 of them. A friend says she's worth her weight in gold.

More photos and a lot more story below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Friday Dose of Cute: Heads Down, Mouths Open

Have a delicious weekend!

© FarmgirlFare.com, always cute, always hungry.

Wordless Wednesday Dose of Cute

Six more photos below. . .

Monday Dose of Cute: Jumping into a Brand New Week

Go, Daisy!

More Daisy? Here and here.
More farm dog photos? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where it only looks like she's going to land in that little barrel.

Sunday Dose of Cute: Greeters at the Entrance to Donkeyland

Got any treats?

More donkeys? Here.

More Donkeyland? Here and here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, the enter at your own risk foodie farm blog where the donkeys don't seem to have had any blog time since 2012. How can that be?! (This photo was taken back in March, and although the hillsides still don't look much greener yet, the pasture thankfully does.) Maybe we need to declare May as Official Donkey Blogging Month. Depends on how the donkeys feel about it I guess. Sometimes they just don't want to pose; even here you can see that Donkey Doodle Dandy is trying to remain anonymous.

Saturday Dose of Cute: Really Lemony Lemon Bars Photo Shoot (The Whole Picture)

Really Lemony Lemon Bars recipe here.

More of The Whole Picture series? Here.

More chickens? Here.

More farm inspectors? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where if you bake it, they will come.

Recipe: Really Lemony Lemon Bars (Reduced Sugar)

These easy, creamy dessert bars are made with less sugar and more lemon flavor. Delicious with either regular lemons or Meyer lemons.

Whenever I see a recipe for old-fashioned lemon bars with a shortbread crust I want to rush into the kitchen and bake some, but the amount of sugar that most of them call for makes my teeth ache just thinking about it. So when I saw this recipe for Creamy Lemon Squares from Martha Stewart, I knew I had to try it. The description said:

The lemon bars of your dreams take just 15 minutes of prep: Stir together a mere three ingredients to create a sunny, puckery filling for a buttery shortbread crust.

Rather than calling for several cups of sugar, the lemon filling is made with a can of sweetened condensed milk, which adds creaminess and sweetness while allowing the lemon flavor to really shine through. I added a generous helping of finely chopped lemon zest to bump up the lemon factor even more.

When I brought a batch of these bars to a big Thanksgiving potluck at a hunting cabin in the woods last fall, I told everyone they were called Pucker Up Lemon Bars and were for serious lemon lovers only.

If you're a lemon fan, these just might be the lemon bars of your dreams. They're definitely mine. And my lemon loving hunky farmguy is crazy about them too.

Recipe below. . .

British Invasion: Homemade Cornish Pasties & Favorite English Cookery Books

The dangers of outdoor food photo shoots (Cornish pasty recipe here).

I'm not sure why, but for some reason my recipe for Jamie Oliver's Cornish Pasties with beef, onion, potatoes, and carrots that I shared with you last fall has been one of the most popular posts on Farmgirl Fare for at least the past six weeks. (You'll find the top ten posts of each week listed over in the left sidebar.) Maybe it's pasty season.

What I do know is that these classic British meat pies taste delicious and freeze beautifully. I made a double batch during the tail end (ha) of lambing season this year, and hopefully next year I'll remember to make some at the beginning of lambing season because they're the perfect thing to have on hand for quick and easy dinners or hot and hearty (and portable!) lunches.

I defrosted the frozen pasties at room temperature and then reheated them in my beloved little Oster convection toaster oven (which I often use several times a day), but you could probably go straight from freezer to oven. If you're in a hurry or at work, you can gently heat them in the microwave. They taste especially wonderful when served with brown mustard and cold beer.

Everybody loves these traditional Cornish pasties, including Mr. Midnight.

This pasty recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver's Great Britain: 130 of My Favorite British Recipes, from Comfort Food to New Classics, which is a neat cookbook. I bookmarked several other recipes to try while spending a couple of hours leisurely reading through it.

I have a huge cookbook collection but rarely use most of them. So in keeping with my word for the year—SIMPLIFY—I've been slowly sorting through my cookbooks, most of which still haven't made the move from The Shack to the new house, and donating a bunch of them to the small local (35 miles away) library, much to the delight of the librarian. Jamie Oliver's Great Britain is staying here.

More British cookbooks (including three for under $1) that made the cut below. . .

Monday Dose of Marta Cute

Wishing you a bright-eyed and smile-filled week!

More Marta Beast? Here and here and here.

More farm dog photos? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, the 20/20 foodie farm blog where five-year-old Marta is a 100+ pound mix of three livestock guardian dog breeds: Great Pyrenees (which is what her seven-year-old partner Daisy is), Komondor, and Anatolian Shepherd. She's also 100% goofball—and in desperate need of her spring spa day/shearing (or at least her bangs trimmed). She is an awesome guard dog and we love her to pieces.

Wordless Wednesday Late Night Dose of Chicken Cute

More photos below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Monday Dose of Cute: Oh, Happy Day

Just hanging out, waiting for their breakfast hay to be delivered.

Two months ago we moved all of the sheep who weren't in the barn having babies off of the big front field, which is our main grazing pasture, and into a pen about a half acre in size across from the barn.

Until yesterday they lived a boring (in a sheep's opinion) existence in there, laying around, eating alfalfa hay twice a day (that we had to buy because our own hayfield didn't grow during last year's terrible drought), and impatiently waiting for the day when they would once again be able to roam the fields, munching on fresh green grass.

12 more photos and the rest of the story below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Monday Quick Dose of Cute

Hi.

Wishing you a cute filled week!

More sheep shots? Here.

Lots of sweet little lambs? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where the hay is running low and the grass is starting to grow—but nobody gets to start grazing on it just yet. Patience. . .

Sunny Sunday Dose of Cute

14 more photos below. . .