Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #30

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 (sometimes actually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Haying round two: cutting the far end of the hayfield.

Wondering what was happening on the farm this time last year? Check out the Friday Farm Fix #14.

I was going to just blow off this week's Friday Farm Fix—seeing as how it's already Sunday afternoon—but while sorting through the past week's photos (so many!) I realized there were some things I wanted to capture and remember, like all that really tall and thick hop clover in the front field. It feels like something out of The Wizard of Oz out there. Picking the first spring green garlic (so good chopped up in tuna salad). Fearless Jasper working on his junior stock dog badge.

And, most importantly, that we put up 26 big round bales of hay. Or, more correctly, that my hunky farmguy Joe put up 26 big round bales of hay. All I did was make lunch, deliver gallons of ice cold fresh mint sun tea and snacks, and drive the truck with the flatbed trailer back and forth when we brought the bales into the haybarn. The only time I even touched any hay was to help move a bale that had rolled down a slope and onto one of the windrows of raked hay. I practically feel guilty.

Putting up round bales is a whole new thing for us, and I'm hoping to write a separate post with more about it, but since I was also planning to put up a separate post about our first 2013 cutting of hay (in square bales) a few weeks ago and still haven't, I figured it might be now or never.

Something I did finally get around to posting this past week is an update on my garden blog about everything that's growing in my organic kitchen garden right now. We've been savoring the last of the beautiful lettuce, lots of green onions, and the first of the spring onions. Also on the menu this week:

29 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Friday Dose of Cute: Have a Happy Weekend.

More photos below. . .

Thursday Dose of Cute: Down at the Sheep Barn

Four more photos and a Jasper report below. . .

Monday Dose of Big Dog Cute

Happy Marta

Happier Marta

Wishing you a wonderful week.

More Marta? Here and here and here.

More farm dog photos? Here and here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where the joyful urge to fall over and roll around on the ground is reaching epidemic proportions.

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #29

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 (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Lucky Buddy Bear cooling off in the creek.

Welcome to the Saturday evening edition of the Friday Farm Fix! The best news of the week is that last Thursday and Friday's five inches of rain started the wet weather creek running again on Saturday. A week later it's still gently flowing, thanks to another half inch of rain we got on Wednesday, most of which slammed down during a five minute period while I was out in the kitchen garden. I was afraid that if I went inside it would stop, and sure enough it did.

The biggest news of the week is that an enormous black walnut tree fell over in the barnyard during last Friday night's thunderstorm. Sometimes you don't realize just how tall these trees really are until they're horizontal.  Miraculously, nothing was smashed or hurt.

I laid awake half of Friday night worrying about the sheep while the storm raged outside, because we'd locked them in a section of the driveway adjacent to the barn without much protection from the elements. The next morning when I saw the fallen tree, I was so thankful I hadn't sloshed down there through the downpour at two a.m. to let the sheep into the barn and barnyard like I'd contemplated. And, like my hunky farmguy Joe assured me, they weathered the storm just fine where they were.

What else has been going on? Joe brewed a double batch of beer, and I made a double batch of these classic beef Cornish pasties (only this time I added an egg yolk to the crust); they're great to have on hand in the freezer for quick meals. I also bought and froze another four quarts of Amish strawberries to sweeten up our so-healthy-you-feel-virtuous-for-the-rest-of-the-day morning smoothies.

The weather has been hot and sticky (hello June!), so we've been drinking lots of fresh mint sun tea. So refreshing, so easy to make: just stuff a handful or two of fresh mint leaves in a glass jar, fill with water, set in the sun for a few hours, then strain and chill—or serve over lots of ice if you want some right away.

Lemon balm sun tea is wonderful too (you can read more about growing lemon balm along with my five other favorite herbs here). I love these half-gallon wide mouth canning jars and plastic screw-on caps for sun tea and so many other things.

26 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Wordless Wednesday Dose of Cute: Jasper Meets Rooster Andy

Six more photos below. . .

Recipe: Easy Orange Yogurt Loaf Cake

A simple, classic orange cake that tastes great with strawberries (recipe here).

How about a sweet treat from the archives? This Easy Orange Yogurt Loaf Cake, which I originally shared back in 2008, is one of the most popular recipes on Farmgirl Fare and still one of my personal favorites.

It's an old-fashioned, not overly-sweet cake that mixes up quickly, can be eaten plain or gussied up, and stays moist for several days. It tastes even better the second day (so you can bake it ahead), transports well, freezes beautifully, and can be easily sliced when frozen.

It's heavenly with fresh strawberries or blueberries, especially if you add some whipped cream and/or vanilla ice cream.

This is the kind of simple cake recipe that everyone should have in their collection (try a lemon or other citrus version instead of orange), and the comments at the end of the recipe are full of rave reviews. Enjoy!

More favorite cake and quick bread recipes:
100% Whole Wheat Coconut Zucchini Bread
Heavenly Lemon Coconut Quick Bread
Lemon Rosemary Zucchini Bread
Quick Chocolate Emergency Loaf Cake

Still hungry? You'll find links to all my sweet & savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.

P.S. Sadly, strawberries are #2 on the Environmental Working Group's list of most contaminated produce. Search for locally grown, organic strawberries (which will be so much more flavorful than store bought) on Local Harvest, or find a U-Pick farm in your area on PickYourOwn.org.

© FarmgirlFare.com, always up for cake.

Monday Dose of Cute: It's Monday?

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Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #28

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 (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Tiny fawn hidden in the hayfield.

Whew, what a week. In five days we managed to accomplish three big tasks that had been looming over us: clipping poor matted Marta Beast, putting up the first batch of hay, and getting the sheep sheared. I just realized they all have to do with cutting.

Tuesday morning we were so wiped out that we both slept in until 10:30, and that was before the hardest work even started. Then the power was out all Tuesday afternoon (which also means no water pumped from the well), making us even more discombobulated.

Saturday we spent an unplanned four hours wallowing on the ground in the sheep/bunny barn with our new animal clippers and a (thankfully) drugged Marta, who is a 100+ pound mix of three thick-coated livestock guardian dog breeds: Great Pyrenees, Komondor, and Anatolian Shepherd. She's also a big mess. Marta could find a mud puddle in a desert, and unlike her Great Pyrenees partner, Daisy, she wasn't blessed with that amazing self-cleaning gene. She also hadn't been clipped in two years, so this was a real challenge.

The last time we had Marta professionally cut it took them five hours and cost a small fortune. The 80-mile round trip drive wasn't much fun either. So we decided to invest in a good electric clipper—which actually cost less than the last grooming session—and try tackling her ourselves.

I wasn't sure it (and we) would be up to the job, but this little Andis professional clipper outdid itself. If it can handle Marta, it can probably handle anything. She won't be winning any beauty contests (which is our fault, not the clipper's), but she looks much better than she did, and I'm sure she feels a lot better too. (Note for home dog groomers: blowing off the blade every several minutes with compressed air to clean and cool it and then oiling it made a huge difference. We're also going to buy a second blade that doesn't cut as close; parts of Marta are very pink!)

34 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image with your cursor for a description). . .

Wordless Wednesday Dose of Cute: Jasper Meets the Sheep

More photos below. . .

Sunday Dose of Happy Cute

I hope you're enjoying the weekend!

More chickens? Here.

More Beagle Bert? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, over easy and rollin' along.

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #27

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 (usually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Daisy, our seven-year-old Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog, leads the flock down the driveway. (Marta was napping.)

The only thing about starting back up with the Friday Farm Fix is that it's making me realize just how fast the time flies by. It's already Friday again Saturday again?

Here's what's been happening around the farm this week. . .

The highlight was seen from the upstairs bedroom window: a mother doe nursing her itty bitty spotted fawn about 75 feet out in the hayfield. So sweet. You can just make out the baby in the photo below.

The humidity jumped up to 87% in the house and had us turning on the upstairs a/c and wondering how we were going to survive the next four months drenched in sweat, but thankfully we've been given a brief reprieve, with a few beautiful breezy days and sweet cool nights. Temporary bliss. We're gearing up to hopefully start cutting some hay next week if the weather cooperates; it can heat back up all it wants to then.

I spent as much time as I could in the kitchen garden, planting, plotting, mulching, watering, clearing out a few more raised beds, and picking lots of bolting Swiss chard (cold tolerant, heat tolerant, easy to grow!) for the chickens. I've also been marveling at how much farther ahead things were a year ago this week. Look at all that beautiful basil! (The Friday Farm Fixes from this time last year are here and here.)

We signed on for a month of rabbit sitting. So far so good.

We fed about 5,000 ravenous mosquitoes. I think this may be the worst they've ever been, but at least their appearance means we've had a more 'normal' (and much needed) wet spring.

I made yet another version of a yellow cake with easy lemon curd that I've been sporadically working on for the past couple of years. Joe loved it, but I don't think it's quite there yet. At this point I've decided it would probably be easier to simply bake a plain yellow cake and pour the lemon filling over each slice.

23 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Easy French Bread Recipe: Four Hour Classic Parisian Daily Baguettes (Baguette Normal)

This simple straight dough French bread (not sourdough) is the perfect baguette recipe for new bread bakers.

Note: If you're a beginning bread baker, you might find my Ten Tips on How To Bake Better Artisan Breads at Home helpful. And if you've been longing to learn how to make your own sandwich bread, my popular Farmhouse White Easy Basic Sandwich Recipe (which can also be made with whole wheat flour) is a great place to start.

While e-mailing back and forth six years ago, I asked Daniel Leader, founder of the renowned Bread Alone Bakery in New York and my bread baking hero, to recommend a summer picnic bread from his new book, Local Breads. He immediately suggested I try the very first recipe, Parisian Daily Bread, or what he calls The Four Hour Baguette.

"It's simple, it's foolproof, and it's delicious," he said, and he was right. I've been baking it ever since.

I credit Daniel's wonderful first book, Bread Alone, with turning me into a bread baker, and I've been recommending it for years to anyone interested in learning how to bake their own bread. After 20 years it's still in print, and considering there are thousands of new cookbooks published each year, that's really saying something.

My original copy of Bread Alone is in four pieces. My second copy was signed and sent to me by Daniel himself when he learned my first one was falling apart, which of course thrilled me to no end. (Sidenote: one of my favorite novels is also called Bread Alone, written by my good friend and fellow Daniel Leader fan, Judi Hendricks.)

Fourteen years after he wrote Bread Alone, Daniel came out with Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers. It's the culmination of dozens of trips to Europe over two decades in search of bakers who are still using time-honored methods and ingredients to create loaves unique to their towns and cities. Part travelogue, part bread making class, and part gastronomic history lesson, the book is full of colorful stories of local artisans and 80 of their authentic treasured recipes.

Beginning bread bakers needn't shy away from Local Breads. The first 60 pages are packed with detailed information on equipment, ingredients, and techniques, all of it clearly written and easy to understand. Even better are the several dozen Q&As throughout the book, which are Daniel's responses to the questions most frequently asked by his students at the Culinary Institute of America and other places where he teaches bread making.

The only trouble you might have is ever making it past this first recipe.

Recipe below. . .

Tuesday Dose of Cute: Rooster Thinking

Wait, how did I get up here again?

More photos below. . .

Perfect Picnic Recipe: Lemony Tuna and Artichoke Cooler-Pressed Sandwiches and a $100 Visa Gift Card Giveaway!

Tuna packed in olive oil with marinated artichoke hearts, lemon, and fresh basil on baguettes makes a scrumptious, no mayo twist on tuna sandwiches. Perfect for toting on picnics or hikes, to work, or just out to the backyard (easy Four Hour French Baguette recipe here).

All content and words are my own. If you're wondering what these BlogHer reviews are and why I write a few of them a year, please see my long replies in the comments section of this post. Thanks for your support!

We love sandwiches. We eat so many sandwiches that we often go through two loaves of homemade sandwich bread each week, and there are only two of us. We also love potato chips. So when my publishing network, BlogHer, asked if I was interested in sharing a sandwich recipe as part of a Perfect Picnic Pairing campaign with Kettle Brand Chips, I knew they'd come to the right blog.

One of our favorite meals is what we call a picnic, though houseguests usually look at us funny when we announce that we're having a picnic for dinner, we're eating it in the living room, there's no basket in sight, and it's the middle of a Missouri winter. Picnic season happens year round on this farm.

Once they get past the initial surprise and lay their eyes on the feast, they're always thrilled. Our typical dinner picnic spread includes a warm loaf of homemade crusty bread, pretty vintage platters piled with sliced leftover meats like homegrown grilled steak and roast leg of lamb, two or three kinds of cheese, an array of cut up raw vegetables (preferably fresh from the kitchen garden), hard-boiled eggs from our hens, various condiments, a dish of nice olives, and if we're going all out, a big bowl of natural potato chips.

Recipe and $100 Visa gift card giveaway below. . .

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 Four Hour Classic Parisian Daily Baguettes.

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)

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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.)