Finding More Foodies& A Chance To Win $6,000

Hand Delivered California Sunshine

A few weeks ago my mother flew in from California for a week-long stay on the farm. Despite the fact that I was 45 minutes late picking her up at the airport, it had started to snow, and she really, really needed to pee, two seconds after a big hello hug she said, "I want to show you something!" and excitedly dove into her carry-on bag.

With a triumphant smile she pulled out a square plastic container the size of a sandwich and carefully pried off the lid, murmuring that she hoped "they didn’t get smashed." Nestled inside the container were six exquisite petits fours. Three looked like tiny pastel-colored, gift-wrapped packages, and three were shaped like animals. If I had squealed any louder I probably would have been escorted from the terminal by airport security.

Because I provide my mother with everything from overalls and turtlenecks to work gloves and rubber boots during her farm visits, there is plenty of available space in her luggage for transporting other, more important things. So along with the petits fours she arrived bearing two boxes of See’s Candy (custom-packed with my favorite varieties), The Garlic Lovers’ Cookbook Volumes I and II (which look absolutely delicious), a couple of baking books, the empty container that had held her homemade lunch, and 26 freshly picked limes from the little tree in her front yard. She never travels without an ice pack and a small insulated zipper pouch and once presented me with a chilled piece of pink and white wedding cake she'd nabbed from a recently attended wedding reception.

Since there is no point in returning home with an empty suitcase, when I dropped my mother off at the airport, her various bags were painstakingly crammed with four blueberry bran muffins, ten cranberry scones, a bag of baby coconut cookies, two dozen molasses ginger spice snaps, four chocolate walnut streusel bars, two apricot almond bars, two blueberry almond bars, half a dozen experimental ginger crunch things I’d made using a recipe clipped from a 1999 issue Gourmet magazine, a hunk of Chocolate Emergency Cake, a homegrown lamb salami sandwich on Farmhouse White (I swear I really will get around to posting this much requested recipe one of these days) with thinly sliced sharp cheddar and lots of mayonnaise, and two cans of pie cherries she found at the supermarket (because they cost so much less than they do back home). She once carried home a container of leftover roast leg of lamb and four loaves of my sourdough bread.

As you can see, foodieism runs in our family--and the secret is out. Knowing I would no doubt have the answer, last summer I received this concerned comment:

"This may sound a bit ridiculous coming from someone who has only just made her first batch of granola, and who only recently discovered breadmaking, but...... what are some of the symptoms of becoming a foodie? I fear I am beginning to develop them. Please, do tell!"

Rather than simply list a few of the characteristics that I personally think classify someone as a foodie, I decided it would be much more fun to put the question to Farmgirl Fare readers--and it was. Here are some of the responses I received. (Click here to read the rest.)

You know you’re a foodie if. . .

--You’ll only eat chocolate your Dutch friend brings you directly from Holland (unless it is a DIRE emergency, and then you’ll resign yourself to a local specialty shop).

--You own five or more kinds of vinegar.

--You own five or more kinds of salt.

--You put the final touch on a dessert by saying "It just needs a little orange blossom water," and you actually have a bottle of orange blossom water in the cupboard.

--All the magazines you subscribe to are about food.

--You’re lying awake at night because you can’t sleep from the excitement of conjuring up a new recipe.

--Your first word (before "mama" or "dada") was "cookie"--and your spouse’s first word was "cheese."

--You work at a bookstore, and when one of your colleagues excitedly tells you that five gorgeous young men have arrived, wearing only aprons and tight boxer shorts, to promote a new cookbook, your response is: "Ooh, did they bring food?"

--You return home from a family Christmas and take your entire bag of presents straight to the kitchen to unpack it.

--Your husband is embarrassed to take you out to eat because of the moaning noises you make while eating something incredible.

--You just won’t stop fiddling with old family recipes--and your mother actually thinks your versions are better.

--Before traveling to a new destination, the first thing you do is scour the Internet (and your friends’ brains) for information on the local dining scene.

--All your friends who are traveling call you first to ask if you know a good place to eat at their destination.

--Your husband has put you on a condiment moratorium, telling you that you must use up all the fancy-ass stuff you buy when you travel before you bring home any more.

--When you walk into Sur La Table with your teenaged daughter, she calls it "The Mothership."

--Some of your best friends are farmers, ranchers, and chefs.

--Your family knows better than to touch a beautiful plate of food until you’ve had a chance to photograph it.

--You’ve caught yourself dreaming of food and chewing it in your sleep.

Let's add to this list. Are you a foodie? How do you know? Was there some defining moment in your life when you realized you had crossed over the line between living on food and living for food--or did you gradually just keep coming down with more and more symptoms until the diagnosis was blatantly obvious?

Do you routinely harvest dinner in the dark? Has it been suggested to you that if you want your salad that fresh perhaps you should be out grazing with the sheep? After a week long visit with your mother, did your significant other turn to you and say, in a slightly uneasy whisper, "All you two talked about was food!"? Those would all be me. So what about you?

Win A New Kitchen Contest!
Now, what foodie couldn't use some extra cash to upgrade the state of his or her culinary preparation space? There's a wonderful new place for foodies to mingle called Group Recipes, and they're giving away $6,000 toward a new kitchen to celebrate their official launch.

All you have to do is join Group Recipes (which is free, takes about 2 minutes, and is something you'll want to do anyway), and you'll automatically be entered in the contest. The winner will receive a $6,000 gift card to their choice of one of the following stores: Lowe's, Home Depot, or Sears. (If you're outside the U.S. or don't have access to any of these stores, you'll receive the monetary equivalent.)

What is Group Recipes?
In their own words, "Group Recipes wants to be the world's neatest food site. The project's goal is to harness the tastebuds of the masses to create a really useful resource for food lovers."

At Group Recipes you can create your own food page, meet other foodies, have Roger the Recipe Robot learn about your tastes and predict recipes you will like or dislike, share & discover great places to eat in your home town, join and/or create groups of like-minded foodies (Food Styling & Photography, Chocolate Dreams, Comfort Foods, and Organic Sustainable Farming are some of the groups I belong to), and of course discover oodles of new recipes.

Don't want to commit to keeping a food blog? Share your recipes on Group Recipes instead!

Sounds pretty tasty, doesn't it? The contest ends at midnight on Tuesday March 6th, so don't delay--click here to join Group Recipes and enter the $6,000 New Kitchen Giveway today!

Farm Photo: 2/24/07

Curious & Oblivious (Also Known As Patchy Cat & Robin)

A year of Farm Photos ago:
2/24/06: Falling To Pieces
2/23/06: Cold Heart
2/22/06: It's A Boy! It's A Girl! It's A Boy!
2/21/06: Note To Self Re Snowstorm Preparation: Think Tarp
2/20/06: Snow Dance
And Chickens On Snow (Not A Recipe)

And out of the kitchen came:
Susan's Super Spinach Soup

Welcome new visitors!
Click here for a brief introduction to this site.

Back Into Bran Muffins: My Best Bran Muffin Recipe With 100% Whole Grain & No Sugar

Quick & Easy Cranberry Orange Bran Muffins Are Tasty Anytime

January 2008 Update: You might also enjoy my 100% Whole Grain Ginger Pear Bran Muffin Recipe

You might think that a girl who once packed up all of her belongings and moved, sight unseen, a couple of thousand miles away to a place where she had no job, no family, and no real idea of what she was doing would be quite an adventurous eater—always anxious to try something new, never ordering the same thing twice. And while I'm sure that girls like this do exist, I am definitely not one of them. The pursuit of good, honest food may be the central theme around our farm and in my life, but the truth is that I am the type of person who will happily fall into a very deep food rut.

The only reason I don't have coffee ice cream every time I visit my favorite ice cream parlor is because they have a rotating menu of homemade flavors, and coffee is not always available. Ordering my first scoop of chocolate almond took several agonizing minutes of deliberation and an extraordinary amount of courage.

I don't find it tiresome to eat the same dinner four or five nights in a row, and I happen to believe that one of the tastiest things in the entire world is homemade leftover anything.

These are handy qualities to have if much of your food comes from the farmers' market or the garden, as I have come to realize that the true definition of eating seasonally means you devour something for so many meals on end that you don't even want to think about it until next year.

At breakfast time, my routine pattern of eating extends well beyond a rut; it's more like a bottomless pit. It's a good thing I don't live anywhere near a Chinese bakery since I could happily eat a warm baked pork bun every morning for the next 20 or 30 years.

Because life on a farm is defined by a never ending series of surprises, you really cannot plan ahead or count on much of anything. This, of course, is what makes it so interesting. It also means that I find a great deal of comfort in something as simple as knowing exactly what my morning meal will be for the next several months.

For a while I was stuck on oatmeal, cooked slowly on the stove with extra bran, a handful of wild blackberries from the freezer tossed in at the last minute. A bowl of hot oatmeal with a splash of cold milk, a dash of vanilla, and a sprinkle of cinnamon made for dozens of wholesome and invigorating breakfasts.

Next I hit upon bran muffins. My first creation called for making up large quantities of a complicated mix of dry ingredients ahead of time, thus allowing you to stir together the actual batter in seconds flat. Then I came upon a banana bran muffin recipe and latched onto it.

The muffins were tasty, but they always made a mess of the pan. It took me longer to wash the muffin tin than it did to make the actual muffins. And using paper liners didn't help, as ridiculous amounts of muffin would stick to them. Of course none of this kept me from consuming a couple hundred of them—or motivated me to come up with a non-stick version.

After the bran muffins came that classic American breakfast staple, cold cereal with milk. I found an organic, whole grain variety I liked and began purchasing it in quantity whenever it went on sale. To each bowl of cereal I would add small scoops of organic oat bran and wheat bran as well as a handful of dried cranberries or raisins.

Not long after purchasing 11 boxes of this cereal, a hankering for bran muffins appeared in the most incessant way. I could think of nothing else, but I refused to go back to those annoying pan stickers. I set out to create an entirely new bran muffin, and, perhaps because I was so determined, it did not take long to come up with one that I considered scrumptious.

My long held pet peeve regarding bran muffin recipes is that they almost always include some type of bran cereal. This, to me, is ridiculous. Why make muffins from scratch using overpriced (and often overprocessed) cereal when pure organic bran is available for a couple of pennies per serving? I recently came across a recipe that had the nerve to call for two different kinds of cereal.

If one of your New Year's resolutions was to increase the fiber in your diet, this is your lucky day. These bran muffins are made from 100% whole grains, including plenty of both wheat bran and oat bran (giving you soluble and insoluble fiber at once), and yet they don't taste like sawdust or have the consistency of little bricks.

I baked up a batch of the blueberry bran version during my foodie mother's most recent visit, and she declared them to be the best muffins she had ever tasted. The honey and molasses add moisture and flavor and are better for you than granulated sugar. (Update: my mother has since become Queen of the Bran Muffins, baking them for everyone from the staff at her dentist's office to visiting houseguests. Her current favorite version is mixed berry.)

You can start with the basic plain version or go straight to one of the variations listed at the end of the recipe (which I think taste even better the second day). The blueberries will deliver copious amounts of antioxidants along with their little bursts of juicy flavor. Adding mashed bananas to the batter will give you a very moist muffin.

My favorite way to eat these muffins is cut in half and spread with peanut butter and jam. Add a glass of milk, and I am good to go for four or five hours. They make an excellent breakfast on the run or afternoon pick-me-up snack for both kids and adults. The very best thing about them is that they freeze beautifully, which means you can always have some on hand.

This is health food of the highest order—disguised as simply good tasting food. When you serve these muffins there is no need for justification or explanation. No one needs to know that you are packing them with nutrients and possibly increasing their life span—only that you baked them with love.

I have some ideas for other muffin flavor variations (such as a carrot and raisin version made with cooked carrot puree instead of grated raw carrots), but for now I'm more than set. Check back with me in a couple of years.



Chock Full Of Blueberry Bran Muffins—Say Goodbye To Storebought

Farmgirl Susan's Basic Bran Muffin Recipe
Makes about 9 large muffins

It doesn't take long to whip up a batch of these delicious, healthy muffins. This is not a temperamental batter, so feel free to experiment by stirring in whatever fruits or nuts or other things you like into the basic recipe—or try one of my other versions listed below. You can also check the comments section below for more variations from Farmgirl Fare readers.

I've included the weights of each of the ingredients, so if you have a digital kitchen scale (I love my $49 Oxo Good Grips 9-pound scale) you can simply place your bowl on the scale and pour stuff in without having to mess with measuring cups. Just be sure to zero out the scale after adding each ingredient.

Liquid ingredients are listed by weight—not fluid ounces—so you can pour them straight into the bowl on the scale, too. When adding the baking soda, baking powder, and salt, I recommend weighing in grams or using measuring spoons, as most home kitchen scales are not precise enough to accurately weigh such tiny amounts in ounces.

As always, I urge you to seek out organic and local ingredients whenever possible. Organic wheat bran, oat bran, and whole wheat flour are bargain priced when purchased from the bulk bins at natural food stores. Organic milk and yogurt are available nearly everywhere (you might even try making homemade yogurt which takes wonderful and is really easy). Look for interesting flavors of honey at farmers' markets.

Every summer I buy 5 gallons of fresh blueberries from a nearby organic grower and freeze them in one-gallon zipper bags to be enjoyed all year long. An outing to a pick-your-own farm is a wonderful way to spend the day with kids and take home some delicious bounty. Click here to locate one in your area (includes listings in several countries).

2 cups (3oz / 86g) wheat bran
1 cup (5oz / 141g) oat bran
1 cup (6oz / 170g) whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons (12g) baking soda
1 teaspoon (6g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (4g) salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup (5oz by weight / 156g) milk
2/3 cup (5½ oz / 156g) yogurt
1/3 cup (2¼ oz / 65g) canola oil
1/3 cup (3¾ oz / 108g) sweet molasses or cane syrup
1/3 cup (3¾ oz / 108g) honey
1 teaspoon (6g) vanilla extract (optional)

Place oven rack in middle of oven and heat oven to 375°. Grease a standard size muffin pan (I use canola oil and a silicone pastry brush) or line cups with paper liners (which makes cleaning up a breeze).

Combine wheat bran, oat bran, whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and set aside. Combine eggs, milk, yogurt, canola oil, molasses, and honey in a small bowl and mix well. (Note: you can use all honey or all molasses instead if desired.)

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix with a rubber spatula just until combined.

Generously fill muffin cups with batter. I use stainless steel scoops, which are also great for portioning out cookie dough.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes. Cool muffins in pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then carefully remove from pan and serve warm, or let cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy them plain, drizzled with a little honey, or spread with peanut butter and a slather of your favorite jam (apricot is very nice, as is strawberry—right now I'm loving Trader Joe's Organic Reduced Sugar Preserves). Store muffins in an airtight container for up to 3 days or freeze. (I think they taste even better the second day.) Defrost muffins at room temperature, or in the microwave if you're in a hurry.

Blueberry Bran Muffins
Makes about 10 large muffins. Follow Basic Bran Muffin recipe, but gently fold 1-1/2 cups (7-1/2oz/214g) fresh or frozen blueberries into the batter. There is no need to defrost frozen berries, but do quickly rinse off any ice with cold water. Note to blueberry lovers: I made a batch of these yesterday and, using my MoreMoreMore philosophy, crammed 2 cups of big fat blueberries into the batter—yum.

Blueberry Banana Bran Muffins
Makes 12-14 large and very moist muffins. Follow Basic Bran Muffin recipe, but stir mashed very ripe banana (2 small bananas, about about 9 oz/255g including peel) into wet ingredients. Then gently fold 1-1/2 cups (7-1/2oz/214g) fresh or frozen blueberries into the finished batter. Baking time may need to be increased to 25 to 28 minutes.

Cranberry Orange Bran Muffins
Makes about 10 large muffins. Follow Basic Bran Muffin recipe, but replace the 2/3 cup milk with 2/3 cup orange juice and omit the vanilla extract. Stir 1 cup (4-1/2oz/127g) orange flavored dried cranberries (I recently discovered these at Trader Joe's and think they are absolutely wonderful) or regular dried cranberries to finished batter. For muffins with more orange flavor, stir 1 teaspoon finely chopped or grated orange zest into the wet ingredients.

Other sweet recipes on Farmgirl Fare:
100% Whole Grain Ginger Pear Bran Muffins
Heavenly Lemon Coconut Quick Bread
Easy Orange Yogurt Loaf Cake
Blueberry Breakfast Bars
Just Peachy Blueberry Breakfast Bars
Apple Blueberry Crumble Bars
Mexican Monkey Cake
Cranberry Christmas Scones
Spicy Pumpkin Pecan Raisin Muffins
Really Raspberry Tartlets
Emergency Chocolate Cake
Chocolate Babycakes
Choco-Oat-Butterscotch-Coconut Crazy Cookies
Molasses Ginger Spice Snaps
Chocolate Biscotti For Beginners
Toasted Almond Chocolate Chip Biscotti
Yip Yap Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Banana Snaps
Easy Baby Shortbread Bites with Mini Chocolate Chips & Toffee Bits

Still hungry?
You'll find links to all my sweet & savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the right sidebar under Previous Posts: Food Stuff W/ Recipes. Enjoy!

© Copyright 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the fiber-filled blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres—and sometimes we throw breakfast caution to the wind and start our day with a hunk of chocolate cake and a large glass of ice-cold milk instead of muffins.

Farm Photo 2/19/07: I Love Black Sheep!

Suffolk sheep (which is what I mostly have) are known for having white bodies with black faces and legs, but Suffolk lambs are often born covered with adorable black spots and splotches. (Chip and Chip, my 11-year-old pet wethers, were so named because curled up together as newborns they resembled two scoops of chocolate chip ice cream.) Some lambs, like Cary and her twin brother, are actually born completely black. But the spots quickly fade away, and even the fully black lambs eventually become white.

When I started raising sheep, my goal was to have a naturally colored flock that would provide me with gorgeous wool to spin into yarn for knitting, and so I bought a Border Leicester ram who had wonderful long black wool. I bred him to my white ewes, and because the ewes I have now are all related to my original flock, many years later there is still some of that black Border Leicester blood flowing through their veins.

My plans to learn to spin have long since fallen by the wayside, but I am always thrilled whenever a true black lamb is born on the farm. There is just something about black sheep that I have always loved. Unfortunately that jet black wool quickly bleaches to brown or grey in the sun (which is still very nice).



But unlike the faded-to-white Cary, that original dark color is still hiding under there.




And when shearing time comes around, these gorgeous girls are back in black (well, except for the big pale spot on this one's back, which started out about the size of a quarter and just keeps growing as she does). This is one of Snugglebunny's 2006 twin girls. Her sister is Lucky Cherry, who was born all speckled but faded to white (and now that she's had her little woolly face sheared, bears an uncanny resemblance to Cary).

Click here to see more photos and read more about Sheep Shearing Day 2007. (Note: I've started using Blogger's new labels for my posts, so this link will take you to all the recent posts labeled "sheep shearing," including this one. Just scroll down past it to reach the others.)

A year of Farm Photos ago:
2/19/06: Same Scene, New View
And WDB#22: Winter Spring

Farm Photo: 2/18/07

One-month-old Baby Cary spent Sheep Shearing Day 2006 safely tucked in a makeshift playpen adjacent to all the action.



This year she was right in the thick of things (for the entire time, since she was the last of 55 sheep to be sheared), but the faithful Nanny Bear kept her company. . .



When he wasn't guarding the gate to make sure no sheep escaped unsheared! (Is it 'unsheared' or 'unshorn?')

Don't know who Cary is? Click here to read her story. And click here to see more photos from Sheep Shearing Day 2007.

A year of Farm Photos ago:
2/18/06: He Could Have Slept In His Hut
2/17/06: Up For The Winter Look
2/16/06: Poultry In Motion
2/15/06: Take A Favorite Photo, Add New Camera & Splash Of Sunshine. . .
2/14/06: Happy Valentine's Day To You
And: O Val-en-tine!
2/13/06: Big Chip Doesn't Like Lambing Season
2/12/06: It's A Girl!
WCB#37: For Some Reason I Thought They'd Be Safer Indoors
And WDB#21: Lucky Buddy Bear Entertains The Newest Member Of The Flock

Attention Dog Lovers! It's time for Weekend Dog Blogging!
To see more fun dog photos and discover yummy new food blogs, head over to Sweetnicks each Sunday night for the roundup. Cat lover? My pal kitchenMage and her lazy cats are hosting Weekend Cat Blogging this week. Starving for something more filling than fur? Don't miss the always delicious (& highly informative) Weekend Herb Blogging, created by Kalyn's Kitchen and hosted this weekend at In Mol Araan. Click here to learn how you can join in the WHB fun.

Welcome new visitors!
Click here for a brief introduction to this site.

Farm Photo 2/11/07: Cary's First Woolcut

Scenes From Sheep Shearing Day 2007

Cary Before. . .




Cary During. . .









And Cary After. . .













Ta Dah!

Don't worry, it'll grow back. But don't get too attached to that snow white wool. Less than 48 hours after being sheared she jumped right back into her recurring role as. . . Dirty Cary. My kid cannot stay clean.

Despite a few frigid nights, I'm still very happy that we decided to shear the sheep before lambing season started. So far our little experiment is working out well, and I think we made the right choice. The first three or four days after the sheep are shorn are the most critical, and fortunately it stayed dry and didn't get too cold (freezing rain is the worst). Our shearer also used a different cutting comb than he does during warmer months, so more wool was left on the sheep. And it's already starting to grow back.

It's really helpful to be able to look at my three dozen (!) pregnant ewes' bodies without all that wool on them, and the books were right--the sheep know to head for shelter to keep their shorn bodies warm. While they normally love to sleep out under the stars in the farmyard, the last few nights when I checked on them, everyone was tucked into the barn--including Dan with his winter fluff (not because he's a wimp, but because he's guarding his sheep of course).

This will become even more important when there are bouncing baby lambs all over the place (starting next month!). Super woolly mothers might not think to come in from the cold because they don't really notice it (especially those with woolly faces like Snugglebunny), but a shorn sheep will feel that arctic blast and lead her much-less-insulated baby to the barn.

Many of you have asked me about the shorn fleeces. Because we raise meat sheep (as opposed to wool sheep), the fleeces that come off our sheep when they are shorn aren't the kind desired by handspinners. Our sheep are mostly Suffolks, and that breed is known for having wool that is coarse and short (and even shorter this time since we sheared five months earlier than usual)--not usually desirable qualities for spinning. Add to that the fact that our sheep regularly tromp through the woods and brambles and do not wear little cloth coats to keep their coats clean, and let's just say that Cary isn't the only dirty one. . . (though I did of course save Baby's First Fleece).

Oh, and then there were the bright red blotches of raddle marker on the backs of all the ewes. . . (This paste-like stuff was spread on Studly Do-Right Jefferson's chest last fall so we would be able to tell when each of the ewes had been bred--very helpful since I never would have guessed how, um, efficient Studly Jeff was at his One And Only Job. I just had no idea the girls were going to be permanently marked.)

I'm still catching up with your comments, and I thank you for your patience (and for taking the time to write). I did have a chance to answer the Cary and sheep shearing questions on February 7th's farm photo--click here and scroll down to the end of the comments section if you'd like to read them.

Don't know who Cary is? Meet her in A Tiny Tail For Mother's Day.

A year of Farm Photos ago:
2/11/06: Fortunately For Dan That's Not Fat, It's Fluff
2/10/06: In This Spot. . . A Miracle Has Occurred!
2/9/06: Same Scene, New View
2/8/06: There's Something About A Sunrise
And WCB#36: Decisions, Decisions

Welcome new visitors!
Click here for a brief introduction to this site.

© Copyright 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Farm Photo 2/7/07: Cary Coming At You!

Carybunga!

Baby Cary is 9 months old today--and she's about to get her first haircut!

Don't know who Cary is? Click here to read her story.
And click here for links to lots more Cary pics.

Late Afternoon Update: So, um, I messed up for the second month in a row. Cary actually turned 9 months old yesterday. I thought about just trying to let this totally embarrassing screw up slip by, but I figured somebody would bust me (yes, that would be you, Yellow Dog).

As for all that lovely snow and ice? Yesterday it was a freaky 67 degrees (with lots of sunshine) and everything melted just like that. Today it was back down in the 30s. Weird.

The biggest news of the day, though, is that Cary and the other 54 sheep have been successfully sheared. But photos will have to wait, as there are treats for the sheep that need to be passed out, and treats for my visiting mother (aka Vital Member Of The Shearing Crew) to be made. I've promised her a dinner of garden haricots verts (by way of the freezer), warm crusty bread, and lamb ribs (yes, we do eat some of the lambs we raise, it's the best lamb I've ever tasted, one of these days I'll get around to writing more about my meat eating practices and opinions as people are constantly asking me about them, and don't worry--nobody is ever going to eat Cary!). Tomorrow night we'll be having her favorite pizza (my mom's, not Cary's).

Then an hour or so ago she casually mentioned she'd never had one of my Emergency Chocolate Cakes, so there is frozen butter softening by the woodstove. Oh, plus there's been a request for cranberry orange scones for breakfast. (Her motto when she visits is, "I work for food!" and over a lunch of Spur Of The Moment Summer Squash Soup--hers topped with thinly sliced Monterey jack cheese & tomatillo salsa, mine with a dollop of sour cream--we mapped out our menu for the week). Okay, I've just been informed that it's 4:30, the living room is still cold, and there's no more firewood on the porch. Now I hear Cary calling to me from outside. I guess I'd better get going. . . (I hope to answer more of your questions soon!)

A year of Farm Photos ago:
2/7/06: My Seed Starting Headquarters (check the comments section in this post for some helpful tips on starting your own seeds). And click here to read about my two favorite seed companies, plus my favorite edible gardening book for the past six years.
2/6/06: Tree Sock Laundry Day?

Farm Photo: 2/5/07

Hay Checkoint

A year of Farm Photos ago:
2/4/06: Lucky 13 Still Likes To Be First Through Any Gate
WDB #20: And You Thought He Just Herded & Protected Them
WCB #35: New Cat Under Cover

Welcome new visitors!
Click here for a brief introduction to this site.

Farm Photo: 2/3/07

Stock Dog Extraordinaire

Slight change of plans. Since this is about the least treacherous stretch of our steep and curving (and very icy) driveway, we cancelled last Thursday's scheduled sheep shearing session. We didn't want our sheep shearer to make it down the driveway and then not be able to climb back out.

The last thing I want to do is annoy him in any way--sheep shearers are few and far between around here, and this guy is really good. When I heard he was out of commission last year due to a broken leg, I started making panicky phone calls looking for a substitute shearer and came up empty. Fortunately he was a fast healer, and late in the season I managed to sweet talk him out of his convalescence and into coming out and shearing our overheated sheep.

I'm trying to reschedule for next week, when these single digit temperatures and wind chills at zero or below will hopefully be over. Meanwhile, after a couple of days of serious procrastinating, we decided we couldn't put it off any longer, so this morning we bundled up, headed down to the barn, and gave wormer shots to all 43 ewes.

The original plan was to do this after they'd been sheared, as it is much easier to catch up a smaller, sheared sheep than a giant woolly one. What makes sheep catching such a challenge is the fact that--much as you would like to--you cannot grab a sheep by all that handy wool. If you do, you will permanently tear the skin from their body, which, as you can imagine, is a pretty horrible thing.

Anyway, wool and all, things went better than expected, and--much to our surprise--we were finished in under two hours. This is mostly due to the fact that we finally bought ourselves a shepherd's crook. Who knew they were so handy? You simply thrust out your crook, nab a nearby sheep by the neck, and reel them in.

Well, in a perfect sheep catching world that's what you do. And although our world this morning was mostly perfect, there were a few times when the sheep were definitely winning.

At one point Joe was forced to snare a feisty yearling lamb using what can only be referred to as The Tackle Method. He lay on his side, clutching the little darling who lay on her side, panting and holding up her front leg to reveal the bare patch of skin underneath where the shot is given.

"This is a warning!" he bellowed from his spot on the barn floor. "I can and will catch you all!"

Unfortunately it was one of the few times I didn't have my camera with me. The lamb's horizontal position made my job extremely easy, and I said, "I think you should catch them all this way."

Meanwhile, Lucky Buddy Bear was wishing it had taken us an entire week to work the sheep. Half English Shepherd and half Australian Shepherd, he was in his element and having the time of his life this morning. At five years old, Bear has become a huge help when it comes to catching up the sheep and working with them in general. The times we want to strangle him for herding everyone in the wrong direction or doing the exact opposite of what we'd told him have become very few and far between. On top of that, he has an enormous, smiling personality, incredible good looks, and of course he absolutely adores his sheep. We are the ones who are lucky.

A year of Farm Photos ago:
2/3/06: New Digs
2/2/06: New Purpose--Visual Pleasure
2/1/06: Reflecting