Input Requested - Name this farm!

Our very soon-to-be new place, our little farm, is going to need a name. I've been mulling this over for a while, trying to think of something unique, witty and fitting. I've got so many weird possibilities that I thought I'd run a few by you, but first, you'll need a bit of info on our farm and what we hope to do with it.



Our new place is located on one of many peninsulas in Western Washington, which means a few things -
A) The soil is clay, rocks and more clay, but mostly, clay.
B) We get a lot of rainfall.
C) Our back pasture is a very small valley with clay soil, which is to say, it is boggy.
D) The main food crop grown on our little peninsula is blueberries, because they don't mind the standing water or the acidity from our abundant fir and pine forests.
E) Our main focus will be poultry, at least at first. Chickens and turkeys for sure, maybe ducks too and somewhere down the line, we'll look into getting something with hooves. We will also, of course, have a hefty garden - eventually.



With all that in mind, I humbly toss out a few of the names that have drifted through my head, when thinking of this farm-

*Homemakers Acres
*Soggy Bottom Farm
*Jackson Family Farmstead
*Pampered Poultry & Produce
*Two Sisters Organics (This is the girls' choice, though I think we'd have to be certified to use this name - d'oh!)
*Little White House Produce & Poultry
*White House Farmstead
*???

Feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions in the form of a comment or email, though I don't know if/when I'll be able to view it, since my internet was supposed to be shut down yesterday, Comcast could drop the hammer at any moment.

See y'all on the flipside! ;)

Sometimes it's the Little Things...

We've been packing up this house, bit by bit, for more than 2 months now. I started with our least essential items - baby books, my wedding dress, Christmas decorations, and slowly progressed toward our more everyday items - towels, clothes, dishes. In this weird period of living without 90% of my stuff, I've had a chance to rethink my take on simplicity and which material goods have truly become essentials, as in, the stuff you should pack 10 minutes before you leave your house for good. Here are my findings-

Stuff I actually needed:

-Cell phone chargers
-An old-school paper phone book
-Corkscrew
-Deodorant, hairbrush & toothbrushes
-Diana Gabaldon Books
-My Knitting
-Towels
-Sharpies
-COFFEE MAKER

Stuff I thought I needed:

-DVDs (As if I have the time. These were actually more for the girls, but they prefer to follow me around asking Whatcha doin'? every 10 seconds instead.)
-Curling Iron (I curl my hair a few times a year. Did I think that someone was going to ask me to prom between now and the weekend?)
-Toilet plunger - I'm pretty glad that this turned out to be unneeded.
-Blankets (It's been in the upper 80's and 90's all week, which is like living on the surface of the sun to a born and bred Washingtonian.)
-My P-touch labeler (Who the hell am I, Martha Stewart?)

Ahhh... live and learn.

When you ignore the garden for three days...

...this is what you get.



Nearly 8 pounds of zucchini! Suffice it to say, all visitors to my house lately, willing or not, have left with at least 2 giant zucchinis. I've got less that a week left to hoard these little beauties before my zucchini patch becomes someone else's zucchini patch. Brace thyself, freezer!

Un-duh Press-shuh

T-minus 5 days until the start of the big move. I am oscillating between hummingbird-like packing frenzies and shut-out-the world napping sprees. I AM NEVER MOVING AGAIN.

In the midst of all of the crazy, we've all been managing to distract ourselves quite nicely from that whole cleaning/packing/sign-you-life-away-on-the-dotted-line thing. Bill and his Grandpa went fishing up in Alaska for a week. Together, they came home with over 80 pounds of salmon and halibut - that's the filleted weight!


Those handsome Jackson boys and their fishies

The girls and I have been crazy busy with camping, berry picking, county fairs and walks on the beach. The county fair may have been a mistake. My cousins' girls were there showing everything from chickens to pigs, and I think that a pair of 4-H maniacs have been born. Here we go again. Liv is already ogling the model chickens in her backyard poultry magazine, and lobbying for a pond so that we might raise her beloved Cayuga ducks. My head is spinning with the possibilities and the more pressing matters of actually getting the real estate stuff wrapped up. I need another nap.

When I resurface, I'll be whipping up a batch of Oregon Grape Jam, showing off my British Columbian foodie prize package (thanks again, Meghan!) and hosting my own pay-it-forward foodie package giveaway.

Weird Things that Chickens Will Eat

I'm cleaning out the cupboards in preparation for our move and purging all of our grocery items that didn't fly so well with our family. You know, the stuff that gets shoved to the back and lurks in the darkness until either you clean your cupboards or a desperate midnight snacker decides to roll the dice. Just for grins, we tried feeding some of what we were going to compost to the chickens. Not surprisingly, they liked everything, including Trader Joe's High-Fiber O's (softened with water),dry quick grits & nori seaweed sheets.

This fits in nicely with my personal theory that chickens are practically pigs with feathers. There isn't much they won't eat, so long as you render it small enough or soft enough for them to swallow. Some of my hennies' favorite snacks-

*Leftover movie-theater popcorn
*Carrot tops
*Bread of any sort
*Pumpkin, sunflower and flax seeds
*Cooked rice & pasta
*Carrot peelings
*Fish skin (especially salmon - they go NUTS for this!)
*Grapes and berries, right off of the plants :(

Between the husband, the chicks and the bunnies, who needs a garbage disposal?


Strawberry, chowing down on my carrot tops

I've got a bucket, got a bucket full of sunshine

Fresh off of jam-a-thon '10, I find myself with still more apricots to use up. Cakes? Fruit roll ups? Pies? Nahhh... How 'bout a little something for the grown ups instead? I'm making apricot schnapps. :)

Homemade Apricot Schnapps:

- 3 lbs cleaned, pitted apricots
- 1 cup sugar (adjust more or less to your liking)
- 1.75 liters vodka (Cheap is fine, the sugar will smooth out the rough edges.)
- 6 apricot pits (kernels) - OPTIONAL*
- Fermentation vessel w/ a lid (a food grade plastic bucket, large glass jar or stoneware crock)

Clean, pit and slice or dice your apricots. Throw them into your clean jar or bucket.



Sprinkle sugar over the apricots and let them rest for 20 minutes or so to release their juices.



Pour vodka over the top of it all.




Add pits, if using. Stir well. Cover and allow to steep in a dark place for at least 3 months. Strain through a cheesecloth or coffee filter and bottle.

*Apricot pits, or kernels as they are more often known, are a key ingredient in making Amaretto liqueur and amaretti cookies and have a wonderful almond flavor. However, they also contain trace amounts of cyanide, so use sparingly and at your own risk. ;)

I documented the whole process of making the schnapps, then, like an idiot, forgot to download the photos before my husband took our camera with him on a week-long fishing trip. D'oh! So I'll eventually update this post with pictures, but for now you'll just have to take my words for it on how lovely this brew looks. As for the smell - at the moment, I can only smell the nose-searing vodka. But, as the cots steep and break down, we should have some golden loveliness, ready to drink by the holidays.

Update - 9/8/10 - Now with pictures! :)

Gotta Whole Lotta 'Cots

Today was a tag-team jam-o-rama. Jen and I made no less than 48 jars of apricot jam & conserves, with apricots to spare. In case you didn't know, 24 pounds of apricots is A LOT of apricots.



Even after we canned the bejeebus out of our 'cots, I was still left with four pounds of fruit. Since I'm a little apricotted out at the moment, I'm thinking of using the rest of mine to make some Apricot Schnapps. It takes a few months of steeping and "aging" for the schnapps to be properly drinkable, by which time I will hopefully have regained my love of the lovely "cot".