Pumpkin Puree

With the Holidays fast approaching, I wanted to get a little head-start on "pie time."

These are called sugar pumpkins. They are small and easy to work with. Apparently they are one of the best pumpkins to use for baking. I harvested some French pumpkins and will give them a few more weeks before I see how they look inside.

Step 1: wash your pumpkins.


Step 2: cut the pumpkins into smaller pieces for cleaning and cooking. Keep the seeds for baking and also for planting some of the seeds next spring. To preserve for next spring, wash the seeds and let them dry. Place into paper envelopes and store in a canning jar in a cool dark place.

Step 3: Scrape out all the stringy gook. My chickens didn't like the gook.

Step 4: Cook the pumpkin. You can microwave it, steam it, or bake it. I baked it for an hour in Le Creuset pans with lids on. Put 2 cups of water in the pans. Bake at 350F (200C).

Step 5: After washing the seeds, dry them thoroughly. Spread them on a baking sheet, add 3 T melted butter, garlic to taste, 2 T Worcestershire sauce, salt to taste, stir into the seeds. Bake at 275F until golden brown. (about 15 minutes, check and stir often!)


Step 6: After the pumpkin has baked and is cooked, place into a colander and allow to cool so you can peel it.
Step 7: After peeling, puree it by whatever method you prefer. I used a hand mixer and finished it off in the blender. Place the puree into freezer bags. I measured out 1 1/2 cups per bag, as that is how much Ruth needs for her pies.

Harvest

Harvesting my own crops is so fulfilling. I love picking things for dinner. We had many meals this year where everything on the table was something from the farm. Grilled chicken, corn on the cob, fried green tomatoes, raw zuchinni, green beans, ripe tomato slices, green onions, pickled beets, chicken and noodles, (store bought flour, homemade noodles), eggs, etc.

I am rather new to gardening and have a much better idea for what I will do this fall and next spring. I ordered garlic and am going to plant it in about two weeks in the pepper bed. I also have loads of composting coop bedding and some "fresh" coop bedding which I will cover all the harvested beds, and till it in a little. This will provide my beds with lots of good organic material and also some good chicken poo. Letting it sit over the winter will allow the "hot" poo to break down into usable fertilizer.

Here are some of the things I am harvesting this year!

Sweet Corn

Wow! This is the "Three Sisters Garden" and I will definitely do this again next year. I need to be more diligent with fertilizer so the cobs will get a little larger. However, the corn was superb. I also harvested many meals of green beans from this bed and there are 6 pumpkins scattered throughout this bed.

Tomatoes

I love vine-ripened tomatoes. This is a Pink Brandywine ready to come in for a visit. The tomatoes grew so huge that I had to use fencing instead of stakes or wire cones to keep them upright. This didn't help too well as many branches bent over and pinched themselves to death. (all the brown leaves)

Pumpkins

I have two types of pumpkins: Jack O' Lanterns and Cinderella. This is a litlle dude hanging from some corn. I have a feeling it doesn't have enough time to be succcessful.

The interesting markings on this pumpkin were made by free-ranging chickens! The little boogars!

Banana Peppers

I don't know what I was thinking when I planted eight of these plants. We hardly eat them and there are probably over fifty of these waiting for chili or something. What do you recommend?

Basil

Boy do we love basil. Ruth makes the best pesto and we faint with the taste of freshly made basil pesto. I have three different kinds and they are flourishing. I took a bouquet of them and surprised my principal with them and the whole school office was rich with the aroma of basil.

Black Peppers

This is a pepper, (not the kind you put in a grinder), which I intended to grow for my daughter's wedding bouquet. However, the Michigan weather didn't cooperate and it is just now (6 weeks late) coming into its own. The leaves are black and the peppers will turn a cherry red. I think they are beautiful, but probably won't grow them again. They need lots of hot weather.

Popcorn

I am trying this out because I thought it sounded like something cool to do. The cobs are all a really nice size, and now I just have to wait for the husks to turn brown. I plan on giving some of this as Xmas gifts.

Zuchinni

I planted one zuchinni this year and it just keeps on producing! I must have picked 20 already and there are another 10 getting ready. This is one crop that can make you feel like a successful farmer.

I am thinking about next year and what the garden will produce. If you have something you grew this year and want to recommend, please let me know. I may name the raised bed after you!

I can't catch you up!

Well, I decided to just post some words today.

I have been busy this summer getting my daughter married off on the farm. Then I jumped back into my routine of spending a lot of time in August getting ready for the new school year. Add to that a new computer and a more complex waay of getting Ruth's photos, and I have fallen off the blog cliff.

I miss all of my blog pals!

Green Barn Update

• I have 44 hens busily laying eggs and eating grass. You can see from my sidebar the different breed I have. I have opinions about breeds and which ones I would recommend, but you don't want to hear that now.
• I don't have any roosters now. I am not sure if I will ever have one again, but never say never.
• I have seven turkeys. I had to butcher one that got injured. After spending two hours doing that job, I am definitely happy to pay the local butcher $7.00 to do that. I have an appointment on November 25 to have the remaining seven "processed."
• My garden has done a great job! We have been eating lots of sweetcorn, tomatoes, green beans, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, fried green tomatoes and various herbs.
• I just received my order of garlic bulbs to plant soon. If you live in a cold climate, order your garlic NOW and get it planted around the time of your first frost.
• My pumpkin production is way down! I have about a dozen pumpkins in various stages and none of them look all that great. Did anyone have good luck with pumpkins this year?
• I have several piles of chicken coop bedding composting away right now. I am planning on giving them a few more turns and then I will cover all my beds with about six inches of it and till it in for the winter. I would be happy to give you a bushel or two of coop bedding! C'mon out and get it. BYOBB (bring your own bushel baskets)
• If anyone is planning on a Hawaii cruise between now and next summer, my son is playing his guitar on the Princess cruise! Let me know and I can hook you (or your cute daughter) up with him! ;)
• I have vanilla still brewing in the cupboard. I ordered cute little amber bottles to put it in. Nice gifts!!
• Another Green Barn gift (hopefully) will be popcorn. I have about 100 popcorn stalks out there and it looks like a bumper crop! I hope to fill pint jars with it. Stay tuned.
• Maybe I need to have a November drawing and give some vanilla and popcorn away.
• I love beets! I grew one row and they went absolutely nuts. I cooked them and canned them and wish I had five rows. No, I won't give this away.

I need to go blog visiting. I hope to see you soon on your blog!

A Green Barn Wedding

I am sorry to have left blog world for a few weeks, but I think I am on my way back.

We had a wedding last Saturday. Our daughter married a wonderful young man from Texas. If you have been involved with weddings, you know there are a gazillion details that need to be dealt with and another fifty that you will miss. However, the wedding was beautiful, fun and full of love, family and friends. Despite the rain, ( it started ten minutes before the ceremony and ended about fifteen minutes after the ceremony), we had a grand time.

We wandered around the farm, playing with the chickens and turkeys, sitting around cute tables supported by straw bales, sipping glacier water, home-brewed beer, two buck chuck, and I think there was a clandestine bottle or two of Highland Park going around. Before dinner, we had hors d'oeuvres to nibble on while we chatted and watched the bridal party get all the photos snapped.

We had a lot of help getting ready. You need to go see my wife's blog Synchronizing, to get a better overview.


Bride with papa

I planted a lot of sunflowers around the farm to give it a good old country feeling. These were planted to be the backdrop for the wedding ceremony




The green barn makes a nice backdrop for our family and friends who came to celebrate and witness Lesley's and Brian's vows. People travelled from Idaho, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Alaska, New York, Ohio, and of course, Michigan.

The best man at our wedding, (right) back in 1978 smokes a cigar with me at midnight. The bride and groom have been taken away by a pumpkin. It was a grand evening.

Vanilla Extract

I like making stuff. During the winter holidays, we do some baking and always go through lots of vanilla, so after seeing several bloggers make their own, I decided to join the fun.

Vanilla beans come from an orchid. It is originally, like pumpkins, corn and turkeys, a "New World" food. It can be grown in most tropical regions, and is now grown throughout the world. Madagascar has in recent years taken over as the world's production leader.I'm afraid that vanilla bean production is a labor intensive job. It takes many steps to get it to market, including needing nine months on the orchid plant!

I bought 25 Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans. They were soft and pliable.

I carefully split them and then took a butter knife and scraped out as much of the caviar (goo) as I could. I then put the goo and the chopped up pods into one quart canning jars. The next step is to fill the jars with either vodka or rum. I chose vodka. The alcohol extracts the vanilla flavor, and mostly cooks off when you bake.

After pouring in the vodka, I needed to find a nice, dark cupboard in which to store these jars for at least six weeks. I take them out three or four times each day and give them a good shaking. I found a web site that sells four ounce amber jars. Sometime in August, I'll strain the vanilla extract and pour it into the small jars. I luckily have a live-in artist who might be cajoled into coming up with a label for the jars. In the meantime, I will start making my gift list. Hmmmm, who has been naughty this year?

Where Have I Been?

I have been very neglectful of the blog world! I have been a little overwhelmed with the ending of school and all that I have to do for that, as well as the stuff around the farm that has been keeping me hopping.

I am planning on getting back into gear. I need to get caught up with all of my great blogger pals.

I just took 28 chickens to my (my?) Amish butcher up near Gladwin, MI. His wife and children do all of the work with the butchering. I wish I had taken some pics, but I think they wouldn't have liked it so much. The Amish farm has some modern additions, like a big diesel engine that runs a de-feathering device, but for the most part, the Weavers live pretty true to their convictions. They charged me $1.50 per bird to do the complete butchering process. They also cut them up, as many of the birds were too large for the gallon freezer bags.

I have another thirty broilers going to the butcher on June 26. Looks like we'll be making lots of chicken and noodles and chicken salad sandwiches!

I hope they are tender! The six month old roosters I butchered last fall were very tough!

Broody is back at it. Tomorrow is hatch day. I can hear peeping coming from the eggs, so I think we (she) will have some success. I made the mistake of leaving her nest in the coop, and she has gone from the original 8 eggs, to an astounding 38 eggs. I am sure they won't all hatch, but to help Broody with the hatching, another partridge cochin has been sitting alongside her for the past week to make sure the eggs all get good coverage. I don't know what will happen when the eggs hatch. Who will get to be the mom?

I am rambling away here.

My veg garden is starting to look like a garden. Practically everything is up and growing! Some of the seeds I planted didn't germinate, so I will have to make do without some things, mostly squash and chives.

The blackberries are going absolute bonkers. I can't believe how many canes I have and they are all loaded with flowers.

OK, I have to go out and do some chores, but I am going to post this boring thing anyway.

Thanks for reading this far!

Five Weeks Old

New Meat Locker

That sounds really crass! I predator-proofed the middle section of my barn this past week and moved 45 chickens and 7 turkeys in, (all of them about five weeks old). They were a little overwhelmed with all of the space at first, but are now happily nosing around in all of the new corners.

The white birds in the photo below are the cornish X breed. These guys are twice as large as the red broilers I am experimenting with. I have heard that the red broilers are tastier, even though they don't grow as quickly as the cornish chicks. I bought the red broilers from Ideal Poultry, and they are growing well. I am going to try to give them a little outside time and see how they like that. Last fall, I butchered out some extra, (annoying) six month old roosters, and they were as tough as shoe leather. I think the free-ranging gave them a little too much body-building time.

In the photo below, you can see three white turkeys and a bronze at the far right. They are very curious and like to follow me around. I am glad I found a butcher, because I am not enjoying the "processing" part of raising chickens.

The two very dark chickens in the photo are barnevelder hens. They will lay very dark brown eggs, beginning sometime in late August.

This turkey hung around Ruth while she snapped photos.

Don't look closely at the chicken wire! I discovered that I am really bad at getting it straight. After I made that discovery, I started to not care too! So, the coop is secure, but certainly not a mona lisa. (This is a short-term coop anyway!) There, that makes me feel better.

To make the coop look even better, I only had four foot chicken wire, and overlapped it. Then I ran out of chicken wire altogether and didn't feel like buying more, so I cut a section of hardware cloth to fill in the last little opening. I connected them with nylon zip ties. Wow! I'm thinking "coop of the year!"

Poopy eggs

The nice man who gave me the blue slate turkey eggs pictured below reminded me that washing them would be bad for the developing embryos, so I didn't. Aren't they just lovely? That is a nice mixture of mud and poo. I hope THAT isn't bad for the developing embryos too!!

Hatch day is Wednesday, May 20!