Devilled Eggs

The first recipe I'm presenting is Devilled Eggs, not necessarily because my recipe is spectacular (although it is simple), but to talk about how difficult it is to peel a hard-cooked Farm Fresh Egg. The eggs you buy from me are usually laid that day or the day before. As an egg ages, an air pocket naturally begins to form between the outer shell and the inner membrane. Fresh eggs have no such pocket and when hard-cooked in the first few days, will stick to the shell and make peeling nearly impossible, frustrating and result in unattractive devilled eggs. For any Farm Fresh Eggs you buy, where you know they are likely a day or 2 old, I recommend to either wait at least a week before making hard-cooked eggs or leave them out on the counter for a day or 2 at room temperature.

To hard-cook eggs, I place the eggs in a pot of cold water and slowly bring the temperature up to boiling. I will boil for 1 minute in a full rolling boil, then turn off the heat and cover the pot and leave it on the same burner for 10-15 minutes. After that, I will put them in the sink, remove the hot water and run cold water from the tap over the eggs to cool rapidly. When they are fully cooled down, I will crack the eggs and let them sit a bit longer in the water. Then I peel the eggs carefully from the large end, trying to get to the air bubble.

Devilled Eggs

(adapted from a recipe on pg. 56 of Company's Coming Pint Size Books by Jean Paré "Finger Food", Company's Coming Publishing Limited, 1993)

8 hard-cooked eggs, cut lengthwise, yolks removed

To the yolks add the following and mash together with the back of a fork...

4 tbsp. mayonnaise

1/2 tsp. dry mustard

1/4 tsp onion powder (0ptional)

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

I like to put the yolk mixture into an icing/piping bag with a large star tip and fill the egg white halves, but you can also spoon it in. Garnish by sprinkling with paprika or chives or whatever is your preference. Refrigerate them for an hour before serving.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday season.

I've been reflecting on all of the accomplishments to our home and farm for this past year to try to banish the impatience I feel at everything that I still want done. Hugh and I have put in a lot of fencing, about 1500 feet (livestock page wire fence, chain link, cedar privacy fence & temporary fencing). We've installed 5 different gates, 2 of which I built with the kids. We have a lovely pool to look forward to, come early summer. Planted a few trees & shrubs (Weeping Willow, Weeping Mulberry, Crimson King Red Maple, Juniper, Stella Cherry, 3 Chippewa Blueberries, currant, raspberry & gooseberry, lilacs). I had 18 lambs this past year and finally organized myself to sell some of the surplus products: sheep, wool, lamb and eggs.

This year I plan to add meat chickens to the livestock. The front pasture will need dividing into 3 separate pastures so that I can accomplish proper pasture rotation for my sheep and their lambs expected to arrive mid-April. I'd like to plant more fruit trees and expand the "blueberry patch" if the 3 shrubs I planted last spring succeed. All this and more is planned for 2011.

I wish to thank everyone who has supported my little farm this past year. Especially for my customers, I've decided to share some of my favourite recipes featuring Hill Grove Farm lamb and eggs. Look for them in upcoming posts.

Happy Christmas!

Wishing everyone a Happy and Merry Christmas.

I once heard that on Christmas eve, the animals are given their one chance to talk, so if you are very quiet in the barnyard, you may hear exactly what they are thinking. Just in case, they got an extra ration of food for the evening to celebrate!

Naughty rams!

Since being off-line for nearly a month due to our wireless internet service provider going AWOL, breeding season for my sheep has begun with lambs expected early April, 2011. On Nov. 16th, my new ram Two Bars was put in with the new and younger girls in the sheep barn (9 girls) while Choy is in his pen with Tommy (the wether) and my 3 original girls: Meg, Thelma & Annie because I really like the lambs I got from this match-up in the past...especially Annie giving me wildly spotted lambs. There is an empty field in between the 2 rams with visual barriers on both fences. 7 ewes are being kept in a non-breeding pen (5 ewes from this year and 2 yearlings) and so far I'm happy to report that the lessons learned from last year's breeding season are being implemented successfully. All was well until yesterday morning...

Clio & Emerson (my Bernese Mountain Dogs) have been having a blast with training and walks in the now abandoned front sheep pasture every morning when I do chores. They have been really good and I've been increasing their freedoms and trusting them. I gave them a bit too much freedom and they took off. After chasing them down 5-6 properties over, I was tired and my previously sore foot was worse for the experience. I finished off the morning chores and headed in.

About an hour later I glance out into the sheep fields and see Choy in Two Bar's field. I race out to see that they are fighting and bleeding badly from their heads from bashing each other over and over. They are in a face-off and they aren't paying any attention to me, so I grab Choy's horn and start to drag him back only to see that Two Bars is backing up to ram him again except now I'm in the middle. I let go to grab my shepherd's crook for help. This isn't going to be easy. I return to the 2 rams and grab Choy again and with the hook I grab Two Bars' horn. I'm backing up with one ram who's trying to move forward and the other being dragged forwards with the hook (he's trying to get away now). When I finally reach the first locked gate, I shove Choy to the other side and quickly try to lock the gate, but Two Bars rams it hard before I get to lock it leaving a big bloody spot on the barrier on the gate "Now get out and stay out" he says to Choy! I managed to separate them. I drag Choy back to his pen and see that I had forgotten replace the makeshift barriers to his gate. Just before breeding season, when all rams were together they busted the gate and the large fence post at ground level. Now, I use a bungee cord to keep the post and gate together, I have a little chicken house on the inside supporting that broken post, I have a large kiddie pool and an old tire placed in front of the gate so Choy can't ram it and get out and I have a cinder block on the other side to keep the gate closed...but that morning, I'd forgotten to put it all back after I'd fed them.

So, Choy had pushed his way through the bungee cord closed gate, raced across the empty pasture in the middle and busted a hole in the page wire fence and through the barrier to land himself in the fight of his life with Two Bars for capture of the fair maiden ewes in his pen. Luckily I saw them or I could have had a tragedy, because they would keep fighting until 1 gave up or died.

The hay is UP!

This is the happy look of accomplishment as we head home with our last trailer load of hay from my neighbour's farm. I got a hay ride home too, pulled by Hugh's tractor...I was very happy! We managed to put up 60 small square bales of hay in the sheep barn hay loft. That's my "cold winter's day" emergency stash. There's room for maybe 20 more, but I'll put some straw up there soon too, so that I have a stash of bedding as well. In general, I use large round hay bales throughout the majority of the year to feed my sheep because they are more economical, but they are more labour intensive and require peeling off flakes and transporting what I need to fill the hay racks. Small square bales are a more expensive option as compared to the large round bales, but they are easier to handle. Because I don't grow my own hay and my pastures are limited, it has been a major source of stress to me, as the farmer, to locate and source the right kind of hay. If I don't have hay come fall and winter, my animals don't have FOOD. So when I have a lot of hay around me, I'm happy. I have several wonderful sources of hay now and I feel RICH! Bring on Winter!...well almost...just a few more things to do yet...

My sheep's wool

Earlier this year, I sent in my raw wool from last year's shearing to a processing mill in Ontario (Wellington Fibres). I had it processed into Roving, which is wool that has been washed and carded, and is now ready for spinning into yarn. I recently received my shipment back and was absolutely thrilled with my fibre. There were 5 bags of different coloured rovings: white, light musket, dark musket, grey and black. Although it took a long time to get it back and with shipping it cost a fair bit, I'm very pleased with the quality. I have decided to sell it all to recover the cost of processing. About half is already sold, and the other half will be sold at the Ottawa Valley Weavers' & Spinners' Guild 30th Annual Exhibition & Sale coming the weekend of Nov. 5, 6, 7 at the Glebe Community Centre, 175 Third Ave. Ottawa.

Looking at all the fleeces from this year's shearing, I'll need to rethink my strategy. I have and plan to sell whichever raw fleeces I can and in the meantime will start to process my fibre myself. For my birthday and Christmas last year I received a very generous gift from my father and father-in-law...my long desired Patrick Green Deb's Delicate Deluxe Drum Carder with fur drum. I've been on a big kick lately to process the fibres I had already washed. The carder is working beautifully with my Shetland fibre. On top of that, its been getting colder here and there is no doubt that winter is on its way...and with all the woolly creatures I have grazing my little pastures, I have nothing I've made from their fibre. So its time to get busy making socks, mittens and my dream Shetland lamb sweater made from Annie, one of the original girls from my flock. She was the only lamb in the group and I sheared her wool myself with scissors and handshears. She represents my first fleece from my own sheep and incidently, she had my first lamb ever too, so she and her lamb Anakin are my farm tag logo.

Farm Stand Revisited

It has been a little over a month that I opened my little roadside farmstand selling eggs and I'm very pleased with the outcome. In my inaugural month, I sold 16 dozen eggs as surplus to our uses, producing about 1 dozen every 2 days. Nearly half were sold out of the little red egg cooler by the side of the road, but more were sold to friends and neighbours and people driving by that saw our sign and came up to the house. Not only has it paid for my feed costs, it has allowed me an opportunity to meet people in the neighbourhood that I hadn't met before in the 5 years since we've been here. They have gotten to know me a bit and I've had a few conversations about my chickens and sheep and what I'm doing here on my little piece of land. Unfortunately, I've frequently been SOLD OUT and have had to turn people away or offer to deliver when the next dozen is ready. Because of this, I've decided to expand! On Saturday, I picked up another dozen young ready-to-lay hens. Since they are young, they will be laying little eggs until they get a little bigger. I already had 3 hens that lay little eggs (because they are a bantam/smaller size), so I've begun to sell Small sized eggs as well as my regular size of XL eggs. When the new hens are up to full production, their eggs will be full size giving me 24 hens that produce XL eggs.