Pumpkins: To Eat or Decorate?

This was my first year growing pumpkins and, even with a late start in the garden, I was still blessed with 6 beautiful pie pumpkins.  The seed that I used was from Gurney's and they're called "Spooky" pumpkins.  With a name like that, and with Halloween just around the corner, I thought it was fitting that they go on the front porch railing.  They're way too small to carve at around 5 lbs each, but I still think they look good there.

Seriously, though...I'm drooling over the thought of homemade pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie.  Each one of these should give me about 1 1/2 cups of mashed pumpkin, which is almost enough for the recipe I use.  I always love to try everyone's recipes, so here's mine if you want to try it:

Pumpkin Pie Bread
Makes 2 loaves (1 for you and 1 for a friend!)

Prep Time: 15 minutes   Cook Time:  1 hour
Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups white sugar
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce (or 1 cup vegetable oil)
• 4 eggs
• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup water

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. If you are using fresh pumpkin, it will need to be prepared and cooked.  See the instructions below.
3. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, beat together sugar, oil, eggs, and pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture alternately with water. Divide batter evenly into two 9x5 inch loaf pans.
5. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. For best flavor, store wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for a full day before serving.

Preparing Fresh Pumpkins

1. Wash the exterior of the pumpkin (do not use soap!)
2. Cut the pumpking in half.  A serrated knife with a sawing motion works best.
3. Scoop out the seeds and scrape the insides until the stringy stuff is cleaned out.  I recommend saving the seeds to either roast or to plant pumpkins next year! Just place them in a bowl or water and rub them between your fingers until clean.  Then spread them out on a clean paper towel to dry.
4. Cook the pumpkin.  There are several ways to do this:  stove, microwave, pressure cooker or oven.  I like to use a double steamer on the stove because it's quicker.  You may need to cut it into smaller pieces to get it to fit in the steamer.  It's ready when it's soft enough to scoop the insides out (about 20 to 30 minutes).
5. Use a tablespoon to gently scoop the cooked pumpkin out of its skin. Mix it gently (I use a hand blender affectionately known as the "boat motor") and you should have pumpkin puree.  It's that simple! 

Tips: 

• If it seems to watery, you can use a coffee filter to strain out the water before using the puree for baking. 
• You can freeze the puree and use it later.  It should last a year or more in the freezer.  However, do NOT can it!   Click here for reasons why you shouldn't can pumpkin puree.

Girl's Night Out

The girls had a great time tonight playing in the leaves and gobbling up mealworms from my hand.   Fiona even decided to hop up on my knee to say hello.

New Milestone: 6 Eggs Today!

It's Food Day 2011!

"...too many Americans are eating diets composed of salty, overly processed packaged foods clad in cardboard and plastic; high-calorie sugary drinks that pack on pounds and rot teeth, but have no nutritional benefit; and fast food meals made of white bread, fatty grain-fed factory-farmed meat, French fries and more soda still."

Amen!  I'm by no means a food nazi (I do love my double cheeseburgers), but I did come to the realization last year that what I was eating really wasn't all that great-tasting and one of the big reasons why I am overweight.  I used to love Chicken McNuggets and french fries from McDonalds.  But, when I stopped to *really* think about it, I think it was more in love a childhood memory of them.  When I really thought about it, the chicken had the consistency of cardboard and even less taste and the fries are so salty that they're inedible.  It was that epiphany (and a healthy fear of what's going on with the economy) that got me started on the urban farm path and a desire to eat healthier.

There are a couple of different events going on today in Kansas City to celebrate Food Day - here's the link to the biggest one.  If you're not in the Kansas City area and would like to find a Food Day closer to home, check the official Food Day page.  You can search on the map or by zip code.  Or you can celebrate on your own through simple choices:  trade the soda for water or a cheeseburger for a salad. 

Happy Food Day, everyone!

Brrrrrrrr!

Well, after a beautifully perfect and sunny 70-degree weekend, we got our first taste of fall today.  It was rainy and chilly with a high of just 55 degrees!  Tomorrow night is supposed to bring our first frost, although we usually don't see those low temps since we so close to the heatsink of the downtown concrete and steel.  I suppose that's one advantage of being in an urban setting.

I closed one of the windows in the coop and lowered the sash on the other one to keep the girls nice and toasty in this cool weather.  They rewarded me today with 3 eggs *in the nesting box*.  Seems like they are getting in the groove with where to lay those eggs. 

We're still getting a ton of tomatoes and I grabbed two pockets full this evening after I put the girls "to bed".  I think I may go ahead and cover the plants tomorrow night just in case it does get cold enough to frost. 

Shivering,

Caterpillar says...

...another bad winter?!?! 

While raking leaves today, we found a couple of these little guys.  In the picture, he's all curled up in his "I am spiky and not good to eat" pose.  Or maybe he just doesn't like to have his picture taken.

Folklore around these here parts says that these "wooly bear" caterpillars are predictors of the weather.  No, it's not whether they see their shadow or not.   They're supposed to have an orange band in their middle - the more orange hairs they have, the milder the winter.  The more black hairs they have, the rougher winter will be.  Some folks even say that each of their thirteen segments represent the 13 weeks of winter, and you can tell how many bad weeks we'll have just by counting the black segments.

As you can see, this guy is all black.  That's just like last winter, which was a bear and a half with all the cold and non-stop snow.  Despite his bad prediction, we sent him on his way.

By the way, J. says this is a "woolly peter", but I think he's pulling my leg.  I, however, am not pulling your leg and you can read more about these interesting little critters here.

Itty Bitty Baby Tomato

Now what the hell am I supposed to do with a beefsteak tomato that's the size of a marble?

Follow the Flagstone Road?

Now that's it cooler, J. and I decided to spend the day tackling the flagstone path that I wanted to put between the two garden beds and leading up to the coop.  We picked up the flagstone earlier in the summer when it was 98 degrees and quickly decided that it was way too hot to work on laying it down.

The path had grown up with some grass and weeds, despite the fact that I had laid down thin plywood over most of it.  So we spent some time shoveling that up and trying to level the space.  If the path looks tilted in the picture, that's because it is.  The whole backyard has a slight slope toward the street and we decided to keep that to help with run off.  I certainly don't want puddles or ice accumulating on the path!

Even with all our prep work, we still had to hand-level each and every stone.  We discovered half-way through that we only had enough stone to finish about half of the path, so we headed off to pick up some bigger stones.  It took about an hour to get all of these laid (in between conversations with interested neighbors).  Then we put new dirt between them and planted some new grass.

I think the colors in this stone are really beautiful and complement the color of the coop.  What do you think?

Happy World Egg Day!

It's the second Friday in October, and that means it's World Egg Day.  And we're just clucking with excitement here at CrankyPuppy Farm.  In fact, we celebrated the occasion by having 3-egg omelets with Sargento extra sharp Vermont white cheddar cheese and Bob Evans sausage.  Deeeeeelish!

How will your family be celebrating this important holiday?

Milestone: 4 eggs today!

Mother Nature Has a Wicked Sense of Humor

My friend Paula and I were skulking around at Hen House market today during our lunch break and picking through the adorable little bin of pumpkins that they had for just 50 cents.  I was thinking I would spruce up the office with a little autumn cheer.  And that's when I found Mick.

You see it, right?  That pumpkin seems to be.....well.....smiling at us!  Here, let me fix it for you:

I think he's definitely alot cuter than his namesake, Mick Jagger, don't you?

Fakin' It

I wish the ladies would recognize all the hard effort that J. and I put into building those b-yootiful nest boxes by actually laying their eggs in them and not on the floor.  I thought maybe they might need a hint, so I bought a fake wooden egg from MyPetChicken and placed it lovingly in the box.  It looks unbelievably realistic, including little speckles just like a real egg.

Guess what?  It actually works.  We only had one egg on the floor this week and the rest have been in the box.  I guess the power of suggestion does work.

Egg on a Soft Shell

Sometimes things just don't go right.  And that's no different for chickens when it comes to egg-layin'.  I went out this morning to gather up some tomatoes and eggs and that's when I found it - my first soft shelled egg!  I'd read about such egg fart oddities on the Backyard Chicken forums, of course, but nothing prepared me for what it felt like when I picked it up.  Think of a completely formed egg with a ziploc bag as the shell.  It was all mushy and weird.  I had to be careful to not break it.

Picture provided by A Half Past Life

I brought it in the house and sat it on the counter, fully intending to take a picture of the darn thing.  Well, life happens and I got busy and didn't make it back to take the picture until just now.  And guess what?  The egg had collapsed in on itself and was hard as a rock!

Fall is Here

My Spookie organic pumpkins (grown from seed) are almost ready!

Even though the temps here are in the 70's, the pumpkins are turning orange and the leaves are starting to fall.  I guess that means fall is officially here.  This is my favorite part of the year, so I'm happy that we finally made it.  But I'm sad to see the garden go and I have so much to do to get ready for next year ... order seeds, plan next year's garden, get the beds cleaned up, etc.  No rest for the wicked, they say.  But it's such a beautiful day that I think all that can wait one more day.

Finally! A Perfect Egg

Okay, so this one was in the corner of the coop and not in the nesting box but we're all trying to work out the kinks with this egg-layin' thing, aren't we?

With a big grin on my face,

A Cozy Place to Nest

Finding the first egg meant I needed to get my butt in gear and stop procrastinating over finishing out the nesting boxes.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd come up with the idea of using plastic bins as inserts in the boxes.  The idea is that they will make it easier to grab the eggs and clean the boxes, since the bins can just slide out the back.  I filled the bottom of the bins with shredded junk mail, so it's a great way to recycle also!

Gosh darn, these chooks are so useful....

First egg!

After J. and I finished canning up a batch of taco sauce from the Romas that we got for free from Hy-vee (with coupons), I headed out to check on the girls.  They were almost out of water and food, so I filled both.  When I went back in with the filled food container, I felt this weird crunch under my foot and thought "what the heck could that be" and then realized exactly what it was.  It was a tiny, perfect little brown egg - just a little over an inch long with a bright yellow yolk.  It had been covered by shavings, so I didn't see it when I was in there the first time.

One of my babies finally laid their much-anticipated first egg and I broke it!  *sigh*  I still can't believe it.

Dejected,

Awesome Auction Deals

It's a misty, ugly day today so J. and I headed to a huge building materials auction to see if we could find any good deals:  he's always looking for tools and I'm planning for the house we're going to build on our 40 acres.  Too bad we don't have a warehouse, because they couldn't give away huge pallets of beautiful wide-plank Brazilian Cherry flooring.  I think it ended up going for just $1.50 per foot.  You can't even buy oak at that price!

We did get some pretty good deals, though.  The last time they had this auction last year, I was lusting over these beautiful turned, fluted oak spindles but I had to stop bidding when they went over $5.00 each.  So I was happy to have a second chance at 72 of them.  The same guy that bid against me at the last auction was there and sitting next to them ALL DAY, so I was certain he would bid it up again. Turns out he only needed 24 of them and he dropped out early, so I got them for just $1.40 each.  These retail for over $10!

We also picked up the really cool lawn cart in the pic above.  It's 12 cu. ft and that puppy retails for $261.99 at Sears right now.  We were happy to get it for just $75 even if it did require assembly.   Plus we got a huge stainless steel cabinet for just $10 (J.'s planning on putting it in the shed), some wrenches for 1/2 price, and an entire box full of cords for our generator for just $8.00.

Score!   What goodies have you found at auctions lately?

Miserable Day? No Way!

Well, I've just come inside from what some folks might call a miserable rainy, cool fall day.  Our plans to pickup the new countertop from Lowes for our laundry room is on hold since it's raining outside.  So I have spent the morning listening to a cacophony of snoring dogs while reading the latest edition of Mother Earth News that showed up in my email and looking at online heirloom\organic seed stores.  The only thing that is missing is a hot cup of cocoa.  And maybe some cinnamon muffins. 

Anyways....my perusing was interrupted by some very excited noises coming from the hen house, so hubby Jim and I put on tennies and hooded rain gear and headed out there thinking we were about to find our very first egg.  But we were only to be disappointed, as there were no eggs to be found.  Good grief...I feel like an expectant grandparent!

While we were out there, I grabbed the plastic bins that I'm going to put in the nesting boxes.  (I'll do another post on that project tomorrow).  I need to cut them down because they're a little too long to fit.  And they turned out to be a convenient box to put some jalapenos, red peppers and tomatoes in - while were out there, we noticed that we had a ton of stuff that could be harvested.  Harvest in the middle of a downpour?  Not gonna stop us.  And a neighbor even stopped by to ask what the heck we were doing out there looking like demented monks with our hoodies up, so we gave him some tomatoes for braving the rain. 

I hope all this rain is drowning those d*mn squash bugs on my pumpkin vines.

Swimmingly yours,

Knock Knock

"Who's there?"
"Fiona and my peeps.  Do you have any treats for us today?"

In case you weren't aware, chickens are nosy creatures.  If I'm in the yard doing something, they want to know what it is.  If I'm filling their food or water, they want to come with me and help.  Or, if I'm cleaning the coop, they want to supervise.  Everybody's a critic...

Please Don't Eat Me!

Imagine our surprise when we walked out this morning to find this HUGE preying mantis guarding our front porch.  This is my favorite bug, so I'm considering it good luck that he's hanging out at our house.  (Not to mention they're great at eating other non-beneficial bugs.)

Next Project: Raised Garden Beds

Last year, we tried a tilled-in garden and didn't have alot of luck for several reasons:  (1) we didn't plant enough - especially the corn, (2) we got busy and didn't keep it weeded, (3) we planted in the wrong location, and (4) our soil is really crappy.  It doesn't help that the soil is compacted from where they bulldozed the house that used to sit on the lot.

So, after reading Square Foot Gardening and doing much research,  I decided early this year that we would try raised bed gardening instead.   The obvious benefits are that you can better control the soil content (new dirt and compost!) and the height of the beds saves your back from bending over so much. 

I'd read that you shouldn't use CCA- or pressure-treated wood for your beds because the chemicals can leech into the soil and your plants.  Some folks use cedar but it will turn grey from weathering and I wanted something a little cuter.  So I came up with the hair-brained idea of using PVC fencing panels and posts.  These are normally $49 per 6'x6' panel from Home Depot or Lowes, but I caught them on sale for just $37 from HD:

The only thing holding these panels are together is PVC glue where the individual slats meet the top, middle and bottom rails.  We used our Sonicrafter oscillating tool to easily cut these apart at the rails every other slat to create foot high panels (2 slats per panel).  You could use a jigsaw or hand saw to do this also.  Then we cut the 4"x4" vinyl posts to 18" each (getting 3 usable posts out of each one).  And, finally, we cut out rectangles in the posts where the panels would fit into them.

I wanted two beds in front of the chicken coop, with a path between them leading to the door.  Both beds would be identical at just over 5 feet wide by 11 feet long, so we did cut a couple of inches off of each panel.  We then leveled out the ground and set the posts in place.  Then we hammered rebar down into the ground to keep them in place.  No digging to set the posts (although you could, I guess).   

It took a 3 pallets of 20 lb bags of compost\dirt to fill both these beds.    We did get some slight bulging of the panels, but it was minor. Time will tell if we have a problem with the weight of the dirt pushing the "panels" out. 

Then we added the post toppers. (The one in the lower right hand corner is a solar light).

I hope you think the finished product looks as nice as I do!  Next project:  replacing the plywood path to the coop with something nicer.

Til later, I am one tired and....

Coop is finished!

Finally, after many months of hard work and rained-out weekends, the coop is finished.  *sigh*  And J and I are taking well-deserved time off to rest.  In the meantime, some pics for you...

From the run looking into the coop.  I love the large windows (that ended up being FREE from Craigslist!).  If you look closely, you can see Kermie the Austrolorp peeking out to see what's going on.

I'm hoping that the climbing rose will eventually grow up over this trellis. 

Here's the mural on the back of the coop wall inside.  J. says this is incredibly nerdy, but I think the girls need something pretty to look at when they're inside.  Or maybe I do.   :-)

Gotta have plenty of storage for chicken stuff - grit, treats, egg baskets, etc.  When you walk in the front door, there are these shelves on either side. 

And here are the girls waiting for me to finish the photo shoot and fill their empty feeder.

Exhausted and heading to bed,

Caution: Chicken Crossing

Before we put up the plywood on the inside of the coop, I wanted to come up with an inventive way to open and close the pop door that allows the chickens to get out to the "playpen".  I didn't want to spend $100+ on an expensive door opener, so we headed to Home Depot to see what we could cobble together and ended up with an expensive set of 16" drawer glides.  Think of a drawer mounted standing up with the front on the bottom sill of the wall like so (picture taken looking down at the closed door):

The glides are mounted fully extended so, when the door opens, it moves along the glides that are mounted to the wall studs.  We placed a piece of 2x4 between the studs right above where the door lands when it is open.  That will prevent critters\bugs\etc. from trying to get up into the enclosed walls.  Here's another pic from the side:

Later, we'll  put an eye bolt on the outside of the door and run a wire from it to the front of the coop so that you can manually open and close the door.  Yeah, it's not automated to open or close on a timer, but cost less then $3.  I can live with that.

Ingeniously yours,

My Babies are Growing Up!

Here are the barred rock chicks at just a little over 2 weeks old, I think (we don't know their exact hatch date).  They're starting to get their wing feather and look at those little tail feather!  I wish I could get an up-close shot of them.  They're used to us picking them up, which we do several times a day so that later on they won't mind us "inspecting" them.  I just can't believe how quickly they are growing and I'm starting to worry that we won't have the coop done in time to get them out of the kitchen!