A night away

Christmas day was filled with family, fun, and delicious food. We celebrated with Dave's parents, his sisters and their families. Dave's Mom and Dad called at 12:45 to say they were just leaving and would be arriving a couple of hours late. Their late arrival created a long downtime since it was too early to cook. My Christmas present from Dave was a popcorn popper, so we made a bunch of popcorn, ate some of Dave's amazing Christmas fudge, and enjoyed one another. It ended up being my favorite part of the day.

Christmas dinner was wonderful! Dave deep fried two small heritage turkeys, a Naragansett and a Red Bourbon; they tasted fabulous. Amy and I used quite a few of the vegetables from my Stella Gardens winter CSA box. We had gingered beets, caraway cabbage with apple and onions, carrots with mustard and butter (Nathaniel's favorite), creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, salad, and freshly baked bread. For dessert we had more fudge and Betty's Christmas cookies.

On Christmas Eve our neighbors came over to meet the dogs and learn my chore routine, since their daughter was doing chores for me one morning and evening on the 26th and 27th. Their help meant we could spend the night in Northbrook for Zachary's final performance and Ken's (Dave's Dad) surprise birthday party.

Jackson was pushy enough with our visitors that we decided to keep the dogs in their outdoor kennel. Although the kennel has an insulated dog house (rated to -40 Dave likes to remind me), I still don't like to leave them out in the winter. We discussed with K. that we would hook up the dog's heated water bucket, and that I would leave extra water with all the other animals so that they would not have to carry water.

I thought I would be able to leave extra water by the animal housing because for some reason I misread the weather report and thought the 30 to 40 degree weather would last through Sunday. Sunday morning I awoke to 16 degree temperatures. Extra water would turn into huge ice cubes.

We planned to leave at 7:00am so I started my animal chores at 6:00am. The heat lamp and water heater were not working in the chicken house so their waterer was frozen shut. I spent twenty minutes trying to fix the electrical problem on my own and then decided to ask Dave for help after I finished with the goats.

Dave was able to quickly fix the electrical problem in the chicken coop since the solution involved plugging the system back into the main outlet. I tried not to feel too foolish. I had been carefully checking each of the cords to be certain they were well seated in the outlet, I merely failed to notice that they were no longer plugged into the power source. Clearly electricity is not my strong point.

While I was doing my chores, Dave had been trying to find the heated dog bowl. We both remembered seeing it on the back porch near the grill earlier in the week. Unfortunately, six inches of snow had fallen and then frozen hard. We both took turns shoveling sections of snow off the porch until feeling overwhelmed with the apparent futility of our quest, we gave up. I placed a bucket of water on a cat bed heating pad inside a dog crate against the inner wall of the dog kennel. When I returned home I discovered that my ingenious solution had not worked. K. had added one of her heated water buckets to the kennel and my bucket of water was resting on the heating pad frozen solid. K. had lowered a heated bucket from her farm into the kennel with the dogs. My heartsank when I saw the extra work my missing dog bowl had caused.

We had a wonderful time in Chicago and were so grateful to our neighbors for how well they cared for our animals despite my errors in judgement. Apologies, apologies, apologies.

As for the dog bowl, it is still buried in snow, hopefully it will reappear in the Spring!

This year instead of growing some of my winter storage crops like squash and dried beans, I grew flowers for market. When the growing season ended I decided to join the Winter CSA (community supported agriculture) at Stella Gardens. Stella Gardens is the student run CSA at Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in East Troy Wisconsin. My small farm is a cooperative farm with Michael Fields. Interns in the Garden Student program at Michael Fields spend one day a week interning at my farm and learning about goats, chickens, eggs, soapmaking, and the balancing act of running a very small farm. Their excitement about farming is inspiring and I look forward to the time we spend together. Thus when it was time to choose someone to supplement what we grow, I chose their CSA. Every two weeks we pick up a huge box of fruit and vegetables, fresh, frozen and canned.

What I didn't realize was how fun it is to eat vegetables that someone I care about has grown for me. Usually I am the one growing the vegetables! I think about Shawn, or Alex every time I prepare gingered beets (recipe to follow) or spinach or whatever yummy vegetable appeals to me for dinner.

Gingered Beets
Ingredients:
bunch of medium beets (I vary depending on how hungry I am)
two to three tablespoons of grated ginger to taste
two tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
Butter (enough to coat the pan and then a couple extra pats at the end to really coat the beets)

Scrub a bunch of beets in cold water and then boil for about forty minutes until tender
Slip skins off under cold water (this really works!)
Slice beets into discs
melt butter in skillet and add grated ginger
cook ginger in butter for about one minute
add apple cider vinegar and sliced beets
stir until beets are well coated, added a bit more butter if you like!
So yummy!