Photos of this and that

Just wanted to share some photos of the place taken recently. This first photo is of one of my new Speckled Sussex hens. I think they are such pretty birds.

This is where my new greenhouse will be built. Ed is going to start on that as soon as he finishes up some other things.

This is a photo of my Muscovy hen that is sitting on 4 duck eggs and one of my California White hens who thinks she wants to sit on this nest! They are both crammed into one of my chicken nest boxes. I keep taking the chicken out. Well now she sits in the box next to the duck so I am thinking of giving her some Blue Andalusian eggs I am going to trade a lady for Muscovy duck eggs. We also have a Buff Orpington who is setting again.

And this is a photo of Sally's 4 leaf clover she found in the yard yesterday. We have pressed it and put it in a book to dry.

Give us this day our daily bread.........

Happy Friday to everyone! My frugal tip for today is baking my own bread. Since we choose to eat unprocessed foods without preservative's or artificial ingredients it is very difficult to find some things in our grocery store. Yes, you can find good breads at the health food stores but at a very high price. I have bought one small loaf of bread from ours and paid over $5 for it. Now that is just too much for me to pay for bread. : ) So, I bake my own at a fraction of the cost.

I start out by purchasing a 50 pound bag of hard red wheat berries. That is only a little over $17. About the price of three loaves of bread from the health food store.

I load up the Nutrimill flour grinder with the wheat berries.
In a few minutes those wheat berries are turned into nutritious whole wheat flour.
Next, I put my ingredients for my bread into the Bosch mixer. What a time/labor saver this machine is!

I put 6 cups of hot tap water (we have spring water), 3/4 cup olive oil, 1/2 cup honey or agave, 2TBSP sea salt, 8 cups of the flour, 1/3 cup wheat gluten and 4 TBSP instant yeast. Turn the machine on and mix until everything is moistened. Then I add the next 8 cups of flour one at a time while the mixer is running. Put the lid on and let it knead the dough for 10 minutes.

It looks like this when the 10 minutes are up.

Oh oh! Look who woke up and came into the kitchen to tell me they were hungry!

I have four 12 inch long loaf pans greased and ready for the dough.

The dough is taken out of the mixer and put on the very clean oiled counter.The dough is cut into 4 sections. Which should be equal in size, but mine never are! ; )

The dough is placed in the pans. I let them sit there for a minute or two while I wash up the mixer bowl and my measuring cups and spoons.Into the oven they go at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. What to do for 25 minutes now? Oh yeah, fold a load of clothes and throw the next load into the washer and dryer.

And here are my 4 different sized loaves of bread! Just in time for breakfast for my two hungry girls. Let's see what else besides warm bread with fresh cherry jam?

Fresh eggs from the hen house of course!Aren't those pretty eggs? Now where are those hungry girls?

Breakfast is served in the kitchen of Bountiful Acres! Enjoy my sweet little daughters!

NOTE* I figured the cost of my ingredients and have come up with the cost for the bread I bake myself. It comes out to about a dollar per loaf. I find that quite frugal for wholesome bread to feed my family.

Cherry Harvest

The new header photo is of the path going down to the river on the back of our place. Hard to believe that pretty peaceful looking river turns ugly brown and violently washes across our place every winter!

Today is thankful Thursday. I am thankful that I am finished with the cherry harvest this year. I am thankful we have bees that are doing a great job for our orchard. I am thankful for the good crop of cherries from our two trees this year.

The pantry now has 36 quarts of canned cherries and 8 pints of cherry jam on the shelves. There is also a gallon of pitted cherries in the freezer for smoothies this winter.

What will be next? Well plums of course! They are thick on the trees and will be ripening next month.

Last week I meant to post about being thankful for a planer mill here that gives away their shavings for free. We got a pick up load and cleaned out both barns and put fresh shavings in them. How nice it is to have a clean barn again! Now I must let you know who "we" consists of. When it came to getting the shavings "we" composed of my Dad and Ed. Cleaning out the barn was Ed alone. And putting the clean fresh shavings I helped Dad and Ed do that part. : )

I am also thankful that my turkeys know me and like me. Why would that matter you might ask? Well on the 4th when we had gone to watch the fireworks one of our turkeys got out. Ed looked for it everywhere in the dark and couldn't find it. We went to bed upset that we had lost a turkey. I prayed and asked the Lord to keep it safe and help us to find it in the morning. We slept with our bedroom window open and what woke us up at 5am?? The sound of a lonely turkey calling and calling! We jumped up and got dressed and headed outside to find it. Well come to find out, it was in the trees/bushes across the road beside our property. I went out there and called it like I always do when I call them for a treat or want them to come to me. I just kept saying "come on turk turk turk". Then I heard him talking back to me, and the bushes began to rustle and soon out popped our turkey onto the road! It came right up to me and let me pick it up and I carried him back to the barnyard and into their pen. I was so happy to get our turkey back unharmed! Thank the Lord for answered prayers!

We have decided to do away with our Dark Cornish chickens. We aren't going to keep them separate from the other chickens. The roosters are pretty aggressive and we only keep calm animals here. So next weekend will be a butchering time. We will do the roosters and the some of the hens and some of the older ducks that hatched this year. That ought to put some meat into the freezer! I am going to keep a few of the Cornish hens and let them in with my laying hens.

Then we are going to use that part of barn #2 for our drake pen. We are hoping that we can keep the drakes away from the hens (duck hens that is) and they won't fight with each other. That way we can keep a few of the prettier colored ones from this years hatchings.

Speaking of hatching, we have two hens sitting again! One duck has 9 eggs under her and the other has 4. Yes, more ducklings will be on their way!

These are a couple of my roses that are blooming. Aren't they pretty?

Have a wonderful day!

The girls have a pool

We found a good deal for a new in the box swimming pool on our local Craig's list for our girls. We had been looking at them at the local stores. This one was listed at about half price and still in the box, never set up. What a blessing!

These photos are of the girls swimming before we even have it full all of the way. They just couldn't wait. The day we got it, we set it up and then it rained for 3 days! The girls were so disappointed of course. Today dawned beautiful and with clear skies. They knew it would be a swimming day at last. : )

This will provide hours of fun for them this summer. Mom and Dad might even join them if it gets hot enough. We aren't as tough as they are and don't like that cold water so much anymore. ha ha ha!

Bountiful Acres now has pigs!

Today we got our 4 piglets. They are all girl pigs. They are 7 weeks old right now. Audrey and Sally are enjoying having new animals on the farm. They spent all afternoon with the piglets. I am posting some photos of the piglets and the girls having way too much fun.

Since the pig housing and fencing is finished we will get to the fencing for the turkeys and Dark Cornish chickens. They will get to go outside then.

While I was watering the gardens today I noticed that we have kohlrabi coming up and the cucumbers. The green beans are doing well and so are the potatoes and squash. I will take more photos soon.

Ed put two supers on the beehive today. The blackberries are in bloom and those bees will be busy collecting nectar and making honey now.

More photos and updates to come soon.

A day late thankful post.

I missed posting my thankful Thursday yesterday. The reason is, it was our 15th wedding anniversary. I am so thankful to have a wonderful man to share my life with. We had a very nice day yesterday. My sister Mechelle watched our girls for us. We took a drive up the coast, had lunch in a cute little place owned and run by a young couple. We had halibut from Alaska. Then we drove to a place called Loon Lake. We hadn't been there since either of us were kids. Well needless to say, in those days the place was on a gravel road and pretty primitive. Now it is all paved and fancied up and they charge you out the nose to visit there.

Anyway, we had a nice long drive and visit. Rarely do we go anywhere without our girls.

In other news, the cat that was killing our baby poultry has been removed from the premises. Ed caught him yesterday before we left on our date. Now the live trap is set for the white cat that is causing trouble here.

These cats are ones that people drop off out in the "country" close to a farm where they think they will be okay. Well that is cruel to the animal and not fair to those of us who are trying to make a living on our little farm.

Today I will get the rest of the garden planted. We almost had it finished when we had a rainy spell. I am also replanting some corn seed to replace what the darned crows have eaten!

As soon as I have a working sewing machine I am planning on a tutorial Frugal Friday post. It is one of my favorite things to do to same money. : )

Have a blessed weekend!

June is here already.

Today it is thundering and probably going to shower on us before I can finish up planting the garden. I was hoping to get everything in before the rain came. Yesterday I got on fourth of the big garden planted. I have my pepper starts in the ground and my Dad planted 7 rows of different beans for me. This photo was taken from the barnyard looking towards the house of the main garden before I got anything planted in it.

Ed finished getting the new raspberries in the ground that my friend Sheila brought me. And he planted the two thornless blackberries that he gave me for my birthday. We will have lots of berries now.

Speaking of berries, we had to put some wire over top of the troughs where I had planted the strawberries, as we have a couple of hens who escape the barnyard and were scratching around in there and up rooted several plants. We found out where they were getting out. There was a tiny little spot under the gate near the hinge where they were squeezing under. Today there is a log there. : )

We are enjoying our ducklings so much. They are very fun to watch. Thirty little ducks and their mamas can put on quite a show!

There are only 6 days difference in the two hatching ages, but they grow so fast, that the difference is amazing.

Today they are napping in a big pile to keep warm. Lilac was babysitting while White Rose was off getting a bite to eat or laying an egg somewhere.

It is rather hard to see them in the straw.

Hard to believe there are 30 ducklings in that pile.Here you can see the little one and big ones together.

Here is the recent photo of the turkeys. They are much slower growing than the ducks or chickens. They are still such babies we leave the heat lamp on for them at night.

These two photos are of shots taken in the orchard.

This the the recent picture of the Dark Cornish chickens. The one here in the center is the prettiest hen, she is a pretty golden color compared to the darker others.

This the the beginnings of my new greenhouse. You can also see the half barrels we bought to transplant the citrus trees into. There is also a strip of brown bare ground to the right. That is where Ed planted the new raspberries and the two blackberry plants.