Farm Fresh Eggs

My girls are now in full production!  Last fall we got our first egg from one of the Golden Girls (Buff Orpingtons).  

Once winter set in, we added a supplemental light and a water heater to keep them going.  Chickens are like plants, they need at least 12-14 hours of light inorder to lay.  About a month ago, we started getting eggs from all 4 of our ladies.  We have 2 Buff's, 1 Bantum, and 1 Silkie.  I chose chickens that produce brown or light brown eggs, but the smaller the chicken the smaller the egg. So the eggs very is size for the most part. But it is still so fun to take Stella out there to collect the eggs from them each day.

Its pretty awesome how much work you dont really have to put into raising chickens.  I love the fact that they are able to proved us fresh eggs on a daily basis!  I love our little farm!

Cowgirl/Toy Story Party for Stella Rae

Our little Stella Rae turned 2 last November.  She has come to have an obsession with horses and Toy Story, so I decided to combine the two for her party.  We had the party at "Grandma Horsey's" house where we could have easier access to a pony for her special day.

I first started out with the invitations.  Here they are...

Here is what it looked like on the back of the invite ...

The day of the party was busy trying to get all of the food and decorations all set up.  We had the party all outside on the patio.  We had the fire going the whole time where everyone could roast hot dogs and s'mores.  We had the cute little pony "Addi" for about a hour taking all the kids around on a stroll.  She was a hit!  Everyone wanted to ride her 3 and 4 times.  Little Miss Stella wanted to hog her all to herself and ride her the whole time.  

I had Sams Club make up her cake.  I had them do a marble cake with whipped cream frosting (my favorite) with a cute Toy Story design on it.  I also had little Toy Story party favor bags, but other than that the rest of the party was mainly Cowgirl themed.  I had little hats I brought back with me from Virginia that I dressed up a bit with the turquoise rope around the hat, and a bandana to wear with it.  

It was such a fun day and Stella had a blast, that is all that matters!  Here are a few pictures of the day.

We may have to have a pony every year, just so we can see that sweet smile!

Mozzarella Yumminess!!

I was told by my coworker earlier last summer that you could make your own Mozzarella cheese from a gallon of whole milk.  I got so excited I looked more into it.  I LOVE fresh mozzarella, especially with fresh home grown tomatoes.  So I tracked down the cheese kit that she suggested.  The kit is called Ricki's Cheesemaking Kit by the New England Cheese Company.  They are based out of Massachusetts but The Beehive Cheese Company sells their kits for $25 in Ogden.  Now if you dont live in northern Utah, just check the cheesemaking site and it will tell you a list of local suppliers.

I quickly got home with my kit and a gallon of Whole milk from Sams Club and got started.  I quickly found out that Sams Club milk is Ultra-Pasteurized and does not work.  I then went to a local dairy in Riverdale, "Johnny'a Dairy," and bought another gallon of whole milk from them.  Although they are suppose to be a supplier of un-pasteurized milk as per the cheesemaking website's list (for that list click here).  So I then found Winder Dairy has un-pasteurized Whole milk and Smiths and Harmons carries it.  So I went and tried out their milk.  It worked wonderfully!  Let me tell you, it tastes AMAZING too!

Here is my first successful ball of Fresh Mozzarella Cheese!

Its not very pretty, but it sure did taste good especially on my delicious Dixie Gold tomatoes!

Go try it!  It really only takes about 30 minutes from start to finish once you know what you are doing.

Now I just want my own goats so I can try it from goats milk.  Mmmm!

Canning spaghetti sauce

So as I got into the hang of canning this year.  With help from some of the masters, I was able to can green beans, spaghetti sauce, apple sauce, strawberry apple sauce, apple pie filling, apple butter, cranberry apple butter, grape juice, and raspberry jam. Whew!  It was a crazy canning summer!
My family has never done it before, so I decided I wanted to try to can my own spaghetti sauce.
When I work I like to make quick easy meals, so spaghetti or some form of pasta seems to be the meal of choice. Needless to say we go through a lot of pasta sauce. So with my garden bursting with delicious tomatoes and Peppers I decided to get to canning.

These are by far my favorite to eat and to can.  It is an heirloom tomato called "Dixie Gold".  They are very fleshy with little seeds, so great for sauces!

 I picked 4, 5 gallon buckets of my tomatoes and a few peppers and onions and began the canning process. My cousin Stacy and I joined our tomatoes together and had a canning party.
We kind of came up with our own little recipe, it was basically a combination of 3 different recipes we had found.  So here is our secret recipe... (now just know, measurements are not exact, we just dumped stuff in and tasted it till it was good enough to bottle)

Stacy and Missy's Spaghetti Sauce

*Note: not USDA tested, our own recipe

about 75 lbs of tomatoes (peeled and ground up)

2 c Sugar

1/2 c Italian Seasonings

1/4 c Basil

3-4 bulbs of Garlic (whole bulb, not cloves)

1/4 c Garlic powder

3 Green Peppers (seeds out and ground up)

2-3 Onions diced finely

3 Jalapeño peppers (no seeds)

6 Bay Leaves

We put it in big stock pots and let them cook down to the desired consistency and then bottled them up.  It takes at least 6-8 hours for the whole process.  But totally worth it!

Here is the final product

Busy Bee

I have had these as drafts for a while, so now I am just trying to play catch up!

This past summer was a busy one for my family and I. I work 3 days a week and 1 farmers market a month. Working for a garden and having my own garden at home has kept me on my toes.
At my work we have 7 bee hives for the garden.

I have been assisting and working with the bees for a year now. We harvested the honey from their frames last month and have finally got it all bottled up. We got about 12 gallons of honey out of our 7 hives. 4 of the hives were brand new this spring, so it was a pretty good harvest. The process for extracting the honey is amazing. Well lets be honest, bees are AMAZING little creatures. It is an amazing feeling to be all dressed up in a bee suit and with your hands in the hive having bees flying all around your head. The sound is unbelievable. Once we got all of the bees off the frames, we took them inside and began the honey harvest process. For those that do not know much about how honey is made, the bees make comb on a frame that is about 14"x10" or so and then mix nectar and pollen together to make the honey. Once the cell is filled, they use wax to cap the comb to seal in the honey.
In order to get the caps off the honey, we used an electric hot knife to cut off all of the caps. If the cell is not uncapped, the honey will not flow out. We then spin them to get the honey out. The honey passes through 2 screens to get all of the bee parts and wax out of the honey. The honey is collected in 5 gallon buckets and then left for a week or two to let the wax and honey separate. Wax will rise to the top and form a crust on the top leaving all the honey underneath. Once it separates, it is ready to bottle.

The main reason I am explaining this process to you is because I wanted to show you how you can use all of the capped wax that was cut off with the hot knife, instead of just throwing it away. It is a fairly time consuming process, but so worth it in the end.
I brought home all of the capped wax in a garbage bag. I would say it weighed a good 7lbs. When I got home I pulled out my crock pot and put it on the lowest setting. I put all of the wax, honey and cut off comb into the pot.

It only took about 3 hours to melt it all. (Disclaimer: When you heat up the honey it makes it very thick) I then put it into a metal bowl and let it sit. It sat for about a week (although it didn't need that long) before I started to harvest it. It looked like it was a solid piece of wax.

The bowl was pretty heavy, but once I cracked the wax to get to the good stuff, it was only about 1/2" of wax and the rest of the bowl was all honey!

I then scraped off all of the honey off of the wax.  There were still small pieces of wax left in the honey so I then put it through 2 strainers to get all of the wax out.  Now I learned the hard way, use crappy cheap strainers because the little pieces of wax are pretty much impossible to get out.  I just threw mine away when I was done.
        I did not have any empty honey bears available, so I just used some of my Ball jars. 
        Then I wanted to make the wax into an easier form, so I melted it all in my double boiler and stored them in more Ball jars.

Here is the wax cooling in the jars

The finished product

It was very time consuming, but worth every minute!  

For Christmas last year, I was given 3 supers and 30 frames!  So now let the beekeeping really begin, except this time I get to do it all by myself!  Im so excited!