Heating the chicken

It's cold out tonight, really cold.

This egg was not out there too horribly long. But obviously it was long enough.


For some reason I had -20 in my head as the point at which I would put heat on in the coop. The weatherdudes say we're already at -25, and think we're headed to somewhere near -30 tonight. I was just out there, and it is almost -15 in the coop. So that is it, time for heat!

My husband helped me nail a heat lamp up with some wire staples, and it is now hanging very securely over the roost. My goal here is to NOT burn the barn down.

Once that was done I took my gloves off and started rubbing petroleum jelly into my two rooster's combs and wattles. It's supposed to help prevent freezer burn frostbite. I still had the hens to do, but after just those few minutes of bare skin exposed I could hardly move my fingers.

I ran back to the house.

My long underwear were missing, because I had to empty my bedroom closet.

This is the reason why.


Nice, don't you think?

A huge gash in the sewer pipe, which was letting a whole lot of very stinky air right into the wall between the bathroom and my bedroom closet... but usually only when I did laundry. But even that is often enough to be a real problem. Finally I had gotten everything emptied out of the closet so my husband could attack the wall. I'm just thrilled the problem was so obvious. It's now temporarily patched up with a bunch of caulking. Still stinky, but not as bad as it was before.

Like I said, my closet is empty... and my clothes (and honestly I really don't have much after being at home with these kiddos for almost five years) are now in three random locations around the house.

So I searched for awhile and eventually found them, the long Johns, and also grabbed my ski pants too. I now had three layers on my legs. My husband found me a pair of disposable nitrile gloves (like exam gloves).

Back out the door and to the barn, which at the moment is colder than my freezer, again.

I peeked in the coop door, and guess what? Not a single freezing frostbit bird of mine was anywhere even slightly near the heat lamp! Birdbrains!

Did you know that a tube of petroleum jelly gets awfully stiff at fifteen degrees below zero? Crazy weird that stuff is, it actually freezes at 100 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Rubber bands get really, really interesting at -80 Celsius, but that doesn't have anything even slightly to do with my farm, where I tend to measure temperature in Fahrenheit degrees.

Anyway... what a difference that thin layer of nitrile made on my hands. Too bad I couldn't coat the chickens combs and wattles with nitrile. But even if I could, they would probably just eat it. Birdbrains.

After greatly disturbing each hen to give it a petroleum jelly luxury frozen prairie spa treatment, I placed it on the roost right under the heat. It was amazing! They transformed from the grumpy, hunched up balls of poofed out feathers that they are in very cold weather. They stretched out their necks and looked all around, preened a few feathers, stretched their legs out one at a time, and then settled in.

By the time I was done I had a roost full of hens snuggled in side by side. The lucky ones were right below the heat lamp. Ah, so much better.

I ran back to the house again, hoping I don't wake up tonight to a barn bonfire and blackened chicken. Wish us luck.

My Christmas

Beth cancelled You Capture this week for reasons beyond her control. However, I decided to put my photos up anyway since I had them ready.

My Christmas this year didn't feel much like Christmas. We cancelled our travel plans also for reasons beyond our control, specifically, snotty noses and because of this...


...which is a heck of a lot more snow than it looks like. Really fun snow too, for boys of all ages. Following in the snow tradition we have established for ourselves, Daddy uses his snow blower until it breaks. Then he uses the plow on his truck, which thankfully did not break (this time).

It also didn't feel much like Christmas because one by one, all our Christmas decorations were attacked by small children, taken down and put away. By the time Christmas rolled around, we were left with nothing but the tree. The only reason the tree survived is because it's locked away in the sun room. Kid proof.


The boys opened their presents, the little bean ate the wrapping paper, and there was much rejoicing.

Please excuse my on-camera flash, it's been so long since I used it, I just wanted to be sure it still worked (or else my kids get up soooooo darn early I didn't feel like using my brain).


It was a quiet Christmas at home, just the five of us.


Well, quiet except for the kid noise, which alternated between fighting, and happily playing at the speed of boy.

Gooey marshmallowy goodness

We dealt with some bad, bad stuff today. Very bad stuff that was very, very good.

I had stashed it away up in the cupboard in the hope that I would forget about it, but one of the little people here saw it... and decided we had to make it today. It had been here since Easter, which is over eight moths ago. A neighbor left it on our front step.

I never thought to take a picture of those cute, little, blue bunnies peeking out at us from the jar. So I went searching, click here if you want to see what we started with.

We dumped those innocent little bunnies right out of the jar, and cut them into a bunch of little pieces. My boys laughed and laughed while they did the dirty job of snipping off the ears.

Once the bunnies were properly dismembered, we added HALF A CUP of melted butter to the mixture. Yes, half a cup. We now had a bowl filled with marshmallow bunny parts, m&m's, graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar and lots and lots of butter.

Honestly, this is not the kind of food we usually cook around here. I'm the kind of mom that makes my kids eat oatmeal for breakfast.

The kitchen filled with such a sickly sweet smell while it cooked, I almost didn't survive it. An over-the-top marshmallowy, chocolaty, greasy smell. I seriously thought I was going to be sick, and I swore I wasn't going to eat a single bite.


And then I proceeded to eat half the pan, before they even cooled.

It might have been better with some sort of filler like flour or... oatmeal! Even my husband agreed.

I watched him eat some of it, and after he was quite a way into his bowl of greasy goodness, I said, "I bet you a twelve hundred dollar, twenty-four to seventy millimeter f 2.8 lens that you go running for a glass of milk in about thirty seconds." He grinned at me with a "no way I'm taking that bet!", as he headed for a glass of milk.

Darn it!

Meltdown

This kid has moments like this all the time.


A twig stuck in his hat, snow in his boots, wet socks, snot pouring out of his nose, a bit of food stuck in his teeth... He was too cold, and that was just too much.

On the other hand, all of this might mean he had a very good time. But we know all good things must come to an end, especially when you're three, and have so little control over your emotions life.

If you look closer, you'll see that there is the tiniest bit of perfection to all of his chaos.


It will melt down quickly, just like he does.

Friend soup

Last week our little farm had a fun day, with a visit from a cousin-in-law of mine, I mean, new friend (and her two adorable little girls).

And just how did I thank her for coming? Brace yourself people, I cannot even believe it myself... I fed her the worst knoepfle soup I have ever made! EVER!!! I know you don't want to believe me, but I swear it's true.

High sodium, trans fat, cold straight out of a store-bought can would have been better (or not).

I thought I had frozen a batch of broth for knoepfle. Well, actually I know I did, but what I did not know was that I had already used it. (Having small children, and never sleeping, has a real way of reducing brainpower.) Living WAY out here like we do, I improvised. But why on earth I grabbed frozen turkey broth, instead of frozen chicken broth, I will never know. That was my first bad knoepfle mistake of the day.

The truth is, this soup never had a chance.

I didn't have any green onion. Whatever, shouldn't make that big a difference right? Wrong.

Then I completely forgot to add potatoes. Perhaps I should say I was distracted by my wonderful company? Or maybe I was distracted by my tired baby, who decided these strange people in our house were here to destroy her life? POTATOES!!! The second most important component other than the knoepfle's themselves! Might as well have milk in a bowl. Milk in a bowl that needed LOTS of salt, because it had no flavor at all. Good thing I had soup crackers on hand, now they're good and salty.

Last, and worst of all, I used turkey meat instead of chicken meat. Now this I had actually planned, and it might possibly be the reason I used the turkey broth too. The problem was that this meat was actually used to make the broth... and apparently some of the bones became very soft... so soft, in fact, that they made it INTO the soup. I didn't realize this until the day after our company was here, when I cooked some potatoes and added them along with some salt to the reheated soup. Sitting down with a bowl and thinking it was much improved, I ended up with bones in my mouth. OH. MY. GOSH. I cannot even describe the thoughts that went through my head.

Normally, I'm a pretty decent cook. Really.

I just don't even know what else to say...

At least I didn't make her eat hair.


Although, her baby thought hair on the menu would be just fine.

Well, we had homemade Cinnamon Swirl Bread for a snack later that afternoon. It's some darn good bread if I do say so myself. And I sent a dozen beautiful, fresh, brown eggs home with her. But I'm afraid to say the balance still tips towards the very BAD soup.

Luckily for all of us, a good friendship runs deeper than bad soup. I have no doubt that she'll kindly say the soup was fine. And honestly, I wouldn't hesitate to visit her... even if I knew she would serve me a bowl of bad soup too.

A Christmas poem

Christmas morning as I watched
the snow swirling around on my farm,
I was confident once again
that it could do me no harm.

See, I married a real
do-it-yourself boy,
who even came with
a big four-wheel-drive toy.

Just yesterday he figured out
the corn burner could go
if hooked up to the car (what the heck!)
so I say, "Let it snow!"

We've got heat, we've got eggs,
we have all that we need.
As long as we don't run out of toilet paper
we'll be doing just fine indeed.

We spent half of the morning
eating cinnamon bread,
and the sugar went straight
to the littlest boy's head.

Our dog is curled up
all warm in her den,
while the cat lost his marbles
and slept in the nest of a hen. (really)

Day one of our blizzard
and the snow drifts are already a sight,
but I can still see the barn,
so I think we're alright.

But the wind hasn't yet
hardly started to blow,
so thank goodness we've got
not a darn place to go!

The only problem we have
is that I decided to cook beans,
and when we're all stormed in the house
I fear what that means.

And there's lots more snow coming,
they say that it's true.
So perhaps I'll continue later
with Christmas poem, part two.

Waiting

It's Christmas Eve, and we're waiting.

We're waiting for snow and wind, and lots of it. The kind of snow that falls all night long, and all day long, and all during the following night too. The kind of wind that picks all that snow up from fields miles and miles around, and then drops all that snow when it hits our tree row. You know, on top of our little farm.


The kind of snow that makes my husband wish Santa would leave him a tractor. A real tractor.

I don't suppose that would fit under the tree.

If we really got into the whole Santa thing, I suppose we would be waiting for him too. I understand that there is a place for that magical part of Christmas, but I have a really hard time with Santa, because of the requirement of lying to my kids. I remember when I found out Santa wasn't real. But rather than being devastated that he wasn't real, what I remember was feeling utterly mislead, and intentionally lied to.

All it came to this year was, "Well, some people don't think Santa is real, but a lot of people do believe he's real, because that is fun."

We're also waiting for our coughing and snotty nosed kids to feel better. I wonder if I had kept count of the number of tissues we've used, or somehow had an accurate measure of the volume of snot we've dealt with... would I even want to know?

On the other hand, I've been rather entertained by the baby's snot bubbles.

No, I do not have a picture. But have no fear, I may get one yet.

But mostly, we're waiting to celebrate our Savior's birthday. I wanted to write that we were waiting to "celebrate his birth", but thankfully, that has already happened.

My oldest boy has a hard time understanding that Christmas is only one day. We hear so much that it is Christmas-time, but I keep trying to impress upon him that actually it is Advent. And that Advent is the time when we are waiting for Jesus birthday. We put up the Christmas tree, and do lots of other fun things, because we are excitedly waiting...


Until I had my own little farm, I had no idea hay was such a good insulator. Laying the little babe down to "sleep on the hay" was probably not such a bad deal.

I'll bet that stable was snug and warm, or anyway, better than a car.

Not that I'd know anything about that.

We played the part of the Holy family at our church program the year our littlest boy was born. I joked that Mary would (rather frantically) have to tell Joseph, "pull that donkey over right now, you're going to have to help me!".

Definitely the stable was a better option.

Just think of the commotion they might have otherwise caused. Jesus the King of Kings, born as his mother dismounted a donkey! On the side of a very busy road!

Good thing Jesus kept them waiting until they arrived at Bethlehem.

And we're patiently waiting now too, but just for a little longer.