Hey y'all. Happy Friday!
Sorry I wasn't around last week - I hosted a book study event Thursday night and didn't have the time or the hooah to blog. It has been a full couple of weeks, and I'm excited to tell you about it. For instance, I butchered some chickens. And cooked and ate them. I'm basically Ma Ingalls now. But we'll get there in a second; let me back up to the beginning. Settle in and get cozy.
First, Penelope and I embarked on a small sewing project. She wanted to make a drawstring backpack to take on vacation in a few weeks, so we got out the sewing machine, looked up a tutorial on Pinterest, and got to work. I think this might be the first sewing machine work she has attempted on her own, at least in part. Other than a mistake I made when cutting out the fabric, it went well.
Lolo has been spending her crafty time working on the world's longest chain of crochet stitches, also a project for vacation: she wants to make it long enough to bungee drop her action figures off of Grandma and Papa's big staircase. I think she's overestimating the height of their stairs, but better safe than sorry, so it looks like she's going to have about 100 feet of bungee. I think that should do it.
Oey is getting closer and closer to walking. Why, yes, she is almost 20 months old and not walking. She's just stubborn enough, and concerned just enough with her own safety, to think she wants to wait it out until she's steadier on her feet or something. But she will hold your hands and walk, as well as stand up on demand, which are both new developments that we're excited about!
The girls spent an evening crafting with friends from church this week. While they were gone, a friend of ours came over to teach Atticus how to assemble the pieces of a gun he purchased with his mowing money. It was a milestone event. I have photos, but this is 2023 so I'm going to keep those to myself.
The kids also went over to a friend's house on Saturday to spend the afternoon shooting their airsoft guns, doing an obstacle course and having target shooting contests. All the kids were going to go, and Todd and I were going to get the afternoon free for a date, but then Finneas woke up with the fever and nausea that Penelope had dealt with the day before. So we kept him home, along with Ophelia and Juni, and just spent the afternoon laying low while the other kids went over to play. Poor buddy.
There has been ample sibling affection around here.
Just Lolo and Juni, working on their suntans.
The boys invited me to play GI Joes with them. I think it may have been the first time I've ever played GI Joes in my life (the boys were very reassuring and told me I was doing a good job). We raided the pantry and the Joes found the dark chocolate. That's a game both kids and moms can enjoy.
Our "Christ is Lord" billboard went up in town last week! Canon Press released a Mere Christendom set, and said that any zip code that ended up with ten orders would get a billboard up for a month on them. Well, our church family got to work and had ten snapped up in no time. So here we are! Todd surprised the kids with a drive past it for the first time, and they were so excited to see it!
Okay, to fill you in on my Ma Ingalls endeavors: first, I canned another double batch of salsa, bringing the total so far this year to 34 pints. I probably need three times this amount to cover the amount we go through in a year, but it's a start, and because I got most of the ingredients free from friends' gardens (MINE IS NOT DOING ANYTHING AND IT'S DRIVING ME BANANACAKES), I think I've sunk less than $20 into those 34 pints, so it's definitely saving money regardless of whether I can put up an entire year's worth.
I also started pressure canning all the dry beans I have had floating around my cupboards. This is a double blessing because, a) I have very limited cabinet space and all the random bags of things were getting to be a real wet blanket every time I opened the cupboard doors, and b) dry beans are only useful if you remember 24 hours in advance to soak them, and then have an hour to simmer them before you put them in your actual recipe. Which I never do. So then I rely on storebought canned beans, which are way more expensive than they should be, considering what they are. So this should make cooking with them way more convenient and cheaper in the long run. (I'm not sure how much money I'm saving; I bought these beans so long ago that I don't remember the price I got them at.) I'll be so glad during chili season to already have done this.
I got nineteen quarts of beans total, but the rest of the jars were still in the canner at the time of posting.
And second in my Little House Life: I went to a chicken butchering. And it was a blast.
A couple at our church offered to raise meat birds for anyone that was willing to come help process them. So a group of us got together a couple Saturdays ago to learn the art of chicken slaughter. This is the part where you may want to scroll down a bit if you aren't interested in seeing the process.
First, the live chicken goes into the kill cone. We used a scalpel to do the dirty work. Then it has to hang out there for a while to drain.
Then it goes into a pot of boiling water (not pictured) to loosen the feathers, then into the plucker, seen here.
Then into an ice bath to cool as quickly as possible.
I did actually butcher and pluck one (well, run it through the plucker, which is an entirely different thing than plucking it by hand, but I'm counting it because I started with a feathered bird and ended with a bald one, so I would say mission accomplished). It was one of the most surreal things I've done besides childbirth. I suppose it was kind of like the antithesis of childbirth, but the amazement is similar. It reminds me of the discussion of the concept of animus in Latin. What happens the second something dies? It is more than just a heart failing to beat or lungs failing to expand. Something essential, something that was there a second ago, just... isn't there anymore. It's crazy to hold something in your hand at that moment, just like it's crazy to be holding someone when they take their first breath. Life is nuts.
Anyway, I only slaughtered one chicken myself. The men kind of took that over, and we women were more in charge of dressing the chickens once they were plucked. I got really proficient at it by the end. It turns out that it's really not that different from cooking, which makes sense, but I didn't know that because I'd never done it before. I guess what I'm saying is that it was way less gross than I thought it would be. There is almost no blood, and because we were doing it outside there wasn't a super strong smell (not no smell, just not as strong as I thought it would be). It was fun to stand around, drinking cheap wine with friends, learning a new skill and basically just doing rustic meal prep.
After plucking. The first step is to remove the head, then neck. The head goes to the dogs (or, morbidly, to the egg-laying chickens, who were very interested spectators; whoever gets there first gets the spoils), the neck goes into the cooler to save for making broth.
Then you open the cavity and carefully remove the guts. (I mean, the innards.) You separate the stuff you want to keep from the stuff you want to toss. The gizzard she's holding in the photo is a keeper, as is the heart and the liver; everything else gets thrown away.
Then you put them on ice right away. After all the birds were done, we rinsed and bagged and weighed them, then we were done! (The dish soap was for surfaces, not the chickens!)
Looking as classy as I felt. Someone brought cheap blackberry wine for all the farmhands and we all drank from the bottle. The whole day was a real health department crime scene.
We tackled a total of 47 chickens in a couple of hours. It stormed a little so the air was cool and breezy, and it was just a really enjoyable morning! Not to mention we ended up getting free range, locally raised, super fresh chickens for $6 per bird! The same couple that raised these is currently raising Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys for everyone who wants some, so we'll be heading out for another butcher day soon. There's talk of doing pork eventually, and maybe even beef someday if we get really adventurous. They're also talking about getting a couple of dairy cows, and I currently buy eggs from them. I am just thrilled.
One thing I felt like I had to give up when we moved here was all the good local food I had access to in Columbia - all my Amish sources of produce and milk and bulk items; my grassfed beef guy; the local miller who raised his own heritage grains. It has been hard to find anything remotely close to the quality here (and the prices!! Oh my. Our raw milk in Columbia was $2.50 a gallon. Here it's $7!!). But slowly yet surely, those gaps are being filled - and in the best way: by our own church family, so we can be supporting each other with reciprocal skills training and income.
I will be joining my friend Stephanie (the gal who raises the meat birds) to teach a class on water bath canning after church in a couple of weeks. Maybe we could do something similar for pressure canning soon as well. There's a guy who grinds his own wheat and maintains a sourdough starter who has seemed interested in teaching that. I am so excited!
ANNNNNYWAY. I could literally talk about local food all day, all night, all week, all year, until my last dying breath. So I will just move on to tell you that I roasted a couple of the chickens I had brought home from Chicken Day and they were really good! A bit lean - I think they could have grown a little longer, and Stephanie says they'll be trying a different breed next time - but really good. I made broth with the carcasses, so I will pressure can that later today.
Precooked. I don't know if you can see how much more... pink? dark? the meat is than store bought.
Cooked. Look how dark the meat was! The skin didn't darken as much as I'm used to, I think because of the lack of fat, and there was a lot fewer drippings in the pans than usual. I think I overcooked them because I had a hard time telling the color of the pan juices, which is usually how I am able to tell if they're fully cooked. It's a learning curve! But the dark meat was still juicy, and the breast meat got slathered in melted butter at serving time to make up the difference.
I bought eight chickens total, and will probably be doing this somewhat regularly as they're offered. In all, it was a successful experience!
Okay, okay, I'll shut up about it now. To cleanse your palate from chicken talk, here is a series of photos of Oey, enjoying her favorite snack: the stick from an ice cream bar. It doesn't matter to her if there is ice cream on it or not, the stick is where the real magic lies.
And here's one of Callista, being adorable:
Yesterday, some friends came to spend the day with us, and between their five and our eight, it was a full house! Check out the driveway full of duelling Krakens.
We served lunch on the deck - it was perfect, since our table doesn't have room for that many people!
And that was our week! Today is shaping up to be another full day. I have some meal prep to tackle before the weekend (I forgot to mention I'm doing another Whole 30, so it takes a little planning), I'll be processing a canner load of chicken broth, and there is a Psalm Sing in the evening. It should be a good day!
