This evening, since we don’t really care about the Super Bowl, we decided to watch Little Miss Sunshine. Now, I know when you’re pregnant organs and such get, um, compromised by the watermelon growing in your stomach….and it was a funny movie, with a hilarious climatic scene that had us in tears…
…but I’m not sure I wanted to hear, afterwards, “I think I just peed myself a little.”
Although they’ve slacked off the last few days, today we reached 100 duck eggs for the month!
Today the forecast is for freezing rain, sleet, and ice pellets (honestly, can anyone who is not a meterologist tell the difference?). I had to head up to the workshop, and walking on 1/16″ of ice on gravel, uphill, is really really hard. Although back in my day we had to walk that way to school, and it was uphill both ways…
So, with nothing better to do, we decided to cook. We made a pot of venison chili. Cabol made bananananana muffins. And chocolate cookies with chocolate chips in them. And corn bread. And maybe some more cookies with butterscotch chips in them. And I’ll probably make a loaf of bread later in the machine.
At least we’ll be set if we can’t go anywhere for a day or two. I think it’s supposed to let up outside tomorrow morning, but even now I know we won’t be able to get the truck down the driveway without sliding into the pond or the sheep, and I doubt anything will melt until the sun has been up for a few hours tomorrow. 
It’s been over a year since I’ve made beer, and although I’m told by Matt that it doesn’t compare to my salsa-making skills, I decided to give it another whirl. Last week I brewed up a batch of amber ale to get back into the swing of things. There was a small mishap earlier in the week when it fermented so violently that it blocked the airlock with foam, causing the pressure to build until the lid of the fermenter went *plonk*. There was some beer splatters on things in the office, and I have been worried that it became contaminated from sitting there with the lid popped open all day while at work. In the oh-so-clean office that contains things like bags of uncleaned sheep wool.
I think my fears are unfounded, however. Today I racked it into a secondary fermenter since it hasn’t been making bubbles much for a few days, and the hydrowhatsit meter said it’s specific gravity is where it should be when done (isn’t that geeky of me?). And it doesn’t taste sour or funky. The downside is it also doesn’t seem very amber.
A few more weeks it should be bottled and carbonated and ready to drink. Maybe I can save some until Cabol’s parents visit. Today or tomorrow I will work on a steam beer. It will be my first experience using lager yeast, albeit at ale temperatures instead of at cold lager temperatures.
Cabol said I should add some pictures from today’s brew session, so here they are:
We buy waterfowl food for our ducks from a company called Mazuri (which I believe is part of the giant Purina Mills entity) – but for the last few months it has been on back order at the store, so we’ve been feeding them the same poultry layer food we feed the bantams. Around Christmas the food finally came in, so we switched them over – and after a week or so of adjusting their bodies, they’ve gone laying 2-3 eggs a day to 5 eggs a day! Duck eggs for everyone!
Who knew there was such a difference between feeds? Although now Cabol worries that we will use up each duck’s ‘supply of eggs’ too fast. Maybe we need to buy more baby ducks this spring…
Yesterday we bottled the wine, and ended up with just under two cases (as measured by beer bottles) worth of wine. I also took the wine bottle worth of wine left in the carboy that had a little yeast remnants in it and bottled it in a spare wine bottle and stuck it in the fridge – I figured the yeast will settle out within a few days, and I hate to waste any…
This morning I decided to make Spritz Cookies, since it seemed like a yummy Christmastime thing to do. Except I couldn’t find any green food coloring, so my little trees are rather yellow.
We’ve had a cookie press for, well, a long time. I think it used to be my grandmother’s. But we’ve never used it, and of course there are no instructions. My first attempt involved putting the die on the wrong side, so it was promptly ejected as the dough squeezed through, making a large mess. After comforting myself with raw cookie dough, I searched online for how to use a cookie press. It turns out the die goes on the inside (ok, that wasn’t in the instructions, but Cabol figured it out), and that you just sort of push the cookie onto the cookie sheet and when you pull back the wonder of physics will hold it to the sheet and break it apart from the rest of the dough in the press. I’m sure anyone who makes lots of cookies are rolling their eyes at this point, but it was a little bit of magic to me.
Today I decided it was time to sample the first batch of wine and rack it into a new container – I’m thinking in a week or two most everything will have settled out of it and it will be ready to bottle.
To my not-very-distinguished palate it tasted like a dry red wine. It seems to have lost some of the ruby red color it had the last time I racked it, and has more of a lighter reddish-purple hue. It will be interesting to see how much of that fades over the next few months.
This has been a sad chicken week on the farm. On thursday I discovered our female Japanese bantam Priscilla (companion to Elvis) face down in the hay of their house, dead. There didn’t appear to be any signs of foul (hah) play, and none of the others in her cage appear sick, so hopefully it wasn’t something contagious. Good thing Elvis has the two younger Japanese to keep him company. Unless they are really pigeons.
Sometime last night, the strong winds popped the top off of the d’uccle cage, and this morning the d’uccles were all huddled up…but the silkie has gone missing. I’m not sure if she flew off on her own, or something snatched her – it would be strange for a predator to leave the others, however. I hope if she is still alive she will wander back, she was one of my favorites (I have a soft spot for the chickens that look like they are wearing little Russian hats).
The ducks have been hiding eggs. I was picking up the visible ones when I felt one hidden under a lot of hay in their nesting box. Then I found another….and another. I don’t think they’ve been there for too many days (they didn’t smell, anyways), so they should still be good. But we’ll keep them for our own consumption just in case.
Today a lady came to take the rest of the bantams we were giving away. Unfortunately, one of them ran away into the shrub (and past the barbed wire fence). And I lost one while moving some chickens earlier in the day. The little brown one came back later and I snagged her, but the white one is wily, and has learned that if she stays in the bushes I can’t reach her.
Hopefully when it starts getting dark she’ll be scared and come back to the roosters. 
It hasn’t been a very eventful week, although Hop and Wibble were both sick and stopped eating (but now are better). Now Carla has stopped eating, so we’re worried about her. But we have leftover critical care stuff to force feed her, so hopefully we will get things moving again. We decided to get rid of some of the bantam chickens, since we really have more than we need now that all those little baby chicks are grown up!
Some pictures from around the house:
