Eggs to Clouds

The chickens are making up for their winter break, and giving us plenty of eggs.  Thankfully, Brandon is now able to eat eggs without upsetting any of his organs, so the chickens are getting lots of love these days.  Especially now that we are following a mostly ketogenic diet, that has us cutting carbs and embracing fats.  An egg has nearly five grams of fat, but less than a gram of carbohydrates.  

We like to eat eggs in lots of ways, but my newest egg adventure is making cloud bread.  There are lots of folks with cloud bread recipes on the interweb, but I've been using three eggs, a tablespoon of cream cheese, and a teaspoon of cream of tartar.  

I love any recipe that lets me separate egg whites from the yolks.  The whites get whipped with the cream of tartar until they are stiff. 

The cream cheese gets blended with the yolks. 

The yolk mixture gets stirred into the stiff egg whites, and then baked at three hundred degrees four thirty minutes on parchment paper.  Super easy.  

They look like golden meringues, or flat biscuits. 

The texture is a bit eggy, but fluffy enough with all those little air bubbles to make you think you have something bready.  At least it seems bready if you haven't had a real slice of bread in months! 

We like to use them as hamburger buns, or with eggs and salmon for breakfast.  The are so light that I can eat a whole batch without even noticing! 

I even tried adding a few squirts of stevia extract, some vanilla, and a big dash of cinnamon.  I sprinkled raisins and cinnamon on them before I baked them, and they turned out to be pretty good.  Like a cinnamon and raisin meringue biscuit.  A tiny little drizzle of honey makes them perfect.  

Mud Season

 

It rained, and it rained, and then it rained some more.  The roads flooded, the earth turned to mud, and poor Wendigo got her hair wet. 

 

I've heard farmers talk about mud season before, but it wasn't until we moved to this clay soil that I really understood the challenges.  As bad as it is when it's so cold the ground freezes, at least during the freeze the mud doesn't suck you down.  Just look at the ground outside our front door!  Even the stones Brandon planted for a walkway are covered in water and mud.  

This weekend, Brandon was so tired of having to change out of his muck boots once he reached his truck, just so his work shoes weren't coated in mud, that he made a trip to town for a load of concrete paving stones.  He really wanted to pave a path with natural stone that we find here at the farm, but the progress was slow, and our feet are getting dirty now.  

In a short time, he had plopped about forty of these pavers into the mud on our pathway, creating stepping stones so we can get to the car or gravel driveway without coating our shoes in mud.  There's something else that's different about our place in the photo too.  Can you see what it is?  

I moved the old dairy sink that we've had by the hydrant.  It was our only sink for years while we worked on the house renovations.  I moved it near the greenhouse, since so much of my work is centered in that area these days.  With the sink gone, and the new paving stones in place, our yard will look even better, especially once the mud dries up and the green grass reclaims it.  

During all that mud making rain, I continued to work in the greenhouse.  In addition to the baby greens that are coming up in the spokes of my wheel, I planted a row of peas, swiss chard, and brussel sprouts with basil.  The greenhouse has a drip line on each side, where the plastic pieces come together.  I've noticed that the soil stays moist most of the time where the rainwater or condensation falls in this line.  I planted the peas in one of the drip lines and the brussel sprouts and basil in the other.  I've never grown brussel sprouts before, and I'm not sure they will do well in the greenhouse, but I'm excited to try them.  

I Planted a Garden

It's February - and I planted a garden!  This is the month for starting seeds, right?  With last year's seed starting experiments in mind, I spent some time messing around in the greenhouse during the rainy weather we've been having.  It's nice under that dome of plastic on a drizzly and cloudy day.  

If you remember, I spread all the old hay and straw that the goats had slept on last year over the ground inside the greenhouse.  The goats dedicated much of their time to generously fertilize this this material, so I was careful not to waste all their hard work.  I soaked the bedding a few times in the late winter, just to make sure there was moisture enough for the microbes to do their job of breaking all those organic particles into something recyclable by plants.  We used the greenhouse for chicken plucking too, so the ground is decorated with white chicken feathers.  

There's about three inches of beautiful and dark crumbly stuff, which was fun to rake into a pattern to create a garden of greens. 

I settled on a floral wheel pattern for this first garden attempt.  I walked in a big circle, and reached toward the center with my fork, and pulled furrows in the hay to plant my seeds in.  I'm determined to give myself and my plants more room this year.  I want more room between the plants, and more room for me to navigate.  I want to be able to raise some greens and be able to see each plant so I can better manage the bugs that come with organic gardening.  If I have spend time on my knees squishing bugs, then I want to give myself more room to work.  I think I'll aim for less produce in more space, so I can allow myself the time and room to take better care of them.  It's a theory, anyway. 

I planted something different in each spoke of my wheel - beets, spinach, lettuce, radish, swill chard, and kale.  I didn't take any notes about which spoke has which plant, so I'll have to rely on my plant identification skills. 

Look!  Is this a baby lettuce?!  It's only been a few days, but I think maybe I already have my first garden plant! 

It will be a few months before the outside garden is ready to plant, but to get prepared, I've put the chickens to work clearing out the old garden.  I sprinkle their food inside the garden fence, and leave the gate open.  They scratch and dig looking for their breakfast, so I'm hoping they will clear the ground and prepare a nice seed bed for me before planting time.  

Earth Creatures

Are we sure that goats are earth creatures?  Don't you think something about Peaches proportions appears alien?  Maybe I just think that because she tries so hard to communicate with me telepathically.  At least that's what I think she is doing when she stares into my eyes with those odd square pupils.  Why else would I feel so compelled to feed her treats!   

Greetings, earth goats.  

I've noticed that the goats rarely come out of their pen lately, and I think it's because they don't enjoy the near constant rain we've been having, or the resulting mud.  Because they prefer to stay in their hay lined stall, they aren't hard on their pasture, like the donkeys.  The donkeys have churned up their yard to the point that it's a quagmire.  They also have a muddy trail that follows the perimeter of their pasture.  I worry about them having wet feet for so many days in a row.  My horse owning friend doesn't seem worried though.  

It's been six days since we buried Puck under the apple tree, and even with frequent visits with the goats, donkeys, and time spent with Wendigo, our big sweet dog, I feel Puck's absence acutely.  The house feels different, like the lights are dim or the fire isn't as warm.  In the days since he's been gone, we've rearranged some furniture and put down a new rug.  We keep the pantry door closed.  I think we're attempting to change things up with the hope that it will help us notice his absence less.  Time is what it will take, and we know that.  

Little Buck still looks like a baby goat to me.  He's taller now, but he's sort of scrawny.  How do you know if a bony young goat isn't growing fast enough?  He seems healthy, and his eyelids have good color.  He eats, but he just doesn't fatten up.  Hopefully this spring he'll have a growth spurt and finally become a man goat.  I have high hopes for goat milk by next spring.  

The Beasts' Confession

An excerpt from The Beasts' Confession by Johnathan Swift

The goat advanc'd with decent pace;

And first excus'd his youthful face;

Forgiveness begg'd that he appear'd

('Twas nature's fault) without a beard.

'Tis true, he was not much inclin'd

To fondness for the female kind;

Not, as his enemies object,

From chance, or natural defect;

Not by his frigid constitution,

But through a pious resolution;

For he had made a holy vow

Of chastity as monks do now;

Which he resolv'd to keep for ever hence,

As strictly too, as doth his Reverence.

Who's Who?

Before we got our second donkey, Hattie, I wondered if I would be able to tell the two donkeys apart once they were all grown up.  It's not a problem.  Brandon is with Rufus in the picture above. 

This is Hattie.   I can tell them apart even when they aren't standing side by side.  Hattie has straight hair and bangs. 

This is Rufus.  Rufus has curly hair and bangs.  Rufus is saying, with his ears, "Give me those treats, lady! Do not give them to my sister!" 

Shaggy Hattie is on the left, wavy Rufus is on the right. 

 Also, Rufus, in the back, is a darker color overall.  When Rufus gets wet, even the hair on his back is curly, so his back stripe is wavy.  Hattie's fur is thick and straight.  Her winter coat looks fuzzy, like she's full of static electricity. 

The donkeys are due for a hoof trimming, so I spent a little extra time with them this week getting them used to being touched again.  It doesn't take many sunflower seeds before they are eating out of my hands and letting me rub their legs and feet.  But if I go for days and days only giving them attention over the fence, because it's cold and dark and we have no time to play, they get really skittish and jumpy, even with me.  I've been told that mini donkeys can be taught to pull a cart.  I can't imagine my donkeys ever keeping their cool enough to pull a cart. Of course, they don't get out much, these donkeys of mine.   

The Journey to Normal

It used to strike me as weird when someone would refer to their food journey.  Or their health journey.  But, when I reflect on this delicious homemade pepperoni pizza, I realize that I could say Brandon and I have been on a journey for our health.  This seems true to me because there is no universally understood route to get to health, and there are so many different directions given for a healthy lifestyle and diet, that it's a journey just to try them all and find one that works.  

This is a pizza crust made with cauliflower!  It's Dr. Berg's recipe, which is two cups of shredded cauliflower, two cups of shredded cheese, and two eggs.  It's pretty good, too!  

Brandon and I have journeyed from the standard american diet and various attempts at weight loss diets, to vegetable smoothies, then to juice fasting, super foods, an elimination diet, gluten and sugar free, low carbohydrate, and now we've stumbled into the realm of the ketogenic diet.  

This pizza turns out even better when cooked on parchment paper on a pizza stone, although we enjoyed scraping it out of a cast iron skillet and eating it with a fork several times before we invested in the right tools for the job.  

I think some of the pathways we took on this journey were not the right destination, ultimately, but they were important steps for us to take.  For instance, I think juice fasting was the thing that made us both realize that we could feel noticeably better by changing how we ate.  Sounds obvious, right?  But until you experience it, it's hard to understand.  It was probably the first time that I stopped eating my old favorites, and didn't have cravings and weakness.  I felt flush with life, and it helped me understand that my body has the potential to feel much better when crammed with vegetable nutrition.  Of course, you can't live on juice forever.  What to eat, then?   

The elimination diet was also a big step in this journey for us.  Not just because we systematically tested different foods, and eliminated foods that triggered uncomfortable feelings in our bodies, but because for two entire months we had to cook all of our own meals from scratch.  If you had asked me before the elimination diet, I would have said we cooked most of our own food, and we weren't eating convenience food very often.  Ha.  We get busy or in a hurry, just like everyone, but during the elimination diet we forced ourselves to plan ahead, and to turn down temptations.  It was good practice, and it's been easier ever since.  

So here we are now, making our own pizza crust with vegetables, scarfing salad by the box, and loading up on saturated fats.  This ketogenic diet approach has us eating unlimited vegetables plus lots of eggs, meat, cheese, avocados, olives, butter, and healthy oils.  We're trying to eat six to ten cups of greens a day!  We're avoiding most carbohydrates, including fruit and alcohol.  

Even though so many people tell me that eating saturated fat is good for me, it's still makes me wonder when I see so many government approved diet plans that say to avoid saturated fat.  But look at the results from my recent physical - I'm normal!  No one ever tells me I'm normal!  Actually, my triglycerides have never been lower, and my good HDL cholesterol has never been higher.  I've also lost nearly twenty pounds since I was at the doctor for my physical last year.  

When I went for an appointment for some new glasses last week (Brandon sat on mine!), they said my blood pressure was text book - 120 over 62.  The doctor bragged about how healthy my eyes were, and when I told him that years ago an eye doctor said there were little bubbles in my eyes that people who get diabetes have, this new doctor scoffed.  He said, "your eyes are perfectly healthy inside and out."  

It's much more fun to visit a doctor and be told I'm normal, text book, and perfectly healthy.  It's encouraging, and it makes me want to continue this journey.