Let There Be Heat(lamp)

Hello again everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are looking forward to a happy and safe Christmas for those of you that celebrate, and for those of you that don't, I hope it's a happy and safe weekend!

This past week I dove - yet again - into work that needed to get completed in the chicken coop. If you're so inclined, you can go watch the whole process here.

I'd decided that I wanted to get in the coop for some festive fun, and while I was there, I might as well finish installing the heat lamp to encourage the birds to use their new roost spots.

Probably the hardest part of the whole job was getting up to the ceiling and installing a screw for the heat lamp to hang off. I eye-balled where I wanted it, had to do some climbing to get to the beam, and the rest was relatively easy to install and hang the light.

The second hardest part was getting the extension cord stretched between the barn and the chicken coop.

Thankfully, I'd overestimated how much cord I would need, so I had plenty of cord to work with. It was just a pain to try to snake the prong end through the tiny hole the previous owners of the property had cut out in the wall for a similar purpose. It's in an awkward spot, so you can't really see what you're doing without getting down on the ground, and there were spider webs all up in that space that I wasn't pleased about putting my face near.

I was able to get the old cord out of the way and the new one in its place within a few minutes, and spent the rest of the time running in a big circle to get the other end of the cord to the heat lamp.

I made sure that all the materials I used were fire retardant and water resistant, so hopefully no one gets burned or shocked, though there is always the low chance of that.

I also keep the heat lamp plugged in on an interval. During the day, when it's warmer, it is unplugged, then at night it gets plugged back in. I figure it'll help the bulb not overheat and lessen the chance of causing a fire and put less stress on the bulb in general so it'll - fingers crossed - last longer.

The total install took less than an hour and left me plenty of time to get into the fun stuff that I was most excited for!

Because I am ridiculous, I decided I wanted to decorate the chicken run with Christmas ornaments!

I don't often get to decorate the house and there are a couple reasons for this:

• We have dogs. Five of them. And their curiosity knows no bounds. Erecting a tree and decorating it with all sorts of shiny toy-like balls and ornaments is asking for trouble.
• To compensate for the lack of tree, I generally hang lights outside. Problem is, there are no outside outlets on the house! Our home was built in 1910, and in the course of its life, none of the previous owners had ever thought to update it by installing exterior outlets. So no house lights.

I decided that I didn't want to go another year without some sort of decorations, so I bought one of those cheap packs of shiny round ornaments from Walmart (while I was picking up a new extension cord for the heat lamp) and set to making SOMETHING festive.

The chickens didn't care while I installed them, in fact, I'm certain they haven't even noticed the ornaments, and it only took me a few minutes to hang them all.

Now I feel better. Not only did I get a productive project checked off the list, I also got to play around a bit.

That's all for today. Thank you all so much for reading this far, I hope you have a freaking awesome rest of your week, Christmas, weekend, and so on! I will see you next week!

-Alyx

Leaving the Farm - For the Weekend

Hello and happy December everyone! How did we already get here?!

I guess I’ll just jump straight into things.

It’s hard enough planning trips away from home, and when you start adding animals to the picture that need to be accommodated for, it just adds another layer of complexity to the puzzle. When you throw in a whole farm, this can make getting away, even for a short weekend trip, a bigger headache than it’s worth.

Thankfully for us, we just have dogs, cats, and chickens. We don’t have that full farm that we would need to hire a farm sitter for. We still sit in that boat where we can ask a friend to watch the animals and toss a $50 and it’s relatively simple for them to get things done.

I know the problem comes when you start adding those larger livestock animals, like pigs, sheep or goats, cows, and horses.

We had a small trip planned for this past weekend. One of my extended family members was hitting that birthday milestone of 50 years, and we wanted to celebrate that with them.

It was only going to be a short trip, so I’ll just quickly walk through what we did to set everything up to make our animal sitter’s life as easy as possible.

The biggest problem was the dogs.

We have 5. That’s right. FIVE. And they’re not small either.

Our smallest dog is a 50lb Boxer. She might be the smallest, but she’s got some power in that little body. She will drag you for miles and not even bat an eyelid.

The next in line are three of her puppies. They’re not puppies anymore, they’re almost 5yrs old now, and they range from 55lbs to almost 80lbs. They’re half Boxer, and the other parent was a German Shepherd/Husky mix, so they’ve got all the energy in the world and I can’t keep fat on them to save my life. All three have wonderful personalities, and are beautiful, loving dogs, but they’ve got their quirks that make them hard to deal with as a pet sitter.

• Sass, the smallest, takes out her stress out as aggression – specifically toward her sister.
• Koda, the sister in question, had an auto-immune disorder earlier this year that she’s still recovering from, and gets a pill every 24 hrs.

Koda still hasn't quite grown in all of the fur that was shaved earlier this year 

when the vets were trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with her.

• Deego, the final sibling, is super attached to the smallest sister and gets stressed out when they’re separated.

And finally, we’ve got an eight-month-old Great Pyrenees pushing 100lbs.

One of the only times this boy sits still is if you've got food in-hand.

To make it as easy as we can, we kennel the Pyrenees at a doggy daycare to help him use up all that puppy energy he’s got, and the little Boxer mix so she gets lots of one-on-one love and her stress is kept low.

The cats are easy. Food and water and some daily love and they’re happy as pie.

The final speed bump we have to work through to prep for any sort of vacation, is the chickens.

We were only gone for a couple days this time, so I knew I’d be able to fill up their food and water and they’d be great until we got back. One of the perks of it being winter, is my hens aren’t laying eggs right now, so the sitter doesn’t have to go in and collect any eggs.

After filling their food and water to the brim, I like to throw down some hay in their run for enrichment. It just adds something to peck and scratch and play with.

 

Once we get that horse, and that cow, and so on and on, we’ll have to train someone to handle the farm that we’ll have, but for now, this is all we have to do!

Thank you so much for tuning in, if you’re interested, you can check out my YouTube to watch the chicken prep I did for this little trip.

I hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you next time!

-Alyx

Back With the Birds

It’s another beautiful Monday! 

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving, for those of you that celebrated, and otherwise I hope it was an amazing Thursday.

In my daily chores over the last few weeks I noticed some small issues in the coop since the last big projects I worked on. I should have known that I was jinxing myself when I said I was done working on projects in the chicken coop. Because I was faced with a not-so-small predicament.

My hens quit laying eggs about two weeks ago.

Now, normally, hens will continue laying eggs as long as they have ample food, water, warm shelter, and at least 12-14 hours of sunlight. When there’s less light, this triggers your birds to go into ‘rest’ mode, and they exert more energy to stay warm than in producing eggs.

While I understand it’s pretty normal for a hen’s lay rate to slow or even completely stop during the winter, it’s uncharacteristic for my hens to completely stop laying all together, so I knew there was another factor at play.

I take care to make sure they have food and clean water daily, so I know that the issue probably has something to do with either their shelter, or that they are using their energy to keep warm.

At this point, I had a couple theories I wanted to address, which you can watch here:

 

One

Something I saw for sure was a leak that dripped water straight into the nest boxes when it rains. This is likely one of the reasons my hens aren’t laying, so my highest priority became building a roof or cover over the nest boxes that would block the leak into the boxes.

I’m quite pleased with myself for holding onto the wood from the old coop, since this is where I was able to get the materials to build the cover over the nest boxes.

There was an intact piece of roofing I was easily able to repurpose to act as a block between the leaky section and the nest boxes, along with several spare bits of wood I fashioned into supports.

I actually attempted this mini roof twice.

The first time I’d designed it so it sat too flat. This would potentially encourage the chickens to try to roost on top of it, which would put them in the way of the water, and would definitely break the roof. This design has very little strength to hold up against weight on top of it, so I knew I’d have to change the design to discourage them from trying to sit on top of it.

I was able to redesign it so it sat at a steeper angle, and this is the final product I decided to go with.

Two

It could be that the hens don’t know where to lay their eggs.

I didn’t slowly transition where I wanted them to lay eggs, and took away the old coop, which for many of my hens was the only place they’d ever known to lay.

There’s a relatively simple fix for this that could train my hens to use the nest boxes.

A lot of times you can trick your hens into laying in a particular place by planting fake eggs in that spot. There are plastic eggs you can purchase, you can use golf balls, or you can do what I did – I looked for rocks that looked roughly like the eggs my hens lay in both color and size.

It might take a few days for this trick to work, so don’t get too discouraged if they don’t lay eggs in the desired nests right away.

 

Three

The birds don’t know where to roost.

This could be causing them to sleep in small groups or on their own, which means they’re not conserving energy by sharing body heat at night.

Again, this is an issue because I didn’t slowly transition them from the old coop to the new one.

Ideally, what I probably should have done was move the old coop so it sat inside the new coop building until the birds were accustomed to laying and roosting in the building. Then I could have slowly torn apart the old coop and the birds would still know that they were supposed to stay in the new building.

I didn’t think of that though when I first started the transition, so I have a couple other tricks I can try to finish the transition.

The easiest route I could take to encourage the birds to roost on the new beams I installed for them is to install a temporary heat lamp above them. Since it’s cold out right now, they’ll be drawn to the warmth, and they’ll start roosting together on the new beams.

Once they’re used to roosting there, I should – theoretically – be able to remove the heat lamp, and they’ll all be able to stay warm by sharing body heat.

The other option I have would be to build a wall extension and closable door in the wide opening in the coop. Then I could physically put the birds inside the coop at night, when they’re more docile and easier to catch, and a few days of closing them in the building at night would train them to go there on their own.

They would have warmth inside the coop either way, which could help them start laying eggs again.

 

 

I only had time to try to solve the first two problems, and I discovered that the extension cord I meant to use to reach from the barn to the chicken coop was both too short and unusable.

Which means I’ll need to go back into the coop another time to finish this project.

 

 

Thank you all so much for joining me again for another struggle in starting a homestead, I hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you all next time!

 

-Alyx

Cooking With Cast Iron

Hello and happy Monday again everyone! This week I’m going to rave about cast iron pans. 

You can watch me cooking with them here.

I love cast iron, I would suggest them to anyone and everyone, and there’s a couple reasons why.

First off. They’re super durable. There’s a reason you see old cast iron pans at estate sales, garage sales, yard sales, you name it. It is so hard to ruin one of these things, and even if you think you have, most likely there’s a relatively easy way to restore it to a usable condition. If you take care of your pans, they should outlive you, that’s how sturdy they are.

Secondly. Compared to how infrequently you have to replace these guys, it is incredibly cost effective to switch your cookware to cast iron. I’m not saying that it’s not expensive if you choose to switch ALL your pots and pans at once, but if you replace a dying non-stick pan here and there, it’s not so bad, and the lifespan of the cast iron pan will basically pay for itself.

Third. It’s no wonder cast iron is popular because they are so versatile. You can use them for sauces. Steaks. Fish. Baking. Casseroles. They can transfer seamlessly from stovetop to oven. You can use them on an open flame. On a grill. Glass cooktop. Electric cooktop. Gas stove. They. Are. So. Versatile.

With all of this said, there are still several widespread misconceptions about cast iron pans that turn a lot of new users away from them.

One of the biggest myths that people believe is that cast iron is hard to maintain. It’s an idea that the seasoning – the protective coat over the bare metal – can be easily damaged and the steps to protect it are difficult and take a lot of time or skill. If you hear someone tell you not to use metal utensils in cast iron, it’s because of this idea that cast iron is ‘delicate’.

This is just not true. Like I mentioned earlier, cast iron pans are crazy durable.

In a seasoning or a re-seasoning process, it’s not just a thin layer of oil on the bare metal. It’s a layer of polymerized oil that bonds to the metal. This means that the oil has broken down into a plastic-like substance, and this is how a well-seasoned cast iron pan can have non-stick properties.

Unless you’re gouging into the pan itself, your metal utensils aren’t doing anything to that seasoning. And any little black flakes that are coming off the pan into the food are more likely to be carbonized food from previous meals than any flaking or damage to the seasoning layer itself.

You can easily store you pans stacked inside each other without having to worry that they’ll damage each other.

 

Hey, I heard that…

Cast iron pans leach iron into the food you cook.

This is true. But the amount of iron leached into the food depends on a huge variety of factors. The older the pan is means it’ll generally leach less. The acidity of the food can also determine how much iron is leached into your food. Another factor is how well-seasoned the pan is.

If you generally run anemic, it might not hurt to switch to cooking in cast iron pans. On the flip side, if your body doesn’t process iron correctly, or tends to build up an overload of iron, this could be potentially dangerous. Always be sure to double check with your doctor if you know your body has issues with iron production or processing so you don’t accidentally hurt yourself.

If you are dead-set on switching to cast iron, an alternative is to instead switch to enamel-coated cast iron. They work just as well as their traditional counterparts, they just have an enamel coat to stop the leaching of iron from the pan. This coat also acts as the pans ‘seasoning’.

Another big common idea is that you can’t cook anything acidic in your cast iron.

While it’s generally a good idea to avoid making long-cooking acidic recipes – like tomato sauces – in your cast iron, ideally the seasoning on your pan would protect it so the acids would never touch the bare metal. This is never a guarantee though since we don’t live in a perfect world.

On the other hand, it’s perfectly safe to cook a small amount of acidic foods in your pans every now and then and it will cause zero damage.

 

Did you know??

The cast iron pans you can buy today are different than the pans made before production was streamlined. Cast iron pans used to be sanded down after casting, and you can see that in many old pans still floating around. When production was streamlined this step of sanding the pans was dropped. This means that vintage pans will have a silky-smooth finish compared to the pans we have now that have a slightly rough finish.

This also means that current day pans will never get as non-stick as the vintage pans.

 

I know, I know. I’ve been beating around the bush.

The most controversial topic of cast irons pans is how to clean them. A lot of people have been made to believe that you can’t wash them with soap and water. 

While it’s always a bad idea to run them through the dishwasher – not the end of the world, but not a great idea – it’s perfectly safe to clean your pans with soap and water. There are just a few steps you’ll want to follow up with to make sure you don’t damage the pan.

1. Wash your pan as quickly as possible. You don’t want to leave it soaking in the water for any length of time, since water is what will cause your pan to rust. Even a tiny amount of water can leave rust spots you’ll need to scrub off later.
2. After it’s been washed, dry it with a paper towel and place it on a stovetop burner set on high. 
3. When the water in the pan is almost completely dried, add a small amount of neutral oil – vegetable, canola, flaxseed, and shortening are great – and spread it around the entire inside of the pan with a paper towel. Be sure to wipe up any excess.
4. This entire process only takes a couple minutes, so be sure to stick close to your pan when you reach this step. When the pan starts to smoke, remove it from the heat, give it one final wipe, and let it cool completely before storing.
5. That’s it! Your pan is re-seasoned and good to go for the next meal.

 

That’s pretty much all I have to say about cast iron. I just have a few final tips before I let you all go that will help you get the best life out of your pans.

• Season them when you first get them. A lot of pans you can buy now will come pre-seasoned, but it never hurts to add a few extra layers. Just follow steps 3-5 from above a couple times with that new pan and you’re golden.
• Keep using your pan. The more often you use it, the better the season will get.

 

 

Thank you all so much for hanging out with me today, I appreciate every single one of you. I hope you have a freaking awesome rest of your week, a happy and safe Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you all next week!

-Alyx

Baking Bread, and a Whole Roast Chicken

OH heck. I’m late in posting this blog.

Hope you’re all having an awesome week and are staying a bit warmer than I’ve been. We’ve been seeing consistent 40F days and rain and wind and I’m pretty much over it at this point.

Because of the weather constraints, I’ve been having a hard time getting to any of the outside projects that have been piling up. Just part of the uglies of living on a homestead; there are some things that can be done when it gets to this time of year, but after getting home from a full day, there’s very little daylight left to get outside projects done.

So this week I did something a little different, which you can check out here.

 

Cooking and baking always warm me up on a cold day, so that’s the hope for this dreary, damp week.

Bread takes longer, so we’re going to start on that.

 

This recipe is basically the Betty Crocker white bread recipe, but I like to substitute the bleached flour with White Whole Wheat Flour. It keeps the bread the same light, fluffy consistency as bleached flour, but it has just a little bit more of a wheat bread bite to it.

 

Ingredients

• 6-7 cups flour
• 2 packages active dry yeast (or 4 & 1/2 tsp yeast)
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp salt
• 2 tbsp shortening
• 1 & 1/4 cup warm water

Step 1

Mix 3 & 1/2 cups flour, the salt, sugar, shortening and yeast in a bowl. Slowly add very warm water and mix.

*Tips from a former baker (me!)

• Wait to measure the warm water until you need it. I mix all the dry ingredients first, test the temperature of the water, then measure and add it. This way it doesn’t cool down while I’m measuring and adding everything else and I don’t have to reheat or remeasure my water.
• Be sure not to pour your yeast directly onto the salt. I’ve noticed from previous experience that this can slow down the rising process and cause everything to take longer. I normally add my dry ingredients in this order: salt, flour, sugar, yeast. Your yeast feeds on the sugar, so adding them closer to each other will help them do what they need to do.

Step 2

Slowly mix in the remaining flour, one cup at a time, until the dough springs back when you gently press with a finger and doesn’t stick easily to your skin. I’ve found this recipe works best with 6 to 6 & 1/2 cups flour.

Step 3

Now it’s time to knead your dough.

You can either do it by hand on a lightly floured surface, or in your mixer, whichever you prefer. I like letting my mixer do the work so I can clean up after the other steps. This process takes about 10 minutes if you’re mixing by hand, and I’ve had great results mixing for only 6 to 7 minutes at medium speed in the mixer.

Step 4

Now we let the dough rise until it’s roughly doubled in size. This takes anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes, depends on how warm the room is you have your dough in. A lot of recipes will suggest you let the dough rise in a lightly greased bowl, it’s always worked fine for me to let it rise directly in the bowl I mixed it in. I just lay a damp paper towel over the top and set a timer.

This is also a great time to grease your pans and have them ready for later.

Step 5

When your dough has doubled, it’s time to roll it out and shape it into two lovely loaves.

I just eyeball everything at this point. I split the big ball into two relatively equal sized balls. I believe the original recipe calls for each dough ball into 9 by 13 inch rectangles, but I quit measuring ages ago. As long as it’s close to those dimensions, it’s good enough for me. Then you roll it up nice and gently, pinch the ends and fold them under, and place the loaf in the greased pan.

Step 6

It’s the final rise step!

The loaves only need to rise for about 30 minutes at this point, just tuck them under that damp towel again and set your timer.

When you’ve got about 5 minutes left on the clock, move the oven rack to one of the lower rungs and preheat your oven to 425F.

Step 7

Now we bake!

The loaves go into the oven for 20-25 minutes. Once the time is done, take them out and let them cool on a rack. Most recipes say to let them cool completely before slicing, but I know how impossible that is, and I generally wait about 10-15 minutes before cutting into my loaves, basically so I don’t burn my hands as badly.

*More tips from a former baker

• If you’re not sure whether your loaves are fully cooked, one way to tell is to flick, tap, or knock a knuckle against the top of the crust. If it sounds hollow, your bread is fully baked.

Now that the bread is done and cooling, I’m going to get the chicken in the oven.

Ingredients

• 1 full chicken, organs removed
• Seasonings of your choice
• 10 or 12 inch cast iron pan

Step 1

While the bread was on its last rise step, I rinsed, dried and seasoned my bird.

For the seasonings, I found a delicious mix by accident, simply by throwing together all the leftovers of several pre-mixed seasoning containers I had sitting around.

I used about 2 tbsp of a pre-mixed Italian seasoning mix, 2 tbsp of McCormick Grill Mates Montreal Chicken, 1/2tsp salt, 1/4tsp pepper, and 1/2tsp garlic powder.

Make sure to spread those seasonings all over the skin of your chicken, I even season the bottom, and inside the cavity. This will help the flavor seep into the meat instead of just staying on the skin.

Place your seasoned bird in your pan, making sure that no parts are hanging over the lip and could drip into your oven. I can normally make a 10 inch cast iron pan work for this, but sometimes the birds are just a pinch too big and I have to step it up to a 12 inch pan.

Step 2

This is the easy part. We bake it.

Place your pan into an oven preheated to 350F and set a timer for 45 minutes.

It normally takes around 60 for an average bird you would purchase from the store, so just be sure to take the internal temperature in the thick parts of the meat to ensure it’s getting cooked through completely.

If 45 minutes isn’t enough, bake it for 5-10 minute intervals until the internal temperature has reached 165F.

The best place to test your temperature is in the thick part of the thigh, making sure you’re not touching the bone.

And that’s it! Let your chicken rest for at least 15 minutes before cutting, to make sure you don’t lose all the moisture when making that first cut.

 

Enjoy your chicken sandwiches, I hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll see you next Monday!

-Alyx