Tag Archives: Urban Homesteading

Making Cheese with Kids

Making fresh goat cheese (chèvre) at home is so easy even a young child can do it! My toddler LOVES to be involved in the kitchen and we believe it helps teach her healthy habits and attitudes about food. It is time to make a fresh batch of chèvre and here are some quick shots of Little Bird demonstrating how we enjoy making cheese with kids.

Making Cheese with Kids

In the above picture, Little Bird is holding a digital thermometer in the milk to make sure it is the right temperature. (I accidentally overshot 86°, and had to put it in a cold water bath to bring it back down. I learned the hard way, do not put your starter in milk that is too hot, i.e. over 90°, or it won’t set. It won’t “go bad” or make you sick but it will be more like buttermilk or runny sour cream than nice, sweet cheese.) Below she is sprinkling in chèvre starter.

making cheese with kids - adding chèvre starter

For all the details of how to make chèvre, including step by step instructions with pictures, please click here. And for more on how to involve very young children and babies in cooking, please read this post.

 

Anasazi Green Beans

If you have seen my previous posts on Anasazi Beans then you know I am a huge fan of the heirloom bean. Although we typically allow them to dry right on the vine and then use the beans as you might use pintos or black beans, I recently learned that Anasazi green beans are another delicious option!

anasazi green beans

Papa Bird has Anasazis growing as vines along our bottom fence, but discovered a gopher had eaten the roots off of one of the plants. Since the plant was on the verge of toppling over, he picked them for use as Anasazi green beans!


For a recipe for the most delicious veggie burger ever, the legend of Anasazi Beans, and more on victory gardens, see my post on Anasazi Bean Burgers. And for more growing tips on Anasazis and a recipe for a twist on a Southern holiday classic, check out Anasazi Bean Hoppin’ John.

Can you recommend a recipe for Anasazi Green Beans?

We usually cook green beans simply, and Little Bird loved to gum them as one of her first “holding” foods at 8 months. But please tell me, what are your favorite recipes for green beans?

Baby Goats! (…Which Means Fresh Milk!)

I’m so excited! Yesterday we received our first milk delivery in a while. As I explained in my Home Dairy 101 post, we are members of a goat co-op and receive fresh milk weekly. We actually haven’t been receiving milk for the last few months as all of the does have been pregnant and just had their babies.

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Springtime is for babies! I know I claimed that there was nothing cuter than a baby chick in the post on how we hatched chicks without a rooster, but these baby goats are pretty cute!

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Many thanks from Cari at White Mountains Ranch for the use of her photos, as well as taking such excellent care of our goaties. You can see more of the goats and their babies here.

Even if you don’t own goats (or a part of a goat) spring is the best time to buy fresh goat milk at farmer’s markets and other stores. Not sure what to do with fresh goat milk? Brush up on how to pasteurize milk at home, homemade cajeta, and how easy it is to make goat cheese (chèvre) at home. I hope to add some posts soon on ricotta, feta, and a mold-ripened goat cheese, inspired by Humbolt Fog.

Click on any picture in the gallery below to enlarge.


Baby Birds No Longer

Today is the 17th and my Baby Bird is 17 months old. She has been a toddler for quite some time. Running, coloring, eating PB&J and saying “no!” (All at the same time.) I suppose it is past due that she get a promotion. From this point on she will now be called “Little Bird.”

She is not our only baby bird growing up. With the passing of Steve, “Bebe,” the chick in our banner and Facebook profile picture, who we watched hatch from an egg, is now our senior hen. She is a proficient layer, laying a large, light brown egg daily.

Bebe, all grown up

Although we don’t have any roosters, we were lucky to watch Bebe and her sibling hatch and grow. A few years ago my husband noticed that one of our hens, Butters, a sweet and social Buff Orpington, was broody. “Broody” hens sit on the eggs all day trying to hatch them. In the wild this is obviously a necessary characteristic in order for the eggs to survive. However, most laying hens have the trait of broodiness bred out of them as it can disincline them to lay more eggs. For the purposes of egg production they simply need to lay the egg and move on.

When picking up our organic, soy-free, Modesto Milling poultry feed and scratch from White Mountains Ranch, Papa Bird chatted with the owner about how to get Butters to stop being so broody. She surprised us by suggesting that we let her! She graciously gave us four fertilized eggs to take home and let her sit on. Butters was a wonderful foster mom. She sat and sat and sat and sat…

And finally, one day in the spring, we had babies!! Two of the eggs hatched. Give me the meanest, grouchiest person, put newborn chicks in front of them and I guarantee they will just melt. There is nothing cuter.

Token and Bebe

One chick was strong and healthy. Since the baby bird had black feathers, well black fuzz, Papa Bird kept the South Park references going and named the chick “Token.” The little one we called “Bebe.” Unfortunately, little Bebe was born with a club foot. Her foot curled in and didn’t open up properly. She couldn’t put weight on it or walk properly. I imagine that back in the old days, on a large farm, such a deformed chicken wouldn’t get the chance to survive. Then again, in modern, large scale egg production the chickens live in cages and aren’t really allowed to walk around. So who knows what they do.

Papa Bird did a little research and decided to try to splint her foot. I was so proud of him and his All Creatures Great and Small skills. As I played nurse and lent extra hands, he experimented with various splints for Bebe. First he tried a little piece of cardboard and some medical tape. Unfortunately, Butters kept pecking at the white cardboard. We were worried she would hurt the poor baby’s foot. Eventually we found that what worked best was just a bandaid or two. Fortunately, after about a week her foot worked well, if a little smaller at first. Now you can’t even tell!

Bebe's BandAid Foot

Token, on the other hand, had a different problem. You see, he ended up being a “he” which is illegal in the City of San Diego! We took him to White Mountains Ranch later that year so he could enjoy the spoils of country life.

Click on any photo in the gallery to enlarge.

 

Dedicated to the Memory of our Hen Steve

This week our oldest surviving hen passed away, we believe of old age. Her name was Steve.

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Steve was an Easter Egger Chicken and laid large, light blue eggs. She was a survivor and an escape artist. Steve was our only chicken to survive the Coyote Massacre of 2011 that decimated our flock and claimed the life of my 12-year-old kitty. Previously, she had been given to us by our neighbors in 2010 and they had no idea how old she was. They had also lost every single chicken to coyotes, except her, and were giving up. They called her “damn chicken”, but we renamed her after a good friend who requested the honor.

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Out of our first flock, and the second flock after the Coyote Massacre, Steve was the hen most likely to break out of the enclosure and into the vegetable garden. Once, after we thought that she had stopped laying for a couple of weeks, my husband stumbled upon a hidden catch of eggs that she was laying in secret.

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Rest in peace Steve. We will miss you!