Thursday, December 9, 2010

A rainbow of eggs

My little blue (she's gray, but for some reason they call gray chickens "blue") Easter Egger chicken finally laid her first egg today, a lovely light greenish blue one! Here it is with the rest of today's eggs:

In other news, still hauling water to the cows. At least we have 2 frost-free hydrants out in the yard, and I'm not having to bring water out of the house!

Made scalloped cabbage with supper tonight. I haven't made it in ages, and I forgot just how good it is!

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Scalloped Cabbage

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 medium head cabbage, cored and sliced thin
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 4 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 cup crushed salted Premium Plus crackers
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x12 inch casserole dish.
  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add cabbage and onion and cook for about 20 minutes, or until tender, stirring often. Add milk and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Gently pour in eggs, stirring constantly. Stir in 3/4 of the cracker crumbs, and the salt and pepper; mix well. Pour into casserole dish and top with remaining cracker crumbs. Dot with butter.
  3. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until golden brown and heated through.
Originally from AllRecipes. I've altered the amount of crackers to suit my personal taste.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

So much for not hauling water all winter

Seems like we tripped a breaker last night - the one running all the heated waterers. So the buckets in with the donkeys/sheep/goats, the geese, and the highlands all froze. At least they should all thaw now that the breaker's back on

Worse than that, the automatic cattle waterer is dry, and hasn't refilled yet after several hours of being back on power. Really really hoping it'll start up again on its own once the heat tape catches up... or that Roy can fix it if not. It'll be a looooong winter if I have to go out and water the cows manually until spring!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Sad day

Allie lost her calf.

I found a little black heifer calf dead in the corral today. She must have had it either late last night, or very early this morning.

I'm not sure if the little one froze, or had some other trouble. It looked like Allie only cleaned off one side of the calf, and there were no signs the calf had ever nursed. She may have been born dead, or simply very weak.

I wish I'd been more vigilant! We just weren't really expecting her to calve so soon, and she hadn't been showing any new signs of being close to calving.

At least Allie seems to be okay. She kept going over and licking the dead calf, but once I removed it she settled right down and started eating. She's wandering the corral a bit and checking all the corners, but she hasn't been calling. I think she's less bothered than I am.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

The warm spot

Went out to refill the dogs heated water bucket today, and this is what I found.



Leave it to cats to find the warm spot!