My chickens

A little pre-curser to my blog post to yank your memory chain about who I have been and how I live now.  I have worn many hats and have a full life with many great memories.  One of my past life's occupation was as the owner of Gnu Adventure Travel Company, where I not only specialized in Africa Photo Safari's, but for that matter, any exotic travel destination I could conjure up.  As we all know, life changes for various reasons that could be boring as hell to some, and extremely interesting to others.  For the parallel with my chickens now, I am going to focus on my "true adventure travel destination, which was Africa".

Known as "Mama" by my Africa outfitters in the past, I used to watch with great interest, the "food chain" in action; lions on a kill, hyenas surrounding some small helpless animal, etc..  My outfitters were well versed in explaining animal behavior to me.  I always understood and fully appreciated each animal's need to survive, so I was not so bothered by what I witnessed.  Oh---another past fact about me which may or may not cause you to continue or discontinue following this blog... I was also a hunter as a young woman, so watching the food chain was also a little easier for that reason.  Aside from that , as I approach life now, it becomes more and more difficult to see any life end, no matter the reason.

Now, I live on a beautiful ranch in Eastern Washington where the deer regularly trim my rose bushes, veggies, grapevines, etc., coyotes howl in the distance, cougar hang out around the barn, but there are no lions, hyena, or harrier hawks.  I have no heart to do the predators here harm, but have great disdain for the damage they do. So given all of this blather, I'll show you a picture of my vibrant sweet chickens taken one and one half weeks ago and then follow with where my chickens are today and wonder what your thoughts might be.

I went to the hen house to gather eggs and opened the door to find a hen lying dead, for no apparent reason.  She had been out enjoying the daffodils and grubs, the day before.  I couldn't figure out what had happened, and decided she must have been sick and died from natural causes, then wondered if a predator had been lurking about, unbeknownst to all of us.  I wrestled with my feelings about the sight of her all day and had a difficult night sleeping...then decided it was "just her time".  

Each day, the roosters have a routine where they crow and call all of the hens to get up and get with the program, but the next day, only one rooster crowed and he crowed all day long.  They don't stop crowing until all of the heads are accountable and I don't know how they know.  I took a head count of my own and saw that there was another head missing.  There is something sinister about going to a hen house that has had problems, so as nervous as I was, I headed down to see what was happening.  YES, there was another hen lying dead in the hen house, but also, my beautiful robust and healthy bard rock rooster was nowhere to be heard or seen.  I searched around the 42 acres that I live on and finally found the remains of him.  I am certain he put up a good fight defending himself and his hen, but there is not much solace in that thought.

I won't continue with the gore, except to say that tonight, instead of eight beautiful chickens, I have only five.  Something smarter than all of the chickens and me, is out there waiting for the next opportunity and there's not much I can do short of sit out there all night with a shotgun.  Again I am watching the food chain, except this time it hurts.

Making Yogurt

I keep getting on my soap box about health, but I am pretty fickle when it comes to passing up certain little yum yum's in life. While pondering a healthy alternative to rich desserts, I decided to get back to making yogurt; something I did for years and years, while raising my three sons.  They loved it, but usually because of all the fruit, honey, syrup, jam, or any other crap I'd put in.  Seems at the time it was a good way to get them to eat it by taking away that certain tangy flavor, which they hated.  Nowadays, we all know better than to load in all that toxic sugar and are constantly coming up with new ways to sweeten it up.  I personally, love it plain and slathered on a baked potato with chives and pepper.  However, if you need a sweet and yummy treat, make a ginger peach conserve to scoop over the top (recipe follows).

I came up with a fairly easy way to make yogurt "Greek" style and with a method which allows some flexibility in thickness and flavor.  It is made in the oven, and I use whole milk....you can ponder that and decide what you will use.  This recipe makes a little over one quart of the creamiest and most delicious yogurt you could ask for.

1 cup of plain Greek style yogurt (with live cultures and at room temp.)
4 cups milk.

Fill a saucepan with 1 1/2 inches of water and bring to a boil.  Set a large stainless bowl over the saucepan and fill it with the milk; do not let the bowl touch the water.  Turn the heat to low and gradually heat the milk to 180 degrees--whisk once in a while.  Keep the temp at 180 for 30 minutes, remove the bowl and let the milk cool to 106 degrees while stirring often.  Heat the oven to 110 degrees.  Whisk the yogurt with 1 cup of the warm milk until smooth, then add the mix back into the rest of the warm milk.  Whisk the warm milk mixture for 3 minutes and pour into clean jars within one inch of the rim.  I used two quart size mason jars.  Place the jars into the oven and  keep the oven temp between 105-110.  Begin checking the yogurt after 4 1/2 hours; it's ready when it is thick, tangy and surrounded by a small amount of whey.  Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled or overnight.

Line a large mesh colander with several layers of cheesecloth-or a moistened cotton cloth and set over a large bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 6 hours or until desired thickness.  Anyone know what can be done with the whey????  Bake bread????

Ginger Peach Conserve
In a saucepan, combine 2 T granulated sugar, (or truvia, etc.) 1/4 c orange juice and 6 T brown sugar (or not) with a pinch of salt and simmer for 5 minutes stirring.  Add 2 T finely grated ginger and 1/8 tsp cinnamon. Thicken with 1/2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1/2 tsp water and simmer until thickened.  Use a blender if you want a chunky sauce.  YUM!

Leaving England

Well, the project in England got as far as we had anticipated, and our last few days with Geoffrey were spent site seeing in Bath, Wales, and Devonshire, where we saw some pretty amazing scenery and museums.  During our drives getting around from here to there, daffodils flanking hedgerows were in full bloom everywhere.

Geoffrey's new hut as we left it

The Roman bath's with all of their history were amazing, and as we toured the ruins, it was most humorous to think that such famous people as Marc Antony, Caesar, and others had actually washed their dirty feet right there!  In Wales, it was especially nice to see so many small and quaint independent book stores--all loaded to the brim with beautiful books.  Apparently, England's economy is not as bad as ours, or there likely wouldn't be so many of them.  One of the shops added a fabulous little cafe inside where we had lunch (the best beef/chorizo burger  ever made)!  And let me not forget to mention the many, many, many, pub stops where we enjoyed local ales and fish n chips----YUM!

Roman Bath

Roman Bath

Wales

We arrived back in the USA in the early evening and thanks to Ken's daughter, we spent the night at her home in Seattle where we were treated to a wonderful homemade dinner.  What a nice homecoming.  Our drive from Seattle to Portland was during an extreme down pour of rain all the way, but we were hell bent to get there and see our newest granddaughter, Fiona; born just two days before we left.  What a darling little bundle of sweetness---and a nice visit with parents, Kurt and Rebecca.

We are home now, recovering from jet-lag and coping with the change in time......talk about confused sleeping patterns!  Naps are nice.  Traveling is fun, but home is where the heart is.

Life is good......