Flashback: Thanksgiving Through a Cat's eyes.

when are we getting this thing started...?

what the...

Liver please? 

Thank you.



Back off.

A little clean-up after the feast.

Flashback: Thanksgiving

Do you miss Thanksgiving? The tasty aromas? The brisk fall air? The friends and family? Well, have no fear. We have been delinquent about blogging here at Radio Acres Farm, and failed to accurately document our first farm-grown Thanksgiving. So here's your chance to relive that glorious day.

I plan on doing a Thanksgiving-through-pictures... and I'm hoping my husband will write an entry on the terrible but awesome Thanksgiving massacre, and Kim will illuminate all with the way to make a Tur-duck-en.

Are we ready for this?

Maybe.

The last living picture of our prettiest turkey.

 

The dying dance of the turkeys.

 

Turkey death row. 

Our supplies.

It is done.

Out of respect for life, dead animals will only be photographed when they are getting ready to be eaten. Did I get that right, J?

Plucking.

Cooking!

Deep-frying two birds. By far the best way to cook a turkey.

Table set, friends coming over.

Turducken! Delicious.

The food line. A bountiful harvest.

farm thoughts

Camille slaughtering her turkey pinata at her birthday party

Progress is meandering along.  Trees have been planted, now we just have to wait for the long, slow growing season.  Our neighbor graciously offered up a few good truckloads of topsoil from a construction job he was doing, so now the garden beds must be filled.  It's amusing that it's taken us this long to even get seeds in the ground!  Sarah and I planted a flurry of spring seeds sometime late in the season, but our timing was off and our soil wasn't mixed very well.  We had a few sprouts begin to take off with good intentions, only to wither in the too-hot sun or be eaten by a bunny.  Wildlife!  This is something I haven't had to compete with before.  We did have some good looking kale transplants for a few minutes, but one morning we woke up to nothing more than nubs.  This should be an interesting thing to figure out!

The holidays were, as always, a frenzied blur.  We moved into the house the week of Thanksgiving, only to be surmounted by oodles of holiday plans.  I am blessed to have a fantastic family all around me, but it can make holidays a little insane.  First was Christmas Eve morning with my lovely husbands side of the family, followed closely by Christmas Eve dinner with my side of the family (two hours away).  The next morning we awoke to presents galore under their Christmas tree and joyously scurried to open them all before we had to pack up and head back to San Diego to spend Christmas day with Jeremy's side of the family once again.  Followed by my mom's birthday on New Years Day (up in Redlands again), Camille's birthday and party on the 2nd of January and lovely husbands birthday on the tenth.  It's finally done, I can breathe again.  During this time, Sarah and BJ were also gone visiting family and attending a work conference, so the farm got little love.  We are finally all back, finding the groove and figuring out where to start!  It finally is now feeling like the start, the beginning of this new life.  We got a new little point and shoot camera for Christmas, so hopefully I will get some good images to post here.

Poultry part 2

The hens have started picking up their laying again! I don't know if we blogged about it, but sometime in late summer they just decided that they wanted to stop laying. Out of 20 hens, we dropped down to 2 eggs a day. Now, I do know that hens are photosensitive and all that stuff, but we've had chickens for a few years and they had never slowed down that much. It was obvious that they had avian pox at the time, so we scrapped it up to the virus and assumed they'd pick up again sooner or later. Well, September came and went, as did October and November and we were still only getting 2 eggs a day at best. In November we slaughtered the turkeys and just before our farm counterparts left for their vacay we were discussing options for our ridiculously expensive yet non-productive laying flock. As much as we didn't want to think about it, I think we were almost resolved to culling and starting over in the spring. At least I was. Now, low and behold, mysteriously only 1 month after we slaughtered those darn turkeys, the flock is starting to pick up pace. It's the dead of winter and we just had the shortest day of the year, so I am throwing out the photosensitivity excuse. I think it was those big, mean, food hog turkeys! My two cents, I guess we'll never know for sure. The only thing I DO know for sure is that we got 5 eggs yesterday and 4 each day the two days prior. More than we've averaged in a long time. I can finally plan on making a quiche for dinner this week!