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!

Flooded!

Here are some good rainy pictures from in-and-around the farm!  Quite exciting times for a usually rain-less San diego.

During the day that day (Wednesday) we also took the girls downtown to hand out donuts and coffee/tea to San Diego's wet and homeless.  Once when we were giving food to folks down there, one of the homeless guys mentioned this idea of hot coffee on a rainy day and how fantastic it would be.  Jeremy has wanted to do it ever since, so we spent our morning running around for a giant coffee maker and 300 donut holes.  It was all actually very worth it.  We made some cold homeless quite happy.  I don't have pictures of that to share, though!  I always feel weird taking photos of them.

I know there is so much to blog about - I really want to fill you in on everything from now over the past month!  Sarah's got all of the Thanksgiving photos so I'll let her post them.  It was fabulous and we had a great time with friends.  We are officially moved in, though not totally organized.  It's been a transition for sure, but I think we were all really ready for it.  So far, so good - loving every minute of it and really loving the people that we've jumped into this with.  I can't believe it's already been over a month!  Whew - 1/12 of a year down =)

Cheers!

A wet fall in San Diego

this last picture is a small creek that developed in the backyard after one of the heavier rainstorms.

Turkeys, more drama

Why did we just invest 27 weeks in these turkeys when one of the bigger ones decides to go a die today. I mean WTF?!? She must have known Thanksgiving was drawing near. But really, we had that turkey since it was the size of my iphone dammit! I drove it back and forth in my car between the farm and the Blough's house. I chased a coyote out of its coup when it was young. I squeezed its crop when it got all bloated and gross and made it vomit all over the place. I mean crap, I was really looking forward to eating that bird. Not to mention, it ate its way through so much organic poultry feed, it would have sold for $20 a lb. at the grocery store, and now its buried underneath a garden bed.

For those of you thinking that your raising your own free range organic turkey for Thanksgiving is a good idea let me give you some advice. Whole Foods has a great selection of free range birds already packaged, de-feathered and cleaned. The experiment is not worth it. These birds are much harder to manage than chickens, get sick more often, have more problems and have the mental capabilities as your average garden snail. Kim and Sarah are not going to like that i posted this blog. But, i don't care. I have had to bury two turkeys already. Not to mention the 2 we lost to coyotes and the other 4 that died when they were still chicks. I am telling you people, i don't care how good the other 4 are going to taste come the Big Day, it has been a hassle and a bother raising these birds.