LL Farm

Friday, August 14, 2015

Farm Photo Friday - Nature Pictures (8-14-2015)

Welcome to Farm Photo Friday!

For these pictures, I thought it would be neat to look a little closer at nature...

A beautiful rainbow above the barn.

butterflies and bees sharing a flower.

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." - Albert Einstein

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Zucchini Lasagna

This is a garden to table 'recipe'.

Not only do I enjoy growing zucchini in my garden,

but I also like to get creative with ways to use it in my cooking.

Zucchini Lasagna is simply substituting zucchini strips for the pasta noodles.

Leaving the skins on the zucchini gives the dish such a beautiful color, and adds great texture.

I like to add a few garden fresh tomatoes to prepared pasta sauce. It helps add to the fresh taste.
Combined with ooey-gooey cheese yummy-ness...

...each bite is packed full of delicious tasting goodness.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Freezer Pickles

The cucumbers are growing!

Every day I check the cucumber vines...

some are trailing up the picket fence, while others are nestled on the ground.

A quick rinse and they are ready to go...

...sliced and eaten plain with a little salt

...put into a simple salad

...salted down, rinsed, then drenched in vinegar

...sliced and added to ranch dressing with a lot of black pepper.

So many ways to enjoy the fresh taste.

But, I also want to savor the deliciousness past the summer months...

Freezer pickles are an easy way to put some away for the cooler days ahead

(if you have the will power not to eat them now ;-)

They remain crisp and have a sweet flavor.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Let me start by saying that we have had a little broodiness before. No big deal...we moved the chicken out of the nesting box a few times, collected the eggs and all was good. But this time...no eggs in the nesting box for two days! The ladies ALWAYS lay their eggs in the same nesting box. It just didn't seem right...what was going on...why weren't they laying?

Inspecting things one day, I noticed one chicken missing from the flock in the chicken yard. It was a fairly hot day, so I checked inside the coop to make sure all was well. There she was all sprawled out...away from the nesting boxes. I tried to move her, but she showed me an attitude that I had not seen before. She puffed her feathers out, cackled a weird sound, and gave me a mean look. Ms. Brood was moody! In reality she was brooding - a natural instinct to hatch eggs. In her mind, she was protecting her nest of eggs from what she perceived as a threat.

We had to physically move her! Guess what we found? Seven eggs! She had managed to move them from the nesting box, across the coop and into the corner. Yes, she was determined, but it wasn't going to work...there is no rooster! She could lay on those eggs for a year, and nothing would hatch...they weren't fertile. She wouldn't hear of it though...

CLICK HERE to read the rest of this article that I wrote for Community Chickens. I explain how we put her in time out to work through her problems.