Fruit

A little while ago I wrote about all the things we’ve planted here.  I remembered the veggies, but I forgot the fruit!

“She considereth a field, and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.”  Proverbs 31:16

Grapes:  I haven’t planted a whole vineyard, but I do have two grapevines planted.  Growing up we had a few grape vines on our property.  If my memory is correct (and it probably isn’t) we had two vines of white grapes and two of purple (or red?).  I couldn’t begin to tell you what variety they were, but it really didn’t matter because eating grapes fresh off the vine is a real treat no matter the variety.

Grapes were something I always wanted to plant and Greg listened to me talk of this quite often.  We began to research grape varieties for our region and we decided on muscadines.  They are native to our area and can be found growing in the wild.  We actually have some growing in our pasture, but they grow high in a pine tree and I can only reach a few.  Muscadine grapes love acidic soil (which we have) and they are disease resistant which is really good for our humid summers.

 

Citrus Fruits:  Our neighbor blessed us with several bags of grapefruit this year.  At first I wondered what on earth I would do with them all, because I didn’t remember liking grapefruit the one time I ate it many years ago.  These grapefruit were so delicious (being ripened on the tree) that I ended up having to ration them out, because the kids would have eaten them all the very first day we got them.  So when we were at Lowes and saw some grapefruit trees on sale for 50% off, we knew we had to get some.  We ended up getting some tangelos while we there as well.

Plum Trees:  Our local feed store sets out fruit trees at the first sign of spring.  It is quite tempting to load up our vehicle with some every time we go by there.  There were already two pear trees and two apple trees on the property when we moved here so we didn’t plan on buying any of those.  The pear trees are old and only produced three pears between the two trees last year.  This year I did some heavy pruning since they were covered in vines and looked like they hadn’t been pruned….ever.  Hopefully we will get some more pears this year.  The apple trees were young, and an escaped goat broke one while bending it over to eat the leaves on the top.  I’m not sure if we will ever get any apples off of that one lonely tree.  Peach trees are a lot of trouble and I had never eaten a kumquat so we ruled out those types of trees.  I would love to grow some lemons and limes, but I decided this wasn’t the year for those, so that left us with the plum trees.  Everyone in the family loves plums so this was a perfect fit for us.  The variety we are growing is Santa Rosa.  We hope to add some more plum trees of a different variety.

Ground Cherries:  Last year I planted ground cherries and only one plant survived, but that one plant made me want more.  I love the fact that I can plant seeds and get fruit the same year, unlike fruit trees where you have to wait awhile.  This year I started more from seed and they are doing quite well.  I have around 15 plants that made it (one of the kids mistook my ground cherries as weeds and we lost a few).

Blueberries:  To say that I love blueberries would be an understatement.  Almost every year for the last 7 or 8 years we have gone to a local farm to pick blueberries.  The first year we only picked a couple pounds.  Over the next few years we picked more each year so that we could freeze them and use them year round.  As our family continued to grow, we needed more berries and over the last three years we picked between 75 and 100 pounds each trip.  Yes, we really picked that many.

With our love (or is it my love?) for blueberries, it seemed fitting to plant some blueberry bushes.  I’m not sure if Greg was trying to send me a message that he didn’t want to go picking anymore or not, but he ended up buying 14 blueberry bushes!  Some were very young, and some were more mature and are already producing berries.  I don’t think I’ll be able to get 100 pounds of off them, so he still has some blueberry picking trips to make.

The Unknown Fruit:  There are two trees in my pasture that blossomed earlier in the spring and the blossoms led me to believe that they were mayhaws, but now I’m not so sure.  I read that they are ripe at the end of April into the middle of May.  Well, here we are in May and they are nowhere near being ripe.  So, I’ll have to do a little more research and find out what they are.

A Time To Be Born (Part 2)

Right in the midst of all our baby goats being born, our guineas began to hatch.  In 3 days we had 10 little guineas born.

Our incubator doesn’t have an automatic turner so we have to mark all our eggs with “x‘s” and “o’s”.  This makes it easier when turning the eggs because you can keep track of which ones have already been turned.

Two of the hatchlings were white and the rest were “normal” guinea colors.  The girls were hoping for some lavender colored guineas like Earl, but that didn’t happen this time.

This is only the second time we have used our incubator.  Before we had the incubator we always ordered our chicks from online hatcheries or from the feed store (they get their chicks from the hatcheries as well).  One big difference we have noticed between chicks (or keets in the case of guineas) hatched at home and ones that come from the hatchery, is that the ones out of our incubator rarely make a peep.  They are the most content chicks and keets ever.  They eat, drink, and snuggle with each other.  On the other hand, any chicks we’ve ever gotten from a hatchery seemed to make noise all the time. We are enjoying our quiet little keets!

+

A Time To Be Born (Part 1)

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:  A time to be born,…”  Ecclesiastes 3:1, 2a 

We have been patiently waiting for our baby goats to arrive for the last five months and they are finally here!  Well, most of them.  Last week 3 of our 4 does kidded.

We had baby goats born Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.  We also picked up two little orphans on Saturday, but I’ll get to that later.  Blossom was the first on the farm to kid.

She had this beautiful little baby last Wednesday.  It is a little buckling.

Next up was Hope.  We went out at 5 a.m. on Friday and she had already given birth and was cleaning up the baby.  I was hoping for a little goat with the same glossy black coat that she has, but this kid came out looking just like his sire.

Hope’s kid is also a buckling.

Then on Sunday afternoon Ginger had her baby.  Any idea what it was?  You guessed it, another buckling!  We were really hoping for a doeling.  Fortunately, we have one more doe left to kid and I’m hoping she will have one.

I love this little buck’s colors.

Bear and Daisy love the new babies.  They bonded instantly.   It was so neat to watch them come in and help clean the bucklings once the mamas were done.

Even Freckles, our other dog, wanted to watch over the new herd members.

Sometimes….

If there is one thing that I have learned with raising children and animals together is that sometimes…

You just need to hug a chicken!

Happy Monday!

It Only Took 13 Years!

Thirteen years.  Thirteen long years.  That’s how long my husband had to wait for me to be able to make a good buttermilk pie.  Before I moved to Texas I had never eaten or even heard of a buttermilk pie (or brisket, jambalaya, gumbo & a bunch of other things).  I never knew what I was missing.  Buttermilk pie is wonderful, that is, if you can make one.  For some reason I could not make one worth eating.

The first time I made a buttermilk pie I couldn’t wait for Greg to take a bite.  He was gracious, but I could tell that the pie wasn’t a winner.  So I tried again and failed again.  I don’t know how many different recipes I tried, it felt like hundreds, but still no winner.  One night I made an applesauce custard and after trying it Greg began to laugh.  I wasn’t sure if I should be offended that he was laughing.  When he finally gained his composure he informed me that my applesauce custard tasted more like a buttermilk pie than any attempt I had ever made.  After that I decided that buttermilk pie was just one of those things I would never master.  I stopped trying to make them all together.  If Greg wanted a buttermilk pie he could eat one at the family Thanksgiving  dinner.

That was several years ago.  I don’t know what changed, but a few weeks ago I felt like taking up the challenge again.  I love to cook and bake and I decided I wasn’t going to let this pie get the best of me.  A few different recipes later and I struck gold!  For the first time in thirteen years I made a buttermilk pie worth eating!

I combined my sister-in-law’s pie recipe (with a little less sugar) and a pie crust recipe a dear friend gave me years ago.  The great thing about this crust recipe is that you make it in the pan you are going to bake your pie in.

Pat in the Pan Pie Crust

1 1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. oil (I use coconut, but you can use veggie oil if you prefer)
3 Tbsp. milk

In your pie pan combine the flour, sugar and salt.  Then pour in your melted coconut oil and milk; mix well.

Pat the crust up the sides of the pan and press flat in the bottom.  For this recipe we don’t need to prebake the pie crust, but if you need it for a recipe that calls for a prebaked crust, it does well at 375º for about 10 minutes.

 

Buttermilk Pie

1 stick butter (softened)         1 tsp. vanilla                                                                                                     1 1/2 c. sugar                            5 eggs                                                                                                                 3 Tbsp. flour                             1 c. buttermilk

Preheat 325º.  Mix the butter and sugar until well combined.

Add flour, vanilla, and eggs; mix well.  You can add the eggs one at a time, but I usually just do them all at the same time.  Finally stir in the buttermilk.  Your mixture will not be thick.

Pour into your pie crust/shell and bake at 325º for 45 min, or until firm.  The top should look golden brown and the center shouldn’t be jiggly [yes, that is a technical kitchen term 😉 ]

Let the pie cool completely, this is the hard part.  We actually enjoy our pies even more once they’ve sat in the refrigerator overnight, but they rarely make it that long.

This recipe will make two regular pies or one deep dish.  You will have to bake longer for a deep dish.  I used to have about 6 pie plates but somehow over the years my number has been drastically reduced to 0.  So, I just use what I have.  The shape of your dish won’t change the taste.

Now go get in the kitchen and bake a pie!