Sorry about the long silence for the last two weeks. We went right from a National Guard weekend into a vacation, and both of those take some recovering from. So even though we were back at the farm on Monday, we didn’t actually get any farming done other than the chores, because we had food to make, school schedules to write, schooling to do (the first day or two back after a break are always a bit bumpy).
We did find out where the ducks prefer to lay their eggs.
Rather than in our beautiful duck-mobile that we built them.
Silly ducks. Alas, we are not going to be able to let them set and hatch a clutch this year because our drake got too close to the goose nest and the gander killed him.
Geese may be low maintenance creatures, but they are not what you would call friendly.
It’s okay for now. Duck eggs are awesome.
Duck eggs, lard, and fresh ground flour will take you baking to the next level.
The problem with fresh ground flour is that it takes time to grind it. With the grinder on the finest setting it takes some muscle to turn it, so the kids aren’t able to turn it by hand. It takes time to set up and take down in the house. It would be a good cardio workout once a week, if it were set up in the gym or shop, but I am not sure how sanitary that would be. Of course the fly-wheel has a groove in it that could accept a belt, and so probably could be hooked up to a motor, or maybe even an exercise bike, but those would take up a lot of space.
You may be wondering why we didn’t just buy an electric mill, and the answer is that this one can do so much more, including grinding wet or oily materials, and since it is muscle powered will work even when the power is out. It’s all about finding the right set-up and making the time to do it. Eventually it will likely be mounted to a permanent butcher block surface in the kitchen or workshop.
In the meantime, the results are hard to argue with.
We ground 6 cups of wheat berry into 10 cups of flour. 5 1/2 went into this bannock, and the remaining 4 1/2 we used the next morning to make muffins.
Dredging lamb tenderloin in seasoning to dry season all day (leftover seasoning mix #2 from the prosciutto experiment).
No sweetener in the muffins other than less than a cup of honey for the whole batch, and frozen blueberries from Aunt Dude’s orchard.
We made 24 mini-muffins, and 12 full sized muffins. And between Daddy and the kids, we ate every last one of them at breakfast.
So we can check both goals off on our board.
As for the lamb tenderloin, it was hands down the best lamb I have ever eaten.
I would willingly pay $15-$20 per pound for this. And it cost us about $2 per pound.
Little Farm in the Big City 