The Front Porch Swing

[lovingmyhens]

Tom turkey wrestled into parts so we can fit it in the oven. I so wish the second oven was working!

Time to rub these bits with spices and get them cooking. :-D I want lunch NOW! Food, food everywhere, but not a bite to eat.

Those are the BIGGEST chicken parts this city girl has ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[lovingmyhens]

Check out these porches! This is just what we need! lol

hey! I thought that's what our looked like!

 

[BantamFan4Life]

Tom turkey wrestled into parts so we can fit it in the oven. I so wish the second oven was working!

Time to rub these bits with spices and get them cooking. :-D I want lunch NOW! Food, food everywhere, but not a bite to eat.

Nice! Did you raise the turkey yourself?

 

[bruceha2000]

It's a gorgeous day out and the breeze feels like a kiss from the Lord! Got my first plowing done and the chickens have gleaned all the surfaced grubs, bugs and worms from the soil. It's funny when you get the tiller out and they know what it's for and start to gather round.

Got some starter soil for my seeds and will be planting those today and placing them in a sunny spot indoors. Never got this kind of soil before but it's organic and has worm castings and bat guano in it....yay for worm and bat poop!

Am mixing that with mushroom mulch and hoping this mix makes for strong seedlings.

I tried to stay with heirloom seeds this time as the last garden showed them to be the best and most vigorous producers:

Cherry tomatoes: Matt's Wild Cherry

What's everyone else planting this year?

Don't know yet, though I know my wife bought some seeds. GUARANTEED: peas

We did Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes a few years ago - hope you have a TALL fence! The tomatoes were tiny, like 1/2 the size of a standard cherry. Very sweet and the branches/vines? grew to 10' to 12'. I had a trellis outside the window of the enclosed porch. Picked some tomatoes from the outside, some by opening the window inside the porch 3' higher than the ground outside.

Thank you. This could be a dangerous shopping venture. Might be too late for this years tomatoes?

Originally Posted by Blooie

Let me check the catalog I have for maturity times. Okay, Mortgage Lifter says 83 days to harvest, but if you start them inside you'll be way ahead of that curve. The Heirloom Rainbow Blend is 80 - 100 days, but again starting them inside gives you a leg up on that. I've always done that - ordered seeds from Gurney's and started them inside, and I never had any problems. They don't ship plants until it's time to plant in your individual zone, but we don't fit into the regular zones because we are high desert, so we have a much warmer micro-climate here than in surrounding areas. We got tired of all of the nurseries deciding for us when to plant and holding off our shipping until they thought our area was ready. But seeds they ship when you order. Good luck! Hope this helps!

There is no sense in planting a tomato or pepper until the air and ground temps are up. They will just sit there and wait for that to happen so you should be OK if you start the seeds soon.

Nice! Did you raise the turkey yourself?

She did indeed. And has quite a few in the freezer. I suspect you are a BIT too far to go pick up a few

Bruce

 

[BantamFan4Life]

She did indeed. And has quite a few in the freezer. I suspect you are a BIT too far to go pick up a few

Bruce

A few what?

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Bruce is right. We raised HUGE turkeys this year ... people wanted smaller birds, obviously. So we have a huge freezer full of huge turkeys. Soon I'll be a pro at parting them out. My trick of parting chickens, where I lift them by the part I'm parting, doesn't work on the turkeys 'cuz I can't lift 40+ lbs with one hand.

 

[BantamFan4Life]

Bruce is right. We raised HUGE turkeys this year ... people wanted smaller birds, obviously. So we have a huge freezer full of huge turkeys. Soon I'll be a pro at parting them out. My trick of parting chickens, where I lift them by the part I'm parting, doesn't work on the turkeys 'cuz I can't lift 40+ lbs with one hand.

Wow! We raised three turkeys last year, our Tom was about 44 pounds! =D

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

So this turkey ... We slaughtered them just before Thanksgiving, as you do, and then we froze them. I got this one out of the freezer a while back and started defrosting it in a cooler with ice and a strong pickling spice brine. It took a long time to defrost! Today, finally, all the ice was melted so I parted it up and rubbed it with my favorite poultry roasting rub and started roasting it in shifts except for the wings. The wings I cooked in the cast iron Dutch oven on the stove top with a little water and two onions.

I just tasted some of the meat from the wings ... and it tastes like corned beef! Sooooooo good!

I feel like I invented a new delicacy. Irish Turkey.

Pass it around and enjoy.

 

[wyoDreamer]

Hm .... corned turkey, hey? Could be pretty tasty.
DH makes a pretty good turkey on the grill. I think I may try raising a turkey or two next year at the new place. Since I will be fairly central for family, I am looking forward to having holidays! I love to cook for friends and family.

 

[Blooie]

Well, we tried to beat the weather...didn't make it. We still have 3 "arches" to cover with chicken wire and all of the hardware cloth to get done. Then we want to put up "baseboards" (1 x 12s all around the inner perimeter) to help keep at least some of the sand in the run! But it was getting so cold and windy we just couldn't work anymore. We had no sooner put all the tools and rolls of wire away when we saw the first snowflakes - and the wind picked up so much that we were dodging tree branches running back into the house. But I think it's looking pretty good! The girls (and Charlie) won't know what to do with so much space!


!
In their temporary pen while we worked on the new one.


I think it's going to work out nicely!


Walking back to the front....there's an entire mountain range hiding behind those snow clouds, and check out the lantern - it's a wrought iron lantern with sand in it - we always fill them with sand in the winter so they don't pack with snow and blow around so badly. I know, we could just take them down and store them until summer, but they make a fun wind gauge!

Deb, the news about your goat is fantastic! I got chills! Nice job on the turkey, Leslie! I have never in my life even learned to properly cut up a chicken! If you were to take the pieces I cut off and try to put them back together to form a whole chicken, you'd be pulling your hair out! Nothing would fit back together!