Be Our Guest

AirBNB: stay with us!

AirBNB

Last weekend we started an adventure and welcomed our first airBNB guests! We hosted a lovely maid of honor & bride the night before the wedding and the very next night we had a pair of guests in town for a separate wedding.

We felt prepared and unprepared at the same time - new sheets, new blankets, new curtains, new rug, new towels - everything clean & set up, with fresh flowers & foliage from around the yard arranged in little mugs & pitchers. It was all so gorgeous! Then we found an extension cord that was a bit loose, an outlet cover that needed to be screwed in, pictures that needed to be hung and a wreath that had been up forever, so we just assumed it was fine when it was actually covered in dust. Ugh!

But things went really well overall and I think this is going to be a great experience - both in us getting a chance to host and also the opportunity to share this beautiful place with others.

the little pond thawed and one of the domestic geese decided she needed a bath in the muddy water.

We're on Facebook!

Trying to stay relevant and more active, so we made ourselves a Facebook page.

Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/WeshFarm/

Canning Peaches

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Peaches and peaches and peaches!!

We've been a bit behind on processing and putting up fruits and veggies for the year. But, peaches are looking great.
We got three big crates and spent all of Tuesday peeling, cutting, jarring, and eating so many peaches!
We ended up with about two dozen jars of peaches, which will hopefully last us until next season.





It's all worth it. Charlie goes crazy for peaches, and who doesn't love a good fruit pie in the middle of winter? Warm and gooey, with a big scoop of ice cream.. now it's so simple. We really love local and fresh too, so this is our best option.

It is a LOT of work though, so I was more then happy when Mom got home from work to help with the jarring part. My goodness, I could not have finished without her.

So, here's how we do our peaches..

We look for the best, ones with big bad spots are put aside to be cut up and frozen (or eaten while we work). This just makes it a little bit easier when we're peeling and slicing the peaches we plan to can. You don't want any bruises going into the jar because that can ruin the whole container. You want something that is at a good ripeness, the kind that gives a little when you squeeze it, but doesn't drip juice.

So the best ones are washed, get a small x (let's say quarter size) cut into the bottom, and parboiled..
- This is a ~30 second bath in boiling water then plop them right into an ice bath. Once cooled off (10 seconds) I pull them out and grab one of those flaps from the x we cut in the bottom. This just helps it peel a bit easier. Also, here's where it's important to really have the best, properly ripened peaches. Too ripe and you'll lose a lot of flesh, not ripe enough and it's very hard to peel.

Once they're peeled we check for any bruises and cut out the pit. I like mine to be halved or quarter when I open them up in the winter, so cut to whatever your preference is. You should be left with a big bowl of beautiful peach flesh with no bruises and not pits or stems.

Toss those peaches into a jar until it is almost full. Now there is a liquid added into the peaches to keep them at the right consistency. If you want no sugar added, you can just fill it up to a half inch below the rim, with water. If you aren't worried about it make a simple syrup and toss that in it's place. This year, for the first time, we made a light simple syrup with local honey. I boiled about 4 cups of water to a cup and a half honey. (occasionally a little less honey, we'll see how it turns out). I love honey, in everything, so hopefully theseare as delicious as usual!
 ** The simple syrup is to keep the color and consistency of the peaches, adding water will not hurt the peaches, but they may brown a bit more and not quite stay the same. Totally your own preference.

So jars are full and ready to hit the water bath. Mom and I had a disagreement, and met in the middle, at 25 minutes. All the tops popped, no casualties. All in all, a pretty good canning experience.

 Here we are right in the middle of a few steps at once, we've got some fresh peaches, peeled peaches, peaches in need of simple syrup, and a few ready to go. It really was a team effort.

And in case you were wondering, of COURSE Charlie was helping us. Here she is getting sleepy, so mom took a break to read her a book. 

July

This fluctuating weather is making us crazy. The excessive rain and then heat have things blooming early, ducks happily digging in mud, and plants growing out of control. I genuinely can't keep up with pruning and containing my tomato plants. Some are growing into all three surrounding tomato cages! Our little tomatoes, pictured to the left two weeks ago, have a hundred tomatoes on each plant. Which is just about enough for me to snack on while weeding, pruning, and harvesting a few to bring inside.  I've also got an abundance of cucumbers flowering and growing all across the garden. It truly is a beautiful thing! I certainly won't complain about too many edibles.

Sully meeting Charlie for her 6 month photos

Our ducks, which we purchased in late May are really growing up nicely. They grow much more quickly then chickens, so we were a bit unprepared. They've been outside since week 3, it's certainly warm enough outside for them. They share space with some of our very spoiled chickens in the "little kid house." This is where newbies go and our most spoiled hen, Sully. It's a tough life for her here on our little farm. 

Our neighbor purchased a great duck house for our ducks, so once it's fixed up a bit, they'll have their own space and safe house to sleep in. Here they are growing out nicely, and enjoying their kiddie pool.

Besides an abundance of fruits and veggies, some amazing flowers are in full bloom. We've had flowers since april it seems, but these I've been really looking forward to. A lily, calla lily, and morning glory growing in among my tomatoes.

Incubating: take two

First hatched chick

A chick unzipped from it's shell

Well, incubating: take one was quite the disappointment, so we tried again. This time we did things a little differently, with dry incubation. Instead of adding water every few days to keep the humidity around 50% we added none, left the vents open (in very humid NJ) and allowed the room to control it. The incubator is kept in the bathroom, at a steady temp inside and outside. Because of this, humidity stayed between 25-30%. 

This second batch from the incubator:

Charlie helping me take pictures

I had 30 eggs inside and 20 made it to lockdown. Pretty good statistics for the obvious infertile eggs and a sizable gap of no electric. Half hatched, 5 others pipped but didn't make it, and the rest didn't make it all the way. I'm pretty happy with these results, we've got another Cream legbar, 2 araucanas, and a few more polish on our chick porch. YUP I've re-named the porch seeing as we've got twenty little chickies running around out there!

To the left is my frizzle polish from the first batch.

To the right is my legbar pullet (90% sure it's a pullet at least!)

Mama and her chicks

So the humans had a 50% hatch rate... My broody hen outside on the other hand had a 100% hatch rate. I gave a first time mom, 8 eggs the same time we started up the incubator. She's a few years old, but hasn't been given the opportunity to hatch eggs, and she did a fantastic job. When I had checked her eggs before I thought only 6/8 were progressing properly, so imagine my surprise when I found seven chicks this morning! Clearly mama hens are better at hatching then we are, even with 3 thermometers and two hygrometers.

 More lessons learned, more chicks on the farm. Pretty soon we'll be selling a few of these polish chicks, if interested, stay tuned!

On another note, my beautiful lilies are blooming:

Incubating: take one

It all started with a teeny tiny pip! 

So a few weeks ago we bought a nice new incubator, a couple of eggs, and did a bunch of reading on incubating. I was using a method that held temperature and humidity steady until the last few days. I read quite a bit about it, and really thought we were ready. Unfortunately, we only had 6 eggs pip and 4 survived! It seems New Jersey may have a bit too high humidity to really get a proper gauge. So, I won't call it a fail, but out of the 18 that were fertile and growing, we only have a handful to show for it. Sigh..

Here's a nice little play by play of the exciting though, because believe me, it was still VERY exciting!!

This is the hatching of one of our mixes, it's a Sultan/Cochin bantam mix. 

Top left is it's little wing popping out. This was about 18 hours after it's first pip, hatching is a long process. 

Bottom left is it breaking the shell all the way around so it can "unzip" the shell around it.

The right pictures is it 75% pushed out of the shell. Only a few minutes until it was free!

Finally free, all it had to do was sleep and dry off a bit. 

Here's hoping our next hatch goes a bit better!