we're got ducklings!

Even though I had calculated the eggs would hatch just before we went to NC, they actually all hatched right in the middle of our trip! Our petsitter called us, unsure what to do, and it seemed like all but one egg hatched successfully :-)

Guess where we're staying in NC... on the Outer Banks in a little town called DUCK!

knock, knock;, who's there?

A little Downey woodpecker! I had the garage door open and it looks like he flew in that way but then got confused by the two eave windows and kept flying from one to the other without ducking back out by garage door... I finally caught him with my improvised chicken net at the part of the workshop that has a second floor and I can actually get to the eave window ;-)

He was soo cute, and definitely not someone you want hammering around in your new timberframe building!

duck egg surprise!

Even though we had a surprise 40th birthday party Sunday for my hubbie, it was I who was surprised with a dozen of Cayuga Duck hatching eggs! I felt like early Christmas :-)

I stuck them in with the Muscovy eggs and will transfer them to the other incubator when those hatch. No sense in having two going at the same time! Unfortunately, it looks like our surviving rooster Eddie the buff Silkie is a bit of a dud - NONE of the chicken eggs were fertile when I candled them! Man! We need a better rooster for next year...

oh, you can actually see a difference between the Cayuga duck and Muscovy duck eggs here, the cayuga ones look almost orange and the others sort of white greenish. Which is funny since cayuga ducks are famous for their dark green eggs when they first start laying!

new hay manger

When we split the kids from the mommy goats we needed a second hay manger, so I choose one I'd seen on our recent trip back to the Netherlands which seemed to be freestanding. The design and it's use is easy, but it is not a freestanding design - we found out... The very same day we put it in the goat yard they'd tipped it over and Mountain Goat got stuck under it.

She had a small cut on her leg, which did not bleed real much and with bag balm is healing real nicely. She also seems to have pulled or torn a muscle behind her shoulder blade / scapula. Her front left leg is winged out a bit, but though she initially limped there never was much heat or swelling and she's walking fine on it now - not even a week later. The Cornell Ambulatory vet students checked her out as well - I was afraid after talking to friend and RN Eileen she might have dislocated her shoulder - but there was not much to be done. So I help her off the milk stand to be nice, though she did not even want any help with that either this night :-)

I permanently screwed the manger to the split fence post, and found that having it there is really nice because I can fill it without having to go into the pasture! Oh, apart from the 2x4" hemlock the rest is all 1x4"s "dollar pile" wood from saw mill Collins with a piece of left over roofing from our new workshop garage. Nice!

I found a bunch of hardwood pallets last week, perfect for extending Simon's Swamp boardwalk! There are more pallets where these came from, sort of hidden from view behind a dumpster and the plan is to have everything transported to our driveway soon. The car only fits 5 at a time...



Check out these mushroom pics below, we had soo much rain last week the woods are just breaking out in 'shrooms!

I did get three very nice pallets from behind a strip mall dumpster which I altered into a subfloor for the goat tent. With the humongous amount of rain we had last weekend - 5 inches in a day - the tent bedding submerged, the goats got wet, and the two boer boys got sick with coccidiosis. So now I have to chase them each night to give them very foul tasting medicine - which they "love"... it's good exercise though :-)

Mr. Whitey checking out the new raised floor. Initially I planned to cover it up with hay bedding but they seem to like the floor the way it is.

fried zucchini chevre pancakes recipe

If you are local to 14850 and love gardening, canning, livestock keeping - in short, the sustainable life in any shape or form - the forum Ithacan.ning.com would be perfect for you as well!

From the Ithacan "Veggie Gardens" forum - zucchini feta pancake recipe:

"CrowJoy": Mine is loosely based on the Moosewood cookbook recipe for zucchini feta pancakes, I just use whatever I have. Shred the zucc, add in whatever herbs you like (I usually freeze the chevre already herbed but mint and green onion is what the original calls for) and any onion/garlic/other veg you want, add about 6 eggs well beaten and the cheese. Add enough flour to get a good pancake consistency. For fun you can add panko (for crunchier) or baking soda/powder (for puffier) pancakes. Fry in shallow oil until the egg is cooked, drain, cool and freeze.

I tried this recipe with about two large shredded zucchini, about a cup of (dry) goat chevre and lots of homegrown crushed garlic and chopped chocolate mint. I was not sure about the amount of flour and should have used more, liquid appeared in the batter about halfway through the frying. We had a whole stack of cakes and came out with at least four two and half person meals! Great, and the toddler gobbled them like french fries...

Something else you can do with those extra zucchini is make zucchini lasagna. Replace the sheets of pasta with strips of 1/4 inch zucchini. Just as filling with a lot less carbs.

And not to forget stuffed zucchini, with a tomato sauce, ground beef / pork and brown rice filling, sprinkled on top with shredded sheep cheese and baked in the oven (350F for about 30 minutes - prebake zucchini, sliced in half, scooped out and seasoned with olive oil and pepper for at least another 30-45 minutes to make sure it's done).

Doesn't this look good?!


Here the pancakes are sizzling in the skillet. This was a first for me, frying in open oil. And a bit disconcerting, after seeing the Mythbusters Fire in the Hole exploding frying oil episode...

all done :-) I stacked them between two plates to keep them warm after degreasing (sort of) on paper towels.

remember our sugar maple adventure?

This is the result: a wonderful stack of different sized wood planks, both straight cut and natural edge... We never had a good tree go down before, but man, am I glad I pursued the idea to have it milled instead of chopped into firewood! We even have a couple planks nearly 20 inches wide, you don't see (commercial) hard wood that wide very much anymore, the big trees just aren't around the way they used to...

And yes, that is my bike. I am fortunate to be able to pick up our son from daycare by bike - if I want too :-) He loves it though, and points out all the interesting things along the way. I'm mostly panting, trying to get back up the hill (it's 2 minutes to school and at least 20 minutes to get back home...).


We're not really looking to sell the wood, though I did talk to a woodworker at the Tburg Farmers Market (a possible trade for a side table) and a fine carpenter, welder, sculptor neighbor Rob Licht ( a possible trade for a bonfire bbq grill). And of course, not to forget, our initial trade with Ithaca Farmers Market woodworker Dave Brown who paid half the milling fee for a fair share of boards. Thanks, Dave, for making this (ad)venture possible!