A Weekend Get-Away

It is amazing to me how quickly time passes, and how soon this blog gets out of date. Again, my apologies. This past week has been consumed with work and the usual chores on the farm. It is lovely to see the days getting longer, finally. Soon the grass will start growing and I can be thinking about starting things for the garden.


We did, however, manage to squeeze a little winter get-away into our busy schedule just last weekend. I was in charge of finding accommodations with the following three criteria: will let us bring our old dog, has a fireplace, and on the beach. We were also focusing on the Long Beach, Washington, area as it was familiar to us and about as short of a drive as we could get to get us to the ocean. It's always a crap-shoot regarding the weather on the coast in the winter, but we totally lucked out and got a beautiful weekend, right up until we had to drive home, which was totally OK.


After much searching on line, I found The Breakers. It is a great place with units that are owned by people who then rent them out when they're not using them. Ours felt homey as soon as we walked in the door! It was a wonderful find. There was also a pool house and a hot tub that I didn't use, but Frank made sure to take a daily soak!


Frank and Sandy also put in lots of beach time. It's the one thing they miss from living in Oregon so they really probably overdid it! Lewis and Clark, while they were wintering in Fort Clatsop, Oregon, made a foray up to this area and there are many historical markers. This is one identifying the location of a giant sturgeon that Clark encountered. Sandy is checking out to see if it's real or not!


On Saturday we ventured up to Oysterville, which used to be the county seat until 'the raiders' from South Bend descended on the town in the dark of night and over the water to steal all the records away. This plaque bears testimony of the bad blood that still exists! Now, Oysterville has about 10 historic homes, a church, and an oyster farmer, who sells to the public as well as restaurants and such.
Going to Oysterville is truly like stepping back in time.


At night Frank would work on some school work and Sandy would do what tired, old dogs do. Mostly she was on her big dog bed that we brought, but occasionally she'd venture up on the couch for a few minutes but it wasn't as good as stretching out on her own bed. We loved having the fireplace (I miss that from our old house) and we ate bad things that tasted really good from the joint across the street. It was then time to go back home and start back up on eating more healthy!

Not much else going on here. We did do our part to stimulate the economy by ordering new carpet for the house. It should be here in the next couple of weeks. We are NOT looking forward to practically emptying the house but it will be so nice to get this crappy old carpet out of here.


I also had a nice surprise when I went out to clean the barn on Thursday and found a large bale of the most beautiful hay just inside the door. Come to find out our neighbor, who works for the state roads department, found it and thought to bring it home for me. What a great guy! Only a horse person could think this was such a wonderful gift! It's too rich to feed to the donkeys or the fat mini, and LB didn't like it (who ever heard of a picky pony?) but Bailey is sure loving this good treat!


Spring sure feels like it's here in the Northwest and I am excited to see how our blueberries and raspberries do this 2nd year after they were transplanted. I am also more than ready to start seedlings for our garden, but it's still way too early. I also need to get Larry's field fertilized soon so I can move the horses and donkeys over there in late March, then fertilize this field and let it rest. There is always something to do on Red Pony Ranch!

The lost art of making bread

I was surprised at the response I got from my last blog regarding the making of home-made bread. More than a few people wanted the recipe, so I thought I'd go one better and devote today's blog to not only giving the recipe, but showing how it's done!


I have to give credit where credit is due. The inspiration from this recipe comes from the book pictured above by Beth Hensperger. Additionally, I would not attempt this recipe without the muscle that Julia, my KitchenAid mixer, provides.


I wanted to point out here that I buy my yeast in bulk in the baking section of my grocery store. It is very economical this way, and also allows me to measure out exactly what I want rather than be restricted to how much might come in one of those little envelopes in the three-pack. I keep it in this airtight cannister right on my counter and it lasts me at least a year. Whatever you do, don't get any moisture in it, or it'll set it off!


The only thing even slightly tricky about this recipe is that it uses a few different kinds of flours and grains that necessitates some shopping prior to bread-baking day. I keep them all together in one container so I can grab just that when I want to make bread. Here's what you'll need to start the sponge:

1 1/2 tablespoons of yeast
2 cups warm water
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 cup rye flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour


Combine those ingredients and mix very well with your paddle in the mixer. We'll be switching to the kneading hook later, but now is the time for good mixing. When well mixed, just leave it alone to proof for about an hour. There's a picture later of what this should look like before you move on.


When you're done starting your sponge, you'll need to put some boiling water on some grains to soften them to add to the sponge later. Here's what you'll need to put together in a bowl:

1/3 cup corn meal
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup mixed grains (I use a 10 grain breakfast cereal)
1/3 cup barley or bran flakes, or wheat germ
1 tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons butter or oil
2 cups boiling water


This is what it looks like once you add the boiling water and stir it all around. Let me stop here and talk about the grains. I have used different grains and in different quantities. I figure as long as I have about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of grains, and not too much of any one kind, I'll be fine. I actually buy all these things at WinCo in their bulk section in just the quantities I need. If you don't have a WinCo, I bet you can find all kinds of good grains at Fred Meyer's health food section or buy Bob's Red Mill grains in the flour section of most regular grocery stores.


OK, back to the sponge. It should be all bubbly and fluffy before you move on. Once it is, add the cooled, soaked grains and mix well. Now add about 2 cups of regular flour and continue to mix well with your paddle attachment.


Once you feel your mixture is getting quite thick, you can switch to the dough hook attachment. Of course, if you don't have a mixer that has a dough hook, you'll have to switch to a stout spoon and eventually do it by hand. You don't want to burn out a lesser mixer with stiff dough.

Add 2 more cups of regular flour (you're up to 4 total) and let your dough hook work it in. This will take quite a while.


Continue to add in flour until the dough is stiff but still fairly sticky. I usually end up adding another cup or cup and a half. I also eventually end up turning it out on my counter and kneading in the last bit of flour. It is much better for the dough to be softer than stiffer. Here is a picture of it ready to go into the bowl for rising. You can see that it stands up on its own fairly well, but frankly, it is stuck to the counter fairly well too. This is the way I like it. Makes for a softer bread.


You can see now that I have it in the bowl and covered with plastic wrap. I do that so the top doesn't dry out and restrict the rising. Let the dough sit until it doubles in size. This takes varying amounts of time depending on how warm it is. Here, at about 68 degrees it takes maybe an hour or hour and a 1/2. Just enough time to clean the barn and do a few other chores!


This is what it should look like when it's met the requirement of 'doubling'. I've let it go too far before as evidenced by huge bubbles and it seemed quite wet, so I just punched it down and let it rise again. That worked totally fine. So when it has risen well, punch it down in the bowl, then turn it out on the floured counter, then knead a few times to work all the bubbles out.


Take a sharp knife and cut the dough in half. Then shape it roughly into a loaf size and put it into a loaf pan that has been greased or sprayed with non-stick cooking spray (my preference).


Let it rise in the loaf pans for about 45 minutes to an hour. In this picture, these loaves are almost too risen as they're looking a little less smooth and like they want to collapse. I knew from experience if I got them in the oven right away that I'd be OK, but if I let them go any longer I would have needed to punch them down, reshape and let them rise again.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. When it's hot, put in the loaves and immediately turn the temperature down to 375 degrees. Cook for about 45 to 50 minutes.


Take them out of the oven and let sit for a few minutes. Fairly quickly, however, remove them from their pans so they can cool and release some of the moisture that might make them soggy if you left them in the pans. Let them cool as long as you can before you can't control yourself (or your spouse or child) any longer and want a slice of this lovely warm bread. We always have real butter on hand, as well as some homemade strawberry or blackberry jam.


I hope to really encourage you to try to make bread for your family. It is so wholesome and has nothing in it that you can't pronounce! Just grains, yeast, salt, a little sugar and a little fat. And truly, it doesn't take all day. It goes in spurts and you can do lots of things while it is rising. After a couple of times working with this recipe, I found that this bread is incredibly flexible and easy. The best of all it is GOOD! Give it a try!

Enjoying the simple life

We so greatly enjoy our simple life here on our little farm and also get a lot of pleasure from sharing these things with you here on our blog. Today, I had the camera with me all day as we went about our chores.


Here are some of our hens enjoying the soft dirt under our cedar tree. They are loving this sun and reasonably warm temperatures (high 40's) so they can both dust- and sun-bathe. There aren't many bugs for them to chase and eat, but there is still quite a bit of vegetation for them to enjoy.


Here is my favorite hen. Her name is either Bean or Deana. There are actually two of these that I can't tell apart. Whichever one I'm looking at of the two is my favorite! The breed is Barred Rock, or some call it Plymouth Rock. They are big hens, calm, hardy, and reliable layers. They also do not show aggression towards the other chickens like some do. Just very sweet hens.


This is our worthless rooster. I just wanted to show you how pretty he is, because that's all he has going for him! He's too small to make the connection to fertilize any eggs (not that we'd hatch any anyway!) and the hens don't really give him the time of day either. He thinks he's tough though, and quite entertaining, so I guess he's not worthless after all.


The chickens weren't the only ones enjoying the sun today! Here is baby (not a baby any more at 2 1/2 years old!) Daisy and of course her mom Lily is dozing nearby. A couple of years ago we had some sand delivered on that spot where Daisy is laying, and although we moved most of it, I guess it warms up in the sun and makes a nice nap spot. This farm would not be the same without the loving, sweet spirits of these donkeys.


Frank continued pruning all the storm damage off the trees in the mini's paddock. Of course Yak had to be in the middle of things as you can see here. He nibbled on them some, but he was more interested in using them to scratch his nether regions as usually there aren't too many pokey things at just the right height like this!


Of course Frank couldn't resist giving little Yak some love. Yak is a very huggable little horse and is definitely hard to resist. He's a great little nursing-home visitor, too!


Before I went outside to do chores, I started a batch of bread. Maria (our friend and former exchange student from Germany) got me started on this recipe and now I make it fairly often. It's got lots of different whole grains in it, and is not as sweet as most american-style breads. This pile of risen dough is what I found when I got back inside! Better deal with that fast!


It's hard to believe that I punched that dough down and got all that into these two loaf pans. I used to do these loaves free-form (boule's) but it was hard to cut evenly and get into the toaster, so I switched to these pans which make slices that are the right size to fit into our toaster.


YUM!! This is the finished product! I wish you all could smell how good this smells. Nothing makes a house smell like home more than homemade bread (OK, maybe apple pie, but you get the idea).

We truly do lead a very simple life here and wouldn't have it any other way: enjoying each day's gifts that God bestows on us. We love company and sharing all our blessings, so feel free to come visit! Just give us a call!!

Time got away from me!

I can't believe how much time has passed so quickly since I wrote that last blog. I surely apologize to my regular readers and hope to use this time to bring you all up to date with the happenings here on the ranch.


Truly this has been a winter with weather of biblical proportions. Before you panic...this is not our farm. It is a picture of a farm in our area that got flooded out due to heavy rains that followed the gigantic snowfall that I chronicled earlier. Ordinarily we are well prepared to handle a 'pineapple express' that dumps a couple of inches of warm rain a day upon us, but it came when we still had all that snow and flooding was inevitable. Our farm is high and dry, but many people in western Washington suffered greatly and continue to deal with the aftermath. Everyone was thankful when the rain ended, but the ground and air were so saturated that we then got to experience the next plague of egypt:


It's hard to take a picture that shows how thick the fog actually was. I finally found Bailey in the mist and got this one. This fog hung on for about a week and just cleared today. What a blessing to finally have the sun!


This is a picture of the Olympic Mountains that you can see from our house when the sky is clear. As the crow flies, they are about 50 miles from us. It would take about 4 hours to drive there as they are across Puget Sound from where we live.


So Frank took advantage of the beautiful weather to deal with some more of the things that broke due to the heavy snows. There are some trees in the mini's paddock that broke to pieces, so he was tackling getting all the bad branches out of there. Of course, he had plenty of help, and during one trip through the gate to the burn pile, Little Bit decided he wanted to come into the paddock too. This made Yakki's day as then those two proceeded to wrestle, chase, and rear...and thankfully quit 'helping'. Sweet Maddie stood quietly by and observed all that was going on around her, getting pats from Frank whenever he went by her. Of course he had to stop and pet the bad boys too!


I know that earlier I was complaining that the hens were freeloading and not producing, but I take that back now. They are obviously happy chickens and this is what the 12 hens produced in the last three days. Good girls! We did have one chicken funeral recently when "Alzheimers", who had been acting weird since last summer, lost strength and the will to live and went to chicken heaven. So we're down to 12 hens now, and one bad attitude little rooster. The three new girls were a wonderful addition to our flock and I hope to find something similar next fall to make up for the inevitable reduction in egg production as these older girls enter their 4th year. Wow, it's hard to believe we've enjoyed their company that long!


Frank has been enjoying his on-line teaching job and I am doing my usual subbing. We are looking forward to a couple of get-aways: a weekend trip to Long Beach on the Washington Coast in late January, and especially our spring break trip to Indio (Palm Springs area) to soak up some sun and float endlessly in the lazy river at our resort. It's nice to have found a reliable house/horse sitter in Kacey. We are also looking forward to a cross-country trip back to Wisconsin to see Frank's mom as well as meet a few of Jayne's draft horse friends (Ange, Kari, maybe John?) along the way.

We hope you are all doing well and keeping warm this winter. I can already tell the days are getting longer! Spring is not far behind! I'm already drooling over my seed and root stock catalogs! I'm having fun trying to decide what to add to our little farm this year. Last year it was raspberries, blueberries, table grapes, hazelnut trees and a peach tree. Maybe a pear tree? More grapes? It's so fun just thinking about it! Hope you are having as much fun anticipating spring as I am!

The meltdown is ON!!

Whooo hooo!! I woke up to 40 degree, rainy weather this morning. Never have I been so happy to hear it raining!! The piles of snow are shrinking nicely, and while there isn't any green grass yet to be seen, it can't be far behind. Above is our oft-pictured deck off the office. You can see my pitiful yardstick listing to the west. It used to measure 21" of snow (see previous blogs) but its job is about over now.


How nice to see wet, non-icy pavement! The chicken coop wall is just on the left and you can see that my worries about flooding are so far unfounded. The water appears to be sinking into the earth rather than flowing over the concrete and into the coop. Yeah!


The "dome o' death" has fallen into the run, making a drift that is higher than the chicken's little door. Luckily, all chickens are accounted for, so there is no worries about there being a flat hen under all that snow. The girls have continue their good laying streak at 5 or more eggs per day, but I'm afraid they might go on strike as I took their heat lamp away from them today. They surely don't need it when it's above freezing. I'm sure I'll get those chicken cranky looks and grumbles about it though!


The big snows and cold weather have caused my hay supply to be seriously depleted. I think I'll be OK, though, maybe only cutting it close in March when the grass starts really growing.


Sandy loves the fact that there is hay missing off the stack, especially since it's pretty much a big stair step to the top of the pile. She was racing up and down to the ceiling, then rolling on the bales and rooting in the cracks, then back to racing up and down again. It's hard to believe that this girl is over 13 years old! She's a happy, active dog.


This is my favorite picture today!! I know most of you won't appreciate it, but with Frank unable to help with the chores this week (thank you so much for all you do, honey!) I am thrilled to get the hose back in action today (Frank was bucketing water to everybody) and the poop-wagon is in place. Frank had been carting the wheelbarrows through thick snow down into our dump spot in the lower pasture, and there is no way I would have been able to do that. So our neighbor kindly is letting us use his utility trailer on which to collect the cleanings and then he'll take it back to enrich his garden. We are blessed with wonderful neighbors. With all of us being pretty much stuck in place, we had some great time carrying by foot our cookie plates to the neighbors. We were invited to one home on Christmas Eve (where we had PRIME RIB!! Sandy is still enjoying the bones!) and another on Christmas day for turkey dinner. We so enjoyed the time spent with these great families. Even though the weather was trying, it brought some wonderful blessings as well.

Wow, no snow in the last 24 hours!!

My mom was complaining that the blog doesn't have pictures of me, so I had Frank take this picture to make her happy. I am leaning down quite a bit. I didn't want you to think I was barely taller than the bad pony. As usual, someone else was horning in on the picture: notice Bailey's big mug to the right.


We are able to get a little bit of a look at the damage left behind of the storms so far. Here is the gutter on the east side of the barn. You had to pretty much expect this with the amount of snow sliding off the roof. But you can see that at least the Christmas light's held on! My yardstick on the back porch that yesterday measured 21" of snow is now showing 18". I don't know if it's melting a little or compacting. Probably a little of both.


Here's the west side of the barn. All of the snow has slid off this side and luckily didn't take the gutter with it. This pile is 1/2 way up the side of the barn and definitely much taller than the mini's. The weather report is for more snow sporadically for the next three days, but hopefully not the big dumps like the last few storms. Please!!


This is the door to our shop. It used to be a garage that the previous owners enclosed and put two bedrooms on. The front bedroom is now my chicken coop (there is a door on the right you can't see in the foreground) and the other bedroom is at the back of the shop. That one is really nice (carpeted, insulated, finished wallboard, trim, full closet. We store my canned goods and a few other household items in there. Anyway, you can see how deep the snow is that Frank pushed off the roof. I am sure hoping the thaw is slow or that sucker is going to flood my coop and shop. Oh well, not much we can do about it!


Here's another picture to make my mom happy. Hi Mom!


All this inside time has kept me busy making Christmas goodies. I have yet to make the chocolate covered pretzels (white and regular), then I need to find something decent to put them on/in to take to the neighbors. We have not been able to get out to go shopping so I don't have any pretty plates or containers to put them in. Oh well, it's the cookies that count, not the plate!


We hope you and yours are experiencing warmth and peace as you prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. I was just telling Frank that I was thinking about Mary and Joseph as they were trying to find a place to rest and deliver the Christ-child. They had no home at all and had to bed down in a barn with the animals. A very humble beginning for our savior. I feel quite foolish complaining about being snowbound in my warm home, and thankful that this forced quiet time around the holidays has me contemplating more deeply the reason behind it all, namely the greatest gift ever given: out of God's love for us, he sent his Son to earth to make us right with Him. Merry Christmas.

OK, that's IT!!

It crossed my mind that maybe the reason it keeps snowing is that I keep blogging about it. Well, my fears were confirmed as we woke up to about 8 MORE inches of snow that fell overnight. We turned the news on this morning and heard about a building collapsing in Marysville (next town over) and we talked about our buildings and decided that our shop probably needed the weight taken off of it. So here's Frank with his HUGE chore today. We probably should have bought a snow shovel. Poor guy.


Last night about 9pm when we went out to the barn to tuck everybody in the for the night, the lights flickered and then were OUT. This is not unexpected but definitely undesirable! So I ran back into the house, got our headlamps (everyone should have these, they're GREAT) and we finished our chores, came in and wrapped up the little parrots with our sub zero sleeping bag, turned down the heat to about 62 and went to bed. Thankfully, at exactly 2:04 am the power came back on. So did the TV, and a couple of lights we forgot to turn out, but the heater did not kick on as I expected. So I went and pushed up the thermostat and it didn't click until about 64. Now that's pretty good to go to bed at about 68 degrees and only lose 4 degrees in 5 hours. It's probably all the snow insulating the place!


This is the back porch by our office from the inside. What you can't tell is that this porch is about 7 inches below the threshold for the door.


If you can't read it, that's the 21 inch marker above the snow. Then I took this long shot so you could see that I took this measurement outside the same office sliding doors.


I didn't get any big horse pictures today, but thought that it was funny to see Yak even deeper in the snow! I always called him a weiner-horse before, but now that he doesn't have any legs it's confirmed!!


The last thing I want to tell you about is our fences. They have taken a huge beating. I keep telling Frank that it's not a matter of IF the horses get out, but when. I am keeping hay in front of them all the time, so that's keeping them fairly close to the barn for now. I did get a little scare this morning when I went out and saw one line totally down, so I grabbed some supplies and walked (with snow up to my thighs!) out there and was shocked and pleased to find a number of fresh horse tracks right up to the breach, but no one went through. Those are some good horses if you ask me! We lost about 10 insulators on the Horse Guard fence system in the back pasture that I'll replace as soon as I can get to them. The side pasture by the barn is just T-posts, insulators and an electrobraid kind of line. That's the one that's not holding up under the weight of the snow. I guess you get what you pay for, because the Horse Guard lines are doing great (except for those insulators that just cracked in the below zero weather) holding up the weight of the snow.

Keep tuned for more episodes of "As the Snow Falls"! Hopefully the forecast is correct in that we'll have some above-freezing temps starting Christmas Day. Until then we've got one more blast of snow coming tomorrow night they say. In the meantime, we're doing everything we can to keep our animals and property safe! God bless!