But inside, it’s another story. The woodstove keeps the kitchen wonderfully cozy and I personally couldn’t be more comfortable. Upstairs, one heat lamp is keeping a large closet warm enough that the incubator that I keep in there can run accurately … and hatch out the batch of little Maran chicks that are ending their egg slumber.

Two of the eggs have already hatched, revealing two perfectly formed, alert, active black copper Maran chicks. They’re a few rooms over from where I’m sitting, basking under the red brooder lamp. (The red light makes it all but impossible to get a decent photo, sorry!)

A friend has generously donated his time and expertise to building some breeding pens for me, which will hopefully be done soon and I will begin pulling purebred eggs from my own stock to hatch. Then clutches of eggs like this, from the ducks, will go into the incubators rather than my baking. These eggs are from all our ducks – Pekins, Rouen, Khaki Campbell and Black ducks. I think they’re beautiful.

I like to start chicks early, so they’ll be laying before the days get too short. Yes, it does mean extra ‘coddling’ with heat lamps and such, but having the new eggs in October rather than fighting for them in December (when the short days inhibit the chickens’ inner “laying” clock) is well worth it. And it’s nice to shut the heat lamps off in July and simply enjoy the remainder of the summer with the livestock and kids.

For Valentine’s Day, I made a (mostly) sole food dinner for my loved ones: butternut squash white lasagna with fruit/ice cream/chocolate sauce for dessert (see me veering a little bit too far from the ‘local’ part of the challenge?).

While roasting two acorn squash, cut in half and ‘gutted’, in a covered baking dish at 250F, I fried up a pound of utterly delicious garlic pork sausage from Tide Mill Farm.

When the acorn squash was soft through, I let it cool and scooped it out of the skin. I whizzed it up in the food processor together with an equal amount of cottage cheese until it was of a ricotta cheese consistency.

Here’s one of the reasons I adore my ducks, who lay eggs with utter faithfulness. My Black ducks have just begun their seasonal laying pattern and their green eggs are almost to pretty to eat.

But eat them, we do. And would you look at that huge yolk! Mix the egg into the butternut/cottage cheese mixture.

Build your lasagna by layering pasta noodles, squash/cheese mixture, and greens. For my greens, I alternated layters between a minced mixture of this gorgeous kale and parsley and this stunning fresh greenhouse spinach.

Layer it up – I usually make 3 layers. For the top, make sure your greens are well protected to prevent burning. I sprinkled a layer of parmesan cheese over the top. Bake at about 350F for about an hour. Keep an eye on it and cover it if it’s browning too quickly on top. In the end you should have something like this. The squash makes for a delightfully smooth sweetness, while the intense garlic of the sausage meat keeps things interesting.

For dessert, I made a simple syrup using lemons. To one cup of organic sugar, I added the juice of one lemon plus the water necessary to equal a cup. I whisked these together over a medium-high heat and let it come to a boil. After a brief boil, while whisking it, I turned it off and let it cool.

I cut up a pineapple and a tangerine, and added a couple of handfuls of blueberries I’d frozen this summer and drizzled a little of the cooled lemon syrup over it.

When it was time to serve dessert, I scattered the fruit over a scoop of vanilla ice cream and topped it with a little drizzle of lemon syrup and bigger drizzle of hot fudge sauce (made by melting 2 T butter and 2 T unsweetened baking chocolate together, then whisking in sugar to taste and thinning to the desired consistency with unsweetened, fat-free evaporated milk). Mmmm. This one, I know, is really stretching it to be considered a SOLE dinner – but it was Valentine’s Day and something special was called for.

On a farming note, a very generous friend has been building some breeding pens for the chickens and it looks like I’ll be able to start pulling fertile eggs within 3 weeks (remember, the birds have to be separated for 2 weeks before the resulting eggs can be safely considered purebred because the hen stores semen in her body for up to 10 days). Please take a look at this post and let me know what chicks you would like, and when. Preorders will take precedence over last-minute requests so even if you don’t want your chicks until April or May, it’s better to let me know now to ensure that what you want will be available when you want it. I wrap up my breeding season in June.

One of our Plymouth Barred Rock cockerels provided the main ingredient. (Niek and I have decided that the Barred Rocks are definitely our go-to bird; it’s not a wonder that this has been such a reliable heritage breed through the generations.) It was necessary to butterfly the bird, meaning the backbone was removed (and saved for stock) and the joints were cracked in order to lay the bird as flat as possible in the baking dish, skin side up.

Make a paste of 1 Tbsp of spicy mustard (if you don’t make your own – and I don’t – Dijon works very well), 1 Tbsp dried herbs de Provence, 1 additional tsp of dried rosemary, 1 tsp to 1 Tbsp freshly ground black pepper, 1 tsp sea salt. I left out the 1 tsp of red pepper flakes because my kids are still learning to appreciate truly spicy food. Pat this paste liberally over the chicken, paying particular attention to any areas that might dry out – the breast and the drumsticks. Drizzle oil or dab butter over the chicken, especially those potentially dry areas, and cover the pan with aluminum foil so it’s as airtight as possible. Cook in a pre-warmed oven of 425F for about 25 minutes.

After 25 minutes or a half hour, add one cup of coarsely chopped olives. Please don’t use the nasty green olives on the shelves of the supermarket – spend a few extra cents to get good quality olives. I used a mix of cured black Moroccan olives (which have a very pungent, salty flavor – be sure to remove the pits, though!) and some firm green olives cured Greek-style in garlic and olive oil. Spread the chopped olives out on the chicken so their flavor will penetrate the entire bird. Then drizzle about a cup of dry white wine over everything, seal it back up with the tinfoil, and allow to cook for about *45 more minutes. In the end, you have this amazing result:

After adding the olives to the chicken, it’s time to make the vegetable accompaniment. I chose a cabbage salad because I had some utterly gorgeous red and green cabbage from Tide Mill Farm and because it would balance the spicy, pungent taste of the chicken. I sliced about 1/2 a head of red cabbage and about 1/3 head of green cabbage as fine as I could get it without adding any bits of my fingers. If you have a shredder, this would be a great recipe for using it. Mix the sliced cabbages together in a large salad bowl. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, boil 2/3 cup of cider vinegar, 1 minced shallot or about 1/4 cup minced onion, 2 Tbsp sugar, a bay leaf, and some freshly ground pepper. Once it’s come to a boil, let it reduce by about half. Pour it while hot through a strainer (to remove all the solid bits) onto the cabbage. Toss it and let the salad sit for about half an hour, tossing every so often. The idea is coat the cabbage and let everything come to room temperature before it’s served.

I made corn muffins to accompany the meal, but they’re totally out of the Dark Days scope so we’ll pretend they aren’t there.

This was the first time the six of us have consumed an entire bird for dinner. Always before, there’s been enough left to make a soup or something. Not tonight – even the bones were picked over. An amazing flavor, even if it didn’t quite adhere to all the rules of the challenge. I think it would do well on any lean meat – rabbit or Guinea or pheasant or ….

*A note on cooking times: Home-raised and butchered birds take longer to cook than store-bought birds and need extra attention to avoid drying them out. The home raised bird isn’t as fat, nor has the home butcher injected the carcass with salt water.

Sprocket, aka Sprott:

Muffin:

Harvey Wallbanger:

I prepared a simple SOUL meal last Tuesday, but neglected to blog about it – one of those weeks in which every single day was jam-packed and blogging was the thing that didn’t get done. I had some help in preparing a delicious dessert of homemade applesauce from a couple of pounds of winter apples that a friend didn’t want to hang on to any long because they were getting shriveled up. They made a delicious apple sauce, and Supervisor Arden made sure I did a good job.

I knew dinner was going to involve those gorgeous squash shown in my last blog post – but which ones, and prepared how? In the interest of time, I decided on (yet another variation of) squash soup. This time, I chose butternut squash because their texture makes for a smooth soup. For more about the varieties of winter squash and how best to enjoy them, this is a helpful link.

I halved two medium butternut squash lengthwise:

I put the halved squash, 6 or 7 decently large carrots, and two heads of garlic in a baking dish and tented them with aluminium foil (because this dish, sadly, doesn’t have a matching lid).

I baked them in a low oven (I think I had it set at 250F) for a couple of hours. Meanwhile those peeled, cored, and quartered apples were on the lowest possible flame. I always add a small glug of apple cider to my apple sauce to prevent any scorching. But just a little! No one wants a drippy apple sauce. We like ours thick enough to eat with a fork!

When everything was fork tender, I removed the seeds and ‘guts” (reserving them for the barnyard animals) then scooped the innards out of the squash, squeezed the garlic out of its roasted shell, and tossed those two items plus the carrots into a food processor and quickly pureed it with a bit of that apple cider (just enough to make the blades spin). For the apple sauce, I simply mashed the apples with my potato masher in the same pan I’d cooked them in. After tasting the soup, I thought it could use a little zing – that roasted garlic makes for a very sweet taste – so I added a big spoonful of the applesauce. Anything acidic would be fine to add some tartness, so don’t be afraid to experiment. If it’s too thick, add a bit of broth, milk, or even water until you have the desired consistency.

I left the soup quite a bit sweeter than I normally would because I had a feeling that kids would find it more palatable that way. I was right.

It rained all night and the temperature edged up to about 50F, so the snow is pretty much extinct. There is some treacherous ice, however, just waiting for a single misstep. Because it’s so warm and wet, I wanted to give the barn a bit of a cleaning – preventative maintenance, something I really should try in the house someday – but that heavy wheelbarrow full of dirty, wet straw, my LL Bean boots, and the ice were just too dangerous a combination. We are on a slope here, sometimes a pretty steep one, and while I could probably get down to the manure pile, I would arrive there on my butt rather than on my feet. So … mucky barn till the ice melts or it snows again or I break down and purchase another pair of crampons.

Here’s a more composed picture of the same chickens, when the weirdly spring-like wind died down. That’s our new Wheaten Ameraucana in front. After refusing to come out of the goats’ side of the barn for several days, she seems to finally be assimilating to the flock. We had been calling her our chicken-shaped goat. To the right is a Welsummer pullet – I do love these girls and their lovely dark eggs! – and behind is a big Delaware cockerel and an almost invisible Delaware pullet. The Delaware was originally bred as a meat bird, but fell out of popularity when the Cornish crosses hit the market. They put on size remarkably quickly – and as you can see, they do get big! Te pullets are a little slower to mature in regard to egg-laying, but all the girls are now contributing pretty medium-brown eggs that will quickly become whoppers. Delawares lay one of the largest eggs of all chicken breeds.

I’ll soon be heading over to the Machias Marketplace to drop off 10 dozen fresh eggs laid by the girls in the past 6 days. They have loved the cold weather – we even had a record 28 eggs on the coldest day of this wintry snap! Yep, these are chicken breeds that really shine during the winter months, and I’m so happy with them. Maybe, if you’re in the area, I’ll see you over there? We still have some squash to finish up from the last two weeks’ orders and I’m sure you’ll see these beauties reappearing as a SOLE food post later this week.

When Max and I first dragged the tree into the barnyard enclosure, Rowen thought the goats might need a bit of instruction as to how to proceed.

But before she knew it, she was on her butt and the goats were going at it full throttle.

Nick, future Forbes 500 member, oversaw the proceedings without actually becoming involved in anything.

As you can see, the goats didn’t need anyone’s help or oversight.

The Guinea fowl provided their usual Greek chorus of disapproval and discontent with the changes being wrought around them.

While the ducks and geese spontaneously struck up a honking, quacking parade around the feasting goats and shrinking tree. (That’s Oreo, our Rouen, with her bill wide open, LOL!)

To be honest, Niek’s always been a good cook and he never tried to make me eat fish fingers – or ketchup. And although my quest for self sufficiency and desire to raise food for our family that’s organic and ethical has never been his quest, he’s been supportive and good-natured about most of the process. (Just don’t ask him about the geese. ) Lately, he’s been questioning the wisdom of introducing rabbits as part of the food chain in our growing farm. I’ve repeatedly reassured him that he’ll love the meat, but I wasn’t making any headway. As Lady Fortune would have it, when Becky and Andy McKenna joined us for dinner last week, they brought a dressed-out rabbit with them and Niek decided to cook it last night … and he loved it. He created a variation of hutspot (a Dutch dish) and stewed rabbit.

In the beginning, there was simply a four pound rabbit carcass. Niek sectioned it according to instructions he’d found on You Tube. For this dinner, the belly, four legs, back, and thighs were used.

He seasoned the quarters, thighs, back, and legs generously with salt and pepper. In our largest cast iron skillet, he browned them in hot oil till they were a nice caramelized color, and then removed them.

He added a minced onion to the hot oil, reduced the heat, and when they became translucent, he added about 2 cups of burgundy wine and fresh herbs, including parsley and a bay leaf. He returned the rabbit pieces to this mixture, covered the skillet with aluminum foil, and put it in the oven at 300F for about an hour.

In another skillet, he melted a generous clump of butter and added the thin strips of meat from the rabbit’s belly, after salting and peppering them. He browned them together with  2 onions cut in slices, and when the meat looked like it was done, he removed it and cut it into small cubes, and then returned them to the pan with onion and about a half cup of wine. He let this simmer, covered, on the lowest heat for about half an hour to create a sort of gravy.

While the rabbit simmered on the stovetop, he boiled about a dozen good-sized potatoes that had been peeled  (perhaps 4 lbs) and about 2 1/2 lbs of cleaned carrots (not necessary to cut them up) with salt. After the carrots were cooked, he chopped them roughly. The potatoes were drained until they were dry. He added the carrots to the potatoes in a large bowl and mashed them roughly together. He then added the simmered onion gravy with rabbit bits to the potato/carrot mixture, mixed them together, and that was the hutspot. The rabbit pieces were served in their own pan and the extra gravy was spooned over the hutspot for those who wanted it. This was was a wonderful amount for our hungry family of six, and the kids loved it every bit as much as the adults.

A note on cooking times: We felt the oven-cooked rabbit could’ve stayed in slightly longer to make the meat more tender. The onion and rabbit gravy that’s poured over the carrot/potato mixture shouldn’t be left cooking so long that the onions begin to fall apart – if need be, turn it off and reheat it briefly when needed.

I’m very relieved that the offspring from our Silver Fox rabbits will be a welcome addition to our family’s menu! And I’d like to thank the wonderful people who organized this challenge for another nice mention in the weekly round-up. Check out the other fabulous blogs and recipes – you’ll be amazed at how simply SOLE food can become a part of your regular eating routine. I’m already excited for next year’s challenge!

The animals don’t mind the cold at all. Another goat owner had been keeping her goats in for fear of them catching cold, but I explained that mine like all weather except rain. Of course, extra hay rations are necessary in this colder weather – and when the hay fairy comes, everyone wants first chomp.

The chickens tend to huddle when it’s cold. Some like to huddle outside:

while others prefer to stay inside (I get the feeling some of them were looking out the window, trying to spot Spring):

As for me, I’m glad to see the cold weather, even if brings treacherous ice. The barn floor stays a lot dryer and conditions in general are more sanitary. The animals all get extra veggie rations during cold weather to maintain health – and to keep them active, running around to see who gets the most pumpkin or lettuce. The chickens, believe it or not, also lay better when it’s cold. So while it lasts, I’ll enjoy these slow, cold winter days.

Gathering the eggs tonight, I found such a sweet little gift. Pullet eggs are always smaller than those laid by the older hens, but it’s exceptional that we get these little marbles. We got two last season, and only one so far this season. I’ve laid it beside a normal-sized egg for comparison. It’ll be a nice surprise for Arden when he’s feeling better – I always tell him that the chickens lay the small eggs especially for him.

We’ve had a rash of peewee sized pullet eggs (about 2 1/2 times the size of this little one) so far this week – I guess the late bloomers in the flock have finally blossomed. For the past two weeks, the vast majority of the eggs have come from our light-brown layers: Plymouth Barred Rocks, Blue Lace Red Wyandottes, and Delawares. These bigger, heavier birds stand the cold well and it’s at this time of year that they really stand proud in the flock. The lighter Ameraucanas appear to dislike the cold, as we’ve had very few blue eggs lately. The Welsummers and Marans have also slowed down a little bit, but not as markedly. The Barnevelders are the youngest of the flock and haven’t really settled into a clear laying pattern as yet. The bigger birds have been patient about providing some extra warmth and mass for their smaller flockmates. Here, you can see Mr Doodles, Rowen’s Serama bantam rooster, cozying up under one of the Delaware pullets.

Soon to leave our little farm, or so we hope, is our Muffin. She’s fast approaching her 12-week birthday and is available for purchase. We sure will miss her, but our little farm is too small for seven goats. She’s a purebred Nigerian Dwarf with excellent bloodlines and she can be registered. If you’re interested, please contact me for more information.

But on to the food, right? Tonight’s SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) dinner was very late in reaching the table – what a crazy afternoon! – but it was just the thing for a cold winter’s night. When I was living in the Netherlands, a friend introduced me to the simple elegance of what he called a Spanish omelette. Here’s my version of that classic, with amounts to feed a family of six:

Peel about 6 big potatoes (mine came to me from Tide Mill Farm) and slice them thin. Boil them briefly – if it were spaghetti, I’d say al dente – and drain them thoroughly.

Peel and slice a good sized onion (thanks again, Tide Mill!) and sautee it in butter (yes, Tide Mill again) until it softens. This is your moment to add other local goodness like some frozen peas, harvested mushrooms (I am so doing mushrooms next year!), sundried tomatoes, or what-have-you.

Mix about a dozen large eggs in a bowl. I added a little dollop of whole, raw milk from Olde Sow Dairy to my egg mixture. If you have a kitchen herb pot still going strong, add snippets of whatever you have – I love fresh herbs! Basil, oregano, marjoram and parsley make wonderful additions.

Heat a generous amount of butter (2 tbsp or so) in two large cast-iron skillets. Before the butter browns, gently pour your egg mixture in (half for each skillet, obviously) and begin cooking on medium to medium high heat. Don’t set the heat high enough that your omelette begins to dry out. Layer the potatoes, then the onion (and other veg, if you added it), and cheese. Once the bottom of the omlette has set, put the skillet into a pre-heated oven of 350F and cook it just till the top becomes firm.

Bon appetit!

“Traditionally, the American poultry industry has relied on the sex-linked function to create visually sexable chicks. If you go to your local feed store and want to buy visually sexable chicks in the spring, you are buying sex-linked –as opposed to auto-sexing– chicks. Sex-linked chicks are the first generation hybrids of two separate chicken breeds. They are produced by the hundreds of millions each year in large commercial hatcheries. If you allow the sex-linked chicks to reach adulthood and breed with one another they will not produce visually sexable chicks in the second generation. In other words, until recently if you wanted to buy visually sexable chicks in America, you’d be traveling to that feed store year after year to buy sex-linked birds produced by large commercial hatcheries. Your flock of sex-linked birds will not be a self-sustaining flock that can produce visually sexable chicks.” (Text from Greenfire Farms.)

Purchase of these sex-linked birds has been a large factor contributing to the decline of purebred poultry, causing heritage breeds – even popular ones like the Plymouth Barred Rock – to decline in numbers and even face extinction. Selling and raising chicks myself, I hear a lot of people lamenting that they don’t want to bother with roosters. For suburban homesteaders, roosters are often not allowed due to zoning restrictions … but what about all of us out in the wilds who want a backyard flock? What’s our excuse? Personally, I’m glad to have my roosters. They’re usually very beautiful – much showier than the hens. Treated with firm kindness and regularity, they’re every bit as friendly and gentle as their sisters and mothers. A good rooster will give his life in protecting the flock from predators, and one of my roosters, Blue, will actually leave the barn in the evening to round up any hens who haven’t come in by dinnertime. And for all the roosters that we don’t keep – they dress out beautifully. Don’t think you can butcher a rooster? I wasn’t sure either, but I read up on it, made myself a list of directions, and got busy. It’s not a pleasant job, but neither is it the worst possible job. And the food you’re putting on your table is honest, sustainable, and healthy. (For anyone interested, I’m happy to share my “How to Butcher a Chicken” cheat sheet.)

Blue, my Blue Lace Red Wyandotte rooster:

But if you really and truly must have only female poultry, please look for auto-sexing breeds. These are purebred birds that possess a stable genome that always breeds true to produce visibly sexed chicks. You can breed them generation after generation, and you will always be able to distinguish the males from the females when they’re just a day old. Here at the Crowing Hen, I have two breeds in which the males can be distinguished from the females when they’re a day old. The Pilgrim geese are a true auto-sexing breed: Day-old males are silver-yellow with light-colored bills, in contrast to the olive-gray females with their darker bills. The Welsummer chicken isn’t considered auto-sexing, but the stripes on the female day-old chicks are much clearer than those of the males, and sexing can be done with great accuracy. Barnevelders, another breed I have here, can be sexed once they’ve feathered out because the pullets (females) have a double-laced pattern in their feathers while the cockerels do not.

Day old Pilgrim goslings (from the Poultry Keeper site):

Our baby Welsummer chicks, with other age-mates:

In my young Barnevelder chicks, the double-lacing pattern of the pullets is obvious: