Busy month! (hatching eggs, chicks, lard, garden, IPA, artichokes, and a new puppy)

It has been a super busy month for me. I have been travelling a lot for work since the beginning of the year and February has been no different.Only good thing was DD and I got to go to CA for one of those trips and see friends and family. While in CA we also picked up a new addition to our pet family. Meet Barley...

Isn't he adorable? He's still working on potty training of course but overall he's a fun little guy. He is getting along great with Basil now. It is so great watching them play and sleep together.

Egg hatching update: we didn't have any eggs hatch. :( We had a couple that stopped developing along the way and had 2 make it all the way. I think 1 was upside down in the shell and the other made it as far as pipping internally but then died over night. It was disappointing but not too surprising since it was our first hatch and shipped eggs.
Yesterday we picked up 27 eggs from local chicken keepers. We got 15 silkie eggs and a mixed dozen. We also picked up 9 chicks from a local feed store. Well, I don't know how local it was. It is over an hour away from us but the good part is it's in the same town as friends of ours so we got to stop and visit for a bit with them. They have bought 4 of our chickens and it's always nice to see them so happy in their new home. DD had a hard time with it though, wanting 2 of the chickens back.  I think she's over it now that she has 9 cheeping chicks in her room. We got 1 Easter Egger, 1 Silver Laced Wyandotte, 4 bantam frizzle cochins, 1 buff silkie, and 2 Belgian D'Anvers. We plan to keep 1 frizzle cochin and possibly a D'Anver, and if we don't get any of the silkie eggs to hatch we'll keep the buff silkie.
Next week we have 20 chicks from a rare breed assortment and 4 bantam easter eggers coming. Problem is now that we are using the Eco-Glow brooder we won't have enough room for them all in our brooder. So tomorrow my task is to make a smaller version of our current brooder (http://thefrugalfarmschool.blogspot.com/2013/12/brooder.html) and put the bantam chicks in there with the eco-glow and use a light bulb on the larger brooder, at least until we sell enough of the chicks to fit them in one.

IPA update:  We put the IPA in the fridge a week or two ago and cracked one open for dinner the other night. It was delicious! I'm so glad one of our beers finally turned out. I guess that new tubing and not doing a second fermentation helped. :)

Lard: My dear friend gave me a couple pounds of pork fat, perfect for making some lard. I found a couple how-to's previously online and found this one again tonight to refresh my memory.
http://www.myhumblekitchen.com/2011/02/how-render-lard-the-right-way-snow-white

Here is the fat that she gave me:

The two smaller packages on top were strips of fat and the two larger wrapped packages were fat already ground up and packed into neat packages. DH ground up the strips in the food processor, it came out like a disgusting frosting. We put it all in the crock pot and set it to low. The rest went just like the link said.

Shortly after putting it in the crock pot

Straining the crispies - I found my metal strainer over a cheesecloth lined colander worked best. If I put it directly in the cheesecloth it clogged too quickly, and if I only used the strainer it let too much little stuff through.

Some of the jars while they were still warm.

And here they are cool

The site I followed said you could save the crispies for toppings and that they taste yummy. But we opted to bottle them for dog treats.

Artichokes: We love artichokes in this house. We could eat them every night. Unfortunately they are pricey out here in CO so we don't have them very often. The other day they were on sale (2/$5) so I bought a couple as a treat. The one thing I don't like about artichokes is the cook time. I got to wondering if I could pressure cook them. A quick search revealed someone that raved about this cooking method. I thought I'd give it a try. Normally I don't do any prep work, just throw them in some water and boil them for ~45min. This time I cut the artichokes in half and scooped out the choke (top two are scooped out).

To do this you stick your knife in under the choke and all the way back to the end of it. I placed my finger on the front of the artichoke then pulled it out to show how far it went in. 

Placed them in my small pressure cooker

And cooked for 6 min.

Pulled them out and they were perfect! I can't believe it, artichokes in 6 min (well really it was about 15min with prep time). Very exciting. Now if only I could grow an artichoke plant here.



Garden: I finally bit the bullet and ordered dirt for our garden beds. Here it is delivered -

We have been filling our wheelbarrow for 2 days now and we have 6 of the 7 beds done and a ton of dirt left. I think either the calculations I found on line were off or the nursery delivered a lot more dirt than ordered. Either way I think we'll be finding a home for a lot of dirt! I went out today and marked my squares on 2 boxes. Making progress towards spring!