I’ve been reading all this stuff online about making lard, and although I’m not sure how we will use it, i decided to give it a try since we would otherwise throw the fat away.

I know it’s best to use leaf lard, but it’s hard to find that here, and what we had was from cuts

of meat like pork chops. So rather than throw it away, i decided to experiment with what i had. My first attempt, I’ll admit, was a total flop. I used fat from the pork chops, and my slow cooker since the fat must be rendered slowly. Well, after 24 hours, the fat still wasn’t rendered, so I filtered what little WAS there. It ended up not even being lard! It was just some clear stuff. The dog got a good meal from the fat that was left.

A few days later, we bought a large pork butt that I separated into several meals, and there was a large strip of fat. So I clipped it off and rendered it. This time I used the stove, and it worked well! I got one little jar of snow white lard, and there was still fat to render.

However, there was some trial and error using our burner (for the first few hours it wasn’t hot enough), so what was left didn’t render well the next day (I turned it off over night), so the dog got another good meal with what was left. But I feel the trial and error part is over, so my next batch will hopefully be better!

With Mrs Leedle still laying eggs, we are still getting fertilized and viable eggs to hatch. Well, let me back up.

Last summer, we purchased 5 hens and a rooster (Leedle, who you know from other posts). Thanks to the dog, who has developed a taste for raw chicken, we only have 2 of the 5 hens left. So, hatching and acquiring pullets has been a priority, and I don’t want to wait until spring to get more, since I’d have to wait an additional 5 months for eggs and chicks. Right now, the incubator is full of Mrs Leedle’s eggs in addition to the 8 we hatched last month. I also acquired what I was told were blue splash marans, but I think they’re blue copper marans. They have leg feathers, so if anyone has any ideas what they are, don’t hesitate to let me know. Being a bit neurotic, I’ve decided to keep all 15 chicks in the house until fully feathered and until I can install some heat in the coop I built (the other 2 hens and rooster are still outside free ranging). The last thing I want are deaths from the cold.

So how have we been handling having so many chicks in the house? We have one brooder in our living room for the chicks that don’t fly yet. They get a heat lamp, and I check the temp constantly. We lost a 5 week old that didn’t grow right and a one week old inexplicably, and although anything could have caused those deaths, I decided to be more proactive about checking the temperature. I also added probiotics (which up until now I thought were just bs), and picked up a multi vitamin. I used the products recommended by Murray Mcmurray Hatchery, from which I bought my cuckoo maran. I think the probiotics and vitamins have helped. I read online that chicks will naturally get beneficial bacteria from picking at the hens, so it makes sense.

As the chicks grow, we move them into successively cooler parts of the house, so we have the additional 7 in our laundry room. I check the temp back there constantly too. We decided House Chicken (my lonely cuckoo maran) would be a house chicken with a diaper, and the other two older chicks are ready to be introduced to the outside as soon as this cold snap ends.

So far, everyone is doing well. The older chicks don’t get the probiotics, but they do get the vitamins once a week. The vitamins are cheap, so it’s worth doing. So it’s busy in the house and it’s an exercise in logistics!

Winter is here full-force, and even though we have a lot to do, the wind especially makes it hard to spend time out there. We’ve been getting strong gusts from the west and the north, with the occasional break when we get wind from the south. I’ve been sort of missing Florida, and making plans to buy a winter property down there. But for this winter, we’re stuck in the cold.

We have a new crop of chicks both in the brooder and the incubator. 7 days from now we will hopefully have some new faces!

We (finally) started on permanent stalls for the horses. They’re sorely needed, as is a rain gutter. That’s the next project!

I love salsas, chutneys, anything that gives flavor to food. The more interesting the better. So, pico is big with me. Having bought this homestead in the middle of nowhere, where, let’s face it, culinary standards are at the “fry it in as much lard as you can get” level, good, fresh pico isn’t something you can just buy at the store. And we’re supposed to be homesteading (i.e. doing it ourselves), right?

We bought this property back in April, and I was having some health issues, so we didn’t get a large garden started. Just some tomatoes, failed cukes, sweet potatoes, etc. There’s been a lot to fix, and a ton of projects. So, that being said, forgive my using canned tomatoes and jalapenos for this recipe, substitute your home-grown fresh veggies for my canned ones, knowing that this time next year I’ll be doing the same. Oh, also, I don’t use exact measurements, I’m a kind of “fly by the seat of my pants” cook. Which is probably why the fudge and yogurt I tried making this week failed.

So, here goes: Easy Pico De Gallo

1 can Best Choice canned tomatoes with green chilis

1/2 vidalia onion, diced

Enough cilantro to satisfy you, diced (I use scissors to cut my herbs and garlic, and sometimes frozen meat. Makes things easier)

Mix everything together, and eat with tortilla chips.

You can also put this in the crock pot with chicken for a good chicken dish. The broth from the chicken mixes with the pico, making it more complex. I add a little butter to that mixture to give it more body and make it richer. You can also add it to chicken/beef tortillas. It brightens up pretty any meal. Enjoy!

So we have these pigs. Yeah. I got them as a breeding pair, figuring the resulting piglets will pay for our feed for the next year, and we can keep 2 for our own purposes. I don’t see myself getting too attached to these pigs, however, which is probably a good thing in the homesteading world. They’re not people pigs, even though I visit them at least 2x a day, and still run from me, while simultaneously trying to get more food out of me. We have about a billion (okay really about 15) pecan trees, and of course had a huge bumper crop this year. Really, we have to have around 200lbs of pecans, and I like pecans but not that much, and I’m not sure they’re saleable in a retail market, so I’ve been feeding them to the pigs. I sold some, but the amount we get per pound isn’t that much compared to the impact they can have on our feed costs for the pigs, so this little piggy is getting some nuts for dinner. The male has started to root around and under the barn, so I had to put cinder blocks in his rooting spot, and thus has not endeared them any more to me. They will eventually go into a 4 acre plot of land at the back of our property, especially when they start breeding, but for now they’re confined to a stall in the barn until that plot is fenced in.

I got my lonely maran chick some friends, in the form of 2 4-week old blue copper marans and 5 (I’m hoping) black copper maran day-old chicks. The day olds are either blue copper or black copper marans. My lonely cuckoo maran pullet is definitely happier, so hopefully by spring we will have some nice dark eggs to use!

A few months ago, I purchased some 4-week old cuckoo maran pullets, which were to ship November 17. After living in warmer climates for a few years, I conveniently forgot that in most places, November means cold weather. So order baby chicks for delivery in November I did. And all but one lone, scrappy little pullet died before delivery. So I now have a house chick who hopefully will one day give me nice chocolate eggs, and who now happens to think she’s a human. It’s kind of nice having a pet that can ride (and poop) on my shoulder, but she needs to realize she’s a chicken, and not try to steal my sandwiches. I found a breeder that has 4 week old chicks, so hopefully I can buy my maran some friends, and she will be less lonely. Right now she’s terrified whenever I turn off the lights, and she isn’t fully feathered out so she can’t live outside. I’m also kind of afraid Leedle Leedle will attack her, as he has kind of a tendency to go after the weak.

On the hatching eggs front, I’m still shocked I haven’t killed these chicks yet. I just checked, and they’re in there moving around, but for the love of god I cannot get this incubator to rise above 100* and settle at 102*. It wants to hover around 93*. One thing I’ve learned in horse breeding is fetuses, if they’re strong, can survive a whole lot, and if it’s fertile and meant to be, those dang fetuses will be born.