Curried Chicken Salad

This was a very popular chicken salad at Copperfield's Coffee Cafe. I admit it is not my favorite. I like the apple and walnut version, but then I like more sweet salads than savory. This chicken salad goes very well with the tomato soup recipe and makes a good sandwich all in all.

2 cups cooked chicken, diced
1/2 to 1 cup celery diced
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 to 1/2 cup green onions diced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sweet curry powder
1/2 to 3/4 cup good mayonnaise such as Hellman's.

Use a large wide bowl. Toss and blend well all the ingredients except the mayo. When the chicken mixture and all the seasonings are well combined, then add the mayo and fold it through the chicken until its all combined. Transfer to a container with a lid or cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour or more to let the curry spice develop its flavor.

Daffodils Are UP

Despite the rain, sleet and snow, the daffodils are up!  Spring is coming, hooray!

I am busy making Curried Chicken Salad for the Historic Downtown Lebanon fund raiser tomorrow night. They have collected over 170 recipes which the group is publishing. I contributed my Curried Chicken Salad recipe to the book and have been asked to bring same for a tasting. About 50 other contributors are bringing a sample of their recipes made up as well. Should be a fun event. Hope to see you there. I'll post the recipe later. It goes very well with the tomato soup recipe.

Green Eggs and Ham

Remember the Cat in the Hat and his green eggs and ham?  I have a chicken that lays green eggs - well the shell is green - the actually egg looks like any other. Aracana is a poultry breed from South America. They don't look quite like the other chickens - more like a hawk - but they are very sweet and gentle and lay eggs in a variety of colors. Chloe lays a pale blue green shelled egg, but I've had other Aracana that layed light blue or soft pink shelled eggs. The eggs are supposed to be lower in cholesterol than regular eggs, but I've never read any real studies that proved it. Mostly its just fun to collect the multi colored eggs.

Manure

Nothing beats well composted cow manure ( unless its well composted chicken manure) for keeping all your gardens growing beautifully. With 29 cows to feed everyday and 22 chickens, I have no end of manure!

Cows are basically ground feeders. Everyday I carefully place hay in  feed racks and watch as the cows blithely pull the hay from the racks, shake it to loosen it up and throw it on the ground. Most of it gets eaten, but about 20% of it ends up trampled into the muck. Muck by the way is that aromatic mixture of mud, hay and manure that Spring will soon turn in to a smelling yucky mess!

By mid summer all that muck will have turned into a wonderful, black, crumbly compost that makes everything in my garden grow like crazy. This year I am using some of last years compost to start my garden seeds.  I'm also using traditional peat pots and will keep you informed how things go. 

I've been saving feed sacks all year and sometime in late April or early May I'm inviting everyone from my garden club to come dig themselves a bag of the "black gold".  I'm hopeful of decreasing the piles with this method. Otherwise, I may have to rename the farm Mount Manure.

Free Range Chickens

At present I have 20 laying hens and two roosters. I say at present because you never know when something will happen to one of them. You see, I let them free range the barn pasture and the yard putting them at risk to such predators as hawks, racoons and coyotes.  The risk is real, but the advantage to letting them run all day in the sunshine and fresh air is generally worth it. They are loving this mild weather we are having. Most of the winter they didn't venture out of the chicken house as they hate walking in snow.

I lost my dog Katie this fall. She was a very smart and brave Border Collie whose main job was to keep the chickens out of the yard. She was passionate about catching rats and mice in the chicken house as well, which lead to her death from complications of hystoplasmosis. This fungal disease found in chicken houses and other places and prevelant in the Ohio Valley is not normally fatal. But in Katie's case some underlying weakness in her system allowed the disease to get into her blood and kill her. I was devasted and miss her terribly.

It will soon be time to clean the chicken house. The chickens made a huge mess of it this winter. We had so much snow cover from December until the present that they almost never left the house. The chicken manure is wonderful for the garden, but cleaning the house is putting me at risk for hystoplasmosis. I will wear a face mask ( I use TB masks but regular masks that you buy at the hardware store are fine), and I will cover my hair, wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt. When I am finished I shake out all my clothes, throw them in the washer, and take a shower. I've always followed this routine, but with Katie's death I will be doubly vigilant.

Garden Seed Time

I collect packets of garden seeds like some women collect shoes.  By the middle of January no less than 10 different seed companies have sent me their catalogs. I study them all carefully and choose one or two to purchase those seeds I know won't be on the racks in any of the stores.

All through the summer and fall it seems like every store I enter has a display with garden seeds for sale. I check out every one and add a packet or two to my collection. This is not just simply hoarding little paper packets of seeds. Weather permitting I try to plant at least three main gardens a year with continuous succession planting of lettuces, spinach and other short season crops.

The first garden will hopefully be broccoli and lettuce set out in April from seeds I started in doors this weekend. Also, in early April I'll  plant peas, spinach and beets directly into the garden soil, again weather permitting.

By the end of May or first of June the soil is warm enough to plant beans, pumpkins, cucumber and set out tomato, pepper,  melon and sweet potato plants. These are long season crops and will most likely be harvested  late July through mid September. I'll also plant more lettuce, mostly romaine types or red leaf types that take summer heat well. If I want more green or wax beans I'll do a second planting of them as well.

Just after the 4th of July, I'll plant Swiss chard, more beets, direct seed fall broccoli and Chinese cabbage.  Then around the first of August, more lettuce, this time a fall blend of butter heads and other leaf types as well as romaine, and also spinach and more beets.

I keep planting lettuce right through the middle of September and will continue to harvest it with a little help from floating row cover, right through October and into November.

I have a wonderful stand of asparagus - two 50 foot rows - and get enough to freeze, eat fresh everyday for six weeks and give away.

I also have a couple dozen strawberry plants, June bearing.  All in all, the garden provides me more than enough fresh vegetable for fresh eating, freezing and canning. An added benefit is the great exercise I get from turning the soil, weeding and watering, not to mention harvesting.

Cooking With the AGA

I love English country house novels. It was through reading those books that I heard about AGA cookers. Cooker is British for what we call a range or stove. British television shows often feature an AGA in their kitchens.

An AGA cooker is a real stove, on all the time and powered by natural gas, or in my case, propane.
I love my AGA. It's great to cosy up to in winter and is wonderful for cooking all kinds of foods. The AGA has four ovens, each set at a different temperature, and its "on" all the time. It was designed for efficiency and it does a great job.

The "burners" on the AGA are two large round plates heated at preset temperatures. One is for boiling, the other for simmering. The simmering plate also acts as a griddle.

Books, Books, Books

I love books. I know Kindle and all that electronic stuff is taking us away from the printed page and that's probably great in some applications, but I still love the feel and smell of a printed book. Two of my favorite country living reference books are:

"Wild Flowers of Ohio", second edition by Robert L. Henn. This is a great field guide filled with good color photographs and detailed descriptions of hundreds of wild flowers found in Ohio. If you check my web site you will find pictures I've taken of the wild flowers on my farm, most of which I identified using Mr. Henn's book.  See them at http://www.ohiobeef.com/.

"The Contrary Farmer" by Gene Logsdon is an inspirational book for anyone who wants to farm organically and frugally; in other words sustainable. That's a popular word right now, sustainable, as applied to agriculture. Mr. Logsdon has been preaching the cause for many years. I highly recommend his book for anyone attempting to "live on the land". 

Copperfield's Signature Chicken Salad

One upon a time I owned a cafe called Copperfield's Coffee Cafe. We served soup, panini, and lots of chicken salad. This recipe is for our most popular version.

                             Copperfield's Signature Chicken Salad

2 cups cooked chicken, chopped into 1/2 inch dice or smaller
2 ribs celery, chopped into 1/2 inch dice
1 medium apple such as Gala, Empire or Red Delicious, cored, seeded and chopped in to 1/2 inch dice.
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup mayonaise (I always used Hellman's)

Combine the chicken, celery, apple, raisins, walnuts, salt and pepper in a wide shallow bowl. Mix thoroughly. This is an important step to blend the seasoning with the other ingredients. Add the mayonaise and mix until blended. Serves 4.

We roasted bone-in chicken breasts, cooled them and chopped the meat. Sometimes we poached boneless, skinless chicken breasts and sometimes we bought precooked chicken. I always thought the roasted bone-in chicken breasts gave the best flavor.

A scoop of this chicken salad with a cup of tomato soup was a cafe favorite.

History House

Years ago we visited Locust Grove, an historic house museum in Louisville, Kentucky. Locust Grove was the last home of George Rogers Clark. The house sits on a hill above the Ohio River placed in a grove of locust and other trees.  When we had a chance to build a house twelve years ago, we decided to reproduce, at least on the outside, Kentucky's Locust Grove. We were lucky to have a good builder who took our photos of the origianal Locust Grove and reproduced it with most all the details. We were able to build the house in a locust grove, so it was just natual that we would name our farm Locust Grove Farm.

When we began building we had just 8 acres of land and lots of trees. Twelve years later we have a house, two barns, a chicken house and miles of high tensil woven wire fence! We've lost many of the big trees to high winds the last few years and have been busy replacing them, but the lot is still nicely wooded. The picture was taken in mid September 2010 and is a nice reminder to me that spring is on the way.

Wildlife Knows No Boundaries

My mother always said that when you live in the country you can't choose your neighbors! How true. These two little possums took over the cat's food on the back porch last November. Naturally, I moved the cat's food indoors, which meant the cats moved in as well. They loved it this winter. The possums continue to visit, one even beating on the door demanding to be let in!  I did not oblige!

The deer have finally come out of hiding in the old abandoned orchard. We have too many houses close by to allow hunting so the deer have free run of about 500 acres. There appears to be two small herds of about a dozen each, all sizes.I didn't notice any deer feeding with the cattle and wondered how they got along with the heavy snow cover the last six weeks, but they seem to have survived just fine.

We all get together on Monday evenings and have a family dinner, each house bringing a specific dish such as entre, starch, vegetable or dessert. We rotate the dishes and houses. There's always a lively discussion on a variety of topics. With the thaw of the last couple of days we all commented on the huge amount of mole activity in our yards. That lead us all to muse on the sudden lack of skunks on the property. Five or six years ago it seemed we were overun with skunks but not moles. Skunks compete with the moles for those fat white grubs that you find all summer long when you dig in the garden (or anywhere else for that matter). The moles feed on those grubs and so do skunks. No skunks means more grubs and more moles! My sister mentioned that the main predator to skunks is owls since they have little sense of smell. We have a lot of owls, so we are thinking they are killing off the skunks. How many people do you know have dinner conversation about owls, skunks, grubs and moles?  With a doctor and two RN's in the group, it was a nice break from the details of hospital activities.

Tomato Soup

Tomato Soup

It wouldn’t be summer without at least a dozen tomato plants in the garden. By late August the amount of fruit is so great there is nothing to be done save preserve the bounty. Freezing is quick and easy, but nothing is more satisfying or more comforting than “putting up” glass jars of whole tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste.  In the cold of winter, this recipe for tomato soup can conjure up memories of the golden August days of tomato harvest.

Tomato Soup

1 quart jar of home canned whole tomatoes

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion chopped fine

1 glove garlic, smashed or minced

2 teaspoons dried basil

½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

4 tablespoons sour cream

Heat the olive oil on medium heat in a large sauce pan. Finely chop the onion, add to the olive oil and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the basil and stir it together with the onions, let it sauté for one minute. Empty the quart jar of home canned tomatoes (or purchased canned tomatoes) into the onion/basil mixture. Cook, stirring frequently for five minutes or until the soup is simmering and heated through.  Add the crushed garlic, salt and pepper and continue to simmer the mixture five minutes more. Remove from the heat and using either an emersion blender or a regular blender, puree the soup. Blend in the sour cream, check the seasoning. If the soup seems cool, return to the heat for a minute or two.  Ladle into soup plates or bowls.  Serves 4 large servings or 8 small.

Log House

When this part of southwestern Ohio was first settled around 1795, the land was covered in dense forest. A quick and relatively easy way to build a first home was with logs. Ohio settlers preferred to build square log houses that would eventually be covered in wooden siding. This log house was built about 1822 by Benjamin Lukens, an early Quaker settler. This was a "starter" home for a young bride and groom. The next generation built a fine Greek revival style farm house attaching it to the front of the log house. Years later, when the owners of the farm decided to tear down the old house they discovered the orignial log house under the siding.  The log house was due to be bull dozed and burned. My brother bought the log house, had it taken down and moved in numbered pieces to his property. Over a year's time he reconstructed the house completely on his own and now has a beautiful retreat where he and his wife entertain family and friends.

Cattle at Locust Grove Farm

Sweet Meadow Sampler is just that, a sampler. My piece of the sampler is Locust Grove Farm where I raise purebred registered Limousin beef cattle. Pictured here are my herd bull, Logan Hills Tommy Boy and my lead cow, Locust Grove's Valentine with her January 30, 2011 bull calf, BTAP Thor.Tommy Boy looks kind of scarry, but he's really very sweet. Baby Thor has a new little half sister, a heifer calf born Feb 6, 2011 named BTAP Bramble. Pictures coming soon!

February 12, 2011 Sweet Meadow Sampler

Welcome to Sweet Meadow Sampler, our online journal about "living on the land".  This is a chronicle of the days, months and seasons of living in the country, farming, gardening, crafting, and what we like to call nature-ing. 

If you have always dreamed of living in the country but haven't made the move yet, then you can live vicariously through us. If you already have a small hobby farm or a big garden or practice traditional hand crafts, then this can be a place to ask questions and share experiences.

We are four household s- me, my sister, my brother and his wife, and my parents, all sharing 130 acres for the past 55 years. We've learned a lot over the years and we hope you will find out story both informative and entertaining. You'll hopefully hear from all of us from time to time.

To get you started on Violet's story checkout her website at http://www.ohiobeef.com/.