Hoppy Easter!

Easter is fast approaching so I figured I'd divulge our family favourite Easter recipe.

Glazed Ham.

I know there's probably about a million and one recipes out there right now.

But this one is easy peasy!

And no cloves. My family hates the taste of cloves.

So here goes.

I make sure to de-salt the ham several times before I even begin.

Score the ham in a diamond pattern.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Put about a 1/4" of water in the bottom of your roasting pan.

 But keep an eye on it.

Make sure it doesn't go dry.

  

Bake for an hour with cover on.

Increase the heat in the oven to 450 degrees.

Combine 

3 cups lighly packed brown sugar

3 tbsp flour

2 tbsp maple syrup (you can use corn syrup but we like maple syrup better)

3 tsp dry mustard

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

Mix together till it's all blended.

Pour a third on the ham and bake with cover off.

Keep putting some on until all gone.

You should bake the ham for 30 minutes

and the sugar concoction will make a nice crust on the ham.

Take out, carve and serve.

Hubby likes to take the syrup from the bottom of the pan and put it on his potatoes.

Hey, to each his own.

Not the best photo, but you get the drift.

Have a Blessed day!

Lisa

A week in photos.

It's been a busy week!

Dave has rebuilt the stalls. They are now 3 even sized stalls. A lot better for the goats.

The new stalls.

He also went to the cattle sale last Saturday. He found me a nice buggy for bringing my bales of hay or what have you around. It's in excellent shape.

My cattle sale find.

Then Sunday evening we had a pre-Easter service. We had a few people from other churches come and sing also. Becky and Chris sang from our church.

Chris and Becky.

They sang beautifully. Gave me goosebumps.

This cross actually survived the church fire.

Well I know that Cindi Lou is due this weekend, but honestly, does this goat look pregnant to you? Nope. If she has a baby I'll eat my shirt. But who knows? She's not even showing signs of kidding. No pawing the ground, no nesting, no jitters. Nothing, nada.

Is she? or Isn't she?

Febe was due on the 21st and she actually gave birth on the 21st! That's a first! She's always late. So she had a girl and a boy. The girl is small, so I've been supplementing her a bit. We named the boy Oreo. The girl is Spring Peeper Azelle Marie. The reasoning behind this name is simple.

Lunch time!

An elderly friend of my mom's was not well. So I told her that I'd name a goat after her. She was thrilled. Then she passed away a few weeks ago. Azelle Marie was her name.

Spring Peeper Azelle Marie

Azelle looks like a mini donkey. She's a sweetie. Oreo, well, he just has weird markings.

Oreo!

We've also been on the hunt for new barn cats. Well we found 2 brothers. J. named them Sylvester and Junior. Really original. Honestly it's hard to tell them apart. Junior has one white toe on his back leg.

I think we're kinda cute!

Can you tell who's who?

J. got a gift from grandpa for Easter. A pellet gun. It's pretty cool. I wasn't too keen on it at first. We're not really a gun family.

Well, it might be spring but man it doesn't feel like it. I have yet to put clothes on the line. It's too cold! The temps are not bad, but the wind is biting. It's bitterly cold. If the wind would die down it wouldn't be too bad. We're still making fire in the furnace like if it was January for crying out loud!

The eggs in the incubator didn't make it. Two hatched but the chicks would die soon after. I don't know what the scoop was on that. They were a week late in hatching. I don't know if at one time the temp dropped in the incubator and I didn't notice. But it's all very discouraging.

I hope you liked the week in photos. Well that's what it seemed like anyway.

Have a Happy Easter and a Blessed day!

Lisa

Spring has come to the country

Busy, busy, busy! It never stops. I sometimes just want to sleep and not wake up for a few weeks. That, I think would be bliss. But life goes on and the world is not going to stop to let me off anytime soon.

Well first things first. Happy Easter and our baby is now 9 years old. It seems like just yesterday that he was born. Boy I miss when he was a baby. He's growing up too fast. Soon he's going to graduate from high school! Oh well... such is life.

J.'s birthday.

Most of the farm animals are doing well. Except for Otis. Otis seems to be losing his fur at an alarming rate. Between his back legs he's completely bald. It's coming out in clumps. I've never seen such a thing. Mind you, this is only our second bull calf. We've asked several cattle farmers around here and they all say the same thing. "It's normal." Weird. Oh well. He's eating well, still a sookie and looking normal otherwise. So we'll leave it at that. If any of you have seen this before let me know.

Our new hens

We have a few new additions to the farm. We bought a few bantie hens ( like we didn't have enough) from a friend. He didn't want them anymore because he needed the room. 3 hens are just banties and one hen is a Millefleur and so is the rooster. That's why Dave wanted them. They are kind of scraggly, but the feathers will grow back one day.

I'm having a dilemma. I'd love to let my hens run free but we have so many wild mink in the area that I don't know if they'd survive or not. And also, will they lay in the house or am I going to have to go egg hunting on four acres of land everyday?

Charlotte and the kids enjoying the hot spring air.

The piglets are doing extremely well. They should be ready to hit the road next week or so. We are keeping 2 for ourselves. Dave brought a piglet to the school in Yarmouth last week. A friend of ours teaches grade 3 and they were reading Charlotte's Web. She asked Dave if he could come in with a piglet. I don't know who was more excited, the kids or our friend? Not one kid had ever seen a pig and only 2 had seen hay before. Isn't that sad. It's not like we live in New York City. There's farms everywhere around here.

We've come to another hard decision. We have to sell Febe. She's a great milker, great mom and great goat, but she's really, really bad with kids. The two legged variety. I cannot leave her alone with J. for a minute or she attacks him. This is not good. She's a very aggressive goat and I figure that she thinks he's a small goat she can bully and she attacks him. Last summer she smacked him in the chest and sent him flying. This cannot happen again and he loves the goats, he wants to help, but he can't when she's around, which is all the time since she's the head goat.

So this winter when she's dried off I will put an ad in the paper to sell her. She was due to kid today but she's late. I think it'll be a few days still. They can be up to 5 days early or 5 days late.

So since we are going to sell Febe I need another replacement. So without further ado let me introduce to ya'll to ....Hazy Day Cindi Lou Who!

J. and Hazy Day Cindi Lou Who

She came all the way from Sussex New Brunswick. That's an 8 hour drive from here. And no I did not drive that far for her. I have a friend that goes to Bethany Bible College in Sussex. He was coming home for the weekend so he was nice enough to bring her along.

She was born March 25 2010. She was in the CAE prevention program, so that means I have to bottle feed her. It's fun, but alot of work. All the milk I had frozen in the freezer for myself is quickly dwindling down for her. Oh well. She is a sweetie.

Well it's Easter today. The day our Lord and Saviour arose. We organized a breakfast at the church and we had an early morning service. I had my parents over for supper and had rappie pie and I'm stuffed!

Egg hunting

The Easter Bunny passed for J. and left lots of eggs outside for the hunt. The weather was great for it also. It's been gorgeous for a week now. We are getting June weather in April. On the down side it's extremely dry at the moment. It's usually so wet now that we feel moldy. So if it's dry now, by August when it's usually dry it's going to be worse. That means no fires, no weinie roasting, nada, nothing, zip! We'll just have to wait and see what the good Lord has in store for us.

Well I have to go and feed "the baby" and check on Febe.

Have a Blessed Day.