Plants, Beef Tongue, and Hugging Quail...

We finally caught a lucky break, weather-wise, this past weekend. Friday & Saturday both turned out to be beautiful, sunny, dry days! Our plant sale went great - we had over 80 visitors to our little farm and sold nearly 500 plants and a lot of seeds. We still have close to 150 plants left for our garden.

I was excited at the prospect of planting some tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins on Sunday, but it started raining early Sunday afternoon and hasn't stopped yet. The little moat that our chickens have dug all of the way around the perimeter of the barn in their quest for good dusting spots and bugs, which normally irritates me as I trip over the ledge (they have an entire pasture to wander, but they have to dig right next to the barn?!?), has kept all of the water from flooding the barn stalls.

Back to the plant sale, we had some wonderful visitors stop by to look at the heirloom plants we had out - everything from a few of the chefs from local resort restaurants to the treasurer for the Slow Food Utah Chapter. Little Q scooped up all the kids that stopped by and made sure they were introduced to the cows, goats, chickens and turkeys. It was a wonderful reminder that we live in a great community where our local (and not so local) neighbors care deeply about supporting small agriculture. In urban farming, it is easy to get caught up in the little things - zoning issues or stray cats or rude neighbors. Sometimes it's good for us to take a fresh look at the bigger community picture.

We had put out full coffee service, juice and dessert bread - Little Q had four cups of coffee before I realized what he was doing...needless to say, he had a lot of energy on Saturday afternoon and I am up for mother of the year.

We slaughtered our beef steer this past weekend, and I can't begin to tell you what a relief it is to have the majority of the hard work of harvesting our meat staples for the year complete. Even as long as we've been raising our own food and slaughtering our own meat, it never gets any easier to take the life of an animal. In hunting, there is sport to it, and a sense that there is some "fairness" in the harvesting; in farming, you hold all the cards and the decision to end a life to provide food is never one we take lightly. Seeing our life through my son's eyes as he fully participates as an older helper for the first time is also a different experience for me as a mother. Little Q helped skin the steer, gut him, and salt his hide to send to the tannery.

A colleague from work came on Saturday afternoon and picked up the tongue, tail, kidneys, liver, sweet breads, and heart, which we set aside for him. He actually made a meal for his family with them for Mother's Day. Even though my mother is English, and I have my grandmother's recipes for kidney pie and beef tongue, preparation of those parts is labor-intensive and they are best eaten fresh. We work hard to make sure that no part of the animals we harvest ever goes to waste.

And speaking Mother's Day dinner, Matt made me a delicious meal on Sunday night - homemade chicken kiev using breasts from some of the meat birds we raised this year. The chicken was melt-in-your-mouth tender and the filling was sinfully fattening and buttery!



Last night, as I was tucking in all of the baby birds that are living in the house right now, I caught one of my little coturnix chicks asleep with her wing around a Texas A&M chick...

Awwwww.......