Surprise!!!

With the weather turning colder I have been a little reluctant on posting about my homesteading ventures. I don't know exactly why. What I do know is that nature is beautiful and has odd timing. So a mother hen hatched out 4 baby chicks a while ago (like early summer). Those all died because we were trying to protect them and put them in a chicken tractor. Momma needed more room than that. She trampled them. So about a week after those died another hen decided to hatch out a bunch. Eight I do believe. 7 survived. They are now almost the size of the momma. Now about a week ago (the week us Wisconsinites got frost every night) hatched out 8 more. Two of them died and now we have six, week old baby chicks. I went outside this morning and there was a black hen with 7 baby chicks under her and the one who had six now had seven as well. Weird. I find it very interesting that they are deciding to hatch out eggs in the beginnings of winter. OYE! So here I sit with a conundrum. I need to have a proper coop for the hens to go in and lay and also to stay warm before winter strikes. So hopefully they will survive, because that is more chicks than hens we have in our flock. We are hoping to put some hens in the freezer. However, if they are going to keep this up we may have to keep them around. :)

{Foodie} root cellaring, harvest time

Well, we didn't go on a field trip today (the weather is nasty, floods everywhere) but we are learning about habitats, we harvested our sunflowers today and brought them in so we learned all about the different bugs that use sunflower heads as habitats. Yuck.. We learned that at least 10 different kinds use them. Our upstairs living room is being turned into a root cellar. :P We harvested our seed cucumbers and have the seeds drying now. I think it is pretty exciting to have our own seeds drying. Last week we harvested our corn. I think tomorrow we will be going potato diggin'. Exciting!


You can see the new color of our living room. It is very bright and vibrant in there. I love it. It makes me feel special to have our own living room even though we are living with my parents.


So since we didn't go anywhere I did some baking. Not your typical baking. I made some broccoli cakes.

They surprisingly are pretty good.


For the Craft show in November, I am planning on making a Harvest time cook book. We will see what happens.  Here is the recipe for the broccoli cakes.

Equipment
Stand mixer or electric beaters
12-cup muffin tin, greased and floured well (or silicone)

Ingredients
12 trimmed broccoli florets (each one should fit into a muffin cup with room to spare)
275g (1 cup and 2.5 tbsp) butter, softened 
50g  (1/4 cup) sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
300g (1 1/4 cup) flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
60g (full 1/4 cup) strong cheddar cheese, grated

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Bring a pot of water to the boil and blanch the broccoli florets for 3 minutes. Rinse well in cold water to stop the cooking, then dry each floret well with paper towels and set aside.
2. Beat the butter until soft and creamy, then add the sugar and continue beating until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix together the flour, baking powder, turmeric, cayenne and salt, and beat this into the wet ingredients as well. Finally, fold in the grated cheese with a spatula.
3. Place one heaping tablespoonful of batter in the bottom of each muffin case, then tap the tin against the counter to spread batter out. Stand a single floret in each muffin case, and top with the remaining batter, dividing it evenly between the cases. Spread the batter over the top of each floret roughly, but don't worry about it looking perfect. 
4. Bake the cakes for approximately 30 minutes, until golden brown and hard to the touch. While baking, some butter will bubble up around each cake — you can mop this up with paper towels if you like, but don't worry too much about it. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack before serving, but do try to eat on the same day.

It's Official!

My easter bunny was featured on UltimatePaperMache.com. Which I think I should say is pretty neat. I have never been featured before. I am now also a member of Magical Holiday Artist Etsy Group. I hope I can get the exposure I need to pay off $20,000 dollars of debt I have I almost wish I had a few more years to pay it off. But I only have 2, YIKES. I don't want to leave my little boy to go to work.

Oh yeah so I posted it on the sidebar but I have an Etsy now. I am super excited. The link is www.smariecarlson.etsy.com. I am planning on adding at least one item a week. But since it is Easter time I am going to try and get a variety of items up for sale. So if there is anything you want feel free to buy it. Or if you want something custom feel free as well. I don't have much up but just some odds and ends I have been putzing with.

Well, I am off to visit my favorite blogs, then pull the turkey out of the oven and enjoy.

I also have another blog. Our homesteading blog. www.enchantedfamiliarfarm.blogspot.com eventually I will have a link on the sidebar.

Thanksgiving in March

We found this great recipe from Simply Recipes. We used it for 2009 Thanksgiving and it was a hit. I have been craving it since we had turkey 2 or 3 weeks ago. So we got the same turkey from the Menomonie Market Food Co-op. They get them from Kadejan in Minnesota. We are on the edge of Wisconsin so that is kind of local. I am totally in love with their turkey. It is free range. Not necessarily organic but no antibiotics. I hope it turns out as good as it did last year.

So we have really been struggling to eat 100% organic. It really doesn't help that my family doesn't care about organic or not. So the trip before the last to the store we ended up only buying one item organic. Now when we shop we shop for our food that will last us for 2 weeks or more. So thats alot of food. The only thing we got that was organic was a box of Kraft Organic Mac and Cheese.

Those two weeks were torture and we are still trying to detox. I totally noticed a change in my mood and the way we act. I was much more tired and I lost all enthusiasm. Since we switched back I have kind of regained my energy. But not completely. We like to try and follow the Dervaes example.

If we can't do the first thing on the list we strive to do the next.

• produce it your self
• buy farmer's market
• buy local
• buy organic
• buy fairly traded
• buy whole food
• buy minimally processed

I think it is really easy to lose sight of what is really important to you during the winter. We stopped making our own food from scratch. today I actually did it again. And boy did it feel good. I made homemade cinnamon rolls (we even ground our own wheat). Then tonight we are having the turkey. I am super excited. I had so much energy when we lived like this last summer/fall. I hope we can make it a habit for the whole year. and not to poop out on it once the weather gets cold. 

Hi There!

Like it says, Howdy! I am S. Marie Carlson. I am an artist of many talents not limited to but including: Portrait Painting, OOAK Art Doll Crafting, Miniature Sculpting, Illustrator/Author, Glass etching artisan, soap maker, and I offer Birth and Postpartum Doula Services to the Menomonie/Eau Claire/Chippewa Falls/Glenwood City and surrounding areas in Wisconsin. I have a full plate. Including raising a 3 year old boy, renovating a barn to turn it into a home, and striving to become self-sufficient. It is a busy life around here for me. I am a stay at home mom, and will be unschooling our son. Actually we have already started that part of it. I have been learning many new talents that I have. I hope I can show off their best qualities on this site. I will have a shop available sooner or later. I just have to get everything figured out. So this site is officially marked UNDER CONSTRUCTION!