Continuing rapid changes.

This weekend we had a really nice time with a fire pit and a lot of good friends visiting, and in the interests of that, we got the cleaning of the yard that was so desperately needed done! It also reminded me of just how much I like cooking over wood, despite how inefficient it is over an open fire. I shifted things around in the fire pit to make a shielded cooking area with a radiating fire box, but it's still much cooler as a cooking surface than if I had a purpose built cooking area. Probably not a project for this summer, though it very well may be given some of the other changes around the house.

The biggest change is we now have a housemate. I offered to use an alias for him, but he's fine with just being himself. Lucas is now going to be living with us, and he's going to be working at one of the local stone quarries. He's the gentleman that provided the tools and expertise on building the stone floor in the kitchen, and in addition to being handy, he's indicated he'd like to help out around the property. With that, we'll see what becomes possible with more help around the property on a regular basis!

A touch of frost, greens, and more.

On this cold morning, we have lots still on plants, and some that I strongly suspect won't make it through the first killing frost, but won't be ripe by then. Always a bit of a challenge with our location. As for the beans, at this point it just comes down to picking them off the plants. Even with the weather, the beans don't seem to be done flowering as you can see Right. Even the scarlet runner beans set more flowers just recently despite being heavy with beans. 

Starting to focus on fall projects.

Dawn is getting perceptibly later. It's not dark when we wake up yet, but it's getting there, and the plants are getting fewer hours of light day by day. Right now that isn't affecting the growth of any of the plants, but it will within the month. Many of the plants have started fading already and setting their last fruit since they know what's coming well before we do. That said, we're going to want more production than we've gotten this year so we have some new things to try this winter.

Checking in on the rabbits after much needed rain.

Having finally had some rain, things have cooled down a little much to the relief of the rabbits, next week also looks like it will be very nice weather, so it's probably time to do the next breeding of the season. It also happens to coincide with the kits being at a good age to be separated from their mothers soon. As you can see, Dawn has taken over a lot of the care of her daughters kits, though they actually seem to be sharing quite well. I'm sure dawn will be happy with her own kits with this next round of breedings.

Recipe: Rabbit in milk

I got adventurous last night and tried modifying a recipe to use with rabbit. Jamie Oliver has a Chicken in milk recipe that looked interesting to me, so I figured I'd give it a shot with rabbit. Of course I had to modify it a bit because of a few things. One, I forgot to thaw the rabbit meaning it had to be cooked from a frozen rabbit, and two, I'm unable to do a recipe as written for cooking from what I can tell.

Ingredients:
1 large or 2 small rabbits
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 stick butter
1 stick cinnamon
A hand-full of dried sage
2 lemons
1 full bulb of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled
1 quart milk

Method:
Due to not having thawed rabbits I couldn't brown the chicken in the oil before mixing everything else together. With a thawed rabbit, brown the outside of the rabbit in oil while pre-heating the the oven to 375F (190C).

Mix all of the ingredients together in the pot so it fits fairly closely together, and cook with the lid closed for ~1.5 hours basting with the juices in the pan when you remember to. I did it a couple times and actually turned the rabbits when I did so. Remove from the oven, and serve on or off the bone with mixed greens. I think this would be good specifically with rice and broccoli, but we had it with some lightly spiced Brussels sprouts.

This is the recipe that has tasted the most like roast chicken of any recipe I've managed with rabbit. The milk leads to the flesh being very tender, and the lemon with cinnamon gives it an interesting core flavor in addition to the taste of the meat itself. Served with some of the curds from the milk separating due to the lemon it is really delicious. I under salted and peppered it which is easy enough to fix post cooking, and I'd probably do it that way again.

I am incredibly frustrated with myself right now though, because after eating last night I was so tired I remembered to bring in the water bottles from the rabbits, and an extra load of wood for the wood stove, but I forgot to put the rabbit away. We got 2 servings out of a probably 16 serving dish of really delicious rabbit. The rest of it is now feeding the chickens because I was careless.

I'm looking forward to trying this recipe again, and I'd probably add some ground cloves to it for a really New England fall flavor.

Out of meat.

There are a lot of things going on right now with food politics, and our life in general. Topics range from the Ag Gag bills that are going around to the Monsanto case being seen in the supreme court, and of particular interest to us bills proposing that rabbits be banned from being eaten since they are a popular pet. Right now though, our focus is preparing to butcher this round of babies.

Strange misty days, and big baby personalities.

 Early on a misty morning, it is time for the daily mom pile. Well, not just mom, all are fair game for being piled on if they are near being in the way of food.