Working Towards A Dream
When I sit and daydream about our future homestead, I often imagine a rustic cabin like the one pictured above. Whether or not our home will look like that one day, remains to be seen. We are still working out the details on what our dream home will look like.
The weather here has been mostly the typical rain, grey, and clouds the Pacific Northwest is known for. As you will recall from one of our earlier posts found here, we have been working on some homestead skills. Well, because of the weather we are having most of the things we have been experimenting with have occurred indoors.
An Old Skill, With A Twist
I am no stranger to making bone broth, but I have never made it from turkey before, much less one that wasn’t store bought. To make room in the freezer in preparation for Aaron’s turkey hunt we decided to pull out the carcass and legs from last year. Rather than let it go to the chickens, we decided to make it into broth. We had to pull out the water bath canner to fit everything because of how large it was.
We threw the carcass in there with carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves, and a whole lot of water. We simmered it for about a day and a half. It smelled absolutely amazing in the house the entire time it was on the stove. It made the most beautiful broth I have seen in a long while!
Obviously I am not a professional food photographer, and this was just a quick snap I put on social media. However, look at that color! We made a ton more broth than this, but a couple of Aaron’s coworkers had requested some broth (we’ve since had more requests) and I put a bit into some pint jars.
Next Time
After reading a few recipes about proper bone broth in preparation for this post, I will probably make a few changes to the next round of broth. In order to get the most benefit from our bones, will definitely be adding a little bit of vinegar to the mix. This helps to pull more nutrients out of the bones and soften them more so that we can feed them to our dogs or chickens with less hazardous outcome.
I am also leaning towards keeping it on the stove a bit longer. Or maybe pulling out our Nuwave freestanding electric burner to ensure that we have stove space. We don’t eat out very often so having 1 large burner occupied constantly makes things a bit of a pain.
Depending on the time of year, having an outdoor kitchen like seen here on Homestead Honey would be a great idea. Once we get onto our own homestead, an outdoor kitchen is definitely part of the plan. Would be a great addition, especially during canning or butchering season.
A New Skill Towards The Dream
If you take a look at her beak, you can see it is pretty overgrown and you can’t even see the bottom portion of it at all. She also either has a bit of an issue with her craw and food being stuck for a bit, or a tumor. We are watching her very closely. She seems to be able to eat and drink, albeit a bit differently than our two other chicks. When Aaron gets back from turkey hunting, we will either clip it with some nail clippers or dog nail clippers.
If I am being honest here, I am nervous about doing this. I am not sure what this chick’s survival rate is likely to be and I am afraid of causing it any pain. Not to mention, I really don’t want to mess it up and cause further issues. It is really hard because this is a breed I wanted to add some color to our flock. Also, I still haven’t named this batch of chicks. I am terrible lol.
Well, that pretty much wraps it up for the new skills department for the time being. My tomato and pepper seedlings are still going strong. At this point, I am just waiting for the sun to be around long enough for me to get the rest of the garden planted. I’m over the rain right now. We are all itching for more time outside!
Working towards this dream is so rewarding. I love learning new things and if it brings us even just one tiny step closer to this dream, it is worth it.
- Barbara
STAY UP TO DATE
Join our newsletter to stay in touch, hear about sales, and extra perks!
Recently on the Blog
A Dream Realized
Exciting things are happening here over at The Wild Paduanos! We recently stepped out of that dreaded comfort zone and took some huge steps toward our dream. I wish I could say that we finally purchased our dream land, but we aren’t quite there yet. Hopefully sooner rather than later!
Sorry for Disappearing
I am so sorry for disappearing, again. Things have been quiet on the blog for awhile now, despite my intentions otherwise. Adding Wildbaby into the mix has been a lot harder than I had imagined. She is such a velcro baby that it is hard to get much accomplished besides nursing and if I am lucky, a thirty minute workout.
Spike Down: Harvesting My First Deer
My second season started after my wife. She was able to go down before me with her dad. While she was there on her last night she tagged out. So not only did she tag out before me she also got a deer before me. She got a nice doe too. My first year I didn’t get to tag out despite seeing deer and releasing some arrows.
