10-mile meal to become a 100-foot meal

Blackberry topped goat's milk yogurt

For the past couple of days, I've been having a breakfast that is currently about a 10-mile meal. I'm having home-made yogurt made with our raw goat's milk (and then strained to make it a little thicker), topped with blackberries that we picked last summer and froze, and then drizzled with honey that comes from a farm up the road in the next town. I bought the honey because it was 'local' but I didn't know how local it actually was until we passed the farm when out biking a couple of weekends ago. I figure that if we drove directly there, it would be about 10 miles from us. This meal is not only a wonderfully filling and refreshing breakfast, but it brings back sunny memories from last summer. And if I have this same breakfast next spring - I'll be using our own honey and will be calling it a 100 foot meal!

This past weekend, we did a bunch of planting. I put in seeds for some more kohlrabi (the previous seeds were pretty churned up by baby goat hooves...so I doubt they'll sprout if they are even still in the same location!), some different lettuces, turnips, beets, parsnips and carrots. Because carrot seeds are so small, it's hard to not just dump them in the soil and then keep them thinned. But I suck at thinning because I just hate to terminate the life of those little potential pieces of food! I got this idea from a forum I belong to for planting carrot seeds. They were using newspaper, but since I didn't have any readily available, I used TP. I gently spread out the carrot seeds on a dry strip of TP. Then I folded it over the seeds into thirds and lightly misted it with water. Then I layed them on a piece of tinfoil to carry them out to the garden. It worked really well! Now lets see how well they sprout. :-)

Carrot seeds in TP strips prior to planting in the ground.

We stopped by ACE to use up the last of a gift card we had to buy another rain barrel. While we were there, I decided to see if they had canning jars yet. They didn't, but they were so helpful in letting me order some that I decided it was time to start stocking up again. I selected 3 wide mouth pint cases and 5 wide mouth quart cases for now. We'll need more later on, but I can wait for local sales for futher purchases. ACE called me two days later to say that my jars were in, so we picked them up last night. I always feel better with more jars available to me. I'll feel even better once these are full of home grown produce and safely tucked away in the pantry!

The canning jar 'tower' awaiting a trip to the basement.

We gave the dogs baths on Sunday night. Charlie usually gets cold, so he wanted to lie on the moving blanket. We tossed the top of the blanket over him to keep him warm and next thing we know, Kitty had made himself at home on top of Charlie!

Yesterday was a day of good things happening.

First of all, our lye arrived. I ordered 4 lbs of NaOH (lye) to use to make goat's milk soap from a farm/distributor in Arizona. It arrived yesterday, so I'm excited to add soap making to our list of accomplishments sometime in the near future. My H also ordered some from a CA place, and that should arrive later this week as well.

Secondly, yesterday was the day that Sassafras should have been showing signs of estrus. Not only did her milk production not dip like it usually does during this time, but she wasn't acting in her usual way. I think we may have a pregnant goat on our hands! I'm going to keep track and watch her for one more cycle, just to be sure...but we may be expecting baby goats next March. Awwww!

Thirdly, I have secured an apple cider mill/press for us!! I called a local home brewery/winemaking supply place and they have a press that they rent out. They only have one, so it's usually very, very booked up this time of year. I got lucky and managed to get it for next Monday. It's only $20 for the day, and we should be able to press all our left over apples in no time! All we have to do now is 1) pick them all this weekend and 2) locate containers to put it all in...

Lastly, I prepped a meal for tonight that is one step closer to being a 100 ft meal. It's actually about a 50 mile meal. I am making a baked pork with apple raisin stuffing dish. The pork grew up (fed on organic grass) about 10 miles from us. The apples and raisins are from our yard. The bread was from a stuffing mix from Bob's Red Mill which is local to the Portland area. The only thing that isn't local is the beef broth - and I used only a half cup of it...so it's not too bad. I'll be serving it with zucchini from our garden. Hopefully, it'll taste as good as it sounds when I read the recipe!!