Scott (the owner of the farm where I keep my goat) and I decided that we were going to take his two bucks to a goat show. Though I have been in the ring with cattle a time or two, I have not really shown goats at all. Scott had no experience himself in the area, so it was quite the adventure.

The good news is that after a little bit of work and some help with showmanship, his bucks ended up as the Champion and Reserve Champion Junior Nubian Bucks. That’s not too bad for my first time out eh?

Up next, I am going to take my goat to the county fair next month. Boy, I am excited about that, let me tell you.

This is a fitting first post to the Oregon Natural Foods blog. We have spent the majority of the spring getting our Urban Homestead up and running. We butchered one set of chickens already (4 Cornish Cross and 4 Light Brahma). That went well, and we have a nice personal stash of chickens in the freezer. We also have 4 ducks in the freezer that I raised by hand with that batch of chickens.

Currently in the meat pen, there are 8 New Hampshire chickens that is another project. I wanted to make sure that we had raised enough chicken for the family with a little leftover to sell or to pass on as a gift. Those chickens are scheduled to be butchered August 1.

I was planning to be done with that, but an idea came to my head. I want to do an experiment that would involve raising chickens on a no corn, no soy diet. Most chickens raised these days (including the two batches I mentioned above) have been raised on soy. Chickens need at least 20% protein to thrive, and a natural source for them to get it is soy. My goal is to find no corn and no soy feed that I can feed them that will keep them above the 20% protein mark and get them big and fat enough to put on a table.

I know that it is possible because before there was commercial chicken feed, families raised chickens in the backyard with nothing more than table scraps. I believe that it can be done, and it can be done well.

So, at this time, I am taking reservations for my next batch of chickens that will be no corn, no soy fed chickens. I will be taking a $15 per chicken deposit from anyone wanting a chicken. This is a project that takes a lot of thought and a lot of work, so I want to make sure that the chickens are reserved ahead of time. The price for the chickens is $5 per pound.

Another catch to this is that the chickens will not be the standard Cornish Cross breed of chickens. I personally believe that Cornish Cross have been overly bred to such a degree that their purpose is to sit around and eat and be fat. The Cornish Cross that I butchered made me crazy because they seemed to be nothing but mindless meat drones that had no personality and that were freaks of nature in their regard to eat and be fat and serve no other purpose (not even an aesthetic purpose). I have chosen for the health of the chicken species in general to go another route. I am going to order a dual purpose breed of chickens that I can use to butcher so that I do not have to worry about supporting the Cornish Cross freak breed.

The spots are filling up fast, so get your orders in soon.

Recently, driving in to Mcminnville has gotten a little out of control, and I feel like I was driving in every day to do one thing or another.

Last week, I decided that I was going to make good use of my time by trying to pool everything I wanted to do in town together into one big trip. That way, I would save my driving time as well as the gas it takes to go into town. It didn’t quite work out the way that I expected it to.

I chose Thursday because that is the day that I go to the market. I think I tried to cram too many things into one trip, and I ended up with a cranky baby and a cranky mama. I am going to have to watch for this. The one thing we did not get done was the food shopping, so we are a little short on ingredients this week, but I am going to try to make it work anyway. Hopefully, next Thursday’s trip will be better than the last.

Now that Daphne is starting to talk, I am discovering that my name is “Mama.” Jared usually refers to me as “Mommy”, but Daphne has decided that “Mama” is a much better name for me.

Truth be told, kids can call their mothers “Mama” well into their adult years without sounding funny. People do it in the south.

From here on out, I will be referred to as, “Mama.”

Blogger is giving me odd trouble right now. Every time I post a blog post, it deletes all of the content from the blog. I am working to get this fixed, so bare with me while I try to figure out what on earth is going on.

Since we lowered the bed, Daphne has been able to get out of bed on her own. Every morning, I wake up before she does, and I go to my office to check and respond to emails and to post new content to the blog.

When Daphne wakes up, she calmly walks out and asks that I pick her up. As soon as I put her in my lap, she puts her head on my shoulder or on my chest, and she promptly sits there is a half-awake state.

I get to just hold on to her and put my cheek on her, and it is such a wonderful thing. I like being a mommy in the morning when I just get to snuggle with the baby.

The “terrible twos” are something that you are told to fear as a parent. Of course, having a naturally wonderful daughter to begin with, I never thought that this would happen to me.

When we were visiting Papa Bob last, I was encouraging her to use more words. One of the words I was trying to teach her was, “No.” Papa Bob told me that I was going to regret teaching her that word, and I was sure that he was wrong.

Fast forward a month. Daphne has learned how to say no, and she uses it in the worst of times. Whenever I try to make a peaceful exit from the grocery store, she spots the candy bar impulse buy section and screams, “no, no, no” as I pick her up to get her out of the store. It can be pretty embarrassing.

She has taken to answering, “no” to every question

This is a fitting first post to the Oregon Natural Foods blog. We have spent the majority of the spring getting our Urban Homestead up and running. We butchered one set of chickens already (4 Cornish Cross and 4 Light Brahma). That went well, and we have a nice personal stash of chickens in the freezer. We also have 4 ducks in the freezer that I raised by hand with that batch of chickens.

Currently in the meat pen, there are 8 New Hampshire chickens that is another project. I wanted to make sure that we had raised enough chicken for the family with a little leftover to sell or to pass on as a gift. Those chickens are scheduled to be butchered August 1.

I was planning to be done with that, but an idea came to my head. I want to do an experiment that would involve raising chickens on a no corn, no soy diet. Most chickens raised these days (including the two batches I mentioned above) have been raised on soy. Chickens need at least 20% protein to thrive, and a natural source for them to get it is soy. My goal is to find no corn and no soy feed that I can feed them that will keep them above the 20% protein mark and get them big and fat enough to put on a table.

I know that it is possible because before there was commercial chicken feed, families raised chickens in the backyard with nothing more than table scraps. I believe that it can be done, and it can be done well.

So, at this time, I am taking reservations for my next batch of chickens that will be no corn, no soy fed chickens. I will be taking a $15 per chicken deposit from anyone wanting a chicken. This is a project that takes a lot of thought and a lot of work, so I want to make sure that the chickens are reserved ahead of time. The price for the chickens is $5 per pound.

Another catch to this is that the chickens will not be the standard Cornish Cross breed of chickens. I personally believe that Cornish Cross have been overly bred to such a degree that their purpose is to sit around and eat and be fat. The Cornish Cross that I butchered made me crazy because they seemed to be nothing but mindless meat drones that had no personality and that were freaks of nature in their regard to eat and be fat and serve no other purpose (not even an aesthetic purpose). I have chosen for the health of the chicken species in general to go another route. I am going to order a dual purpose breed of chickens that I can use to butcher so that I do not have to worry about supporting the Cornish Cross freak breed.

The spots are filling up fast, so get your orders in soon.

I have decided that I will be cross posting for a while between the Oregon Natural Foods blog page and this blog. Eventually, I would like to move all of the Urban Homesteading things over to that blog and keep this blog for family and friends that want to keep up with us as a family. We will see how it goes. I will be cross-posting all blog posts for a while, but eventually, I will be tapering off.

Please, sign up for that blog in the mean time, and it will get interesting as the projects come to fruition this summer.

As you may have noticed that all of this traveling has thrown off my blog 365 goal. But that is OK. I am still motivated to blog every day for the rest of the year, and I have some exciting things that I am planning for the blog.

1.) Now that the “urban farm” is mostly set up, I will be providing a photographic tour as well as updated posts on the projects that I am working on now.

2.) I have a new blog that I will be cross posting to. Please do sign up for it. It is located at www.oregonnaturalfoods.com Jared and I have set up this site so that we can provide the world with some information about what we are doing. It will have information about what I have for sale as well as how I am doing the things I am doing. I feel like I am recovering a lot of lost arts in the kitchen and on the farm, and I want to share these arts with the world so that they are not lost forever. I am going to double post on both blogs for a while and see how that goes.

3.) There will be lot of recipes being posted on both blogs. Just today, I am going to preserve strawberries, cook a duck and make cesear salad dressing. I also have pickles to make my own dill pickles as well. Stay tuned to see how I do, and if I find the recipe to be successful, I will post it along with any other information that was useful to me. We will call these posts “The Food on My Table” series.

4.) After a lot of hard work, I have completed editing the photos that I took while I was in Greece. I have well over 300 photos, so I plan to put one up here and there along with the story of taking the photo or any other relevant information. This will be my way of sharing that beauty with you so that you can understand why I strive so hard to be European at Heart.

5.) Of course there will be updates about Daphne, and I will be taking more photos and posting them more often.

So hold on to your hats and glasses because this here is going to be a wild ride (in the words of Thunder Mountain at Disney Land).

Stay Tuned