Knox Farm Fiber Festival

Located southeast of my little town is the village of East Aurora. It is a quaint town in western New York. At the outskirts of the village lies Knox Farm State Park. This was formerly the Knox Estate until it was purchased by New York state in 2000. I grew up a few miles from the park and regularly drove by the beautiful stone walls as a young girl. Today, Natalie, Carolyn and I headed out to be part of the 2008 Fiber Festival. I had just learned about it last night at Carolyn's 4-H meeting.

Here is our afternoon in pictures.

You are now entering the Knox Farm State Park.



The sheep rest peacefully in the shade of a tree. They are lurking just behind the stone wall.



Many of the fiber vendors brought their animals with them.



Are you lookin' at ME?



What a cute face!

Quaint buildings surround the entrance area of the park. This is where the vendors displayed their goods.

The highlight of Natalie's afternoon was the border collie herding demonstration.

This is Dennis, border collie herder in training.

Dennis' herd and trainer...

Natalie making friends with Dennis after his demonstration.

Going home...

This is a gorgeous view of the Holland hills across the pastures at the park. If you look closely you might see the goat in the middle.

Homemade Tortilla Shells

I have been making my own homemade tortilla shells for well over a year now. We prefer them hands down to any store bought shell out there. They are soft and flexible. The flavor is delicious, and best of all these don't upset my stomach as some of the commercial shells have been know to do.

I started with the recipe from Hillbilly Housewife and then modified it somewhat.

My recipes is this:

4 cups flour-usually it is 3 cups AP flour and one cup of wheat (hard or soft is fine in this recipe)

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

1 1/4 cups water (usually cold or cool)

Assemble your ingredients.

Add flour, salt and baking powder together in a bowl.

Whisk that up.

Add 1/2 cup shortening.

I mix it in with my fingers until I have little pea sized balls of shortening.

Add water and mix until a dough ball forms. Lay that out on a floured surface. Knead a few times and let rest 10 minutes.

Divide dough into 12 pieces.

Roll pieces into balls.

Lightly flour your work surface. I use a wood board. Flatten your ball into a disk. Flip the disk over, so that both sides are floured.

I use a tapered rolling pin with the sloped ends and no handles. It is easier for me to work the dough with one of these. I roll and turn the disk. If it sticks to the rolling pin I flip it to the other side.

Finally, into the ungreased 10 inch cast iron skillet the shell goes. I cook it on one side until it bubbles up some and is slightly browned.

Then I flip it to the other side. You can see the brown spots on this shell. This is what I strive for. If I don't focus, they get a little more done than I may like.

As each one finishes, I put them on a plate that is covered with a kitchen towel. This keeps them plenty warm.

Enjoy your shells with your favorite taco fixings. We like meat, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, black olives, sour cream, taco sauce (or salsa) and onions. Well, I like the onions.

Blessings,

Jennie

Up to our elbows in school.

This is why I have not blogged in two weeks. We are now back in school full swing. It is taking all my focus to keep all the plates spinning right now. So, I thought I would share with you a little photo essay of our day yesterday.

Natalie and Carolyn choosing the proper color for map coloring.



Brianna colored Antarctica orange.



Jonathan, the high school freshman, does his school work in his room.




Carolyn must have found the right color.



Natalie is finishing up English.

Have a great weekend!

Jennie

Riding horses

For years my oldest daughter, Natalie, has wanted to ride horses, but the timing or the money never seemed to work out. Well, last fall, at age 11 she finally got her wish. Good friends of our had a daughter riding at a stable about 7 minutes up the street from us. I got the instructor's phone number from my friend and put in a call. A couple day later we stopped by the stable for a visit. The instructor's mom owns the property, and she took us on a little tour. So, we agreed to start riding the week after Thanksgiving. I know, who starts riding lessons at the start of winter. I don't know, but we did. Natalie and Carolyn both ride. It is now nine months later, and I have finally taken some decent pictures of them riding.

First, they had to learn to tack up. The first step in tacking up is grooming your horse. If you are lucky you can rope your twin sister into helping you. Note Brianna behind Carolyn. Carolyn is riding Sugar



Natalie is all tacked up and ready to ride Laura.



In the summer, the girls ride in the round pen. There is a ton of mud in the round pen due to all the rain we have had, so for the past two weeks they have been riding in the training area outside the round pen. The lady in the sunglasses is their instructor, Maureen.



Natalie on Laura, and Carolyn on Sugar



Natalie on Laura.



The lesson is ended, and it is time to dismount. In the background you can see Maureen working on some bit training with another horse.



Laura is done working and ready to go back to her stall.



Natalie and Carolyn can both walk, trot and canter, but it is hard to get that with a still camera. I did take a video last week. If I can figure out how to put it on You Tube I will have it on here soon.

Have a great day...
Jennie

Making bagels...

In my attempt to keep grocery expenses down this month, I am making my own bagels each week. I was a little leery of doing this because my first attempt at homemade bagels a few years back was less than satisfactory. The first week I made plain bagels and last week I made cinnamon raisin. We have decided that we prefer the cinnamon raisin bagels the best. I will show you how I did it and then give the recipe.

After the dough sat in a bowl and doubled in size for about an hour. I divided the dough into 8 balls of dough. Then I rested the balls of dough for about 5 minutes. After resting for 5 minutes, I stuck my thumb in the middle of the dough ball, and then I spun the dough around my thumb to make the hole. The hole really does need to be about 2 inches across otherwise you will have bagels with no middle hole. This happened to me the first week that I made bagels.



Once the bagels all have their center holes they need to rest 10 minutes. Before I started making holes in the middle of the dough balls, I set a pot of water to boil on the stove. I do add some honey to the water. After the water is boiling, I start dropping bagels into the water 2 at a time and poach them for 1 minute turning over once or twice during the poaching.



After poaching the bagels, I drain them on a rack set over a jelly roll pan.




Then I move the poached bagels to a cookie sheet with parchment paper. I would have liked to put an egg white wash on my bagels, but I was tight on eggs and didn't want to give up one to the bagels. I think they would look better with the egg white wash.



Here are the baked bagels.



Some are nearly perfect looking.



Others...not so much.



Here is the recipe I used.

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 Tbsp. dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
1 Tbsp salt (yes, you really need this much)
2 cups unbleached white flour
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
8 cups of water for boiling
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp water

Add ins...1+ Tbsp cinnamon and 1/2 + cup raisins or whatever you think you might want.

1. In stand mixer, mix water, honey and yeast. Let stand 3 minutes.

2. Add half of the flour to the yeast mixture and combine. Add salt and then remaining flour. Add the remaining flour a little at a time until the dough pulls away cleanly from the sides of the mixer.

3. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes in a Bosch mixer, you may need a little more time to make a smooth, firm dough ball. I added the cinnamon and raisins toward the end of the kneading time. Place dough in bowl, cover and let rise to double.

4. Punch down dough. Divide and shape in 8-12 balls. We make 8 because we like larger bagels. Allow to rest 5 minutes.

5. Bring water to boil. Make a hole in each ball of dough and pull open about 2 inches, amking a bagel shape. Placethe shape dough on a cookie sheet (I use a greased flexible cutting board) for 10 minutes.

6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Drop 2-3 bagels at a time into boiling water for about 45 second to 1 minute.

7. Drain poached bagels on a wire rack. Mix egg white and water; brush tops with egg white mixture and top with optional toppings, if using (seseame seeds, poppy seeds, etc.). Place bagels on greased (or parchment papered) baking sheet.

8. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes. You can flip them over once if you are not putting additional topping on them or you can turn them on the sheet if you are using topping. I, however, did neither of these. The original recipe said to bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Tips: Making the dough balls as round as possible seems to help shape the bagels. Keeping the bagels round also keeps the water from sitting in nooks and crannies on the bagels.

Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jennie

The Kitchen Garden

Last year I was inspired to create a kitchen garden out the back door of my house. It seems that these might be the plants that do the best this year. The house is higher on the property than the large garden. These plants are getting good moisture but are not standing in water like those poor plants down on the south side of the property.

I planted cabbage for the first time this year. I did get some holes from the cabbage white butterflies larvae, but they have disappeared.

I also plant my herbs up here. The previous owners of the house had some perennials around the house, but there were no basic herbs. Now I have dill, chives, curly leaf parsley, flat-leaf parsley, sage, thyme, spearmint, peppermint, catnip, rosemary, and oregano. This picture is only one half of my flat-leaf parley.

I have about 10 sweet pepper plants planted near the house. These are the biggest pepper plants I have ever grown. They were so sad looking when I put them out in May, but they are just flourishing now. I have never had good success with growing large peppers. I hope that I get some larger sized peppers this year.

Finally, we have my most delightful surprise. I have butternut squash growing. They are the best looking squash that I did not plant. I have never had great luck with vine type plants, but I have the potential for at least 2 good looking butternut squash. When I saw these guys volunteering this past spring I asked David to leave them alone. I am so glad we did.

Hopefully the deer will leave them alone. They are nestled in among the flat-leaf parsley and behind the pepper plants.

County Fair

Just those words...County Fair bring to mind Almanzo Wilder's milk pumpkin from one of my favorite books, Farmer Boy. The children and I headed out this morning under beautiful sunny skies to get in during the early admission time. The street traffic and people traffic was heavier than I anticipated, and we cut it right down to the wire. In the process of getting in and getting the tickets two of the children went missing. Never in my life has this happened before. All is well that ends well, and I don't desire to rehash the whole thing. So, suffice it to say that after a 20 minute panic attack we were all together and off to enjoy the fair.

Natalie and Carolyn were very excited to see the hunter/jumper competitions. We walked through the horse barns and saw some very impressive draft mules and Percheron. I wouldn't want one of those Percheron to step on my foot. They have some mighty hooves.

We took a walk through the grange building, the historical building and the 4-H building. I picked up some information about getting the girls involved in 4-H. I was not in it as a child, but all the things that they do (sewing, canning, cooking, etc.) is right up my alley. I am going to call tomorrow about clubs in my area.

We also went through the livestock buildings. The children and I toured the Moo-terity ward and saw the little calves with their moms and the piglets nursing on their mommas. It was so sweet. I enjoyed the rabbits. Some of those rabbits were bigger than my cat.

The last event we attended was the pig races. It is a cute little 15 minute show consisting of 3 races. The last race, if you want to call it that, was the pot bellied pig race. These guys were funny. We ended the day by sharing two pieces of fried dough. They cost $5.00 a piece. I couldn't believe how expensive the food was. I know fair food is always expensive, but this seemed quite a bit. In all I spent $35 for our day at the fair. We stuck to traditional county fair activities.

Wouldn't you know that I forgot to bring my camera. I love a blog post with pictures. I wish I could give them to you, but alas, I can't. You will just have to imagine with your mind's eye all the fun things we did and saw.

The Rain!!!!!!!!!!

Here are the rain gauge totals. It might be a little hard to see, but that is 2.5 inches in 24 hours.

Here is what it did to my garden.

The peppers and corn are under water.

Hopefully we won't have anymore rain for a long time and this will dry up very soon. We had flooding in the garden about 6 weeks ago, but this is worse. My corn and peppers had their growth stunted back in June. I don't know what we will harvest from the garden. Next year we will be able to build up the beds more, and they won't be as susptible to this. At least when it is too dry, I can irrigate. I can't do anything about this.