Farm Update. Including chicken adventures of a different sort…

If you’ve been wondering what we’ve been up to at Crack Of Dawn Farms,  you’re not alone. So are we 🙂

Seriously… it has been busy here lately. The critters got another weekend without me hovering as Jackson & Jerry took the helm for a few days while Ryan & I took a quick trip to Florida to see family and celebrate the life of a cousin who left this world way too soon. (Miss you, Krysta Kai!)

All the critters passed the weekend with flying colors, and rumor has it that some winter wood preparations happened as well. An upcoming post is in the works to introduce you to my lumberjack hubby and his activities at the farm.

For now, here are a few quick photos before you move on to the real adventures this week (keep reading after the gallery)!

The past two days have kept us next door at my mom’s (CoDF annex) doing my own version of winter prep: canning.

I have been trying to plan for and figure out when we were going to be able to do a batch of meat chickens,  but I just couldn’t figure out how to make it happen until next year. I had resigned myself to store-bought chicken for the next several months when I got a blessing text. Was able to get a quantity of chickens – plucked and cleaned, ready to cook/can/etc. Mom & I decided to split 20 birds.

I picked them up Wednesday morning at my friend’s house in Kentucky,  and as Thursday comes to a close,  we are almost done. The last canner batch of broth is processing,  and we only have some chunked meat left that we picked off of the bones after broth was made. We will freeze it tomorrow.

The canning wasn’t without excitement, lest you think that it is boring, ho-hum kinda stuff. You see chicken has to be pressure canned. That ups the stakes just a bit.

We had one jar failure yesterday, but tonight was a first for me. We had a jar lid pop completely off after we took the lid off the canner!! I am very particular about letting the canner come down to zero pressure on its own, rather than rushing it by rocking the weight. But, I realized tonight that I am not usually sitting around, tapping my toes, waiting for it to finish so I can start another batch. You see, we had eaten dinner while the canner processed, and then once it was done I turned the stove off as usual. We let it cool off and let its pressure out while we did dishes and such from dinner. We had ONE more canner load of broth to do, and we were ready for it to be done. Note: After 2 days of processing chicken, it’s time for it to be done… we REALLY enjoyed our beef/bison burgers that we had for supper tonight 🙂

Well, as soon as I saw it was at zero, I popped the weight off and took the lid off. The lids inside were doing a lot more popping than usual, which was weird. I just attributed it to not usually opening it that soon — I know it is normal for that to happen as they cool.

Well, Mom was near the stove, and all of a sudden, kerbang!!! I just knew one of the jars had exploded, and I was worried she had a face/arm full of glass. Fortunately, no. She did end up with some super-hot broth splashing on the back of her head, but the sound was actually of the lid and ring becoming projectiles – along with half the pint of broth! A nice mess all over the ceiling and floor, but everyone was safe.

A couple of lessons from this for you canners out there:

1. Let the canner sit a while even after it comes down to zero pressure. Take time to have another cup of coffee or something. The next batch can wait a few minutes.

2. Never lean over your canner when the jars are making funny noises. I am so thankful Mom wasn’t peering over into the canner – she could have had serious burns and possibly cuts/bruises on her face.

We laugh about it after the fact, but this stuff is no joke.

On the plus side, we have 32 pints of canned chicken and 21 pints plus 7 quarts of broth between us, and some miscellaneous legs and other frozen parts we saved for frying. We’ll be enjoying our chicken dinners this winter!!