Peanut Butter-Cheese Fudge

I know I have been a terrible blogger and have neglected it for almost a year now, but our facebook farm page has taken off and I seem to just put everything on there now. Tonight I decided to come give the blog some love and share a yummy recipe with you though.
This fudge is not a healthy recipe(I never buy or use Velveeta Cheese ever, I don't like it), I can promise you that, but it is rich and yummy. You will want a glass of milk with it though. :) Whatever you do, if you share this fudge with anyone, DO NOT tell them it is cheese fudge until after they eat it. Many will turn their noses up at the name of it, but I have never had anyone know that there was cheese in it after they have tasted it.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound sliced pasteurized prepared cheese product(such as Velveeta)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 teaspoon  vanilla extract
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
2 boxes(16 oz each) confectioners sugar

Step 1: Lightly coat bottom of a 9 x 2 in. square pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Step 2: In a saucepan over medium heat, melt cheese and butter together.

Add peanut butter and stir until smooth.

Remove from heat and add vanilla and nuts. (I did not use nuts this time)

Step 3: Place confectioners sugar in large bowl; setting aside 1/4 cup.

Pour cheese mixture over sugar.

Stir until completely mixed. Candy will be very stiff.

Step 4: Using your hands, remove candy from bowl and press evenly and firmly into prepared pan.(It will be extremely greasy)

Pat top of candy with paper towel and remove excess oil until dry on top

look the oil made a smiley face :-)

Place pan in refrigerator until candy is firm, about 1 hour.

Step 3: In a small bowl, stir together reserved 1/4 cup confectioners sugar and 1 teaspoon water until thick drizzling consistency.

Transfer to a resealable plastic bag. Drizzle topping onto fudge.

Step 6: To serve, cut fudge into small squares, about 64 total and enjoy! (Again, it is rich and sugary, so you won't want big pieces)

Fudge will keep, covered in plastic wrap for up to 1 week.

Remember that the name cheese fudge will scare people away and most won't be willing to try it, so just tell them it is peanut butter fudge and once they eat it and love it, then let them know about the cheese. They will be shocked and new found lovers of Peanut Butter-Cheese fudge. :)

I hope you all get a chance to try it and love it as much as we do. Let me know what you think.

A Spring Fling!

This weekend we finally got a taste of spring and I must say it felt pretty darned good! Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine Sunday and getting some work done too. OH Boy, is there a lot of work to be done after winter.

We have recently discovered that two of our goats are possibly pregnant. This is great news, as we never saw the act happen, and assumed that it did not! lol Well, looks like they just wanted some privacy and soon there should be kids on the farm again!!

Here you can see that Oreo's udders are filling up too.

Big ole Mammas!

Poor Daisy, she looks pretty uncomfortable, but still enjoying the sunshine!

She is getting wide

So we spent much of Sunday trying to prepare the barn for delivery. We have divided up some space for kidding stalls and got things set up for small outside pens for the babies to play in too. Now just need to get my milking station set up and I will be ready for the birthing to begin! Well as ready as I can be, considering this will be our first and I am scared to death of complications. I pray everything goes smoothly for both moms and all babies!(yes, ALL babies, as they could possibly have 2 or 3 kids EACH!!)

Daisy's udders are filling up!

Next step will be learning to milk and learning to make cheese! I am very excited about this part too. (Well not so much the milking schedule that has to be followed to a T) I can't wait to learn to make yummy cheeses though. This will be a fun new adventure, that hopefully pays off and will soon be feeding our family even more.We love CHEESE!!!

I guess Belly was to much of a bully to get bred

Belly did not manage to get bred, at least there are no signs yet, but she may be the first to be eaten. I know, it sounds horrible, but she is a MEAT goat, that is what we raised her for. She would not be a good milker, so that just makes her an expensive eater. 

The boys happily eating in the sun

We have also started the chore of putting fencing up to move the boys and Belly out to the front field, so that Daisy and Oreo will have more space and privacy with their babies. We don't want anyone getting hurt out here when the babies come. Hopefully next weekend brings more sunshine, so we can get this finished and move them out there. I think they will be quite happy when they see all the fresh trees and grass they have to eat out there. And they will be butted up to the back of my garden, so they can hang out and visit with me when I am working out there too. (well if the weather ever lets me plant a garden this year)

Next project will be setting up the new pig pen and shelter.........then it will be time for piglets!!!! Reminds me, if anyone is truly interested in us raising a hog for butcher this fall, please let me know soon, before we go get them, so we can work out the details. 

So while the girls are hanging out and being pregnant, it seems that the spring air has gone to everyone else's heads. They all seem to be getting twitterpated!! Everyone seems to think it is time to get busy breeding. We even had Cardigan so excited yesterday, that he was doing his flirting dance with Keith and Christian! ha ha ha Here are a couple of short videos of what it is like to be loved by a goat!

This one is Cardigan and Christian pushing each other around. 

In this video, Cardigan just can't leave Christian alone, until he discovers Keith.

Cardigan REALLY decided he liked Keith and he was not taking no, or walking away for an answer...

Here he could not make up his mind on what to do. He really wanted to flirt with Keith, but he also did not want that dog getting any closer to his man! ha ha

When Cardigan gets frisky, he does this flicking of his tongue thing that is just hilarious! Well this time he was pointing his tongue in Keith's direction.

 Cardigan only likes to rub all over me, lucky me! I guess. =)

Well, he also likes to chew on my coat strings....at least it's not my hair anymore.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the farm......the ducks were having a little fun too. I found them enjoying the sunshine and what was left of their puddles. As soon as I got the camera out to take a video, they decided that was a great time to get frisky too.

So, sorry if it looks bad, but the ducks are all about the "gang bang".(not to offend anyone, with my lack of a better term)

You can see in this next one, that I am wrong about everyone being in the mood. The boys certainly are, but some of these girls would rather be left alone.

It was rather funny watching them splatter both of our trucks with mud, all they way up to both windshields. Somehow, they think this is taking a bath. You can tell by what should be a white duck, it isn't quite working.

While I was still watching them play, suddenly one of the males quacked and everyone ran under the truck to hide. He peeked his head out and looked up in the sky, and sure enough, there was a hawk soaring in from above. I was quite proud of the keen senses of this duck, as usually it is my roosters that are the fist to alert of a predator. It took until after my videos, before I saw the chickens even notice and run for cover. Good thing we were out there to keep the hawks at bay, or one of my chickens could have been the hawk's dinner. :(

                                          

It turned out it was not one, but two hawks!

Thankfully everyone survived the beautiful day, our first one that really felt like spring. I am sure the rest of you feel the same way we do on the farm. WE ARE READY FOR A LOT MORE DAYS LIKE THIS!!! 

So for now, we say good bye to the sunshine and hello again to the rain and snow. Until next time my friend.......I can't wait to see you again. 

I hope to be back next week with an update and pictures of moving the goats to the new area. Maybe we will even have babies by then!!! Although I hope not, I am really not ready yet!!! :\

Our dear Twisted Sister :(

This weekend on the farm, we all were reminded of the heartache that comes with naming (and loving) your farm animals. Our very dear and very "special" chicken passed away Friday night. I found her in the coop Saturday morning and my yells and cries of anger and sadness might have woke my neighbors for miles. She was a very big part of my every day and I truly am still a bit lost out there without her.

I recently read a story in a chicken magazine that I get, about another "special" chicken, with a name. While this author was telling the story, he continued to remind you that you should never name a chicken. He said once you give a chicken a name, you will always worry more about it. You will always walk out and wonder where it is and if by chance you don't see it, you will worry until you find it. You will never eat it, and it will cause you heart ache when it does finally die. The whole time I was reading this story, all I was picturing in my head was our Twisted Sister. You see, she was just that bird.

We bought Twisted Sister about 2 years ago. When we went to pick up the 10 chickens we were getting, it was night and dark in the person's barn. Keith and Hayden ran around and caught all the chickens, while I controlled the cage door. We never really got a good look at anybody. We took them home and straight into the coop they went, to go to bed and wake up to make friends in the morning. Well when morning came, we let the chickens all out and suddenly noticed that one of them had what appeared to be a broken beak! We thought somehow we had hurt her in the catch, or the cage, or the drive!?! We were horrified! We started reading and soon found out that her beak was not broken at all, it had been growing this way all along. It is one of the defects that can happen during incubation and usually this kind of chicken would just be butchered, as it would not be an egg productive bird. I still wonder to this day, why this person sold us this chicken and did not just butcher her themselves. BUT....lucky for her, she made it to our farm, where egg or no egg, you are welcome!

Twisted Sister and The Peeps. She was always one of the nice chickens that we could trust with the babies.

We soon discovered that not only was her beak twisted, but it was so overgrown that she could barely even eat with it. So we slowly began the process of trimming it back for her, to a more manageable length. Meanwhile, we started getting to know this girl. I use plastic coffee cans as feed scoops, and she would always try to jump straight into the can, before I could dump it, and eat from there. You see her beak could not fit very well in the chicken feeders to get the food out. Sometimes she even managed get hooked on them and we would find her stuck there.  We got her a new feeder that was easier to eat out of, and a couple of bowls of her own, but she still preferred the red coffee can! So everyday, morning and night, when I go feed she would be the first to the feed bin, jumping straight into my coffee can, to be fed first and then again last. After awhile, she even learned the trick of just jumping right into the feed bin or bag, to just help herself while I fed everyone else. (The only times we have really had to wonder where she was, this is where were would find her trapped.)

Here is a picture of her and Cardigan when he was little. A little better view of her beak.

She would always be the first chicken at your feet, every time you went out, every where you would go. This is where she soon got her name. My Twisted Sister that was always by my side. :) So, for the last 2 years, we have all gotten quite used to this poor pathetic, but "special" girl. We always had a red can with extra food it it for her and everyone always tried to give her lots of treats. She never did lay and egg and we never did care. We were not going to eat her, we were only going to try to give her the best chance at a happy life that we could. And we did. She was(not that she could tell me, but I fully believe) very happy. She was quite sociable and friendly, so most visitors got a chance to check her out, or even feed her right out their hand.(another favorite of hers and most kids) Her and Hayden became such great friends, that she would just let him scoop her right up under his arm and he would carry her around the yard, taking walks, playing, and even swinging with her. She would fly up and land on my head or shoulder often, to hitch a ride to the coop or her bucket. That used to scare the you know what out me in the beginning, but I soon became fond of her sneaky landings. Again, we will really miss this girl.

So that brings me back to Saturday morning. Keith was home and we split up to feed. I went to the chickens and he went to the goats. I opened the coop and went to the feed bin.....no Twisted sister.(remember the story, this is why you don't name your chickens) I started feeding the ducks first and still.....no Twisted Sister. I then assumed that she just went out back with Keith and was in the shed, gorging herself in a bag of goat grains. So I continued on and filled the feeders on one side of the coop and then went on to the main side, to fill the rest. I stepped in and there she was! Laying on the hay, not moving! My heart sank. I tried to move her and make her get up, but she was gone. My heart broke. I yelled, I cussed, and kicked things. Then I found Keith and yes, I cried like a baby.

Keith and Cardigan saying their goodbyes.

Once the shock was over and we broke the news to the kids, we then had to find a way to put her to rest. You see, we have a pet cemetery in the back of our garden, but it is under a foot of snow and inches of ice, not to mention the ground is frozen solid. So burying her there was not really an option right now. So we gathered up some burnables and some dry wood and built her a nice fire to say our good bye. It was a rather emotional experience for us, that I will not soon forget. I have saved some of the ashes from the fire, so that this spring we can pick a very "special" spot in the garden, that is just right for her, and my Twisted Sister will again be by my side, always.

This is our first chicken with a name that we have lost and it is definitely a much harder experience. I see now just what the author what warning us of. It is like losing a house pet, or even a friend, not just dinner. We will all miss her and never forget her. So now I ask, will this stop us from naming and loving others?? Ha! I doubt it! Heartache is worth the love and joy that we have with them while they are here. Besides, we already have, Mr. Cheeks, Floppy, The Peeps, Emery, Henster, & Kohlar! I can't just take their names away now, can I? That would just be cruel! :)

Not the prettiest of girls, but that did not stop us from loving her.
RIP Twisted Sister 2010-2012

Swimming in the rain

Today is a yucky day on the farm. It has been raining and snowing off and on, with huge wind gusts. The only ones that seem to be enjoying the weather today are the ducks!

Swimming!

Oh how they miss the water.

This is what I found them out doing today. Swimming in the lake that has formed under my truck!

Taking a much over due bath!

Time to get started

Farm life can be so rough, unless you are one of the animals on our farm. :)

This is the life for me!

Everyone is treated with love here.

Ok, here we go! Give me a little time to figure this all out please. It's all new to me. There are just too many things going on out here to only be posting on Facebook. So I wanted a way to share all of our silly and sometimes sad happenings on the farm with everyone. Bare with me here as I learn how to use this and I hope you all enjoy the experience!