Homemade Cayenne

I am not a huge fan of spicy food. I'm working on increasing my spiciness tolerance, but it's still pretty low. Somehow, I ended up with a couple of cayenne pepper plants in my garden last year. Probably freebies from the garden center. 😂 I hate throwing plants away, so I stuck them in the ground and figured I would find a use for them.

Of course the peppers were quite prolific and I ended up with so many I had plenty left over even after giving a bunch away. I dried them so they wouldn't go bad, and left them in my pantry for months. 

Eventually I had the idea that I could grind them up to make them into ground cayenne. I do use cayenne in cooking from time to time. Also, I found a recipe for boosting chicken egg production that uses cayenne, so worst case scenario the chickens get to eat it!

Wear gloves to protect your skin and eyes from the heat. Pick the green tops off.

Save a few seeds because ground cayenne is actually a really good idea and I didn't have any in cayenne seeds in my seed stash.

Grind them in a spice grinder! 

I wasn't sure if the seeds would grow. I remembered that I dehydrated some of the peppers in my dehydrator and some of them were left to air dry. I couldn't tell the difference, so I saved/planted seeds from both- one pepper had darker seeds, possibly dehydrated? The other had lighter seeds, probably air dried.

I had horrible pepper germination earlier this spring, so I made sure to plant a bunch of seeds, expecting a low germination rate. Of course they all sprouted. 🙄 Both kinds too! Anyone need cayenne pepper starts?? 😂
 

Freeze Dried Avocados

We are the people in the math books. 😂

It was my idea. Costco had a great price on avocados. I happened to freeze dry one a long time ago and it rehydrated super well; you could hardly tell it wasn't a freshly cut one. So I told G to stock up. We ended up with about five bags. 

They ripened super quickly, just in a couple of days. I sliced them, froze them on trays, and popped them in the freeze drier. 

It didn't take as long as I expected. There must not be that much water in avocados. They don't pack into glass jars very well because of their shape, but I had enough jars to fit them all. 

Quest: Banana Muffins

I really like my current banana muffin recipe, but it is way too sugary for babies, so yet another quest... This time for a sugar free/low sugar go-to banana muffin recipe.

There are a number of highly rated recipes out there, and of course I want to try them all to find the best. 😅

First option is from the Yummy Toddler Food blog. This one uses bananas and applesauce as sweetners. 

Pros: 

makes a lot- 48 mini or 24 regular muffins

was quick to mix together 

has good banana flavor 

Cons: 

came out flat, don't look super appealing 

the high ratio of banana makes it tough to tell when they're done

I don't love the texture, but Jaron seems to be a fan. 🤷‍♀️ 

The quest continues! 

Nasty Gnats

Those horrible black biting gnats are officially here. 😭 

I thought I spied one as I got out of my car, but thought "it's too early and it's been cold!" I was wrong. Poor Jaron bore the brunt of that...

We spent yesterday afternoon outside - moving the potato containers, pulling dandelions in the garden, and hauling mulch to make pathways in the garden. 

Just two of the potato containers have sprouted so far the red and purple. None of the garden planted potatoes have sprouted yet.

Jaron was quite content to play with the rocks in the driveway and then play with a bucket of dirt in the shade next to the garden. I noticed bugs flying around my face but didn't get bit. 

I looked over to see how Jaron was doing and saw blood literally dripping down his neck! 😱 I thought he'd scratched himself really bad somehow, but after running over, I saw the bite marks. 

Poor buddy. He must take after me because they didn't bother him at all yesterday, and then overnight they turned itchy. I had to hold his arm down until he fell asleep so he wouldn't scratch. 

This is after getting him cleaned up. I put some honey tallow salve on the bites, then later some elder salve. Hopefully they heal quickly. 

We went back out after dousing ourselves in vanilla spray and Bug Soother. The gnats didn't bother us the rest of the day! 

Orange Egg Yolks

Just a short post today! 

Check out these vibrant yolks...

What a difference the spring weather makes! More insects and growing things to eat means more nutrients and more color in the eggs (both inside and out). 

Goats Giving Grief

Somehow the goats know when we're gone and save their mischief for those special times...

I was gone all morning, so of course when I came home I found Brighita in the pasture and Senka on the duck side.

My first clue was Gerda's frantic bleating from the shed. Not only was she unhappy to be separated from her daughter, her head was stuck...🤦‍♀️ in the same place as last time. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ You'd think she'd learn!

First, I blocked the chicken opening on the east side of the shed. I moved a bench in front of it and slid the bench away from the building about four inches so there's room for chickens to leave and hopefully not goats. Maybe if it doesn't look like an opening, they won't try. 

Then I locked the goats in the shed so I could chase Brighita back in without letting any others escape. 

She kept trying to go out the way she got in, which was by slipping between two overlapping pieces of the fence. But the angle from Jip's side was wrong and she couldn't squeeze through. 

The Help Me Grow people had arrived by this time, and they were willing to help me corral her. 

Next up, rescue Gerda. I opened the shed door and found this scene. How did Mina even get up there??

Gerda came out easier than the last time. I dug out the straw from under her head and she was able to slip her head back through. Senka quickly scooted through the opening back to the goat side. Soon she'll be too big to squeeze through and then I'll be rescuing Senka's stuck head! 

I reset the blocks in front of the chicken hole to make the opening small again. By that time, Mina was outside with her mom. Did she jump straight down? More likely she used the cat feeding shelf and the milking stand as steps. Guess we'll need to move the milking stand now. 🙄

Full Incubator

Since our incubator is empty, Dad sent an ice cream pail of guinea eggs home with me to hatch. There were more eggs than filled the incubator, so I tried listing the leftovers on Craigslist. We'll see if there are any takers. 

Guineas differ from chicken incubation in a couple ways. They hatch in a 26 day cycle (but could be up to 28 days) and they like a lower humidity to begin incubating (45% max). The eggs are smaller and more pointy on the end. 

We'll see how many hatch!