Sweet Al's Sauce Kickstarter!

What is one of my jobs? Working with people that I love (my family and occasionally a friend or two) with our catering and events business, we love to feed people. Our Teriyaki sauce is amazing and reminds me of my childhood, sweet, salty, a little tang, a little heat. After some demand from the public we are getting it bottled so you can take it home and share with your own family. Please help support our family run business. Can't afford to donate? Then please share the link and spread the word! Help keep a Mom and Pop business open and thriving!

Sweet Al's KickStarter!

Where have I been? What have I been eating?

I've got papers piled high on my desk, books and notes stacked some what neatly on the shelf, and my office is cold. Autumn is here! I have a few excuses for why I haven't been posting all year but instead of complaining I am going to gush about future plans.

Meat?

Last month I felt like a real farmer, I killed and cleaned my first chicken (6 chickens actually).  These were chickens that I had helped raise from fuzzy yellow chicks, I felt proud knowing they had a good life (down right spoiled) and we gave them a quick and clean death, with the purpose of feeding our family. I look at store bought meat in a different way now, I question it, I feel sad on the freeway when I pass a semi truck full of white feathers, knowing they are going to die in a chaotic processing plant after a short miserable life. It really inspired me to raise my own meat, so this winter I'm setting up the property and building pens for meat chickens, ducks, and a few geese and turkeys. 

Eggs?

I have 12 beautiful hens in our snazzy new chicken coup (remodeled this summer). I love these birds and they are just starting to lay the cutest and tastiest  little eggs. I recently bought them a Rooster.

 

I named him Egon (from ghost busters) and after the girls bullied him for 3 days he became part of the flock. I look forward to incubating some eggs in the future and getting babies from them, as future layers for myself or for resale.

Produce?

My garden this year has been bountiful,  Tomatoes, Zucchini, Cucumbers, 3 different kinds of beans, Broccoli, Beets, Swiss chard, Potatoes, White currents, and Herbs.

I'm a beginner at gardening and I learned a lot this year (I didn't trim my tomato plants and ended up with a tomato tree forest  and a few other newbie mistakes).

22 Lbs of Yukon potatoes! (I didn't think they would turn out at all, people told me I planted them too late in the season) they taste amazing. 

This was half a weeks worth of tomatoes! It made the most delicious  Tomato sauce (first time canning!)

I know now to stop my mom at 2 cucumber plants and 3 Zucchini plants (we had 6 cucumber plants and 8 Zucchini plants) we feed a lot of friends with what we couldn't eat, some even went to the neighbors pigs so as not to go to waste.

Above is Layla my 6 month old hybrid (Shiloh shepherd/malamute/wolf mix), best dog I could of found, shes learning pretty quick how to be a farm dog. She's with me wherever I go on the farm, she gardens with me and keeps the chickens in the coup while I feed them.

Eating Gluten free has taken me on an amazing food journey, I've really been looking at where my food comes from. I've greatly enjoyed feeding myself and my family from things I have raised and grown. Next year the garden is expanding as well as our livestock.  

I'm looking at getting laying ducks before winter sets in and in the spring I want to get Honey Bees.

I'm also researching dairy cows for a dual milk/meat production, maybe as early as next summer but we will see.

My point is that I'm still here, I'm still eating Gluten Free, I've just been doing more Homesteading than baking. But do not fear, Autumn is here and with it the holidays, I feel like winter is baking season, and I will have more recipes to share with you (and probably more homesteading posts)

Life and whats happening.

It's disgusting to think I haven't posted sense January. It's not that I haven't thought about what to blog about, or haven't taken pictures for blog ideas.  In the winter my apartment is a dark hole and the artificial light makes nothing appealing. We've also been dealing with a mold problem, a decrease in income, and a general  jumble of life. The past few weeks we've been working on the second house on my parents property, so Mr. Beam and I can move in. We've replaced windows, walls, tiled, redone the kitchen cabinets and much much more. We still have some things to do (like carpet the bedroom), but we only have a week left in the apartment, this next week is going to be chaotic.

That post from January? I still plan to do it all. I'm hoping to start up next month, I will have a bright, clean kitchen, with room to move and cook in. I also have some product reviews to post, as well as my weekend with my celiac cousin and the treats we ate :)   I'm really looking forward to starting up this blog again, I've been bursting  with ideas.