Farmish Shenanigans and a Tart of Downton

Hello dear readers! Welcome back for more farm doings this week.

Welcome to the new readers, the sheep are happy to sit with you and submit to your cheek skitching, but only if you brought peanuts for them.

Thank you to Marilyn G for becoming a paid subscriber, and to Kemstagram for your generous tip. I am grateful for your blessing to me and the critters. Thank you!

There have been shenanigans here this week. Partly my fault and partly the tank heater’s fault, partly the LGD’s fault. Mostly the tank heaters fault though.

Every so often, a tank heater decides to go rogue and electrify the water in the tank. Thus, it will zap whichever unwitting creature decides to take a drink from it. This week, the heater went off the rails on me.

Now, the part that is my fault, is that I didn’t pick up on it faster. The water level in the tank was not going down thru everyone drinking, and I totally didn’t notice. My bad.

When it was noticed, I had boy child stick his hand in and see if the cold water was hot. Yeah, he did the zap-dance-hand-wave-holy-crap-I-just-got-electrocuted boogaloo.

So, we pulled the tank heater and consigned it to the dumpster with a few choice words for its lack of compassion and consideration towards the sheep, dogs, and boy child’s hand.

This also means we are down to one heater (have I told you that we seem to have one turn evil and self destruct every winter?) and are switching between the two tanks until we can get another. Of course, all the local farm stores are currently sold out.

In comes the LGD’s.

One of the great thing’s about LGD’s is they are very smart. It does not take them long to pick up a pattern and roll with it.

They picked up that the red thing in their water was bad. Very bad. So bad that it is up to them to make sure the bad thing goes away. Pretty much keeping in line with their job description.

Which they did.

So that they, and the flock, has open water during the night, we put the tank heater into the corral tank. We tie it onto a water pipe that hangs over the tank so that it more or less stays in place.

Come morning, that evilbadnastyhurty red thing is on the ground outside the tank. With additional doggy tooth puncture holes on the protection sleeve.

Yup, despite being tied in place, they were flinging that sucker out so nobody got zapped.

Told ya they were smart.

Luckily, our temps are still out of wack for the time of year (it was 60 a few days ago) and there is only a thin layer of ice on the tanks in the morning. I just decided to leave the hated heater out of the tanks for the time being in the vain hope they will forget about the evilbadnastyhurty red thing.

Yeah, right. Did I tell you they are smart?

The other oddball things around here is that from the beginning of November until this past week, all the little birds seem to have disappeared. No chickadee’s, nuthatches, wood peckers, and other cute little dudes I have no idea what they are called.

We put out a suet bird block when the cold times are supposed to hit so those little guys have a source of food. Nothing had touched it until a few days ago.

Whenever you go outside, you didn’t hear any birds, you didn’t see any birds, it was the exact opposite of Hitchcock’s epic “The Birds”

It was kinda spooky and I was hoping I had not walked into an M Night Shyamalan horror flick. Made me seriously wonder if something bad was going on with Mother Nature or if the aliens had returned.

Thankfully, they are back!

I do have a cat, who is primarily an outdoor cat until the first cold evening force’s him to live inside, sleeping on comfy blankets, being pampered and fed to his hearts delight. It’s tough being Gunny kitty. So, I don’t think he is outside terrorizing the birds. The only time he leaves the comfort of his spot is to go potty, then he is right back inside acting like the king of the castle.

And the last two things….

We have grass growing at the moment, and my walking onions are sending out green shoots. There is enough new growth that the sheep are spending a part of the day out grazing instead of just eating hay.

Baylor doggo has decided to blow his winter coat. There are chunks of white fuzz all over the corral from us pulling the loose bunches out. And today, we get snow.

It’s been a week!

In the theme of the challenge I was given last week that had me cooking chicken from “Outlander”, the “Downton Abbey” cookbook arrived.

This week I present to you a Custard and Jam Tart!

Despite it’s grand name, it was not very difficult to make. Although the crust had me concerned as I am a crust deficient baker. I just can’t make them to save the life of a pie no matter what. Rob was the crust maker extraordinaire in the house.

Alas, I had no choice but to put on the big farmer girl panties and give it another try.

Custard and Jam Tart

For the crust: ( my nemesis)

1 1/2 C flour, plus a little extra for your work surface

1/2t salt

6T cold unsalted butter cut into cubes

3-5 T ice water

Work the butter into your flour/salt mixture until you have the consistency of bread crumbs. Add 3T of the water and mix until your dough comes together into a rough mass. Use the rest of the water if needed.

Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Have 12 tartlet pans, 3” size ready for use. Roll out the pastry as thin as possible. Using a sharp knife or cookie cutter, make rounds 3/4-1” larger than the pan.

Press them into the pan and trim any excess. Refrigerate the pans for 30 minutes.

For the custard:

1 1/3 C milk

4 egg yolks

1/4 C superfine sugar

1/4 t vanilla extract

Warm the milk in a sauce pan until bubbles just form at the edge of the milk. Meanwhile whisk the sugar and egg yolks together until well blended.

Gradually whisk the milk into the egg mixture. Be sure to temper it or you will end up with scrambled eggs.

Whisk in the vanilla.

Preheat the oven to 400.

Place your chilled tart pans on a sheet pan. Divide the custard between them evenly. About 2T per pan.

Bake until the crust edges are golden and the custard has puffed up some and are lightly browned at the edges. About 20 minutes.

Let cool completely, remove carefully from the pans, and add your jam on top. About 1-2t to each tart.

Notes from me on this recipe….

I don’t have 3” tart pans, I have 4” tart pans and only 10 of them. Arn’t they cute? The bottom come out so it’s easy to remove the tarts without busting them all up.

I pre-divided the dough into 10 equal pieces and rolled them out individually instead of one big sheet and trying to cut circles.

With 4” pans, I put in 3T of the custard mix in each one. Worked just as well. They did need a few extra minutes of baking time.

The jam. That was a problem for me. Even at room temp, it was not spreadable on the tart. I tried to warm it up, and it was not good that way either. What I should have done was to take it out of the jar and whisked it to a smooth consistency first. Either that or buy a better quality jam. My local store is really limited. They only had one kind of jam at all.

The jam did separate overnight and made for messy eating. I suggest you eat these the same day you make them

Enjoy!!!

Next week….Yellowstone!

Have you accepted my challenge to make something from one of your favorite movies or TV show? I would love to see and hear what you created!

Blessed Be!

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Thank you for your financial support for my farm. I am grateful for your help! Every penny goes back into the farm to feed and care for the critters. Your support keeps this place going. Thank you again!