County Fair

The other day we went to the county fair. They had chickens (of course)! My Little Sister's Farm entered some eggs in a contest, but I didn't see anybody from there or from the buffalo farm around. There were some gorgeous draft horses, as well as all breeds of cattle, goats, and sheep. Also rabbits. I didn't know most of what 4-H did, but they also apparently have a lot of non-livestock-related activities, such as table setting, photography, flower arrangement, and sewing. Who knew? (Aside from them.)

They had gorgeous goats (above -- check out that kid! So cute) and very silly sheep. I didn't realize there were so many different breeds of goats and sheep, which is probably naive of me, but I have no real experience with goats or sheep. They had adorable kids, dairy calves and lambs, screaming pigs (seriously swine in groups will continuously make noise), and sheep in various stages of hair growth.

Some were freshly sheared, while their pen-mates were hilariously not, which just shows you how much of what we think of the essence 0f sheepiness (fluffy, short, white goat-shaped things that kind of just graze around and generally look like puffy l

and clouds). The top one is kind of.. naked looking, don't you think? And her friend there has a wonderful puffy coat of lovely wool. (They refused to look at me in the .83 seconds that I attempted to get their attention. 4-H-ers were looking at me in a way that seemed suspicious and slightly disgusted. Yeah, I don't even know if Lake Oswego had a 4-H group.) For more information on 4-H, including what those four H's stand for, you can visit their official website. I think the coolest of the small quadrupeds, however, were the curly-horned sheep whose breed name I have of course completely forgotten despite having tried to memorize it and writing it down on a slip of paper that has since gotten lost (naturally). My roommate/landlord says that they're Navajo sheep, which sounds right.

How badass are these two? Look at those horns, their rugged wool, their jaded, cynical attitudes... Surely these are the Casanovas of the sheep world. I bet they get all the ewes.

Unforunately, despite the fact that the fairgrounds were originally built for 4-H, the owners want to start making money off the grounds (4-H is free). They're tearing down the buildings one at a time in the hopes of driving the 4-H-ers off. The 4-H group apparently doesn't have enough organization to take a stand or move en masse, so changes are good that the group will completely fall apart once that happens. It's a real shame, because the facilities are amazing. The sheep building had shearing stations, the cow building had a pair of milking stations (how cool is that?), and the relatively low-maintenance grounds were still pretty decently kept. The only horses they had there were Clydesdales -- the horse building had already been demolished.

Still, all in all, it was pretty interesting. Robin got a "brick of curly fries," which pretty much looked the way it sounds, and Nikki got a turkey leg. She said it was disappointingly dry, but it'd been sitting out in the heat under a heat lamp for hours, so I don't know what she expected. Sunset that day was nice too.

Oh, and all the photos from this post were taken with my cellphone. It's fancy and has a 3 mega pixel camera. I love it. I do wish, however, that I'd thought to whip it out when we first got there and stopped in the chicken / rabbit building - there were some beautiful birds in there.

RIP Great Expectations flock

I bought a 10x6x6 dog run from Home Depot recently (Craigslist just wasn't working out, and the chicks were ready to go outside all day long) and had that set up. It's been hot, so the chicks were outside. They really enjoyed it! Scratching, and shyly exploring. It took a few minutes for the last one, Willow, to get out of the box and join her sisters. I left the house and when my roommates got back, they let the dogs out.

Well, the dogs managed to open the door to the run and killed my flock of 5. Willow, Hazel, River (my favorite!), Ganymede (my other favorite), and Loki (suspected rooster) are all dead. It was devastating to come home to. Apparently nobody thought that the dogs, who regularly bring home all manner of dead animals from snakes to birds, needed any supervision whatsoever. I mean, I can't expect anybody else to care about my own personal project, but I guess I expected them to care about five living creatures enough to at least put the dogs in the backyard and close the door again. (The only reason the dogs went out front was because the fenced back yard is closed off from inside the house -- one of the cats keeps escaping, and could be eaten by coyotes -- at night.) Maybe I expected too much?

Anyway, I'm going to a chicken swap meet in late September, and will spend up to then perfecting run, coop, and recipes. I was going to take Loki if s/he turned out to be a rooster (my roommate is afraid of roosters, so I can't keep them. Otherwise I'd like to breed them, but oh well) to swap, but without a chicken, I have to come up with something else to trade. I'm making food instead.

Here's what I have planned:

-Swedish pancakes with a Chantilly-style traditional sweet cream and seasonal berries. Chantilly cream is a whipped cream folded in with sugar and vanilla, originally from France. Swedish Chantilly uses almond extract instead of vanilla. Swedish pancakes are very similar to crepes. The berries will probably be raspberry or blueberry. I'm planning to get the berries from the local farmer's market.

-Savory crepes with a Gruyère-mushroom-spinach filling and a mornay sauce. Gruyère is a very mild cheese that goes well with vegetables and savory dishes. I figured that a lot of people would be bringing deserts, so something with vegetables couldn't go wrong. Mornay is a béchamel sauce (a white sauce) that includes both Gruyère and Parmesan cheeses. I'm hoping to get all of the filling ingredients from a local farmer's market.

-Cucumbers with basil-chive-cream cheese topping. Light and refreshing, slices of cucumber will serve as plates for dollops of cream cheese flavored with lemon juice and fresh herbs. A slice of chive on each one will class it up a bit.

Upon hearing about the death of my flock, one member of the forum stepped up and said that he would just give me a pair of pullets, straight up free. I was shocked, and touched, so I decided right then to bake something in exchange. I was talking to him about his food allergies and apparently he has Celiac disease, so he can't have any gluten. My Gram's Swedish pancake recipe uses wheat flour, so I'll be modifying it to use rice flour instead.

Once I have recipes down for each of these things, I'll post them -- except my family's super-secret-original Swedish pancake recipe, passed down for hundreds of years from Sweden, of course! Swedish pancakes are very similar to crepes, so you can use just about any old crepe recipe you like for the base pancakes, then fold or roll your favorite toppings into them.