Ramsey Farms Ranch Dressing

Since Sonja asked for it, here is my Ramsey Farms Ranch Dressing recipe! Like all my recipes, it's really very easy to make! (I don't have time for fancy, hard-to-get ingredients or time consuming processes!) It'll taste even better if you grow your own dill and herbs! ❤💗 Farmer Chris won't touch bottled ranch dressing from the store anymore and there have been threats of eating it from the jar with a spoon! It's great on salads, for fresh veggies, even pizza crust or whatever you can put it on to eat it! It's that good! 😋

Ramsey Farms Ranch Dressing

Makes about one pint - mix it all up in a pint size mason jar. We save the plastic mayo lids to wash and use to close up the jars. Will keep in the fridge until the expiration date of your sour cream. This is a great base recipe, you can add your own ingredients, spices, herbs to get the flavor you like best. Be cautious about how much garlic you use, otherwise you'll be up all night with heartburn! You can find my original post of this recipe here. Thanks to The Pioneer Woman for the foundation for this recipe! 

Ingredients

• 1 cup (real) mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup sour cream* (see below for how to make your own quick sour cream!)
• 1 to 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp+ sugar
• salt to taste
• dill (fresh or dry), to taste (I use about 1 tsp fresh or 2 tsp dry)
• a splash of buttermilk* (or lemon juice or vinegar) (I use about 2 tsp of the sour cream liquid mentioned in the sour cream recipe below)
• other herbs I use interchangeably: parsley, thyme, oregano, rosemary, cilantro, chives
• Optional: paprika and or hot pepper flakes and or cayenne pepper and or hot sauce

Directions

1. Mince your garlic and chop the herbs very finely. 
2. Mix the garlic, sugar, salt, herbs into the mayonnaise. Stir well.
3. Taste frequently and adjust seasonings as desired.
4. Add the sour cream; mix very well.
5. Chill for at least 30 minutes or up to a few hours for best results. 
6. Thin with buttermilk (or vinegar) or milk if needed.
7. Eat and enjoy!!

Make Your Own Sour Cream

This makes a thinner cream than the weird gelatinous stuff in a plastic carton from the store, but it gives a much more authentic flavor to your dressing! We very rarely buy the sour cream in the store anymore since this is just so easy to whip up in a minute and feels healthier to me without the additives. 

1. In a glass mason jar, add one cup milk. (Note the milk's expiration date, this is when your ranch dressing expires too.)
2. Add 1/4 cup white vinegar.
3. Place in coolest part of the fridge for 20+ minutes.
4. This makes approximately 1/2 to 3/4 cup of sour cream.
5. Scoop the cream of the top to add to your dressing!
6. The liquid that is left in the jar can be used as buttermilk!

You can check out all the recipes on my blog here! 

"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things." ~Henry Miller

The Pre-Spring Herb Garden

The bare herb garden ready for spring and new seeds. You can see the lemon balm, cilantro, some dill, the thyme and the tea tree (in the middle).

The biggest ant hill you've ever seen moved in right smack dab in the middle of the chocolate mint plant! What you see there is grits - yes, dry grits - coating the entire mound. Within just a few days, the ants were gone!

The view from the other side. Thyme, cilantro, dill, the tea plant in front of the lemon balm then at the far end the chocolate mint topped with grits.

Spring officially starts tomorrow morning at 5:28! We will celebrate!

Hang On...Spring's on the Way!

It's been warming up for a few weeks. I can hear birds singing before the sun rises. Farmers have tilled their land. Many seeds have been planted. A great deal of seedlings have emerged from the soil. Trees are budding! The Spring Equinox begins about 6:48 am on March 20 this year in the Northern Hemisphere. Just 24 more days until the official first day of Spring! REJOICE!

Farmer Chris has planted a good deal of the early crops. So far we can see the potatoes, snow peas, lettuce, carrots, spinach, radishes, green onions, and the stems of our "We Ain't In Vidalia" Ramsey Farms sweet yellow onions have all made their way from the soil to push through and face the sun!

Potato Seedlings 2/13/17

Check out our Facebook page for a cute video showing the newly emerged seedlings and plants and more!

Remember to put a smile on your face and love everyone you meet today! Your's may be the only kindness they receive or see all day. 💗💗

Lemons

Wow! Already 2017 is here! Where has the time gone?!? We have been so busy around here with Christmas and the kids being out of school and the new year and this incredible crazy weather. It was winter for about three days - got down in the 20s actually! Then it went back to summer and has been in the mid-80s most days for the past couple weeks.

I've got my Best of 2016 blog stats prepped and ready to go, just haven't been able to make time to write it up! My company has been booming with business of late - which is great, but doesn't give me much time for all the other things I enjoy. So as soon as I get time for a breath, I'll be back writing up a storm here on the blog and showing you all the awesome things we've got going on here. It is tator planting time, you know!

Until then I just wanted to share this photo of one of our meyer lemons. We have harvested five that were on the little sapling and there is one more still ripening. I protected the tree and the one lemon from any frost by covering the cage around the tree with a sheet on those three nights of temps in the low 30's / upper 20's. Although a mature meyer lemon tree can withstand temperatures of 22 degrees Fahrenheit.

Isn't it a beauty?! Oh my goodness and they smell and TASTE so delicious!

Enjoy your new year and check back soon for new posts! ~Ramsey

You Cannot Reap, If You Do Not Sow

You cannot reap if you do not sow. Autumn in Georgia. Harvest time. Thanksgiving. So thankful for the life we have, the earth, the river, the warm sun, the pine trees, and blue skies as far as the eye can see. Peace, love, laughter and contentment. There is nothing better that we can reap while we're here on this planet.

Pears!

 My sweet friend and neighbor, Teresa and I ventured over to the next county to pick pears at her mother-in-law's house in late August. We picked about 55 or 60 pounds of pears, which doesn't sound like much, but wound up giving me a fulltime project for the next week or two.

Gorgeous homegrown pears

Makes me think of marble or granite. Edible artwork!

Pears peeled and ready for slicing & coring

Pear peels used for pear vinegar and feeding to the chickens as treats

Canned Pears in light syrup!

We made about sixteen 8-ounce jelly jars of pear butter

Put up about 18 pints & 7 quarts of canned pears

The pear butter has been a huge hit. My son will even eat it directly from the jar if you don't watch out! The canned pears look absolutely perfect. I cannot wait to have "fresh" pears this fall and winter and into next year for making pear-cheddar cobbler, poached or braised pears, pears flambèed in rum, pear salad, pear cinnamon oatmeal, pear pan cake, pear butter spice cake, or just plain ol' pears warmed and buttered or just cold, straight from the jar!

Do you have a favorite pear recipe?! Please share in the comments below.

“Don’t shake the tree when the pears fall off themselves.” ~ Slovakian proverb

Eggs! Glorious Eggs!

So you know I was super duper nerdy excited when my hens finally started laying eggs! And of course I took a ton of pictures of the first dozen! :) We found the first eggs on August 27. Loner Bird must have started laying on August 25, on the floor in the coop, so we didn't find them until that third day. Happened to be sitting by the coop, drinking coffee, watching the chickens do...well do chickeny things. We heard a bunch of weird noises in the corner of the coop including a scratching or tapping noise. Loner was the only bird in the coop. Upon opening the coop this is what we found...

And every day since then...

The girls produce an egg a day! 

A hen will take a day off every now & then, but we usually get 5 or 6 a day.

 Including huge double-yokers like this one from Big Bird! 

 Our eggs are way healthier than store-bought eggs. Our chickens eat a healthy diet - no chemicals, no hormones, no junk food! 

 White egg (from the grocery store) shown for size comparison.

 As you can well imagine, we've been eating lots of eggs lately! Quiche, frittata, breakfast casserole, cakes, breads, and my son's favorite, eggs in a basket! Where you cut out a hole from a thick slice of homemade bread, toast your bread a little on both sides in a buttered pan, then crack an egg into the cutout. Fry until set, flip, cook for a minute until your preferred taste. Voila! 

Pretty Bird and Baby Bird take a little stroll. These two girls are solid layers - rarely taking a day off since they started laying at the end of August.

We love our chickens and it's just so awesome that these beautiful sweet creatures also give us food daily! Best animals in the world! Everybody should consider owning chickens!

Check out all the photos of our chickens here and see the fantastic, super deluxe chicken cottage that my Farmer Chris designed and built right here!

Enjoy your day and remember that if you're in a storm right now, there are always blue skies & sunshine just beyond the clouds!! ~Ramsey

The Finished Deluxe Chicken Cottage

Finally I have gotten to the photos of the coop! 

Construction / groundbreaking began on May 18. 


The girls moved into the run around June 18 and got moved into the coop side of the Deluxe Chicken Cottage about a month after that. 


We put all the finishing touches on the coop and it was officially complete on August 14! 

So here are the first released photos of the completed Ramsey Farms Deluxe Chicken Cottage! 

Remember you can see all the coop pics right here and also pics of our chicks and other fun stuff at the Facebook page.

 Thanks for dropping by the blog!

The Ramsey Farms Deluxe Chicken Cottage!

Bruce or Caitlyn?

Big Bird July 13 @ 14.5 Weeks Old

You all remember the pretty yellow chick? The only one we weren't sure on its gender? Originally that chicken's name was simply "yellow bird" that morphed into Big Bird. But for awhile, Farmer Chris contemplated calling her Bruce / Caitlyn since we were not sure of the gender (reference: Bruce Jenner). My friend, Caroline (the woman, not the dog) refers to this bird as Gertrude.

The Red Ranger breed of chicken was selected by my son. Because he wanted a yellow chicken, not the black ones Mom was picking out! The Black Stars are genetically modified (is that the right word?) so that at hatch, the female chicks are solid and the male birds have a black dot / star on their head. Saves those chicken sexers some extra work and saves those that do not want roosters from getting cockerels.

5 days old, she didn't have a name yet!

So for nearly 23 weeks, we watched. We wondered. We waited. Was Big Bird a boy or a girl? (What about on Sesame Street, I'm not sure that Big Bird was gender specific either, was he / she / it? Hm. Anyway!) So now whatever name you want to call this big, beautiful, size of turkey, can-imagine-it-fried, docile friendly bird...you can call her "ma'am" as I literally saw an egg coming out of her body!

Big Bird at 16 weeks, July 15

And let me tell y'all, about every third egg she lays is HUGE. The egg from yesterday barely fit in the egg carton with the lid closed. My seven-year-old must hold this super egg in two hands! She's given us one double-yoker already and I have a feeling that jumbo egg from yesterday has more than one yolk in it too. I'll find out this afternoon. My son (the junior farmhand / chief ditch digger around here) declared that he wants to eat that egg for snack after school. It's his chicken, he said, he is gonna be the one to eat her eggs. How's that for a pretty awesome pet?!

Big Bird starred in her own little show that depicted this chick's faster growth from week old baby to a teenage pullet. You can check out that fun little minute-long clip here. I know, I'm personally a little obsessed with these awesome little cute feathery food producers but if you wanna see all the chickens in all their glory, be sure to visit our Facebook page for all the fun photo albums. I even have an album just for the chicken cottage construction photos too. :) Enjoy!

My personal note for today:

You can either curse the rain or search for rainbows! ~Ramsey Penegar

Make the most of what you have & love with all your heart!

Cheers,
Ramsey

What Do You Feed Chickens?

Laverne chilling on the temporary roost in the run

We love our chickens! Who knew they'd be so much fun?! Really they are fun to sit by the chicken coop in a shady spot and laugh at their crazy antics, they greet you with such admiration and idol worship, they are gorgeous creatures to look at, you can pet them and hold them (someone told me the other day she used to have a chicken that would just hop up in her lap!)...ummmmmm plus they give you food i.e. eggs!

Finding eggs is the trophy of chicken ownership of course. Each egg is unique in size, shape, shell color and design. I've enjoyed a little chicken-study the past few weeks as the egg laying began to figure out just which of our six girls was laying which egg. I'm a little nerdy that way, but it's been a fun endeavor and now I'm the resident expert on "who laid this egg?!" A title I've really always dreamed of. LOL Yesterday was our first half dozen day - all six hens laid an egg yesterday! The final one to lay (I feel sure it was Shirley) dropped her first egg several days ago and it takes a few egg cycles to get regular. Our Black Stars should lay about every day taking one day off every week or so. Big Bird, the yellow Red Ranger might only lay every third day give or take. At least that's her M.O. so far and heavier birds tend to be less prolific layers. The Black Star variety were bred to lay daily.

Once they awaken at sunlight, these funny birds spend their day eating, drinking, scratching, dirt bathing, egg laying, and general chicken silliness. And pooping. Oh yeah, don't forget that - they seem to poop all the time. But all that vitamin-rich chicken poop can go straight into the compost (unlike other fresh manure) and composted for our garden. So they are like little wild squawking compost machines! It all begins with commercial layer feed.

The girls have all day access - an all you can eat buffet - to their commercial layer feed with it's 15% protein and high calcium to help with the formation and production of eggs. Without this stuff, we could make our own but you want to ensure a healthy flock and this is a key step in that. Much of the commercial feed also has medication to help prevent common bird issues.They also have all day access to water in their run.

However, just like all animals, they love food and treats. And just like all pets, chicken owners want to give their girls yummy snacks in appreciation for all those eggs! My girls see me coming with a bucket and it gets loud and rowdy up in the chicken run - all of them hollering and singing and declaring their deservingness of a snack! These girls love acorns, blackberries, muscadines (unripe, ripe, peels only, and dried), strawberries, pears, apples, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, basil flowers, acorns, marigolds - all healthy, nutritious snacks if given in moderation. They also love bread and cooked pasta but don't get much of it since it lacks much nutrition. (One cannot live on junk food alone, even if they are a chicken!) There are a lot of other great food treats chickens may safely have and I'll be working on getting them some fun, delicious recipes!

This is a gigantic zucchini that hid from us in the garden until it was way past the size we want to eat. So instead of just tossing it in the compost, I scooped it out and ran the pulp through the food processor along with some other veggies like cucumber and squash ends. Added the puree back to the zucchini shell and topped it with breadcrumbs, chicken feed, and dried marigold flowers. Garnished with leftover corn on the cob (unsalted, unbuttered) for a perfect chicken snack feast! Needless to say, it did not last long!

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Hope you have a wonderful week full of rich experience. Be nice to yourself ! 

Cheers,
Ramsey 

Summertime Pickles

Pickles! Sweet pickles, sour pickles, bread 'n butter, dill pickles, lime pickles, frigerator pickles (that's short for refrigerator if y'all didn't know that word!) There are so many different varieties, types, and flavors of pickles out there! There are even pickled ocra, pickled green beans, pickled eggs, and my favorite, pickled pigs feet! (Nah just kidding, I wouldn't eat pigs feet fried, boiled, grilled, steamed, or pickled. No thank you ma'am.) Maybe we have a pickle obsession?!

Our cucumbers did not yield as much this year as we saw in 2015. I think I was only able to make about seven jars of cucumber pickles. I also made squash relish and spicy squash pickles! My mom fell in love with the cucumber lime pickles (made from lime the mineral, not lime the citrus fruit) during one of her visits here. These lime pickles are sweet yet not syrupy, and the crispest, crunchiest pickle you've ever had grace your mouth! Plus they stay a really lovely bright shade of green, not the dark overcooked sogginess that some pickles get.

Different pickles have different seasonings. When I first made the cucumber lime pickles, the instructions on the bag of lime said to use "pickling spice". So of course I had to google it to see just what this was and how I could make it at home (right now) to continue forth with my summer pickle fiesta.

To make your own pickling spice, here are your necessary ingredients.

Pickling Spice

• 2 tablespoons whole mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon whole allspice berries
• 2 teaspoons whole coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more to taste
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 bay leaves, crumbled
• 2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
• 6 whole cloves

Place mustard seeds, allspice berries, whole coriander seeds, and red pepper flakes into a small glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake to combine. Add ground ginger to seeds and shake again. Sprinkle crumbled bay leaves over spice mixture and place cinnamon stick halves into the jar. Seal and shake to combine. Mixture can be stored in the tightly sealed jar for up to 1 month without loss of flavor.

Check out all the recipes on this blog here!

If you have never tried making your own pickles, I encourage you to try it! Come on over and we'll do 'em together! If you grow cucumbers or can get your hands on some fresh, homegrown cukes then by all means - do it! Even if you've never canned anything before, you can make pickles! Start out with a fairly easy refrigerator pickle that requires no canning - just make the pickles, put them in the jars, and make room in the fridge!

We have cucumbers growing in the garden right now, so I hope the fall season will produce many more cucumbers and many more jars of pickles in my pantry!

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time."

~John Lubbock, "Recreation," The Use of Life, 1894

Make the most of today!

Cheers,
Ramsey