Lamb Noodle Soup

20161228_15510020161228_155244Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 chopped carrot
2 cups Water
4 cups Lamb Bone Broth
3/4 cup pasta
2 1/2 cups of shredded lamb
2 tablespoons chopped parsley20161228_155254

 

 

Saute the chopped onions, celery, carrot, salt and pepper in the olive oil until the vegetables are almost tender.

20161228_155644

Add the broth and water and bring to a boil. Once it is at a boil, add the pasta and cook 7 minutes or until the pasta is not quite tender. Stir in the lamb, and let it heat up until the pasta is fully tender. Stir in the parsley and serve!

20161228_163828

Lamb Bone Broth

20161119_083808Neck bones may not seem like the most prized cut of lamb, but they are excellent for making bone broth. Any bones can be used for bone broth, but neck bones have quite a lot of meat that will come off easily during the broth making process.

20161119_082924
Start by thawing the neck bones and soaking them in your stock pot with 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and enough water to cover the meat. This starts breaking down the bones, so you will get more out of them. This should take at least 30 minutes. Do not turn on the stove yet.

20161119_092418Then, prepare the following:
2 whole Onions, chopped
4-5 stalks of Celery, chopped
4-5 whole Carrots, chopped
1 bulb of Garlic, peeled and smashed
1 bunch of Parsley, chopped

And add it all to the soaking bones with some fresh ground pepper and sea salt.

20161119_092425Bring the pot to a simmer. The goal is to let the bone broth simmer for at least 12 hours, but longer is better. The meat will fall off the bones, and they will turn white if allowed to simmer long enough. That means you’ve gotten all the good stuff.

20161119_235037After simmering for at least 12 hours, strain the bone broth. We use a colander, so we don’t over strain it. As you ladle the bone broth into the colander, you will be separating the meat. The vegetables will be soft, or falling apart. You can feed everything that is strained out to your chickens!

The broth can be used immediately or frozen to save for soups and other recipes requiring broth.

Here’s a great recipe for Lamb Noodle Soup that you can make with this bone broth and shredded lamb!

Plans and Priorities for the New Year

During the winter is a great time to reflect on priorities, since things have slowed down from the holidays and there’s not much to do outside. Last year, when I listened to Jack Spirko’s podcast on Getting Ready for Spring I set about 9 project goals for the year, including finishing the duck paddocks in our back yard, starting a tree nursery, and buying land. Out of the 9, 7 were accomplished and one more was started. So when it came to the first of this year, I was excited to evaluate the projects I have for this year, prioritize them, and develop the plans for making them happen. This was also the first year that Christi helped add to the project list.

Jack Spirko suggested making a list of projects, then prioritizing them based on how much you want them and how much you need them. Also, adding the cost in terms of money and your time will help in balancing between what you can do yourself and what is better to hire out. I’ve added a couple of new columns: Category (to keep track of where the project is needed) and Schedule (when I am planning on accomplishing the project). Not all the projects are on a schedule, because it depends on what I am able to accomplish.

Annual Goals Project List

On December 30th, our pastor gave a great sermon on making plans for the new year. Some improvements in life don’t cost and are ongoing, but they do take a plan. Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”, so we added another tab to our Project Priorities spreadsheet. It helps to have a list of what you would like to do and put plans to actually accomplish them.Annual Goals Plan List

Here is a link to a template spreadsheet for tracking your plans and priorities.

The Shire

It’s been a while since I updated the blog. This has been a huge summer for us. We bought 16 acres in June! It’s the next step for us in this Regenerative journey. It’s been non-stop work almost every weekend to get things set up, because we are attempting to work with minimal infrastructure, mob grazing, and multiple species to manage the land. It’s easy to dump lots of money into land like this ($450 to mow the pasture!), so we’re taking it slow and finding natural solutions to management. There are lots of Bradford Pears sprouting everywhere, so we’re getting a couple goats to eat them. We picked up 6 sheep last weekend to eat the broad leaf plants in the pasture, and before that, we brought on a couple calves to eat the tall grass. We also moved out chickens to The Shire to scratch and spread the calves’ calling cards and sanitize the pasture. So far, the only failure is that we lost all three of our roosters to a raccoon.

We’re really excited about the changes (and lambs) coming. More updates coming soon!

To keep up on the day to day updates, you can go to The Shire’s Facebook Page.

Sheep on Pasture