Herding Cats

We have two herds on the farm: our cattle heard and our cat herd.  We have about 30 head of cat running around.  Our herd grazes on mice and little birds and we fatten them up with cat food.  When the herd has eaten enough for the day they like to lay around and do nothing.

How many cats do you see?

Sometimes our herd is thinned out. When I first came to the farm we had a couple cats that used to hang out in the shop.  I called them Bob and Bob.

 

One day one of the Bobs disappeared.  About a month later we had another one that looked just like him, so I named the kitten Replacement Bob.  You can see him with his bros here:

The life of a free range farm cat can be a difficult one.  They spend most of their time sleeping and playing and waiting for the magical door to open up with more food. 

-Cat Cowboy Ryan

Corn Cob Jelly

One of my favorite things to do is try new foods.  Obviously.  One day my Mother-in-law told me about a nice lady in town who makes jelly.  She started to list all the the types of jelly she makes and as she was going down the list she said corn cob jelly.  I'd never heard of that before so I said we should try it. 

It turns out that during the dust bowl one of the only things that the farmers could use to make jelly was corn cobs and most weren't lucky enough to have even that.  The recipe that was used to make our jelly was a family recipe from that time period.

When I tasted the jelly the first thing that I thought was that it tasted like honey.  The other more interesting flavor that I tasted is hard to describe.  Corn harvest has a very distinct smell to it; it's kind of like dusty corn and straw.  The smell of harvest is what the jelly tasted like.  If I had to choose between corn cob jelly and another more common type of jelly like strawberry, I think I'd choose the strawberry every time.  If I was a hungry farmer in the thirties, I think that corn cob jelly would have tasted like best thing I'd ever had.

I'm not going to act like I'm a cook, I'm not.  For the people that are out there who are interested I found this recipe on Food.com.   If anyone tries to make it let me know what you think!

-Farm Foodie Ryan