It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to....

.... no crying here - it was a great time!

Well "Old Matt", my official unofficial brew club name, is now bonafide, certified, petrified old... turned the big FIVE OH last weekend....

We had close to 50 folks show up for some beer and eats and other festivities... some great gifts, and the brew club chipped in for me to get my own 3 tap jockey box - woot woot!! Rumor has it that they are desperately trying to dig up on old pink Coleman cooler for the building of this thing... Sweet!

Many thanks to Jeff for the smoked Tri Tip, Tom for the smoked turkey breast, and Janie The Goddess for making me a 13 layer birthday cake... Yes, THIRTEEN layers... that baby was really something!!






















Pam made me a one-of-a-kind, ain't nobody else got one custom CBS apron... it totally ROCKS!!





















I was expecting cases and cases of Geritol and Mylanta and Preparation H - but my friends really came through!!

Remember waaaaaay back in the beginning of this chicken thing when I said my bro Jeff likes to call having chickens like having "Chicken TV". Well it's true - here's the proof:






I managed to get a picture of Jeremiah's son being entertained...










I think I've *finally* learned how to get a decent picture of the chickens - put my camera on 'continous' mode so it takes 9 pictures in about 2 seconds...
















Nic snapped a nice one of two curious girls:

















Fast forward a week - This Saturday morning I decided to declare myself a chef and experimented with creating a new (to us) dish and go for something resembling a 'presentation'... same ingredients I always make breakfast out of, but just assembled in an orderly way:

Chickens on the roof!!

Relax.... I didn't say WHICH roof now did I??

Caught a glimps of one of the Reds on the roof to chicken coop while getting ready for work this morning.... never seen them get up there before...

[chicken on roof]





I've been holding down the fort lately as Nic has been little miss world traveler and away on business... She knocked 'em dead at Interbike in Vegas and is off to Louisville Kentucky for the big Kid's Show... not big kids, but a large show.... Whatever....

We were holding steady at two eggs a day for a long time there.... last weekend we were kinda joking around that if the girls didn't start laying more that chicken and dumplings might be on the dinner menu soon... Well lo and behold we started getting 3 eggs a day, then 4... they must have overheard us...

Things have dropped back down to 3 a day so maybe I need to bring a frying pan outside for the girls to see... just a subtle reminder....

For the first time, we haven't been able to keep up with the eggs the girls are laying!!

[bunches of eggs]









Ran up to visit No-Longer-Big-Gay Jason, Ali and newborn Christopher at 6 days old... Dang they are small when that young...

[matt and christopher]




Jason and Ali gave me an early xmas present/late birthday present (or whatever): the Pitmaster iQue110 charcoal grill temperature controller...

[iQue110]




I hooked it up the other day and it did a fantastic job of holding temp at 250... you more or less just set the temp you want and forget about it...

Here's the results:

[grilling results]




















We've been slowly harvesting some 'maters of various types, then I realized we actually had quite a few sitting on the counter.... decided to take a stab at freezing them up by just removing the skins, quarter them and into the freezer bag.... the boiling water trick worked like a champ!





The setup...














The results...

Summer In Full Swing

Here we are, 2011 going on 2025.... Sorry - gots the Blues Brothers on my mind right now....

For lack of a better term, I think "bouncy" describes what's been up lately... variety of things keeping us busy...

A few weeks ago Nic hosted a planning meeting for next years National Homebrewers Conference trying to get it all figured out... travel, a booth, club night, beers, who's going.... there's a LOT to it and I'm really proud of her making it all happen... I shudder to think what a mess this could become if it fell into the wrong hands...

Somebody call the Pope, because Hell has indeed frozen over... I actually got together w/ my brother Peter from New York when he and his wife Susan drove down for the night. Grilled some eats, had some beers, told some (sometimes true) stories...

And for the first time in almost a year, I got to take a VACATION !!!

I headed out to Black Canyon (by Oakridge) last Wednesday night and set up camp for 3 days of solo camping.... campfire, beers, books.... Ahhhh.....

My home for 5 days:
[butt in chair]




Nic came up Saturday morning, brought some fresh supplies (i.e. more beer and ice) and we had a nice time for 3 more days hanging out...

Well, except for the whole trip into town to catch the UO/LSU game at a local pizza joint... Nic not a happy camper after that, and I saw the Beavers had gone down in total shame, so we weren't exactly in great spirits when we got back to camp... that was a real early night for us...

Obligatory chicken pics:


Buffy is a big girl now!!













And so are the other girls!

Dog days...

Well looky there... it's been something like three weeks since my last blog post... Bad Matt!!

Let's see - what's been going on?

Nic has been making good use of the new fire pit as a feeding station for the girls....

(nic on fire pit.jpg)



A few weeks ago we went to No Longer Big Gay Jason's baby shower up at his in-laws place in Halsey... Somehow we got the bright idea to brew 10 gallons of something big in hopes of giving it to his son Christopher on his 21st birthday... He and I had the Impy Stout we made last October (wow - that is TASTY stuff) but wanted to do something specific for the baby shower...

So I took a friend's Sno Cap clone and imperialized it and we ended up brewing it up there out in a field... and just to make it more fun there was a request for me to do some grilling, so I did two pork tampenade roasts on my Weber... I will NEVER NEVER NEVER again take beer and dispensing gear, everything needed for a grill session, plus everything needed for a 10 gal brew session on the road again... Just WAY TOO MUCH logistics and packing of the piddly little stuff... And after all that, no pictures... Oops!

We also survived the annual Brew Club campout up at Clark Creek... Wow - that place is just so perfect for us... lots of great food, great beers, a new record in our fund raiser, Nic made blueberry pancakes, I made wings Fri night and Belgian Braised Beef Saturday night... lots of raffle schwag for all and a good time!

Oh, but wait!! Here's the Big News!!

WE GOTS EGGS!!!

Not a lot of eggs, but we got 'em!!

The morning we were getting ready to leave for the club campout, Nic was in back doing chores while I supervised, and lo and behold she stumbles across a green egg sitting out by the garden shed... Woot! Woot! She let out a yell for sure... It's official - We be chicken ranchers now!!

Proud Wanna-Be Mother (eggs1)




We were soooooooo excited to have eggs that we actually briefly toyed with the idea of staying home from the club campout!! But sanity set in and after some mutual prodding, we loaded up our stuff and off to the great outdoors we went...

We went looking around for other eggs - who knew how long they had actually been laying - and Nic found three more in the corner of the chicken run...

Egg Cluster (eggs3)




They say chickens start laying around 18-24 weeks and I had been meaning to put either fake eggs or at least golf balls in the nesting boxes, but just hadn't got around to it... we put a golf ball in each box, along with the already laid eggs (didn't know how long they'd been there and weren't about to eat them)...

Sure enough, as of the next morning (and as far as we know, ever since) the nesting box on the far right seems to be The Place for doing their business (eggs that is)...

We were doing about two eggs a day since getting back from our campout, and once had 4, but the last couple days just one... I think it's the sustained hot weather...

Pretty darn sure it's the two Buffs doing the laying so far...

So incredibly thrilled with our first egg that Nic decided to blow it out for saving for posterity...

Mmmmm - is this an attractive picture or what??

(nic blech.jpg)



Nic made a run to Boise for the better part of a week to spend time w/ Mandy...

While she was gone, we had accumulated enough eggs that I took a shot at making my so-called world famous frittata... I broke all the eggs in to a bowl and of course they looked perfect, just smaller... It didn't look like I'd have enough so I added two more 'regular' eggs, and took a picture for comparison....

Can you tell the difference? It's there, just not as dramatic as I would have thought...

(eggs in bowl.jpg)




Last weekend I brewed up 10 gallons of my Brown Ale for some early fall enjoyment (got that big party coming up) and whilst doing so, smoked up a rack of ribs...

(mmmm ribs.jpg)

So, now everybody is pretty much caught up!!

Until next time...

Herding Chickens...

Oh... My... Gosh...

Talk about a cluster grope wrapped in an enigma with a side order of chaos... that pretty much sums up our chicken interaction last night...

On the advice of a friend, we were going to leave Those Damn Chickens (formerly known as "The Girls") in the run for a few days, in hopes that the One Damn Chicken will reacquaint herself with her home roost and not be such a PITA to deal with come bed time...

That was the plan anyway...

After our usual Taco Nite feast at Shooter's, T'wife couldn't resist letting them out for a while (and deep down I wanted to as well), so we turned them loose for an hour or so...

Let the fun begin!!!

Now in order to get Those Damn Chickens BACK into the run, the usual "chick chick chick" call with some treats had absolutely no effect on them... just stood there and looked at me...

Normally if I pick up my Official Chicken Whackin' Stick (also known as the Rod of Obedience), and thump it on the ground, Those Damn Chickens will make a bee line for the chicken run...

Well this time the exact opposite happened - they scattered in every direction... when you have 6 chickens, that's a LOT of directions...

I tried corralling them and they would group together, only to scatter again in, yep, 6 different directions...

As I stood there and contemplated how many shotgun rounds it would actually take me to deal with this, t'wife entered the fray... instead of me using The Stick, she wanted to try The Carrot...

She actually managed to get them grouped together and heading toward the entrance of the chicken run, but the closer they got, the more they scattered...

Tried that again, same thing... and again... and again...

I'm thinking that no more than about 8 rounds ought to do it.... but I was overruled...

At this point we have 6 terrified scatterbrained chickens everywhere, but t'wife managed to get them into a corner with two miraculously still in the run with the door closed...

One by one, she managed to grab each and toss it into the run...

Hmmmm - Ten or twelve rounds, maximum...

I wonder what adventures await us tonight???

Bad Girls...

I remember saying something to t'wife one night as we sat out back admiring our six cute little fluffy hens-in-waiting... "Wife.." I said, "one day we won't be calling them 'The Girls', instead it will be 'Those Damn Chickens'...

That day has come...

What was, we thought, a one time thing where one of the Reds decided to roost one night up in the big Rhoddie, has now become a way of life for Elvira, one of the buffs...

Or in her case, a way of Death...

I'll be darned if I'm gonna spend 30 minutes every damn night trying to coax her into the damn chicken run along with the damn 5 other girls... and of course, the more she does this the more likely the others will think it's like way totally cool and start doing it as well...

Not gonna happen, damn it....

And if it does, we are having a LOT of chicken BBQ in the near future... hmmm - just in time for my upcoming 50th birthday party... mmmm young and tasty...

Careful girls - daddy's getting ideas...

Damn obligatory picture of damn chickens... it's a damn rake girls, calm down... (not pictured: Damn Chicken)...



Another damn picture of those damn chickens... think they notice the axe and chopping block in the background????



So at the advise of a damn friend... oh wait - he's a human...

So at the advice of a good friend who has damn chickens, he suggested just keeping all the damn chickens locked up in the coop/run has a reminder of where their damn home is... if this doesn't work.... mmmm chicken and dumplings...

Those Damn Chickens.....

My wife has been peeing in my briefcase....

.... okay, she's been putting a container of fresh picked snow peas in my bag before I leave for work... what a sweetheart! And they are a big hit around the office when I feel like sharing...
















This is a flower of some sort that t'wife seems to like a lot...




















Built the main part of a fire pit... next comes the hard part of tearing up the sod to form a path and ferrying in all the pea gravel for it.... joy...















I bought a bug zapper last summer and was eager to see it in action... put it up again about a week ago.... bugs zapped so far, including last summer: 1. Uno... great $44 investment there....
















Neighbor cut down a couple massive pine trees and we managed to score a bunch of the (heavy) wood... three truck loads of this stuff and all but the smallest chunks weigh about 90 or more pounds...
















Obligitory chicken picture...