Getting Ready for Christmas

The next two weeks before Christmas will be a busy time at Little Mill Christmas. I'm gearing up to bake over 100 loaves of Limpa and Swedish rye bread for Bell's Market in Kane, Pa. . I've gotten a few mail orders for bread and goat milk fudge. One woman was looking for goat milk fudge for her mother who hasn't had goat milk fudge in over 50 years. She googled Goat Milk Fudge in Pennsylvania and found us at Little Mill Creek. Next week I'll be sending Goat Milk Fudge to Oklahoma.

All the Christmas cards are sent out, the tree is up and all the gifts are bought. In my Christmas letter I mentioned that a book about our goat farm at Little Mill Creek would be published soon. Little did I know that it would arrive in the mail a few days later. Dennis Glover, a childhood friend of Cliff's wrote the children's book after spending some time here doing chores and hanging out with Cliff. The book is colorfully illustrated and includes real photographs. The story is about a mutiny in the barn, when the goats and animals decide they want Sundays off. We've sold quite a few copies already and have more ordered. The books are 10.00 each plus 2.00 S&H. They would make nice gifts for children or anyone who has visited Little Mill Creek. It can be purchased by phone 814-772-5461 or via email at stumps@littlemillcreek.net

For those of you who may not of recieved a Christmas card in the mail, we would like to wish you all a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year. Please keep in touch and let us know how you are doing.

Getting Ready for Thanksgving

This weekend Cliff and I are getting ready for Thanksgiving. Our Red Bourbon Turkeys are readly to butcher for customers. In March we ordered 20 of the turkeys. Fifteen survived and have all been sold. Red Bourbon Turkeys are a heritage breed of turkey that are said to be closest to what the early settlers would have consumed. They are an average weight of 8-12 lbs and take at least five months to raise. At this point they are called Jakes and Jennies and are working on their mating calls and behavior. We love hearing the gobbles as we do chores and such outside.

We have three turkeys going as far as Chicago, Illinios and one going to Rockville, MD. Over the summer a friend brought her son to visit. Ed is a chef in Chicago and was delighted to find Red Bourbon Turkeys available. He ordered two of them for their Thanksgiving dinner. Our friend Ada, who enjoys culinary delights lives in Lake Forest, Illinios and requested a turkey. Ed's mom Edith will pick up the turkeys on Monday and deliver them to Chicago. We are happy because with the cost of postage we didn't want to ship them. Five of the turkeys will be butchered tomorrow and the rest will be butchered on Monday.

We are having our Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday evening. This works for us and our children . It gives them a chance to spend Thanksgiving with the other side of their families. It also gives me a head start on the weekend baking for hunting season. I'll brine the turkey from a recipe at www.recipezaar.com. The website has a formula for dry basting turkeys, which I'll try this year. One of my favorites at Thanksgiving is a cranberry relish made from fresh cranberries. I love the tartness of the cranberries. Stephanie is making pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes & coleslaw. YUMMMM.

This past week included alot of baking and jelly making for the Horse and Sleigh Christmas Shoppe in Brockway and Bell's Market. I had an order for my nut roll, that I've began baking since I was 16 years old. I made a double batch and they turned out superb. Since the price of walnuts has dropped I'll be making more of them for the holiday season. I've made a few batches of fudge this week and added dried cranberries and walnuts to a batch of vanilla. The flavor is wonderful and will be a regular addition to my peanut butter, chocolate and butter pecan goat milk fudge.

My daughter Brandi, is now known as the Pumpking Roll Queen. Since October she has baked over 60 pumpkin rolls that have been selling well at Bell's, The Shop on Main and the Horse & Sleigh. My trip to the Swedish Festival in Rockville, MD turned out well. We enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new. My daugther in law Jessica and I traveled via Pottstown to I pick up my son Caleb. It was nice spending the weekend together and having him as a co-pilot. Caleb is taking a bus home for Thanksgiving. Wishing all of you and your loved ones a blessed Thanksgiving.

Bread Baking Marathon

Make a Smilebox slideshow

If you visit Little Mill Creek today the aroma of fennel, anise, cardamom, molasses and brown sugar will welcome you before you reach the front door. Cliff and I are baking 175 loaves of Limpa Swedish Rye Bread to take to an annual Swedish Festival in Potomac, MD., just a few miles north of Washington DC. The Swedish Festival is held the first Saturday of every November at St. James Episcopal Church and is hosted by Drott Lodge #168.

According to Wise Geek "Limpa bread is a traditional Swedish rye bread which is flavored with molasses, anise, and orange peel. When well made, Limpa bread is moist and extremely flavorful with a rich, almost intoxicating odor. This bread is extremely popular in Sweden and in areas with a large Swedish population; if you happen to be fortunate enough to be living near Swedes, you can probably find a bakery which makes Limpa bread." Or you can buy it at Little Mill Creek for $4.50 a loaf.

This is the second year I've baked bread for the Swedish Festival. Last year, Dolores Johnson Sielbert,a native of Ridgway and lives in Rockville, MD was given a loaf of my Limpa Swedish Rye bread. She called and told me how good it was and asked me if I would be interested in baking 100 loaves for the Swedish Festival. Previously they purchased Swedish Rye bread from Minnesota. I baked some loaves for the committee to sample and all the members agreed to purchase my bread.

I've never baked 100 loaves of bread at one time so wasn't sure what I was in for, but agreed to give it a try. It took me about 1 1/2 days to get all the bread baked. I have a Berkel 20 quart mixer that mixes 12 loaves of bread at a time. My convection oven bakes 6 loaves of bread at a time. Cliff scales each 25 oz. round loaf while I mix the bread and then form it into loaves. He bags the bread and will load it in the van. This year 100 loaves were done in 10 hours. Last year Cliff and I drove to Breezewood, Pa. to deliver the bread. We met Dolores and her friends at Bob Evans and had a lunch together. Dolores had invited me to go to MD and stay with her, but at the time I was having alot of back pain and didn't feel up to it. Dolores called me after the festival and told me the bread sold out within 2 hours. I received numerous calls from people who had bought the bread at the festival. They told me how good the bread was and wondered where they could buy it in the Potomac area.

In September of 2009 Dolores called and requested 175 loaves of bread for this years festival. I told her no problem and that I would be happy deliver the bread to MD. My daughter in law, Jessica is going to travel with me. We are leaving at 8:30 am on Friday, November 6. As I'm typing this Cliff is bagging up the cooled bread. We have 4 plastic racks from Stroehmann's bread to transport the bread. Each rack holds 12 loaves of bread. We need eleven more racks. I suggested Cliff call Palumbo's meat market to see if they might have some racks we could borrow. He just called and they have exactly eleven racks!!

http://www.drott-lodge.org/Bazaar.htm
http://www.jackbellmeats.com/
http://www.littlemillcreek.net/

Today Cliff and I traveled to Emporium to make a four year old little boy's wish come true. A few months ago women named Ruth from Make A Wish called and asked if we had goats. Ruth was telling a mutual friend about a little boy who wanted a goat for Make a Wish. Make a Wish is a non-profit foundation that grants wishes to children who are diagnosed with life threatening disease. Our friend told Ruth she knew someone that had goats and gave her our phone number.

When Ruth called we thought our nigerian dwarf does were bred. I told her we would donate two of the kids to the little boy. Cameron was diagnosed with cancer when he was three. What he wanted for his wish was a goat and a goat barn, despite trying to be talked into going to Disney World and some other fun things. I told Ruth it would be a few months until the goats freshened. We waited impatiently and after the estimated five months our nigerian dwarf still hadn't freshened.

A little barn was donated by Burke's Home Center in St. Marys and I knew that Cameron must be getting anxious about the goats. I called around to everyone I knew who might have pygmy or nigerian dwarf kids that were born this year. We wanted small goats since Cameron is so little. Goats have strong herding instinct and need to be with another goat, therefore we needed two goats. I called our friend Kelly, a goat owner who lives in Ellington, NY and he suggested I call the Farmers' Inn in Sigel, Pa. The Farmer's Inn is a restaurant with a petting zoo that is open during the summer months.

I called the Farmer's Inn and Kim , the owner told me that this was the last weekend that they would be open for the season and we could come up and pick out two goats. I was busy baking for an autumn apple festival. Cliff was making deliveries so offered to drive up and came home with two darling little goats. One was chocolate brown and the other pure white. I named them CoCo and Snowflake. They were quite friendly as they are used to being around people. Every year we take a few animals to the Apple Festival festival in Kane as they have a barn full of animals for kids to pet and enjoy. Coco and Snowflake enjoyed a weekend full of attention.

When we arrived in Emporium with the goats, Cameron was a little sheepish. After I talked to him a few minutes and asked if he wanted to get up on the bed of the truck he became more talkative. We took the goats into the barn and had him get into the pen with them. He couldn't stand still he was so excited. He started to chase the goats to get close to them. We told him to sit down, gave him some feed and soon the goats were coming to him. He looked up at us, smiling ear to ear and said "Thank you for my goats."