Jeph's Spot visits Bluebird Meadow Farms!

While in NY visiting my parents this past weekend, we got to go visit Andy and Kelli at Bluebird Meadow Farms. Andy and Kelli have been friends of my parents for years now - they're often referred to as "The Young Ones" when mom and dad are out partying up with them (yes, this makes my parents "The Old Ones").

I sorta feel bad for Andy and Kelli, along with Kelli's parents who were visiting for the weekend. I'm sure things were relatively peaceful and quiet (as peaceful and quiet as a weekend of killing, scalding, plucking etc 34 chickens can be!), and then suddenly eight people show up in two cars - and trust me, we're a talkative bunch! But the folks at Bluebird Meadow Farms are a VERY hospitable group, and in no time we were seated with margaritas and lemonade and being fed great food, including some seriously kick-ass beer battered, homegrown peppers and onions dotted with small pieces of cheese (white cheddar?). Talk about some goooood stuff!

Here's Jesse chilling with a non-alcoholic drink (Remley Baby Girl #3 is due in late October!)...



Andy and Kelli's dog Watson is QUITE a character. He's a wirey little Border Terrier, and I DO mean wirey! I've never seen a dog with such coarse fur. But he's a lot of fun, and full of energy...plus really he's got some great tricks and is very well behaved.


Here's the nice, peaceful view of Andy and Kelli's backyard. Well, part of it...it goes on quite a ways!


Gotta say I never would've thought to try frying up anything in a cast iron skillet on the grill! Here's Andy cooking those great peppers and onions! We couldn't get enough of them, so he whipped up a second batch. MMMM GOOD!


Emma found out Watson likes chips and salsa...


Sarah: "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, with the prettiest golden hair...hate me because I can look this amazing and still chow down on a bowl of chips!"


Brett doesn't eat fried peppers.
Brett doesn't eat fried onions.

Brett DOES, however, eat fried potatoes!! Andy made sure everyone was accounted for, and fried up some of the taters he'd just dug up....GOOD STUFF! Luckily Brett was kind enough to share...


After nibblies we got a tour of the farm, the barn, and the property - starting with where Andy, Kelly and Kelly's really nice parents spent a lot of the weekend before we arrived - the chicken killing and processing area (aka the backyard). Here's the cones Andy rigged up for draining the blood from the chickens. While Andy shows us his most horrifying slaughter-pose, Sarah contemplates what the last few minutes of a chicken's life was like. LOL (If I remember right, she was giggling a bit while Sean flipped her upside down)


What's the most modern, high-tech way to get the feathers off a freshly killed and scalded chicken? You tickle them off!


No, really... Take a look!


(I couldn't convince Emma that this contraption was really a fun carnival ride - that all she had to do was crawl in and we'd turn it on. What it does is spins around rapidly, and those rubbery fingers remove all the feathers, most of which fall down the sides of the barrel. Would've been interesting to see it in action!)

No chickens were harmed during our visit. This was the most chickeny thing we saw (until we peeked in their fridge!):


And how do you effeciently heat a barn during those cold New York winters? You build one of these crazy ovens!


Out behind the barn Emma played on a pint-sized tractor... There's Andy and my brother wondering why the wheels on the tractor don't really work very well, and mom, as usual, is on the phone doing real estate stuff.


Dad and Andy are waiting for the the rest of us to pile in the back of the pick up to go on a tour of the property...


Brett just loooooves the sun!


I was hanging my arms out the pick-up, plucking grasses and wild carrot flowers for Emma and Sarah - I think that was the best part of the tour for them.


Brett, Sean and I just enjoyed the chance to sit and go for a nice slow ride through the fields.


Something Andy and Kelly have is a whole lotta nuthin'. Lots of space. And this is a really, REALLY good thing - be envious! I sure am! How beautiful is their "backyard"!?!?


Little house on the prairie!


Kelly, aka The Girl in the Kitchen (or just Kitchen Girl for short), was showing us Andy's Padington Bear boots.... I still think we need to paint some little butterflies and ladybugs on his nice yellow boots! ;-)


A woman after my own heart, Kitchen Girl has an amazing knack for packing A LOT into a dishwasher. I get lectured for this. We all joked about how my dad is incredibly meticulous with dishwasher loading, while we're all about getting as much in there as possible.


My mom's well known for her "dislike" of chickens, raw meat, raw chicken, salmonella, and anything that might be germy. We grew up thinking chicken was best marinated in bleach (I'm kidding!). Here's me terrorizing my mom with the half chicken Andy and Kelly sent us home with (and yes, there's also a yellow squash in the bag), and Kelly's providing some bleachy disinfectant to protect my mom! ;-) (And knowing mom, she'll make me take this picture down - so hopefully you'll see it before she does!)

[Sure enough - she had me take down the picture!]


Thanks again to Andy and Kelly for having all of us, for feeding us, for the great chicken (another post will show how I cooked it tonite!), and the really fun afternoon. It was also really nice meeting Kelly's parents. Turns out Kelly and her mom, Meme, are lurkers here - never commenting but keeping up on what's going on with us here...so it was a bit unnerving when they would comment on stuff going on in our lives, and yet I'd never even met Meme before! NOW I know how Finny must've felt recently... But seriously - I'm really glad we got to meet Kelly's folks, and got to see Andy and Kelly again, and will hopefully get to see them again before too long.