Calamondins and Crazed Dogs

Our neighbor gave us a bunch of calamondins - tiny, extremely sour, but very flavorful little citrus fruits (the one in the picture is actually a Satsuma orange - Clothilde had started peeling it.  The calamondins are much smaller and at that point had worked their way into the sour gummies).  Ethan baked a ham that had been clogging up the fridge in the brine bucket for weeks and made a wonderful calamondin glaze for it, and I made a bunch of sour gummies - they are all gone by now.  I can't make enough of them!  I saved the old chocolate advent calendar molds from last year.  Every gummy is different, and they are all different shapes of starts, angels, houses, trees, boots filled with presents.  It's fun.

Mirin has been pet-sitting for our neighbors with a very beloved (absolutely doted on), but very badly behaved dog.  My mom is good friends with them, so she has been going over with Mirin to make sure he does it all right.  They are realizing that when the neighbors would say, "Don't jump," to the dog, they really meant "Don't hump."  It also jumps up and knocks you down and scratches you with its claws because it's part boxer.  They also have chickens and guinea pigs, but of course the hardest part is trying to do everything for the other animals while the crazed, hyper dog is humping their legs.  It's good life experience.

We put six turkeys in the freezer yesterday - I'm still tired.  They weren't very big this year.  We got them at the wrong time before Ethan had finished building all the coops we needed because the hatchery was being shut down due to the big poultry disease outbreak that went on this summer.  They had to share with the chickens for WAY too long, and it wasn't good for either of them.  There are still seven left, but we don't have freezer space for them - or for the beef this year, either.  It's too full of dumpster-dived frozen organic veggies we don't really like.  There's talk of triaging a lot of it to the pigs to make room.  It will be a big relief when all the poultry is gone (except the egg chickens, of course).  I don't know what we will do with the beef, but at least someone is going to borrow Explorer for awhile, so we don't have to feed him hay constantly while we are waiting for more freezer space to appear.