Now that the mud room project is completed, my Partner in Culinary Crime (PICC) and I have moved on to stage one of the next project, which is a kitchen cabinet facelift. We live in a 104 year old farm house that was outfitted with built-in-place hardwood plywood cabinets in the 1970s, and while those kitchen cabinets are roomy, they really needed a facelift. Since neither of us is interested in blowing  $40,000 or more on a kitchen update or putting a bunch more stuff into the landfill or burn pile, we put our heads together and decided against buying new doors for the cabinets. We chose instead to modify them to look like something that they are not. So with minimal investment in anything other than time and a few tools, we transformed the well dated kitchen cabinet doors into something that looks a little more rustic and makes for a much brighter kitchen.  

The first step in the process involved carefully labeling the doors, drawing a map to be sure they would go back into the same places and removing all the hardware. We decided to replace the handles with knobs but wound up painting the hammered bronze hinges black rather than using new hinges. Yes, you can paint hinges and yes the paint will stick.  

While my PICC prepped the interior of the cabinets and filled screw holes, I took the doors to my router table and using a pointed plunge-type round-over bit I first routed a groove into the center of each door to make it look as though it was formed from two tongue and groove boards. I relieved the outside edges of the doors with the same bit to give them a uniformly rounded perimeter. When working with the router table it is really important to keep the work snugged up against the fence or you will get significant wandering.

We next filled the screw holes on the doors and gave everything a good roughing up with 100-grit sandpaper -- even though the special glossy-surface primer that my PICC sourced didn't require it. I should mention that the primer was a low VOC product that covered things nicely, left a great surface for the topcoat and was easy to use with the house closed up because it was virtually fumeless and it cleaned up with water. Sweet!

We used brushes and small microfiber rollers to apply the primer and topcoat. We brushed out the rolled topcoat, which was a top of the line Valspar low VOC paint. My PICC bought the stuff and paid way more than I have ever paid for paint (except for tractors) but wow, did it go on smooth and brush out beautifully. Oh, and it covered in one coat no sweat.

Painting the doors was a trick for us because we have relatively few flat surfaces for drying them. The dogs were evicted from the house during this operation for obvious reasons. The little dots you see in the corners of the doors is where we have the door numbers -- we used permanent marker and took care to sand and paint around them.

Callie the calico cat and our terriers Pearl and Molly like to tease one another. Callie found that the top cabinet made a much cozier vantage point than the top of the fridge from which to cast her canine slurs. Once I got the doors reinstalled, she was forced out.

Though our kitchen is far from completed, the successes with this first bank of cabinets has us motivated to move on. Right now we feel like we might splurge and replace the 40-some year old laminate counter top with a natural material -- and on a lark, a couple of weeks ago we ordered a new cast-iron sink and fixtures. Stay tuned.

Wholegrain cornbread can be the ultimate comfort food and with all that wholegrain goodness, wholegrain cornbread makes a healthy alternative to cornbread made with highly processed flours and meals. I love cornbread and last Sunday, while watching my Partner In Culinary Crime (PICC) paint the insides of a bank of kitchen cabinets, I threw together a batch of my Osage County Red bean-free chili. Nothing goes better with chili than cornbread, but in the spirit of Weston Price and Nina Planck, I wanted to make wholegrain cornbread with minimal sugar and a healthful oil that was more or less unadulterated.

I happened to have a tube of some industrial de-germed and vitamin fortified yellow cornmeal in the pantry and used its recipe as a starting point. I substituted organic peanut oil for the “vegetable oil,” home-ground (fine) and home-raised Floriana cornmeal that my friend, and Mother Earth News editor in chief, Cheryl Long gave me last fall (literally whole grain … no sifting, nothing) for the name-brand stuff, and whole wheat flour for the bleached all purpose fortified white flour. I had to monkey with the ratios to get the batter where I wanted it, but wow, did this wholegrain cornbread turn out great.

I didn’t get rid of the sugar all together, opting to take Nina Planck’s approach of cutting it in half as the first step. And unadulterated whole milk could have been substituted for the  unadulterated half & half I found in the fridge (we only had whole goats milk and my PICC guards that like gold bullion at Ft. Knox). In the future, I plan to try this cornbread with honey instead of sugar and some different unadulterated fats, including our home-rendered lard. You could also bake it in a glass or glazed dish, but I am very fond of cast iron. If you use cast iron, pop the wholegrain cornbread out of the pan to cool – that way you will avoid any iron flavor in the bread and any condensation from forming between the cornbread and the pan.

Hank’s Wholegrain Cornbread

2 eggs, beaten

1 ¼ cups half & half

½ cup peanut oil, divided

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup fine wholegrain ground corn

2 T sugar

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

Place ¼ cup peanut oil in 10” cast iron skillet and place in the oven. Preheat oven and skillet to 400 F.

Whisk together the eggs, half & half, and ¼ cup peanut oil. Set aside.

Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder. Combine the two mixtures and stir just until wet.

Pour batter into heated skillet and bake for 20 minutes. 

Photos and recipe formatting Courtesy Karen Keb.

Earlier this week Missy, one of our “named and tame” black Katahdin ewes, lambed early, right in the middle of what I hope is our last blizzard. Our sheep production model aims to have the ewes bred for April lambing because by then the pasture grass is coming on strong and we believe that good grass makes awesome milk. And awesome milk makes strong, rapidly growing lambs. Suffice it to say, things don't always work out the way you plan.

Quoting a good friend, we had a fencing malfunction last year -- so our big ram George (a great grandson to Wendell Berry's ram) managed to connect with at least one of the ewes. I have to say that George is very respectful of fences good and bad, but this particular ewe has a mind of her own and a knack for finding holes to slip through. The grass is, after all, greener on the other side. So, I have no doubt that Missy slipped through the fence into George's paddock because I caught her on the way back out. I figured there was the chance of some February lambs and that figuring was born out on an incredibly cold and snowy day.

We had been monitoring the flock and noted that a couple of the girls looked mighty big. The night before the snow flew, signs of immediate parturition were absent, although our sheep are allowed to keep their tails, so it isn't always possible to get a good look at all the signs. Early that fateful day, my Partner In Culinary Crime had slipped on the ice and racked her knee and ankle bad enough that she was imobilized (she managed to hobble and crawl back to the house). So she didn't brave the blizzard to check on things mid-day. The ewes had plenty of hay and plenty of water and the snow was piling up -- I would check them when I got home from work. By then it was about 7 degrees and the wind was howling out of the north east.

I fed the hogs and poultry. Broke ice where ice needed to be broken and was about to deliver a fresh 1800-pound hay bale to the cattle when my mind registered something odd with what my eye had seen. There was a little black snow-covered lamb standing next to a snow-covered black ewe over by the mineral feeder. Huh?! Oh ya, there was that hole in the fence. As I jumped off the tractor to have a closer look I heard a little lamb voice coming from the hay stack. Missy pretty much always has twins and this time was no different. I checked the lamb by her side; he was strong and his belly was full. The little girl had been cleaned and was breathing, snow-covered and half frozen in the hay. I tucked her into my coveralls and raced her into the house, but no amount of massaging, heat and warm colostrum drench could bring her back. Our terriers licked her face, cuddled with her and stayed on the job for about an hour after she expired. What a bummer.

By the time I got back to haying the cattle, Missy and her lamb were nestled down in the open-front shed, out of the wind and the weather. That little guy has experienced nights with temperatures into the negative teens and continues to thrive. What a way to come into the world. Fixing fence is a top priority for me this summer, but malfunctions are always expected on the farm.

Well, the great Kansas blizzard of 2011 appears to be over. Some folks say that the Kansas blizzard of 2011 was of a magnitude not seen for years. I'll admit that it was the first real blizzard that I've experienced in Kansas, but it wasn't the worst I've experienced in either North Dakota or South Dakota. Still, when the temperatures are in the low teens and the wind is driving the snow sideways at about 25 miles per hour, you definitely have a blizzard on your hands, and it is hard on people, machines, animals and plants. Yet, blizzards are characteristic of the plains states so the plants, animals and people that live there have sufficient adaptation to plow through in most cases.

Courtesy Karen Keb 

Down in my part of Osage County, Kansas the snow amounts were no where near as dramatic as they were further east and into Missouri. The accumulation at our relatively sheltered farmstead ranged from 4-foot drifts in the lee of the wind to an inch or less in smooth open areas. In the yard and animal pens we received a fairly uniform 10 inches of accumulation -- enough to require shoveling out of feeders and gates and plowing paths. Truth be told, I enjoy snow and the work that it takes to keep the farm going in spite of it.

Last night when I got home from work, I set to on some of my favorite chores -- the encore performance this morning was met with subzero temperatures, calm air and a gorgeous sunrise.

Courtesy Karen Keb 

When I pulled our trusty Kubota out of the shed, the hay spears were still on the loader arms so I swapped them for the utility bucket instead of the snow bucket (visible in the background) because I need to unload bagged feed from the truck. The box blade is useful for pulling snow away from buildings and for pushing it off the lane.

Courtesy Karen Keb 

Molly, our 7-month old Border Terrier loves to romp with us while we are out doing chores. She has seen snow just twice before yesterday, and she doesn't let it hold her back. Molly also has a wonderful knack for staying out of the way of equipment such as the tractor, but she loves racing up and down the plowed corridors and then leaping over the snow piles and into the soft powder.

It cleared up sooner than expected last night so the temperatures dropped further than expected. Chores were completed and the snow was plowed once again when I paused to take in this icy sunrise. How can you hate winter when you get to experience something so glorious?

Our little 104 year old farmhouse survived the blizzard in style. The new mudroom addition stayed snug, warm and dry. It was nice to be able to shed my ice-encrusted coveralls in a proper mudroom and pop them into the drier so they'd be comfortable when I next needed them.

Last night on the way home from work I had a little trouble getting the big Dodge through a couple of drifts. I heard the maintainer scrape past this morning about 4:45. Thanks Mr. maintainer driver for making my trek to US 75 this morning an easy one.

They say it will be even colder tonight, although the winds are scheduled to be calm. I hope it stays calm for the sake of the plants, people, animals and machinery.