Adventures in Florida Homesteading

Write the Vision II

2011-12-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

I love this saying*. So when people ask me why I work so hard, I can honestly say its not work. Or at least it beats the alternative.

Last year I "Wrote the Vision" that we had for our little 'stead for 2011. We done good if I may say so myself. Tis the season to make our plans for 2012. Its going to be a good year, ya'll. I feel it in the depths of my muddy feet.

1. Install a water line and hose bib to the southeast corner of the house. Anytime
2. Clear and fence 1 paddock in the pasture and install a sprinkler.- May
3. Add a poop catcher to the rabbit hutch to make collection of fertilizer easier. -January.
4. Construct a sheltered milking area, preferably with a concrete floor. -June
5. Construct/create a hay storage area closer to pasture. Anytime
6. Build a feed trough that sits outside the pasture fence and retrofit a portion of fencing to allow their heads through to eat. Anytime
7. Re-rig the outside shower (dependent upon #1). -June
8. Install a shaded raised herb bed... again. -April
9. Build a tree house. -December
10. Build a greenhouse that can be converted to a shade house. -January/June
11. Move bananas (if we can find a better place for them). -February
12. Plant blackberries and grapes where bananas currently are. -March
13. Find a way to grow garlic. -September
14. Construct a durable, permanent clothesline for the kids. -March
15. Construct a cover for the water system. -March
16. Make a quilt for Farmer Boy #1. -December
17. Start and finish scrapbook for Farmer Boy #2's infancy. -September
18. Repair old rabbit hutch into a finishing pen. -March
19. Plant a loquat (again) and kiwis.
20. Increase the family with 1 treasured foster child. -January

*If you can't read the sign it says, "The view from the barn door beats the view from the sofa. -Cowboy wisdom"

Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

2011-12-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

Christmas, yes, that's wonderful. I like it, I really do. And planning for spring planting is part of that! This year Mother Earth News did an article on people's favorite seed companies.

Seed catalogs have this amazing, kid-in-a-candy-store type affect on me. I requested a few new ones, but Nichols Garden Nursery's got to me first (along with my old stand-by Southern Exposure). I want to get seeds in the ground ASAP so the rest will have to wait until I'm thinking of my fall garden.

So I ordered a lot. I was low on a few types and, of course, I have to try new things. I'm an absolute sucker for a seed catalog. And Nichols had such interesting unique stuff- such that I hadn't even seen at Baker Creek! I made a long list for both Nichols and Southern Exposure and now am waiting anxiously, very anxiously, for them to arrive.

I salivate just thinking about it.

But for record keeping sake, here's my orders. I know... I got a lot. As I said, its totally a weakness, but I don't go clothes shopping. I don't wear make-up. I haven't bought new shoes in 5 years. Indulge me my seeds, ok?

Nichols:

VCC567 Cucumber Lucky Dance
HBA215 Basil Bolloso Napoletano
HRB228 Papaloquelite
FLW316 Calendula Flashback - Organic
GRD115 Luffa Gourd
FLW123 Cosmos Early Summer Mix
FEV245 Strawflower Monstrosum
VSP405 Spinach Malabar Climbing
VCE185 Celery Afina
VCE181 Celery Golden Bar
VKA557 Kale Redbor
VLT631 Lettuce Matina
VME525 Melon Hannah's Choice
VWA509 Watermelon Ruby
VSQ621 Salman Zucchini
VSQ659 Squash Sebring Golden Zucchini
VTO438 Tomato Cherokee Purple
VTO549 Tomato Sun Gold
VTO443 Tomato Gold Nugget
MCO808 Sourdough Starter-French Lactic
MHG255 Plastic Plant Markers 5" x 5/8"
SESE:
1 x Carolina Wonder PEPPER, BELL (SWEET) 0.5 g (46123) = $2.50
1 x Jupiter PEPPER, BELL (SWEET) 0.5 g (46134) = $2.75
1 x Rosita EGGPLANT 0.25 g (45203) = $2.80
1 x Purple-Podded Asparagus (Yardlong, Yard Long) Bean 4g (11103) = $2.95
1 x Cascade Glaze COLLARDS 1 g (24108) = $2.50
1 x Savoy Perfection CABBAGE 2 g (22107) = $2.05
1 x Ruby Red (Rhubarb Chard) CHARD, SWISS 4 g (32102) = $2.05
1 x Lazy Wife Greasy BEAN, SNAP (POLE) 14 g (13603) = $2.95
1 x Red Cherry TOMATO 0.16 g (49136) = $2.50
1 x Matt’s Wild Cherry TOMATO, CHERRY 0.08 g (49804) = $2.75
1 x Blacktail Mountain WATERMELON 1 g (55113) = $2.50
1 x Jericho LETTUCE, ROMAINE 0.5 g (62706) = $2.65
1 x Vates KALE 2 g (25101) = $2.35
1 x Ashley CUCUMBER 2 g (51101) = $2.50
1 x Star of David OKRA 5 g (69108) = $2.50
1 x Roselle, Thai Red - Herb 0.6g (71301) = $2.35
1 x Thyme, Creeping - Herb 0.2g (71249) = $2.10
1 x Thyme, Summer - Herb 0.2g (71304) = $2.25
1 x Della SORGHUM 7 g (72612) = $2.50
1 x Black Amber Cane SORGHUM 7 g (72606) = $2.75
1 x Sweet Potato Mix; Orange, White, and Purple, 6 Slips (74151) = $10.00

Surprise! Babies!

2011-12-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

Forgive me. I never got a chance to even get a picture. December 19th, I walked out, checked on the rabbits and found 7 babies in Cream's pen.

Surprise!

I didn't even know she was pregnant. I tried to breed her with Brownie before he went to be the patriarch of another set of ladies. She showed no interest. He "attacked" from every angle but never got the good ole grunt and roll so I figured she just wasn't ready.

Fast forward 5 weeks and we have squirming babies on bare wire. I quick flipped over the nest box and put them in. I pulled some fur from Cream (who should have done that herself) who did not appreciate the help.

The next morning 5 of them were dead. A few minutes later I discovered Helen had miscarried. Can we say "miserable day?" The day after that the remaining 2 were dead. This is not uncommon for new bunnies. Its like it takes a tragedy for their maternal instincts to kick in. So Cream will be visiting "Steve" (the bunny down the street) this weekend. We'll give him a day or so to "reload" then take Sugar a-courtin' too.

Bewilderment

2011-12-29T13:01:00.000-08:00

Take a little walk through history with me. In April of 2010, we acquired Helen and her daughter Doby who was only 2 months old. Shortly after that she got pregnant and had Willy in September of the same year. Then she got pregnant just one month later. I didn't even know that was possible. But sure enough, she birthed Jonah and Julius in March of 2011. Jonah appeared healthy, but Julius seemed to lack a proper suck reflex. He died about 2 weeks after he was born. We got Copper good and isolated that very month.

Or so we thought.

I had wanted to give poor Helen a nice break from babies. But in November she started to look round. She had always been so scrawny and gangly that seeing her a little on the plump side made me happy.

We also, in the month of October, had some troubles with Copper. It started with him jumping his 4' fence repeatedly. We never found him in the paddock with the others, but clearly that was his goal. He spent a week on the end of a chain until we could contruct "The World's Ugliest Fence" around the bachelor pad. Then we went camping and came home to find that he had ripped a hole right through his fence, broke a 4x4 pressure treated post in half with his head, ripped the common area fence right off the rest of the posts and was in with everyone having a hay day. His interest was mostly in Doby and Bella so I had hoped in those few hours (14 at most) that it would not just happen to be the 2 or 3 days in a month that Helen could get pregnant.

But then her milk dried up rather suddenly and she she started looking fat. She's a lot like me... barely pregnant and people are already asking when the due date is. I wondered if she was pregant or was she finally just recovered from multiple babies and lactations?

December 20th we had our answer. She didn't come when I fed them that morning. That's always a red flag for any of our critters. I went in and checked her out and found two tiny fetuses hanging out of her. They looked the same, size and all, of the rabbit babies that had also died that same morning (more about that later). I mourned. I tried to save her from pregnancy and didn't and now she has 3 dead babies (including Julius) all because her poor body was just tired and couldn't grow them properly.

She cried all night that night. She didn't eat for a couple days. Now she's back to normal. So much so that she butts Bella away from the feed. But we started wondering exactly what happened.

Possibility #1: Copper DID get in the common area in early October and then back out during those couple weeks we were fighting him. Likelihood- very low. If he got in and back out, Dulci would have surely followed him.

Possibility #2: Helen did just happen to be in heat when he got in the common area in late October. Likelihood- about 1 in 14 chance. Not to mention that he did not appear interested Helen when I was draggin him away from his harem.

Possibility #3- Helen lives in perpetual heat like a rabbit. Likelihood- well, I've never heard of that before, but if anyone's like that its fertile Myrtle Helen.

Possibility #4- Those were Valentino's babies and destined to miscarry anyway. Likelihood- moderate.

So, yes, sheep and goats can reproduce. It doesn't happen often, but when it does they are almost always miscarried or stillborn. Very rare occurances result in live births. Odd as it sounds, I think this is the thought we'll need to run with. That Valentino will need to be kept separated from at least Helen during times when she's not pregnant and we don't want her to be.

Is that feasible??? That's 7 months of the year. And he can't be in the bachelor pad or he and Copper will kill each other. Is it likely Valentino wouldn't attempt to mount her except in the fall when ewes are in heat? Would that at least chop those 7 months down to 2? Or would we just need to arrange her "schedule" so she's pregnant in the fall?

Or does she need to get moved on to a home that's not so hard on her uterus?

Questions abound. No conclusions just yet. Any advice would be appreciated. I just really don't want her continually pregnant by whatever random critter is woed by her feminine whiles. I'd rather see her in a different home than harmed because we can't feasibly provide what she needs.

Daisy Roast

2011-11-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

I don't have a picture of our fabulous dinner last night, but I do have another picture of that fancy shmancy meat grinder again. Husbandman's favorite feature on this baby is the sausage stuffer. When we slaughtered Button, we processed all her meat into sausage because she was older and would probably have a fairly strong flavor. We really enjoy the sausage (made from only meat, onions, garlic, salt and herbs) but we had no way of making links so its just ground and in 1 pound packages. Husbandman picked up some hog casing because he was a mite nervous about saving the casing from his own slaughter-subject (though he really does it all very well). And when we were searching for our own meat grinder, a sausage stuffer attachment was a must.

A couple months ago we decided we were overwintering just way too many animals. With the acquisition of Zuma, Esperanza and Nina were unnecessary as breeding ewes. Zuma has had twins each time and her size (hopefully coupled with the rapid growth rate of the khatadin in Valentino) would produce more lamb than we would need in a year. We traded Nina with a friend who raises grass-fed beef. She ended up becoming a wedding feast which I think is a fine fate for an animal who has to die anyway. Esperanza was almost 2 years old so we made her into sausage like Button. Very very yummy sausage. Some in links and some ground in packages. Daisy, being less than a year old and true "lamb" we processed into roasts. I roasted a shoulder cut in the crock pot last night with garlic and rosemary. Absolutely superb. Fall off the bone tender. Great flavor. Kids gobbled it up. Couple that with a nice pile of garden fresh greens and we had ourselves a very fine meal.

Making Soap

2011-10-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

As promised, here's the how-to of soap making. Please keep in mind, I'm not a professional. Neither have I even yet used what I've made. Just posting what I do know right now because I spent many nights reading about this stuff!

1) I wanted to start with what they would have used in the good ole days- FAT! A call to the butcher at Winn Dixie and Publix provided me with all the beef and pork fat I could want. Winn Dixie seems to have more to supply than Publix, but they also charged me $.50/lb for the stuff where Publix gives it for free. Not a lot of money, but seriously, they're going to promptly throw it away. Charging is just poor form in my book. I digress. We came home with large packages of fat.

Then we ran the beef fat through our new handy dandy meat grinder. This isn't a necessity, but it definitely expedites the rendering process on the order of days. Then I put it all in the crock pot. I started it that evening and by morning it was done. I ran it all through some cheese cloth then poured the golden liquid into jars and let them cool until it was white and a soft solid. Then I put them in the freezer. The dog thoroughly enjoyed the cracklings. The next bit was the pork fat. By this time I had read more and it said grinding was not necessary, but it was necessary to cover the fat in water. Now that I've done it, I totally disagree. That pork fat sat in the crock pot for days. And I kept adding water. By the time I was done (note I was the one done, not the lard), it was a pain to try to separate the lard from the water. I ended up having water in each jar of lard and had to be careful when spooning it out for soap. And while you can buy lard fairly cheaply in the grocery store, you can't get tallow and they both have different properties in soap. I'll probably still render my own tallow. We'll see about the lard.

2)Then I got figuring recipes. I realized that using only tallow, lard, olive oil and coconut oil really would not give me a very nice, conditioning soap, I started looking into other oils. A friend found http://www.essentialdepot.com/ and http://www.wellingtonfragrance.com/. They had the best deals we could find on bulk oils and essential oils (for scents). Essential Depot also had the best price on lye. We ordered coconut oil (virgin, but not as pure as food grade and thus a fraction of the cost), palm oil and Castor oil. Castor oil is available in small quantities in any pharmacy, but its considerably cheaper to order through a soap supplier. I've since learned the quest for palm oil is ravaging rain forests so once what I have is gone, I won't be using it again.

3) Once I figured what other oils were in my price range, I went back to figuring recipes. I learned from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Natural Soaps about http://www.soapcalc.net/. This is a fabulous website that allows you to create your own recipe using the ingredients you want. You determine what fats and oils you want to use, the percentage of each and hit "calculate" and not only will it spit out the recipe, but it will give you a numerical factor of various soap qualities, like hardness, conditioning, or cleansing. And it gives you the desired range of each property too. Then you can tinker with your recipe to make it just as you want.

4) Then find a mold. I happened to have 2 shallow, rectangular tubs 10x9x2 (don't ask me where I got them). I had to figure out how much soap, by weight, I needed to fill that mold. Follow closely, math coming. Find the volume of the container in cubic inches, but leave room in the height. For example, I calculated 10x9x1.5= 135 cubic inches. Then multiply that number by .58. That gave me 78.3oz of soap for this mold. You need 11 ounces of oils for every 16 ounces of soap so then I took the weight of my soap times 11 divided by 16. In my case, 78.3x11/16=53.8oz of oils. I rounded that to 54 and that's what I plugged into soapcalc.net. I then got my recipe based on weights of oils, water (or goat milk or tea) and lye.

5) Then its time to start weighing. If you use goat milk, its good to freeze the milk so I weighed out my amount in the scale you see pictured. This was a very handy and very reasonably priced purchase. You must have something that can measure by weight to the fraction of an ounce for decent soap making. I weighed out my goat milk then poured it in a ziplock and stuck it in the freezer. Then I weighed out some strong chamomile tea and poured it into a jar to cool for later. It wasn't until the next day that I started weighing out fats and oils according to my recipes. My goat milk body soap has beef tallow, coconut oil, castor oil, olive oil and palm oil. My chamomile shampoo bar has castor oil, coconut oil, olive oil, lard, and beef tallow. My laundry soap bar has coconut oil and lard (with water). Ingredients are listed in order of decreasing amounts.

6) I did each soap one at a time. I started with the goat milk soap. I'd read it must be kept cool to prevent darkening. Darkening doesn't hurt the soap, just makes it not as pretty. That's why you start with frozen milk. Adding lye to a liquid (never liquid to the lye), causes an exothermic reaction... meaning it gets hot. I melted the milk merely by slowly sprinkling the lye on it. And please wear gloves and goggles and do it in a ventilated area. I mixed it on the stove with the exhaust fan going and all the kids firmly instructed to not come near me. Once the lye is dissolved, add in the oils. Weigh out everything prior to mixing anything. Also have your mold greased and ready to roll. Once things are moving, they're moving and you really can't stop. Its not necessary for all the oils to be in liquid form. The heat from the lye solution will soften things. Also, please invest in a stick blender. Apparently you can make soap without one but you must take great pains on the temperatures that everything is at or you'll be stirring the stuff for 5 hours or more. A stick blender will ease the troubles considerably. So I poured in my fats and oils, taking care to not splash as the lye solution will burn. Its suggested to have a spray bottle of white vinegar handy if spills do happen. The acid in the vinegar will neutralize the caustic nature of the lye. Then start blending with the stick blender. When the mixture starts to "trace", its time to add scents, dyes and pour into the mold. Tracing is when its thick enough that if you dribble some from the blender (when the blender is NOT on) onto the rest of the mixture, you can see where it dribbled. It doesn't quickly mix into the bulk of the solution. And on a side note, please use a stainless steel spoon. Or at least not wood. A nice wooden spoon is really unpleasant looking (and toxic?) now that its been stirring lye. Learn from my mistakes.

7) Once you got the trace thing happening, add the essential oils for scents or any dyes. I added lavender oil to the goat milk soap, but everything else is totally bare this round. One thing at a time for me. Ok, well, at least in this case. Then pour into the mold. Lots of sources stressed the need to line the mold. One source (a DVD available from the library) merely suggested greasing. So I just greased my plastic mold and figured if worse came to worst, I'd pop it in the freezer to get it out. I also used a cheep metal rectangular cake pan as a mold in addition to my plastic pans. Not sure what kind of metal it is. Probably aluminum. Greased that too and I had no problems getting soap out of any of them. What you do then is confusing. With the goat milk soap, some said its important to keep it cold so to put it in the fridge. I did for a couple hours... then I felt the need to get the 25lb bag of carrots that it displaced off my counter top. With other soaps, some sources say to insulate it so it doesn't cool too quickly. Like throw a blanket over it. I don't see why. Especially if with goat milk you're supposed to stick it in the fridge.

Well, things definitely changed color. Everything was creamy at first, then they got dark in the middle. The one on the bottom is the goat milk soap. The left is the laundry soap and the right is the chamomile shampoo. I cut them into bars after a few hours, while they were still soft, but firm enough to hold the cut.

You can see the colors changed further. The next day I popped everything out of the molds and set them on cooling racks in the bathroom. Pictured here is the laundry soap on the bottom and the shampoo on the top. The laundry soap will need to cure for about 2 weeks. The shampoo and body soap will need about 4 weeks on account of the castor oil in it. Its not caustic after only a day, but it will not have the nice conditioning properties so soon.

And here's the goat milk soap. The next round I try, I'll leave it in the fridge over night and see if that keeps it any whiter. I don't mind the color at all, just trying to learn the tricks. If I were to color it, I think I'd want it lighter so the color would be brighter.

And in reading about shampoo bars and their benefits, I stumbled upon a homemade deodorant recipe. And if you don't know me well, you're about to. I'm a sweater to say the least. As a teacher I kept a stick of antiperspirant in my desk drawer to use mid-day. Cold, hot, doesn't matter... gallons pour forth from my pits daily. As I like to say, I have a very efficient cooling system. I will NEVER get heat stroke, now will I? I'm bred for workhorse character, not for the show ring. So the dilemma is that I know how horrible antiperspirants are for you. They're linked to all kinds of terrible diseases. And they plug the source that God intended to use to rid you of toxins... meaning you're still holding onto all those toxins! Really not cool. But the state of me without this 20th century invention is really beyond what's socially acceptable. I tried using all natural deodorant (no antiperspirants) when I'm just going to be home all day. My husband would hold his breath while hugging me. But I'm hopeful of this concoction.

Homemade deodorant:
1/4 Cup coconut oil
1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup corn starch
30 drops tea tree oil

This is my own concoction, but it involves the same ingredients others posted on the web do. And as for today, after a full afternoon (albeit a coolish afternoon and I wasn't doing much manual labor), Husbandman said he could only smell me in 1 pit. I suspect if I'm able to keep this up without offending people, even that will decrease as toxins are actually allowed to escape from my body. Pictured is homemade deodorant, homemade toothpaste (equal parts sea salt, baking soda and xylitol) sitting atop shampoo soap and laundry soap.

So, you think you wanna try making some soap???

*ps- those jars of dark red liquid pictured in the fat grinding picture... just beet and carrot juices we were drinking. Absolutely nothing to do with animal fats or soap in any way.

Obsession

2011-10-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

A good while ago, Georgia Farm Woman was blogging consistently about making soap. I totally didn't get it. I thought she must be nuts to need to be making so much soap.

Well, now I get it.

I made soap.

And more soap

And more soap.

It started as a thought for Christmas gifts. But once I started reading about it, I soon became enraptured in my new love affair with Clean. I figure if you don't enjoy the process, you might as well enjoy the products, right?

If you're interested in the soap-making process, stay tuned for a future post. For the rest of you who just want to know what crazy thing I've been up to now...

It started with collecting beef and pork fat from grocery stores and rendering it in the crock pot. Then I bought some other oils like palm oil and Castor oil. Then created my recipes on a nifty website. What I've ended up with is some goat milk body soap, some chamomile shampoo bars (yes, shampoo can be done in a bar which is actually much better for your hair and the environment) and some laundry soap.

Then I added some homemade deodorant to the list.

So, yes, I'm obsessed. I have to wait 4 weeks to try this stuff and I'm wondering if I can wait until I try it before making another batch.

Heeeeere, Ducky Ducky Ducky

2011-10-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

Ducks are not very obedient. Scold all you want, they just don't listen.

After loosing all but 1 drake (male duck) to some odd leg problem (possibly caused by a show of force of the dominant drake), we were down to 4 hens and the 1 drake. We opened them up to roam the pasture, but locked them up at night... a feat that got more difficult as their independence grew.

One day I was late letting them out. Lo and behold there was an egg on the floor of the pen! I then watched where they went and upon later inspection discovered the pictured nest deep into the pasture in a little hole they had created in a pile of scrub.

Of course I thought I could reform natural instincts. I created a little nest in a dog dish, put the eggs in there and set it up inside the pen where it would be protected from raccoons or wayward goat feet.

I even added a tote to provide shade and further protection.

They didn't care. They continued to lay in the old nest, on the floor of the pen or, best of all, right in the middle of the barn.

Nothing would get them to sit on that nest either. And the eggs were just disappearing too. I presume they were getting broken and something was eating up the evidence.

So, we decided to really put Angel (the guard dog) to the test. We moved all the ducks to the bachelor pad to run free with Copper, the buck. Angel has access to 3 sides of the bachelor pad, the 4th being a shared fence with the pasture. We figured if the ducks were kept in there, its a small enough area that its unlikely a malevolent critter would first get by Angel, then Copper, then that ferocious drake (really, he's the scariest animal on the property), to harm a hen or her nest. And so far so good.

Except that one duck is still managing to squeeze through an unknown hole and lays eggs in the barn. She had a nest of 6 which then got trampled during a rainstorm when all the animals huddle in the barn. We're down to 2 intact eggs and she just quit going there. The other hens laid a nest of 9 as of 2 days ago. Then Dulci (who's supposed to be pregnant) acted like she was in heat so I put her into the bachelor pad. I guess the chasing Copper did was too much for the nest as 6 eggs were scattered and 2 were missing. Today only 3 remain intact and they are not together in a nest. And then a hen up and died. Chilly night and I went out in the morning to find her dead in a sleeping position. No idea what that's about.

All in all, we're still hopeful some semblance of instinct will kick in and these ducks will manage to reproduce. Husbandman thinks it will take until spring until they get it figured out. I'm thinking of building a little hut I can pop over whatever nest they build to protect it from undiscerning goat feet.

Picking Up Speed

2011-09-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is not referring to any new drug use, though I'm sure that would be momentarily helpful. No, instead I'm seeing our fall whizzing toward us at break-neck speed and I'm scrambling to be ready when in slams into my hot summer pace.

Not that summer has been lazy. Just still working on summer stuff, that's all.

Sometime in July and August (see, I told you I was behind), I finished picking the last of our grapes. Got about 10 gallons this year. I fired up the canner to make jelly, but instead of creating a sauna inside, Husbandman set me up reeeeaaaallll nice. And you have to read the rest of the post in a true southern drawl to get the full effect.

We recently acqured a large 2-burner gas stove, mainly for this very pupose but also for any pesky hurricanes that take out our power for any length of time. This burner easily held my water bath canner and my pot of grape jelly. I also did watermelon rind jelly since everything was fired up and crankin'. And I had a nice shadey spot to work while still keeping an eye on the rugrats in the pool or swing set. Everyone was happy... until a wet bottom found its way onto my Countryside magazine while I was up stirring the brew. Anyway, about half my grape jelly turned out just fine. The other half and the watermelon stuff didn't set so at some point I'll reopen those jars and try again. More pectin, more sugar, more cooking and stirring. One day I'll learn how to get it right the first time around.

I registered farmer girl and "Thumper" for the county fair last week. Now we get to figure out the proper positioning and handling of a rabbit, not to mention getting her tattooed. (The bunny, not the girl). A friend suggested waltzing into our local tattoo parlor, "Bad Azz Tattoo" with our fur ball and suggested a nice barb wire tat around the bicep. Tempting... but we're obligated to letters and numbers in the left ear. Later today, we're moving Thumper and Dumplin (because farm boy 1 won't be left out) into the porch for easier access for practicing. And I also get to make matching outfits for the girl and her bunny. Not really sure how, or why I'm happy about that, or even what possessed me to think of entering her into that contest, but I did. And ya know, the smile on her face will be worth it, I'm sure. The girl, not the bunny. Not sure the bunny will be too thrilled on the notion.

We slaughtered our first ducks on Saturday. We're having a rough go. We started with 10 around Easter. One died we think from internal injuries suffered at the paw of Angel. Another turned sick-looking a while later and died. Another just a couple weeks ago started limping and went quite lame. He was one we slaughtered and by Saturday he was down to nothing. He must have been starving for a week and a half, unable to walk enough to eat and drink. Another had a large cyst/tumor thing on its face. We culled them both and one is due for the oven momentarily. The other (the skinny one) will be made into soup on a fine autumn day. And now, yet another is acting lame. We now have 1 good male, 4 females and a lame male. Good for breeding stock which is what we wanted, but I'm nervous whatever has happened already will end up happening to our last remaining drake. Unless its male competition that's doing it.

Nina is unwittingly enjoying her last meal. I called a friend on a whim to see if he was interested in swapping a sheep for some beef. He is, but wants it in meat form, minus the hoof. So, sweet Nina is leaving us. I haven't broken it to the girl child yet, but I don't think it will be a huge issue. She's more keen on Daisy now anyway because Daisy is smaller. She's never taken slaughtering real hard. My mom was over while we killed the ducks and she expected a traumatic reaction from her granddaughter. To her surprise, farm girl very bluntly and calmly explained the whole process to her and ended with, "And that's yummy MEAT!" Yes, she's our sweet little carnivore.

We have re-acquired Doby. You may remember Helen's baby... who had a baby... and we sold to some friends to get them started in dairying? Well, they've decided farm-livin' is not exactly the life for them. At least not with a triple digit heat index that go on for months at a time. So we have her back and we're happy. She's so sweet. The farm girl is learning to milk on her (she's the only one who doesn't protest). We initially only wanted 3 total dairy goats, but we're going to run with it. 4 isn't too different. Especially since we decided to only keep Zuma and Valentino for breeding sheep.

We put Dulci in with Copper a week or so ago since its about time for her heats to start. And sure enough, she got him all riled up. (Don't forget that southern drawl). She escaped on Saturday while we were gone. We put her in with the rest of the ladies until we could fix the fence. Sunday Husbandman could tell she was in heat and Copper was just beside himself. So we put her back in despite the fact that the fence wasn't shored up. Sunday night she was out again and we put her in with the ladies. Monday morning Copper was out... and he had circumcized himself in his escapades. We put them both together and immediately went to fence fixing... at 7:30am. At this Husbandman remarked that "we watch more goat sex before breakfast than most people see in a lifetime." And yes, bloody and injured though it be, Copper took his one and only job very seriously and did it thoroughly job right before our very eyes. The kids were inside watching a dinosaur documentary just in case you were concerned for their innocense. He's calmed significantly today, but I have not ventured close enough to get a full accounting of his injury. The bleeding has stopped and he's acting normal so I'll probably just let him be. I mean, I do know the injury was, um, flushed.

And since I may not get blogging again for another month, let me comment on the state of our bee hives. We suspect that both of our hives swarmed and that we checked one hive at just the wrong time and caused the new queen to fly off in fear. So we put a frame of eggs (we think) and larvae from the other hive into the queenless hive. And next week is the moment of truth. Hopefully they're doing their thing.
I've got radishes, squash, and mustard greens ready to go in the ground. The jelly melon is finally producing... like mad. Picked our first one today just to determine how to know when its ripe. We've got a busy week lined up with not a stitch of gardening in it so next week will have to border on insanity.

Especially since the kiddie pool bit it this weekend. That marks the official end of summer.

Fall, Be Kind to Me, Please

2011-08-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Irene is off our coast. Strong coming winds and rain beckoned husbandman out to milk the goats early. I'm to be doing dishes... but my counter is full of heads of cabbage from our recent co-op order. And I can't put them into the fridge until I clear some space. And I can't clear some space until I clean out the fridge, which I might as well do before I do dishes. And one of the most intrigral parts of cleaning out the fridge is refiling my seeds that I planted yesterday but I don't want to do that until what I planted is recorded. Its all very logical that I'm here blogging while loads of work is yet undone.

Veggies
Peas- Little marvel. Growing them in burried pots this year. I think nematodes are taking them out before they can bear much of a harvest.
Radishes- early scarlet globe. Growing them in window box only this year.
Bok Choy- Ching Chang. Tried and true. Don't fail me now.
Collard Greens- Southern something or other. From my own saved seed.
Swiss Chard- Rainbow. Tried and not so great, but maybe this year will be better.
Mustard Greens- Early Mazuna. Not my favorite green, but it grows well.
Squash- Cushaw White. First time. Feeling lucky... not sure why.
Squash- Candy Roaster. Same as Cushaw White.

Fruit
Vietnamese Guava. Old seeds. Hoping they still germinate. They did great last time until I put them in the ground. I think it was goats that killed them. Round 2, wiser.
Papaya- Sunrise Hawaiian Solo. Heard the way to do these is to plant in pots in late summer. Over winter in pots then set them out in the spring for harvest next summer. Sounds like a plan.

Herbs
Parsley- giant of Italy. Good stuff. Tried and true.
Dill- bouquet. Tried and true.
Sage- Broad Leaf. I can never have enough sage. And it hates the summer.
Chamomile- German. Saved Helen from edema. Never did make tea, but good intentions are still nice to have.
Cilantro. Tried and true. Will be nice to make falafel with the herbs that are supposed to be in it again.

Pretty Patch
Love-in-a-mist: free gift. no idea how they'll do here.
Larkspur- Shades of Blue. Did great in the spring. Fall is winging it.
Strawflower- Mixed colors. Same as larkspur.
Snapdragon- Tall Maximum Blend. Plants from spring are still kickin' but no blossoms for months. Not sure if the old oneswill revive with cooler temps, but we'll try some fresh ones just in case.
Calendula- Pacific Beauty Mix. I LOVE these flowers. I vow this time to actually use them for medicinal or culinary purposes.
Evening Scented Primrose- Tina James. Tried twice on these with no go. Few seeds left. Give it a whirl.
Dwarf Coffee Plant. Again, a third attempt with nary a single seed to germinate. Supposedly a nice house plant.

To quickly summarize the summer, it stunk. Nothing did well save the watermelon. I think okra of all things were attacked by nematodes... showed the same signs as peas have for the last 2 years- They get so big then dry up and die. Beans suffered but mostly because I planted them with very large amaranth plants and the got drowned. What the deal was with eggplant is still a mystery. Not a single blossom. I have a single Jelly Melon completely taking over a bed with lush healthy vine everywhere and again, not a single blossom. I'm ready for fall. But please, Fall, be kind to me.

That Other Season

2011-08-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Life has been BUSY! And here I am, only because getting a hurrican plan for the animals is high on the priority list. So I'm figuring it out and posting it here so that we always have it to look back on in future years.

Animals
3 pens of rabbits- little pen**, dog crate, wire pen to garage.
3 pens of chickens- old GN to south side of house, young GN to garage, barred rocks to porch** (fit?)
Angel- loose in garage.*
Sheep and goats- Common area and south paddock open (add Bella)*
Copper- bachelor pad open, label his collar with phone #.*
Ducks loose with sheep and goats.

*denotes not to be done until last minute

Random preparedness:
1) Ford focus to mom's garage.**
2) Seedling pots to porch.
3) Potted plants to front stoop.
4) Pool to porch.
5) Slide and climbing cube to shed.
6) hanging pots to porch.
7) Take down clothes line.
8) Move milking table to porch.
9) Clip a leash on each milking doe.
10) Add straps to bee hives.**

** Denotes requires husbandman's assistance.
Estimating all can be done in less than 3 hours without tending kids, less than 5 with tending kids.

Cute Power

2011-07-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

If we could power our house on Cute...

...then this would be our carbon footprint.

Tis the Season

2011-07-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

Tis the season for snakes and breeding. Farmer Girl picked this one up and waved it at me. You can imagine my response. Thankfully it was already dead. And also, especially thankfully, its a harmless scarlet king snake and not a coral. (Coral snakes are more predominately black than red). I can only assume that Angel is the one that took care of this one. It clearly was dealt a fatal blow. It sets my mind somewhat at ease believing Angel will take care of slithering foes, but on the other hand, I don't want to lose Angel to venomous bite suffered during the defense of her territory. I've read that to administer anti-venom, you must know the species of snake that bit. But injectable vitamin C in high doses can save animals (and people) when the species is unknown. I've been on a local hunt for this magical goodness called Injectable Vitamin C to no avail. I think, before snake breeding season carries on much more, I will hit the all-providing internet to acquire such a spectacular potion.

Another snake-bite preventative motion is to attach bells around an animal's neck. The loud clanging alerts snakes that this is a large animal not suitable for a meal and they slither back to protect themselves. I can't imagine the racket that would be heard if I attached bells to all 10 of the 4-legged creatures. I think instead I'll just be cautious (as I've done other years) to make sure the sheep are keeping up with the height of the grass and I scope out the yard before releasing the kids to play each morning.

The Rabbit operation expands

2011-07-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

The drama a 3-lb rabbit can produce is astounding.

As previously posted, Mona had babies which fell out of pen #1 because she had them outside of nestbox #2. We got them back into nestbox #2 which stayed inside pen #1. Eventually 2 of the 5 died but not by foul play, or at least not what we can tell.

Then all 3 babies were soon climbing out of nestbox #2. We happened to be right there to witness it... and watch them climb/fall right out of pen #1. One poor bunny fell right into the poop collection pan that also held rainwater. Husbandman heard the splash, fished it out and cleaned it up.

To fix that problem, we moved Mona and all 3 babies to Brownies pen (pen #2)... obviously moving Brownie to pen#1. The kids liked that better so they could see the babies better. Here they are watching our version of Saturday morning cartoons. Even in their pajamas (in their defense it WAS still quite early). But Farmer Boy 1 was found parked there much of the day. Afterall, if he went through the trouble to haul his own little Mickey Mouse Lazyboy to the scene, you know he intends to spend some time there.

Unfortunately, when we got home from church the next day, the little tan bunny was missing. We went on a hunt and Farmer Girl was the one who figured out to check Angel's hidey holes. Yep, little tan bunny was laying there dead. It either fell through the chickenwire floor of pen #2 or Angel pulled it through. Just so happened that the day before Husbandman and a friend finished building our new 3-hole rabbit hutch. We moved it into position and moved Mona and the 2 remaining babies into one of the holes.

So here they are in pen #3. So cute and cuddley. We named the brown one Thumper, but have no name for the black one yet. One will be for Farmer Girl to show at the fair this year and the fate of the other is undecided.

But since we had 3 empty holes, we went hunting for meat rabbits. I found nothing worthwhile on Craig's List and was bemoaning such to my friends at the hardware store. They responded with, "Why not call Ms. ___? She sells meat rabbits and her sign with her phone number is posted on the wall by the feed." Sure enough, Ms. Rabbit herself lives about a mile away. I went over and was highly impressed with her level of knowledge and all she can do on a typical city lot. She gave me a great tutorial about rabbit health and sold me 2 New Zealand/Californian cross does. They were born on May 25 and will be ready to breed when the weather cools. We'll keep looking for a buck from a different gene pool with good breeding genetics.

This is Thumper looking so cute. Picture was taken this morning. They are each a good handful-sized.

Mona likes to snuggle with her little ones too. I can see why.

Kits, Chicks and Heat! Oh My!

2011-06-26T04:03:00.000-07:00

We've had some interesting adventures this week. Thursday morning, I noticed Mona had pulled some fur and was looking crazed. That evening Husbandman went to check on her and agreed, lots of fur, crazed look, but no babies. Moments later Farm girl runs in screaming that there are baby bunnies on the ground. Sure enough, 1 was outside and squirming around in the dirt. Angel helped to find the others that had fallen out toward the back of the pen. Mona had decided that even this nest box was not suitable evidently. And delivering them outside the box meant they all fell out of the pen. I called a friend and she said not to put them back in right away. So we created a little home for them... in our bathroom.

This set-up is a 5 quart ice cream container (curtousy of my step-dad who's an ice cream junky... I totally dig the buckets). The 5 babies are under the pile of fur that Mona had pulled out. We set up our heat lamp that we use for chicks. Over the top I laid an extremely well-used (but clean) cloth diaper that would block out some light, but have enough holes in it to allow some air circulation. Later that same friend sent me a webpage giving me better details on how to care for baby rabbits... like keep the house between 68 and 72 degrees and IF its cooler than that add some heat. Needless to say the light got shut off immediately. Our house is kept at 80 and since outside night time temps may not even dip down to 72, I figured that would be just fine for them.

And so I fed them goat milk via dropper that first night and hoped for the best. In the morning, they were all still alive and wiggling. I fed them goat milk again (rabbits only nurse once per day and if fed by hand, should only get it twice at most). My friend came by with a homeopathic concoction to help calm Mona. I put that into her water a waited a few hours. Then I put 2 babies back in, wrapping them well in some fur. By feeding time that evening, there was still wiggling under all that fur so I knew at least 1 had survived and I put the remaining 3 back in. As of yesterday, there was some wiggling, not much, but enough to know at least 1 is still alive. We really can't find out anything more certain with out potentially causing more harm by freaking Mona out so we'll just wait and see.

Yesterday morning, while preparing breakfast, we noticed chicks scurring loose about the front yard. We ran out and collected them and discovered a hole where something had dug under the pen. 4 chicks disappeared with only a few feathers left behind. This is our first predator loss since getting Angel. But we pulled an enormous tick from Angel on Friday AND she always sleeps in the back yard. I think the reason we only lost 4 and not all 20 was because of Angel, but I think a lot must have gone on before it woke her up. Either because of distance, the fact that the chicks are still very quiet or she was feeling lethargic due to that tick that had been feeding off her for quite some time. At any rate, we moved the chicks to the back yard (where I was gradually working them toward anyway) where she could better protect.

The garden is doing miserably. By now okra and beans should be pumping. I have nothing but amaranth, watermelons and cherry tomatoes feeding us. I tried new varieties of okra and beans: eagle's pass for okra and Chinese red noodle bean. With both they get just so big, produce maybe 1 fruit and then curl up and die. Since ripping out my cucurbits (except watermelon), I've had room to add my standbys (Burmese okra, rattlesnake beans and red-seeded asparagus beans) so I'm hopeful to still get a decent harvest. But I'm also concerned killer compost has found its way to Florida. Monsanto has been selling this herbacide for hay fields. Only it doesn't break down after the animal eats it. Instead, it gets pooped out, composted and tossed in the garden where it continues to kill everything. Since learning the problem, have they taken this junk off the market? Goodness no! They wouldn't make any MONEY if they did that!!! Given that some beds are fine and others are not, I think it could be other issues. But, for example, my eggplant should also be big a producing by now... I've had to reseed 4 times! They either wouldn't germinate, stunt out before transplanting or stunt and die shortly after transplanting. I just got all new seed, got my first good germination and transplanted healthy looking plants. Hoping for something good.

The heat has been rough this past week. I transplanted some new collard green starts (from my own seed!) and they just couldn't handle the heat. I watered every 2 hours the first day and they still just laid down flat. All but 2 transplants are now dead 3 days later. I've got an idea for shade frames for transplanting in the summer heat... just add building them to the to-do list.

Another interesting event earlier this week was Zuma came down with laryngitis. She spent most of her 5 years in a concrete pen being fed from a hay rack and drinking from a pig waterer. Her previous owners warned us that she probably wouldn't drink for a while since her only option was to drink from a bucket. And we also discovered she didn't know how to graze. I'd tether her out and she'd do precious little eating and absolutely no drinking. One day this week, I did the same... only it had been very hot and a bit smokey the days prior. That night and strange noise was coming from the barn. Husbandman told me about it and said he thought it was Zuma. Angel was going nuts. I ran in and found her looking just fine... just sounding like a pubescent boy whispering. We grabbed a bucket of grain which she ate happily. I did research about sheep laryngitis and the results were miserable... like immenant death! But she was eating fine, standing fine so I figured she just pulled on her tether a bit too hard, got dehydrated by refusing to drink from that bucket all day, and the smoke further irritated it. I left her in the pasture for a couple days and she was back to her normal loud, deep demands at first light from the house.

A Day of Firsts

2011-06-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted. But what a great day.

Some friends came over to help us with a hive inspection (we were also moving the entire hive stand set-up). In one hive, we had a considerable amount of honey in the super. For reference sake, we have 8-frame hive boxes. We have 2 deep boxes and 1 shallow super per hive. In this one hive, as I said, the honey was calling us. Also, the bees had drawn the comb rather helter-skelter. We're not sure why. They're bottom boxes look great. But we decided to harvest honey for the first time from 4 shallow frames of honey and replace them with 4 empty frames.

Each of us took a sting. Our friend got his very first sting right on the nose (his veil fell against his face). Husbandman took one to the hand (no gloves) and I had one crawl up my pant leg and get me on the leg just as I was walking away with their honey. But other than that, and given that none of us really knew what we were doing too well, I'd say it went rather well.

Then came the fun part. In the future, we'll likely use a honey extractor so we don't have to destroy the comb, but this round given the state of the comb, we just cut it right out of the frames. We put it all into our big stainless steel milking pot. And I got to squeeze.

After I got it all squeezed out, we set a jar in a bowl and our milk funnel into the jar. We set a piece of cheese cloth into the funnel and filtered the honey.

The chunks of wax we'll melt in the sun and filter through cheese cloth. Maybe mix it with some goat milk for soap???

From those 4 frames, we ended up with just shy of a gallon of honey. Its a bit thin, but experts say to set the capped frames in a dehumidified room for a few days before extracting. Bees can't bring the water content down in Florida humidity. We skipped this step. We're fine with runny-ish honey. In China, it was water thin... but then again, it really is precious little more than water at their own doing.

Our next adventure of the day dealt with this new toy... a Nutrimill grain mill! I've been wanting an electric grain mill for years. I finally got to order one and it arrived late this week. I already had some wheat berries given that I used to occasionally pull out the hand-crank mill and let Husbandman crank it shirtless for my own amusement, but it really didn't produce fine enough flour for nice breads. But today, Husbandman stayed fully clothed, the kids ran to a bedroom and shut the door against the noise and I listened to the hum of nutrition bursting from tiny little grains.

A couple hours later (and a bit of our own honey in the recipe), I had these beauties. It tastes good. I'm a bit of a novice to the various types of wheat and all the recipes so I have lots of reading to do, but I'm sure the nice folks at Bread Beckers will be happy to supply me with all my knowledge and material needs.

Here are the boys, licking the dregs of honey from a bowl lid with a slice of freshly baked bread in hand. Though the meal was light on veggies, I thought bread, honey and fresh goat milk made for a mighty fine supper. They thought so too.

Uh...Whoops

2011-06-03T05:02:00.000-07:00

So, let's rehash some history. We've been collecting other people's cast off pet bunnies. That's how we came by both Mona and Brownie. Both were "girl bunnies". We bred Mona to the "boy bunny" down the street. It didn't end well, but it did varify that Mona is still in bunny bearing years and not older than... well, our oldest son.

Last week we decided to give Brownie her round with the buck. We took her over. Brownie's previous owners were over so, yes, we made quite a spectacle of it all. Except, it really wasn't going well. Brownie wouldn't hold still for Steve (the confirmed "boy bunny") and they even swapped places a few times. We sat there scratching our heads for a bit then when biting started taking place we quickly removed Brownie and headed home. The astro-physics major who lives next door suggested comparing the 2 bunnies' nether regions. Yes, at least 2 head smacks were heard all over the street.

Uh... Brownie looks just like Steve. We took him/her home and put Mona with him/her. The gender was immediately varified. Brownie wasted no time and did a grunt and roll that could rival the biggest polygamists.

So now we have Mona pregnant again. And Brownie, for a buck, is literally half the size he should be for good meat rabbit breeding stock. So we will still need to acquire new stock when we finally get this rabbit operation moving. But I think Brownie will stick around. He's actually much nicer than Mona. I'd rather have the kids play with him instead so if we can only keep 1 cute little fluff-ball, it will be him.

Breaking the change-of-gender news to the farm girl wasn't easy. She looked heart-broken. Then she went outside and said that Brownie still had really long eyelashes so that means he's still a girl. Sorry, sweetie, Brownie's just a very pretty boy bunny. She's gotten used to the idea now. She actually tells people that he "used to be a girl bunny." We haven't tried to correct her. That's a can of worms better left unopened by the 5 yr old brain.

Bella and Zuma

2011-06-03T04:39:00.000-07:00

Meet the newest additions. This little nubian is Bella (I know we already had a Bella, but hey, we like the name). She's a 1 year old doe with good genetics and very sweet disposition. She's a bit skinnier than we were expecting so we're taking this month to condition her and we'll breed her to Copper at the beginning of July. She's our replacement for Doby and our means of milk through the winter. She'll kid in Nov/Dec. Dulci will kid in Feb/Mar and Helen in June/July. Milk flowing all year and Helen still gets her nice long vacation.

Bella's a quick study too. After only 1 day of leading her to the milking table, she knows right where to go and the patches of nicest leaves when she's finished with her grain. Like the other goats, she doesn't much care for tethering. She doesn't like to be away from the other goats, even if it is so she can have the best forage without competition. I guess most anorexics do it for social reasons, right?

And this is Zuma. She's a Suffolk/Hampshire cross ewe. She's 5 years old. Her previous owner was a local middle school student and wasn't going to be able to continue taking care of her as she went on to high school. Zuma has been bred twice before and gave twins both times. She's a good bit bigger than our Khatadin sheep. The twinning genetics and the size hopefully coupled with Valentino's fast growing genetics and we have a winning combination. Zuma is also very sweet and tame. When she first arrived, she was scared and rather scary. The other animals ran when she came near. Now, they're exercising the we-were-here-first attitude and shoos her off the hay until they're done. We're working on keeping a collar on her and we'll soon tether her as well, but I want her to get used to us first. Scared animals are dangerous animals.

And meet our Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars. There were 10 of these guys on my fennel plants. They're missing now so I assume they've gone to metamorphosize. I hope so. Farm Girl would love to see a host of swallowtail butterflies dancing outside our living room window. And thankfully she's not skillful enough with her net to catch too many either.

The Life and Times of a Zucchini

2011-05-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

Zucchini plants are kind of a flash in the pan, at least for us. I planted them by seed in late January or early February, got them in the ground a few weeks later and started harvest maybe in mid April. And I'll probably give them another week before I rip them out. Powdery mildew got pretty bad a couple weeks ago. I didn't even try to do anything for it because I knew the pickleworm would be moving in and devouring all my squash. In other years I've held them back a bit with bagging and Sevin, but this year... well, I don't think I have it in me to bag and Sevin will kill my bees. So I'm resigned to losing my squash a bit sooner than usual. But here's what I've done with it all:

1) I pick the nice sized ones for a meal the day they will be eaten.

2) If they get a little bigger, I pick them for pickles and store them in the fridge for a week or so.

3) If I miss them until they're monstrous, I shred them through the food processor and freeze them in 2 cups quantities for breads and muffins.

So I've got about 6 bags frozen, about 2 gallons of pickles canned, but the okra and beans aren't quite ready to take over daily veggie requirements just yet. Pickleworms haven't found my cucumbers yet so maybe they'll float us for a bit longer.

If you're interested in pickling those excess zucchinis, this is my grandmother's recipe:

I slice the zucchini somewhat thinly, but not so much that it folds easily. And lest you think I actually have the patience and ability to do such a feat with a knife, view the handy dandy device I inherited from my grandma.

This baby is adjustable to any thickness and makes it quite easy to slice away beautifully. After everything is sliced, soak the zucchini in very salty water for 3-6 hours. I use about a quarter cup of salt to a gallon of water.

Then mix 2 cups white vinegar, 2 cups sugar, 1 Tbsp pickling spice and 1 tsp tumeric in a pot and bring to boil. Take an empty, hot, sterilized jar and pack it tightly with zucchini slices. Pour hot vinegar mixture over the top. Poke the zucchini around with a butterknife or chopstick to get air bubbles out. Leave a half inch headspace. Cover and return to the canner for 5 minutes. I'll use several batches of the vinegar mix to get through the amount of zucchini pictured, but you can't really know exactly how much you'll need so just make it one batch at a time.

These were my favorite pickles that my grandma would make. She would bring down several jars just for me when she'd come visit us from Minnesota. Except she cut her zucchini with a french fry cutter and died the brine dark green. So the pickles were perfectly square and emerald green. I've adapted it for both health and consumption purposes. No one needs dies in their diet and the flat slices make them quite nice on sandwiches.

And my favorite zucchini baked goods recipes are:

Zucchini Brownies (no really, they're good):
1/2 cup coconut oil (or other vegetable oil)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

In a large bowl mix together the oil, sugar, and vanilla until well blended. Combine flour, cocoa baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture. Fold in zucchini and walnuts. Spread evenly into a greased and floured 9x13" pan. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Frosting: Melt together 6 Tbsp cocoa and 1/4 cup butter and allow to cool. Blend together 2 cups powdered sugar, 1/4 cup milk and 1/2 tsp vanilla. Stir in cocoa mixture. Spread over cooled brownies before cutting into squares.

For Zucchini bread:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tso baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 egg
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/4 cup oil

Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg. In another bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Stir into the dry mixture. Pour into greased bread pan and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes.

Button Mutton

2011-05-20T03:50:00.000-07:00

You may remember us getting Button over a year ago. We purchased her from a big farm where she got basically no human interaction. She never got used to us. Last summer we tried tethering her out to munch on fresh grass in the front yard, but she got loose twice. Each time of trying to catch her was horrible. So, finally, she was resigned to a life of never EVER leaving the pasture. And I couldn't check her for worms. When she was lambing, I had to stay a good distance away. What if she needed help? Well, too bad.

So when she birthed her replacement this spring, we decided to cull her as soon as Nina was old enough for weening. And because she's at least 2 years old, likely older, we knew she'd be pretty strong on that mutton flavor. Sausage it is.

Last Saturday, Husbandman and I (mostly him) ended her life and readied the meat for grinding.

A couple days later a neighbor woefully said, "I could NEVER do that. I don't know how you kill something with eyes."

My response... "Oh, I didn't know you were a vegan."

Lest anyone say I'm heartless, I really did not CARE for Button. She was a pain in the butt. Because of her I had to do more work. Because of her, Daisy (who's actually Esperanza's lamb) is also skiddish and tends to run from me. Yet even still, I couldn't take her life without pause. It's HARD to look at something with the miraculous breath of life and know that in a few short moments, by my hand, that life will be gone.

But if you insist you "could NEVER" do anything but outsource your unpleasantness, you have no right to eat animal products.

Don't tell me you're an animal lover while conventionally raised meat stocks your freezer... and you likely eat it daily. Don't tell me what a horrible person I am for taking responsibility for my family's food while the animals that feed you and your's live sick, miserable lives. Don't act like not seeing those animals suffering as they do, its suddenly a different piece of meat on your plate. Like if you didn't kill the animal, then the meat must have been harvested humanely with no loss of life. Afterall, hasn't the food industry genetically modified cows to regenerate their own steaks yet?

I digress. Anyway, Husbandman then took chunks of deboned meat to a friend with an electric grinder. We found a recipe from a book in the library titled The Venison Sausage Cookbook. It called for various spices, onions and garlic. Nothing unnatural. And thus he turned that meat into some of the best sausage we've ever eaten. There's not a ton of it. Maybe about 20 pounds worth. But its good and will feed us for almost 6 months. While processing the meat, our friend (an avid hunter) said he'd never seen venison as stringy as Button's meat. We're guessing she could have been pretty old. I'm very glad all that sausage spice is able to make it all taste good though.

Mona's PPD

2011-05-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

Post-partum depression can be ferocious.

So bad that you eat your children. Well, if you're a rabbit at least.

On May 5th, one day remained of Mona's "window of opportunity" for birthing her kits. She had done no nesting, pulled out no hair and had nothing of any note for teats. I told the girl child that Mona was probably just too old to have babies in her tummy.

And then, Friday, May 6th, there were 5 little balls of skin wiggling around. The nest box I created for her had a feed bag on the bottom, a piece of lattice over that (to prevent her from shredding and eating the feed bag) and hay on top of that. She ate most of the hay before she birthed. The babies nestled in the holes of the lattice. 3 babies in one hole, and 2 more in their own holes, but spread out away from the rest. I didn't like the looks of it, but I knew if I went in there poking around, they'd all be done for. Through out the day that day, she kept moving those babies, but they were never covered unless covered by another baby. By Saturday morning 1 baby was missing, 3 were in 1 hole (with the bottom baby dead) and 1 more in its own hole. By Saturday evening, the rest were dead or missing.

So, lessons learned... no lattice. If she shreds the paper, oh well. Secondly, use actual bedding and not hay so she's less inclined to eat it. Thirdly, be prepared for cooler temps. Nights were a bit chilly and there was a chance of rain. I covered the top and sides of her pen with a tarp to keep the drafts out, but I could tell she didn't like it. It scared her to have something different going on, even as "different" as a tarp.

From here... well, we don't know. We'd heard the first round of babies can be hard. We need to breed Brownie quickly because she's over 2 years old. But we've also heard not to breed them in hot weather because its too hard on the does. But we've also heard to just give Mona a rest and try again in a month. The jury's still out on which route we'll take. The bunny stud who lives down the street certainly doesn't mind offering his services as much as we may need.

The Little Dobers

2011-05-19T03:24:00.000-07:00

As I alluded in another post, Doby kidded about midnight on April 21st. She didn't make a peep. I knew something was up because Angel started making this excited, confused whimper noise. I went out and there was a sweet little blue-eyed buckling, pictured with Farmer Girl. I let them stay together until morning.

Doby's done really well on the stand. She gives a little over half a gallon a day. While that's not stellar, she's still quite small. But even still, we made a decision to move her on.

You see, we have friends who wanted to get into dairying. It's difficult to find dairy goats around here. We figured out that if we let them have Doby, it would open up a space in our pasture for a different goat- one we could get pregnant now and make sure to have us in milk through the winter. And Doby's a good beginner goat. She doesn't have a testy attitude. She's sweet and lovable and totally people-friendly. And not giving a ton of milk means the hands can those unused muscles good and strong before having to milk out a gallon at a sitting. My first few days of milking after a dry spell always leaves me with cramping, sore hands.

So our friends prepared their milking stand and got their milking supplies and we delivered Doby to them last weekend. Their Alpha-goat, a bossy female pygmy, did not much care for the addition at first, but it sounds like everyone is starting to settle in and find their groove... though Doby will not be able to lounge in empty hay baskets anymore.

And we found our replacement already! She's a 1 yr old pure Nubian. She spent most of her days at a school before going home with a student. That student's mom is now looking to decrease the number of mouths she's feeding. We're getting her tested for CAE (a contagious disease similar to Johnnes in cows) and the results of that test will be available Friday. If she comes back negative, Sunday afternoon we'll drive out to pick her up. She'll immediately go in with Copper meaning she'll kid in October or November. That's about the time Dulci will get pregnant, kidding in March or April. And we'll get Helen pregnant in March or April for kidding in August or September. And thus never have a day without fresh milk!

And also never have a day without milking! But that's another reason we were so keen on helping our friends get a good start in dairying... we can milk for each other! Either family can now go away for a few days and the others are fully equipped to cover those missed milkings. Its a huge relief to know we won't have to dry off our goats just to go to a family reunion. Instead we'll just truck those goats to their house and they get an abundance of milk for cheese-making! We haven't been away from home more than 14 hours in well over a year. Not that we're going to run off on vacation... but its nice to know we could!

Let me remember...

2011-05-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

... this morning 20 years from now. And may I laugh heartily. Until then, let me blog and vent my utter frustrations before going back out to make our little world right again.

The kids have been begging for oatmeal lately. So I soaked some last night. Did they eat it this morning? No. Farmer Boy 2 (FB2) dumped his on the floor. No matter. Its a common occurance. We let in the dog to clean up the majority as I tell the older 2 to put on their swim suits. I rinse out the 2 day old pool water from their kiddie pool and set it refilling. A fight breaks out over what swimsuit Farmer Boy 1 wants to wear because he's scared of the one with orcas all over it. Meanwhile FB2 has gotten into Farmer Girl's oatmeal, covers himself in cinnamon and leaves her crying because she wanted to eat it later. I finally get them outside. I pull the waterers from the chicken pens so FG and FB1 can get started on their chores. I get Doby on the stand (oh yeah, she kidded... a while ago... I'm behind, I know). I milk her into ZigZag (her buckling)'s bottle. FG and FB1 start fighting over how much (or how little) FB1 is helping. I give FB1 the bottle and he happily runs off to feed. I just finish milking her and discover that FB2 has taken to "feeding" everything dog food. There's dog food dumped all over the porch floor. I scold him and get him cleaning up his mess (keeping in mind he's about 19 months old) when the Solar-Fit guy shows up for me to sign the contract on our solar hot water heater. FB1 starts helping FB2 clean up so I assume that will go relatively smoothly. Doby takes forever to eat so I assume she's fine being left on the stand. I always let her eat her fill and do other chores after I've milked her out. I ask FG to unclip her from the stand so she's free to get down and graze when she wants but fully expecting her to stay at the stand the few minutes I'd be away. I go inside to sign papers and less than a minute later hear FG in the kiddie pool. I scold her for playing before chores are finished and I peak at the stand to see it empty. I run out and Doby's completely MIA. I run around the whole property, call the dog, call for FG, summoning the troops to find our little escapee (who no doubt would return, but how much of our gardens would she eat while I don't know where she is?). Mr. Solar-Fit is left inside. I finally see her against the side of the pasture fence (on the wrong side of it, mind you), way in the back happily munching scrub so I leave her again. Come in to find that the boys decided to dump the dog food all into the bag of game bird starter I'm trying to sell on Craig's List (another long story). I start to really flip then decide I can finish my flip out after Mr. Solar-Fit is on the road again. I sign my papers. He leaves. I find FG playing again. FB2 is back at the dog food. I scoop him up and plop him screaming in the crib. I retreive Doby and scratch my legs up on palmetto scrub while doing it. Then its Dulci's turn for milking. I tell FG and FB1 that I'm going to be the "faster" (FG's made up noun for her and her brother when they finish their chores before I finish mine). That usually sparks my little dilly dally-er into motion. Keep in mind, all she does is fill 3 chicken waterers, 2 goat waterers, pick leaves for the baby goat and collect the hay baskets in the garage. She's got a single chicken waterer filled at this point. I milk Dulci, give her first round of chemical dewormer and let her finish her breakfast while I prod the young ones from a closer proximity. Helen's up next and she's late so she's jumpy. The sheep are getting really noisy and I have to force Valentino back into the pasture because I'm not ready for him yet. FG grabs the bucket for leaves and goes to the front yard. I'm half way done with Helen and FG SCREAMS. I drop everything and run... to discover she caught a butterfly in her butterfly net. I've told her many times about not screaming in excitement because I can't tell if she's in serious trouble or not. I haven't had the heart to discipline her for it. After all, she comes by it honestly. Her father squeals with delight with just seeing colorful lichen on a tree. I get back to Helen who's very agitated. She's the only goat who HATES being left alone on the stand. She lets me know she's mad too. I spill about a pint of milk trying to finish getting her milked out. I get Helen back to the pasture and I go back to FG and help her move the butterfly from the net to their bug observatory. It's a white southern butterfly, one that's unique to central FL, so I'm thinking we'll have to do a special lesson about it and don't punish her neglect with chores by releasing it. Meanwhile, she still has leaves to pick for ZigZag, 1 more chicken waterer to fill and both the goat water buckets. When I go to let myself into the pasture, the sheep are done waiting for me. Valentino, Esperanza and Nina (those that graze the front yard) were ganged up and bull-dozed out. I let them go, afterall, they just eat grass. I fill the pasture water buckets. FG runs crying because she's supposed to take care of Nina. She's hoping to show Nina in a fair this year and she's practicing by leading her to her graze station each morning. I get her calmed down by showing that Nina's not tethered yet. I get the collar on her and hand her to FG who does a great job... except that the leaf bucket is still mostly empty. I water the gardens while she FINALLY gets some leaves for ZigZag. She fills his water bucket and takes that to him too. Then I see a black snake slowly exploring the garden I'm in. So this time I interrupt the flow of chores to call them over. FG tends to freak out at the sight of a snake so I wanted her to see this good one and emphasize that if it doesn't look like THIS snake, she needs to get away and tell an adult. So we stand and watch the snake for a while. Which gets them in the garden and picking unripe tomatoes while I'm not looking. More scolding. I kick them out of the garden back to filling water buckets and now, also cleaning up all their toys they've scattered around while they were supposed to be doing chores. FB1 finally just gives up and puts himself in his room (his option if he's not going to be outside working/playing with us... he's my little inside boy). FG is the one responsible for chores anyway. We just encourage FB1 to "help" which is as good as "just stand beside someone working outside". Then it dawns on me that I haven't yet filtered the milk. I get that going and go outside to pick squash, 3 HUGE zucchini that I must have missed for 3 days. I'm in and out, adding more milk to the filter with a bit too much on the brain... and discover that I caused the milk to overflow and leave a flood on the counter. FG is still working on that last goat bucket and collecting hay baskets. I start cleaning my own mess when FB1 comes to me with FB2's diaper... which FB2 apparently took off by himself and threw at FB1. FB1 himself is also naked and crying because he can't find his "Diego go go go" underwear. I leave them naked, move Copper's finally-full water bucket to the bachelor pad, finish watering the herb gardens, and powow with FG over her lack of diligence. Its now 3 hours after we started chores, and she's just now finished. I had filled the pool for them to play in this morning, but she doesn't get to now because she dilly dallied for 3 hours. Tears flow. I'm over tears. I'm about to shed them myself. I tell her if she cleans up the mess FB2 made in the porch she can have pool time while the boys are napping today. She decides its not worth it and she'd rather just go inside. Me too. I'd rather go inside and do puzzles and play piano and eat bananas. But instead I get to fill out complaint forms over legal malpractice all afternoon.

One day I really will laugh at all this. And before that time comes, I'll have another day just like this, only maybe with twice as many kids involved. One day I'll know exactly what the result would be if game birds eat a little dog food. Or rabbit food. Or if rabbits eat chicken and dog food mixed in with their own. And throw the dog's garlic tablets into everything too. Yeah, one day stories like this will make me rich.

Even if only rich in heart.

Dairy Goats- you need one

2011-05-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

When someone finds something that works and is enjoyable, they tend to evangelize their methods or discovery with the world. Such is this post where in I tell everyone precisely why they simply must have their own dairy goats.

I'll start with our journey which began in the fall of '07 with 2 Nigerian Dwarf does. We planned to tether them to trees in the would-be pasture during the day, enclose them in step-in electric fencing at night or when we weren't home and let them clear their own living space. That didn't work as well as planned... ok, it didn't work at all. They got repeatedly tangled around trees and brush and didn't eat the palmetto scrub that filled our land. We ended up keeping them in the front yard for a year while we cleared (with heavy equipment) the back half of our property and fenced it. Then came fencing... we planned to do barb/electric fencing in a high tensile fashion because that was cheapest. But we didn't rent a stretcher and didn't know a lick about getting proper insulators for the posts. And posts at proper 8' intervals would have broke the bank so we actually marked and saved trees and danced our pasture fencing around to use them as posts instead. Husbandman gave me the fence for Christmas of '08... and the first goat we put inside immediately turned and walked out, straight through our barbwire/electric fence. And no, we didn't electrify the barb wire, but we had plain wire in between that was supposed to be electrified. With that disaster behind us, we then saved up and bought enough 3' woven wire fencing to go around the perimeter. That kept them in. We started milking Christmas of '07, traded up to full-sized goats in the spring of '10 and have learned a LOT along the way. On to discussing all that learning:

Fencing- While I don't advise anyone to go quite as redneck as we poor, living-on-love honeymooning parents did, there are some things I do advise to anyone keeping goats. They aren't as hard to contain as people make them out to be. If you do a fence right, they'll stay in. Our suggestion is to use sturdy trees and fence posts every 8 feet. Use cement on corners at least. 4-5' welded wire with 2"x4" openings (or no climb fence) is best. Using a stretcher is good too, but not imperative. Also add 1 or 2 strands of barbed wire inside right at goat body height. This prevents them from using posts as scratchers and pushing your posts over. 3' fencing with 1 or 2 strands of barb wire over it work fine too.

Breeds- There's more variation between the goats and their personalities than between the breeds. If you want meat, boer is the breed of choice. Pygmies would be the smaller version. Milking goats are basically everything else. Nigerian dwarfs we found to not give enough milk. We had heard nubians were the hardest to contain. Our nubian has only once ever gotten out and that was when a storm took down a portion of fencing and everyone got out before we knew what was going on. The buck has been the hardest to contain... but again, that's been with using unstretched chainlink we found on the side of the road and bendable aluminum posts. Do a real fence... ya know, like spend at least SOME money on it, and they'll respect it. We kept our nigerian buck even when we upsized because he's sweet tempered and if he does get ornery (which all bucks do some), he's small enough for me to take down. We're in it for the milk, not the babies (who we sell anyway) so them being mutts really doesn't matter. Besides, mini-nubians and mini-manchas are gaining in popularity now anyway. If you want a dairy goat, its best to get a goat from someone who milks them. Goat kids drink about a quart a day, but if a full-sized goat only gave that in a day, they'd be considered a rather poor milker. But keep in mind that the cast-off's from someone who's really serious about milkers may be a great find for a decent price. Helen came from a lady who had a huge spread. She gave lots of milk but once turned out on that big spread where she had to forage for herself, she dropped. Her conformation is terrible (sshhhhh, don't tell her I said that!) and being on her feet that long... well, she'd rather starve. Our set-up suits her fine. She can lay down and stick her head in the hay basket and then give her gallon a day. And another thing when looking for stock, we've learned "bottle babies" are the way to go. If they're bottle fed at birth, they will always be easy to handle for milking.

Milking- The process of milking is really quite simple. Squeeze the teats in different ways until you get something out, then repeat what you just did. Refine as you go. We don't have a fancy stanchion. We have 1/2" plywood on four 4"x4"s about 12" high. We built it low to make it easy for dwarf goats to get on. Build it higher for bigger goats. We built a hobo bucket holder (call it an after market addition) because they kept knocking the feed bucket off. We have an eye screw in just before the bucket holder with a chain and clip which we use to keep them on the table. (Right by the milk jug... which is just another redneck remedy for something else). It does hold them if they really want down (these goats are big enough to simply knock the table over and drag it with them), but it deters them enough from moving to milk them out. We also have an eye hook by each back foot. I cut up an old dog leash and re-sewed it to be a loop of fabric with a clip on it. We wrap the loop around an ankle, slip the clip end through and lock to the eye hook. They hate it, but it keeps their feet still while they're learning to be milked or while shaving udders and such. We don't do that for each milking because they're just calmer without it once they know the drill. You can see Husbandman teaching a friend the milking procedure. Milk into a small stainless steel bowl (we set it on another bucket to get it close to the udder making aiming much easier) then frequently dump into a bigger container (which is a stainless steel pot with a lid just barely visible under the table. The white and green thing was our old small bucket holder and still serves an occasional purpose.) This means that if they kick the bowl or junk falls in, you only loose a little and not your whole milking. After milking, we use a dairy filter that fits in a special strainer that flows into a mason jar. We put a plastic lid on the jar and label it for the day and morning or evening.

Why not cows?- We don't know why everyone is so cow happy. Goats are family sized. Lets look at the economy of scale for a cow: The heifer calf if born. 2 years later its bred. 9 months later it "freshens" or gives birth. You milk an insane amount of milk for7-9 months where you may not be able to use it all. The time to make all that cheese, butter and yogurt doesn't increase with the quantity. The cow can still get testy, only its 1200-1800 lbs of testy. To breed her you need a bull... those aren't fun. So you either bring on an expensive artificial inseminater or you buy a bull or you haul your cow to the nearest bull in town. And you better have a LOT of land if you're going to keep 2 cows so you have 1 giving milk while the other is dry. So basically after 3 years and a bunch of money, you have more milk than you can use followed by a long stretch with nothing.

Now let's look at a goat. You buy a young kid, raise it 18 months and get it bred. If you don't want a buck, you put it in a dog crate, toss her in the truck and bring her to a buck. 5 months later you get a gallon a day. A usable but abundant amount of milk. For the space of a cow you can keep 3-4 goats meaning you can easily always have 1 or 2 in milk. If a goat gets testy, its 100-150 pounds of testy. They don't want to stand to be milked, you're strong enough to force them. If its a cow... well have fun. And goats have personality. And no, I'm not saying that as a nice way to say they're quirky. They really are fun creatures. But the biggest difference is just the safety of smaller size. I don't worry about my kids being around them. The worst that could happen is they get knocked down. With a cow, they could get knocked down and stepped on resulting in major bone breakage and worse. Big scale production means big scale problems.

So there's my 2 cents worth. Now go find yourself a goat!

Sweet Dulcinea

2011-04-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of reading and researching about how to better care for our animals, namely our goats. Pat Coleby's "Natural Goat Care" has been top of my list. That's where I first read about giving goats copper sulfate as a copper additive. Many common ailments are easily remedied when goats get the proper amounts of copper. Providing free choice minerals with enough copper isn't an option while sheep are around as copper will easily kill a sheep. So when I read to give 1 tsp of copper sulfate per goat per week, I thought I had the silver bullet of husbandry going. Last Monday was my first day administering it. Each dairy goat came out to eat while on the milking stand (hence away from all sheep) and each got their allotted teaspoon. The buck, being housed alone, got his copper in his normal feed as well. I noticed they seemed to tire of their food before eating it all, so this week I gave them only grain (instead of mixing grain with alfalfa pellets), less of it and the copper sprinkled on top. Each goat did fine. I had also read that calcium deficiencies are common in dairying goats and diatomaceous earth was a great supplement that will also help with any worm problems. I heard to give it to them every day for 60 days. So a couple weeks ago I started that as well. There were no amounts mentioned, but I doubted any issue of too much so just sprinkled some on their morning feed every day.

Which brings me to Tuesday morning. As I said, I gave only grain, a little less than a pound, a little diatomaceous earth and a teaspoon of copper sulfate sprinkled on top. Doby came out first. She doesn't eat much and doesn't milk much so she lost interest about when I finished milking. I tethered her to a tree to eat some leafy greens while I milked the rest, and put her bucket with her remaining feed within reach. She never finished it all, but ate most of it. Dulci came out next. I had her bucket of feed, DE and copper ready. She ate well, milked well and eagerly munched grass on her way back to the barren "pasture". Helen was next and she did about the same as Dulci, maybe eating a bit less. I also gave Copper his portion. Monday night, Husbandman was milking and both Dulci and Helen were low. The bug zapper was active and they seemed jumpy. We wondered if a storm was coming because they seemed a bit on edge, but nothing showed on the radar. Nothing notable about the moon either.

Tuesday morning I got up to find only Doby waiting for me. She bounced out and onto the table and was perfectly normal. After she was finished, I called for Dulci who was laying down toward the back of the common area. She let out a bellow but didn't move. Helen slowly sauntered over and came out for milking. I could see walking behind her that she was quite low on milk. She didn't eat at all, but stood still for me to milk her. Yes, she was low but she's not exactly little miss constant supply. When she was done, I went back for Dulci who had risen long enough to move to a shadier spot. I went in and prodded and half picker her up. She got up, walked about 5 feet and laid back down. I started panicking. I prodded and hefted again. Again she walked about 5 feet and laid down. I got her up and started dragging her where she walked to just outside the gate and laid down again. I had to pull her out more to close the gate. I got a bucket of hay and put it in front of her. She nibbled some. I got her up, kept her moving about 15' this time and she laid down again. I left the bucket there and called my husband, called Hoeggar Goat Supply and started crying. Farm Boy 2 came and laid down beside her and giggled about resting his head on her. She didn't mind at all. I let her rest a spell then prodded her up again. I got her to the table where I had to lift her onto it because she didn't have the strength to jump. She nibbled a bit at the hay, was not at all interested in grain or alfalfa. She gave a third of her normal milk. I wondered about copper toxicity. She showed some interest in leafy trees so I stood there with her, bending branches down, letting her eat until she tired and laid down. I coaxed her back into the pasture and did research.

Copper toxicity, though rare CAN occur in goats and they usually die within 24 hours (we were right at 24 hours). Hoeggar goat supply folk were as unhelpful as always, suggesting a whole host of meds they'll gladly sell me. I should have them all in my medicine cabinet right now and they treat me like I'm a fool if I don't. They did give me a number to another person. And the man at the feed store gave me a number. And another friend gave me a number. So I did everything. I tried to get a vet to see her to get an injection of atripine (spelling???), I ran to the health food store and got thiamin tablets and shoved them down her throat. I shoved down a few activated charcoal tablets too. Also gave her a shot of B-complex. I finally got a hold of one vet who said if she wasn't eatingor drinking she was probably too far gone to save. That's when I lost it. After months, or a year even, of constant kicking, just when I think I'm hitting normal again, my very favorite goat dies at my hand. I'm ready to quit everything. I'm ready to sell the house and move to a condo.

Then a friend calls. I sob on the phone with her. She's known the ins and outs of every other problem I've had as well so was very sympathetic. She said another friend said to bring her to her vet. I explained that I had already called that vet and was told she was too busy to even talk to me on the phone. We hung up. I went back to crying. Torrential downpour comes and I run out to let the sheep back in to the barn. Dulci hadn't moved at all. She refused to drink for me. I hugged her and cried some more. A little while later that other friend showed up at my door and said to load her up, that she knew her vet would see her. So I sent my kids to my neighbor's, backed the car to the pasture and we half carried half dragged Dulci out and loaded her into the back of the Tucson. She stood the whole time... which I thought was a good sign.

The vet had a nice fenced area that we let her into. My friend called her to say we were there and she came right out. (It's nice to have friends in high places!) We discussed a whole host of things:
1) If it were copper toxicity, her poop would be blueish. Right then and there she pooped and it all looked good, but she took a sample.
2) Giving her more grain than normal could have thrown off her rumen. It wasn't much more, but it was a possibility.
3) She could have parasites and the vet then told me that waiting until their eyes pale out to deworm is waiting too long. I'd like to have her in a room with the ag extension agent who swears we're creating super bugs by routine deworming.
4) She could have eaten something else toxic.

So the vet took blood samples and my friend and I left her there. I came back by to drop off some peanut hay for her on the off chance she'd decide to eat. I thanked my friend repeatedly, but I really can't thank her enough. She gave me hope when all hope was lost.

A few hours later the vet called me back. Dulci's calcium and phosphorus levels were very high, but that's not something that kills a goat. She also had a hearty population of parasites in her fecal sample. She's never shown any signs of illthrift from parasites, but being that she's such a strong goat, that count could be high and just not affecting her much. Or the copper could be doing its job and shedding them. Her lethargy could be from an overdose of calcium (which another friend told me she personally had and it made her feel horrid), or from the parasites being cleansed too quickly... or being spring, she had a rapid upsurgence in parasites.

So now I'm left to decifer what I'm to do with not just Dulci but all our goats. Should I continue with the copper supplements? The one vet and Hoeggar's were very adamant against it. Hoeggar's wants me to buy "their minerals" (and charge me $50 in shipping!) and that vet wants me to have their copper levels tested several times a year. The Hoeggar minerals would have to be administered away from the sheep, meaning it would never be free choice, but just during milking times. Reading more from Pat Coleby, I'm inclined to think she really does know what she's talking about. I'm wondering if a gradual approach is better... maybe 1/4 of a tsp for several weeks first?

As for Dulci, the vet recommended fenbendazole for parasite control. I'll administer that recommended dosage for her and feed her milk to Angel and the chickens for a week (the withdrawal time in milk hasn't been determined). I'm going to stop with the DE or maybe give it free choice rather than mixed in feed. We read on Fias Co Farm's site about doing our own fecal parasite tests. It's an initial investment of a microscope (which in this family of nerds will be a blessing to our homeschool anyway) and some test tubes but given that I could carefully watch their levels on my own, I think its a good thing to start doing.

When we brought Dulci home, she was much more chipper. She almost ran once she saw the pasture. But then got side tracked by leafy trees along the way. She still didn't readily come for milking. We had to prod her up and drag her out, but she jumped onto the table without assistance. She wasn't interested in feed so I stood there cutting leafy branches and holding them for her to eat. I hugged her goodnight and gave her some nuzzles. She nuzzled back, sweet girl. I don't tend to think of myself as emotionally attached to our animals, but I am. A lot, I guess.

So in the end, I'm open to suggestions, advice and opinions. I don't want just run-of-the-mill animals completely dependent upon chemical dewormers the way every other goat in Florida is, but I also don't care for this "experimentation on live animals" thing either. Share your wisdom, everyone!

Impulse Ducks

2011-04-23T04:29:00.000-07:00

Remember those muscovy ducklings I mentioned? Well, yesterday after spending a full day at the Orlando Science Center, coming home and building/painting bee boxes, we decided at 6:30pm to jaunt another 35 miles away to bring home some ducklings. The sellers were going to a farm swap this morning so I was nervous they wouldn't have any left. So while Husbandman did a slightly early evening milking, I loaded up the kids and drove through Chic-Fil-A for dinner. (cringe!) Not only were we acting impulsively, especially since we didn't even have any game bird starter on hand to feed these guys, but we didn't even have time to flop together some pbj's for dinner (we already had PB&J's for lunch at a park in Orlando).

But off we went and successfully put 10 little ducklings into our dog crate. Then I started asking the seller about pigs. He took us out to see all his pigs of various sizes. By the time we came back into where the chicks and ducklings were, we discovered the little puffballs had all escaped!

So then we got to scurry around his garage and catch them again. He gave us a box to bring them home in and suggested we wrap the bottom half of the crate in saran wrap to keep them in. So once we got home, we put the already snoozing kids in bed, and got to work on the ducks' new home.

We put them in the porch so Angel is less likely to pull the saran wrap off. I thought we had a red lightbulb for heat, but we can't find it so the ducks are plenty warm but lit up bright. We got a small scoop of game bird starter from the sellers and we'll pick up a bag from the local hardware store (who's number I have on speed dail) who assured me they had it in stock.

And my beeswax is probably melted by now so I can prep the bee frames. Here's to a busy yet highly predictable day! (hopefully...)

Flash Farming

2011-04-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

Husbandman and I may not be known to let grass grow under our feet, but we do usually do things rather methodically, calculated, planned, over-planned and almost always over-researched.

But this year seems to be different. Without meaning to, it seems as though we're blitzkrieging on new enterprises.

So Mona spontaneously got bred. And we spontaneously brought home Brownie, another rabbit for breeding, when some friends offered her to us. This leaves us with 2 filled rabbit hutches, neither with a nest box, neither with enough room for the mother and her 6-week old weened young and no suitable pen for said young. With Mona due in just over a week, I have ordered three 20"x26"x6" wash basins for nest boxes (because I don't have time to build something). It gives us about 7 weeks to build a pen large enough for the weened young. We intended to breed Brownie pretty soon, but that may be put on hold for a bit now. (whew!)

Then Doby kidded last night. I wasn't expecting her to kid until May or June, but a couple days ago I realized her time was immanent. I was quite nervous for her as she's just over a year old and still rather small. That she was bred to a dwarf goat eased my mind only slightly. But my worries were for naught. She birthed about midnight last night without a peep. I knew what happened only by Angel making some odd confusing noises and figured she was baffled by the "miraculous" appearance of a new charge. She stood vigilantly by them the entire night though. So now, in the midst of everything else, I'm milking a new goat 4 times a day. She's not great on the stand yet. More nervous than interested in food. To narrow through the hips to make udder access easy. Just all around, not that fun right now. I'm also not sure how long we'll be without milk in the next year as the 3 present milkers dry off and we appropriately space their lactations now that the buck's "services" can be planned and prevented.

A couple days ago, the people we bought our bee hives from came by to give us a tutorial and check on the hives. Turns out they've gone gangbusters in there and are already busting out of the original boxes. We need to add a box to each hive pronto... meaning we need to build them first! So tomorrow morning, Husbandman will ferociously build, tomorrow afternoon I will ferociously paint and Saturday we will quietly and calmly install.

A few days ago friends asked if we wanted some new chicks. We did the math and decided,yes we could use some fresh layers to see us through the lean time this winter when daylight and molting could bring us to less than a half dozen a week. So now we need to figure out which pen will be our brooder and then hold our growing birds... which means no pen is available to even buy some time with the young bunnies.

Then today, I popped on Craig's list (hoping to see a rabbit hutch for sale to save us the time and energy to build one) and found muscovy ducklings for sale locally. I've never seen muscovy ducklings for sale! Hatcheries require a huge order and a pretty penny each. I asked the people selling if this was something they would likely keep on hand. No such luck. They're only available a couple times a year from hatcheries and they grabbed these on a whim. So, this means we're probably going to be bringing home muscovies again rather soon. We'll brood them in the dog crate until their ready for the old turkey pen outside in the pasture. And one of those rabbit nest boxes I ordered will probably wind up a duck bath.

And those same friends that gave us Brownie, and asked if we wanted to order chicks with them also asked if we wanted a really nice Suffolk ewe. Apparently this ewe has been shown at the county fair and has had 2 sets of twins in her 4 years of life. Her present owners just want a good home for her. So, we're now considering bringing on a new ewe that would have more likelihood of twinning and slaughtering both Nina and Daisy (knife to the heart twice!!!) this fall. We don't want to overwinter 3 breeding ewes. Should we take this ewe, we'd keep her and Esperanza for breeding (and of course Valentino too).

So guess what we're doing this weekend.

The Buzz

2011-04-16T19:55:00.000-07:00

We worked our new hives for the first time last Saturday. All in all, it went very well. No one got stung despite us not getting the smoker to really work properly until the very end. Honey bees get such a bad rap... they're just not at all aggressive. A person's much more likely to get injured by a dog, but no one flips over Fido moving in.

I digress. Anyway, as I was saying, it all went well. We're still VERY new to this so we didn't quite know all the various things to look for. Every day when I'm in the pasture filling water buckets, I peak at the hives. I don't open them, just stand to the side and watch for a decent amount of activity. They're always buzzing and busy. I also look for an abnormal amount of dead bees on the ground. Thankfully I haven't seen any of that.

Here's Husbandman suited up using the hive tool to separate frames so they can be pulled and inspected individually.

I wish I could get a good picture of bees with pollen on their legs. Its so neat to see the perfect way God designed their little bodies to do big things!

A pulled frame. We were looking to make sure we saw all stages of bees and honey: eggs, larvae, young brood, pollen, nectar, capped honey, etc.

When we purchased our bees, we bought two 5-frame nuks of bees and put them each in 8-frame boxes. So some frames are filled and covered in bees while some of the outer frames are still rather vacant.

Husbandman closing up after finishing the task.

So, because people ARE going to wonder about safety, let me share the facts.

Africanized bees are aggressive and those bees are gradually crawling up the state of Florida. It is estimated that by 2015, 1 in every 6 homes will have a colony of Africanized bees on their property. Keeping nice, docile honey bees around will actually PREVENT Africanized bees from deciding your home is a good place for them. An established hive is already going after their food source. When a swarm is looking for a place to land, they will be less likely to go where bees are already inhabiting.

Honey bees only sting when they're feeling like the hive is being threatened. And they give plenty of warning. A few dive bombs to the head will let anyone know that they're getting too close.

We have opted for minimal gear. We have 1 proper veil (which I was wearing) and both of us opted for no gloves. Gloves make for clumsy fingers that can squish bees when handling frames. Many experts don't even wear veils when their working their hives. I read about a man who complained about his horribly aggressive hives as he bumbled around in a complete head-to-toe bee suit. Another expert went to inspect these "aggressive" hives wearing normal light colored clothes and a baseball cap. Turns out the bees weren't aggressive at all. The man in the suit just wasn't being careful and then never bothered to clean his suit between uses. Being clumsy and careless makes them defensive. Once they sting (or try to sting) they leave a pheromone on you telling the others that you're dangerous and should be stung. This man only needed to go into his bee yard in his pheromone drenched suit and every sentry on guard would be after him. Careful, slow movements make for calm, happy bees.

And a word about "swarms". The word "swarm" brings fear to many people, but in actuality, swarms are nothing more than a great big breeding fest. A new queen is made and she leaves the original hive with a line of drones (who are nothing more than breeding machines) and they find a new place to settle. During a swarm the bees are more docile than ever. A person can literally pick up that pulsing, buzzing ball of bees and simply drop them in a box and never get stung. I've heard several people say they have put their bare hand into the center of a swarm ball and pulled it back out without ever being stung.

The kids have all been introduced to the hives. Since they reside in the pasture, which the kids are too short to get in to without adult assistance, there is no risk of them stumbling upon them or getting more curious than is safe. Even still, they'd get a sting or 2 and would quickly be running crying to mommy and no other stings would be necessary. The goats and sheep have learned to not bother them, so why shouldn't kids? As for allergies, I doubt we will have an issue with them. There's now a suspicion of a link between extreme allergies an excessive vaccinations. Given our vaccination record, I'm doubtful there will be an allergy or one very severe.

We will possibly not get any honey this year. We want to create the best base for them which means allowing them to build their own comb (for at least the bottom box) and allowing them to keep plenty of honey for themselves. We'll let each hive fill up 2 deep 8-frame boxes before adding a honey super. If we get honey before winter, great. If not, there's always next year.

Summer's Coming

2011-04-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

Some say summer's already arrived. And yes, the temps have crested 90 here already, but I'd still have to say its been a pleasant spring and continues to be such.

But we did bust out the kiddie pool. Actually bought a new one. A small little plastic one that I feel safer with farmer boy 2 playing around. He's not likely to venture in the water himself, but the big deep one (that has to be filled almost full to keep its form) is just not ok by me, even if I am just 100 feet away in the garden.

Given some unfortunate circumstances that have kept me inside and on the phone or flitting to various offices, the gardens have been looking quite rough. The last of my spring seedlings were bursting from their pots. Weeds were overtaking my canteloups. I finally took a couple days this week to spend outside. It was as refreshing for my emotions as it was for the plants.

A couple weeks ago, Farmer Girl and I ventured to the ag extension's Master Gardener Plant Sale. I was in search of a loquat tree from a grower who is known for the monstrous fruit... and came away with much more.

a bunching muscadine grape vine
a pair of kiwi vines (a male and female)
another pomegranate tree
a smattering of herbs

and of course the loquat. Aside from the kiwi (who needs a properly built trellis), they are all in the ground and doing well.

I also managed to overhaul all the herb beds in a single day, thanks to that wonderful kiddie pool that kept all 3 gloriously entertained for 5 straight hours! I saved some dill seed, and ripped out the rest. Added oregano, cosmos, morning glory, creeping rosemary, basil, watercrest and peppermint in the full sun beds. In the new shade bed I put thyme, spearmint, peppermint, oregano, watercrest, and horehound. Obviously, some are experiments as to where they'll do best. I'm also trying to add some color and "pretties" to fill in the bare spots in the beds near the house. The "pretty patch" is where I grow smiles so I must confess to losing some of my utilitarian edge. Ornamentals are certainly proving their worth 'round here.

On the food front, I got the sweet potato bed pretty well filled already. Had way too much basil for the herb garden alone so filled a bed in the big garden too. Got genovese, lettuce leaf and cinnamon basil varieties. Should yield some good pesto this year. Also got the cherry tomatoes, some okra and a few more beans in.

Then I refilled my seed planters with:

watermelon (blacktail mountain)- not pleased with germination before and really hoping for good fruits this year so going for a last round with seeds.
lima beans (christmas)
okra (eagle pass)*
eggplant (pandora striped rose)*- only 3 eggplants germinated and survived transplanting. I'm not sure what variety I have left. This is a new one that looks really good.
cantaloup (EPS)*- some seeds I got in a seed swap. Again, I'm pretty late, but the last round of seeds wasn't impressive. May not get anything before the pickle worm comes in, but I have the space to try.
amaranth (joseph's coat)*- I actually can't remember if this variety was cultivated for its looks or its greens. I want the greens mostly, but I'm not opposed to the pretties.
peanuts (Virginia jumbo)*
zinnia (giant violet queen)
morning glory (kikyozaki)
dwarf coffee plant- 3rd time's a charm... something will HAVE to germinate at some point.
marigold (harlequin)
sunflower (teddy bear)

More "firsts" this week were picking the first wonderberries, tiny little dark barries that are tastey, but not spectacular. Will be fun for the kids; once I point them out I won't get to harvest another. Also cooked out first zucchini and yellow squash of the year a few days ago. Added zucchini to tonight's pizza (topped with homemade goat cheese!) Guessing another week or so out on our first tomatoes.

Butter!

2011-04-05T03:37:00.000-07:00

The second attempt at butter making went much better than the first. This time we realized that having the cream quite cold is imperative. Without that, melted butter looks a whole lot like cream. So, again, Saturday morning, we separated Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning's milkings, 3.5 gallons. We got about 2.5 pints of cream. Separating goes better with the milk warm so after separating we stuck it back in the fridge. We intended to get to making butter later that day, but we had a busy weekend so Monday night I finally had a chance to tackle it.

So the cream got put into the blender. Within minutes it was butter. It took some coaxing as the whipped cream would create a pocket where the blades were turning and you'd have to keep pushing the cream back onto the blades. Then it would get to where it would basically stop mixing (a big blob that doesn't blend) and then it would start mixing again where the big blob is broken up into slightly smaller blobs bobbing around in butter milk. That's where we'd stop blending.

Then we poured off the buttermilk, put the butter into a bowl and began the washing process. Its better to get the butter back into the fridge to chill again before washing. Also wash with ice cold water. So, with cold butter and cold water, pour some water onto the butter and mix it up. The water will get cloudy with buttermilk residue. Pour off the water and wash again, repeating until the water runs fairly clear. Then stick the butter back into the fridge.

Once its cold again, its time to press all that excess water out of the butter. I tried several methods, but the most effective I found was to press the butter blob around on a piece of cheesecloth. The cheesecloth absorbs the water but doesn't stick to the butter. Then salt it and mix it using the same method. The recipe says 1/2 tsp per pound of butter. I mixed it in using the cheesecloth press method again. Then I lined the butter mold with wax paper, pressed the butter into the mold, molded the butter and viola, the finished product.

So, yes, this was a lot of work for half a pound of butter. But I think we'll still be doing it again.

Mona's Night Out

2011-04-05T03:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, some neighbors stopped by to chat, see Daisy, etc. Farmer Girl took them to see Mona, even though they have met Mona many times before. Farmer Girl's quite proud of her little fluffy charge. These neighbors have a buck rabbit themselves. Husbandman started talking with them and the next thing I know, Mona and her pen are being toted by the red Radio Flyer off to meet her new beau, Steve, with all the kids in tow as well. I was busy taking down laundry so merely asked where she was going as the whole gang (7 people and a bunny) trotted across 3 front lawns.

Apparently Steve did not even wait for privacy. In less than 3 minutes the deed was done. Husbandman did not think it could have possibly gone that fast so we left Mona with Steve until after dinner. Then again, all 3 kids went with him to bring her home. The littlest farmer boy this time riding in the wagon with Mona's pen and the other 2 kids holding on to the sides. It was quite a sight. So now "Backyard in Your Barnyard" has been added to my bedside reading stack, a stack no less than a foot high. I need to figure out how to properly feed this pregnant bunny as she mostly just gets scraps from the kitchen and garden. Lately when we've given her pelleted food, she eats some and scratches the rest right out of the bowl and it falls through the pen.

May 2nd starts the window of time she could birth. It will be a new experience for me to be involved in the labor and delivery of something I can't stick my whole arm inside. Not that I help in many deliveries anymore, I guess 2 in the last 5 years. Certainly beats the stats on the conventional dairy farm where about 1 in 3 births needed assisting. I digress... merely saying I don't think my pinkie finger will be able to assist so Mona, its all you, sweetie.

Yet Another

2011-04-05T02:57:00.000-07:00

Another sad day at Ziptie Ranch. Julius died Sunday morning despite me, once again, doing everything I knew to save him. He was never a strong kid. He was born a bit later than his brother Jonah and initially was considerably weaker. He was slow to get his legs under him the first day. Then he was never a good eater. He didn't suck, he merely gnawed at a bottle allowing milk to dribble into his mouth. He didn't even suck on a finger so I'm not sure he would have even been able to drink water from a bucket. His chin was always drenched after every feeding so I knew milk was running right out of his mouth too, but I never knew how much. He never did the new goat gallivant. As time progressed, Jonah pulled further and further ahead of him, but I still didn't think Julius's problems were fatal. I had turned over the feeding of the kids to the 2-leggeds. Farmer Girl and Farmer Boy 1 would always go running out with their bottles. Farmer Boy 1 would always stay out there until Julius's bottle was empty, which often took a MUCH longer time than I had patience for. But again, being that he's 3, that milk may have simply made it down his chin (or into Jonah's tummy) and not much into the intended belly. After every interaction with Julius, I would come in only partly joking that "Julius has to be retarded."

Julius started appearing worse than "just Julius" on Wednesday. I took over his feeding again and was really surprised by his lack of "skill" to eat. He seemed to even regress in the week since I had given that chore to the kids. Thursday evening, Jonah was sold and Julius was launched into full-fledged depression. Droopy ears and everything. I put him in with Copper and Doby, but he just laid down in the sunshine and didn't move. By Friday evening he wasn't standing properly. I wondered about "bent leg syndrome" and started giving him cod liver oil, feeding him by syringe and giving vitamin B injections. Since he was Helen's fifth kid in 3 complete pregnancies all crammed into 19 months of time, birth defects unfortunately could be rather expected. We kept up the regime, adding vitamin C to the mix as well on Saturday and moved him into a sick bed on the porch where we could keep him warm and comfortable. Early Sunday morning, I heard a little peep from him and was relieved to know he made it through the night. But by the time his milk was warmed and I went to feed him, he was gone.

I spent a few hours, both before he died and after, trying to figure out what was ailing him. I poured through my "Natural Goat Care" book and found nothing that really fit, including bent leg syndrome. The author of this book does make note to not spend much time or resources saving unthrifty kids because nature usually knows better than we which ones can survive long-term. I have a hard time with that, but I feel a bit less guilty with his death. I think there was likely a non-visable birth defect that prevented him from eating properly.

In the end, I'm glad we've been able to keep Copper away from Helen. She just came out of heat (at 3 weeks post pardem) so we only have another year's worth of heats to go through. Hopefully the fence on the bachelor pad is up for the challenge. I think that's really the only way we can prevent this in the future.

Butter?

2011-03-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry, no pictures. But trust me when I say this has been an adventure. A month or so ago, a friend encouraged us to actually spend money on something moderately frivolous. Truth be told, we're total and complete tightwads so this is something that takes a bit of arm twisting. We were thinking of the 2 gallons/day of milk we'd be getting with both Dulci and Helen in milk, our nice tax non-return (which I find ridiculous that we should get paid that much money merely for having kids) and decided it was time for a cream separator.

Now let me give some information here. Unlike cow's milk, goat's milk does not naturally separate. You can wait all week and not get more than a teaspoon of cream rising to the top of a quart of milk. Centrifuge is the only way to really get goat cream.

It arrived on Tuesday afternoon so Wednesday I was chomping at the bit to use it. 6 hours post-milking I had a half pint of cream, a very sore arm and shoulder, and an ENORMOUS mess. It was a disaster. I decided separating was not something for me to do alone.

This morning, after chores, Superhusbandman cranked while I poured. We still splattered milk all over the kitchen. We separated about 1.5 gallons and put the pint of cream in the blender. And blended. And blended. And blended. And got cream.

And now its late and we're due to be leaving soon to pick up our bees (another post for another day) so let me just say that another 5 hours of separating and blending and we still only have cream, but are hopeful for another go at butter.

But not today.

Daisy

2011-03-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

On March 18th, our first 2nd-generation FLhomesteader lamb was born. Farmer girl named her Daisy.

She immediately won the hearts of the farmer kids.

At only a few days old, she and her mother, Esperanza, were mowing the lawn. I tethered Esperanza just outside of Angel's zone and Daisy was completely free to roam anywhere... of course she stayed near mama. This is giving Angel and Daisy a chance to get to know each other without Angel immediately mauling her new charge.

And given that Daisy is free and Esperanza is tethered near the pretty patch, she did take the opportunity to snack on some calendula and strawflowers. Thankfully she has a small mouth and doesn't eat much. Farmer Boy 2 found it all quite entertaining.

And they are very well trained. I merely unclip Esperanza's tether and she knows to go right back home. Superhusbandman built another gate today so we now can keep the animals off that barren side for a stretch. I have some cowpeas, sweet potatoes, and millet grass to be planting over there. I'm hopeful for some fertility in there this year.

Jonah and Julius

2011-03-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

We had another birth on Saturday. Husbandman and I were out working on the "Bachelor Pad." I had been expecting Helen to kid for 2 days so when I saw her go off to a secluded area of the pasture and lay down, I knew it was time. Without a sound, a little goat was born. I gave her ample time to clean it off and it seemed as though she were done. Later a friend came to visit and we took him back to see the new addition... and there wasn't just one but TWO! Both of them are bucks and both are identical. One has an ever so slightly larger grew patch over his eyes than the other. So we put a collar on one... which Farmer Girl named Jonah. The other is Julius. Now if this over-sized collar happens to fall off, then whichever one gets the collar will then become Jonah. The kids are doing well. The first afternoon, one was markedly weaker than the other, but by morning I couldn't tell which one that was so they must be fine. They are eating well and are almost ready for the kids to take over their feedings. Helen on the other hand is not milking well. Granted we're still in the colostrum phase, but we're getting just over a quart a day from her who previously has given over a gallon. I'll be milking 3 times a day to see if that will help. I'm hoping to milk her for about 9-10 months so I really need her to start strong.

Copper's Bachelor pad is now finished. We "finished" it last week only to find him back with his ladies the very next morning. We "fixed it" again and again he was back within 24 hours. Now we think we have him trapped. He's been there for about a day and a half now so maybe we're safe. We put Doby in with him to keep him company. They're enjoying the browse while it lasts.

We're still waiting for Esperanza to lamb. Nina was sucking on her the other day so it must be soon. Then our babies will be done for the season. Well, until Doby kids which could be in June or so.

Florida and Kids

2011-03-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

I recently got a comment that someone had purported Florida to be a bad place to raise kids.

Hehehe.

Well, if that keeps the bozos away, then let them believe it!

I'm including this picture, sorry its sideways, to prove that our grass is perfectly safe for little one's feet. Its a fight to keep shoes on them. We DO have patches of stinging nettles and sand spurs, but those are PATCHES and kids quickly learn to stay out of there if they're not wearing shoes. If you have a small yard, its easy enough to yank the offending grasses. Stinging nettles are quite nutritious so I'm actually looking for some right now, but they only occasionally pop up in the garden and we've never had them in the yard. And if they keep popping up despite yanking, sow some perennial grass seed densely and let that keep them out.

And is it too hot for kids? Well, that all depends on your kids. We have friends whose kids will play outside all day when the weather is scarcely over 40 and hate it over 82. My kids look at me like I'm nuts if I drag them out with me on cold days. In the worst of summer, we go out early in the morning to do chores but are almost always in by 11. Farmer Boy 1 doesn't much care for the heat. He's usually inside playing by himself when the thermometer tips 90. Farmer Boy 2 would stay out at 110. We also find ways to beat the heat. Kiddie pools are a summer essential. We fill it up every couple days and they usually splash around in there if I have extended work to do outside. If its a morning where I'm merely doing the barest of chores, we'll be back inside before it gets hot. Does it seem like we're always living inside to get away from the heat? Well, maybe for 3 months or so, but the other 9 its quite comfortable to be outside all day.

Gardening is a tricky thing in the heat though... you can't bring the plants into the AC. There are some select things that really thrive in the heat. Our summer staples are sweet potatoes (that we don't harvest until the first freeze), okra, collard greens, pole beans, cow peas, cherry tomatoes, and amaranth (for the greens). Many herbs will need to be shaded in the summer to hold out. I'm putting in a new herb bed just for that purpose right now. We won't get the yields that our northern friends do, mostly because of those blasted nematodes I just wrote about, but also because of the sandy soil that doesn't hold nutrients. But the key is finding the foods that work, not trying to force what doesn't work while the only thing growing is frustration.

But the biggest benefit I see to homesteading in Florida is for animals. While the winter was hard on everyone else and I spent many a morning waiting for the hose to thaw, it certainly beats wondering if I have frozen goat kids or how to keep the waterers from freezing while I'm gone all day. Our animal housing is minimal and they do fine. Yes, we have a harder time with parasites. No, some animals don't handle the heat well. But its all things that are easy to work with.

Now, with that said, I'm a southerner. My grandparents moved here for my grandmother's health when my dad was in high school. My dad headed back north and met my mom. They came back to Florida to thaw out when I was 2. Despite divorce, neither ever left. I went to college in northern NY, working on a farm there during my summers. Then moved to a northern area of China after that. I came back to Florida and don't regret it one bit. There are things that are nice about the north, but I'm very familiar with the south. I'm accustomed to sweating, not shoveling snow. I'd rather run my AC for 5 months than my heater for 8. I feel quite comfortable with the thermostat set at 82 but our winter temp of 58 is grueling. Running through soft sand feels far more natural to me than trying not to slip on ice.

And there ARE some places in Florida that I would NOT recommend for raising kids though the natives will sternly disagree. I'm not big for cities so Miami and Orlando and much of the over-grown south Florida regions would be out for me. But saying Florida is bad is like saying all of NY is bad because New York City has a high crime rate. Anyone who's ever been to northern NY will find that thought preposterous. But Florida is growing, in some places rather unwisely. I can't say what it will look like here in 10 years. Walmart is building a superstore (which I vow to NEVER step foot in!). Whole new developments and neighborhoods are planned. Things are changing and the only thing more certain than that are the taxes we'll pay on those changes.

But for now, Florida is home. And its a nice one.

Spring Sprang

2011-03-03T12:43:00.000-08:00

I always seem to find myself here when I have multiple other things that are more pressing, but alas, I'm here so I'll make it quick. :-)

Yesterday I had a positively glorious time playing in the dirt, with at least 1 little helper most of the time. We ripped out most of the arugula and some older lettuce, kale, collards, and mustard greens. The goats were happy to take the cast offs from my sweet helpers' hands. We filled multiple wheelbarrow loads with compost and refreshed the beds. One particular bed ends up quite shaded in the winter. I've had it covered with a billboard tarp since November. I peeled back the tarp to find grey beach sand. Nothing more. I've been planting and ammending that bed for 3+ years now, and its still basically beach sand. Its also no surprise to see roots like these on the mustard greens.

The little blobs in the roots indicate nematodes, a horrible menace to the Florida gardener... and very little to realistically to about them.

So after ripping out the old plants, adding fresh compost and mixing it in some, we transplanted- something the farmer girl has really come to enjoy. I love having her little hands working with me. Farmer Boy 1 enjoys it too, but the temptation to pitch dirt in the air is sometimes too much for him to handle. FB2 likes to just wander around the garden carrying off any tools someone else is using.

We transplanted an entire bed of cayenne peppers (hoping to trade the fruit for a drink concotion that is helping several friends and family members), a good number of bell peppers, the last of the big tomatoes and lettuce, Black Valentine pole beans, huckleberries, wonderberries, cucumbers and eggplant.

What remains in the garden now for today's eating are collard greens and lettuce. What remains for seed production purposes are a few old lettuce plants, arugula and bok choy. Aside from what's noted about as recently transplanted, we also have yellow squash, zucchini, bok choy, swiss chard and peas in the still-growing phase. There are still a good number of things not quite ready to transplant, but more about those next week.

Next we planted seeds:

For the pretty patch: cosmos, marigolds, zinnias, morning glory and sunflowers.

For the eating: Sugarlee watermelon, Chinese Red noodle beans, cherry tomatoes (lollipop, sungold, and chocolate cherry), and basil (genovese, cinnamon, and lettuce leaf).

On the animal front, we sold Rocie and Poncho. After not being able to sell Willy after weeks of having him posted on Craigs List, I started early this round... they were gone the first evening. Truth be told, I wasn't quite ready. When I got the call that the buyers were on their way, I quickly rounded up the kids for a photo shoot. How many beautiful mornings had the kids been in there playing with them and though I'd stop to admire the abundance of cute, I never grabbed the camera. These pics aren't too great as the light was fading and the goats were hungry (hence eating farmer girl's hair), but its something.

Esperanza is still big but not looking particularly "due". Helen is bagging up more so my guess is she's the next birth. We'll be spending all day on Saturday on the "Bachelor Pad" despite the huge amount of gardening work to do. A place to put Copper after Helen kids is essential. She's had way too many babies too close together. If we don't get the new section fenced we will simply have to find another home for Copper fast. She got pregnant 4 weeks post-pardum last time.

Back to work now. Thanks for the break in cleaning. :-)

Livestock Life

2011-02-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of the year where we tethered out the sheep. Our front lawn looks a mite rough.

Not that looking rough isn't normal for us.

But having seeded the front lawn with rye grass then the chickens eating a majority of that grass, we have bright green patches of tall grass amongst the sea of brown.

Instead of dusting off the mower already, we set out the sheep and they were happy to work.

Valentino is standing tall and proud as the happy daddy of Nina and the lamb(s) making Esperanza so round.

I tried to get an upclose picture of the littlest kids on the 'stead. They were adamant to climb me instead. So I had to shoot pics through the fencing of their kennel. When the bigger kids are outside feeding the little ones, I might be able to snag some better pictures.

The one with the black spots is the doeling, Rocie. The one with small brown spots is the buckling, Poncho.

Nina taking an afternoon snooze. Button looks content.

Our working girls. Dulci (the white one) is giving a gallon of milk a day. Helen is due in mid March.

Nina and Mona

2011-02-08T06:37:00.000-08:00

Button the ewe went into labor Sunday afternoon. I noticed her very bagged up and a bit puffy when I fed them about 4:00. I figured by morning we'd have a lamb. Less than an hour later Husbandman was out collecting buckets and saw "something hanging out". Button being as skiddish as she is, he didn't want to get too close. We whipped out the binoculars and spied on her from a distance. She was laying down and pushing. And pushing. And pushing. It was a rounded nub sticking out, not gangly legs so I got concerned. With Bella, there's a lingering fear that in my nervousness, I caused the ultimate death of both Bella and her baby. Bella was also skiddish. Both Bella and Button were purchased from a big farm where they got almost no human interaction. When Bella's baby wasn't coming, and I tried to pull it, it was clear she was much too small for the size lamb inside her... but was she tightened up because of fear and stress? So, that mulling in my brain, I wouldn't even get close to look. I snuck around to the side of the house and spied. I waited. I wrung my hands. And next thing I knew she was licking it off. We continued to give her good distance until after we saw the lamb nurse well. Then I grabbed it, put iodine on the umbilical cord, determined the gender (a ewe) and let the kids pet her some. Farmer girl called her grandma and insisted she come see the baby NOW. Thankfully Grandma lives a quarter mile away and was happy to oblige. Other friends came to see her too. She was just officially named "Nina" this morning. Farmer Girl is our main namer now and I think she did well chosing this one.

So what does this birth mean? Well, unfortunately for Button, it means her days are numbered. Button, being so skiddish, is much too hard to manage. I can't graze her as I do the other sheep because if she gets loose, there's no catching her. Nina will be our replacement breeding ewe and Button... she'll be sausage before the summer is out.

And now I watch our other ewe thinking she's going to be due soon too. As of this morning, Dulcinea looks the closest to birth. Which I'm just as happy about. I'm desperate for real milk again.

And since I'm at it, here's the bunny Farmer Girl is raising. A friend gave us this rabbit, complete with its pen about a month ago. We'll get meat rabbits in the summer, but this is a pet rabbit for the girl to practice on. Since she'll be the main care-taker of the rabbits, we figured this was a good way for her to grow into her job. She does a very good job. She needs some reminding at times, but she's only 4. She named this bunny Mona and Mona is certainly a sweetie. She will not be eaten. She's merely a cute puff-ball, all fur and no meat.

Seeding Spring

2011-01-27T17:21:00.000-08:00

I just had the best day all week. I walked out of the house, ignoring the mess within, and puttered in the garden all day long. I took a break only to feed the little dust balls, find the skin beneath and put the smaller 2 down for naps. Then farmer girl and I continued to prep beds, rejuvenate them with compost, transplant and plant seeds.

Transplants:
-a new bed of lettuce (slow-bolt and little gem)
-peas (little marvel)
-mustard greens (curled southern)
-chinese cabbage (michihili)
-bok choy (ching chang)

Herb Seeds:
-spearmint
-peppermint
-water cress
-white horehound
-oregano (wild zaatar)
-summer savory

Fruit Seeds:
-wonderberry
-huckleberry (chichiquelite)
-melocoton cassabanana
-asian melon (golden sweet)
-canteloup (edisto 47)
-jelly melon kiwano
-watermelon (blacktail mountain)

Vegetable Seeds:
-zucchini (dark green)
-summer squash (cocozelle Italian)
-yellow squash (early prolific straight)
-tomato (southern night, uncle mark bagby)
-cayenne peppers (long thin, African)
-eggplant (rosita)
-bell peppers (roumanian rainbow, emerald giant)
-Cucumber (Edmonson, poinsett 76)
-bok choy (ching chang)
-celery (tendercrisp)
-hot peppers (tam jalapeno)
-lettuce (sweet valentine)
-swiss chard (rainbow chard)

Random:
-dwarf coffee plant (a pretty houseplant that supposedly produces a good berry for a coffee substitute... I'm a sucker for a seed catalog.)

So... this is the absolute most seeds I have ever planted at one time. And given that most from my last round aren't quite ready for transplanting yet, I have a LOT of seedlings around! I didn't have enough window boxes but I put a good number of puts to use too. Particularly for zucchini and melons where the starts will be huge, the pots will prove better, I'm sure. If frost threatens, I'll have my work cut out for me, but oh well. Spring planting is here!

Greenhouse Blues

2011-01-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

January 19th, almost a month before our average last frost date, and I've taken down the greenhouse. Oh how I loathe it, let me count the ways:

1) There were virtually no instructions on assembly.
2) Upon its arrival 1of 2 zippers were broken meaning it wouldn't close properly.
3) 3 joints would not stay connected.
4) It blew over in just a minor amount of wind the very first day.
5) When it blew over, the stakes that came with it ripped right through the cover.
6) It took some major creativity to get it secured enough to handle the lightest wind.
7) The 2nd zipper broke the 2nd day.
8) We had a very moderate rain, light in comparisons to some that come through FL, yet it collected an enormous amount of water. I went out twice, in the rain, to dump water off the top... yet the frame still broke.
9) The weight of the water tore some holes in the seams on the top... nice gaps in just the right place to let any heat out and completely defeat its purpose (yet not in places that would allow the water to drain).
10) It was rendered useless just as we discovered 2 major roofing problems, the washing machine broke, I learned about tax issues regarding my deceased father's business, some more rather pertenant tax information conveniently hid from me and facing a very major family decision. The last thing I needed right now is for my stress relief (gardening) to be saddled with bitterness.

But, I'm not sending it back. It will cost $20+ to ship back and only cost me $70. Instead, I will put the pieces to good use and still wind up with a very good greenhouse. Here's what I've come up with:

1) I'm going to use the dog kennel as my greenhouse frame. We use it in the summer to house the sheep at night, but the sheep are in the pasture with the goats during the winter. It's 6'x10'x6'... a perfect size. It costs about $200 new, but some neighbors gave it to us when their dog repeatedly climbed out of it. It has served us VERY well! I've seen them on Craig's List for about $100.

2) I'll lay 2x4s across the top along with a piece of welded wire fencing with small openings (2" or less) to create a stable top (that won't sag with rain) but one that will still allow light in.

3) I'll rip out the seams of the greenhouse cover and use them to create a new cover to fit over the kennel. A 4mil drop cloth worked great as my new closure and is very inexpensive so I can use that on the larger sides to make a good fit.

4) The shelving that came with the greenhouse is still good so I'll keep that inside.

5) The big archs of the frame will make great trellises for vining plants. It costs about $8 to make a large trellis out of electrical conduit and then when they're not in use, they are difficult to store. These will work perfectly and I can take them apart to store.

6) The other aluminum framing pieces I can piece together to make smaller trellises for tomato plants and such.

So all in all, I should have listened to my wise friend who said the portable greenhouses were too flimsy. Oh well, lesson learned. I'm still licking my wounds (as the rain drips through the roof and the laundry piles up), but my plants should make it through the rest of winter just fine.

And for others looking for a greenhouse, I'd suggest obtaining a used dog kennel and some drop clothes... I think it would be constructable for about $125 or so.

Write the Vision

2011-01-12T12:09:00.000-08:00

And the LORD answered me and said: "Write the vision and make it plain upon tablets, that he may run that readeth it. Habakkuk 2:2

And so I write out our plans for our little homestead.

For 2011 (with approximate completion time): will ~~strike through~~ when completed.

1) ~~Fence in the pasture common area (February)~~
2) ~~Install inhabited beehives (March)~~
3) ~~Plant several blackberry bushes~~ and ~~one more grape vine~~ (April)
4) ~~Install new shaded herb bed (April)~~
5) Build fly/maggot traps for chicken feed (May) Husbandman drew the line at farming flies.
6) ~~The Bachelor Pad- a separate fenced area to house our goat buck (May)~~
7) ~~Build pens and fill them with meat rabbits for breeding (June)~~
8)~~Add removable plywood walls on the barn~~ (as opposed to the present billboard tarp walls)- (December)
9) Install hay storage area over pump house (whenever) Decided that wasn't such a good idea... they'd maul us at each feeding.
For years beyond:

1) Add another partition to the pasture, one each year of 2012 and 2013, including separating and burning felled branches in each paddock.
2) Develop a grain patch to grow some of our own goat or chicken grain. (2014?)
3) ~~Install a geothermal AC/heater (2012?)~~ Removed from to-do list. Not cost effective.
4) Clear to southern property line (2012)
5) Install a southern "fence" and plant blackberries and grapes along it. (2013) May be rethought with plans for a tree house.
6) ~~Add muscovy ducks~~ and/or turkeys (2012)
7) Clear area for garden expansion, expanding about 10-15' each year beginning in 2013.

Starting seeds

2011-01-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

I have a greenhouse! Hooray! It just arrived moments ago, purchased new off ebay on New Year's Eve. In anticipation of its arrival (and some very good weather forecasted for the next week), I planted a whole host of spring seeds. But before I get into my own personal record keeping, let me tell you about my greenhouse. We'd been planning to get one since May and just didn't. I started to dither about the size of the original one we planned to get: 18"x30" foot print with 4 shelves. Yes, I could do seeds, but little else. So, in hunting some more I found several options that were much bigger for the same price or slightly more. What I eventually settled on was a 10'x6.6' footprint, 6' tall in the center with movable shelves included. I can plop this baby over a garden bed of something cold sensitive and put my shelves of pots or seedlings in the walkway or around the planted items. I'm a bit dubious how well it will hold up to wind, but we decided to give this a try and if it needs replacing in a couple years, we'll know that much better what we need before buying a super good quality one. Merry Christmas to me!!!

I had a BLAST this morning outside pretending its spring. With the current weather, the imagination doesn't have to work very hard. The older 2 kids helped me clear some room in the seed boxes by planting the remaining stuff in the pretty patch. Then they "helped" me plant the seeds. I use window boxes for seeds, splitting each into 2-4 sections for each type of seed. When we're working on one particular seed, for example bok choy, I'll show them the section in the box those seeds will go in to. I'll put a few seeds into farmer girl's hand (4.5 yrs) and have her lay them, one at a time, on top of the dirt. I'll put a 1 or 2 seeds onto farmer boy's flat palm (almost 3yrs) and he just dumps them onto the dirt. Then, depending on the size of the seed, I'll allow them to push it down and cover or I'll push it down and let them sprinkle dirt on top. Between anticipating all these new foods I'm planting so early and doing it all with 2 of my very favorite people, I was in heaven all morning!

Now on to boring record keeping:
1. Chinese Cabbage: Michihli (fall plantings didn't head likely due to heat late in fall. leaves still good to cook and eat)
2. Bok Choy: Ching Chang
3. Asian Greens: Large Leaf Tong Ho (fall plantings slightly bitter)
4. Hot peppers: Tam Jalapeno*
5. Bell Peppers: Sweet Chocolate, Emerald Giant
6. Chichiquelite Huckleberry*
7. Jelly Melon Kiwano*
8. Melocoton Cassabanana*
9. Wonderberry*
10. Eggplant: Pandora Striped Rose*, and Ping Tung*
11. Parsley: Giant of Italy
12: Mustard Greens: Southern Giant Curled
13: Celery: Tendercrisp (fall planting grew very pretty flowers similar to zinnias- either my mistake or Baker Creeks?)
14: Tomatoes: Beefsteak, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Chocolate, and Green Zebra

*Denotes first time planting

Without a greenhouse, most of these I'd have to wait another 6 weeks to plant. This way I can get a jump on the bugs and heat. I'll get 6 weeks more fruit out of my tomatoes before the bugs, fungus, heat and disease wipe them out. I'll start my squash, melons and cucumbers in about 3 weeks so I can get that much more out of them before the pickleworm eats them all. I'd love to start them now, but I can't imagine containing a 6 week old squash vine to a pot inside a greenhouse!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-23T07:48:00.000-08:00

In the midst of Christmas preparations, life happens. I'm finding this year, that it takes a conscious effort to remember to enjoy it. Every year I vow to do less. And every year I do less. But still, I'm wishing today for a chance to go to a park with my kids and enjoy them. But I have cooking and cleaning to do to prepare for 3 days of "celebration". 3 days of kids being wired and likely sugared. What I would give for a quiet Christmas Eve with immediate family only and a laid back Christmas Day at home with my in-laws... what would I give? Would I hurt my family's feelings? Would I deny my mother the chance to bestoy her love language on her grandchildren? Would I neglect the long drive to see good friends for the first time in many months? What does it take to scale back enough to enjoy Christmas?

Thankfully for me, as the Yeoman Farmer so aptly stated last year, Christmas is 12 days long! I have 4 more days of chaos, then I will sit back, snuggle with my children in front of the tree. I will putter in the garden and get us all dirty planting lettuce seedlings. We will spend evenings with a nice fire and hot chocolate singing carols.

It's then that I can stop and smell the roses. Then I'll celebrate more extensively the Gift of Jesus. Until then... back to work, break is over.

Merry Christmas from all of us on the 'stead!

Mourning

2010-12-15T07:32:00.000-08:00

We're mourning with the family at Roscommon Acres for their sudden loss of sweet 22-month old "Tiggy". Please pray earnestly for this family to KNOW the peace of Christ as few people can truly know. There are 5 other children ranging from 12 to just a few weeks who are saddened along with their parents.

Thank you, Jesus, that we CELEBRATE Your birth so that this death is not the end! We continue to rejoice in Your Gift to us through the tears. I never knew Tiggy, but I miss him still and look forward to meeting him in Glory.

To all of you at Roscommon Acres, you are being upheld in prayer from all around the world, but also from right here. Prayers for you fill my sleepless hours at night and every time I hold one of my little ones. You have my deepest sympathy.

Sweet Potato Harvest

2010-12-10T04:27:00.000-08:00

Cold weather came early and yesterday I went out with FarmBoy1 to dig in the dirt and bring in the sweet potatoes. I was impressed. They aren't as plentiful as last year but they are way bigger. Next time I will plant the starts more densely but fertilize just the same. Many people say sweet potatoes like sandy soil, no water and zero nutrients. We've not seen that to be true for us. We get bigger potatoes by fertilizing and adding compost. But maybe most people aren't thinking of starting them in beach sand.

Last year we got 2 baskets full. Husbandman thinks there are more lurking deeper than I was digging. I hope so as this wouldn't last us the winter.

Now they need to cure. We leave them in the basket on the porch for 2 weeks before we start eating them. Then we just eat from there, never transferring to the fridge and never cleaning them until just before we cook them. They'll begin sprouting on their own. When that happens, I save some for next years bed and plant the rest in the pasture to be animal fodder.

Mad Dash Blog Post

2010-11-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

Forgive me. I don't have time for this but am doing it anyways as I'm WAY behind in my record-keeping.

I finally completed my mushroom logs. I got shiitaki soaked dowels from Fungi Perfecti online, drilled holes in a log completely covering the entire log, pounded the dowels in and sealed them with beeswax. I melted the beeswax in an old coffee pot/dispenser that I found. One of those you'd use at a party or office. It heated the wax perfectly. I used a paintbrush to dab over the plugs. I had enough for 1 large log and the beginning of another. I'll use the coffe pot/beeswax combo again to make dipped candles for Christmas presents. Perfect size and shape. May even use the dispenser feature to make some molded candles too.

And husbandman and a friend added the roof to our barn. The closed off section contains our pump. The area under the roof doubles our current "barn" space. We intend for the sides to be removable so its nice and open for hot weather and cozy and snug in the winter. So far we're dithering between using plywood or a billboard tarp that we'd merely roll up come spring. We're going to try the billboard tarp first and see if it will work.

And none too soon. This is our old "barn". It served us well as a makeshift shelter until we knew what we really wanted. The next phase of improvement is to add a common area to the pasture, which will include the barn and main gate, that the animals can access no matter which paddock their opened to. Fencing is never finished.

In other news, we managed to slaughter all our turkeys. We roasted one on Sunday (Thanksgiving was a bit different this year) and while it tasted good, I don't think I'm the best judge. I'm very used to our own chickens so frankly I'd have been sadly disappointed if it didn't taste as it did.

We learned lots at the purple cow festival and the county fair... another post for another day. Suffice to say we've decided to go ahead with honey bees and just be totally and completely dependent on our dog to keep any roaming bears at bay. I'm also going to start a shaded herb garden. And we'll begin design and construction on some small-child-friendly rabbit pens sometime next year. Lots in store for us. Lots to keep us busy.

Now on to the rest of life.

Wee Willy Wishing

2010-11-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

Another lesson at the school of hard knocks... rip out ALL lantana that grows ANYWHERE. Last Sunday night, Willy started screaming. I got up and tromped outside expecting to find his collar hooked on the chain link of the kennel he shared with the sheep at night. He was standing free but looking very anxious. I remembered how earlier that day his ears drooped with what I thought was sadness. He didn't eat much that day so I figured he was finally with friends again and hungry (the sheep had spent the weekend in the pasture where Willy was too small to he held behind the pasture fencing). I fed him some beet pulp which he readily gobbled... or so I thought. Later inspection showed he was only drinking the water out of it. I left him free to wonder that night so as to not keep him from eating his choice or snuggling with the goats, but he continued to scream. He finally settled down towards dawn. Just after dawn I see Angel, the dog, pulling a limp Willy by the leg and nosing him, probably wondering why he's not playing with her. I ran out to find Willy still alive, but very weak and his body temperature way below normal. I set him in a laundry basket with a heating pad and towels and tried to get him to take a bottle of milk. He wanted nothing. He let out a slight groan here and there. I gave him a shot of Vitamin B. I wondered what happened to make him so sick.

Hours later I remembered. The prior Tuesday and Wednesday I had him tethered in an area where I knew there was lantana... but since it wasn't in bloom I had completely forgotten about it. It was lush with grape vines, his favorite browse, so I never gave the lantana a second thought. Until it was too late. I found the plant, a big one, with only a precious few leaves left on it to even let me confirm its identity. Willy, little tiny Willy, had eaten a LOT of lantana.

I hate to say this but I just waited for him to die. Oddly enough, Monday afternoon he all of a sudden perked up and gobbled down a bottle of milk and another bottle of water. I was so excited, so hopeful that I didn't just kill the sweetest goat we'd ever owned. That hope was premature. He was tucked into bed that night in the porch right next to our bedroom so I could easily hear him if he needed a midnight snack. Tuesday he was back to not eating or drinking. I read that even after symptoms of lantana poisoning go away, the animal still generally dies within 6 weeks because the liver and kidneys shut down. My husband brought home some activated charcoal which I crammed down his throat. Then, fearing dehydration from not drinking all day, I used a funnel to force water (with a bit of sea salt for electrolytes) into him. I tucked him into his bed, that laundry basket with the heating pad. Wednesday morning he was gone.

And now we remember what a great goat he was. He often let the farm baby use him as a walker. And when the baby was in the stroller and Willy was tired from playing, he'd curl up right at the baby's feet... maybe hoping to find a tiny toe to suck on. He loved to play with the farm boy, especially when he had his bike! He would jump and play all around it. Farm boy didn't like it too much because he was often knocked right off. Willy loved the farm girl the best. She fed him most days and never seemed to mind him sucking her finger. They'd dance together all over the driveway. Those were fun days. But he's buried in the pasture now. Just last week I was trying to get him to stay in the pasture. Now he'll never come out. This is the one part of homesteading that never gets any easier.

And for your information, in my recent research I've learned that lantana is poisonous to EVERYTHING, not just livestock. So that plant is definitely getting ripped out. The berries are by far the most toxic part and my children absolutely delight in picking and eating random things growing around the property. We have a rule that if its outside the garden, they have to ask first, but this is one rule I'm not going to risk them breaking.

No More Seminoles

2010-11-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

I will never grow Seminole pumpkins again. Well, never say never, but not when this is so readily available after Halloween.

To detail the last couple weeks, I posted on facebook that I was scouting for unwanted pumpkins. A friend who is a receptionist at a local Methodist church responded that I could clean up whatever was left after they closed their pumpkin patch after Halloween. A few days later I was called to get some that were about to go bad. I came home with 10-12 pumpkins and immediately processed them into pumpkin butter (which I canned) and puree (which I froze) and a few were only fit for animals. I questioned how many pumpkins would be usable to human consumption so when another patch closed 2 days sooner than my friend's patch, I went out and filled the car full. There were all kinds of people there cashing in on free pumpkins and still, the 1 acre field seemed an endless sea of orange. I had snagged another 20 pumpkins. 15 of which I brought inside and began to process.

The Monday following Halloween, my friend said I could come and get whatever I wanted, as many trailer loads as I cared to take. Whoa. I showed up and was astounded at the number of left over pumpkins. I could have loaded the car and trailer 4 or 5 times over. I began to get a little worried because I told my friend I would take everything that was left, never having ANY clue it would be this many. I also felt really bad because it was a fund raiser for the youth group and I was concerned that they were in the negative on this deal. As we were loading up... and I say we because the kids were all helping. The older 2 were pleased as punch to carry over the small "baby pumpkins" and the littlest was happy to climb the biggest ones and wave at passing cars. So, as we were loading up, the pastor came out and explained that this is a mission project of the United Methodist churches (hence why all 3 pumpkin patches in the area were connected to Methodist churches). They have a mission with the Navajo Indians raising pumpkins. The churches then sell the pumpkins for them, returning 75% of the proceeds to the Indians and keeping 25% for the church. There's no capital needed. No one's "loosing" by so many pumpkins going unsold. Its a great system. And I walked away with LOTS of free pumpkins!

As you can see, the animals are happy. I smash open a few each day. The bigger ones for the sheep and goats and the small ones for the chickens. Not much gets left behind. I'm also making lots of pumpkin butter, puree and soup. In fact, yesterday we were at the Fall Jamboree at the Pioneer Art Settlement and learned about Timucuan Indians. They would cook stews a such inside the pumpkin. So we did that for dinner. We used a big pumpkin and a couple little ones for the kids.

For future reference, the smaller pumpkins work better for such things. The soup never heated in the big pumpkin, but did great in the small ones. Its a fun variation on something... well... that could get quite old this winter!

Pumpkin Curry Soup: pumpkin puree, coconut milk, curry powder, salt. All to taste. Its a made up recipe and I'm not sure about amounts.

Pumpkin Bisque: pumpkin puree, chicken broth, onion, cumin, salt, cream. Again, work it to taste.

Pumpkin Butter: Pumpkin puree (or raw pumpkin in chunks), sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Set it cooking in the crock pot until it cooks down and is somewhat thick. I added some orange juice to acidify it more and further reduce the risk of botulism. USDA (after hundreds of years of people canning it) has recently decided pumpkin butter should not be canned because its not acidic enough. Hence the addition of orange juice in my own recipe.

With the frozen puree, have pumpkin soups, breads, muffins, pies etc all you want until next fall. No pumpkin shortage here!

So what have I done with my lush and blossoming seminole pumpkin plants? I pulled one and fed it to the sheep and will plant more lettuce and greens in its place. Pumpkins take up way too much room, are too susceptible to disease and take too long to produce to grow our own when these are going to be available, likely every year. I could never grow this many pumpkins. Its nice to know I don't have to.

The promised pictures

2010-10-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

I'm really starting to hate blogger. I've fought with this off an on all morning. They keep changing how photos upload and make it EXTREMELY difficult to arrange. I never know what order the pics will be uploaded and I arrange them after uploading and all of a sudden they move on me again. So forgive the lack of logical flow. Its blogger that lacks logic, not me.

The Chinese bed in the "orchard garden". Chinese mustard greens in the bottom right, rest of the right side is Chinese cabbage and left side is bok choy.

The younger tomatoes on each side of a almost dormant peach tree.

Along the back are Seminole pumpkins. Under the conduit trellis are cucumbers. Small peppers on the bottom right and turnips at various stages along the left.

The bigger tomatoes in the middle. Lacinato kale along the left. Mustard greens along the right. Some young peppers beside the tomatoes. I'm considering tenting this section and trying to hold the tomatoes and peppers through the winter.

A small rosita eggplant that we'll eat next week.

The eggplant plants. Very full. Have required staking for months now. They definitely have flushes. I'll get lots of fruit for about 2 weeks then 2-3 weeks with nothing.

This is celery. So they say anyway. I have no idea how celery grows but its certainly pretty. I would never guess it to look like this though.

Swiss chard. I'll thin it some next week and transplant the smaller ones into another bed. Which bed, you ask? I really need more garden space!

This is the just transplanted swiss chard in the "vineyard garden". The broken tile is a stepping place to cross walkways.

The logs for mushrooms. Shitakes!

My seed station. Using the window boxes works much better for growing transplants. Most of these boxes are empty as I've transplanted their goods. I grow a bunch, transplant the biggest, spread out the smaller ones. A week later I'll transplant the next round of biggest, filling in holes in the beds of transplants that didn't take and again spread the rest out in the box. I continue as such until all the seedlings are done. I get much stronger starts and better bed use.

The bottom is the lettuce, arugula, and a few collard greens. The center bed is all very small collard greens.

The watermelon is still cranking.

The overview of the vineyard garden: lettuce on the bottom, swiss chard on the right, watermelon on the left, collards in the center and the back bed doesn't get enough light in the winter to plant anything. The grape vines are almost dormant.

My potted onion experiment.

The recent heat wave has really hurt the peas. They were doing very well before. I've now lost about half of them but I have plenty of time to re-seed so that's what I'll do. Sweet potatoes are along the left.

The overview of the orchard garden. I lay feed bags down as weed barriers but have yet to cover with mulch. I'll get there. Esthetics are low on the priority list right now.

Still Going

2010-10-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

Recent weeks have been busy. The kind of busy where I pause momentarily to pray the dinner blessing with my family, wolf a few bites and keep working, the day's work always draping over into tomorrow as well. I rose bright and early this morning to see Husbandman off to conquer his Professional Engineer licensing exam. 8 hours of testing sandwiched with 2 hours of driving and almost 2 hours of testing protocol and instructions. He'll be gone for about 14 hours today and come home blitzed. His dinner request? Ice cream. And I just might comply. :-)

The garden has been doing great. I get to pick lettuce or greens a few times a week. Some fruit is set on the tomatoes. Even have a cucumber on the vine. I planted an exorbitant amount of collard greens and swiss chard. Most is still quite small. I also am trying again on onions, this time in pots. I put about 8 little seedlings in a 3 gallon pot filled with compost. I intend to keep them going a long time and hope they bulb out. Other attempts at onions were thwarted by them taking too long to grow that, come late spring, I had to rip them out to put in something else. The pots will remedy that hopefully. I also decided that I flat out need more garden space. Husbandman and I took a stroll figuring out where it could go. We decided on a place and I've been watching the winter shade... which is far too encroaching. It would be fine in the spring but its already almost entirely shaded most of the day and we're 2 months from the solstice. Back to the drawing board. This is where homesteading gets creative.

Given the previous post, this coming weekend, the one where Husbandman will be wallowing in brain fog, is basically our only chance to work on partition fencing in the pasture. I desperately want to get some grass seed down during the next rain, but not until we have the pasture split so I can keep the animals off the tender grasses. We have a long fence down the middle, most of the way down. We intend to fence a common area that includes the barn, the turkey hutch and the main gate. Then leave openings to the 2 paddocks with a single gate between them. Move the gate from one paddock to the other while the herd is feeding in the common area and the move is complete. I definitely think we can complete it in a day, but Husbandman is desperate for a free moment. And his back is bothering him. And the budget is a bit tight to be buying a big roll of fencing. I don't know how much to press the issue and how much to just sit back and let it get done in January instead.

Today's job is canning, canning and more canning. I have a friend at a church with a pumpkin patch and I've collected a few that were starting to go bad. I salvaged much of them and have pumpkin puree in the freezer and pumpkin butter in the crock pot to can. I also have 40lbs of pears that I purchased to process. I've been waiting for the promise of cooler weather to steam up my kitchen with the canner. Today holds that promise. And if it doesn't deliver, then I get to sweat. Its got to get done today. May be getting a lot more pumpkins this weekend and I gotta be ready!

We're still waiting for Dulcinea to show signs of kidding. I had her due last week and she's not at all bagged up, nor even that big. So much for using sores on her hips to determine pregnancy. And we were too slow in doing something with our buck and Helen is now pregnant. She delivered in January of '10, September of '10 and will again in March of '11. This is way too hard on her body. I'm very upset by it but I never expected her to go into heat 4 weeks after delivering when she was still giving almost a gallon of milk a day. I feel horrible about it. We've decided to get rid of Copper and hold on to Willy (who we haven't been able to sell despite our attempts). If Dulci has a buck, we'll keep her's who would have greater genetic diversity from the rest of the herd. This would buy us some time to get our bachelor pad completed before immediately impregnating Dulci as well. I just hope we can move Copper without him ending up on a table.

Yesterday, a friend with a tree business dropped off about a dozen HUGE oak logs. MUSHROOMS! I'll slice these logs in half, drill holes in the flat sides and pack them with innoculated sawdust (that I have yet to order... add that to the to-do list) and set them in that once-completely-useless shadey section. What logs we don't use for mushrooms, I'll chop and store for next year's firewood. It was alive just yesterday so its perfect for mushrooms but not so great for the immediate winter. Sharpen the axe, I found my new workout regime!

The girl child is up now. Its just a matter of time before the boys follow. Then I can really start my day. My seemingly never-ending day. At least I'm not taking a never-ending test. God bless my superhero. I'll add pictures later.

More Goings On

2010-10-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

This is a BUSY season. Fall/winter planting is on-going. Still milking Helen 3 times a day. A batch of meat birds is growing well. Turkeys are learning to cooperate. The dog ate the best functioning goat nipple (not one attached to a goat, thankfully) and so bottle feeding little Willy takes twice as long. Its not an issue except when we're late on the evening feeding and we're doing it after the little farm girl is in bed. She doesn't mind if it takes longer to feed him. We're also debating over siring issues. We have Willy listed on Craig's list but have had no calls on him. We're also thinking about getting rid of Copper... only because he's already trying to mount Helen and we definitely don't want her pregnant right away again. That's way too hard on her body. We're expecting Dulci's kid to be a buck and so we'll likely keep him instead. It would give us plenty of time to construct our "bachelor pad" before unwanted pregnancies would be an issue. But I also don't want to see Copper go for meat. Not that I'm opposed to eating animals, but he's such a great buck. There are plenty of do-do's out there that can be eaten instead. Who would eat a 5 year old registered blue-eyed dwarf buck with a fabulous temperament? Someone really hungry I suppose.

Anyway, for anyone who missed the "Here Comes the Sun" energy expo in New Smyrna Beach, you missed a GREAT event! I was highly impressed! We came away with a lot of info we knew nothing about previously. On the specific energy side, 2 things stood out to us- this dohicky thing that recaptures energy generated by a running motor and allows it to be used before tapping into metered electricity. For high energy users it seems like a great device. About $400 outlay which they guarantee to pay for itself within 36 months. The company, KVAR Energy Controller, has been in business 18 years and their units are still going strong all these 18 years. We were thinking very seriously about planning for this investment but in crunching the numbers, we really don't use enough electricity to make it worth it. Particularly when considering other plans we have to use even less electricity in the coming years. But for others, I'd highly recommend it!

The second highlight is a geothermal AC company, GeoFlow. They design, sell and install geothermal AC/heat units which use the groundwater (a nice 72 degrees) to heat or cool your home. It's a genius system! They estimate that most systems have a payback time of 5 years. You can also use its residual heat to supplement your hot water heater saving energy in that area as well. We got dreaming about having it discharge into a tilapia pool, into our banana tree patch or sprayed over the pasture and they said it was all doable... cost effective, maybe not, but we'll see. We'll have them come out and come up with a plan and we'll start saving to put it in. I doubt it would be anything that happens in the next couple years or anything. Something like this is bound to have a big outlay and so will take a good long time to save it up, but we'd at least know what the goal is.

So... are you sorry you missed it??? Well, don't worry. There are LOTS of other great events coming up.

1) 10/29- Husbandman takes his engineering licensing exam. Pray for him, please!!! :->

2) 11/6&7- Fall Jamboree at the Pioneer Art Settlement in Barberville, FL. I've never gone to this but we're really looking forward to it. Should be a great time... and little farm girl gets to wear her bonnet!

3) 11/4-14: Volusia County Fair. We're planning on taking in the rabbit shows and fun events this year. Every year we enjoy this more and more... and we never go on the rides! Total nerds like us would rather be learning and looking at plants, animals and other displays. And I'm planning on shooting for Homemaker of the Year next year. I was thinking about doing it this year... then I came to my senses. This homemaker has too much housekeeping to do to have things ready by then. :-<

4) 11/20- PURPLE COW FESTIVAL! This is a MUST! We loved it so much last year and it was only their first time putting it on. We learned so much and are ready for more! I just hope we can stay the whole time as we did before. The littlest slept in the sling and the older 2 held out ok. This year, wee one is much too big and alert to be sleeping in a sling yet still really needs naps. If you see 2 engrossed parents and 3 screaming kids at the end of a long day... that'd be us. :->

Time for bed. And remembering how thankful I am that our dog, Angel, stays on alert and barks away any creatures lurking in the woods. Especially when she strewed laundry all over the yard last night and ran off with my shoes this morning. Milking tonight, it was dark and late and she was barking and pacing the edge of the woods... but I felt totally safe. Not that she would protect me. No, but she certainly sounds tough. And that's enough for us here. Good night, all.

Goings On

2010-09-24T04:23:00.000-07:00

1) A big event is on the horizon! Sunday, October 10th there will be an alternative energy expo as the Marine Discovery Center in New Smyrna Beach. But its not limited to alternative energy only but anything that will help us on the path toward a more sustainable existence. And another cool aspect is that the businesses represented are all LOCAL! If you have or know of a business you'd like to see there, let me know and I can connect you with the organizers. Anything from bat boxes to builders to landscapers. Very low vendor fee. Great opportunities for everyone!

See you at the Marine Discovery Center, 162 N. Causeway, New Smyrna Beach from 11am to 3pm.

2) Bringing back home, last Sunday, late afternoon, we were all outside. The family was playing on the swingset, sheep were grazing nearby, turkeys running in the pasture... and the dog went on red alert. A casual attempt to try to figure out what she was jumpy about sent us into a panic. I (with my less than perfect vision) thought it was a BIG black wild pig running up our neighbors driveway. We went running with the kids to the house, Husbandman grabbed the sheep, I herded up the turkeys and wondered if I should grab Dobie, our small, not quite yearling goat. I called everyone on the street with kids, guts or amo. Husbandman went out to check over the area with a, um, .22. He didn't see anything then but the more we got talking about what we saw, its shape, the way it moved and its sheer size, we determined it was more likely a bear, its brown face tricking my near-sighted eyes into looking like tusks.

I started researching and the more I learned the more it must have been a bear. To sum it up, black bears don't attack people, even little people, unless provoked. They will eat chickens, turkeys and even small goats and sheep and come back night after night. The dog may be enough of a deterent that it could pass by and not even come on the property. But just to be safe, we've decided to hold off another year on starting honey bees just to make sure this cub kicked from the nest isn't making its home near us. The smell of honey is strong and luring. We could easily protect the hives but not everything else that a hungry bear would find delectable!

3) So instead of honey we're thinking of rabbits. What started out as a conversation of getting the little farm girl her own animal/s to care for, show at the county fair, pet and play with, ended up being a full-fledged rabbit operation. The more we read, the more we wondered why we're raising chickens. Now I'm not ready to give up on poultry all together. We'll always raise egg-layers, but it would be nice if we could, between the turkeys and the rabbits, replace the meat bird operation. Turkeys and rabbits are all things we plan to breed here where chickens... just not going to do a rooster again. More thinking and planning to do. We won't be doing anything until well after Husbandman's exam next month. And the new barn needs to be finished first. And we're thinking of creating a "bachelor pad" or breeding pen mostly because Copper has been jumping on Helen since the moment that baby came out. A farmer's work is never done.

A Wee One

2010-09-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Wednesday, the most celebrated day of W-week!

Yesterday evening, as I was doing the last check on all the animals, I felt Helens tailbone tendons as I've done twice a day since Friday. They were so soft they couldn't be felt... meaning birth was just around the corner!

I couldn't sleep. I wondered if I should wait up. I checked on her again really late (ok, maybe it was 10 but that's well past our normal bed time!). She seemed annoyed by me. I didn't try to touch her, I just wanted to watch her to see if she was contracting. Nothing. I sadly went to bed. At midnight I woke up and checked again. Again, I seemed to be a nuisance. 3am: same thing.

I gave up on sleep at that point. I moved to a different room and began reading through our books about goat birth. Husbandman teased me saying, "Like what? You haven't done this before?" Truly, this would make our 10th kid born here, but every goat is different and this being Helen's first on my watch, I was nervous.

The baby woke up at 5. I fed him and checked again. Again, I was disappointed. I crawled in bed and slept for an hour. I went outside after a normal morning, making phone calls actually, at 7:30. Helen didn't come up with the crew wanting breakfast.

I found her in the back, feet already out, laboring silently. She didn't like me getting close so I watched from a distance. It was clear she didn't need me so I ran to get the kids. By the time I made it back to the pasture he was out and she was dutifully cleaning him. I never would have heard her in the middle of the night. Contrast that with Fudge, a prior goat who really wasn't so lovey dovey normally but during labor would practically climb into my lap screaming.

He was just starting to nurse when I had things set up to take him away and milk her. Oddly she really didn't protest when I scooped him up. I had a little bit of a chase getting her to come with me to the milking stand. She immediately gave over a half gallon of colostrom. The little farmer girl helped to bottle feed him. He ate ok. I'm somewhat concerned about him as he's panting a lot. Its a little warm but not that bad. He's always in the shade and is eating frequently. Nervous mothering on my part I guess.

As for names, we had named him Willy... for W-week, of course. But then the neighbor boy came over with a great name- Niblet. And given that his fate could possibly end up being dinner, that may be better. We'll try to sell him... blue-eyed mini nubian, son of a fabulous milker... he should be good. But times being what they are, he may be more valuable as a yearling whether. Hard to think about that when the cute factor is so high, but perspective is important too.
And this is slightly confirming that our buck only throws bucks. Not like it matters, we're not keeping any of the babies anyway, but does sure are easier to sell.

Gardening Glutton at Work

2010-09-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

Big day in the garden today. It has been a long time since I've worked outside so long as to feel totally tuckered out, but I did it today. We started the day with normal chores, moving the remaining chicks outside and determining their breed... quite the task when they're still sorta like little puff balls. When they were all separated into pens and safe from both the rain and the dog, I eagerly started my garden fun.

Husbandman tilled up a patch of a bed that had gotten grossly covered in weeds. After the worst was done, I shooed him back inside to continue studying for his licensing exam and continued the tilling of 3 more beds. Then I hauled multiple wheelbarrow loads of compost from the trailer to the tilled beds and hoed it in. I transplanted my few remaining pumpkin plants, a whole slew of tomato plants and some celery seedlings.

Then I planted seeds. Technically I'm late for fall, but I'm only doing more seeds of things that I can harvest through winter. We're trying a lot of new things this season and giving up on the brassicas (broccoli and cabbage family) for now. We'll try again after our soil is built up better. Last year we were swimming in Bok Choy and we'd heard oriental greens and cabbages do well here so I planted some more Ching Chang Bok Choy like last year and added Wong Bok Greens, Michihli Cabbage, Large Leaf Tong Ho Greens, and Mizuna Greens (similar to mustard greens). But is that enough for greens??? NO! I planted some other things that we've tried and that should do well here but we haven't had tremendous success with yet. Gailan Chinese Kale, Rainbow Chard, and Flamingo Pink Chard. I also put in more Georgia Southern Collards. I've tried all summer to get more started and the heat has killed every transplant so I'm hoping these will do well. I can never have too many collard green plants!

And I'm being a tad hopeful but I'm tired of buying lettuce. Its still a bit warm for lettuce seeds to germinate but maybe with the cooler nights they'll still do ok. All these are varieties I've grown before with good success. Sweet Valentine Romaine, Slo-Bolt Looseleaf, Jericho, and Apollo arugula.

I also did some root veggies which we've never done great with but we'll try again anyway. White Egg Turnips, Early Scarlet Globe Radishes, and Cosmic Purple Carrots.

And finally I direct seeded some peas into a bed. Again, I'm a bit early, but its a bed right next to the sweet potatoes so the only thing I can grow there now is something that will go up a trellis and not be swamped by potato vine. I put in some Little Marvel and Wando.

Earlier in the week I had transplanted a good about of Dinosaur Kale, Curled Southern Mustard Greens, Green Zebra Tomatoes, Cherokee Purple Tomatoes, Chocolate Bell Peppers, Emerald Giant Peppers, Edisto Cucumbers, Seminole Pumpkins, and Candy Roaster Squash.

Then I did just a few things for the pretty patch: Evening Scented Primrose, Nasturtiums, and Petunias. I'm still learning ornamentals and their seasons so everything is an experiment. I know petunias are a cool season flower but I know nothing about their temperature needs for seed germination.

The Rosita Eggplant is going strong. I'm eating Thai Tender Amaranth weeds that are springing up in my now pumpkin bed. Burmese Okra is just starting to produce (a second planting done about a month ago). My drip irrigation wasn't watering my first planting of it and I just discovered that. I'm done with drip irrigation. Its all hose for me now.

Still waiting for a goat birth. Stay tuned!

One Big Happy Family

2010-09-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone's together in the pasture now. Well, except the chickens. And they get along very well I might add. No squabbles other than the you're-smaller-than-me-so-get-your-head-out-of-my-feed-bucket-head-butts between the goats.

Despite the tall grass and my disinclination to mow, Valentino and Esperanza are in the pasture with Button right now. A couple nights ago we noticed Button doing some interesting acrobatics and being a bit more feisty with the goats than usual. Tis the season so Valentino got to bunk with her. And Esperanza HATES being alone. So unless a little farm girl wanted to spend all day and night petting her, Esperanza was going to have to go where he went. We're leaving them all in there together for 3 days doing what we can to make sure the "job" is done well. :-> Please excuse Valentino's appearance. Hardly acceptable to be courting a lady, but he doesn't like me combing out his wool. Its all shed, just clumped in there until I brush it out. I did most of him before I had mercy on his restless soul.

Helen is due to have her kids (presuming there are twins) on the 19th. She's looking rather robust these days. Her bag is filling out. I check her tail tendons everyday for any signs of birth. Thankfully there have been none as birthing more than a couple days early is really hard on the little ones. Meanwhile, we are hobbling along with no milk for now. It will be so nice when she kids as she at one time gave a full gallon a day.

Copper, though a wee little lad in comparison, remains the king of the pasture. He's fine with his new feathered subjects though.

And here's the turkey's night time abode. I wrapped it in barb wire to keep the goats from rubbing against it and trashing it. However, I also have to keep it closed as they love to go inside. I refuse to barb wire the inside so closed it stays. I put the turkeys' feed bucket on top of it. They can fly up and eat but the goats don't bother to try to get into it. I don't know what I'll do when the birds are too big to fly up there, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

A couple of Blue Slate turkeys. 5 of these remained after the massacre incident and they are really pretty. One Royal Palm (black and white ones pictured with Copper) is a tom as it has started to strut its stuff. Three of these guys remain. I'm hoping we have a tom and 2 hens, perfect for breeding come spring.

And here's the newly refurbished trailer. One of our welding friends and Husbandman worked all day one Saturday to get it looking this good. Its been a year since we've felt like the trailer was up to the challenge of hauling compost so we were in dire need of some. We lined the expanded metal with a section of a billboard tarp and I shoveled in a load yesterday. Today I applied almost all of it as I had some cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, mustard greens and kale that all were needing more growing room. I'll probably get another load next week too. They have plenty and we need it all!

And that's all the updates from this end... Maybe the next post will be announcing a birth!

Jelly... well, Almost

2010-09-11T02:28:00.000-07:00

Its 4:30am and I'm blogging. Signs of an addict? Maybe.

Yesterday was a fun day. After being crazy busy all week, Friday afternoon was a nice time to be able to just cross a few things off the to-do list. We were beginning to have raisins forming on our muscadine vines so the cute little farm girl and I decided to pick them clean and make some grape jelly. Last week we processed about 3 gallons of grapes into syrup. We had almost 3 gallons left on the vine for this week. And some beauty berries were looking luscious and ripe. So we had an all out jelly fest. Unfortunately, none of the jelly set, but I now know why and can add the pointers as I go.

The pots on the left are grapes. The big pot on the right is the canner. The jug I'm holding is filled with beauty berries. I washed the grapes, put them in the pots (they all wouldn't fit in 1), added some water and let them cook down while we picked the beauty berries. Once the grapes were cooked, they mashed very easily with a potato masher. From there the instructions all say to separate the juice from the pulp through cheese cloth. I tried that... it doesn't work. The cheese cloth gets awfully plugged up and it makes a horrible mess. Instead, I poured it 3-4 cups at a time into a colander over a pot. I stirred the juice in the colander to keep it from plugging then dumped the pulp into a bucket for the goats. I got very few seeds in the juice and was able to strain those out very easily.

The goats enjoyed their sweet treat.

With the grape juice separated, I followed the recipe in the sure-jell package for concord grapes except that I didn't add the water. I figured I had already done so to get them to cook down enough to squish them. The problem here is that the recipes I've read since all say to not do more that 6 cups of juice at a time. I think I was doing 16-17 cups. Then the next problem was that it took forever to get it to boil. I had someone coming over for a "farm tour" and so neglected the proper cook time. I didn't think it would matter. It did. In fact, if you cook it long enough you can actually make jelly without pectin. I had been wondering just how they made jellies back before the time of Sure-Jell... well, that's how. This seems like a great recipe and the one I will be using next year. Also in this picture are the beauty berries cooking down. This recipe is one we had in the Florida's Wild Edibles handbook. You cook the berries down (which removes all the color from them and puts it in the juice!), 3 cups of the resulting infusion, 5 cups sugar, 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1 pack of pectin. Again, I was tripling this recipe. I ended up 3 cups short on the sugar and figured it would be close enough. Wrong again. Live and learn. The chickens really enjoyed the cooked beauty berries though!

So now that I have 18 pints of syrup, I'll probably be making pancakes this morning. Especially since I already made muscadine syrup with the last batch of grapes. I'm learning. God bless my grandmother who took all these secrets to her grave. I gleaned from her what I could as I was growing up, but frankly she wasn't much for teaching anyway. I've inherited all her canning equipment, antique meat grinder, even her treadle sewing machine, but learning to use these handy gizmos is all up to me and the internet. And I usually don't consult the internet until a problem arises. The good news is, if I really want to, I can open up all these jars and try it again. That's online too. We'll see. Husbandman is going to be gone all day with our newly constructed trailer helping some dear friends move. I've got a mess of weeds to pull and a turkey pen to make pasture-ready. I may have time this evening to play with it all... just 3 pints at a time.

Worms!

2010-09-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I appreciate blogger trying to fix the picture posting issue, but this new thing is no better. Forgive the confusion, but I'm giving up.

This is my latest experiment- worm bins. I had researched them a while ago... or I should say my husband researched them and it just seemed so complicated. Then I heard from someone else that it doesn't need to be so perfect. And so we dug in. I started with 2 smallish rubbermaid totes. I used a drill to poke holes on every side but the bottom. I filled one bin up with scraps. That was some grass clippings and kitchen waste mostly, I think. Then I bought a tub of worms. Funny story there... I was out on the bike when we stopped at the store for the worms. We went into the library with the worms safely in my bag (I didn't want them to get too hot if I left them in the trailer trunk). I was careful that they didn't open so you'll have to keep reading to know where the funny part is. We left the library with our books and no worm incident. We got home and I set the worms on top of the car as I unloaded the kids from the trailer. Yes, I forgot about them as I figured I would, but it was ok to set them there as they were adequately shaded. Later that evening we loaded up to go somewhere. My husband loaded the wee one on that side of the car and never noticed the worms. I didn't think of it until after returning home. I went walking down the street looking all over for my worms and never saw any trace of them. I hope they busted out of the tub and didn't get cooked! Anyway, we did manage to replace those worms and I had my bin ready for them so they went straight in. This past weekend we got a second set of worms for bin #2. I filled it with spent bean plants, a huge pile of beet and banana peels, cantaloupe rinds and a few egg shells. I dumped the worms in after I checked to see that the first bin was working properly. I didn't see any worms in bin #1, but I didn't dig either. I figured since there was no mold and even a few sprouts, that the worms were thriving. These bins reside in our garage where they won't get opened by marauding night varmints or cook if the shade shifts. When the compost is ready, I hear you just dig out the compost carefully and set any worms into a new set of scraps. Should be fun!

Just scraps

The worms from the local hardware store (and bait shop).

The worms on the scraps... look closely!

My first worm bin on the left after about 3 weeks, I think.

My 2 bins.

Bad Puppy

2010-08-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

Rough day on the 'stead yesterday. After finally getting a grumpy, over-tired 2-year old to actually stay in bed, I was desperately trying to catch up on my chores when I noticed a lump in the front yard. Hmmmm... it looks like that lump has feathers. Closer inspection revealed it to be a half eaten turkey.

We've been day ranging the turkeys in the back yard. The plan is to day range them in the pasture but I didn't want to throw them out there until they were used to the drill. I set up some baby gates around the door of the pen so they had more space where they wouldn't get bothered by the dog, but they usually chose to just fly over and roam. And Angel (the dog) would chase some, but not too badly unless they strayed really far from the pen. She's a fast dog so if her desire were to catch, she'd have no problem whatsoever. In the evening, they come home to roost, we lock them up and they are safe.

Yesterday morning while working in farmer girl's "pretty patch" we noticed a turkey straying all the way into the front yard. I took it back once and not too long later it was back, assuming it was the same bird. Angel was chasing it, I caught it again and again returned it to the secure area. Late afternoon, upon discovering the half eaten turkey, I ran to the back to see if the others were safe. I counted 7 (where there were 10), locked them in the pen and went hunting for the others. I soon found another one in the woods towards the front, alive and well, and another barely alive. I locked up the good one with the others and transferred the injured one to the dog crate. It appeared as though her leg were broken or maybe she was spraddle legged. I put a call into a bird rescue place to see if they could talk me through saving her. Meanwhile I'm trying to decipher what took place. I was home the whole time. Inside and busy but I would have thought I would have heard Angel barking if an unwelcome animal were visiting. I had no other option but to deduce that Angel must have killed the turkey.

I decided to follow the folk wisdom... tie the dead bird around the dog's neck for a couple days. I took the half eaten bird by the remaining foot and Angel immediately pulled against me by the wing, staking her claim. I then had little doubt that Angel was the culprit. I tied it to her and went back to the injured one which I then found dead also.

The bird rescue lady said the deaths were likely caused from stress. The story I'm spinning is that the birds strayed to the front yard, Angel chased them incessantly to get them to the back (she doesn't bark unless there's an unwelcomed animal around), the one died from stress and, being dead, Angel decided it was a meal. The second one was still alive which is why Angel probably didn't go ahead and start munching on that one too. Either that or she was full.

Later that evening we were debating about how to protect Angel from critters wanting the rotting meat- she's just not a fighter. She's an alarm, a scary alarm, so animals don't challenge her, but if something vicious were to decide she had what they wanted, I don't think she would fight at all. Anyway, that dilemma was solved as we noticed that she had eaten the rest of the bird though I thought I had tied it high enough to disable her from reaching it. We had already disposed of the other bird. This morning she merely reeked of rotting meat and has likely not learned her lesson. So she's spent most of today in the 6'x8' kennel. Tomorrow she'll have her usual reign, but I'm certainly not letting her around the turkeys again. She'll have to be kept tight until the turkeys are ready for the pasture... or should I say the turkey PEN is ready for pasture. I need to wrap the pen in barb wire to prevent the goats from rubbing against it and destroying it. Then I think they'll be fine to set out. Still a bit nervous about it, but given that they even come "home" when it starts to rain, I think they should be ok.

Getting Healthy- A Day at a Time

2010-08-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

A friend recently walked in on a conversation I was having with another friend and quickly learned (all TOO quickly) the serious state of our nations food supply. I never want ANYONE to feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the need to watch what we eat. The FDA and USDA doing it for you will not lead to good health. I decided to do a step-by-step, make-changes-as-you-can-when-you-can type post. There are always going to be things to do to be healthier. This is just a place to start thinking of how to get on the road. Some people can make lifestyle changes at a lightening pace. I certainly am not one of those people. I try to add one or two new healthful habits a YEAR. Some habits are easier to change than others. So, if you're new to the road, jump in where you can and know that God's Grace is sufficient for you. No pressure, no performance. Add to your healthy living as you get things under your belt (and you'll no doubt be punching extra holes in that belt as you go.) :->

1) Make a list of categories and prioritize them based on how easy it would be to change and the level of return.

2) List changes that can be made in each category (examples will be given in a future post) and apply a SINGLE change at any one time. When that one becomes natural, add another. You will obviously have some feeling of deprivation, but don't allow that feeling to be so intense that you give up.

3) Find sources for information and learn to love gleaning that information. Ask people at a health food store their favorite periodicals. Find good websites (again, for another post). Watch documentaries (though understand you may very well get disgusted and overwhelmed). Go back and watch them again if you find yourself straying back to old ways.

4) Find new food sources. If you live in a small town its harder, but there are bound to other people in the same boat. You could start your own buying club and order wholesale or build a BIG pantry and make a once or twice a year trek into a big city for food.

5) Plan your menu. Find new recipes and as your healthy recipe box grows, have more and more healthy meals each week.

6) Become responsible for an increasing amount of your food source. Plant a garden or fruit and nut trees. Raise a few chickens (much easier than you would think, and lots of land is NOT necessary). Or really get wacky and put in a tilapia pool.

7) Use your new found energy. Increase your hands-on activities as you increase your health. That way if you slack off, the lack of energy will be readily apparent!

And in this I'm realizing I'm only discussing physical health which is completely dependent upon emotional and spiritual health. But, frankly speaking, I'm still figuring out how to be under the weight of the world yet not feel stressed so I'm not exactly at the "advisory stage" yet. A big reason why my husband is such a pinnacle of good health is likely because he never lets anything get to him.

So, in conclusion, don't let healthful habits be a stressful thing or you're counteracting everything. But also know that you'll likely feel less stress in general if you're getting proper nutrition, namely B vitamins.

And on that note, I'm going to go drink my water, take my B-complex and jump into chicken slaughter just before I run off to put in my co-op order.

"Preferred PLUS"

2010-08-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

(WARNING- this is a very controversial post!)

This is Husbandman, my very own superhero, who has just attained "Preferred Plus" status. That is, we recently opted to obtain a life insurance policy for him and the premium is determined by the individual's level of health. Premiums for the "Preferred" status were quoted to us because Husbandman "is a healthy guy." But no one gets "Preferred Plus". At least no one has gotten it from this insurance office in over a decade.

Well, we recently got word of the results of his physical and this is what "Preferred Plus" looks like. Fully decked out in a home-tanned goat hide. Want to know how he got that way being a full-time desk jockey and a weekend warrior on the homestead??? Read on.

First and foremost, we ignore the FDA. We've done a LOT of reading of studies NOT funded by the FDA or big agribusiness and have learned to do almost the polar opposite of what the FDA says to do. For example:

1) Drink raw milk and lots of it. And since we have goat milk which is naturally homogenized, we drink it with full fat... about 6-8% butterfat. Playing "Russian Roulette with our health"? We'll take our chances.

2) Eat eggs, lots of them, almost every day. Often raw. No eggbeaters here. Give us all the real cholesterol you can. Cholesterol is not the enemy. It forms on arteries to protect them from damage from other things, such as sugar, antibiotics and various toxins.

3) Eat real butter. We'd rather eat home-churned raw butter, but even store-bought butter is better than smart balance. Vegetable oils go rancid extremely quickly... at the heat of body temperature. Not to mention that all those oils are made from genetically modified crops, thoroughly sprayed with round-up and then packaged in a BPA-laden plastic containers.

4) Eat meat, even red meat. Now, we're not huge meat eaters. We eat meat for dinner about 3 times a week. But if we roast a chicken, I'll get those 3 dinners from the single chicken. And the meat we eat is all grass-fed and organic.

5) Eat meat slaughtered in an "uncontrolled" area. We slaughter our chickens, goats and sheep right here at home, in the back yard, open to the great outdoors and all the "horrible bacteria" that the natural earth can throw at us. Compare that with what you can contract in a super sanitized hospital. We're careful with our meat and cool it in an ice bath immediately after slaughter, but it's certainly not done on stainless steel tables that have been bleached to high heaven. We actually let plain soap, water and sunshine do all our sanitizing for us.

6) We do all cooking with coconut oil which is an evil saturated fat! Coconut is a rare oil that can be heated without going rancid and so maintains its healthy benefits even after cooking. If we use olive oil, we add it AFTER the foods are cooked (if they will be cooked) so that it maintains it's benefits.

7) We're not exercise buffs. I ran a marathon once but can now barely run a mile. I like to ride my bike with kids in tow but I'm certainly not conscious to get my heart rate to that optimum level. Husbandman, as stated before, is a desk jockey and benches a computer mouse. He sometimes goes for pre-dawn walks with God in the morning, but he's purposefully not breaking a sweat. Also, his corrected clubbed feet don't make for the world's greatest athlete. But he works hard every Saturday morning shoveling mulch, hauling lumber, tilling ground, etc... just before he spends the afternoon cramming his brain for his licensing exam. We'd like to exercise more, but there are too many other demands on our time.

8) We never eat soy-based pseudo health foods. (Naturally fermented tofu would be fine though)

9) We don't take medicines unless absolutely necessary. We have no primary care physician. Shoot, I only recently got health insurance at all. Husbandman has had antibiotics once and nothing else since his prescription acne meds in high school. (He has a great complexion now.) We do overdose on vitamins rather regularly though. When someone has an ailment, we search a publication that the American Medical Association refuses to publish... and get great results.

There are a few things we do right, according to the FDA as well though.

1) We drink only water and herbal tea regularly... and we drink a LOT of water. I drink a quart first thing in the morning and another just before bed, and a quart or 2 between. Husbandman is sure to drink at least a half gallon a day. And Husbandman is teetotaler against all caffeine and alcohol. I enjoy an occasional cup of Joe much to his chagrin.

2) We sleep a lot. We have no tv to keep us up late. We're usually in bed by about 9 or 10 and sleep till about 5 or 6.

hmmm... I guess that all we do right according to the FDA. Oh, maybe the fruits and veggies thing... what is it? 5 a day the color way? Yeah, I'm sure we do that. He eats 3 servings of fruit just in his lunch.

Now, I know this comes across as prideful gloating... as yes, it is. I'm glad to have a measure of proof of our health to show all the nay-sayers. We repeatedly hear "You eat eggs every morning? I'd hate to see your cholesterol level!" Or "Raw milk? Don't you know that can kill you?" Or "I wouldn't touch your eggs with a 10 foot pole. I want the Publix stamp or approval." Or "Just wait till you get sick eating that chicken." Or "Goat? Are you serious? You eat goat?" Or "You're going to get so fat drinking whole milk!" Or from the other side: "You don't feed your chickens organic grain? Then why bother? They're no better than traditionally raised." Or "Your soil is so bad your vegetables aren't going to be nutritious."

So, while there are still many strides we want to take in our health so that 50 years from now he's STILL "Preferred Plus", we're very glad to have this tiny tidbit of proof that we're on the right track. And for FDA followers, take note that those with "skin in the game", ie: insurance companies, are placing their money on NATURAL foods as opposed to all the "heart smart" foods and drugs.

A Diapering Odyssey

2010-08-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me some details regarding my diapering methods. Rather than writing an individual e-mail and plugging up an in-box with lots of pictures, I decided to make it a blog post instead. So this is our diapering odyssey through 3 kids and counting...

When the farmer girl was born, the only thing I knew about cloth diapers were prefolds with pins and plastic pants. I was NOT interested. I learned about fuzzi bunz when she was about 4 months old. I did the math and figured out we'd be saving money by making this rather costly initial investment. And so we bought about 15 fuzzi bunz and 30 inserts (because she needed double stuffing to not leak). About 6 months later when she was outgrowing that first size, I started researching other brands and happened upon a yahoo group of people who MADE their own pocket diapers. I'm not the greatest seamstress, but I'm always up for a challenge and figured I could make this work. I found more yahoo groups of diaper fabric co-ops making the price for supplies a good deal cheaper too. Getting good deals on fabric meant I could make a diaper for about $3 each- totally blowing the cost of disposables out of the water!

So, this is what I make, various versions and various results:

1) Pocket diapers- This is my first pick but they are the most time consuming to make and also the most expensive to buy or make so my selection is a bit limited. They hold the most, especially given that you can double stuff them if need be.
a) The inner layer is microfleece or suede cloth. I prefer the microfleece. Suede cloth offers some color variety which can be fun. I have some black stuff that I thought would look sharp on blue

or red dipes... that will only likely only be worn by #3 (IF I actually get some more made!)
b) The outer layer is polyurethane laminate (PUL). This can be purchased online retail or

through online co-ops. I've got a good stash now so I'm not up-to-date on co-ops or current pricing. I do know to

NOT use prints. As ADORABLE as the frogs dressed as spider man or the pink camouflage diapers are, they just don't work. Stick with solid colors.

c) In some I used fold-over-elastic (aka FOE) (like in the bright orange one). In others I used standard elastic which is all covered by fabric. I used the FOE to add sidewalls which I don't think are worth the effort. They leak the same as the others (the sage or bright green ones) when inserts are saturated and are way more fussy to make. Also the FOE is more expensive and that design requires more of it.

There is a place for FOE and sidewalls, but more about that later.
d) Inserts- In one picture you can see a diaper and 2 different inserts. The center insert is one I made from 4 layers of hemp cloth. Hemp holds more than microfiber, but buying them retail is really pricey. If a good deal on hemp comes up, I'd snag it quick. The insert on the right is

a purchased microfiber one, purchased with the first fuzzi bunz. They work fine. I've also heard of people stuffing dipes with a folded microfiber towel they bought at the auto store, or with a prefold diaper, or even with old kitchen towels. I like having things already folded and ready for stuffing so making a few extra inserts from hemp was worth it for me. Another thing I've done is used some smaller hemp scraps to make little square inserts. This gets added where the biggest projection of wet occurs for a girl or boy. It gives a bit more protection against leaks but doesn't make the tooshie so big as to need its own zip code.

2) Using pockets can be tricky. When poop is involved, it requires dumping in the toilet (which is required for disposables too if you read the label!). Sometimes you have to swish it around in the toilet to get it all off. It's not for the faint at heart... but then again, neither is parenting. Washing must be done with the inserts removed from the diaper with minimal amounts of detergent. Every so often you'll notice they are leaking more than they used to, meaning detergent has built up on the inner-lining (which is designed to let fluids through but keep the bottom somewhat dry). To remove the build-up, simply wash with only a bit of dish soap, put through an extra rinse cycle and maybe add some vinegar to a rinse cycle as well. A bit of baking soda in the wash will also help to remove the laundry detergent build-up. They can be dried in the drier after any wash though the PUL won't last as long if they routinely are. They line dry quickly. I know someone who puts the inserts in the drier and merely sets the pockets on top of the drier. The residual heat is enough to gently dry them.

3) Traveling with cloth is a feat I don't go for anymore. When it was just 1 child in tow, I thought nothing of packing a PUL bag in the diaper bag and put a diaper (and ALL its contents) in that PUL bag until we got home and it could be dealt with appropriately. Now I'm all for 'sposies when we're out and about. Too many times, as more kids entered the picture, I have forgotten to deal with a diaper in a timely matter and have had... yes... MAGGOTS in the diaper bag. Just can't deal with that anymore.

4) Currently, #3 fits in both the smalls and the mediums so I have an abundance of pockets. But once he's cracking more than one smile in the smalls, I'll be using the prefolds more. They are cheap and easy, but they definitely need to be changed more frequently. I simply don't know how mom's made it through the night with only prefolds and plastic pants in their diaper stash. But even with the prefolds, I don't use pins. "Snappies" are available online through lots of retailers. It's the red rubbery thing which grips the diaper in 3 places and holds it snug. They are very handy and much safer to use as well. They don't grip flannel, fleece or hemp so don't both trying to make prefolds with that hemp as I did.

5) I like wraps over pull-on pants for over prefolds. Its easy to keep the changing mat clean and its easy to re-use a wrap for several diapers without the outside getting moistened. The turquoise one is one I made using PUL and FOE.

Notice the side walls- very important when making a prefold wrap. The blue wrap is a

"Thirsties" that I purchased to get a working design to copy.

6) Actually sewing these buggers really isn't that hard. If I can do it, anyone can. There are free patterns available online. If I remember right I started with the "Mama Bird" pattern. I made it out of cheap scrap fabric to get a good fit. I ended up adjusting here and stretching there and made about 3 of my own patterns and diapers before I got the pattern that worked the best. I also discovered that Happy Heinys are really good diapers. I modeled mine after those as they had simple Velcro closures. Oddly enough though, my own diapers have worn much better. I have 2 purchased Happy Heinys and they are both done in with only 2 kids.

I've replaced the elastic already and the PUL is now shot. I'm going to take them apart to use as a pattern though. Theirs did fit better as each kid grew taller than my own pattern did so I'd rather use their pattern. Besides, I've lost my pattern now anyway. By the way, I cut patterns out of brown paper bags and trace them onto fabric using washable ink. After cutting out the pieces, I sew the soft side of the velcro onto the front of the PUL. Be sure to use 100% polyester thread as any cotton in the tread will wick moisture past the polyurethane. Also, the added soft velcro tabs on the side are important so that the rough velcro doesn't snag everything in washing. Folding the tabs in really reduces snags though they will still occur some.

You'll notice I only discuss price and not environmental ethics... because studies are now showing that cloth are no more gentle on the environment than disposable. I don't know how that is, but its been a bit of an embarrassment for the cloth diapering "tree-huggers". They say the water used to repeatedly wash these diapers, the energy usage in running the washer, etc, is just as detrimental as a mountain of disposables in a landfill. I find it pretty hard to believe, especially when we're washing with well water that hasn't been treated by a city facility anyway. But, alas, I'm not the one making these claims. You'll have to judge for yourself. I'm frugal so regardless of environmental claims, cloth is our method.

Now with THAT said, I have to confess that I did give up cloth diapering #2 a bit before #3 was born. That boy has an ACTIVE colon. I just couldn't keep up with the swishing of the poop. It was disgusting and I was tired. #3 is much more "normal" in his bm's so I think he'll be an easy one to see cloth through to potty-training time.

Feel free to post questions. I left a lot unsaid, but there's TONS of info on the internet. I'm not sure if any of my sites are still up and I'd be hours finding sites to link. Happy diapering.I hope this helps.

Blog Therapy

2010-07-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

My to-do list seems insurmountable. Just when I think I'm getting a handle on everything I find a list or remember a whole category of jobs.

And grief wearies me.

I'm thinking of a dear friend who's hurting so much right now. Another friend needs to come up with $40,000 to register her 2nd child in China (where their annual combined income is maybe a quarter of that). And petty family grievances on top of it all.

The watermelons are overtaken with weeds and producing no more fruit. The weed barriers in the garden walkways need to be dug up (from their THICK stand of weeds) and flipped over. Even the cowpeas are so infested with bugs I don't bother to pick them anymore. Everything I try to transplant dies despite 3x daily watering. I'm about to lose my entire herb garden if a good few days of rain doesn't come soon. My garage is plugged up with 2 broken lawn mowers and a broken weed wacker. Snakes are very much active (the farm girl had an extremely close run-in with a water moccasin a couple weeks ago in the middle of a public playground) so we had to buy a 3rd lawn mower because we couldn't risk the tall grass waiting for repairs to be made. We need a good load of compost added to the garden before fall planting but the trailer can't handle it. We have a welder friend working on it in his spare time but it likely won't be ready in time. 2 goats have worms that our dewormer isn't touching. Farmer Boy #1 has completely regressed in any potty-training ground we made. I think I've figured out why I'm still holding on to nearly every bit of baby weight though #3 is now 10 months old... but trying to eat as I need to requires so much time and preparation I'd rather just not eat.

And this feeling of being overwhelmed is completely debilitating. Taking a break doesn't help because I just goofed off all morning with my neighbor and I'm still staring at all my work with dread. I feel like I can't do anything right so why bother doing anything at all.

And this is why Jesus said to cast our burdens... does just dropping them work because I don't have the energy to throw anything?

And this is why He said to take up His yoke... He's not saying to do nothing, but rather do what He's asking of me, when He asks it of me and nothing more.

And this is why He says to think on whatever is good, noble, lovely and of good report and not dwell on the negative.

So... my asparagus beans are pumping. I get to blanch and freeze some soon or give them away if I don't want the work. The sheep are keeping the mowing needs down to every other week rather than every week for most areas. My kids all still take naps. My husband comes home every day saying, "How can I help?" I'm able to pray for my friends and my God is willing and able to provide for their every need, some through me but the rest through Himself and His Body. There have been no devastating storms. I can choose any day of the week to do laundry and know it will all get dried on the line. Our dog has kept all mischeivous vermin at bay and I sleep each night knowing our turkey poults are well guarded. Helen is rounding out well, her due date a bit over a month away. Neither of our pregnant goats have worms so I can use a different dewormer without fear of hurting a fetus. My children all love me and come to hug me when I'm crying. Farmer girl randomly stopped me in the garden this morning and asked if she could give me a hug... and I wasn't even crying. My little one is teething yet you wouldn't know it. Thanks to my neighbor and my mom I have an enormous stash of big boy pants for #2. And I have a neighbor who brews a fresh pot of coffee and treats me like a daughter. And her own daughter ran like mad catching a stray sheep yesterday when the tether broke while I was gone for a bit. We have AWESOME neighbors!

And now I'm going to take up His yoke. That means fold laundry, tidy the house, and get my brain decluttered. And that will probably require brain-numbing, digital entertainment for my kids and a friend's son who I'm watching later today, but praise God for Daniel Boone DVDs available at the local library.

Thanks for the talk. :->

Turkeys!

2010-07-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago we took in a few chickens from people who didn't want them anymore. Shortly later we met some friends who were wanting to get into chickens. We gave them these. The little farm girl was sad to see the funny-head chickens go, but when I said they were going to a family who didn't have any chickens at all she responded with, "No chickens, Mommy!?!?! They need them really bad!!!" And that was the end of her sorrow.

Well, that family ended up not wanting them too much. They had built a very large and heavy pen and with their property being a touch low, they just didn't have enough dry ground to keep up the fresh grass supply. So they gave the chickens back... with the pen!

This is a HUGE blessing! My wheels immediately started turning thinking of what we could do with this awesome pen. (We gave away the chickens on craigslist) So, it's only natural that I started thinking about TURKEYS!

Our last turkey attempt was 2 years ago with industry-standard double-breasted turkeys. We ordered 4 poults, 2 survived which we named Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving was a big Tom that weighed over 50 pounds at slaughter. He was 37 pounds dressed and I had to haul him into the bathtub for the final cleaning before slaughter. And then who has a roasting pan for a 37 lb bird? We decided then and there to never raise frankenfoods again (all double-breasted birds are artificially inseminated as they are too big breasted to mount and mate naturally). Yet ordering heritage breeds required a much bigger order and cost almost double the standard breeds. So we decided we would wait until we were ready to really do turkeys... as in get a starter batch and keep some for breeding and hatch out our own birds each year. This pen is perfect for that. It's a bit small for a bunch of full-grown turkeys, but it has a side door for day-ranging. We may convert our old goat barn into an overflow turkey night house. We can let them out during the day, round them back up at night, let the hens hatch out a clutch in the spring and slaughter the extras in the fall. The toms aren't nearly as noisy as roosters so it just might work.

But even better, we found a local source (several of them!) for poults and picked up 10 of them the very next day. We have 6 Blue Slates and 4 Royal Palms. They've been here a week and are all doing very well. We aren't day ranging them at this size. We'll wait until they are considerably bigger and start with a small area before we turn them out to the pasture. We'll be just shy of "market weight" by Thanksgiving so we'll probably just slaughter one then and wait until Christmas for a few more. We'll over winter maybe 4 or 5 and see how they do in the spring!

Carpentry 101

2010-07-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

Carpentry 101 is a class both my husband and I neglected to take. And it's showing. But not for lack of effort- that's just it. It's taking a LOT of effort to build a simple (ok, maybe it's not simple) pumphouse. Framers should be making 6 figure salaries. Do you know how hard it is to get posts in straight, flat sides flush with another post 12 feet away and also sunk to the same height? Well, that took a day in itself. And it didn't help that we changed the design twice after beginning construction. But anyway, my heroic husband heartily hammered away yesterday and completed (sorta) the first phase of construction. What you see before you is a walled in pump. Next we will put in a few cross beams over the pump, some hardware cloth or metal lath then linoleum which will be the floor to a day-range chicken house. The section beside it with the posts and 2"x4"s is the new livestock barn. It will have a good slanted shade roof and removable sides. Their present barn is a movable shed basically and gets HOT in the summer. I feel so bad for them when it rains in the summer. 4 goats (and some sheep too maybe) cram into that barn for shelter from the rain but practically melt in the process. The removable sides will give them adequate shelter from the elements in the summer but keep adequate air flow and keep them warm and cozy in the winter when they want to curl all up against each other and stay away from drafts. The chicken house will have traditional nest boxes for setting on eggs (should we try that again), a removable side for cleaning, a hinged section for gathering eggs, and a latchable door for night time protection should Copper allow a critter into his territory. I'm really looking forward to giving our animals a nicer home. Construction may be complete in another 2 months though. Just in time to put those sides on the barn.

And this is Doby, our ferocious attack goat. She'll suck every finger you've got.

Seeds of Doubt

2010-07-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

There's been 2 distinct times (now 3) when I've seriously questioned if I had the ability to do what I've set out to do. The first is farmer boy #1 and the second is farmer boy #2. Both pregnancies brought with them a wave of fear- "how am I ever going to manage TWO young children?" I finally rested by the multitudes who had gone before. MANY mothers have children far closer together than 20 months. So when the third child was waiting his debut and I was again having those fears, I again remembered the multitudes through history.

Now I'm stuck. This round of fear (which is completely unrelated to pregnancy despite my ferocious case of baby envy) has none that I can find who has gone before. None. I'd be happy for someone to point one out. Please... just one... anyone?

I'm beginning to doubt my ability to school my children well and maintain the homestead. Farmer girl hasn't yet begun kindergarten and I'm floundering getting through 3 days of preschool lessons a week. And I understand that I'm abnormally busy right now, but it has just started me on the hunt for someone who's doing both. Instead I find:
1) Women who have great homesteads but "unschool" their children. Yes, its a valid movement but not at all an option for this family of proud, unswerving nerds.
2) Women who school their children superbly but manage very little real food production.
3) Women who seemingly do it all beautifully yet their husbands are home all or much of the time to "tend the fields".

We practice what we like to call "old fashioned home economics." My husband has a city job and I do what I can to produce as much food whilst caring for the young'uns. But we have a solid stance toward homeschooling. And homeschooling WELL. The multitudes who have gone before had far fewer skills to teach. Then it was arithmetic... I'll be teaching calculus. Then they taught English... I'll be teaching Chinese. I'm determined that our children will have a better education with us being their teachers than they would have in any school system. So, if something has to give to do that, what gives? The garden takes the most time, but also produces the most nutrition. If I can get everything on maintenance mode where I don't need to do all day weeding sessions once a month (which keeps the garden barely recognizable as a garden), and I can convince the bugs to not eat anything but those weeds, and I can always depend on adequate rainfall, oh and I'd also need automatic planting and transplanting... I could probably do it.

Maybe I'm just fretting over nothing. Maybe I'll learn to get up and get the chores done in the pre-dawn hours as they did way back when. Maybe I'll learn to function on 6 hours of sleep. Maybe the kids will learn to stay in bed beyond when they hear my bedroom door open. Maybe the kids will be able to really help in the garden in the near future. Maybe the farmer girl really will be able to milk when she's 5 as I've told her that's when she can help milk (so now she asks everyday when she's going to turn 5). Maybe I'll find ways of streamlining housework. Maybe I will find someone who's doing it all and be able to glean some wonderful tips.

Maybe I should call these "weeds of doubt" instead and just yank them from the root.

dinner

2010-07-04T03:56:00.000-07:00

Farmer Hub has been enjoying curry as of late. And its a great way to use random veggies so I certainly don't mind obliging. This week's curry had our first eggplant, a handful of okra, some cowpeas, asparagus beans, green onions, and a couple hot peppers with some amaranth and cinnamon basil thrown in right at the end. It was supposed to go with our chicken left-overs, but frankly, I forgot to add the chicken to it. It was served over rice cooked in chicken broth. And other than the amaranth being a bit tough (it's been feeding us for a while now), it was quite good.

July Garden Update

2010-07-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

What a strange year. Last year we were swimming in okra. This year not even enough for a meal a week. Eggplant are finally setting fruit but they're very small. The collards, dispite 3x weekly spraying with soapy water, are limping along, still covered in aphids. The lima beans vine is big and glorious... with a whole 5 pods. The asparagus beans are keeping us fed now, barely. They're producing well, I just put in more rattlesnake, contender and mcCaslan beans that the asparagus beans. Learned that lesson. Pumpkin vine wilts in the heat, but is holding its own though with only 2 pumpkins, I wonder if its worth it. The watermelons, oddly enough, are doing well too with no sign of disease. Except the biggest one split yesterday... without having rain for weeks. I don't understand that one. I have several things ready for transplant but I don't dare until rains are coming somewhat frequently. We got a good rain this morning and more expected tomorrow, but I've lost so many transplants to things just being too dry to risk it now. I'm praying for the sweet potatoes I set out in the pasture beyond access to water. They could be a very good source of forage if they can get established.

I'm planting some more butternut and pumpkin seeds later this month. Am also hoping for more collards to germinate. Those were already planted but did precious little germinating. It's been a tough season. Most of that is probably due to me being so busy and out of routine. We used to spend every morning, all morning outside puttering, planting, trellising, mowing, etc. Now I'm lucky to get a day a week without having to run in, clean up and head somewhere else. The end is in sight though. Life will soon be back to normal.

Whatever normal is.

Valentino

2010-07-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

Meet Valentino. He's the ram born to Button's travel mate. The travel-mate herself, Valentine, died suddenly about a month ago. We have several possible culprits, but nothing for sure. But Valentino was sad as the only sheep left in a pasture of goats, his owners were nervous of losing him too and so we were happy to bring him to our place to "take care of" our ladies' reproductive needs. So far he's seen no "action", but given that we aren't sure if they'll actually go into heat before fall we aren't that suprised. But at any rate, he's very happy and we're happy to have him. He tethers well and seems to be a calming factor for Button who remains our most skiddish sheep by far.

Sweet Potatoes Galore!

2010-06-03T12:58:00.001-07:00

Seriously, folks, sweet potatoes have to be the easiest thing on the planet to grow... at least in Florida. After fighting with my fingerlings to actually sprout while the weather was still cold, I gave up. I have since filled my sweet potato bed, mostly from ones that keep sprouting up through my weed barrier next to a green pepper plant. It was last summer's sweet potato bed and evidently something got left behind during harvest. I still started some slips from fingerlings and just cut about 4 of the biggest slips from them to completely fill the bed. I also looked in our remaining basket.

The humidity in the air (which has been THICK) was enough to sprout slips on their own! Here they are as proof. I'm now swimming in slips with no one wanting them.

So this is where I convince you that you should come take my slips. Sweet potatoes need basically nothing. Nothing's going to dig them up but you so no fence is required. They like sandy soil though you'll get bigger ones with a touch of fertilizer. They are extremely drought tolerant so there's no need for watering once they get established (you know they're established when they show new growth). No need to harvest until after the first frost. Dig them up and leave them in a cool, shady place (we used our porch) and eat all winter. Don't wash them until just before you cook them as the dirt helps preserve them.

So, Volusia County-ers, drop me an e-mail and I'd be happy to pass these on to you... maybe with some lemongrass!