Learning on the Job

Kissee's Belly pics- about 3 months in

2012-01-10T17:06:00.002-05:00

Kissee's goofy smile. Oh how we love her goofy smile (even if its a flaw)

OH and then there are these :) These are mine. I'm about 9 weeks and there's just one in there. I'll probably start a new tab of pregnancy posts so those interested in the farm don't get bored of hearing about human baby stuff

The Winter Slow Down

2011-12-28T20:43:00.001-05:00

Everything has slowed down now that most of the winter holidays are behind us and we are down to the animals that we plan to keep from year to year. Kissee is getting kinda large with those twins in there and her milk is nearly dried off. Partly that's my fault, we started moving her to 1 a day milkings and her numbers tanked. Now here we are about 20 days away from her planned dry off date and she's giving so little milk its not really worth the effort to clean the pail, strainer and strip cup. So tonight is her last official milking, anything beyond this will be to keep her comfortable and nothing more. We will miss that milk for sure. Store bought cow's milk, even the organic, tastes old to me.

The hens are still laying in nearly full force. We are getting anywhere from 8-14 eggs a day, one of those is a duck egg. I'm in awe of our duck, she lays more reliably than the hens do! Anyhow, these girls easily overwhelm us in their quantity of eggs so I took about 7 dozen to the family Christmas and needless to say I returned empty handed. Our chicks are still doing great, we still have the remaining 7 and the 2 that appeared to be roosters still do look like roosters so once the weather improves for spring we will add them to the deep freeze.

I think I might have mentioned it already (I guess I can go look it up) but I had started making goat milk soap back in November and we can finally use the bars. They aren't great at sudsing but they are really nice feeling on your skin, not drying at all. They remind me of Cetaphil in how they feel in your hands, but without the dry it leaves behind. The first batch was Oatmeal, the second which I made in December is lavender/mint. Now that one I can't wait until its ready! Its smells so amazing!

So that's whats going on here. Nothing too exciting. Anything going on with you?

Who needs a blood test when you have ultrasound?

2011-12-05T21:44:00.001-05:00

My neighbor is proving to be quite the person to know. He's been talking to us about a friend of his who is a local vet trying to sell of some of their dairy goats. I was telling him we were planning to add another doe in the spring and maybe get a buck to breed with (Those long trips to Angola, I love that breeder but I don't care to ruin my truck again). Anyhow that particular vet was ultrasounding her goats on that particular day and she came out and did ours too. Kissee is having at least twins and it appear her pregnancy is healthy. Makes me so happy to know this. So come around March 15th we will have a couple spring loaded goat kids around here :)

A year in review - 2011

2011-11-25T11:47:00.001-05:00

I realize this isn't yet the end of the year but since we are already planning for next year, this feels like the time to review this year.

This year has been a whirlwind. I'll start by bragging about my son, which is way too easy. So this year M turned 2 and since his birthday he's just exploded in words and now even has short sentences. He's learned the alphabet; he can't read it in order completely yet but he can identify the letters and for most of them he knows what sound they make. He also recognizes his numbers, but he gets a little hung up on counting. He's picked up some really good manners, by osmosis....he's just seen us do it and followed suit. That makes me so proud of him when he says "excuse me", "please", "thank you" and "bless you" (for sneezes). He's getting easier to understand all the time and that makes caring for him both easier and harder. He's now always telling me he's hungry but if I put food in front if him he refuses it. Frustrating! For all the frustration though, he's totally worth it. He's such a good boy for us and while I think he's probably in his terrible twos, this really isn't too terrible.

Now about the farm-y stuff. Our chickens are doing so well. Last night I picked up 14 eggs out of 17 layers and its nearly December so I'm wondering if I'm freezing all these eggs in vain. Of the September/October chicks, 7 are still around- growing very well and the flock has accepted them without any problems. They don't need their mamas any longer so I can't even tell who the mama hens are any longer (we have 4 nearly identical black ones). As a recap though, we began the year with an order of 25 roosters (+5 free), 6 buff orphingtons, 3 blue Andalusian (+1 free) and 2 Americaunas- plus we were gifted 7 mixed breed laying hens and we end the year with 5 buffs, 4 blues, 2 americaunas, 5 mixed breed laying hens, 5 mixed breed pullet chicks and 2 mixed breed cockerel chicks. Plus about 27 roosters for our freezer. I'll sum that up as a successful year. We lost 4 chickens to injury and natural illness.

If you recall we started with 7 turkeys and 6 of those thrived and ended up in our freezer. One I'm cooking today. Their weights ranged from about 18lbs to about 30 some odd pounds dressed weight. Of our ducks, we started with 7, we kept 3 for entertainment/breeding/eggs and 4 went to our freezer. One of those are left in the freezer and I think it might be Christmas dinner. We had 2 geese, one died at about 5 weeks-ish and the other, Bruce, is still going strong. I think he's a bit lonely though. We're working on that.
The goats have been a sharp learning curve. From them getting out and into the feed (and having a near emergency result from that) to learning to milk the goat once we brought her home- they've been by far our biggest challenge. We still are learning as they continue to break out of fences and find new trouble all the time. We've also become extremely attached to their sweet faces and personalities and I see how easily I could become the "crazy goat lady". We took Kissee to the breeder this fall, nearly ruined the interior of my Trailblazer trying to get her there and back and now we aren't really sure if she took. I really hope so but we won't likely find out until sometime next month when we get blood sent in for her pregnancy test.

I stopped calculating the garden yields (hanging head in shame) but it did really well for the lack of planning. Next year we are already planning and the garden will be expanded. We really want to move the garden into a 4 season garden with the use of row covers and hoop structures to extend our seasons. We've found that storage space is really one of our biggest obstacles. We did move the orchard from our 9 acre lot to here so its the beginning of what I hope will be a very productive orchard. We moved also 4 blueberries and about 5 raspberry plants. There are a few more perennials to move but most of our big investments are now here.

We've been pretty fortunate overall. Its been hard and we've learned so much in a very short period of time. I'm both busier than I used to be but I find myself in a position where I really like being home doing the things that this home needs. I get burned out a bit on redundant work like cleaning house, dishes and stuff but fortunately there are plenty of things I'm learning that break up the boring stuff to keep me moving forward.

Pictures!

2011-11-19T23:13:00.001-05:00

Impossible to get a good picture of Kissee

Never quite up for posing

These babies are getting big! 7 weeks old

9 weeks old- rooster

Look muffs! Hoping she's going to lay green eggs, maybe blue

Young Rooster

Family Pictures :)

I'll fill y'all in on all the happenings later :)

Meso Cheese Cultures decoded

2011-10-31T21:52:00.004-04:00

A while back I made up these flash cards of the bulk cheese cultures (from the dairy connection) I use and how they translate to those cute little packets they sell at New England Cheesemaking Supply. I use this information all the time and I was thinking maybe someone out in cyberspace would find it useful too. Who knows. I'd love it if you'd leave me a comment if this helps you. It's nice not to feel like you are connecting :)

Here goes:
Mesophillic MA019- for hard and fresh cheeses. Makes Cheddar, Colby, Feta, Chevre, etc.

Dose:

1/8 tsp to 1 gallon,
1/4 tsp to 2-5 gallons
1/2 tsp to 5-10 gallons milk.

Milder than MM100
Cultures:

L. lactis
L. cremoris

Replaces:

Mesophillic Starter
Mesophillic DS

Mesophillic MM100- for fresh cheeses. Makes Camembert, Gouda, Feta, Blue, Chevre and others where buttery flavor and/or eye formation is desired

Dose:

1/8 tsp to 1 gallon,
1/4 tsp to 2-5 gallons
1/2 tsp to 5-10 gallons milk.

Cultures:

L. lactis
L. cremoris
L. biovar diacetylactis

Replaces:

Fromage Blanc DS

Mesophillic Aroma type B a/k/a Flora Danica- for soft goat cheeses. Makes cottage cheese, sour cream, cultured butter, cultured buttermilk, fresh cheeses, Havarti, baby Swiss, Edam, Gouda, creme fraiche

Dose:

1/8 tsp to 1 gallon,
1/4 tsp to 2-5 gallons
1/2 tsp to 5-10 gallons milk.

Cultures:

L. lactis
L. cremoris
L. biovar diacetylactis
L. mesenteroides subsp. cremoris

Replaces:

Buttermilk DS
Chevre DS
Creme Fraiche DS
Flora Danica DS
Fresh Starter
Sour Cream DS

Now every one of these that it replaces that has a DS after it I believe that it has rennet added to the packet. So obviously you'd follow the recipe for that cheese and add rennet where it calls for it. If you are using the book Home Cheesemaking and you want to make a cheese that uses a "DS" packet.....you probably should be getting a more advanced cheese making book. That's where I am. I've moved out of that book and into a different one to get better recipes that allow me to easily use the bulk starters. I still use Home Cheesemaking a lot. Its not going anywhere.

Posting my salmon patty recipe so I don't forget it

2011-10-23T19:38:00.001-04:00

Sad, right. Anyhow, this is the best salmon patty I've come up with yet.

2 foilpacks of salmon
1 duck egg (2 chicken eggs- approx)
10 saltines or about 1/2 cup oats
1.5 tsp ranch dressing mix (I use penzey's)
1/4 cup chevre
1/4 cup fresh diced onion (chives or green onion would probably be better but this is what I had)

mix well, form into patties and into a hot cast iron skillet with a decent layer of lard or oil....brown both sides well :) Serves 3-6 depending on how hungry the people you are feeding are

Goings on in the fall garden

2011-10-06T21:53:00.002-04:00

rainbow chard, planted in July is going strong

Packman broccoli, in flower. This attracts a lot of bees and other pollinators

My lettuce and spinach patch, now about 30 days or so old and we are picking from it. Cut and come again style.

My root trio- radish, beet and carrot. Radishes are about done, beets in about 30 days and carrots for winter.

This radish is starting to bolt. Its easy to tell from the broken leaves (usually its one big leaf, lobed leaves are for bolting radishes)

same trio bed with radishes removed. It really loosens the soil nicely for the beets and carrots to grow

from near to far: turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi and spinach....all 30 days in

hard to see but if you look closely I've got onion seed sprouts started here to overwinter for spring next year.

Spring lettuce gone to seed. Also attracts pollinators and provides me some seeds.

anyone know what this is?

Broody #2 and her babies

2011-10-06T21:44:00.003-04:00

Imagery of today

2011-10-06T20:57:00.000-04:00


My boy <3.....even grumpy he's handsome


Whats that saying about a bird in the bush?

4 of the 6 new chicks


my son feeding the goats

the babies from last month


York.....he's such a sterotypical goat

more chicks, pics to come later

2011-10-04T23:06:00.000-04:00

I'll try to get some video with all the chicks for you. We have 8 right now ranging from about 20 days old to 1 day old. They are so cute, just wait and see :)

Last week was a bad week, I hurt my back and so I've been babying it since. Its still not quite pain free but its improving. Lots of moaning and groaning about and barely keeping things up around the house. I did manage to get things caught up yesterday pretty decently and today its pretty much stayed in a good place. Between yesterday and today I've been pretty productive. Yesterday I finished the goat yard, just a bit of fenced space right outside their stall for the winter months and today I got the stall cleared out and fresh bedding down.

I went to my grandparent's house after all was done enough around here and picked pears. I must have around 1.5 to 2 bushels of unripe bartletts to play with now. The tree exacted revenge for my stealing its fruit by dropping a large one right onto my forehead from about 20 ft up. Ouch! Rang my bell for a second, took a rest and got back to working on it. My plans this year include pear butter and dried pears, which I do every year and I'm hoping to do some basic canned pears too. I'm not the biggest fan of pears in their raw form so I probably won't eat any raw. I am tempted to pick up some additional fruit at the store and make my own fruit cocktail. That should be fun for my son to try. I don't think he's ever had it since I won't buy the canned ones at the store. (I know, I'm a bad mom ....or a good one, depends on your viewpoint)

Also in canning news, I managed to dig up and salvage my sweet potatoes after the voles nearly destroyed my entire harvest. I pressure canned the rescued bits in quarts and we haven't tried them yet but I'll bet they are tasty. They sure smelled good cooking. I also cleared out the frozen fruit from the freezer and made us some jams and jellies.....mulberry jelly (tastes like grape), mixed berry jam, spiced peach blueberry and black raspberry (which came out way too stiff). The black raspberry is really the only one that didn't turn out but I found out that if I put a big scoop of that very stiff jam in the bottom of my yogurt before I set it to culture overnight then it softens nicely and blends without adding moisture so the yogurt doesn't become a drink like sometimes it can. I love when mistakes work out.

Turkey day went well, aside from a few mistakes. The big tom was too big for everything. I ended up sitting on him and unfortunately it was like riding a bronco. I got hit so many times over. He was huge. The hens all went much better and the only thing that went badly there was that we used a 5 gallon bucket with hole in the bottom and she broke the bucket and fell. Both she and the tom were used for ground turkey meat and I parted out her breasts for meals in the future. The hens weighed about 18lbs average dressed out, the tom we didn't dress out but we parted him out to 16lbs of meat so I'd say he was probably around 25lbs if we'd dressed him out. I think he might have been as much as 40lbs live. HUGE! 2 turkey were pieced out. 4 left whole, 1 for each of our families, 1 for a barter (family pictures) and 1 for us later to decide what we are doing with.

I think that's all I have for now. I'll try to find my camera tomorrow for some video of those babies! So cute!!

The Dude and his progeny

2011-09-18T10:15:00.000-04:00

Chick #1

Chick #2


The Dude and his golden girls

Busy busy- fencing, eggs, cheese, canning

2011-09-18T00:39:00.000-04:00

Good times going on around here. Hard times too. I hate to admit but funds are low right now so getting another goat is going to have to wait. Luckily ours is going to reproduce in the spring so with any luck we'll have a doeling (or two) out of her and we can build our herd a little more slowly but at a pace that fits our budget a bit better. My sister (as in the best sister in the whole wide world) has so kindly ordered the meds for Kissee to get prepared for breeding for me so we are almost ready.

The goats have been escaping a lot so we cleared all the weeds from the fence line and ran many tests on the fence and charger before we finally opened the back of the charger and there is a significant black smoky mark on the circuit board. Needless to say the charger is dead. So today we got our gloves on and installed a section of "real" fencing that was left by the prior owner of this house. There are a lot of sections of used fence too so we will be busy tomorrow installing the next piece we can find that might be long enough to cover our shared fence line with our neighbor. I'm especially concerned that they might get the idea to go that way being as our neighbor grows a very large market garden with lots of goat temptations. Its a fairly temporary solution, but like I said, funds are low so we make do with what's on hand.

The garden is really growing all the fall/winter veggies pretty well. I planted a section with a trio of radishes, beets and carrots....idea being the radishes harvest first, then the beets and the carrots being the slowest. So far the radishes are about half way there. I also have planted turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, spinach, lettuce, bunching onions and snow peas. I don't know if we even like turnips or rutabaga but we figured the goats and chickens will enjoy them if we don't.

The pullets from April's chick order are starting to lay. At least 4 of the 5 Buffs started laying right after they turned 20 weeks. The Americaunas started laying last week at 22 weeks old. Still waiting on the Andulusians to lay. The duck started laying too, everyday without fail so far. Two of our hens went broody ( I think I mentioned it but maybe I didn't) and the first one hatched 2 of 3 eggs and the babies are so cute! The second broody hen has about 6 eggs under her, 5 chicken and 1 duck. I slipped the duck in there hoping to win the lottery and get another female duck....and to see if the Cayuga drake was hitting his mark. When I candled her eggs the other day the duck egg appears to be developing. I'm not sure yet what I'll do if the hen gives up early and the duck egg doesn't hatch. I don't think its going to be a big deal but when the time comes I'll be watching the hen.

I canned some carrots I got on sale a couple weeks ago, they turned out great! Why didn't I do that sooner? Tonight its tomato puree. Tomorrow its roasted peppers and I'm to can some chicken noodle soup and chicken and rice soup as well as just canned chicken and broth. We are butchering the turkeys next weekend so I really need the freezer space for them now.

Also tomorrow I need to get crackin on making some cheese. Our milk inventory is a little high so I think some Queso Fresco is in order. My husband wants more kefir and our son just adores yogurt. I think that will use up what we have on hand. I really want some cottage cheese sometime this week so that will be next up. I picked up some cream at the store so goat ice cream is on the menu soon too.....see why I'd like another goat?

Updates and my evening routine (in pictures)

2011-09-12T14:24:00.000-04:00

The two black hens in the back are the broody ladies

This has been an eventful day/week/month in the world of chickens. I lost a black hen today, found her in the bushes dead. She looked like she just fell asleep and didn't wake up. She's one of the original bunch that were a gift from a friend so I'm sad to have her gone. That leaves 6 hens, 2 of which have decided to go broody. One of the broody girls has made it 16 days so by next weekend I think we may have chicks! My other broody girl just went to the nest today so I plan to slip her a duck egg and see if she'll hatch it out too.


buff orphs to the rescue!

Luckily my young buff orphington pullets are starting to lay and as of now I have 4 of them laying eggs, albeit tiny and infrequently, but they really are making a difference with 2 hens down and 1 gone. My pekin duck (as mentioned above) is laying eggs daily and I couldn't be happier to see it. I don't really want more ducks but I do want to see if either of our drakes are doing their "job" so that's why I'm going to see if the broody will hatch one out for me. Both my husband and son like duck meat so a few ducks each year probably wouldn't be too bad. I think 7 for us was too many though.

I recieved a gift from a friend of some old cast iron pans in need of repair, they had heard I was trying to make the switch from my old toxic non-stick pans. I now have them up and running with a fresh seasoning and they are better at being non-stick than my old non-stick pans were already. I couldn't be happier with their turn out. I made pancakes with them using both this morning, unfortunately the smaller lodge pan started sticking so it went back in the oven today for a new coat of oil for seasoning. Hopefully this time I'll have a better outcome.

before milking (not her fullest udder)

after milking

Kissee is going back to the breeder next month to be bred. I'm going to go with the breeder's recommendation for bucks to see what offspring we end up with. I know wishing doesn't get one anywhere but I'm really hoping she throws both a buckling and doeling so we can have some goat meat for the freezer. I've only had goat once and I liked it but I don't know if I actually tasted the meat being as it was a highly seasoned satay.

I was at the fertility doc this morning, got all my scripts to get the meds so here we go again. My first official month of trying will be October. I'm not going to post the play by play, but hopefully it will result in some eventual good news.

Pictures from today

2011-08-29T22:21:00.000-04:00

I took some pictures today, I don't have a ton to report so I'll let the pictures and captions tell it.

Love finding a Praying Mantis of this size in the garden

Mammoth sunflowers

new radish seedlings

This is "One Eye" Willy, he's a silver leghorn...he's in a cage because "The Dude" would kill him.

Broody hen day #3 out of what 21

Broad breasted Turkey hens at 20 weeks old

Broad breasted white Tom, 20 weeks

a face only a mother.....who am I kidding, I can't wait to have him for dinner

One of our original "mutt" hens. (off to the side is a curious turkey inspecting my camera)

My handsome boy!

Our pullets, now 20 weeks. The two in the back are Blue Andalusians, the front is a Buff Orphington

My son just loves these girls, they almost let him touch them

Our latest trick to get the older girls to lay in the same place all the time....wooden eggs from Hobby Lobby. Its working!!

Our feed organization system. The upper two are sunflower seeds and cracked corn. The two below them are chick starter and layer feed. The two off to the right are dairy goat feed and alfalfa pellet. In the shelf above those I keep bags of loose minerals, baking soda, kelp and diamond x yeast

York, looking over the gate as usual

see that farm in the back there? I just love seeing the sunset over that farm. It'd be nice if I didn't have to see our torn up yard (septic field replacement) to look at it.

"The Dude" our White Wyandotte flock rooster

Bruce the African goose, our flock guardian


Kissee loves apples, so does my son


Our cayuga crested drake and unknown crested gray drake

Eating from the Garden

2011-08-27T00:34:00.000-04:00

I have a pretty green thumb, I can grow most anything really....I'm not bragging I promise. I don't know why I can. One of the results of this is lots of garden goodies to eat. One thing I'm not so great at is using all the things that come from my garden efficiently. I'm working on it.

Right now in our garden we have green beans coming in fast, also swiss chard, cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, a few green bell peppers, cranberry red potatoes, squash, and watermelons. Its heavenly, until I have it stacked everywhere in my kitchen trying to decide what to make of it all. Anything less than perfect is easy to figure out what to do with- chickens! This year was a small garden so I really need to get my act together because I'm planning a very large couple of gardens next year so I can do more canning.

So a couple of lovely dishes we eat pretty regularly in the summer are simple ones. Like the blend of pasta sprinkle (Penzeys), cherry tomatoes, pasta and olive oil with grated Parmesan cheese. Or the crockpot of green beans, potatoes, onions, broth and smoked sausage. I'm sure these dishes have names but I don't know them. Maybe someone will eventually tell me. Most recipes I use aren't really mine but the result of doing a google search for whatever veggie I have on hand in abundance. Recently it was chard- my search gave me this: Swiss Chard with Garbanzo beans and fresh tomatoes. It was delicious and I think I'll try to post some links when we find a good recipe.

In other news, I'm going back to my fertility doctor next month to start getting serious about treating this PCOS. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm. I think I've come to the conclusion that I really would like to have another baby and also the PCOS seems to be taking some affects on my health. I've gained weight and I'm tired a lot, my periods are on time but out of order (going by "signs" of ovulation- I'm not ovulating) and I'm having muscle spasms daily and nightly. So, I guess I'm all out of whack. My recent bloodwork showed my cholesterol is on the high side, although none of my numbers are really scary my doctor would like me to go on a low fat/low cholesterol diet. I have a feeling though that if I treat the PCOS that my cholesterol numbers will fall into line on their own. I've read the book "Nourishing Traditions", which if you've read it you know that they put a lot of emphasis on good fats and it runs completely against everything my doctor will tell me. Now, just because I've read NT doesn't mean I'm sold on the ideas, nor do I think its an excuse to eat a lot of fat (which I think is an easy interpretation to make). I also don't regularly soak my grains or any of that nonsense- I understand the concept but I think the so called "anti-nutrients" do some good things too, like chelating heavy metals from your body.

Anyhow, I suppose my PCOS diet will probably keep me away from eating most sweets and breads and put me closer to eating a Primal/Atkins style diet. I do plan to continue drinking our goat milk no matter what they say and I'm not giving up my eggs either. Both are incredibly bio-available protein sources and for us they are our most plentiful source of protein along with chicken and turkey. I think its going to be hard to resist breads especially since my son and husband love my home baked bread and I make beautiful breads. Getting rid of sugar will be hard too, I have a terrible sweet tooth. I think as long as I can keep fruit in my diet (unsweetened of course) I'll survive it but if they take away fruit, I might just break down and cry.

Matchmaker, matchmaker...make me a match!

2011-08-17T00:36:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to find a one night stand for my goat. Do you know how crazy this can make a person? I have two choices in bucks, they are both of good stock and I think I have my pick. Now enter dilemma of the possibility of bringing home second bred doe. Now I have to find two matches, or match them to the same. So my thought is to have them each bred to a different buck, so if they each have a buckling I can breed each other's buckling to the other doe next year. Then I can put off trying to find a buck next summer.

You see the problem with keeping a dairy goat is, that you have to keep breeding her if you want to continue the milk supply. I could just breed her to any old buck if I was going for just milk but we are also hoping for meat to come of this breeding and maybe a doeling to raise for additional milk and meat. Can you see how this can become an addiction fast!

I think what we have to do is look at the long term picture and figure out just what we want. Eventually, I think we'd like to have 4 does in milk total to cover our milk and cheese needs plus feed goat kids as they are born. After a while, we'd probably want to keep a buck to breed our does to every year. So 5 goats year round, with burst of goat kids in the spring. If each doe has twins (common in goats) then we are talking as few as 13 and as many as 17 goats in the spring. Boy, I hope we end up liking goat meat!

Viewers be advised- Dressed bird pics

2011-08-08T00:30:00.000-04:00

This post will include pictures of roosters that we killed literally today. Nothing more gory than what you see at the store. Some of these guys I was really impressed with and some not. We finished 14 between Thursday and today so we've been busy....that and we are really slow at it.


New Hampshire Red (over scalded)

Rhode Island Red

Turken


Barred Rock

speckled sussex


dark cornish

All of these birds are just over 16 weeks old, most of them ranged from 3-4lbs dressed out like this. We were most impressed with the meatiness of the Dark Cornish, Turken, Hampshire Red, and the Rocks (both Barred and Partridge). Now the Partridge rocks looked awful once plucked. You really can't get all those blackish pinfeathers out and it just makes it look bad. Same with most of the dark birds. The prettiest dressed birds were the Turken, Hampshire and Speckled. The Turken has really tough thick skin but was very very easy to pluck. We grilled one along with a Barred Rock after butchering and I don't remember noticing a difference but then again I don't eat skin.

All of these birds had very little breast meat. Most of the meat was in the thighs with the exception of the Cornish, Turken and Hampshire....they appeared to have more breast meat. They are a sharp contrast to Cornish X birds you see in the grocery, I can see why people prefer a Cornish X. I think we may try to raise a few next year.

I'm going to post chicken pictures soon

2011-08-07T11:23:00.000-04:00

I have to find my camera battery but I'm going to see about taking pictures of the finished birds, partly for reference since we plan to raise meat birds next year. I hope I don't gross anyone out :)

Have you read this? Rawesome Raid

2011-08-03T22:04:00.000-04:00

The states position
The raw advocates position

If you recall Rawesome last year was raided for illegally selling raw milk and dairy products. What do you know its happened again. So the Raw foodies are all in an uproar as are many other groups. If you've read my blog for a while you know I'm not a raw milk junkie. I pasteurize our milk when we have guests or if I'm making cheese and pretty much did it for all of our drinking milk until recently. Mostly I switched out of laziness, not out of a health reason.

So back to the events at hand. Here is how I feel about it. You would think that after last years raids, Rawesome would have gotten a clue and gotten a proper business license. You might also think that someone would get smart and find a licensed dairy for selling raw milk. Alas no, they set themselves up for this disaster by not taking those wise precautionary measures and now, big surprise, they are once again in the spotlight. I'm not saying these raids are right either. Surely it doesn't take a SWAT team with guns drawn to handle a situation like this. It probably doesn't take a stay in jail either. My guess is that those measures are being taken to send a very LOUD message.

Here's what I don't get though. In California, raw milk is legal. This is the legal summary:
Sales of raw milk and raw milk products are legal both in stores and on the farm. In order for raw milk to be sold legally, it must be 'market milk. 'This is milk that meets the standards provided in the Milk and Milk Products Act of 1947.
Under the Act, market milk is graded and designated into three classes:'certified milk,' 'guaranteed milk,' and 'Grade A milk. 'Of the three classes, only Grade A raw milk is available for sale today in California. The standards for guaranteed raw milk to be market milk are more stringent than those for Grade A raw milk. While the Milk and Milk Products Act calls for county milk commissions to set the standards for certified raw milk, not a single county milk commission still exists.
Raw milk dairy farmers need market milk permits in order to produce their product. In addition, any person engaged in an aspect of the milk business that falls under the statutory definition of milk products plant must obtain a milk products plant license. There is an exemption from the license requirement, however, for "any producer whose business consists exclusively of producing and distributing raw market milk produced by such producer."
Raw milk and most raw milk products require warning labels. Municipalities and counties in the state have the power to establish compulsory pasteurization laws but only Humboldt County has done so.
Here's a link for additional details. The dairy, Healthy Family Farm, does not hold the appropriate license according to the state.

In my state of Indiana, raw milk is not legal for sale. Milk shares are a non-pursued gray area. Raw cheese must be aged over 90 days. So these folks have a legal way to sell raw milk and you can't convince me that they don't know the legal route to this. I mean COME ON! They were trying to exploit a loophole that backfired and now they are suffering the consequences. Pardon my lack of compassion on this one.

The only thing to be really angry about here is that the raid cost the taxpayers a lot of money, the accused were said to have not read their Miranda rights and the warrant was MIA. You want to be mad, that's where you should be mad. I truely believe that if these folks had all their ducks in a row they wouldn't be dealing with this.

While I'm not a raw milk junkie, I do believe that the stuff shouldn't be illegal. I believe it should be available through licensed inspected dairy with proper facilities to ensure a quality product. I believe it should carry a warning label, we are talking about a fluid that comes from an animal that stomps happily in its own dung....there is an inherent risk of contamination.

Canning season is upon us

2011-07-25T13:25:00.000-04:00

Canning jars on my shelves filled with goodies make me happy

My pantry as a whole, mess and all

Lake County, Indiana Blueberries

Lime pickles and Lactic cheese

My son's first muck boots!!

Septic leech field supplies


Caerphilly ready for wax

It's been busy around here. I've been doing lots of canning (I need to update the side bar totals, I'll do that later) making zucchini pickles, lime cucumber pickles, green beans and dry beans. I would say I make blueberry jam but really its not properly set so its yogurt flavoring. I did make blueberry syrup and its not terribly sweet but for us its perfect. We don't need that much sugar.

I've really been making a lot of cheese. I've recnetly made a caerphilly, monterey jack, several balls of mozzarella, "velveeta" from lactic cheese and one of my favorites, fromage blanc. For some reason since my last yogurt success post my yogurts have been all contaminated with yeast....I think I jinxed myself! I need to throw out my freeze dried starter and I bought some store yogurt to freeze for starter. Luckily around here, even my mistakes don't go to waste. They go to the chickens. The chickens absolutely love it when I come there way with my mistakes. They love whey too. Its almost as good as having a pig.

Speaking of pigs, we are considering that as our next homesteading project animal. One problem is though that I'm not a fan of pork, or at least commercial pork. I'll eat bacon, canadian bacon, ham and sausage but once you start talking ground pork or pork chops I'm eating vegetarian that night. I really need to get over my distaste of pork so I bought some chops. I don't know how to make pork chops so this might be interesting.

My kiddo is getting so big! He's reading off letters everywhere he sees them and loves to point out everything he sees and identify it. What a chance from a year ago where he was just learning to walk. Did you see those cute muck boots? I couldn't resist, that and he's always stepping in places in sandals that he really shouldn't be.

notice to the right----->

2011-07-15T16:43:00.000-04:00

I've added a tally on the right of the foods we've produced so far this year. Its pretty much all been done by yours truly but my husband plays a role in some of it by watching our kiddo or tolerating a mess for a few days. He's really not much of a gardener, he'll help if I ask but he's not drawn to it like I am. I'm out there every day looking for something to pick and work my dinner around.

Thankfully the garden has really started producing something. I'll be canning our first batch of green beans soon. Not sure exactly how much I'll get out of 7lbs but I'd guess around 4-5 qts. I'm really hoping I have a lot more coming. I'd like to have about 8 or 9 qts worth to get through the year.

I've been really canning up a lot of dried beans lately. I really like to cook vegetarian meals sometimes and beans are pretty essential to making those work and making them filling enough to keep my guys full. I've been using the instruction is Jackie Clay's Growing and Canning Your Own Food. The instructions are really basic and other than it takes and hour and a half of staying up late to get it done I'm pretty happy with it. It makes meal planning much simpler when I don't have to find time to soak and rinse and cook the beans first.

I just put my first Caerphilly into the cheese fridge, I wish it was for us but alas it was made on request for someone else. I really hope it turns out. I'll have to make sure that before its served someone takes a nice taste of it 24 hours ahead of the party and ensures that its safe. Hopefully I'll get to take that taste so if it is bad, I'm the only one who gets sick from it. Is that bad of me? I'm just not confident enough yet in my skills maybe. Anyhow, I'd much rather be the guinea pig than someone else.

Gobble, Gobble, YO!

2011-07-11T18:23:00.000-04:00

I am not a farmer

2011-07-04T09:20:00.000-04:00

I read a blog post the other day that brought this into perspective and while I was in no form of denial, I thought I'd break clean of that image all together. A farmer makes their living from their farm. I make no living off the things we do....actually as far as I can tell we barely save money doing it this way if not pay more for our food that we grow. Its really a toss up, sometimes we pay more for things- sometimes less. I do a few farmer-like activities but for all intents and purposes its a hobby. It might someday evolve into an income for our family, but I don't want to water down what real farmers do by calling myself a farmer.

I hate drama

2011-06-25T00:25:00.000-04:00

Aye, yiye, yiye! My life is usually pretty calm. I avoid drama as much as possible. However it seems to find me. This time it was goats and septic.
First, I'll tell you about the goats. So my husband brought the goats in from the rain (again, lots of rain here right now) a couple days ago and apparently the bottom stall door didn't latch or came unlatched. It doesn't really matter what exactly happened but the goats got out and I came down to check on everyone a couple hours after he brought them in and found their greedy little heads deep into the feed sacks! Now if a human overeats, we get a tummy ache; if a goat overeats on grain, they could die. No exaggeration! So I grab some tubes of activated charcoal and start forcing it down these guys throats and get some advice from the Homesteading Today goat forum on what we do next. Lots of good advice from that place, really its a priceless resource since goats are a veterinary no man's land. So the next advice we followed was to get baking soda into these two. Worked for York but Kissee is a whole nuther story. That girl is really really strong! and nearly as heavy as I am (mind you I'm a big girl)! So the next day I went to the country girl's walmart (read: Tractor Supply) and bought some CD antitoxin and some really big fat needles. Let me tell you how much fun it is to inject under the skin of a goat Kissee's size. That evening, actually the whole time Kissee looked pretty good but I was really worried about York. York is about half of Kissee's weight and I think the grain affected him far more. That night, I wasn't sure he'd be alive the next morning. His bloat was really bad, if you thumped him he reminded you of a drum or a watermelon and his midsection nearly met the level of his backbone. Anyhow, he was great by the middle of the next day and has been fine since. No sign of founder either....at least yet.

Now for the septic. We had it pumped out last week. This week we were still hearing gurguling in our bath tub....call out the plumber thinking it might be a clog. He after much looking and inspecting pops the top of our new riser off and sure enough, its filled again. I talked to a nearby neighbor and he says its pretty common around here for the water table to flood the septic. Great! So I think we'll wait it out and check the tank in a week or so and see what the level looks like. In the mean time we are going to dig to find the Dbox and see what it looks like under the lid. Lucky us.

Thursday was our 10th wedding anniversary. Most of the time I think I'm pretty luck to have met a man and married him who still makes me tingle when he kisses me and is always interesting to talk to and be with. Its not perfect, anyone who's been married for a while would tell you the same. But here we are 10 years later seeing the realization of a dream we've had for some time. This is good place to be.

Goat milk yogurt, finally great success!

2011-06-19T11:11:00.000-04:00

I've had only moderate success with getting an acceptable yogurt until this last batch. This most recent one takes the cake though. Its as good as icecream! This is what I'm doing every time...it beats every version I've had from the grocery store too.

So here is what I did. Take my whole goat milk, raw and heat to 180 degrees. place the pot into a sink of ice water and bring them temp down to 116 and add my starter. I'm using bulgarian yogurt starter. Then I add 1/2 tsp animal rennet and stir well. I let this it in my warm spot (my microwave mounted above the wall oven for me) overnight and the next morning I scooped it into cheesecloth laid inside a colander and let it drain for about 4 hours in the fridge. I like my yogurt greek style. OH. MY. GOODNESS!! So thick and creamy.

So I mixed this with some raspberry foam- you know the stuff the foams up when you make jam on the stove. You have to scrape it off so I save it for yogurt and icecream topping. Good stuff.

100th post- Images of my day today

2011-06-17T20:49:00.000-04:00

Some type of wild oats I'm saving the seeds on. My goats/turkey/ducks/geese/chickens all think this stuff is super tasty

Daisy hiding in the landscape

Lilies

Tire swing

Apricots, still not quite there yet

The garden, a month after planting looks amazing

Kissee and York hiding in the pasture shed

The boys, now almost 10 weeks old

Don't they look like trouble?

This is one of the roosters free ranging, recovering from a tail wound (that is why his tail is purple)

fresh eggs! I love having fresh eggs all the time :)

The hen chicks, almost 10 weeks old

look at these turkeys- 9 weeks old- huge!

teenage African goose - 9 weeks

The remaining pekin ducks and crested drakes

so if you whistle to turkeys, the boys will bark back

their heads turn red when they are excited- this one in front is the dominant male turkey of the bunch

this one I'm pretty sure is one of the hens, we suspect there are 2

no idea what these are called, but I like them

My son's play house, 3rd hand toys are the best!

DDD take 2, cheesemaking, and other farmy updates

2011-06-15T11:43:00.000-04:00

Duck Death Day take 2 has come and gone. It was better than take 1 for sure but the first duck we thought for sure skinning would be better and easier than plucking....oh boy were we wrong! We managed to salvage the breast meat out of it but not only did it take longer but we risked drying the meat out and contaminating it due to the time it took and the exposure to the feathers. big FAIL!! The next two we plucked and luckily our skills are getting better. It still seemed to take forever (which is why we stopped at 3 that day) but this time they looked nicer. They weighted just over 4.5#s a piece dressed out. We didn't keep the organs, we just don't eat organ meat and didn't want to waste time on cleaning and keeping something we don't eat.

The three remaining ducks seem to be on notice that they could be next. They are next but I think we are going to have to take some rooster chicks first. We've had our third injury (another white rock) from the chicken tractor that we use to contain the roosters and I'm thinking its probably those feisty barred rock boys. So we've decided they are next to go to freezer camp as cornish game hen sized birds.

My gosling is growing fast and turns out it is indeed an African Goose. I have no idea what gender but my guess is a boy. We've decided that since he's all along that we will butcher him for New Years. I hate to do it but unless he proves himself useful that will be his fate.

The turkeys appear to be mostly boys, meaning they will be some huge birds (my book says 50#s!!) by September when they turn 20 weeks old. They've been the most interesting creatures to raise. I really wish they weren't all broad breasted birds so we could keep a few to breed for next year. Turkeys are definitely one we are doing again!

The goats are doing great and we are keeping steady at 5#s of milk a day. I looked back at Kissee's milk test from this year (just one month) and last and noticed that this spring she only started out on average producing about 6lbs so producing 5lbs now is about right really. Here I thought we were doing something wrong all this time but I think we had expectations of something different than the actual facts.

I've been making cheeses, my goal being one soft cheese and one hard or semifirm cheese every week. Today is yogurt cheese and Mizithra. Last week it was stirred curd cheddar and Fromage Blanc. The week prior it was Queso Fresco and Chevre. We do a pretty good job of using and eating all of the cheese and drinking all of the milk. I've yet to throw any out for going bad. I have given a quart or half gallon away here and there but nothing to really account for. I have the plans and materials to make a cheese press, they have been sitting on my kitchen counter for a week in hopes that my husband will make it for me. He's been so busy though I may have to do it myself. This should be interesting.

DDD take 1

2011-06-05T12:01:00.000-04:00

Duck death day as its been coined. We butchered a duck yesterday, it was our first time so it took a lot longer than we expected. The duck was about 7#s to start and dressed out at almost 4.5#s. What we learned it that ducks take forever to pluck and we need to research a little better where to make the killing cut (on the neck yes but I don't think we hit the right mark). Also you have to detach the windpipe and esophagus first before you start to eviscerate. Otherwise though we now know what to expect for next week when we take on the rest of the birds and we'll be better prepared.

Tonight on the menu is roast duck though. I'm pretty excited to get a taste of our hard work!

7 week weigh in

2011-06-01T23:07:00.000-04:00

Pekin ducklings 7# plus (they won't hold still long enough to get an exact)

Crested ducklings around 4# (same problem, won't hold still)

Turkeys 5#10 oz to 5# 13oz

the chicks and goose I'll get tomorrow if its cool enough. I'd estimate the goose to be right there with the pekins and the chicks to be just over 2#s

On a personal note

2011-06-01T16:51:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this mostly to clear my head. I have several friends on FB that have been pregnant since I've had my son and I'm afraid I may have been offending them accidentally. You see many of my friends are of the "crunchy" sort and I probably would be too if it were not for all my experiences. I originally wanted the midwife homebirth, no drugs route. And then my complicated mess began. I was diagnosed with a septate uterus and then I had a miscarriage after taking fertility drugs. Then it was 2 surgeries and a devastating miscarriage at 17 weeks which involved an induction and a hospital delivery of a fetus that was so immature we couldn't clearly tell the gender but we could easily see her resemblance to my husband and now my son.

When I did have a successful pregnancy with my son, it wasn't normal like most of my lovely friends have had. Heck, I didn't know most of you while I was pregnant so you only know from what I've told you after the fact. I had a complicated pregnancy, lots of cervical checks by ultrasound and growth checks and non-stress tests. It included injections twice a day to keep my blood from clotting and progesterone support until the second trimester. At 23 weeks I was hospitalized and given betamethasone to speed up the growth of my son's lungs because they were afraid I would deliver early. I was bedrested from that point until I had my son at 38 weeks and 5 days. I had to have a c-section because of my bleeding risk and because my son was frank breech and had been since about 20 weeks; my septum that I had had removed back in '05 had just enough of a lip to keep him from going anywhere but where he was.

I'm not typing all this because I want anyone to feel sorry for my experience. I know every day what I went through to bring my son here and if I though the outcome would be the same I would gladly do it again. I'm saying all this though because I wanted you to know that my experience wasn't normal and I can't relate to the normal experience very well. I'm sorry if my experiences offend you when I chime in with how things went for me. That's not my intention at all. I'm also not trying to be a bummer - promise! I'm always so glad when things do go normally for other people and I'm a little sad when they don't. Oh and I always worry when you shirk off medical help in favor of the "natural way", but that is because of my experience...try not to take that too personally or offensive either- you'd do the same in my shoes.

Anyhow, it always makes me emotional to have to recant all the details of things prior to my son's arrival so I'm done.

Expensive milk!

2011-05-18T10:49:00.000-04:00

I'm going to break down the list of stuff so far I've bought for this goat- not including fencing, I'll estimate that one. Its amazing how quickly its added up! I probably could have bought a less expensive doe, but I wanted to start with good genetics so here we are:

2 goats $450.00 ($400 for the milker, $50 for the wether)
1 bag of ADM goat feed 50# (lasts about 25 days) $13.00
2 bags of alfalfa pellets 40# $20.00 (lasts about 25 days)
1 bag black oil sunflower seeds 50# on sale for $15.00
estimated fence upgrades $250.00
baking soda 3# $5.00
loose goat minerals 8# $20.00
diamond v yeast culture $6.00
kelp 10# $24.00
herbal wormer $20
udder wash $6.50
charcoal gel (emergency use x3) $22.00
milk kit (pail, strip cup, udder spray, funnel, filters) $70
goat first aid kit $58.00
shoo fly spray $21.00
mo milk supplement $10.00
10 bales of straw $35.00

I've left off a few things that we bought and turned out to be a waste ....like a goat mineral block. I'm leaving out cheesemaking supplies too because I would buy those with or without a goat. I'll be glad when we get things down to just reorders on the couple of things they need monthly.

We've been having some issue with keeping her supply up so we've started milking her 3x a day. That's a lot of pail washing! I don't know if we will get to stop that anytime soon so I may have to invest in a second milk pail to cut down on all the washing. I also need to invest in a stainless steel pot that can hold 2 gallons of milk for hard cheese.

Expensive milk indeed!

5 week weigh in

2011-05-16T16:50:00.000-04:00

roo chicks are averaging about 1#, one RIR was about 1.25# (I thought they might be bigger by now)
pekin ducks are just below the 5# mark
the remaining goose is right about 3.5#
and the turkeys are right about 3#

I gotta tell you for as much trouble as those ducks are they sure are growing very well. I heard somewhere that pekin ducks were the cornish x of the duck world. Sounds about right.

Just call me the turkey mama!

2011-05-11T23:00:00.000-04:00

I'm going to try to post a video of this phenomenon I'm experiencing. Our now 4 week old turkeys have begun following me. I hear this loud "peep!peep!peep!" and turn around and 2 young poults come chasing after me wings flapping full force run through tall grass the other day. Now we are up to 3 babies doing this. Once they get to my feet they start making all those cute turkey chortle sounds and quieter peeps. Just call me "mama".

Also, our milker Kissee has broken out of her electric fence a couple of times. Not to get away but to get to ....US! She's so attached to us (or people anyhow) that she will risk electric shock to hang out with us.

That's all I have for now, signing out now as Critter Mama.

about that celery

2011-05-09T15:30:00.000-04:00

I forgot to explain the celery. I noticed one of my celery hearts looking like it had roots so I put it in water just to see what it would do. Well it put out nice roots and I planted it. That was a month ago and I've since added a second celery heart since then. I'm thinking they may allow me to grow celery enough to harvest from the store bought celery waste. How cool is that?

2011-05-09T09:42:00.000-04:00

they look like small chickens now- 4 weeks old

another view


our pitiful sick little turkey, I'm keeping her isolated so she'll stay warm and hope she won't pass it on

the rest of the turkeys (nearly 4 weeks old)

Kissee wishing she could go out and play

grape vines waking up from their winter rest

irises

celery (I'll explain more below)

ducks


ducks and the tail end of our goose

I finally put up some more pictures! All the babies are moved to the barn and are now or approaching 4 weeks old. My husband is making tractors for them but for now they have a home in the barn. The turkeys are taking liberties of flying out of their pen and exploring which is really cute and makes me nervous but I'm hoping that like most creatures, a little exposure to dirt and germs will make them healthier. One little turkey is sick and I think its coccidiosis. I've been treating all of their water since with ACV (apple cider vinegar) to help boost their immunity. The same night we isolated the sick turkey, one of our geese (the chinese goose) unexpectedly died. We can only presume it was stress since it had no symptoms. So much for the possibility of a breeding pair of geese.

The goats have settled in great. We finally put them out into the electric fenced pasture and at first they both would burst right through it. I made one minor spacing adjustment and now they respect the fence. They have spent the last several days out in pasture and I couldn't be happier since we don't have a reliable hay source yet and our hay field has yet to been cut.

Mother's day came and went. I always find Mother's day a little difficult, even though I am a mother I still remember all the babies we've lost on the way to getting here and all those horrible not-yet-a-mother Mother's days of the years before our son came along. It didn't help that on Facebook, some friends of mine were complaining about Mother's day, I just wanted to confront them and say "do you know what lengths I went to to become a mother?" but I didn't. Everyone had their reasons to love or hate it and I guess I'll respect that.

growth spurt

2011-04-29T21:45:00.000-04:00

I was just looking at the pics I recently posted and realized we have had a huge growth spurt. The largest of the geese and the ducks are weighing in at a whopping 1.5lbs (estimated) and that was Monday. I'll bet they are nearing 2 lbs now. I cannot believe how fast they grow!

The chicks are all working up to being fully feathered. The hens are much more feathered than the roos.

I made some fresh mozzarella tonight with Kissee's milk and while it made great pizza it didn't set up like I'd hope so I'll have to try again before I host my first cheese class.

I'll try to post again soon with pics...promise!

Finally! getting a chance to post some pictures

2011-04-24T17:09:00.001-04:00

The Hens

The Roosters

a couple of turkeys

trying to get a cute Easter picture

the trip home with the goats


Geese, Ducks and Turkeys

the newest additions- Kissee and York

So all the poultry babies are just growing really fast, Monday the chicks will be a bit over 3 weeks old and the rest will be reaching that date on Thursday (I'm going by arrival dates). Its hard to imagine the amount of growth they are supposed to achieve in the next couple weeks. My books say the ducks should be ready to butcher at about 8 weeks and weight about 7lbs. WOW!

The goats we just brought home yesterday. Kissee is a very well scoring, good milking bloodline registered Nubian. She was not cheap, but I'm really hoping that she will prove to be a good milker for a long time so getting the quality in place now can mean a lot. Her only real flaw is that she has an underbite, but none of her kids do so its apparently not passed on. Her scores are 11*M, VVEV, averages about 7.8lbs of milk daily (I've only recently learned what those even mean, don't feel bad if you don't). As I've discovered that you have to be a pretty good hand milker to get that 7.8lbs a day. This morning we got a quart and a half out of her and we probably should have been able to get that last half quart if we were better at milking. Aye, its a learning curve. I've also learned why a milking stand is important....my back hurts! Not to mention how fidgety she is about being milked from the floor. So my husband (awesome man that he is!) is building me a stand as I type this. Isn't he great!

The other day, on April 22, I calculated how many eggs we've gotten since the arrival of our 7 hens on March 23rd. It was 115 eggs! So I did some math and compared to Meijer organic eggs at $3.39/dozen, which is what we were buying, we saved about $15 after adjusting for feed by keeping hens instead; and they are better eggs! Now that the eggs are coming in faster, I'll have to make more egg related dishes. I figure our "cost" per dozen is right around $1.50 if you don't include things like the mobile coop costs.

I'm trying to keep up with the economics of the farm outputs vs. inputs since part of the reason we do this is to hedge off rising grocery prices. I'll put up more comparisms as I have them. I hope its not too boring.

Goats!

2011-04-23T23:27:00.000-04:00

The goats are here! I'll come back later with the details and some pictures but tonight...I need some rest!

Babies updates and coming attractions

2011-04-20T21:44:00.000-04:00

These weeks get crazier all the time. I can't believe we are past the half way point of April already. I still don't have a garden planted, which for me is unreal but its a new garden bed and its been really wet. I'm making a lot of excuses huh?

The chicks are growing wing feathers and tail feathers. One of the turkens appears to be growing the beginnings of his comb. I've managed to ID all the hens that we are keeping, but I still have no idea which chick was the "free exotic" or what its gender is. The hatchery sent an extra 5 babies beyond what we ordered and I know one of them was labeled as a female Blue Andulusian (they must have had an odd extra I guess)- whom I've already identified but the other four I can only guess were extra roosters on my "all heavies" portion of my order. So I have 5 (the 4 unknowns plus the exotic unknown) that I assume will go to freezer camp at the end of the summer.

The turkey poults are growing pretty fast too. They are about 10 days old by my guess and are starting to fill in with wing feathers and I think they've gotten taller. I'm somewhat sure that the white ones are actually Giant White Turkeys since they are bigger than the Broad Breasted Bronze one (it could be a standard bronze one, impossible to tell really).

The ducklings are getting huge! The Pekin ducks are nearly the size of the goslings at this point. They are kind of funny in that they sit around the water dishes and play in the water. They usually muddy it up really well too and I think they are dunking their food in it. The smallest of the alleged Pekin ducklings has a gash on its bill that I'm a little concerned about. I can't imagine how it got that way so I guess since its otherwise pretty active and lively I'll leave it be. The black and gray ducklings, I think are Swedish but I'm not completely sure; they aren't growing as fast but I don't think they get as large either as adults.

The gosling pair are real characters. They like to "talk" to us every time we look into their brooder box. They are also brave enough to put the poults in line (the poults pick on everyone by pecking at them, I assume this a turkey thing).

So next week, I'll add to my updates news of goats hopefully. I'm supposed to pick up a Nubian milk doe and a saanen wether to get us started. I've already bought salt blocks, bedding, a milk kit and a first aid kit in preparation for the new arrivals. I already had cheese making supplies so I'll be looking forward to getting a chance to really try them out on some fresh milk!

turkeys, ducks and geese

2011-04-14T23:26:00.000-04:00

The turkeys, ducks and geese arrived this morning...another 6 am wakeup call and trip to the post office. They are sooooo cute! The turkeys are all light yellow (6 of them) but one which I suspect is a broad breasted bronze. The light yellow I suspect are holland whites since thats the bigger white turkey they offer. The geese I think may be pilgrim geese, there are two and if they are then we have a male and a female which is ideal for us. The ducks, 5- I believe to be pekin ducks and the other 2 I think may be Swedish blue ducks- although one is black and one is blue.
Oh and its true the old saying that "birds of a feather flock together". The water birds have been inseperable and the turkeys are trying their best to work their way in but those water birds want nothing to do with them. Also, I've learned that turkeys will lay and sleep in the oddest positions, I actually thought one was dying based on how it was laying in the brooder. He (or she) popped right up and started running about though when it was woken up.

Quick update

2011-04-13T23:52:00.000-04:00

Wow, who knew moving and trying to get a farm (even if its just a hobby farm) up and going would keep me so very busy! and its expensive!

Monday our chicks arrived. I know there are 6 Buff Orphs, 3 Blue Andulusians and 2 Arcaunas for our layers since I picked those by breed. The "all heavy males" though are a fantastic mix of colors. It looks like we have Turkens, Barred Rocks, RIRs, White Orphs and I think I noticed some Black Cornish and Light Brahmas but its hard to say. They gave us about 5 extras too, I'm assuming males also. We have 1 mystery chick that I think is a White Blue Andulusian but I don't know what gender or even if thats correct. Its fun trying to figure them out though.
I've been talking to a couple goat breeders and I have choices of Nubian, French Alpine and Saanen goats for our home dairy. I cleaned the barn today in preparation of whatever we bring home and I order from Caprine Supply a first aid kit and a milking kit. I also picked up a fence energizer and rope electric line for restringing our fence line. Still so much to do!
Our current flock of 7 layers have already paid for their feed bag and still have a 1/4 bag left so they are proving their worth. They are now averaging between 4 and 7 eggs a day. We finally had enough to share with our very helpful neighbor who was so kind to till us a garden space with his tractor. Yay for good neighbors!!

wordless wednesday

2011-03-30T16:36:00.001-04:00

Home at last!

2011-03-26T20:44:00.000-04:00

This has been a whirlwind of a week. Back and forth from the apartment to the house, moving bits and pieces of our stuff to the new place. Today we rented the moving truck and moved the storage unit contents over. We are all pretty tired!

Oh, and we have chickens! A friend who has chickens graciously gave us 7 hens to get us started (she says they aren't well trained- not that I care at this point) and we've already collected 7 eggs since Wednesday when I brought them home. The last couple days though they slowed down with the cold snap we got. They have been having a hay-day (nevermind the pun) in our barn, picking through the old hay stash for bugs and worms and stuff. They also are quite fond of table scraps and we are thoroughly amused by all their happy chicken sounds.

I've been removing wallpaper with the help of some friends; what a task! Right now that project is on hold because my husband's office has now taken priority since we were trying to have a bit of overlap on the cable hookup for internet but the company who supplies it says we can't. I still have to get the final bit of paint on the walls, get the desk bought, assembled and outfitted and then back to the rest of the house.

We've really been enjoying it here. The big windows make for fantastic mornings, much like being at a vacation home with its sweeping views. I still need to clean out the wild bird feeders but even without seed we are visited by nuthatches, purple finches, blue jays and cardinals. There is one male cardinal that likes to tap on my son's bedroom window. We think he might be fighting a competitor aka his reflection. What fun! I'll put up new pics next Wednesday...maybe pick up the wordless Wednesday trend.

Its officially ours now!

2011-03-18T17:35:00.000-04:00

Whew! Glad that parts over, now we can finally get to work! (can't believe that's me saying that) We have a lot to do out there...for starters, we need to build a chicken coop because it appears we are getting some nearly grown birds (layers) this next week unless something comes up. Either way we still have chicks coming in April so that coop is better to be built sooner rather than later.

We also need to seriously prune the fruiting trees. There is a sour cherry, an apricot and five apples that all need work; at least two of the apples need to be cut down because they have some serious issues and they were all planted about 2 feet apart so they are way too crowded. There are two grape vines, to which I have two young grapes to add that need pruning. I picked up four blueberry bushes that need a space where we can amend the soil with acidifier and plant them; we have five other blueberry bushes that I have to decide if we are going to move or let fail at the 9 acre lot (its too alkaline at the lot for them). I think on those we'll wait to see if they put out leaves since they are bare at the moment. We also have all those other fruiting trees out there to consider moving; we are leaning toward leaving them out there though since they've been in the ground for two years.

Also soon, we need to get a garden started out there. Currently there is not a tilled space for a garden and the most ideal place was flooded earlier this year so I'm debating if I want to brave it. My understanding after talking to the sellers today is that it doesn't normally flood that high up. There is another elevation that did not flood that we could put in a garden but it really chops up the yard so its not ideal either.

Around the house there are lots of bulbs and rhizomes peeking out from the leaf litter giving us clues as to what is under there. We've been able to identify tulips, crocuses, daffodils, irises, coral bells and some day lilies. I have a feeling once we clear out debris this place will really shine.

I don't expect to be posting a lot in the next week with so much going on but if anything exciting happens I'll put it out there at least on facebook.

Garlic and other signs of life (from the 9 acre lot)

2011-03-02T23:30:00.000-05:00

hooray for garlic! It has new leaves from the last time I saw it

my wolf-y looking dog and my kid (dog is not in any way part wolf)

Honeyberry baby putting out a couple of leaves

flooded a bit here too. Not bad though, this lot has really decent drainage

House pictures

2011-03-02T23:24:00.000-05:00


utility room

bedroom 3/ office

bedroom 2

ugly yellow hall bath

entry

living room/dining room

ugly fireplace insert

awesome kitchen

master bedroom

master closet

master bath

master built-in cabinets

front of the house

see the shiny stuff back there? That the flooding from the storms as of Monday

looks like a pretty lake huh?

This was as of Wednesday....much improved!

another view, again though much better

Moving Day- coming up

2011-02-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

We are starting to plan out our moving day. Closing is now only 19 days away (YAY!!!!!!) and I suppose its time to start thinking that way. We are planning the big part of the move on March 26th. We figure that will give us time to get in there, get any appliances (fridge!) installed before there are obstacles and repairs made (waste pipe) out of the way. Also my hubby says we must repaint his office/bedroom before he starts working in there. I guess butterflies don't really suit him. Other To Do's include getting all the utilities including broadband hooked up since my hubby works from home its an absolute must.

I've set up a Facebook event on my personal FB page if anyone wants to help us move. We will be serving lunch so there is free food involved :)

Everything is moving along it seems.

2011-02-17T23:37:00.000-05:00

This will probably be my last post before closing on the house on March 11th (at least that's the planned date). There really isn't much going on right now. Except signing papers and waiting. YAWN! I'm so ready to move!! The water tests came back pretty much clean so we are really happy about that part. We've got the down payment ready to go to (just a bit important)

I'll put up some pics after closing. I do have a few on my personal facebook page if you wanted to catch a glimpse though.

The bank stuff is in the works now.

2011-02-09T23:54:00.000-05:00

We have the official bank approval (before it was a pre-approval) and locked in our interest rate for the term of the loan. The closing date is set for mid-March so we are really looking forward to moving in late March.
I have the quote for insurance too. Since we will be keeping livestock, no ordinary insurance will do (of course!) since we need liability coverage in case one of our critters injures someone. Its about $60 or so a month higher in cost than normal house insurance. Not loving that part.
Oh and I now have recently educated myself in what to call the style of this house. Its a mid-century modern. As soon as I did a google search it was very clear that is what it is. I think we'll eventually replace our furniture will cool mid-century styles as they wear out or as the funds become available. It does though seem a bit strange to have a retro cool house but farm-y stuff outside, but it might be just perfect for us.

The inspection was good!

2011-02-06T23:49:00.002-05:00

The inspection showed some minor things and one kinda major things needed on the house. As far as we are concerned its still a go :)

Getting things together

2011-01-31T21:13:00.001-05:00

I finally sorted my seeds and found out that I have no less than 6 varieties/packets of beets, 3 of the same variety packets of spinach, 3 each of pea types and green bean types....what I'm saying here is "Hi, my name is Melody and I am a seed addict". Kinda feeling like a hoarder about now. A hoarder who will have a really awesome, yummy garden this year.
The house is still in the works. We have an inspection coming up on Wednesday that will make or break the deal (not worried though). If they find anything major we can walk from it. Fortunately my husband and a friend who happens to be a contractor had already looked at the house inside and out (except the roof) and determined it looked pretty good AND there was an inspection from two years ago that a bunch of things were brought up and fixed at that time.
We are still undecided if we are selling our 9 acre lot. On the one hand, its a great lot for growing hay, animal feeds and grains. We could fatten up grazing animals over there if we added some fencing and there is a lot of wild fruits along the perimeter that are pretty awesome. On the other hand though, its a monthly payment that doesn't really earn its keep now. The money we pay into that lot every month could go a long way into the new house and its acreage. Also the upkeep of the lot is a pretty decent task all by itself. We had been relying on a local guy to cut the hay but if you've been keeping up with my blog you already know that so far that hasn't been really working out. So if we keep it, we could really use to buy a tractor and hay cutting equipment. More $$.
If we keep it then we really need to earn money off of it. Enough to offset at least some of its costs. Steers could pretty easily do that as the demand for grassfed beef is pretty good, we'd need to purchase though the livestock, fencing, vet bills and processor fees. A CSA could do it pretty well too, but for that option we really do need a tractor. An orchard could work, but there are a lot of apple orchards around here. Pastured poultry, maybe, but I'm concerned that we'd have trouble keeping them safe from predators when we aren't right there for them.
Sorry guys, I get to thinking on paper sometimes with this blog and just start rambling on. I'll keep you posted as things get interesting.

Accepted Offer!

2011-01-27T10:52:00.002-05:00

I'll keep this short since this is all just getting started but we have an accepted offer for a house! It's all pretty exciting and there is a lot to get done between now and closing so here we go.

counter offer

2011-01-24T20:51:00.000-05:00

Their counter offer was terrible. They barely left their original price and are refusing to make any of our requested repairs. Mind you we haven't had the place inspected yet so there might be more needed to the place than what we requested. I have a feeling that this may end up being a dead end. We have a price in our heads that sounds just right for this house and they are still 10k above that price in their counter offer. We plan to counter back but I don't think they will like it.

Tomorrow I go and look at another house, one that is in the running right up with the one we bid on. Its in the next county....about a 1400 sq ft log cabin on 8+ acres w/ a barn. I've heard from my husband that its a tad small but we should be able to work it out. Its out in the middle of nowhere so I don't suspect anyone would have a problem if we added on to it in the future. (One of the things I won't miss from our old cookie cutter, vinyl village home we used to live in...the one with a restrictive HOA)

My seed order arrived in the mail today and I'm feeling so charged for this spring's garden. I need to start a few seeds soon for cold weather crops and artichokes but we have no place to set up the mini-greenhouse. We really need to find a place soon!

Offer in

2011-01-22T21:08:00.000-05:00

We put an offer in on a house just outside of town here. Its a nice big house with 5 acres, a barn, pastures, hayfield...its really just lovely. We offered 85% of what they are asking for so come Monday we'll get an idea on if they are interested in negotiating. Fingers crossed!

Boston beans, homemade dishwasher powder and laundry soaps

2011-01-19T15:40:00.000-05:00

pressure cooking on my barely adequate stove

I've been trying to convert some of the things I used to take for granted into things I make homemade. A year or so ago we gave up grocery store canned goods (metal cans) because of BPA. As a result, simple easy lunches like beanie weanies (baked beans and hot dogs) had been virtually removed from our diet. I was getting pretty good at using the pressure cooker to provide cooked beans for us but still that requires enough foresight to get the beans out and soak them, sprout them...you get the idea. Last week though is the beginning of the end of that inconvenience! I canned my first batch of Boston baked beans! I know real exciting but we were missing having that as a food option. I used the recipe from Jackie Clay's Growing and Canning Your Own Food which I'd recommend if you want to take canning to a level beyond just single ingredient fruits and veggies. If you don't, the classic Ball Book of Canning is just right for just about everything else. I don't think I can just post the recipe but it was basically navy beans, brown sugar, molasses, onion, mustard and bacon- which the instructions didn't say to cook and drain the bacon but I think next time I will since there is a LOT of grease in those beans. They are super tasty though! I think this is the start of some serious bean canning because that will seriously make dinner time easier to do on the fly.

the turkey roaster was the only pot big enough to cook them in


finished jars (after a few were given away)

A few other items I now DIY are dishwasher and laundry soaps. I found the recipes on a website (I think e-how) but since I've adjusted it a bit I'll just post mine. I was using those cascade complete packets with lemishine on the side but I'm not missing the cascade at all. I can't seem to get away from lemishine though. That stuff just rocks! If TEOTWAWKI happens I'll have to try to get case loads of the stuff....oh wait, I won't have electricity most likely so nevermind. I need a good liquid dishwashing soap recipe if anyone has one.

Dishwasher Machine powder

1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1/2 cup kosher or canning salt (I use canning salt...its what I have on hand)
1/2 cup lemishine or citric acid

(after breaking up the borax clumps) dump all ingredients into a wide mouth quart jar. apply lid and shake. Use about 1TBS per load. If you have cruddy water like mine you'll need to add a 1/2 TBS of lemishine in the prewash pocket.

My laundry soap is just as easy...can't remember where I found this one but its really close to the way I found it. Its gets even my kid's nasty stinky cloth diapers clean so I feel pretty good about it.

Basic dry laundry soap

1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1/2 cup kosher or canning salt (can you tell I have bad water?)
1 bar of Fels naptha shaved

I take the ingredients and put in the powder-y stuff first into my blender. I put the shavings on top and pulse until I get a nice fine consistancy. I use about a heaping TBS in each large washload. Its best to dissolve this stuff in hot water first but I'm usually too lazy and it does just fine. I would imagine you can substitute the Fels Naptha but I kind of like the smell. We were formerly using Country Save and it had absolutely no smell so a little scent is nice.

brrrr! cold day for looking at houses!

2011-01-15T16:52:00.000-05:00

We are still house shopping. Its really hit and miss, a lot of homes overpriced for this economy and even more that need more work than would be sensible for us with a toddler roaming about. We're looking pretty much anything within an hour of Indianapolis that has greater than 4 acres. Its a smaller list of homes than I would have anticipated.

Our realtor is also sending out letters and making phone calls to the houses that border our lot and see if anyone has been considering selling. To us, that sounds like a pretty good option too.

We are putting in a poultry order this weekend for shipment in April. If we are still in this apartment by then it should make life REALLY interesting; keeping chicks in a small apartment isn't my favorite idea but fortunately its only until we get away from frost and they gain some feathers to keep them warm or until we get a place where we have room. So far the order looks like it will be 25 meat chickens (a mixed bag of heavy breeds), 10 layers (2 americanas, 2 blue andulusians, 6 buff orphingtons), 2 geese, 7 ducks and 7 turkeys - all whatever breed they give us. Should make an interesting brood! I'm following the advice of Joel Salatin to get only as many birds as you can eat in a year on your first bunch being as we are new at this. I'm really hoping we get a decent breeding set of chickens, turkeys and ducks out of the deal so we can either let them restock us next spring instead of placing another order.

I'm still working on my seed inventory. I think I've got most of the garden covered though. I'm going to try picking up some organic sweet potatoes and starting my own slips this year. I completely forgot to grow them last year and they will be a brand new experience for us. I kept all my smalls from my regular (and by regular I of course mean Cranberry reds, All Blues, Yukon golds and Russett burbanks) to plant this year and I'm really hoping they'll be good by time planting comes 'round. I think I found a use for all that hay that was ruined last year....garden mulch! Surely we can use it for mulch and maybe it will breakdown and help improve our garden soil.

House shopping

2010-12-24T00:48:00.000-05:00

After the holidays we are going to look at houses. I'm pretty excited and nervous about it too. On one hand, I've put so much energy into the land we have and trying to get a house on it that I think I'm having some trouble letting that idea go completely. On the other, it would be pretty exciting to have both and having both really expands our possibilities.

There are a few complications to the idea of having two properties. One big one being that there is no water source on the current lot so we may have to consider either hauling water, digging or having dug for us a well or setting up some really creative rain water containment system.

I have a lot of ideas roaming about in my head of things to do if we had two plots to work with. Growing crops and trees on the one we aren't living on comes to mind....that would leave us free from having to do much over there in inclement and winter weather. This spring, house or not we'll be adding in critters so I should have some lovely pictures once we get going.

I expect this will be my last post for the year and maybe for a while (or at least until I order seeds) so have a happy holidays!

Take a cookie break from my drama

2010-12-13T13:18:00.001-05:00

and visit my friend over at Stay at Home Chef for a chance to win her super secret cookie recipe. You'll need to become a follower through networked blogs :)

So we have decided....

2010-12-12T10:36:00.000-05:00

We've decided after much discussion with relatives and friends that we are firing our banker dude working on our home loan. What does that mean? It means that we are either going to wait until spring to build or we are going to find an existing home with acreage and divide projects between both lots. There are actually 3 homes in our searches that would be a good place to start looking so probably after the new year we'll start our search for existing homes and put building on the back burner for now.

We may come back to the idea to build and we are going to leave our deposit with the builder we've selected for now. As it stands we wouldn't be moving in until spring or summer anyhow once the house would be built so a few months of clarity would be good for us. We DO still plan to get chickens and goats in the spring despite the fact that we won't have a house out there. I've seen some really nice igloo style goat housing, movable fencing and I think the addition of a milk stand and an "instant" canvas garage might get us started. For chickens we will build a chicken tractor to keep them safe and contained. We only live about 10 minutes away right now so we will be transporting water and spending a lot of time out there gardening so I think it will work.

The nice thing is that we own the land we planned to build on and I think with some creativity we will still make it a farm, even if we are farming from another location too. Ideally if we find an existing home to purchase it will have land of its own. One of the ones on our short list includes 12 acres...so in that purchase we will go from 9 acres to 21 total acres! Holy cow(s)! We may have to start raising grass fed beef to keep that managed. Darn! I "hate" having such high quality problems. :D

I'm reading Joel Salatin's book right now, You Can Farm, and its providing me with some inspiration about farming remotely since in this book he's adamant that you don't even have to own the land you farm on (too late for that one).

I'll keep y'alls posted on what happens next. Wish us luck!

Contemplating a change of course

2010-12-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

We are at a point where we are considering other alternatives to our original plan. One option is to keep with what we are trying to do, build the house on our land starting sometime hopefully soon with the banker we can't stand. The second option is to find an existing home with land and farm it or both locations. The third option is to stop where we are with this lender, regroup and find a new lender in the spring with a fresh face- this may or may not include keeping the current builder. If we don't keep this builder I have a mind to revert back to one I interviewed before that we were pretty impressed with and our original smaller cape cod style plan.

The builder has really gone out of their way to try to make this work, its not their fault. I'm not even sure if the fault lies on the bank themselves. The banker that we are dealing with though is about to make me go off. Its been since the end of August since we signed on. They approved our loan back in early october. Our appraisal has been done for nearly a month and now they are saying its a bad appraisal, that the house out front is/was a problem, etc, etc....it just goes on and on! I think we've just about had it though.

If any of y'alls have been here, have any advice or whatever...we'll take it! So far our families think we should walk from this bank. We are pretty much in agreement.

In other news (see I'm not all gloomy), I met with a survivalist group today. Lots of great people with good ideas and skills, some of which we've not yet dabbled in yet. Its good to have folks to ask when starting something new :) If I get the ok from them I'll try to post a link sometime soon.

Next week maybe?

2010-12-03T19:23:00.000-05:00

I spoke to both the bank dude and the builder today and it sounds like the problem is the appraisal. Remember that 10k in improvements, well apparently that means to one party something different than it means to the others. To the appraiser, its the lot improvements such as to be done well, sewer, drive, etc. To the bank, it meant improvements we had already completed. To us, it means more money at closing...but they can't yet say how much that will be. Both the builder and the banker agree that the goal currently is to close by Friday the 10th and by Dec 15th at the latest.

On a cheerier note, we are getting snow and if it actually will stick long enough to get a picture of it I'll have to put a pre-construction snow picture up under pictures soon.

Last day of the month

2010-11-30T20:17:00.001-05:00

...and I have nothing to report :(

The walkout with Jack

2010-11-26T13:57:00.000-05:00


So this is approximate the home site.

Neil is about at the front left corner of it.


Neil at front left corner, Jack at rear left corner

Jack is at the front right corner of the garage.

I don't know if you can see it but the upside down hammer Jack is walking away from would be the garage entrance.

view from front porch

facing out the front door

approximate view from living room window minus a truck

approx. view from office window

builder's sign

Its cold! I want to go home!

Walk out scheduled

2010-11-23T17:38:00.000-05:00

We have more progress! On Friday, we will be meeting with the builder to do what they call a walk out (and I keep wanting to call a stake out- sounds so much more elusive doesn't it) where we go to the property and mark with stakes where the house will sit. Pictures to come with the stakes in place :)

Small, but big stuff happening

2010-11-22T12:02:00.000-05:00

I just got off the phone with our bank dude, Tony, he has officially locked in our interest rate. He says the goal is to have our loan closed by the end of the month. All goes well that means the build will begin in December. Fingers crossed!

How it looks right now

2010-11-16T23:12:00.000-05:00

So this is our 9.4 acre field as it looks today. Nothing too exciting yet. I decided to take this picture as I pulled in on my way to drop off compost from our kitchen and I thought this would be a good time to take a picture like this. I'm really hoping in a few weeks I can show you a similar picture but with a scurry of excavators and workers trying to erect the framework of a house. The tire treads you see now will be the driveway and we plan to make it 400 feet long for privacy and well, if you have this much space why not? We go all the way back to the tree lines on either side and the houses in the very back. If you looked to the left you'd see the Christmas tree we planted the first year we bought the land and just after that our nearest neighbor's house. We have a little additional land on the other side of her house too.

Speaking of that tree line, thought I'd show you my husband's latest project: Removal of extra, broken, diseased trees in the windbreak. Boy, he took on the task. This picture (below) is either a Bradford or Cleveland pear that was broken in a storm recently. Fun huh? Still lots to do.

Hoping to have more soon!

Slowly moving along, but we have progress!

2010-11-12T16:32:00.000-05:00

Ok so now we have the appraisal back....its good! They appraised the land and house at about 20k higher than the cost. The only possible problem at this point is that the land itself appraised at 50k which is about 7k less than it did 2 years ago. The upside is the appraiser made a note that we had made about 10k in land improvements so fingers crossed that those count toward our down payment. It sounds like we might get started next month if the weather holds but I'm still not ready to declare it as a done deal. More to come soon I hope!

Dehydrator giveaway

2010-11-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

Anyone need a dehydrator? Nourishing Days is doing a giveaway.

Raw

2010-11-11T07:49:00.000-05:00

The new of raw milk and cheese raids just keep rolling in don't they? This Grist article suggests the problem will get worse and not that that is any surprise to me but it still just makes my stomach ball up to hear about it. So it brings me to a pretty final realization in my head that dairy is out of the realm of possibilities for us. No herd shares, no underground, no nada!

Quick funny mental image but my son has been singing "cow, cow, cow, moo!" as I'm typing this..not sure why but its super cute.

It makes me wonder though, if I say takes my cheese or any kind of dairy product say to a pitchin or a family get together....will I be breaking the law? Say I make my bread with whey from the cheese I make, is my bread illegal (for sale that is)?

I'm not even sure if we will drink our milk raw. There is an awful lot of hype about its "healing" properties and quite frankly I'm not so sure. One producer from my FB page said they "healed" three chronic illnesses with their milk. A baby with an ear infection, a three year old with a runny nose and a viral infection in an adult....now first off...why wasn't the baby drinking human milk? Seems like a momma as crunchy as to server her baby raw milk would breastfeed....not buying it.

Going off course here but anyone follow the supposed food gurus? Mercola, Weil, Weston A. Price, heck even Dr. Oz jumps in there....who are you supposed to believe? They all have some overlap and some contradictions to each other but in trying to follow any of their advice I find myself really confused over simple things like say canola oil- which I don't use much because most of it is GMO- but Mercola and Price say its rancid unhealthy oil and Weil and Oz tout its as very healthy. Butter, which I use a lot of, is praised by Price and maybe Mercola but for Weil and Oz its unhealthy saturated fat. Meats are avoided for all but Price. Soaked grains to remove phytic acid or unsoaked to help move out cholesterol? See how confusing this can be? Of course this comes back to raw milk as Mercola and Price sing raw milk praises. Not sure about the other two but Oz would probably warn about how dangerous it is.

Thats all I have, sorry for my rambling on and on. Its been that kind of week already!

its just about seed ordering time

2010-11-08T18:03:00.000-05:00

Guess I should start planning next year's garden. I think we will move it, shrink it and keep it simpler next year. This year it was still too big even though I only used half the space Neil did from the year before but it was still too much to keep up. I think I could probably use the larger garden next year but I'm hoping if I can do a better design job and really maximize the space and plants I'll have a better outcome.

The stars!

2010-10-31T22:23:00.000-04:00

So tonight my husband and I picked up some unwanted limbs and firewood and drug them back to our property to burn tonight. They finally lifted the burn ban in our area so my husband has been just itching to start a fire. We left him to it. So I called around 9pm wondering if he was camping out...nope...just needed some water to put out the remaining embers. I drove out to the property to meet him with a 5 gallon bucket of water and looked up into the sky on the way there and didn't see any stars so I assumed it was cloudy. Once I arrived at the property I realized I was wrong, yes it was partly cloudy, but our city has a good deal of light pollution in town that prevents you from seeing those lovely stars. Out on the property, you can see a lovely sky full of small white twinkles and only a few wispy clouds.

This is one of many reasons why we love this property!

Gahhhhrlic and cake

2010-10-30T12:06:00.000-04:00

I have all the garlic planted! Yeah!! I planted a little over 50 cloves in between our asparagus plants. About 20 were from last years crop and most of the rest were whatever white variety was at the store this season. I did also put down some store bought elephant garlic, but only about 6 cloves. I totally didn't get an order in this year so here's to a little experiment :) I plan to try more of these experiments next year. I'll let you know how it goes.

I've heard from the bank that our appraiser has requested additional information from the builder. Not sure exactly what that might be but I put in a call to our builder today to follow up and try to get this thing off the ground. I had hoped that I we might be started by now since my mother is coming next week but alas, we have no progress at this time.

Speaking of next week, its my husband's birthday! I'm making this cake King Arthur's favorite fudge birthday cake recipe and it just looks so indulgent. I may have to post pictures of it. My mom is coming up from Florida on that same day and the following day we are going to see my sister. Should make for an exciting week around here.

Here's the birthday boy and his biggest fan.

Pondering on Profitability

2010-10-24T17:55:00.000-04:00

Ok well maybe not exactly profit but at least supplemental income to help support our farm efforts. Obviously the hay business is not for us. Our plan is to take 4-5 acres and fence it in for pasture. So what after that? I'm pretty sure I want to do pastured broilers and layers...those are pretty easy with low overhead. I'm debating goat herd milk shares but I'm still not sure what I need to do to get started. I mean obviously we need goats and milk jugs and grass but do I need any kind of licensing or special equipment? What if we get a cow and do cow shares? I know to sell our own cheese I pretty much am out of luck until we have the kind of money that will allow me to purchase full on dairy equipment. I know I'd like to try to do a small CSA eventually but I need at least another year to work out the issues with nutrient deficiencies in the land first.
An idea I'm considering for the spring farmer's market is selling baked goods. So far my breads get raved reviews and at the church bake sale they sold pretty fast at $4/loaf. I could also do jellies and pickles I believe without a special kitchen as long as its through the farm market. I think if I tried it otherwise I'd have to set up a commercial kitchen. Another idea would be to make soaps from the goat milk and also I've been making dishwasher and laundry detergent...maybe I could sell versions of that too?
So much spinning about in my head, I really hope something will clearly come through as the right path. Might be a whole lot of trial and error next year...actually I can promise that!

A lovely walk

2010-10-23T22:37:00.000-04:00

We took today a lovely walk around the perimeter of the property and my husband is embarking on the task of removing saplings and brush that have grown up and are eating up valuable acreage. We were IDing trees and we have elms, maples, oaks, chokecherry, mulberry, crab apple, elderberry, apple, wild plum and hawthorns. Among the rest of the plants we have a bunch of raspberries, blackberries, wild grapes and wild roses. There are a lot of forageables there to work with really. Hopefully I'll report next year what I manage to harvest and process of those.

Haycutters!

2010-10-19T09:11:00.000-04:00

So if you look back a couple of posts you'll see we've had this problem before. Hay cutters come out, cut the field, fluff it and bale it only to let our bales get rained on (there was obvious rain in the forecast) and to make sure and take their share of them....leaving us high and well ...wet!
Our arrangement is that in exchange for half of the hay they are to cut and bale our field, leaving us bales to use for whatever or to sell. The first cutting was in big round bales, which we have about 11 remaining of. The second cutting was square bales in which they were supposed to stack and put a tarp over. They claimed the hired help wasn't worth the trouble and fired them, leaving our bales in the rain and making sure to get theirs home. We have about 160 of those bales, all ruined now. Now on our third cutting we actually didn't expect them to cut. They didn't call, they just came and cut. Well they baled that on Monday and once again left ours to the rain....at least they stacked them this time but we didn't even have a chance being as it rained on Monday! Seriously I would have been happier to see them leave it to improve the soil after cutting than to bale it up.
So in my book, they are stealing our hay. We should have really good hay to sell but they've left us with ruined bales twice now and made sure to take theirs. I think we should fire them, I also think they should pay us for the bales that have ruined and take them off our hands. I'm so over it. We were never looking to make a profit selling hay but we had hoped to offset the cost of planting the field. Now, we have a 1/2 of our years worth of hay, most of it unsellable. Really high quality garbage!
I have someone coming (at least I think I do) to take the bales as a donation. At least we can get them off our land as right now they are just sitting on and killing grass.

Still no news on the appraisal. I really hope to hear something this week.

Channeling a great grandmother?

2010-10-16T23:15:00.000-04:00

Today we celebrated my grandfather's 85th birthday. It was lovely to see family and enjoy a good time with some good food.

Strange conversation topic came up between my grandparents and my uncle about some foods that my grandmother's mother used to make. It all started with me talking about the baking I did yesterday; I made 16 loaves of bread and 4 dozen cookies for a bake sale. It reminded them of my great grandmother baking many loaves of bread at a time. A little further into the conversation they were talking about some of her German cooking....things like fried brains and some kind of loaf that contained tongue, heart, liver and oatmeal (and/or cornmeal) that was chopped, congealed, baked and sliced. I'm not sure how likely it is that I would make those exact dishes but they spoke of the dishes with a great deal of fondness. I guess as we plan to raise and probably butcher our own animals we may have a unique chance to try some of those out. Like they were telling me .....nothing should go to waste. I can't help but be the modern day girl that I am and my knee jerk reaction is yuck! Maybe I won't be channeling her after all.

I'm told it won't be to much longer now

2010-10-13T21:17:00.000-04:00

I'm told by both TK and by Tony the bank dude (yes, that is how I have him listed in my cell phone) that we should hear something from the appraisal soon...as in the next couple of days. This is so unnerving. I'm mostly worried that the appraisal will be too low and we will be back to square one (or two since we already own the land).

I did have the pleasure of visiting the old house I grew up in since its in foreclosure now and I have to say that I thought I might be more interested in buying it at one time but in reality its just too much work. It was a little sad to visit memory lane, after all I did get married there, had my sweet sixteen birthday there and so much more. The house is in some disrepair but not unlivable or impossible to make nice. Its also going for a bargain so I REALLY hope that someone who buys it will fix it up and really love it. Houses that old really deserve to be well loved.

I did get some pruning done in the last few days. All of the fruit trees have now been fall pruned and the trees on the back acre have been relieved of their water sprouts and dead limbs. By fall pruned I mean pruned to restrict growth. I'm really hoping to properly train our fruit trees to be a manageable size and highly productive. I'm also really hoping we actually get a few pieces of homegrown fruit next year. We still need to fortify and possibly move our blueberries, plant the new honeyberries and goji fruits I just received yesterday and move the surviving raspberries into our windbreak. Lots to get done before winter :) Oh and we have more orchard trees (1 each apricot, apple, nectarine and asian pear) on the way and 3 additional blueberries. Some year we should have a crazy amount of produce from our own land...I can't wait.

Maple Valley Off-Grid Farm

2010-10-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

First let me give you the linkage to them:
www.eclecticculturefarm.blogspot.com/
http://www.maplevalleyfarms.net/
http://www.maplevalleyoffgridmercantile.blogspot.com/

So after visiting the beautiful Hope College in Holland, MI we headed north to visit Homemaker Ang of Maple Valley Farm. She greeted us with spiced cake and coffee and we got a peek at farm living for just a few hours. They are off-grid but not like the new generation of off grid but rather the Amish version of off grid. I didn't take any pictures of inside the house, quite frankly because I forgot but I did take some outdoor pictures. We didn't stay long, mostly because we were trying to get back to Anderson that night but we really enjoyed meeting the family and getting a look around.

a quick picture with Homemaker Ang

the fawn, Betty

Those crazy kids!

Maylon pets the fawn

Mighty Hunter Neil petting the fawn

Cute!

the cabin bedroom (which you can rent for a night ;) )

a view from one of the rooms into the kitchen

kitchen complete with wood stove

another cool building on the farm

the view of the main farm from the cabin

a trail in the woods leading to the cabin from the pond

isn't this scenic! They said there are some big fish in there.

One of the girls coming up the road on her pony.

milking time

mmm...bacon!

Crazy Week!

2010-10-07T15:39:00.000-04:00

This week has been an incredible roller coaster.

Monday- I'll keep this short, basically we found out last week that we were pregnant, however, the pregnancy appeared to not be viable and I had a miscarriage on monday. We are fine, this is something that has happened to us several times (4) before and while it sucks we are moving on and not trying to dwell on it.

Tuesday- We left Tuesday evening for South Bend to visit my sister. I <3 her :) She's the best, we really kind of sprung on her with us arriving late, with our dog (who I totally neglected to make plans for while we were out of town)....and she loves our son- I have the best sister! Really!

Wednesday- We had the privilege of listening to Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms speak at Hope College in Michigan. The earlier lecture was "Ballet in the Pasture". In summary, it was a description of the whys and hows of their farm's pasture rotation system of cows, followed by chickens, followed by pigs and rest. We plan to model some of what he does on our own farm. The later lecture was "Local Food to the Rescue" and that was about the ins and outs of the processing, packing and sales of locally produced meat. I've not listened to that one yet because my husband and I switched off between watching our son and the lectures. We filmed them both so we will watch them more closely later and I may have more details to add in another blog post.
Later that day we visited Maple Valley Off-Grid Farm. I'll make a separate blog post for that one too since I have pictures to share.

Today! Thursday- We have bank approval on the house subject to the pending appraisal. That's really the only thing holding us up at this point.

Still waiting on the bank

2010-09-28T13:53:00.000-04:00

Well, title says it all. We are still waiting for a response from the bank. We know it went over to appraisals because they finally cashed our check. I'm making a basic assumption that they would have ran our finances before it went to appraisals so we should be nearing the end of the process of the bank part. Either they will say yes or no.

I've contact two Indiana goat breeders to let them know we would be trying to obtain dairy goats in the spring. I was thinking on getting two, I figure at just under a gallon a day, two would allow me to have milk to make ice cream, cheese, store some and have plenty to drink too. Also in the plans are some broilers and layers.

I'll be glad once we get going on all this stuff, its stressful around here right now with the way things are around the apartment. We're pretty squished and just lots going on.

anticlimatic

2010-09-05T20:16:00.000-04:00

There is nothing going on right now. We hired the builder, we are waiting for the financing and the garden has slowed WAY down.
I've been dreaming. I still have lots of that going on.

Yay! we are moving forward!!!

2010-08-23T11:50:00.000-04:00

Ok we are onboard for building this fall. Sounds like after talking to the finance guy that we should be approved (not worried) and able to get started. Trying to wrap my head around it. Its this plan
The Raleigh

Moving forward?

2010-08-20T16:32:00.000-04:00

Moving forward is more of an inquiry than a statement today. Tomorrow we speak with a builder about beginning a build. Its very exciting but I have some concerns related to financing that hopefully won't amount to anything.

The hay has been rained on now many times and I'm sure is only good for cows. We've had a couple of people call on it but they never seem to follow through with the call back and pick up. Not exactly sure what's going on there.

The garden is fading fast with the exception of a few plants; okra, popcorn, cowpeas, pintos, chard and kohlrabi. I'm actually a bit eager for the end of this years garden.

Ruined Hay

2010-08-14T09:30:00.000-04:00

So this morning we had planned to wake early and deal with the hay only to have it rain before we leave the apartment. Ugh. I think someone/thing is trying to let us know that this hay was not meant to be. So now we need to try to unload it or find a creative use for it. I thought about donating it, freecycling it, making a shed of it (like a strawbale but hay instead), using it as tree mulch. Its hard to say what is the best thing to do with it now that its pretty much worthless.

On the positive, we are going to visit TK homes today about an email offer that is pretty awesome and might allow us to build soon.....REALLY soon! More to come on that, I'm trying not to get too excited about it.

Wet Hay

2010-08-11T14:29:00.000-04:00

Wet hay is a very bad thing. Its our second cutting of hay and we had it done in square bales this time and it was all going pretty well until it rained this morning--and looks like its going to rain off and on all night. For us it means making tepees out of hay bales so they air out and dry again or suffer the consequence of ruined hay. Like 100 + bales of ruined hay. At $3.00 a bale that's money lost. Not to mention, what do you do with that many bales of bad hay? I guess it could be mulch for our orchard but we still have about 10 round bales left from the first cut that are needing to be used up or sold. Did I mention that we suck at selling hay? I'm thinking of asking my DH to let me handle the business of hay since I'm more available than he is in the hopes that we can do a better job of selling it off when the time comes.

What! Its August???

2010-08-10T07:25:00.000-04:00

Time flies, does it? My last entry was in May so that's 2 months of busy work to keep me from updating my blog (I swear busy non-stop...haha!) Ok, so I may be exaggerating a bit. We did find a couple of builders that we like but the cost of building with a custom builder seems too high for today's housing market- we have some big concerns that the bank won't finance a custom home because it won't appraise high enough. I think we will probably end up with the likes of Hallmark or TK homes. There is also another option we are considering in that we are going to look at existing homes with acreage. This could be a really good thing since we would have more total acres and we might end up paying less overall. Anyhow, nothing at this point is set in stone. We are going to start looking at existing properties and in the spring when we have our down payment together we will build if we don't find the perfect existing home.
I have a couple of new ideas for a home based business. One is home orchard management- taking care of existing apple trees in people's yards for the payment of 1/2 the produce. It doesn't make money but it would give me valuable practice and of course lots of apples and hopefully other fruits. I'm not ready to share my other idea, I still have much research to do.
The garden has been crazy. We went on vacation in June and low and behold the skies opened up and rained for an entire week! My garden looked pretty good before we left but when we got back the weeds had shot up a foot and the bugs had gone wild. My tomatoes took it the hardest. It looked (and still looks) like they were hit with blight, hornworms, blossom end rot...the works. For about 2 weeks I was throwing away tomatoes for rot. They are recovering and I'm getting some decent 'maters but I'm not sure I'll have enough to do much with them. The corn also suffered; was stunted and lot of tassels but no ears. Some patches are doing better than others so we might have some late corn but overall pretty disappointing. My squash/cukes/melons were getting taken on by squash bugs. I was tearing off leaves to remove the eggs and eventually I dusted them to kill them off. I can however seem to grow beans pretty well :)
My son is growing fast, he's 15 months and walks well so when we go to the garden he usually ends up heading for the tomatoes. Boy that kid can make short work of a 'mater. He will pick it right off the vine and just begin chowing down. That's my boy!! Glad I grow organic!

another month passes by

2010-05-30T00:24:00.000-04:00

So we've been in the apartment now a month. We are really no closer to selecting a builder but we are making progress; I've already met with 2 builders, eliminated one, with 3 appointments next week. I do think we have a plan we like that we are using for estimates and its a very flexible cape cod style 1 story with a future planned addition. Its a smaller house but I think it will be perfect.

The garden grows! We have already harvested several pounds of radishes as well as some spinach, lettuce, strawberries, even some buttoned broccoli. The cabbages are beginning to form heads, the chard and kale are growing fast, corn is breaking ground and the first run of beans should be producing in a couple weeks.
Next up we need to plant melons and cukes.

Lots going on here, looking forward to the next chapters

Greening up Anderson

2010-05-09T18:11:00.000-04:00

So I created a new Facebook page to help me (and anyone else who cares) find local businesses and farmers worth supporting. Might also help me discover what businesses keep their money in the city I now live in. I figure it will also help me find a customer base once our little farm thing gets off the ground.
click the badge on the left of my page to view it.

Its Done!

2010-05-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

The house in Greenfield is sold, done deal, no more anything to deal with. Have to admit its a bit surreal no longer being a homeowner but this is a step closer to our farming dream. I've been neglecting the garden for about a week or so but next week I need to jump in full force to get pea trellis up, weeds knocked down, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants planted and staked where need be. Its going to be a crazy week (as if I ever don't have a crazy week).
We just celebrated my son's first birthday and we had no idea what we were doing but it went pretty well regardless. New toys and new clothes and about half a cake came home with us that night. We were so exhausted but it was great, got to see family and friends and hopefully a good time was had by all.

Spring Planting and Hancock Farm Tour

2010-04-24T18:52:00.000-04:00

I've been busy planting; peas, beans, carrots, potatoes, chard....and so on. Its been so nice to get out in the sunshine and fresh air and feeling like I'm actually accomplishing something for a change besides a clean house.
I'm seriously considering a hoop house for our property, looks like a nice big one will run me about a grand for something not too fancy. While on the Farm tour we visited a nursery that had about a dozen hoop houses and he told us he started with just one to start his own seedlings and he started selling and before he knew it he was making more money doing that than his regular job and bought more houses. Seems like its been a good business for him.
Also on the farm tour we stopped at a dairy. Funny because just earlier we were discussing the possibility of beginning our own dairy; not really feasible for us we believe. Anyhow, we saw they had dairy bull calves and the dairy operator said they do sell them for beef steers. I'm thinking this could be a great way to get into raising cattle without the commitment of buying 2 dairy cows, kind of a test the waters approach. We actually plan to do the same with pigs, just buy a feeder pig or two to raise and see how it goes. With chickens we will start out at Tractor supply with their spring chicks. Low commitment but loads of experience I'm sure. I do however plan to get dairy goats right off the bat.
While I'm indecisive about cows, mainly because of their size and quantity of milk, I'm quite sure goats will work beautifully for us. I'm also quite sure I'd like to have turkeys and chickens. Anything beyond that we will just have to see how it goes.
We are still looking at house plans, seems like we just do it in spurts. Perhaps after writing this I'll browse through a few.
Until next time :)

Our house sold!

2010-04-15T08:19:00.000-04:00

Finally we have a sale! We close out this chapter of our lives on May 7th. My DH and I decided to move into an apartment so we have plenty of time to find and start building on our property. This is so exciting. We are researching builders right now, getting some mixed reviews on a few; fortunately we have 6 months to find one which will allow us 6 months to build a home. I may have to rename my blog to How to Build a Farm after that.

Our apartment will be cramped for us, a good 300 sq ft smaller (missing a bedroom and a bath from our house). Most of our stuff will remain in storage so building a house will be a priority. One big plus is that our apartment is very close to our property so we will be able to garden and make daily trips out there as the season calls for it.

We spoke to Hallmark builders, they want us to begin building in August... seems too soon for us really since we took on a burden of debt to sell our house and we'd like to pay that down first.

Well more to come as the events unfold...

Its March! ramblings from me

2010-03-01T21:01:00.000-05:00

Oh my its March....that means garden season is nearly here. I have some head starts on broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage all ready to go for spring planting. I'm direct sowing this year carrots-rainbow, nantes, tendersweet, peas- misty and maestro english and snow peas, variety lettuces, spinach....just to name a few.

I seriously have cabin fever. I'm trying to arrange a walking group and the idea thats floating in my head would be a walking group that visits various historic areas and walking trails on a regular basis. Sounds good to me anyhow, social interaction plus the added benefit of some great scenery.

My son is going to be 10 months on the 5th and I'm still in awe of how fast a year is approaching. This time last year I was on bedrest, bored out of my mind going in for weekly ultrasounds and checks. Amazing what a difference a year makes.

Food Inc.

2010-02-02T13:18:00.000-05:00

I've been on a documentary kick since we enrolled in Netflix. I finally watched Food Inc. and it was really moving. I nearly cried listening to the seed cleaning guy have to turn in his customers and friends while on trial with Monsanto (GRRRRR! I have NO love for that company). So many disturbing things about that video and a few things that some people would find disturbing that I didn't. (I also watched King Corn so if I confuse the 2 sorry )
The corn subsidy, the folks who complained about the price of medicine but bought crappy food, the GM foods, the prevalence of E coli in beef and elsewhere all bothered me. Oh and the ammonia laced beef additive---ewwww! I'm so glad I don't eat beef!

6 more weeks of winter

2010-02-02T13:12:00.000-05:00

I have my seeds, mulch and starting medium and I've been busy potting up seeds for the spring. So far I have 8 cold set tomatoes, 8 plum dandy tom, 8 variety slicers (rutgers, marmande, cavern, etc) and 8 cherry tom (golden current, swt. baby girl, reisentraube, etc), 6 red skinned potato (out of my pantry..lol), 8 dusky aubergine, 8 variety aubergine, 8 hot peppers and 8 bell peppers. tonight I think I may start my cabbage, cauliflower, broccolis and whatever other ones I need to start early like amaranth (don't have many seeds). I lost my packet of amish paste tom seeds so I'll look for some at a nearby store.

This is looking like the start of a busy season.

The Business of Being Born

2010-01-11T12:59:00.000-05:00

So I decided to watch this documentary Ricki Lake put out called The Business of Being Born; I think I may have even seen it at least in part before. Also right now in Indymoms there are some discussion threads about home births and their values, risks etc and the posters like to refer to this movie as pro-home birth. Anyhow mostly this movie is pro but at the end the filmmaker who was pregnant during filming and planning a home birth ended up having a c-section at a local hospital and delivered a teeny tiny growth restricted baby...something that probably would have been caught had she been monitored by an OB rather than a midwife and had she had a homebirth as she had planned she probably would have lost her baby. seems like they defeated their intent.

Planning for critters

2010-01-07T17:40:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking positive today. I believe that sometime this year we will sell our house OR we will obtain the house at the front of our property...either way its a good thing. So for critters out there here are the zone rules we must follow:
concept of Farm Animal Unit has been created to balance the impact of large and small animals.
FA-01: This Farm Animal Standards section applies to the following districts:
AP AG CR R1 R2 GC HC LI GI
A. Exemptions: All lots shall be permitted up to and including 0.4 animal units for the purpose of
facilitating participation in 4-H and other educational opportunities. All lots which include 0.4 or
fewer animal units shall be exempt from the setback requirements of this section.
B. Farm Animal Defined: Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as regulating the keeping of
household pets. For the purpose of this section, farm animals shall be defined as those which are
raised and maintained for, or in support of, the production of food or other products.
C. Lot Size: The minimum lot size on which farm animals are permitted shall be 4 acres.
D. Animal Units Permitted: There shall be 2 animal units permitted per acre as determined based
on the following table. The Planning Director shall have the discretion to determine the minimum
acreage for any farm animals not listed.
Animal Type Units:
Large Animals (horses, cattle, buffalo, camels,
donkeys) 1.5
Medium Animals (llamas, emu, ostrich, alpacas,
sheep, goats) 1
Small Animals (pigs, turkeys, geese) 0.5
Very Small Animals (chickens, rabbits, ducks) 0.1

so any 2 goats or sheep per acre, any 4 pigs, turkey or geese per and any 20 chickens, rabbits or ducks. I think my ideal situation would be a 3-4 diary goats (staggered lactations - kids for meat or sale), a sow (to breed yearly-piglets for meat or sale), 8 layers, 20 fryers, 10 turkeys and rabbits ...this would give us meat, dairy and egg self-sufficiency. we have just enough room :D

that and a 1 acre garden(eventually) and our orchard (planted just needs to mature), leave an acre for the house and yard...should be fantastic! Boy, I hope this is our year.

New Year, New Goals

2010-01-03T22:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not even going to try to call this a resolution. Its more like goals or ideas.

1. I going to continue my deconstructive phase; that is taking convenience items and breaking them back down into their simpler origins.
2. I would like to lose some weight. I figure I'm about 70lbs beyond where I should be...if I could lose half of that I would be a lot healthier.
3. I would love to find myself pregnant again sometime in the late part of 2010. I know that could be contradictory to my 2nd goal but a girl can dream (and if I lost the weight it would make my pregnancy easier on my back)
4. Plant a productive garden and actually use the produce that comes out of it.
5. Stick to our budget and begin to save money toward an emergency fund.
6. Learn to thrift shop- might need some help with that one from a few friends...I'm no good at shopping at Goodwill.
7 Actively search for an independent work from home business. Might be selling produce or sewing or jewelry but I really think this is something I should be aiming for.

A little garden experiment

2009-12-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

So I think this year along with my fancy schmancy seeds I would like to plant a "grocery store" garden using seeds you can locate in a grocery store. Perfect examples would be black beans or celery seed (which is usually salsify). I know one year I had planted whole mustard seed out of my pickling spice mix and it not only grew but it produced seed and then that seed grew. Very cool! So as an experiment I will run germination tests over the next couple of weeks and just see how viable all that seed you get in the grocery section really is. I also plan to use store bought potatoes and garlic. Who knows I might find a new favorite.

Yule Log

2009-12-19T22:50:00.000-05:00

I made a yule log today using a recipe from online with a few alterations
here is the original:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chocolate-Decadence-Yule-Log/Detail.aspx
now I mixed all the dry together first, in a separate bowl I put the eggs and oil, water. blended wet, added to dry and baked.
I also adjusted the recipe for 18 since my pan was 12x18, used cocoa and oil instead of unsweetened chocolate (which removed the melting step for the cake), used 7 eggs instead of 7 1/2, used 3 TBS water + a single serve instant coffee packet instead of coffee liquor.
The icing was mostly to recipe except since I needed more of it I added 8 oz of heavy cream whipped up to extend it and again left out the coffee liquor.

I just hope it makes it to church tomorrow in one piece and its enjoyed :D