Navajo-Churro Baby!!

Jed and I have been looking for Navajo-churro sheep for a while. They were the original sheep brought over to the Americas by the Spanish. And finally I found some on craigslist. I just got a call this morning and we're going to see about getting a sheep for our little farm! We'll see if we can rent a ram so that the Tunis sheep can also take and then we'll have baby sheep on the way for our farm. Yahoo!!!

Plant update

The garlic in the front is taking off, so are the artichokes, asparagus, favas, and onions. The rain did the strawberries good. We'll see if the rabbits left any carrots. They did enjoy the celery. Which reminds me, I haven't seen any rabbits so I'm thinking one of the neighbors poisoned them. That thought creeps me out because I would hate to think that there is poison out there that could get into my animal's water or food supply. Moving on, the order of plants came in and the raspberries all look like if they are taking off, which means I just need to plant all 18 of them and 5 of the blackberries. I only received 75 of my 100 strawberries and it appears that 25 of them were moldy and dead. =( So I'll be emailing the company to return them since I cannot use them. Hopefully my last package will come in without any damage.

Farmwork while pregnant

Pregnancy seems to be short bursts of energy punctuated with bouts of utter fail. Today I'm so tired but was able to feed the animals and con Aaron into helping me move the huge mound of green waste in the front to the back where it can feed the goats. Aaron was able to move large quantities of the green waste by tying it up with a rope and walking back to the goats. He looked like those little old people in old paintings carrying something many times their size on their backs. I wish I could have taken a picture. After a bit I was totally worn out and had to take a break. I laid down for a bit but the baby just kept kicking which made it difficult to actually sleep.

I finally got up and made some dinner then went out front to move the last bits of green waste. After flinging most of the big pieces over the horse gate I started moving the nice mulch over to the veggie beds in the front. I also placed some under the front gate where the chickens keep on getting out. I also watered the strawberry bed and I plan on placing some of the mulch in that bed after they're a bit more developed.

I then came inside to continue the lard process. I was able to move dirty dishes to the sink, wipe off counters, and put things away when I became insanely tired again. =( I'm now back in bed trying to type while laying down. I wish that my fits of energy would last a little longer. We'll see what it will be like when the little one gets here.

On a happy note, the remaining goose was sitting on the eggs today. =) It made me happy. I'll go out and check on the little broody hen tomorrow morning and put up some cardboard so that if the chicks hatch soon they won't fall down.

I think I just need more minions...

The passing of a goose

Yesterday I found the mama goose dead behind the old coop. She looked like if she just walked back there to hide and then slipped into death. She didn't thrash just layed down and died. =(

She left a full nest of eggs that she had been sitting on. I don't want to disturb them, but if her daughter sits on them then they should be fine. If not, then we lost all the goslings. Tough call and it doesn't seem as if I'll be able to end up with a good outcome. We'll just see how things go.

I know that the male and the young female are breeding and that she started a nest, but I'm not sure how that is going. We'll just have to see how things go.

Neighbor frustrations

We research killing our animals very thoroughly, we take the time to see what is the fastest and safest way to slaughter them so that they won't suffer. Whenever we slaughter larger animals we always shoot in the head (to kill instantly) and then we slit the throat to have them bleed out faster. We make sure that they go swiftly. That is part of what we owe the animals.

On Sunday, Ginger called me over, not 3 minutes after Jed had fired the shot and started telling me that we needed to find a more humane way to slaughter our animals because she saw that pig thrashing for 15 minutes after we shot it. That she's around death all the time and she knows what suffering is. That it wasn't funny and that we needed to do something about it and then she just walked away.

Firstly, we put up boards so that the other pigs could not see, so where the heck was she that she could see Macaroon all the way from her porch. Second, 15 minutes had not passed. Third we make sure that they go quickly. Fourth, all animals twitch after death and this especially is true for pigs who are known to thrash after death. Fifth, wtf?

I was very, very frustrated and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was very insulted and wanted to know why she was offering this input if she has absolutely no knowledge of what we are doing. I was up contemplating saving up just to put up a tall fence on her side of the property just so that she wouldn't have to "deal" with us any more. The feedback I received from people is that she would only want to spy on us some more because we sould obviously have something to hide from her if we put up a fence. I'm not sure how to deal with it, but I'm just so frustrated with being insulted by her. I'm probably going to take one of my friend's advise and if she tries to talk to me I'm just going to let her know that I do not feel comfortable talking to her and I would rather go back to a "neighborly" relationship where we just wave and say hi but do not have anything to do with talking to each other. =\ I'm still miffed.

Piggy Parts

Sunday after the Slaughter Party Guy was able to take me to the store to pick up some more salt for curing the bacon and then we continued to make more lard.

After he left I started working on other things then went back to the piggy parts. The head and skin was brought in and is ready to be processed, the meat and organs were ground and mixed with spices to make the garlic sausages and the fat continued to be processed. I also was able to get all the leaf lard and to process it. Not as pearly white as the first few batches of lard, but still has a different consistency. The lard processing continues and I'm not sure when I can finish it all. =)

The bacon curing is on going and we'll try on different types of recipes to see what we like. The remaineder of the piggy parts will be put into the ground to help compost and to add to the soil nutrients for the future patch of watermelons that will be put in where Macaroon was staying. It looks like spring is here and it's just the beginning of all the work.

Slaughter Party Update

Due to rain and other events we ended up having a pretty small turnout, but luckily enough to go ahead and slaughter Macaroon and several roosters. Jed and Guy did a ton of prep work on Friday getting things set up so that Macaroon was separated from the other piggies, built a bridge, moved our washed out bridge back to where it needed to be, fed the animals, built the structure for scalding her, picked up some extra straw to soak up the blood, built a little platform under the hanging area, and re-enforced the structure that we were going to hang Macaroon off of.

Saturday started early with getting the piggies nice and drunk. They mixed up cob with molasses and two quarts of vodka, which all the pigs promptly ate. Macaroon simply fell asleep, but Digger and Oreo got goofy drunk and started staggering around and doing silly things. Digger began digging like mad then staggering into things. Oreo began trying to put a blue tarp around him and swayed as if to dance. It was my task to distract the piggies so I took some of the rice crispy treats that I had made for Jed, some left over waffles, and some pumpkins and walked out towards the piggies. I moved them to the farthest part of the paddock and enticed them with unspeakable goodies. They loved the rice crispy treats and the waffles, and they even found the pumpkins delicious. Jed let me know that he was going to shoot so I gave them some more pumpkins and when the shot was fired they got a little startled but didn't let it distract the from the food. I kept them busy for a little bit longer and left pumpkins there for them. Our neighbor ended up calling me over and just frustrated the hell out of me (story for another post) so that when I walked back to the group I was in a bad mood.

We tried scalding her but we didn't have enough water and the temp of 150 wasn't working so well. Guy and I skinned her and then I went ahead and took out the organs. After that Jed split her in half and we were able to take her in to finish the cuts. Guy and Jed jointed her and then Holly, Brighid, and Melody helped vaccum seal the cuts. Holy Brighid, and Melody also helped cut up pieces of fat so that I could start making tallow.

Soon after Lucy and Alex showed up and then they went out to slaughter some chickens. In all we ended up slaughtering about 6-8 chicken/roosters. The roosters just had to go and so did the Frizzles, which Holly lovingly called them zombie chickens. We were able to start grinding the left over "stew meat" to make into sausage making and I cut out the intestines and started cleaning them while dinner was served. We had corned beef and cabbage and then were able to send people home with some honey, eggs, lard, and chickens. =) All in all, a good day, but we'll need a lot more help when we do Oreo.

New plants

Earlier on this month I went hog wild and ordered a whole mess of plants... what would I call a whole mess of plants? (I think Jed would call this Rosie math)
A whole mess of plants = 100 strawberry, 18 raspberry (3 early, 3 late, 3 everbearing, 3 yellow, 3 black, 3 red), 5 blackberry, 1 gooseberry, 1 red currant, 1 black current, 1 elderberry, 6 poplar, 2 aspen, 3 birch... I think that's all.
Well, yesterday I received my first shipment, but my poor aspens were broken in three different places. =( I'll see about planting the strawberries in the fabulous bed that Sharon dug out for me. I think I'll probably call it the Sharon berry bed.

When it rains, it pours

We had a pretty interesting weekend with epic wind gusts and interesting rainfall. As of Friday I believe we are now at some insane number as in 5inches as of this moment. I call this insane because the normal for the year is around 13 inches of rain in this area. When we had the flooding in Dec/Jan - we received 7 inches in that storm. The weather is also interesting because right now I'm looking out the window are sunny blue skies while there is heavy rains falling on us. The streets are flooding and it seems a bit comical. On Sunday morning Jed was able to go out and wade in knee deep water to move debris out of the path of the "river" running through our back yard. The ducks and geese loved it, but all the other animals were pretty upset. The chickens had to play hop-scotch from little island to island so that they could move to a grassy area with out flowing water. The bridge was swept off the base and everything is pretty much floating around the back yard. As soon as the water starts to recede then it starts raining again and the whole process starts all over again. =) Forecast calls for not rain this weekend so we should be able to slaughter, and then more rain all of next week. We'll see how all this plays out.

Spring = broody time

At the moment we have a broody chicken that has been on her eggs for over a week. I just found a goose nest yesterday and other chickens are starting to keep the eggs warm... Hopefully things will work out well and we'll end up with a gagillion baby chicks running around. More food for us. I hope the goslings hatch because I'm looking forward to a Xmas goose... with gooseberry jam on it. The turkeys are also desperately trying to mate and hatch out chicks, but as we do not have a male for them, it makes it very difficult for them to actually be able to make any new baby turkeys. We might put some chicken eggs under them to see if that works.

Also, Bugger will be ready to breed at the end of this month, Lucy aka Unigoat at the end of April, the sheepies are ready to go, and Digger is ready to breed. Sheesh... It's like the Discovery Channel around here.

I guess it makes it even weirder that our baby is due at the end of June... there is obviously a theme going on this year. We'll see if the ducks join in the celebration.

Teasing turkeys

We had a fabulous weekend with our friend, Sharon coming down to visit. I have mixed feelings because I know she came down to help us on the farm, but I still feel bad because we're putting her to work. But I suppose my personal gain outweighs my guilt. Yaaay!
Friday night we had an armour workshop so we had people over to work on projects and so we just hung out and ate tacos. Sharon came in from the back yard and said that the turkeys were really tired because they kept laying down and that she was able to pet them. =D That night I asked Sharon if the turkeys laid down when she got close or if they were already laying down. I wanted to warn her that all the turkeys were broody and were hoping that she would mount them.
Saturday we started off by eating quesadillas with scrambled eggs, yogurt, fruit, and snackies and then we went out to trim goat and sheepy hoofies. The goats were fine as they are really easy to walk up to and to hold on to. I believe the only one that gave us trouble was Lucy, which we have been calling Unigoat due to her one horn. After that we tried "wrangling" the sheep but that was just futile. We moved on to other projects which included the dismanteling (aka: demolishing) of the old guinea coop and the old pig pen. While dismanteling the pig pen we found that we had a ton of pumpkin seeds growing. Hopefully they'll be able to grow and provide a nice pumpkin crop this year. The only surprise is that we have absolutely no clue what types of pumpkins or if they are other types of plants that we fed to the piggies.
And as it turns out, Sharon was curious to see if the turkeys actually wanted to mate with her so she began to pet the turkeys and then ask how they were able to mate if their tails stayed down. I told her that the tom usually mounts on top and then and when he penetrates that the tail raises. So she proceeded to try to press on different parts of the turkey's back to get the tail to flip up. Now the turkeys make cooing noises when she's around and automatically drop into position when she's around. =D
After destruction we had food and then took a nap before heading back out to trim one of the sheepies hoofs. We were able to get Sheepie #1 but not #2. Their wools is ready to be sheered as well so we'll see when we can do that. We also worked a little in the front and were able to scythe some of the front parking area so that cars can actually park closer to the gate. Jed took the grass and clippings to the back and threw them on the pigs so that we had green pigs running around.
On Sunday Jed took off to work but Sharon helped me set up the new strawberry bed so she dug and broke up clumps as well as helped place the bricks around the bed. It looks a lot better and I look forward to having my strawberry plants come in so that we can have year round strawberries.
In short it was a fabulous weekend and we really enjoyed having friends over to chat and work on things. We look forward to the slaughter party and hope to have an enjoyable weekend then as well.

Animal Auction

So Rosie and I attended our first animal auction the other day, it was.....Well interesting.

There where a number of rude people who seemed to think that coming into the auction 20 min late means that you get to stand in the view of people who arrived on time. I mean REALLY? Who does that?

The animals where interesting and while we did not see anything we felt the need to bid on the prices that animals went for was very reasonable. We talked a little about teaching a class at a latter date "Swine to Sausage, how to slaughter and part out your pig" and getting a pig at the auction and finishing it off at home would be far more realistic than raising it up our selves for a class. Also if people where interested in spit roasting a whole pig, the auction is the way to go.

One interesting thing that we realized is the actual weight of our pigs. We saw some bigger pigs that weighed in at around 650 lbs. and they where quite a bit smaller than Oreo. SO the pig I have been referring to as a 500 pound pig is more like a 700 pound to 800 pound pig. Really, he is THAT big. So our small pig Digger is about 250-300 pounds Macaroon is about 250-300 pounds and Oreo is about 700 pounds. Yup that's right we have about 1200 pounds of pork in the yard. Bacon any one?

Honey harvesting

As many frames were already crystalized we went ahead and just cut out the frames and Jed eats them fromt he fridge as medieval candy. I sometimes find him chewing furiuosly to keep me from seeing that he's eating more of the honey and comb. =)
We did have a few frames with liquid honey in it, but not enough to get a significant amount of liquid honey. =( Those we placed on a plate and we've been using the honey as we go along. The new honey extractor worked really well, but the cleaning process is interesting. Also, I would not recommend using it if the frames have been knocked into the ground and covered in mud... then you just get muddy honey and that's just wrong.
I placed the drawn out comb in the freezer and will save the frames for future bees. I should be able to get some more in April and I'm looking forward to seeing the girls out and about.