A better lambing season

As many of you know, our lambing season had a horrible start: 3 stillbirths (one was partially eaten by neighbor dogs) and one dead 2 day old lamb. It took its toll and left us pretty depressed. Luckily, the Navajo-Churro sheep had a much better show. Darth Sheep gave birth to twins on March 15th. That gave us a male and female lamb for eating and for raising/selling, the other NJ gave two male lambs a few days later. Of course with our lambing luck the second NJ refused to accept one of her lambs and by the time we realized this he was pretty cold and not doing too well. Though it was a long night for every one the abandoned lamb survived and is now living in the house and answers to the name of "Derp", an indication of his humorously low IQ. Really, he is that dumb. With the help of some children (and adults who fall for his cuteness) Derp has now outgrown all the other lambs due to his nearly constant supply of milk.

So in all we have three male lambs to eat (meat babies according to Rosie) and one female who we are undecided about, we may keep her or sell her or eat her.

So while our sheep population is growing we are looking to reduce our goat population. Our goat count stands at 2 adult females and 2 young wethers (castrated males). We will be eating the two males and probably selling one of the females leaving us with one goat for cheese and the occasional meat baby.

Our chicken flock is about to undergo a reduction (tonight) as we are ready to cull out some of the hens who are not laying enough and who do not have the traits we are looking for. More specifically we are going to be culling the remaining Polish, Buttercups, and perhaps a few others. This Friday for workshop dinner we will have smoked whiskey glazed chicken on the menu. We feed our farm hands well.

One of the lessons we have learned the last few years has been how to achieve a better balance of livestock on the homestead. We need fewer fowl but more milk producers, fewer goats but more sheep. Trying to achieve a better balance will allow us to not only have happier animals but to have fewer animals producing more food for our family. Also having a better balance of animals leads to less impact on our native flora, leading to healthier plants and better soil. Some of the worst soil you will ever see is in areas where too many animals have been packed into too small a space (ever drive by a feed lot?) As strange as it sounds more animals does not mean more food and a better life. If we where in the business of selling livestock perhaps we would be more willing to pack more fauna on our property, but as our goal is to be as self sustaining as we can there is simply no need to keep a large population of any one animal. For our readers who are looking to start their own homestead or just want to add a few chickens to their yard for eggs, our suggestion for you would be; Start Small. 3 chickens is a good number to start with, no reason to buy 25 chicks your first time out. One pigmy goat can produce an impressive amount of milk if treated right, no need to bring home the whole herd. Animals are a great addition to the urban homestead just make sure your not turning your back yard into a feedlot, you and your animals will be happier for it.

The backyard

I keep forgetting that not everyone sees things through my rose colored lens. When I look at the backyard I see so much potential that sometimes I forget how messy it is. But today I was thinking about all the neat things I would like to do with it and happened to actually see the mess as well. That frustrated me. I've gone through so many different iterations of plans for the backyard that now it seems as if it is actually getting somewhere. I want to draw them out and start working on different projects. I want to get the backyard to look like how I see it in my head.

Here is a glimpse of the backyard when we got it:








Here is what I would like it to look like with some things already in place:








We're always working on things because when we look outside we see the second picture. It is just taking us a bit to get it to look like what we see.

To cow or not to cow?

John Seymour stated that the first question on a small homestead should be "To cow or not to cow?" and in his opinion a cow was an invaluable asset to the small homestead. Rosie and I have recently found our cow, a 3/4 mini Jersey named "Brown Cow". I have posted an image of Brown Cow and some of the great things she has given us in her short time on the homestead. Top left is a pound of butter we just made, followed by the proto-butter. We where able to use my great grandmothers old butter churn to make our butter and I can only hope she was looking down on us with a smile. The next image is one days milk, about 6 gallons. Then a image of Brown Cow followed by our fridge full of milk to bursting after the second day of milking. So far Brown Cow is amazing, she produces more milk in one day than our goats do in a month. Tomorrow will be all about making cheese, yogurt and more butter as we hold a series of classes on what to do with our new windfall of milk.

Now on the other hand, cows are a very expensive commodity; the cost of the animal its self can run into the thousands depending on the breed and the cost of food can be almost as high. Our little cow eats about 1 flake of oak hay and one flake of alfalfa a day plus a little grain and that is on top of the grass she lives on. I have heard horror stories of a Swiss Brown (large dairy cow breed) that ate an entire bale of hay a day plus 25 lbs of grain while in milk! Also cows deposit a lot a manure (up to 15 tons a year) and if you are unable to deal with that much manure it can be a big smelly mess (for us it will be much needed soil amendment).

So far Brown Cow has been a great boon to our home and our life style, we shall see what the future holds for us and for her.

Bees on the Almond blossoms

Just because I love the sound of the bees on the Almond tree and because the bees and the butterflies seemed to be having fun out there. Hope you can hear them humming away.

I must do all my pruning in January

I can't tell for sure since the weather seems to keep telling me to jog on but I think from the last three years of watching the trees that I might want to do all my trimming in January. The trees go dormant sometime during November or December and then the buds start to swell in January. All the short cold hour trees seem to bloom in February so I have to make sure that I do all my spraying or trimming during January to keep from damaging the trees and vines.

This year I was able to trim most of the trees and berries in time. Heck, I was even able to take some 18 new shoots from the boysenberry in the front and transplant the to the back. I also started propagating some grapes to plant along some of the fences to work as live hedges. We'll see if that is really how they will end up or if I end up devising a much more elaborate pathway for the garden area.

But I must remember... prune in January before the bud swells.

Sourdough starter

Lately I've been making a lot of sourdough with the whey from our kefir during the cheese making process but I was fortunate enough to head down to Arroyo Grande to pick up some sourdough starter from a lady on Freecycle. She has a starter that is over 100 years old and it smells delicious. The poor thing is very set in its way so I'm trying to coax it to start on a different feeding cycle so that I can make bread more frequently than just once a week. I'll have to see how it goes as we start making bread with it on a more regular basis.

Charcuterie

There was a very interesting Charcuterpalooza challenge on Facebook last year that I was only able to catch the tail end of, but what I did see thoroughly impressed me. After reading their blogs and seeing the entries I decided to try out my own challenge for 2012. I picked up a copy of Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn on Amazon thanks to Jake and Erron Depew for this specific purpose. It is only March 1st but we've already been able to try out many different things.

For January we tried out bacon. We cured it in kosher salt and honey for about a week and then brought the temp up to 152 degrees and then smoked it. We found that if we let the pork belly cure for longer than a week we end up with a slightly terriaki flavor to the bacon. Bacon was also our first attempt at smoking so we ended up with a very steep learning curve on how to make our barrel smoker work. Our friend Lisa brought over flavored honeys (one was basil and the other was tarragon) and we made a few pieces flavored with these honeys. In the future we would like to go ahead and flavor our bacon a bit more with additional spices just to see how it turns out.

February turned in a whole challenge all on its own. We were supposed to go to the Culinary Symposium but the van broke down so we ended up with a bunch of slaughtered ducks which we made into duck prosciutto and confit. We also had a weekend of sausage making where we made fresh and smoked sausages as well as salamis. We were also able to start some ham and ham hocks brining for later smoking.

At the start of March I can't help but look at the extra chickens in our yard and know that we'll be culling a few more. We'll have to try them brined or smoked or both. I'll also save the livers for pate and for some of the italian sauce recipes I keep reading about. I'm looking forward to a nummy March.

We'll follow with some recipes.