Autumn Lingers

We still haven't had a killing frost yet. Last week I covered part of the wood pile.

There should be plenty of extra wood in-the-dry under there for the entire winter. Four rows ten feet long by five feet high. Sorry to bore you but this is how I document this sort of thing. There should be a few ricks of wood left over for next winter.

I might use the surplus to make some terra preta. I have discovered an easier way to make charcoal than previous searches have revealed.

It is described in detail at http://www.saveourskills.com/lump-charcoal

Last week I also turned the compost from these two bins..

..into this larger bin.

I wet it down as I forked it over. Yesterday it had settled about a foot and was giving off considerable heat.

Last evening I took a break from work and raked some of the upper field with Tristan and Toly. We raked hickory nuts and leaves onto a huge piece of tarp. They helped me drag it to the pigpen and dump it. several more evenings like that and we'll have the entire paddock cleared of leaves and hickory nuts and acorns. The pigs should really enjoy the fodder.

The chickens are finally laying a reasonable amount of eggs again.

One of our neighbors had a stroke and gave us his chickens. I reluctantly took them, because I felt bad for him. They promptly gave our hens mites and probably worms. One day I went to collect eggs and there were merely a fraction of the expected amount. Since we treat everything naturally and only when necessary it takes a while to get over this kind of stuff. That was several weeks ago and with intensive treatment and they are finally getting better. No good deed goes unpunished--I didn't even like that guy either.

I also got a bit more slipform masonry completed on the milking barn.

The weather has been perfect for this kind of work and I have been stuck in-doors doing web design. Aarrgh..

Here is that bad cow on pasture furlough. She has been promptly going directly for the acorns. She can poison herself if she eats too many. We have been keeping her up and feeding hay until I can do something about it.


The boys are getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Their raw diet agrees with them. They still have that sheepish puppy look to them. astrid has been keeping the dominance pressure on them even though they are beginning tower over her. Ianto, the tallest, is starting to not take it anymore. I imagine there will be a power change very soon.

customers

we have been selling eggs for a few months now. it seems to be balancing out. i mean, we are mostly paying for our eggs and have extra for extended family. we were frightened of "the other fella" as my father-in-law calls customers. so far most everyone is very nice and gracious. i must admit that our eggs are amazing and that goes a long way to securing return customers.

a couple of days ago i was working in my messy garage and an extra big shiny new truck pulls up. an older gentleman wearing a veteran of some war hat says "how much are you gonna charge me for a dozen eggs?" i say "two fifty." he carried on to balk at the price. finally, he asked if i knew how much he could get them for in the store. "a dollar ninety three just down the road." he listed some local store near springfield that sold them for less and would i take two dollars? i said "i would just as soon give you a dozen eggs" i was heavily implying that if he might be too poor to afford them (obviously, he could afford them).

we exchanged a few more words, his face got pretty red and he left. i almost asked him directly if he couldn't afford them i'd go get him a dozen. it was just as well, he wouldn't have been able to taste the difference between our eggs and those minimized eggs in the store anyway.

that is the exception. most of our customers are wonderful. this is especially encouraging since we are preparing to take deposits for our pastured poultry starting april fifteenth. that is when we will take possession of our new chicks. our friends just got their chicks from the same new hatchery we are both trying this year. they look great.

yesterday we went to the semi-local feed and farm store. we got some new chicks. we are hoping for some colored egg layers. that will mix it up a little. we need to have a culling of older hens pretty soon. these new birds should pick up the slack in a few months. we have always ordered our chicks from the springfield hatchery or mail order. this method is new to us.

i also bought a new stock tank. two by two by eight feet. i put it next to the cow pen and plan rain water collection from the barn and pen shed. tabitha and i have decided that i need to roof the other half of the cow pen to keep control over the deep bedding. i might try to get to that after the annual easter egg hunt today.

happy easter

little building projects and contest

at every opportunity i am building a few seedling trays.

we have finally started to win the battle against damping off. we had a turn in weather. is quite chilly outside today. i had planned on making large soil blocks and migrating the seedlings to larger opportunity. i hope it warms up so we can tie into that this afternoon.

yesterday in the afternoon i built a mineral feeder for the cow. i altered my original plan for several reasons. it was going to be round and mount to a stump in our field. now that we have decided to mostly keep the cow in a pen i decided to make it initially mount on her feeder. once she is confinement i will move it to her pen.

i put the final coat of paint on it this morning. i have a large piece of conveyor belt that will cover this like a heavy flap. she will be able to nose up the flap to get to the minerals.

the four compartments will contain; fertrell salt mix, fertrell conditioner, baking soda, and sea kelp. the flap will shed the elements to keep the minerals reasonably dry.

i also built this, is of my own invention and it's use is novel. it will hang from that hole against a post.

it opens like this:

here it is from the bottom.

the first person to guess what this is will win a bar of our lavender soap. i will continue to add clues until someone gets it. the winner must comment on the blog not at FB where my posts copy automatically.

most excellent guesses it is not:
suet feeder
thread feeder

i am unemployed and still can't get everything done..

i am sure that my expectations are higher but still...

we intend to keep our cow in a pen during the evenings and rainy weather. she just tromps around and damages our little paddocks hunting for a blade of grass. we have so little pasture that we need exacting control to manage it effectively. we have good hay for her that she thrives on. she just needs to be exposed to the paddocks when they are ready.

we have started training her to lead on with a halter. today i built her a pen feeder. it will fit whole bale of hay. it seems cobbled together but that is only because it is made from recycled materials. it is sturdy and will offer shelter for her hay. i will be able to fill it and clean it out easily.

next thing to have ready will be her water source. i have to get a new stock tank and plan rain water collection from the barn and roof of the pen.

i worked until after lunch time on her pen then i needed to paint the shelves that i built last night. oh, did i mention that i built shelves?

i made them out of 3/4" plywood sanded both sides. one of them is simply a book shelf that needs to go over our bed. we have tons of books and never enough place to put them. the other one isn't really a shelf but a cabinet. i scored a locking door with keys and have been intending on making a cabinet for our bathroom for several months. creating a receiver for the latching mechanism was a little tricky. i think that it turned out well.

the door is metal so magnets can hold artwork and stuff.

there is even a shelf for the kids nintendos with an outlet for their charger. those chargers are very fragile and toly eats them--literally. a safe haven for nintentos and games is well appreciated.

our seedlings are having a rough time with damping-off. we have been diligently spraying them with the concoction without much success. i am beginning to blame the soil blocks. we'll see if the next batch with sterilized soil does any better. if not we'll have to make a big strike against the soil block maker. although we don't have a control group that is planted in a normal fashion.


the swiss chard seems to like the heated green house.


tristan ripped the net guard for the trampoline. i told him that he was on restriction from it until it got fixed. he convinced kassi to sew it for him so they could play.


i got the new trailer hitch for the van. i'll try to get to that tomorrow. it'll have to be in the afternoon assuming the rain stays away.


this evening i built two more cedar trays for soil blocks. i might be cursing them very soon.


we had rotisserie chicken for dinner. we got the grill to ease kitchen pressure during summer. having the ability to cook a chicken outside will be great. the stove is usually filled with canning stuff and grills are generally easier to clean up after.

can a person be too well informed?

a few months back we took our heifer to rendezvous with a bull.

we had calculated her cycles and made sure that she'd be with the bull during our best guess at standing-heat. she stayed for over a week to be sure. we are really good at second guessing ourselves in these matters. so for the past two months we have had the question looming "is jocelyn pregnant?"

we use a method called bio-tracking to check for cattle pregnancy. this method can test for for pregnancy in goats, sheep, elk, horses, bison, and deer as well. you have to take blood from the animal but that is only mildly traumatic. they send a kit of vacutainers and some double sided needles. don't use the vacutainer part of the method described unless you are a trained vet or phlebotomist.

we used the tail vein. there are instructions that anyone can follow on their site. after a small trial we learned that a simple syringe can be used to draw the blood, instead of directly using the vacutainer and double needle. this is easier for the novice since you get more than one shot at the vein. the syringe can then transfer the blood to the vacutainer and ready for shipping. this is a real trick and should be marked if you might attempt to use bio-tracking.

after a few more days of wringing our hands the results came in last night by email on a saturday. she is pregnant. hooray we are so happy. but the numbers seemed a little high. well, really quite high. tabitha did some further reading and discovered that she is likely with twins. we are tentative about this to say the least. so back to my original question, can a person be too well informed?

what should have been a joyous sigh of relief still presents a looming question. "will she have complications delivering twins?"

180°

i know to most it seems such an awful waste but items one through twelve  on the above diagram are all ground meat. we still have steaks left over from the half beef that we got in the spring. it is the burger that goes quickly around here. spaghetti meat sauce, tacos, meat loaf, chili, burgers and many other tasty dishes all require ground meat and that is what those kids mostly like.

the meat processing went wonderfully. james has this three quarter horse commercial meat grinder. it chewed everything that we could throw at it--first time.  i also cubed twenty plus pounds of lean meat for tabitha to can. it made a pressure cooker load and dinner last night. the kids liked the stew from the butcher two days prior. another ridiculously-local meal from the omelay farm.

cancel the appointment with the slaughter plant..

i have already recovered from the mad-slaughter. i plan to do it again. those pigs will be next. seeing the stuff that we didn't add to the grinder and realizing that a processor would have just added it plus.. even though it took four shots to kill that steer i am sure that it was more gentle on him than riding to a slaughter plant and getting killed there. plus, meat tastes better from an animal that isn't stressed. yes i already ate some. it is good.

thank you everyone for your words of support. it was traumatic but, so was the first time we butchered chicken. now we have a system and it is just part of our lifestyle. butchering our other animals will likely become part of our deal too.

i really liked the home schooling opportunity when i was sawing up the bones for beef stock. explaining a ball and socket joint having a working example on hand is rather interesting--anatomy 101.

we played uno (card game) for several games this afternoon. toly joined in for the first time. amazingly he got it right away. i was totally blown away. tristan was really trying some strategy but didn't win until the very last game. it is difficult to understand, no matter how well you play uno is still mostly a game of luck.  it doesn't help having a really lucky sister that taunts you with her alleged mental powers of mind over matter. he was in tears before that the final win. furthermore he harbored a grudge toward her for quite a while. i was only a minor villain, even though i actually threw the game and tried to throw it on several earlier occasions only to have one of his siblings swoop in for the win.

jocelyn is back from her visit with her beau. we hope she is bred--fingers crossed. she is really upset that phoenix is gone and the place probably smells like blood.  it is raining tonight and hopefully it will wash away the rest of the kill smell. henry is feeling better, he is happy to have jocelyn back. but when we arranged a meeting between jocelyn and astrid, henry noticed that jocelyn was throwing her head toward astrid and threw a fit. he came rushing toward her with all his most aggressive force and suggested to jocelyn that the puppy was HIS.

i guess after he had to save the puppy from being mauled by the pigs he is a little defensive of her. oh yes, he saved that puppy's life. before that i was sure that he didn't like her. in fact when i heard henry making attack sounds from the upper yard, i was sure that he was killing astrid. joy, he was saving her from the pigs. what a good dog.

i take my certification test tomorrow. i should be studying instead of blogging...

ok, i'm still a little freaked out

WARNING THIS POST IS ABOUT KILLING A COW
please be warned and if you are compelled to flame me about it please do it on your own blog.

in the heat of the moment i can do just about anything. my adrenaline kicks in and i get on task. killing anything generally upsets me. i killed that steer, phoenix. earlier that day i spent a little time with phoenix. i thanked him for his gift and hoped that we gave him a good life. i believe that we did.

james a friend that i work with came over to help with the deed. he brought his gun since my twelve gauge would have made a canoe out of his head. i lined him up where i though it would be best for him to stand. i put the barrel right between his eyes, up just a little and fired. he just stood there and staggered away. s#@T what a bunch of crap! it took three more shots, four total. finally the last one i got just over his eye and he dropped instantly.

now i was really upset. the last thing i wanted to do was hurt him. tabitha tried to console me that head injuries don't hurt nearly as much--right... insert plenty of profanity here. anyway, he was finally dead and needed to be moved to where we could hike him up.


he weighed too much for james and i to drag him without a mechanical advantage.

the kids helped.

my block and tackle made my tie-off height too low. he was too heavy to lift entirely with both simple machines. we had to improvise. we decided to try to gut him first.

this where i began to loose myself in the moment.

james gave me instructions every step of the way.

he helped at every turn or would step in where i would stall.

the kids were right there. they saw every little thing.

the innards were ridiculously heavy and near impossible to manage.

finally we hiked him up to to work on.

kassi was especially interested. she stuck through until the end.

i used my cordless saws-all to cut through the neck bones.

finally progress could start in earnest.

i even kinda enjoyed myself.


kassi was amazing, she would size things up and try to be ready to hand me the next ting she thought i might need. here it is a towel.


we cut him into quarters and put him into the freezer. james is coming back tomorrow with his commercial grinder and we will put him into little packages. this is the last photo before the camera battery gave up the ghost.


it got dark and i had to set up a four foot florescent light. kassi was so impressive she helped until the last moment. her little hands were freezing. i tried to shew her inside several times and she wouldn't have it.

we are thankful for our bounty. next time we'll try to afford to have money to have our animals processed professionally. i was overwhelmed and had to severely decompress after that ordeal. i know that some people can do that stuff day and night but it was a big job for me. learning stuff always makes me anxious. i guess there was too many things whirling around in my head compounded with the stress of it taking four shots. we'll see how i feel in a few weeks. it might not be so bad once a little spilled milk has passed under the bridge.

chicken soup

tabitha has been making bone-broth chicken soup regularly since our quitting milk. i guess that cooking the bones for extended periods makes the bone calcium bio-available to us. regardless of the super nutritional benefits, she has perfected it. the soup is so rich and flavorful. she adds some of our dehydrated onions and several heads of garlic. then the coup d’état is her crazy-good semolina egg noodles. our girls eggs are so dark yellow that anything cooked with them takes on that rich color. the kids all love the soup and we eat it for several meals between roast chickens.

dehydrated onions is a technology that we'll incorporate into our life forever. the onions keep better and are simple to use. a solar dehydrator is in my near future--this summer.

best of all we have been eating the soup from our new set of bowls from annie--also thanks for the tomato seed btw.

it is like drinking a specific wine from the proper glass designed for that wine. the bowls complete the soup into a final product, the sum being greater than it's parts. it is like garden fresh tomatoes and home made cottage cheese, the sum being greater than it's parts. there are many things where the sum being greater than it's parts but they are usually experienced infrequently in life.

the kids are really growing fast these days.

rome is especially breaking the time-speed-continuum. he is so-almost crawling.


we all huddled in front of the imac camera the other day.


our chickens laid twelve eggs yesterday. tomorrow i'll make morning-cake aka french toast. it is a very popular breakfast around here. we buy real vanilla and maple syrup from the natural foods store. given our farm fresh free range eggs and the result is heavenly. i'll try to capture the excitement on camera tomorrow morning once they know what i intend to make for breakfast.

i have officially gone through 2/3 of our wood queued for this winter. i have some other back-up wood that we could burn this year. i guess everyone is burning more wood than usual in this area. i'm not sure what the factors are that cause this. we are burning an inordinate amount because a baby needs a really warm house to crawl around in.

i bought bees yesterday. three pounds of russian and marked queen. i pledge to take better care of the bees this year. i need to get my Ch'i groovin' with these bees this year. we love them and are willing to go to great lengths to have them here. the russian queen will be an experiment. people either love or hate them. we'll see where our cards fall regarding them. i'm excited for this new adventure.

i need to get tabitha a bee suit. it will be better if we do it more closely together. we balance out each other in life and approaching the bees together will be one further example of how we do things better together. we can play off each others strengths and achieve the sum being greater than it's parts. isn't that what life is about?

roary and nimue are gone

our friends bought roary and are taking nimue to the sale barn for us. we were very happy last evening to have them gone. then it happened..

the calves knocked over our strongest bee hive last night and killed all the bees due to the cold temps last night. bees are not like ants they cannot freeze and live to tell the tale.

spring-like winters day

toly in his new totoro sweater and kassi are ready to go to the store with me. we had a great time. toly, kassi and myself are an unusual supplies party. i feared it was more than i could handle and actually get the numerous things on my list. they were great. toly was especially well mannered. i got the admiring-the-cute-kids-look during our entire adventure.

toly is much improved since the removal of milk from our diet.

tabitha had a tragic visit with and extremely lame doctor regarding toly. she blogged about it a few days back. stream still puffs from my ears when i think about it. he told her that we were just bad parents and toly needs to be on ritalin. that prescription alone is contradictory enough to discount him. make up your mind are we just bad parents or does toly need to be medicated? then he went on to tell her that toly needed to be in daycare because they won't be afraid to reprimand him.

ok, i think that ritalin is satan. i'd sooner have my son circumcised than get on that stuff. many of you who know me know how passionate about circumcision and keeping things as nature intended. alright i won't do either. but i just want everyone to know where i stand. ritalin is cocaine for the brain and it has no business in my two-year-old's blood stream. i could rant about the stuff for several boring posts and still not change alleged-modern-medicine's mind.

deep breath...

i'm in my happy place...

deep breath...

rome, tristan and mommy stayed home.

tabitha and tristan spent a little time playing final fantasy IV. tristan is learning the strategy and getting lots of reading comprehension practice. he already beat the harry potter game we got him for chistmas and is back on final fantasy. it should take him a while yet. the depth of that game is intense and shouldn't be attempted by any adult unless you are on vacation or recovering from major surgery.

i am very proud of the-girls. they have been laying like crazy--always more than five eggs per day. we have been without "real" eggs for so long that we are eating them almost as fast as they can lay them.

this is their feeder set-up. it is double protected from the cows. kids have been known to leave pasture gates open to the yard. the chicken feeder is like a big box of candy to a cow.

i have extension cords strung everywhere the chicken coop light, the stock tank heater, and the pig waterer.

the chickens love their new light and are showing me how much they love it by giving us so many eggs. i usually have their light on for an extra hour each evening. it makes them settle into their coop more easily too.

i forked two huge pick-up loads of manure into compost bins from the lower hopper-style feeder.

i also added the better part of a truckload to the pig pen.

it keeps them busy and from rooting under the walls of their pen. they also will have this manure and hay pulverized into more easily compostable material in just a few days. i'm still sore two days later from forking all that wet manure around.

kirby and zelda sure are looking tasty these days. they are so friendly that you have to take care that they don't knock you down when you enter their pen. they have killed two chickens that interloped into their pen. they were old hens that weren't laying anyway. i don't think it was malicious. they were just playing and cornered the hen where it promptly had a heart attack.


henry is the-show-dog. he is the best dog i have ever owned. his instincts are so strong to do his job that he needs very little training. like any puppy he doesn't know when to quit playing. he'll grow out of that. he is a foreboding presence on our farm, fiercely guarding his boundary with extreme prejudice.

he is aging into the classic pyrenees aloofness. when you call him he gives the-look "hey i'm busy over here." he still comes though.

the cows still look like hell from being sick.

jerseys loose condition so easily and we struggle and struggle to get them back into shape. the two adult cows are leaving thursday. nimue will go to the sale barn and roary to a friend. we can't have milk cows and a two-year-old that can't have milk. maybe once jocelyn is old enough we'll try milking again. we'll keep phoenix, he'll be phoenix burgers in several months. yum.

jocelyn


phoenix

and tabitha of course. i'm so happy she's feeling better. that was a long recovery.

rome really likes it outside too

he is the speed-scooter almost crawling. he has cross crawled a few times but mostly finds it easier to scoot everywhere.

tabitha took down the obama yard sign. i was going to leave it up until next time.


tabitha made sushi last night. the kids love sushi. i love red tuna sashimi. tristan liked it so much that he cleared the remaining rolls from after dinner and stowed them in the fridge for his "snack" tomorrow. any dinner that prompts a six year old to clean up after dinner is stellar.