Free to Good Home...

I tell myself I won't do another animal that is "free to good home"...and then I get another animal that I got for free. Well, yesterday I got two for free.

We welcome to the farm two rams: a Merino and a Karakul. Rams?! Yes, dude sheep that are still hangin'. A rough mix I've been told and they are likely to battle.  I also have absolutely  no objection to snipping or, if need be, butchering either one of them. There are plenty of rams to go around and just about everything on a farm is expendable if they become a PITA.

These boys are currently pastured with a few of our younger cows and while they are together, we haven't seen too much aggressive behavior. While we don't want anyone to get hurt or injured, they seem to be staying away from each other for the majority of the time. Fortunately, the Merino (Jack) hasn't been responding to the Karakul (Rufus) when he plays the "I have bigger parts" card. He's definitely a "dude" and he is doing what dude animals do when they smell the lovely ladies that live next door. 

On the other side of the fence is all our sheep gals and our Shetland ram Stormy. He and Rufus have been "chatting" through the fence. No damage done to anything, including sheep parts, say Amen! everybody.

Our plan is to have our two larger girls (St. Croix) breed with Jack and Rufus next year. Breeding Petunia and Penelope with Stormy was a success, but we want to get larger lambs for the freezer. I'd rather keep the Shetlands to the Sheltands, with the exception of daughters, naturally.

So we'll see how well everyone does over the next few weeks, getting used to each other and the farm. Keep your fingers crossed!

Egg-zzz-actly!

We have been without eggs for most of the past summer. I've had to either purchase from the store--the most hated option--or beg my very good friend to sell me some of hers. Which she was gracious enough to do..and I'll love her forever for it (Thank You Phyllis!!) My hens, for whatever reason, decided to lay their eggs among the 1,000 lb. hay bales in the barn. I could not get to them, but the raccoons have been having an egg-eating spree. If I were into eating raccoon, I'd probably find a few very fat ones from all the eggs they've eaten in my barn. *grrrrrrrr*

My girls have FINALLY started to lay a bit more consistently over the past week AND in a place I can actually collect them (yes!). I still have a few store-bought "farm" eggs though. Today I had a young U.S. Army SGT, stationed in Afghanistan, complain a bit about the eggs he has received there, telling me that the yolks are "orangey". For starters, this young man has never lived on a farm and has only seen eggs from a store...no harm, no foul, but he need "edumacatin'". haha!

I told him to thank his Afghan egg providers with as much enthusiasm and joy as possible, because he is getting very good eggs...real ones and that is important!

You will note the photo at right. I took this picture this morning after cracking two eggs into a bowl. I wanted to show this young man the HUGE difference between my eggs and a store bought egg. It is hard to see a difference in the "plumpness" factor, but it is there. The color difference is clear and these eggs were also the same size ("large"), yet my egg has a larger yolk.

So what? So this...my farm egg comes from a chicken that gets sunshine all day (unless it is raining...duh), eats a bunch of bugs and grass, drinks good water, breathes good air, and gets to run around doing what chickens do (gossiping about the new rooster...really). My chickens do not: sit all day long in cramped boxes; eat worthless grain and chopped up chicken parts; and crap out eggs that have zero nutrition value. That beautiful rich orangey color means more protein, more Omega 3s, more good fats, and much much much much more taste and texture.

Okay, now the plug for your local farmer's market (please patron!). The next plug...check your city ordinances. Many cities allow you to have chickens in your backyard...hens though, not roosters. Without roosters, you don't get fertilized eggs (some folks like the taste of fertilized eggs) or the potential for hatching out baby chicks (you can buy hatching eggs if you really want that experience).  However, you get eggs and really nice ones if your chickens can "free range" in your yard, scratching through grass and dirt and being able to move around. Chickens are not expensive to buy, house or maintain. Their eggs are delicious and if you have a hen that is a PITA, you can then have chicken and dumplings. Ha ha...okay, I'm not kidding! But that is another story :)

Enjoy your real farm eggs...you are getting one of the best food sources on the planet. Just ask your dog...or your local raccoon.

Dew Be Dew Be Dew

Until recently, it was starting to get pretty crispy here in this part of the country. We had a lot of very hot days coupled with long stretches of zero rain this summer.

So it seemed odd that, even with the heat and lack of rain, we still had a lot of green around. (When my husband is in haying mode, he is preoccupied with grass). He looked at me one morning and said

"Dew!"

 "Do what?" I replied.

"No, 'dew' as in dew on the grass! THAT is why it has stayed relatively green this summer!" he exclaimed.

And I remembered that there were many summer mornings this past season when my shoes got soaking wet when I went out to feed critters. Not because I had managed to splash water all over them (I have done this though) but because I had been walking through the grass on my way to the barn.

Dew doesn't get a lot of credit, not like it's big cousin Rain or even bigger cousin Thunderstorm. So I just wanted to say thanks to Dew for keeping us green instead of brown...we love Dew!

Feed 'em up regular and they get bigger!

The Anatolian Shepherd puppies are getting bigger! They are weaned from their mom and have been surprising us--in the most delightful fashion--that they are smart. Probably smarter than we are!

We feed them outside in their area. Before the food is put down, however, they all must sit. And they DO! We are beginning to expose them to the chickens and recently acquired Rouen ducks and Toulouse geese. They run their parents ragged and have gotten head-butted by the sheep, learning that it means "back off Jack!"

One of the males is going to be heading to his new home around the beginning of October. His name will be Duke and he'll be living on a farm and watching over feathered critters. We will be keeping a brother and sister, leaving two for sale that were previously going to go to my brother-in-law.

The puppies with Auntie Bella, our daughter's black Lab.

"Hey, whatcha got in there?"

"WHAT are YOU?!" Puppies checking out our
Highland calf, Norman (who is being halter trained)

A Year of First Time Experiences...We have Puppies!

My husband wasn't too thrilled when I said I wanted one litter of puppies (not ME personally, but our Anatolian Shepherd female). I have never been around puppies, watching them grow and change and I wanted the experience. So now I'm getting it!!

Our Anatolian Shepherd female, Fiona, gave birth to 5 pups: 3 boys, 2 girls on 25 June. It has been so stinkin' hot here in the Ozarks that, although they were born outside, we brought them in to the air conditioning. I wanted to post some pictures since so much has been happening here and we have been so incredibly busy. These were taken yesterday and today, the puppies are 4 weeks old.

Enjoy!

P.S. I am NOT doing this again...hehehe...once is enough for me!

Bottle Feeding Ain't As Easy As It Looks

Depending on your outlook, living on a farm can be horrible and/or wonderful. Not to be a downer, but last night was not fun. We had to put down our first cow who had just given birth to a bull calf. The calf was very large and, possibly in the processes of expelling the baby, the cow expelled a lot of other internal items. By the time we found her, she had lost a lot of blood and we didn't know whether she had even had her calf or not. We called our neighbor who came over (he and his wife have cattle) and he said it looked really bad for this cow. He asked me if she had had the calf and we thought, as big as she still was, that she couldn't have, but I found an amniotic sac and started searching.

I found the calf across the field curled up, completely wet but it got on it's feet quickly. That is a good thing. While waiting for a call from a mobile vet we contacted, my husband got the calf secured and taken down to the barn to be put in a stall and I milked the dying mother cow to get as much colostrum as we could. Not easy to do when the cow is laying on it's side and you are used to gravity helping you get the milk out. I tried my best not to cause her any more pain. We never did get a call from the only large animal vet that has an after hours phone number. Sometimes living in rural areas, where a lot of vets simply lose money working with livestock animals and so are more likely to work with smaller animals, just sucks. We are blessed, however, with a vet who at least talked to me on the phone this morning regarding this calf.

So there we are, having to put the cow down and move her out of the field as dusk was falling. I admit it, I cried when we did it. Not that I was in love with this cow, it was just sad and I think I was feeling fairly powerless/helpless at this point. We tried several times to get the calf to suck on a bottle with his mom's freshly milked colostrum to no avail. We did get him wiped down and mostly rubbed dry, although he is still a tad damp this morning (it is very humid and warm here this week). We dragged ourselves wearily inside, showered all the goo and muck off, and went into town to eat. We got back home around 10:30 p.m. and fell straight into bed.

This morning we got powdered colostrum from the feed store, a smaller nipple, and a little more info on how to bottle feed a baby that doesn't seem to know how to suck and is resisting all attempts to show it. We've spoken "cow" to the baby (which is funny all on it's own merit--two grown humans "mooing" to a calf), it is urinating (good thing), it has hopped around a bit (good thing), goes to the corner of the stall door as though looking for a teat (which baffles me), and ignores the bottle nipple completely (which baffles and frustrates me). So I've been putting the colostrum on my fingers and running them inside his mouth so he'll get a taste and hopefully get a hankering for more. He isn't getting it yet...but I feel it is merely a matter of a bit of time and more patience/trust on my part. 

I am trying not to worry because they say getting the colostrum in within the first 24 hours is critical...I believe we waited too long with JoJo to get her started on colostrum/milk replacer and so she was overcome with scours. I really don't want that to happen to this little guy. So keep your fingers crossed and send us lots of good vibes...

Waste Not! Rendering Lard...

Before I started the endeavor of rendering lard, I did a lot of researching across the internet. I even found a few blog entries that discuss how to render lard, so while this may seem redundant to some, it is all new to me!

Since we were refilling the freezer, I had to process these large frozen packages of lard that were taking up a lot of space. Fortunately for us, we purchased a large beer-making vat last December (for scalding our huge turkey in) so I knew I could render this lard down outside. I've heard that it doesn't smell "that bad" but I didn't want to find out how bad. The vat has a temperature gauge and sits on a frame which is hooked up to a propane bottle. Super easy to use and it can be moved around wherever it is most suitable.

Fresh lard in the vat.

I had to let the lard thaw overnight and the next morning it was ready to be pulled apart and put into the vat. I pulled it apart only to get it to start melting faster instead of dumping the whole mass into the vat. I did not add any water, although next time I will add an inch or so in the bottom. Some of the cracklings started browning before I had poured any of the fat off and I didn't want a "toasty" smell or taste to the lard.

I kept the temperature fairly low...no more than 100 degrees. It only took about an hour and a half over the low heat, with the lid ajar, before the fat was melted down and the cracklings were visible. I used the lid only because it was outside and the wind was blowing little pieces of leaves and such around.

Cracklins'...yummy!

At first I poured off the melted fat through the vat's spout, but this proved to be very slow going as the tube would clog with cracklings. I resorted to using a ladle to scoop the fat and cracklings out. I placed a piece of flour sack cloth into a large colander which I set into a deep bowl and loaded fat and cracklings into the colander; the fat then strained through the cloth, leaving the cracklings behind which I bagged into freezer bags. From the bowl I poured the strained fat into clean mason jars.

 

I was actually fascinated by how quickly the lard set up...and the way the color changed as the fat cooled.In the photo, the jar on the far right is the "newest" pouring compared to that on the far left which is the "oldest" pouring. You can see that it starts out amber, but lightens as it sets up and cools.

The following morning I made my husband cornbread, which I hadn't done for a long while. I toasted some cracklings first (they POP! which is why they call them cracklings...and that pop of fat can hurt!) which took a little time. After I had the batter made for the cornbread, I added a cup of cracklings and the fat from the cracklings right into the batter.

This cornbread was FANTASTIC! The cracklings added a mild flavor but it didn't alter the taste so much that you didn't think it wasn't cornbread.

So now I have jars and jars of lard and room in my freezer for meat. I also have a bunch of projects I am itching to try out. I want to use lard in soap making; to make a pie crust from scratch with the lard (versus butter, which I normally use); biscuits from scratch; and fried chicken!