Posts from — August 2009

I started the herbal deworming schedule recommend by Fiasco Farm today.  Three of the goats ate their dosage balls; three I had to stick it in their mouths.  I’ll be a bit more careful about doing it tomorrow AM.  I was told by another woman who is doing herbal deworming that you could put the herbal mixture on jelly sandwiches and the goats eat those right up.  I guess I’ll make some jelly sandwiches first to see if they’ll eat them.

Milk production was down a bit in some of the goats both last night and this morning.  I put the calf in with the goats yesterday morning and Lil in particular acted like a put a lion in there with them.  Last night, the sheep were up with them.  Maybe the slight (and it is very slight) reduction is due to stress (from the calf and to some extent, Rose) or perhaps they were not able to get as much food because of the sheep (probably not the case) or maybe it’s just because it’s been bloody hot.

We’ll see how it goes.

We should have re-set the fence last night.  I went down before Wally got home and set the lines, but unfortunately (but really fortunately) it rained about three-quarters of an inch before he got home so we were not able to mow the paths.  He goes to the auction tonight so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to set it.  Even though it interfered with setting the fence, I was glad to see the rain.  It is not supposed to be quite so hot today which will be good.

I postponed my friend’s visit originally scheduled for today until it cools off a bit.  It’s no fun being outside when it’s over 90 degrees and humid.  While I have A/C, not much cools off a cardboard house when it’s that hot.  Plus, I didn’t go to the farmer’s market yesterday afternoon as originally planned to get the ingredients necessary for the corn relish.  In a little bit I’ll head down into the garden and pick tomtoes and do another batch of sauce and can it.

As I write this, the sheep are grazing in the back “yard” and the goats and calf are out in the front pasture.  The calf continues to do well.  I’ve been feeding him four times a day which means he’s consuming two gallons of milk a day.  I might go over to the dairy and pick up a few gallons of cow milk to take some of the demand off the goat milk … it probably isn’t necessary … I worry too much.  We packed up 70 pounds of whole chickens yesterday evening and when we were rearranging the freezer to get them in, I found about six packages of frozen goat cheese.  I should probably use that up before I begin to worry about running out of goat milk.  The dairy is close enough so that if I need more milk, I can get it easily enough and it’s only $3 a gallon.

I’m thinking seriously about getting a pressure canner.  While I am able to can tomato sauce and relishes in a hot water bath canner, I’d like to be able to do soups with meat and chili.  Like many people, a pressure canner scares me, but like many things, if you do it right, it is perfectly safe.  I bought a book called Stocking Up published by Rodale Press, Inc. and I highly recommend it.  I need to take the time and really read through the pressure canning process.  When I do go back to work, and one day I feel sure I’ll find another job, it will be nice to have cans of stews, pasta sauce, soups, etc. ready to heat up for a quick meal.

Until later …

One of the first things I told Wally this morning was that we were going to have to move the sheep tomorrow night.  Not something to look forward to given how hot it is going to be and how hard the ground will be, but it has to be done.  I took a few minutes to catch up on the Blogs that I like to read and came across this post.  Take the time to read it, it’s a good one. The photo that she shows of the cow grazing in what looks like a green pasture is quite typical of what you see around here.

I’d love to have permanent fencing for the sheep and goats, but I think permanent fencing would make us lazy. Taking the time to move the sheep around is often a pain in the butt, but it has to be done, both for the benefit of the sheep and the land.

The sheep are fenced in the 12 acres I rent that is behind the house.  There is another 20 or so acres along side it that is owned by the people in front of me.  Nothing is grazed on it and you’d think that it would look better than the 12 acres I use.  It doesn’t.  There’s a lot more grass, healthy grass, on my side.

On another note, I processed another bushel basket full of tomatoes this morning into roasted tomato sauce.  I canned the last batch yesterday and I think it came out okay.  I was pretty pleased with myself to finally can.  I’ve been talking about canning for years and never did it.  I had to restrain myself when all of the jars were full of soup to not put them in the freezer.  In the next couple of months I am going to invest in a pressure canner so I will be able to can soup and stews with meat, chili, etc.

Here is the recipe for roasted tomato sauce:

**Roughly cut up lots of tomatoes.  If you are using large tomatoes of uniform size, you can simply cut the stem and part of the core out of the top and set them in the baking pan;

**Add one large, roughly sliced sweet onion, as much garlic as you can stand and a roughly cut pepper;

**Drizzle about a half cup of good olive oil over the tomatoes;

**Add coarse sea salt (a good amount of it) and fresh ground pepper.

**Bake at 400 degrees for about an hour.

**Process in a food processor, a lot if you want soup, just a bit if you want sauce.  You could avoid the processing altogether and just spoon the mixture into cans.

On Thursday a woman that I met via this journal is coming out for a visit.  We’ve talked a lot over the past few months, but we haven’t met in person.  She’s unemployed as well.  We will probably work on a canning project together.  Maybe we’ll make corn relish … or maybe we can get the banana bread factory going.  Maybe we’ll do both.  It should be fun.

Off to milk.  I have to drive to Statesville this morning to get rabbits and rush back for a 10:00 telephone interview.

Until later …

I canned for the first time today.  It seemed to go well.  I made tomato soup out of the tomatoes that I baked the other night.  As soon as the cans cool, I’ll put them up and start another batch tomorrow or the next day.  Being the good little recycling doo-bee that I’ve become, I saved the water in the canning pot and will re-use it tomorrow AM to water plants with.  There may be enough tomatoes in the garden now to make another batch, but it’s bloody hot outside and I really don’t want to go out.  I’m such a baby when it comes to the heat.

Around noon I brought the sheep and Rose up to the fenced-in area where they can have shade.  I’ll bring them back down tonight when there’s shade available. 

Buster has already had two bottles today.  I have another one sitting on the countertop to feed him later this evening.  I feel better feeding him several small meals a day rather than two large ones.

I followed-up on Luna, Penny, Dusty and Rain’s baby with the contracted tendons.  They are all doing well.  The baby’s legs are getting better each day.  She’s been splinting them every other day and it seems to be working.  They love her and she’s become quite the pet.  Luna and Penny have been perfect angels on the milking stand.  Good girls.

I spoke to Raspberry’s breeder this morning for about a half hour.  She’s a wealth of information.  Glad that all worked out the way it did.  Unfortunately I cannot get Raspberry’s papers because there is a question as to which buck bred her mother.  Some breedings take place while the owner of the dairy is at the farmer’s market and sometimes things don’t get written down.  It really doesn’t matter.  I don’t care much about papers.

Finally, I started to look for sources of bulk kelp and stumbled on this web site.  I’ve been here before and considered their products then, but darned are they expensive.  Their goat food looks wonderful and I’d love to be able to feed organic grain, but I simply can’t afford $24/bag.  I am currently paying $14/bag which is high enough.  This company will mix up the mineral mix as detailed in Pat Coleby’s natural sheep book and that may be an option.  I considered offering each mineral seperately free choice, but that many different containers (one each for copper sulphate, dolomite, sulphur and kelp) and keeping the minerals out of the weather would be difficult.  The owner of the company told me that one woman was offering kelp free choice to her sheep and they went mad for it, so much so that it interfered with their iron intake and they all died from anemia.  Not sure if that would be a problem for my sheep or not, but too much kelp can lead to health issues.  The feed store where I buy my grain has a sheep mineral that does contain copper that I may try.  I do know I need to get on the ball and keep minerals available for both the sheep and goats.  The primary problem with Countryside Natural is getting their products.  There is a woman out Asheville way who distributes and apparently a few in Charlotte.  Things to think about.

Until later …

Gel isn’t exactly an old dog, but while milking last night, I figured I’d try to teach him a new trick.

When it’s time to milk, we bring (Gel does most of the work) the goats into the hitching area, tie them up and give them a bit of grain in their feed boxes.  I bring one in to the milk parlor at a time, milk her, then either tie her back out in the hitching area or bring her back into the fenced area.  It’s better if they go back into the fenced area as they tend to get bored being tied out and fuss and make a lot of noise.

The milking parlor and hitching area is about 30 feet from the gate going into the fenced area.  We should turn the gate around so it opens in the opposite direction as right now it sort of blocks the line to the gate into the hitching area.  Beyond the hitching area is the poultry pasture with another gate that is often opened which the goats like to go into to get chicken grain.

Pictures would be good, huh?

Anyway, when I finished milking the first goat, Champagne, I knew she’d go right up into the fenced area (where she knew there was grain that we just fed to the young goats) so I asked Wally to open the gate to the fenced area.  I sent Champagne and she went right in.  Then I positioned Gel at the gate to keep the goats in.  He likes this job almost as much as he likes keeping stock off feed tubs.

Once they finished eating the grain that we put in there, the goats tried him.  Occasionally I had to say his name to get him up to stop a goat that was trying to sneak around him, but in retrospect I think Gel had everything in hand and knew that goat wasn’t going to go any further than where it was at the time.  He’s always had a good amount of presence on stock and when he’s in holding mode, he’s all presence.

When it came time to send out the second goat, I got his attention and flanked him around to pick up the goat I just released and put her up.

The cool thing was that after a while, I saw that Fern was backing Gel up at the gate.  Good girl.  Where was Kessie during all this?  In the fenced in area with the goats … go figure.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing if Gel remembers his new trick this morning.

Until later …

Wednesday was Gel’s birthday.  He is now five.  You wouldn’t know it by looking at him.  Wally and I planned to go out and reset the fence when he got home from work, but instead we went out to the local dairy farm to see if they had any bull calves.  I knew that they had a man who was buying all that they produced so I thought we might as well go out and put our name down for the next one that was born.  As it turned out, there was one bull calf there, who was promised to the man who bought them all, but the owner of the farm said that if we wanted to take him home that night, we could.

We did.

I road in the back of the truck with him.  Wally said that it was a good thing that there were not a lot of bugs out as I would have had a lot of them stuck in my teeth.  I had a big grin on my face the whole way home.

Jersey cows are beautiful creatures.  They have eyes like deer.  Buster Brown is a lovely calf.  He is healthy and a very good size.  This dairy farm takes very good care of their animals and I think Buster is going to do well.

So far he has.  Feeding him has been a learning experience.  After we got him home, we went back out and got him a bottle, filled it with goat milk and headed out to feed him.  He’s a rowdy boy while eating.  After trial and error, we leaned that holding the bottle straight up and down (vs. at an angle) works far better.  When holding it at an angle, he’d butt it and at times, knock it out of your hand.  Wally told me not to hold the bottle close to my body and I should have listened to him.  I now have a bruise on my belly where the bottle hit me.  If you hold it straight up and down, you can pretty much just hold it with two fingers and he doesn’t knock it out of your hand and he is able to suck the milk out easier.  It makes sense, that’s the position of an udder.  All and all, he’s doing very well.  I want to get him on a three times a day feeding schedule for the first few weeks.  If we can do that, I think he should grow up well.

After I got out of work today, Wally and I went to visit a Boer goat breeder that we both know.  I hadn’t been to his farm before.  It was surprising to see the difference in size of the Boer goats who are the same age as Casper.  They are a lot smaller, which shouldn’t be the case given that they are meat goats.  I think leaving the goats on their mothers as long as we did has made a huge difference.

Rain’s baby, formerly known as Sunny, who is to be registered as Spellcast In the Pink, is doing great.  She’s growing like a weed.  She was almost white at birth, but now she’s pink, hence the name change.  Raspberry’s baby is doing very well too.  She’s not producing much milk for us, but her baby is getting plenty and for now, that’s all that matters.  A Saanen doesn’t come into her true udder until she’s three or four years old.  She has filled out and is a beautiful doe.  She’s very easy to handle and doesn’t let the other goats boss her around.

Speaking of milk production, I started weighing my milk today.  That is a much more accurate means of tracking production.  Rain and Champagne were tied at 2.12 pounds.  Billie was a close third (which is impressive given that she’s a yearling doe and this is her first freshening), with Addie coming in fourth and Lil in fifth at 1.12 pounds.  Lil has been a bit funky lately.  I’m not sure what’s going on with her, but I think she’ll settle in and be fine.  Champagne was off for about a month after I got her.  Raspberry gave about four squirts into the bucket.  That’s okay, she didn’t give me any trouble on the stand and her baby is growing good.

I took the plunge and ordered the ingredients for herbal wormer for the goats.  It’s time I got with the program in that regard.  I’ve also been inspired by this couple and their efforts to raise sheep in a sustainable, grass based system.  They are using Pat Coleby’s mineral mix, which includes copper sulphate … horrors of all horrors, right?  Sheep don’t need copper and it will kill them.  Au contraire dear friend.  Thanks to conventional means of farming and caring for the land, today’s pastures are literally stripped of nutrients and so is the food raised off today’s lands.  While copper may have been available to grazing animals in the past, it is not today.  If you offer animals (who, in some respects are a lot more intelligent than humans) minerals, they take what they need and leave the rest.  Goats and sheep who are deficient in copper (and likely other minerals as well) are more susceptible to worms … but wait, no problem, just chemically worm them, every thirty or wait, how about every ten days … voila, no worms … but at the expense of what?

This world is so f*cked up it isn’t funny.

Anyway, I’m going to pick up the minerals recommended by Pat Coleby and figure out a means to make them available to the sheep and see what happens.  The goats are on a good, pre-mixed supplement, but when that is gone, I’m going to do the same thing for them.  Interestingly, the mixture is the same for sheep as it is for goats.

All of the chicks are still alive and there is a duck sitting in the garden.  Know how you know when your garden is a jungle?  When you go in to get tomatoes out and find duck nests throughout it.  It isn’t weeds, but the tomato trees and herbs that are growing down there.  I hope she is able to hatch out her clutch.  Fingers and toes crossed.  Last night Wally and I harvested a bushel basket full of miscellaneous tomatoes, all heirloom varieties.  We cleaned them and put them in to bake with onions, garlic and herbs.  I’ll process and can them tomorrow.  How exciting!

The lap top is burning a hole into my legs and I need to end this post.

Until later …

I have a lot to update and will do so soon, but I want to write about how pissed I am with the Cash for Clunkers program.  Sure, I see the need for people to drive more fuel efficient vehicles, but in this economy, to offer people as much as $4,500 to trade in their “clunker” towards a new, more fuel efficient vehicle and then to pour toxic liquid into the engines of these clunkers so that they can no longer be sold … is that in any way efficient, sustainable or good for the environment?  Where are they going to put all those no-longer useful vehicles?  In the trash?

This is a perfect example of where our society is going.  If an item is no longer shiny, popular, vogue, hip or whatever, well, just throw it away and get another one.  No problem, the government will even give you thousands of dollars to bring in a vehicle which may still be running perfectly so that you’ll buy a new vehicle which you may or may not be able to afford.  We live in such a disposible society.  It is incredibly disgusting to me.  These days, I think long and hard before I throw anything away.  I am throwing away less and less.  Think of all that you’ve thrown away just today, or better yet, all that you’ve thrown away in the past six hours.  Scary.  What you throw away isn’t going into some void somewhere.  Soon, there’s not going to be anywhere to throw things away.

It seems to me that there’s a better use for the billions of dollars that are going into this program.

In thinking about the cars that I see being driven around town, I see few that I would consider “clunkers.”  What is the description of a “clunker” anyway?

I am pleased with how Obama is handling the country, but the country is so damned screwed up these days, that poor man’s head must be spinning trying to deal with all the issues.  I can’t see it straightening out any time soon, I really can’t.

I heard on the news tonight that unemployment may be extended yet again.  I’m glad to hear that.  While I am enjoying having the time to “farm;” I’d really like to get back to work, but there are simply no jobs out there.  A friend of mine told me that she was offered a four month long temporary position with pay less than what she is getting on unemployment.  She countered a dollar more an hour and was refused.  I’ve never seen the employment market as bad as it is now.  I’ve never been out of work for so long.

Luckily, I am still in the running for the position with the local law firm.  I should be called back this week for a second interview.  Fingers, toes and everything else that can be crossed are crossed.  I realize now that I had a very cushy job at the law firm I recently worked at; at almost all of the other law firms I worked at for that matter.  Sure, I did my job, but I wasn’t driven like I am at Wal-Mart.  If I get this job, I’ll pour my heart and soul into it.  I don’t ever want to end up at a job like a cashier at Wal-Mart ever again.

Everything does happen for a reason and I am certain this is all happening for a reason, but I hope the reason makes itself known relatively soon and I can get back to some sense of normalcy soon.