Yesterday afternoon we got our supplies all gathered to butcher the rabbit and roosters. I am happy to say this morning that all 7 roosters are in the freezer and the rabbit is in the refrigerator. Thankfully it wasnt as bad as I thought it could have been. My husband did the rabbit first....I wont go into any full details here as there are plenty of instructions online and even videos of how to butcher a rabbit. It was fairly quick and easy though since the fur pulled off like a sweater. Next were the roosters, which my husband went to work on. He got annoyed with the feathers about half way through so i took over. We had done the roosters like we were did the rabbit, kind of peeling the skin and feathers back and off like a sweater. Since these were roosters (not meat birds) and they were 4 month old there was not a whole lot of meat on them. After I got the first bird butchered....I took the wing, leg, thigh and breast meat off we decided to just take the breast meat, leg and thigh off the remaining birds. There was not much meat on the wing and it was a huge hassle trying to get those wing feathers and skin off! I need to get into the chicken coop again and go through the chickens. There are quite a few roosters left and we dont need them all so a few more will have a date with the freezer here in a couple of weeks. Its nice knowing that I can butcher them myself if need be....I figured that I could probably do it but you never know :). My dad and I fished for years together...we used to wager who caught the least fish had to do the cleaning. So I had experience cleaning fish and also doing the plucking of chickens but we had never butchered them this way before. I have to say that I prefer the skinning method! No hot water and yucky smell. Above is a picture of the butchered rabbit in a bag ready for the refrigerator. We are going to the auction this evening so I am planning on cooking it tomorrow. Now I just have to figure out what to make.......hmmmmmm

Roosters & Rabbit

Soy bean harvest October 6, 2008


Today is the day! The day that we are going to get the roosters and rabbits butchered. Hopefully it will not take too long. The chickens are going to be skinned (along with the rabbit). It just takes too much time to scald them and do the plucking, plus its just downright smelly! But I think that I have written about that before. Food was withheld last night so their systems should be pretty well cleaned out. Just like if you have surgery or some other kind of Doctors appointment and they ask you not to eat after midnight. That way your system will be cleaned out, basically so the food can pass through your body. We will probably have to do the deed in the barn since its supposed to rain today, we cannot put it off any longer. Well at least I dont want to....but I cannot butcher them myself. Well, I probably could but its much better to work as a team and get it done. I will let you know how it goes, wish us luck, on tomorrows posting. So, last night I was putting away leftovers from dinner. Gad, I feel something in my hair...I brush it out thinking that it is a lady bug. I look down into the bowl of refried beans and GAG it is a big brown disgusting hairy spider. I start yelling, ah that was in my hair. Something that I despise is spiders. I know, I know they do have a place where they fit into our world, but being in my hair or my house for that matter is not one of them.

Tomatoes after 20 hours in the dehydrator


Ok, so we didn't get the roosters or the rabbit butchered this weekend. We are hoping to get them done on Tuesday since my husband doesn't have to work. It might be better that way too since our soon will be at school. He isn't too attached to the roosters but the rabbit was supposed to be one of his. We had thought that it was a girl and he named "her" Phoebe....well now it is Pheobo. A big no no is naming an animal that you plan to butcher. We have 2 wethers that are named lunch meat and meat stick. They are out eating and being happy with the other goats but we try not to interact with them too much. One of our goats, Paprika (like the spice or the baby from Blues Clues) has gotten enormous! She has been running with our buckling boer goat and the buckling dairy goat that we have, but is possible that she was bred before we got her. Paprika was quite thin when she came to live with us at the beginning of July. I went back and looked at the pictures and cannot believe how skinny she was. We thought that maybe she had something called bloat....a goat has something called a rumen. It is a big fermentation vat for their food, but it also produces carbon dioxide and methane gas which they need to release either by belching or tooting. Yes, not very polite on the goats part, but they do need to release that gas or the goat can die. Now the dairy goat that we purchased in May must have miscarried in July as we had thought she might have. She was with the lady's buck from April 1-May 9th so with the 150 day gestation that would put her last possible due date as today. No signs that she is going to give birth so hopefully the bucklings that we have her with have done their job! We really want some goats milk. I love to cook, bake and experiment with foods in the kitchen. It would be great to be able to make cheese, yogurt and maybe even some goats milk soap. With the price of cheese too it would be nice to be able to save money where ever we can. The picture above is the tomatoes that I started in the dehydrator yesterday. It takes quite a while for them to dry out since tomatoes are full of moisture but in about 20 hours they are done. I had a few that needed to be dried a bit more. They get nice and dry and leathery when they are done. Last week I made some bread and added some chopped dehydrated tomato and some basil in the bread and it was delicious!

Roma tomatoes ready for the dehydrator


Last night we were all sitting in our bedroom watching the Wisconsin/Ohio State game on ABC. My husband and son were playing mancala while I was watching the game. Carter looks up while the referee is announcing a penalty and says "Oh my gosh, look at his giant mole". Well it in fact was not a giant mole but his microphone headset and the foam end of it was some attempt at flesh colored. Now why did they do that? Why not just go with black? The color of the foam was close to the referees skin color and in fact did look like a giant mole. I hope that you get a good laugh from this, I certainly did! It is raining a little here this morning so I wont be doing any garden work like I had planned. I did get all of the cucumer and zucchini plants taken out of the garden. This was a chilly week too, with lows getting down in the high 30's some days and only up to the 50's-60's during the day. The garden has slowed down a lot, but that is to be expected for early October here in Iowa. The swiss chard I do have to say is showing llittle signs of slowing down. You can cut it off, leaving about an inch of the stalks and it keeps sending up new leaves. I think that I have cut the leaves off 3-4 times...I planted the seeds late too, I think maybe in June. I do need to get out and get some cuttings from the herb garden so I can have some indoor herb plants. Basil is very easy to propagate....you can take a snipping off a plant and stick it in some moist soil and it will send out new roots. Chives you can dig up the plant and seperate the plant. There are many others that you can either root by layering, division or taking cuttings. There are lots of sources online if you are interested just google "Herb Propagation". Of course you can start new plants with seeds, but if you already have the started plant why not use that to create another? Yesterday afternoon the man that farms the land around our house started to take out the soybeans. Soybeans and corn are the primary crops grown here in Iowa...Iowa is first in production of corn and soybeans. Some other crops that are grown here are hay. In 2006 Iowa farmers produced 5.6 million pounds of hay which ranked us 10th in the country. Iowa also produces oats, Christmas trees, honey, strawberries and even grapes. So, yesterday the beans started to come out. We thought that he would be harvesting soon since the plants looked very dry..a golden brown color. I was dreading the harvest since it seems to kick up lots of bugs, but yesterday was cool and there were not the swarms of ladybugs that we usually get. Just a bit of the field is done and with the rain this morning he probably will not finish today. I will get out and take a picture that shows what the bare field looks like once everything is harvested. Next year corn should take its place as they tend to rotate crops.

Whats Cookin'?

Jalapenos ready for the dehydrator


Yesterday after I got done doing the morning chores I picked a huge bowl full of tomatoes, also some green peppers, jalapenos and 3 eggplants. I already had a bag in the refrigerator that has about 2 pounds of jalapenos in it already, along with about a pound of tomatoes that I harvested the other day. Now, in previous years I had canned most of the garden produce that we grew. This year I decided to buy a dehydrator. One of the reasons was our son loves dried fruit.....banana chips, apple chips, and of course raisins. The dehydrator was a little less than $60, certainly not a top of the line dehydrator but so far has done the job nicely. I have been able to dehydrate lots of tomatoes already, its amazing how many of them you can fit into a jar. Our thinking with the dried tomatoes is to rehydrate them and use them in chili, soups, dips,salsa, pasta dishes and maybe even keep them dried and put on salads. I have also dehydrated swiss chard, jalapenos, eggplant, cucumbers, bananas, apples, green peppers, zucchini, patty pan squash, and yellow peppers. I am sure that Im forgetting some things but it will be fun during the winter months to be able to use some of the vegetables that we grew ourselves in our dishes. So yesterday I dehydrated swiss chard...it dries out very quickly so I got that all done and started some tomatoes and jalapenos. The dehydrator is still drying out the tomatoes, I should check it here in a bit and get the veges that are dried in a jar. This week has been down right cold in the mornings. Some counties just to the north of us had their first frost warning last night! Yikes....the tomatoes and eggplants and probably the peppers cannot survive a frost so if we are to get cold here soon I need to get an old blanket or tarp to get the garden covered. All depends on when the frost will hit and how the garden is doing. Plants in pots can be brought inside. Since it has been chilly this week I thought it would be a great night for soup. We love soup, especially in the cold weather months. Sometimes I use a recipe and sometimes I dont. Its somewhat fun to be able to put your own touches into something that you make. Ok, so back to soups. Last weekend I boiled about 10 pounds of potatoes. They were just beginning to sprout and my husband wanted some potato salad. So some were used for the salad the others I put in a storage bag and into the fridge. So I thought those can be used for potato soup. I chopped up some celery, onion and carrots put those in the pot with some olive oil and 2 cloves of garlic. Let them cook until they were just starting to get soft. While they were cooking I peeled and cubed the potatoes and added those to the vegetables. Water just to cover, salt & pepper and I also added four bouillon cubes. I still had quite a bit of Swiss Chard left in the garden so decided to find a recipe to use some of that in a soup. Here is what I found, I did make some changes...I used some basil instead of fennel, no beans, pasta was cooked seperately and then added to individual bowls...I find that it tends to fall apart in soup especially if its reheated. I used whole grain pasta. I chopped the ingredients by hand. Swiss chard is delicious and so easy to grow! Something that I will definitely do next year...you can cut it all off and it will come back to harvest again and again. Its somewhat like spinach but not as strong, delicious in soup.

Swiss Chard and Penne Soup

2 cloves garlic

1 medium red onion

1 bunch swiss chard

3 TB olive oil

6 cups chicken stock

3 cups water

1 cup penne

2 cups canned cannellini, drained

1/4 tsp fennel

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

salt & pepper

parmesan cheese

Directions

Steel knife: With food processor running, drop garlic through feed tube and mince. Add onion and chop coarsely, using 6 to 8 on/off turns

Remove leaves from chard and reserve. Cut stems into feed tube lengths.

Ultra thick: Stand stems in feed tube; slice, using light pressure.

Heat oil in heavy 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add contents of work bowl and cook until soft, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.

Add stock and water; bring to a boil. Mix in penne and cook 5 minutes.

Ultra thick: Roll up chard leaves and arrange in feed tube. Slice, using light pressure. Add chard leaves to saucepan.

Mix in beans, fennel seed, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.

Bring to boil and cook until penne is tender, about 3 minutes.

Can be made ahead. Pass the Parmesan cheese

I also made banana bread yesterday. Cinnamon rolls I made the day before using sliced up apples from the tree in our backyard. They went great with our breakfast dinner :)

Our Town

We live in Rowley Iowa. It is what we consider a small town with less than 300 residents. We dont actually live in town but 2 miles outside of town on our small acreage. Some of the businesses in Rowley include an excellent meat locker (Marks Locker), two hair salons, a small animal trapping service, a bar/grill (with great food at an excellent price), auto repair service, a John Deere dealer, a Co-op and a bank. There is also a post office that was briefly closed when there was a mold problem...thankfully now it is back open. At one time there was a railroad, grocery stores, a lumber yard, a hotel, a hardware store, implement dealers, service stations, a creamery, a bank, a public school, and a dentist. The railroad is no longer in existence and the tracks have been removed. There was a public school located in Rowley, a beautiful old school that was built in 1916. Unfortunately the school board voted to close the school and tear it down. Our son was lucky enough to attend South Elementary for Kindergarten, a great small school where there was one of each grade, a wonderful place to learn! The school met the fate of the wrecking ball on November 6, 2006. It was a sad day for our family and the rest of the town. Fluffy, one of our rabbits had babies this morning. There were 2 dead at the front of the nest box which was sad...Im not sure how many are in her nest. I didnt want to disturb them too much so will let my husband do the count later. I also saw a very nice looking buck cross the road today. Bow hunting season opened yesterday plus the rut will be starting here soon. Our neighbor has a very nice wooded area and was nice enough to let my husband put up a tree stand, so hopefully we will be able to put a deer in the freezer too!

Just Ducky

Ducky

We have an incubator and have lots of fun hatching eggs in it. Chicken eggs only take 21 days to hatch, give or take a couple of days. Duck eggs take a bit longer from 28 days (muscovies take 35 days), give or take a couple of days. The temperature and humidity needs to be monitored in the incubator as well as turning the eggs so the little embryo doesnt stick to the inside of the egg. This spring I was doing some looking on Ebay and found some hatching eggs with several different kinds of chickens and the package also included ducks. We havent had ducks on our little farm before and thought that we might enjoy them. The chickens hatched out pretty well with what looks like now to be mixed breed chickens, but thats ok they still lay eggs that are eatable. We then were anxiously awating the pipping of the duck egg. Pipping is when the bird begins to break out of the shell...the baby bird has a little bump on the beak that helps them go around the inside of the shell and crack it open so they can emerge. The little bump is called an egg tooth and the chick generally breaks out of the larger end of the egg where the air sac is. The picture above is from our first duck appropriately named "Ducky". Ducky was just out of the shell when this picture was taken. You can see that the feathers are still wet. Ducky stayed in the incubator until her feathers were nice and dry and she was moving around well. I am saying her because Ducky is a girl. Female ducks are the noise makers....they quack where as male ducks make a hissing sound. Ducky sure is loud...she makes quite a ruckus when I go into the barn in the morning, greeting me with a series of loud quacks. We hatched out a second duck too. It is a Muscovy and took 35 days to hatch. This second duck is named Ducky Jr...arent we creative?

Can you see how their coloring is different? Ducky is dark brown while Ducky Jr is dark brown with pale yellow. They sure do grow quickly too and it seems much faster than the chickens. Ducky Jr did have a problem though and we were not sure if he was going to live. I found him laying outside on his back unable to get up, kind of like a turtle. So I scooped up Ducky Jr and we checked him out fairly well, not finding any visable signs of any injury we put him in his own little cage with food and water. It took a couple of weeks and it looks like Ducky Jr has healed fairly well from whatever problem he had. He moves around like a champ and no longer has to stop for breaks and doesnt fall over onto his back anymore. Its just a guess but we think that maybe he grew too fast for his little legs and didnt have the strength to hold himself up. We are guessing that Ducky Jr is a male. Muscovies are pretty quiet ducks, from what we have read and Ducky Jr doesnt really make any noise besides a little hissing sound. So maybe we have a male and female????? Now if they are a male and female and we hatched out fertilized eggs from them the resulting duck would be a mule. This mule duck would be infertile (unable to reproduce). The ducks have been nice to have around. They do like to play in water, eat grass and other greens plus a generous helping of bugs. We are awating eggs here soon. The chickens should be laying towards the end of October, ducks take 20-24 weeks to bein laying eggs. About the same amount of time for chickens to being laying

Here Chick chick chick

Well, I went into the chicken coop the other day and started to grab up roosters. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? I think that I counted around 11 hens, I thought that we had more but maybe not. We did lose one to what we think was a raccoon. The hen didn’t come inside at night, we didn’t notice when we locked the chickens up in the coop. I had the pleasure of finding it the next day under the lilac bush minus its head. Raccoons typically eat only the head and leave the rest behind. The other day there was a large raccoon dead in the road, so perhaps he met the same fate that our poor little Buff Orpington did?
Ok, I got off subject…back to the roosters. Now if there are 11 hens, give or take that means there are about 19 or so roosters. Yikes!!! That is way too many. Especially going into winter. We don’t need to feed all of those extra birds and during the winter time they are not able to go out to explore as much as they would like. They eat so many bugs, grubs, worms and greens in the summer free ranging that we dont have to feed them a whole lot. Just a bit to get them in the coop at night. In the extreme cold their combs (red part on top of their head) and wattles which is the red skin hanging under their beaks can get frost bit. The skin then eventually dies and falls off, just like it does with humans. So here I am in the chicken coop, hunched over trying to grab scurrying and squawking birds. Right now we have the chickens in a large dog kennel inside the barn with some boards laid over the top so they cannot escape. Once the corn comes out we are going to move a chicken coop to our place that our neighbor gave to us. Corn needs to come out though so we can drag it through the field on skids. Needless to say the birds are freaked out since I am in there and also since I have a couple of birds hanging by their feet from my left hand. There are a few birds that don’t follow the others when it is time to come inside. The others are really good ….I can yell “come on girls” and they come scurrying to the barn…they know its feeding time and don’t mind the gender thing . We have a 12 ft cage, long and narrow hanging by the “coop” which our neighbor used for bantys. Its big enough for rabbits so we have one rabbit in it now, its perfect to put those roosters in so I start filling the empty spots with roosters. Right now I have 6 birds in the cage, with space for I think 3 more? During the spring/summer months I saved some of those individual serving pudding cups (empty), it seemed just a shame to toss them and I thought that I would get seedlings started in them. I poked 2 holes in them and used some wire to put 2 in each cage. One for food and the other for water. The day before we decide to do the deed the food will be taken away so their system can be flushed pretty much clean. When we first had chickens we butchered them ourselves. Its not really that bad, but oh the smell! Once the chicken is dead you dip it in scalding hot water so you can pluck it. Let me tell you there is nothing like the smell of hot, wet dirty chicken with a hint of poop. Now there chickens are not spanking clean, certainly they are not covered in filth but they are outside animals. Think of wet dog only much, much worse! For these roosters we didn’t want to take the time plucking them or taking them to the poultry processors so we thought maybe we would just skin them. We don’t really eat the skin that much, I don’t make fried chicken, other than oven fried and that doesn’t require the skin. So today I did some research on skinning chickens and it totally looks like something that we can handle. No plucking nasty feathers or messing with scalding hot water. It looks similar to how we will butcher the rabbits. Just pull the skin off kind of like a sweater. We will hopefully be doing them this coming weekend and I will try and let you know how it goes.

Buggy

Newest members to the farm, Pygmy mom & daughters (doelings)

Fall is in the air and so are the bugs! The weather has cooled off nicely, not too cool which keeps the garden in production, but cool enough which makes the bugs want to come inside. It also attracts the flies to warm things like humans, animals and the house. YICK...I hate walking out of the house and have a fly hit me in the mouth! Fall also means ladybugs...now they do look cute but those little things can bite. They also stink...stink when they are smashed or make your fingers smell when you pick them off. Now I dont generally mind bugs, I dont yell and scream when I see one. But this time of year they are an annoyance! The lady bugs too like the warmth and once the farmers start to harvest their crops that really kicks them up! They will start swarming on the house, especially the south side which is the warmest side. You have to be quick when coming in and out of the house so you dont let too many of the critters inside. Maybe the chickens will cut down on the populations some?Well, if you have been reading my previous blogs you have read that we have been looking for a dairy goat. We have now come to the conclusion that maybe this isnt the best time of the year to find a dairy goat. Other than "Filth Farm" there have been no ads with a dairy goat for sale, lots of pygmy goats and boer (meat) goats but no dairy. I did find an ad for pygmy goats that were with their new kids. So Saturday we drove up to an Exotic Animal Sale in Waverly IA to see this lady's goats. There were lots of them, bucks, does and kids! We let our son pick which one he liked....he picked the one shown in the picture above since she seemed the nicest. She is pretty nice and since she has the little kids is producing milk for them. We are going to give the kids another week on their mom full time, then at night they will be put in the stall next to her and I will try milking her in the morning. Pygmy goats, since they are smaller, will not give as much milk as a full sized dairy goat but some is better than nothing. We will keep looking for a full sized dairy goat, maybe something will be available in the spring. The mom is named Wanda, the lighter colored doeling is Daisy and the darker is Violet.

Hippity Hoppity

One of our rabbits is due to have babies, well her official due date was yesterday, Friday September 26th. Rabbits have on average have a 31 day gestation period....meaning they go 31 days from the date they are bred to when they give birth. Pretty amazing. This particular doe had 11 babies the last time she kindled (rabbit terminology for giving birth). Thats a lot of babies! We thought that maybe she wouldnt be able to take care of all of them but she proved us wrong. All of them lived and are growing quickly. We are wondering how many she will have this time??? Her nest box is in place with plenty of straw. She will get in her box and make a nice place for her babies and will also pull fur from her belly. Not only to make a nice warm place for her babies to be but it also exposes her nipples making it easier for the little ones to feed. They are born with no fur and their eyes are closed. Like the naked mole rat from Kim Possible. Their eyes open after about 10 days. We are careful not to handle the babies too much as we dont want to get our human scent on them. Some moms dont like that and will kill the babies. You do need to check and make sure that all of the babies were born alive and check again in a couple of days, just dont touch them too much and try not to disturb the mom. The mom usually is only in the nest box with them at night and that is to feed them. After a few weeks the babies are able to come and go out of the next box. They start to nibble on the hay and rabbit pellets (food) and drink from the water bottle, also nursing from mom. We leave the nest box in so mom has a place to get away from all of the baby activity. Once the babies can get up on top of the nest box we can take it out since mom no longer has her "safe zone". The babies can be weaned, taken away from mom, at about 6 weeks and given rabbit pellets, hay and water. We are raising the rabbits for food so the quicker they can be born and put in the freezer means less that we have to spend on feed. Plus we dont want to have a bunch of babies to care for once our Iowa winters set in. It can get pretty cold around here! We have a littler of 11 that were born on July 27th so they have been around for about 8 weeks. We did have a mishap with their mom however. Thinking that she wasnt bred we put her in with the buck. They mated so my husband went to put her back in the cage and realized geez she just had babies. Oops, but it had been quite a while since we had purchased her so we thought she was not pregnant and we hadnt put her in with the buck when we got the rabbits. Oops, well it was a learning experience. So we did take the 11 babies away from her fairly early, if I remember right they were only 30days old or so. We just didnt want mama to give birth and already have the 11 hopping around in there. So they probably havent grown as quickly as they would have being in with mom the full six weeks. But like I said its a learning experience and its nice being able to know where your meat is coming from and what they are being feed and how the animals are being treated.

Horses

These are the two horses that we have. The Palomino on the left is mine....a palomino is the color of a horse which is cream to gold in color with a white mane and tail. His name is Sporty, his registered name is Sporty Spanky Two...kind of funny. He is a Quarter Horse, which is the breed of horse...and the perfect height for me since he is a little over 14 hands high. The horse on the right is my husbands horse. We are not sure of his breed but think that he is a quarter horse. He is taller than my horse, its hard for me to get on him even with the saddle on. His name is Kris, we havent measured him but he is well over 15 hands high. They are both geldings, which are boys that have been fixed so they cannot reproduce. Just like the goats or even your dog or cat. A vet does the procedure which requires a minor surgery, usually done when they are young. Going back to measuring horses..they are measured in "hands". A hand is 4 inches...so since my horse is 14.1 hands he is 56.4 inches at the withers. The wither is the shoulder of the horse and they are measured at the last hair in their mane. I have added a picture of my son and the pony that we had (the wither is marked), he didnt have any real interest in her at all so we sold her. Im sure that she is being enjoyed and there is no point right now in keeping animals around that are not providing some sort of benefit to the farm. Now, I am talking in terms of food...we have the 2 horses that we ride at shows and trail ride. The other 2 were just not being used. Hay went up an additional 60cents a bale so taking into account the 300 bales that we went through last winter/spring that would be an extra $180 this year. We do have the goats that we didnt have last winter but they will not eat the 150 bales that we figure we are cutting back on, and if they do at least we will be getting milk and meat from them. Also any extra kids (goat babies) that they have can either be retained for the herd (doelings), sold or butchered for meat. Back to the horses though. We love to trail ride and there are even campgrounds that you can load up and take your horses to and camp and trail ride. Just like regular camping that you may have done but instead of going on a hike you get to ride your horse. You can cover a lot of ground that way, its good exercise for both you and your horse and just a fun relaxing time. Then you come back to camp, where we camp they have picket lines to tie your horses to. They get plenty of water and nice hay and we cook food for ourselves over the camp fire. We also like to go to horse shows. There are lots of different events to participate in from in-hand events where you present your horse to the judge, riding events and even games. We took this year off to work on the house so havent done any trail riding or shows, but with the soggy weather that we had many of the riding trails were closed and shows canceled. Hopefully we will be back in the saddle next year!



These are the two horses that we have. The Palomino on the left is mine....a palomino is the color of a horse which is cream to gold in color with a white mane and tail. His name is Sporty, his registered name is Sporty Spanky Two...kind of funny. He is a Quarter Horse, which is the breed of horse...and the perfect height for me since he is a little over 14 hands high. The horse on the right is my husbands horse. We are not sure of his breed but think that he is a quarter horse. He is taller than my horse, its hard for me to get on him even with the saddle on. His name is Kris, we havent measured him but he is well over 15 hands high. They are both geldings, which are boys that have been fixed so they cannot reproduce. Just like the goats or even your dog or cat. A vet does the procedure which requires a minor surgery, usually done when they are young. Going back to measuring horses..they are measured in "hands". A hand is 4 inches...so since my horse is 14.1 hands he is 56.4 inches at the withers. The wither is the shoulder of the horse and they are measured at the last hair in their mane. I have added a picture of my son and the pony that we had (the wither is marked), he didnt have any real interest in her at all so we sold her. Im sure that she is being enjoyed and there is no point right now in keeping animals around that are not providing some sort of benefit to the farm. Now, I am talking in terms of food...we have the 2 horses that we ride at shows and trail ride. The other 2 were just not being used. Hay went up an additional 60cents a bale so taking into account the 300 bales that we went through last winter/spring that would be an extra $180 this year. We do have the goats that we didnt have last winter but they will not eat the 150 bales that we figure we are cutting back on, and if they do at least we will be getting milk and meat from them. Also any extra kids (goat babies) that they have can either be retained for the herd (doelings), sold or butchered for meat. Back to the horses though. We love to trail ride and there are even campgrounds that you can load up and take your horses to and camp and trail ride. Just like regular camping that you may have done but instead of going on a hike you get to ride your horse. You can cover a lot of ground that way, its good exercise for both you and your horse and just a fun relaxing time. Then you come back to camp, where we camp they have picket lines to tie your horses to. They get plenty of water and nice hay and we cook food for ourselves over the camp fire. We also like to go to horse shows. There are lots of different events to participate in from in-hand events where you present your horse to the judge, riding events and even games. We took this year off to work on the house so havent done any trail riding or shows, but with the soggy weather that we had many of the riding trails were closed and shows canceled. Hopefully we will be back in the saddle next year!

Auctions

Ewe from a May 2008 auction


I love animals and I love to go to auctions. Doesnt matter if its a livestock auction or a household goods auction, we do tend to go to more livestock auctions. The picture above is from a May 2008 auction that my husband and I went to. The ewe's face was just so captivating and kind of Hobbit like. I had to use my cell phone camera to take a picture of it. We were walking through the barn looking at the goats and when I turned around there it was just looking at me. It was the only one in the pen who was interested in us....I pulled on my husbands sleeve and was like you have to look at this sheep!Last night we went to a livestock auction to see if we could find a little friend for our Pygmy goat Ethyl. The other goats are pretty mean to her, but that is what goats do. They are herd animals so when someone new enters the herd they have to reestablish the pecking order. Generally by head-butting. We have an older boer doe named Jackie who is the herd queen, the leader of the group. Next is Roseanne, she is a pretty dark brown with a hint of red Boer goat with a hint of Nubian (dairy goat). Ethyl was going to be at the bottom of the herd. She is the smallest of them all and probably weighs half of what our boer kids weigh. We just didnt want her to get hurt and also she will not stay in the electric fence. Anyway, off we go to the auction...plenty early since they started later than the 6:30pm scheduled time. First some sheep went through. 1 lamb that weighed 70 pounds went for $65, then another lamb that was knock kneed came through that weighed 45 pounds went for $5. A big ewe (mature female sheep) that weighed 155 pounds went for $17....we are assuming that this was by the hundred weight so about $26.35 total. A group of 11 ewes went through then a buck goat. We got excited since finally we were to the goats. The buck goat was neat with long horns that swept back and to the side a bit. He weighed 150 pounds and went for $57.50. Goats they price per head not per hundred weight like they do for the other livestock. Sadly he was the only goat to go through so no new goats for us last night! I did check some websites and found some phone numbers to call regarding some goats. Part of the reason of getting our acreage is to raise some of our food. The goats are great because you can get meat from them and milk which can then be made into cheese, yogurt, butter and even icecream, YUM. We do have two goats that we are going to butcher when the weather cools off a bit more. However we do not have milk. Pasha, our dairy goat, is still a mystery. We dont know if she is still pregnant or not....she has shown no signs of being close to kidding or even any signs of heat. That was one of our main reasons for getting the goats was the fresh milk and right now we have 11 goats and no milk. They are addictive and so much fun to watch. The ones that were really shy before will now come up for a treat and a little scratch. Nothing too much and we certainly cant pet all over them like we can with some of the goats but at least they arent running away when we come up. Off to search for a dairy goat....think good goaty thoughts for us. Once milk comes in I want to put information on milking and maybe cheese making. Maybe with a video segment?

School

This is our sons school. To the left is the "old" school, it was built in the early 1900's, about 1916 I think. They have since added on and the elementary, middle and high school are all connected together. The town that the school is in has a population of less than 800, our towns population is less than 300. Our son is in 3rd grade this year...there are two 3rd grade class rooms with about 26 kids in each class. Wouldnt it be nice to have a graduating class of about 50 students? Here is some information from our schools website....the district covers 137 square miles and enrolls about 550 students with 6 bus routes. All students ride the buses together, no splitting of elementary, middle or high school students. His bus ride is about 40 minutes long to get home in the afternoon, shorter in the morning going to school as he is one of the last pickups. Of course it does take longer in bad weather. There were 12 snow days last year, which was unbelievable...we had awful weather! Those were just the days where there was no school...there were several late starts and early dismissals which had to be made up. The scheduled last day of school was supposed to be May 20th, but the school board decided to extend the school day by 1/2 an hour to make up some of the days that they missed. If they hadnt done that the kids would have been going to school until June 11th, but they were out May 28th. We like the school and all that it has to offer, great teachers who are always willing to answer questions plus that small town friendliness that we just love! There are also after school activities that he can be involved in and was able to join some basketball camps last fall. He had one camp that was 6 sessions long and cost only $3!!! How can you beat that, it was only fifty cents for each hour. Baseball is a big thing during the summer and again very inexpensive...I think that it was $52 for everything and that included his uniform and the adult tshirt that I got for myself. Small town living we love it....it is a 40 minute drive to a community of any considerable size, by that I mean a city having a mall/target/home depot/lowes, etc.

Week

I couldnt think of anything interesting to write about this morning. Until the chickens start to lay and we get goat babies/milk or butcher rabbits it just seems rather uneventful. Then I got to thinking about what we have planned to do this week. Besides working, I work from home and DH has a job at a Warehouse which supports our farmy life, and the usual family stuff...which is probably much like everyone else. Where we differ though from others is the chores, and this doesnt mean dishes/cleaning/laundry, etc. We still have the farm to take care of. Friday my husband will leave from work to get a load of hay. We can usually squeeze 30 or so bales into the bed of the truck. Once he gets home then they need to be taken out of the truck and stacked in the barn. This is what I do every morning and it has to be done every single morning...rain/sleet/snow/illness the animals depend on us for their food and water and just to check on them. I get up at a little before 5am...give myself some time to wake up, check my email and do some work. I make custom clothing for horseshows. Monday-Friday I get our son up and ready for school. Do some laundry and dishes while he is getting ready. He gets on the bus at 7:30ish to head to school then I go out and do chores. I let the chickens/ducks out so the can chase bugs around the yard and eat some greens. The rabbits I check their water, the younger bunnies that are being raised for meat purposes get free choice food (all they can eat basically) so I make sure that they have food and some hay. The horses get turned out to pasture and I check and make sure that their water tank is full. Goats I walk out and make sure all is well with them, check their water, minerals and baking soda. Also check for any signs of kidding. We do have a doe that we are unsure if she is due or not so we are keeping a close eye on her. During the winter time the goats and horses will be fed hay...or once the grass dies back. Evening chores are pretty much the same except chickens need to go back in their coop with food/water. All of the rabbits are fed and given clean water. The horses are taken out of the pasture and put in their dry lot. Goats, basically the same as in the morning. We need to pick up a load of feed this week too, rabbit feed, chicken feed, corn and goat feed. Also something else that we had planned for this week was to go through and decide which roosters we want to keep. They arent of much use besides breeding purposes, a couple might have enough meat to put them in the freezer and there really is no need to feed all of them through the winter. I think that we will keep a couple but any more than that need to go. Also there is an auction on Wednesday night that we want to go to...that is for fun though. I have been searching all over for a dairy goat and have had no luck at all. Well besides the "Filth Farm" that I wrote about last week but I wouldnt buy from there if that was the only place to buy from. No need to invite all of the possible disease onto our farm. I also need to get out and get some things done in the garden, remove some zucchini plants that are no longer producing and go through my seeds and see what I can plant for a fall harvest...although I might be cutting it short here, but its worth a try since I have the seeds and do have plans to try and get a cold frame built. Beets, spinach, lettuce, carrots and probably some other things that I cant remember right now like the cool weather. I might be able to get another row of peas put in if I get the cucumbers out.

Fall

Today is the first day of Fall. Where did the summer go? We had a horrible winter which went to a soggy wet spring and a rather cool (for us anyway) summer. Not one day over 100 and very few hot humid days. Usually we have a stretch of hot humid weather about a week or so long, but not this year. There were a couple of days, but not the knock you out humidity.The garden is starting to die back a bit. The cucumbers are pretty much done as well as the zucchini, we are still getting a few patty pan squash. I have a second planting of green beans that are starting to produce so hopefully will get a nice amount off of them to put in the freezer. The swiss chard is still going like gangbusters, tomatoes are good and have gotten several to put in the dehydrator. Once it warmed up the jalapenos and green peppers have really started to produce....since the spring and summer were so cool I was worried that we wouldnt get any since the plants just stayed so puny. Peppers like warm weather to produce and grow well....it just took a while to get there. I also planted galic in the spring, it was an experiment as I have never grown it before. Dont know why as it was just like putting onion sets in the ground. I am just hoping that it will be done. After doing some reading online about garlic it looks like it is supposed to be planted in the fall so if it fails maybe I will buy more heads to try planting in October. Like the onions they dont take up much room so I just planted the garlic in between the pepper plants. We also have beets that are doing well, the broccoli I didnt put fencing around and the chickens have pretty much pecked it apart, the cabbage was also a first time for us. The cabbage moths and cabbage loppers are horrible. I dont like using pesticides on the garden and havent had to, but if I wanted any cabbage using some was going to be a must! The little green caterpillars devour the leaves and just make a mess. You can tell where they have been by the droppings that they leave behind. I did try to hand pick them off and giving them to the chickens, but that was a losing battle. Next year I think that I will give a row cover a try. Something to cover the row of cabbage so the moths cant get in there to lay their eggs. Something that I really need to get in gear is my cold frame. I would like to give some fall plantings of spinach, lettuce, maybe more swiss chard a try. Once the garden is done the chicken wire will come down and then the chickens can go in there and eat any produce that fell off the vine....I had a horrible time with volunteer tomato plants this year. Lots of tomato plants everywhere. When the chickens are done I will add what I can to the compost....the zucchini and cucumber vines I will give to the goats. The squash borers got to some of the zucchini plants and I dont want to keep those buggers around. We are blessed here to be able to grow and expand in our garden. If you dont have the same luxury there are lots of things that you can grow in pots. One of my favorite places to buy seeds is www.superseeds.com They have lots of interesting seeds at a pretty decent price, along with a nice selection of container plants. Happy Plantings!

The fog was thick this morning....like something you would see on Scooby Doo. A nice crisp Saturday morning. During the week I am up about 4:45am, this morning I slept in until almost 6am which was a nice treat. After waking up a little I threw some sandals on with my tshirt and boxers and went out to do chores. The animals greeted me with nickers, quacks, clucks and baaa's. The chickens are restless to get out of their coop, the horses want to be turned out to the pasture, ducks...well they are just loud and want to be out of the barn too. After taking care of the animals inside the barn (including the rabbits who dont make much noise) I grab some straw and mineral and head out to see the goats. The straw is for the inside of their goat shack, they enjoy munching on it too. Goats need minerals for a well balanced diet so I refill their mineral tub and they go to town licking it up and munching on the straw meant to be their bedding. Yesterday I made a little goat bench from 2 old logs and some boards that I salvaged from the garage that we tore down. Perfect for the goats to climb and play on and for humans to sit and relax on. I sat down to watch them munch their hay and just enjoy the quiet surroundings that we have. How quickly the fields of corn and soybeans have turned from green to gold. The fall harvest will soon begin and our road will host a parade of combines and wagons bursting with the labors of the farmer.

Auction

On Wednesday evening we decided to go to an auction. Now this isnt the typical household goods auction that you might normally think of, but a livestock auction. Down the road from us there is a "Sale Barn" about 15 minutes away. We had never been there before since the sales are at night and my husband used to work nights. Also probably due to the fact that I would feel sorry for animals and bring them home if he wasnt there with me....we would have a pasture full! The auction started at 6:30pm which would be great....enough time to have some dinner and then make it home early enough to get the boy ready for bed for school the next day. I had planned on taking some pictures to post but forgot the camera and the camera on my phone just isnt the greatest...maybe next time. They did have some nice (and inexpensive) goats go through...some not so nice, but that is typical too as there are meat buyers there. There were some very nice and cute pygmy goats that were sold. That got my husband and I to thinking....we dont really want another goat buck kept on the farm but why dont we get one that we like at the auction. Keep him around for a month or so to breed Ethyl and then either sell him or take him back to the auction. We are going to wait and breed her until Feb/March of 2009 so she can grow a bit more and then the babies would be born July/August 2009. The dairy goats that went through were too sickly looking for us to consider...they had certainly been used in a dairy. Ok~well thats about all for today but I will close with a pet peeve....and I see this guy quite a bit driving around in a 1980something Ford Escort hatchback wearing a cowboy hat....it just doesnt fit ya know. Kind of like driving a dumptruck with a pillbox hat on.P.S. want to see an auction but dont know where to go? You can watch from the comfort of your home online! www.lmaauctions.com You can watch something close to you (maybe even go there in person sometime?) or something all the way across the country.

New Addition

This is Ethyl, the newest member of our farm family. She is 6 months old and is a Pygmy Goat. Let me tell you about our little adventure to get her.I really want another dairy goat (I want to be able to enjoy the fresh milk and experiment with some cheese making),so I have been searching all of the online ads that I can think of to find one within a reasonable driving distance. Ah, here is one close to us so my husband calls. They are asking $225 for an doe that has been exposed to a buck. A little bit more than we wanted to spend, but we thought heck maybe for that price they are some nice goats and might be worth it in the long run. So we load up in the Blazer and make the 20 minute drive to check out the goats...no need to call as the man would be out doing chores. Getting out of the car we are greeting by swarms of flies and a putrid stench...neither of these are things that I want to be greeted by, the mangy looking dog was not a nice greeter either. All of the goats are packed into different pens, not out on pasture but in what we call a "dry lot". The feeders were dirty with small piles rotting corn laying in front of them. One of the pens had smaller goats in them, that I hope for their sake was the cull pen. Some of those goats had umbilical hernias the size of softballs, crusty eyes, dirty and just living in unsanitary conditions. First off these goats were not worth the $225 the man was asking for them, regardless if they were bred or not and if we did bring one of them into our herd it could cost us the entire herd if it brings a disease in.My husband tells our 8 year old son not to touch anything and we make fast tracks back to the Blazer, pile in and get out of there as quickly as we can! Now, during the day my husband had also called about a Pygmy goat. I had found the ad online through the credit union where I bank and realized that the goat was for sale in the same small town that we live in. A Pygmy goat would not have been the first choice of a dairy goat for myself, but I thought since they are only 16-23" tall at the shoulder (withers) then it might be the perfect little addition for our son. While driving back from the Filth Farm my husbands phone beeps that he has a new voice mail....we were in a deadzone...where is that Verizon guy anyway? Certainly not out here. The lady says that they still have the goat and to call her back. He gives her a call back gets the address, we stop at our small town bank to use the ATM to get the $20 that they were asking for her...just in case she is a nice goat. Pulling into their farm is like night and day compared to the one we had just been to. Ethyl is out in the yard and follows the man down part way to greet us. We walk up to their very clean barn to discuss Ethyl. He tells us that they got her from a sale barn in March and that they bottle fed her. Ethyl is very affectionate and thinks that she is more dog than goat. The man tells us that the reason why they want to sell her is that their other 2 goats are mean to her....one of the goats just had a baby too and boy was it tiny! The other goat was due to have a baby soon so they thought it was in the best interest of Ethyl to give her a new home. We tell him that Ethyl is great and get out the $20 to pay him and he wont take it! He wants to see Ethyl go to a home where. She is getting lots of love here, Ethyl sure does think that she is a dog too....our son can walk her on a leash. She follows me around the yard and pasture when I am out doing chores. Ethyl also went for a ride in the truck yesterday when my son forgot his lunch. She rode in the front seat and was a perfect little lady, ok, well she did pee but it went on the towel that I had laid on the front seat just in case. We are doing some reading about the Pygmy goat breed....they do make a nice dual purpose goat for both milk and meat. Pygmy goats can milk about 2 quarts of high butterfat milk a day. Did you know that Pygmy goats first came to the United States in the 1950's? Mainly as a novelty for zoos. Like other goats their gestation period is about 150 days but the kids only weigh about 4 pounds when they are born. So far Ethyl has been a joy to have around and maybe in a year or so we will be updating this blog on any kids that she has!?! We are going to wait until March or April of 2009 to find her a boyfriend.

Farm fresh eggs....have you ever tried them? I was thinking about eggs this morning as I was getting my sons breakfast ready this morning. We got our day old chicks on the 4th day of June. They broke out of their shells on the 3rd day of June and were shipped to us that day....we are expecting them to begin to lay then around October 21st. Lets see, what did we order? Buff Orpingtons are pretty dark gold chickens that lay brown eggs, Barred Rocks & Production Reds which also lay brown eggs. Then we also got some Americana's...also called easter egg chickens since they lay blue to green tinged eggs. Really neat and our son loved getting them from the nest boxes when he was younger! They came from Decorah IA, so not too far from us. They can travel up to 3 days with no food or water since they absorb what is left of the yolk so that is their nourishment. The post office called us when the chicks arrived, my son and I went to pick them up. They put 26 chicks in our little box....they stay warm with their own body heat until they get to us. Once the baby chicks arrive they need a few things...heat, water and food. We use a rubbermaid 18 gallon tote (no lid). The shop light clamps to the top with a 100 watt lightbulb for their heat source. The chicks can move in and out of the light if they get too warm or too cold. The babys need food (chick starter) and water. They grow really quickly! What starts out as a little ball of fluff quickly becomes a hen or a rooster. The hens are ready to lay in about 20 weeks. That to me is really amazing that it only takes 20 weeks for a hen to lay an egg, which basically means that she can reproduce. You dont need a rooster for the hen to be able to lay eggs. The picture at the top was taken back when we first got chickens in 2001. There is a variation in the colors and sizes...the tiny eggs were from hens that had just started to lay. Then we go all the way up to huge eggs that wouldnt even fit in the jumbo egg cartons. Now, if you do have a rooster then you have the opportunity to expand your flock. For this you can use a broody hen, which is a hen who wants to sit on her clutch of eggs. A good way to tell if she is broody is when you go into the coop and try and take eggs from a hen that is sitting on her nest. She may squack at you or even peck your hand. Another option is to put the eggs in an incubator. This means that you have to act as mother hen....turning the eggs and providing the right temperature and humidity. Not all hens will be broody or interested in raising their own chicks. We do have extra roosters that will have a date with the freezer later this fall....they just need to have a bit more meat on them. We dont need 30+ chickens...my son and I hatched some eggs in our incubator to bring us up to that total...plus we have 2 ducks that wehatched out as well. Soon we will go through, decide which roosters we want to keep. We do like to experiment with eggs in the incubator and is a good way to replace hens that have declined in the number of eggs that they lay. Production declines after about a year or so at which time the hens can be butchered and replaced. The hens are not pets to us, however they are a vital function to the farm. For now they are allowed to free range in the yard and pasture. This means that they have access to bugs, greens (grass and weeds), fresh air and sunshine. It is amazing how many bugs they can eat too, we feed them at night when they go in the coop. No need to feed them during the day as they are out foraging for bugs, worms and grass. I put chicken wire around the garden to keep them out but they love to roam around the edge and I cant even imagine how many crickets and grass hoppers they have probably eaten! The green beans I didnt fence in as the chickens were not bothering them and I havent had one green bean with a big nibble on it....amazing! Usually the grass hoppers love them and I have to toss quite a few. Not this year, I have trimmed, blanched and put loads of green beans in the freezer. Will make some great eating once the winter months hit. Below is a picture of a frying pan of eggs. I hope you can tell how bright orange the yolks are! They are rich and delicious with a nice firm yolk that stands much higher than the store bought eggs....the whites are firmer too. If you are at a farmers market or out driving around and see a sign for Fresh Eggs....give them a try!

Goatastic

One of the new animals that we purchased this year were goats. We were hesitant to get them at first, mostly due to some misconceptions. After doing some research using books, the internet and my cousin (who has goats) we decided to get some. Here are some things that we learned: goats in general do not smell, the intact males (bucks) during rut do have quite the aroma, but that is to attract the females (kind of like a goat cologne). Goat meat is 50-65% less in fat than beef and has a similar protein content...goat meat also has 40% less saturated fat than chicken (even with skin removed). Did you know that 65 - 70% of all red meat eaten in the world is goat meat? Also more people in the world consume goat milk than cow milk. Goat milk has smaller fat globules than cows milk and is more easily digested....it can often be successfully replaced by people who are alergic to cows milk. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of babies. On our farm we have Boer goats (meat goats) and a couple of Alpine goats (they are dairy goats). The dairy goat was exposed to a buck during the month of April and the early days of May. Goats have a 150 day gestation period, however Pasha had some problems in the month of July and may have had a miscarriage. We have been keeping a close eye on her to watch for signs of an upcoming birth. She hasnt gone into heat, which would be a good sign that she lost the baby, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that she was bred late April or early May and will kid (Give birth soon). This is our plan for the babies: any doelings (girls) that we think will add good qualities to the herd will be kept, bucklings (boys) will be castrated at which time they are called wethers and will be used for meat. Castration so far has been fairly simple. We have castrated 2 of our goats so far (they will be butchered later this fall). The device slips a really tight rubber band on their testicles, the testicles shrink and eventually fall off after about a month. It sounds harsh but we dont want any unplanned breeding going on and using the Elastrator seemed kinder than the other castration methods. The boys did pout for a while, who wouldn't??? I have been keeping track of the heat cycles for the does. The one that we now know is bred is due on January 18, 2009. It seems a long way away, but with the way the days fly by now it will be here before we now it! Dont worry, the goats wont be cold. We made some stalls in the barn this spring/summer and have lots of nice warm straw for them to sleep in. Two of the other does, Roseanne & Paprika may also be bred and are tentatively due sometime in early January but we will be watching for any heat signs. If they do go back into heat they will get to go on another date to see the buck :DOn another subject the weather is still really cool for this time of year in Iowa. We hope that its not a sign that we are in store for another snowy cold winter! Here is a picture of how it was last year.....Barbara this snow is for you!

Bountiful Harvest

Well, its after Labor Day! Hard to believe that the summer is about over. The way that the weather has been towards the end of the week it certainly felt like Fall with temps in the morning in the 40's!
Friday the dehydrator that we ordered came. Nothing fancy, just something to get us by. It has been running nonstop for 24 hours and I have already gotten orange peppers, cucumbers and some zucchini done. I have probably 15 pounds of patty pan squash that will go in, along with shredding and freezing some for breads. Loose goat, got to run outside :D
Well its a few days later, but wanted to add some additional info to this entry.
The swiss chard dehydrated wonderfully and very quickly. I just took the tough parts of the stem off and smashed the leaves down into the canning jars that we are using. All of the patty pan squash are done so far, there are a few left in the garden but not too many. Roma tomatoes are in there now, its amazing how many you can pack into a jar! I have several eggplant in the fridge that I need to get into the dehyrator.
The garden is starting to die back....the temperatures have been unseasonably cold with lows in the 40's As far as I can recall we havent had a day close to 100 degrees this summer. There were a couple of days in the 90's but nothing like the heat waves that Iowa tends to have. Got to figure out a cold frame to experiment with for the fall/winter months. We tore a bathroom apart and have frosted glass shower doors that I thought would be fun to experiment with to make a cold frame. Hmmmm

Thinking Fall

With the passing of Labor Day we are starting to look forward to the winter months. Well, not really look forward to but planning on what we need to do before winter sets in. We had wanted to get the chicken coop built but might not get it done. If we dont there is plenty of room in the barn, especially after we butcher the extra roosters. The stalls that we built for the goats are temporary and can always be taken down if we need the extra room. We still need to get hay and straw. Our hay guy is the best! He stores the hay for us and we just go get truck loads here and there when we need it. The garden is starting to slow down a bit. I have gotten loads of summer squash, both zucchini and patty pans, cukes, green beans, beets, swiss chard, peppers, onions.... cabbage is doing well & the tomatoes are starting to come along. I would still like to get a cold frame built to do some cool weather crops like spinach lettuce and whatever else comes to mind. The goat bucks are starting to go into rut. A few of the does have gone into heat and are hopefully bred for Dec/Jan babies!

Baby Bunnies

This year we have added lots of new things to our farm. The garden has doubled in size...the number of animals has also grown! We did downsize in the number of horses that we had from 4 to 2. The other horse and pony were just not being ridden and with the price of hay going up we decided that we would be better off getting rid of them and investing in something that would give us a return. The goats will give us milk, meat and more kids (since we now have 2 bucks for breeding). We have several chickens which will provide eggs here in a couple of months as well as some meat. Something that my husband wanted to try was rabbits for meat. One of the rabbits kindled on July 27th and had 11 babies. They have been weaned and are doing great. All 11 are still alive, we had planned on maybe losing some, but so far so good! The other doe gave birth yesterday, August 26th at 12:40pm ish and had 6 babies. They are born naked with their eyes closed. It doesnt take long for the fur to come in and for their eyes to open. They grow very fast!Going to buy a freezer tonight as we will be butchering some goats this fall, will soon have rabbit meat to put away as well as some chickens!Good eating

In a Pickle

In a Pickle
It has been a busy week with our son starting school. I have also been over loaded with cucumbers and have been making a few different kinds of pickles. My husband enjoys bread & butter pickles, however I am not a big pickle lover but decided to try something on the spicy side. We have lots of jalapenos in the garden now which I thought we add a nice kick.After searching the internet I found a great recipe! We have already tried them and I really liked them. The brine is on the salty side, not a big vinegar taste. I also used 1/2 tsp dill seed in my pint sized jars, instead of the dill weed used in the recipe. YUM!!!

Here is the recipe:IngredientsNote: Some ingredients are listed "as needed".

* 2 quarts water

* 1 1/2 cups salt

* 2 cups white vinegar

* dill weed (as needed, one sprig per jar )

* jalapeno peppers, sliced length-way (as needed, 1 per jar)

* garlic (as needed, 3 cloves per jar)

* whole black peppercorn (as needed, 1/2 tsp per jar)

* fresh grape leaves (as needed, 2 leaves per jar) I used Alum

* fresh, unblemished cucumbers (as many as you want to make)

* sterile jars, lids

Note: Make one batch of the brine and use till gone. If you have more cucumbers, make another whole batch of the brine.Directions

1. Sterilize jars and lids in boiling water (keep in slow boiling water until used).

2. In a LARGE pot, combine two quarts water, 1 1/2 cups salt, two cups white vinegar. Bring to a boil until all the salt is thoroughly dissolved.

3. In each jar place: one large sprig of dill weed, 1 medium jalapeno pepper (sliced length-way), 3 cloves garlic, 1/2 tsp black peppercorn and 2 grape leaves.

4. Fill jar with sliced cucumbers (or whole if you prefer) and pour hot vinegar mix in jar to within 1 inch of top.

5. Seal jars and process in hot water bath about 20 minutes.

The Pasture

After spending 4 years working on our pasture it is finally starting to come around. When we moved here the pasture was pushing 5 feet high in places and was a jumbled mess of thistle, did I mention Thistle??? Burrs and lots of other weeds. After spraying, digging and pulling the vast majority of the thistle is now gone! The goats that we purchased this year have done a great job of eating the weeds, pulling off seed heads and just doing what they are supposed to do which is browse :)I have also made it out in the pasture with our handy push mower to mow some patches. Im sure I looked odd out in the 5 acres with a push mower, but not only is it good for me but also good for the pasture. We have the pasture sub-divided and there are a couple more areas that need to be worked on. The fencing isnt up to goat standards however we do hope to have that done and available for them to munch on next year. It will be nice to see how the pasture comes up next year, we are hoping for less weeds since the goats have enjoyed munching off the seed heads and such!I have also spent time these past couple of weeks canning some pickles, freezing green beans and canning some spicy pickled green beans, which will be fun to see how they turn out.

Egg in My Face

Eggplant that is. I was going to write about the work that I did in the pasture today, but decided instead to use this opportunity to blog about eggplant.This is the first year that we have grown it in the garden, and the first time that I can remember trying it. Well maybe I have at some point in our childhood...we used to eat lots of different veggies and really enjoyed them. I had some smaller eggplant that the chickens decided to peck so instead of letting them peck them to death or have insects get to them I clipped them from the plants. The plants by the way are doing wonderfully...no problems with insects (knock on wood) and besides the chickens giving them a few pecks they have been very very easy to grow!After looking at some recipes online I decided I wanted to do something easy for dinner...I was quite tired from mowing today and a little sunburnt. Spaghetti is easy, premade sauce...browned some hamburger to throw in it. Ok, on to the eggplant. I used my mandolin to make some nice almost 1/4" slices out of 2 medium eggplants...sprinkled them with salt and let them sweat a bit. While they were sweating I beat 2 eggs, which was too much...there was quite a bit left over. In a bag I poured about 1cup of croutons, used a rolling pin to crush them. Oven is being preheated on 450. I grabbed a 9x13 cake pan and lined it with foil. About 15 minutes later I rinsed the eggplant...shook them off a bit and then dipped them in the egg. They then went for a dip in the crouton crumbs and then in the foil lined pan. I gave the slices a light dusting of parmesean (the kind in the shakey can) and into the oven they went. I didnt check the time but it was maybe 10-15 minutes or until the croutons were golden brown. Very quick, easy and yummy!

What The Cluck????

We had our first batch of chickens at our rental house in Coggon IA. That was over 8 years ago! We even hatched out some eggs in my husbands homemade incubator (more about that later). We let them free range all over the property...they are great bug eaters and will scratch and dig for worms and crickets! They do however also like to scratch and dig up my garden. So far there has not been any considerable damage to the squash or cukes, but they loved the swiss chard and beet tops. To protect them I erected some chicken wire...just some low stuff and they havent invaded yet. Next spring our project will be to fence in the garden area. By erecting the fence it will keep the chickens (and any escapee goats out) and we can also use as a trellis for peas, beans and cukes. For feed we are using a poultry grower (unmedicated so it can be used on the ducks) mixed with cracked corn. They dont eat much during the day since they are out and can eat as many bugs, bits of grass or greens that they want, as well as scraps from the kitchen. We mixed up the feed in June and are still working on the same batch...we have 2 ducks and almost 40 chickens. They do go through more feed in the winter time, but I save kitchen scraps for them and we have even gotten "feed" bread at the discount Hostess bakery 25lbs for $5. Chickens are great to have in the backyard and are fairly easy keepers. We are anxious to have our first eggs and meat from this new batch of chickens.

The Garden

Today I thought I would write some about our garden. We have lived in our house for 5 years now...it has been lots of work and we didnt really have time for a garden until last year. Of course I had visions of a grand garden. I called to have the power company come out and check the area where we wanted to have the garden..."Call Before You Dig". All was ok, we were going to rent a tiller, but of course I couldnt wait. The weather was nice so I grabbed a shovel, some gloves and the radio. Probably the second scoop that I took, scrape....hmmmm. Dropping to my knees to investigate and thankful that I had on my gloves....glass & lots of it. Dig a bit more and more glass. As I go deeper the pieces are larger...I am unearthing complete canning jars (some with lids) and old medicine bottles. HUH? Break time and off to the computer to investigate. Seems that back in the day when outhouses were used trash would be tossed down the hole. Tilling was not an option, I couldnt imagine gardening amongst shards of glass. I did however have a roll of landscaping fabric. Unrolling the fabric to 8' (the width of the garden) I marked where I would place the plants and cut an "x" in the fabric. Using some bricks to hold down the end of the fabric I folded it back on itself and dug a hole just big enough for the plant. The fabric was then stretched back out, plants put in the ground through the "x" in the fabric. The garden measures 8'x26' and I planted most of the plants using this method. As I worked my way down the garden and got to the end there was less glass...the last 2 rows were used for bush green beans (no landscape fabric used) To hold down all of this fabric I used shavings from the stalls. We have a 45'63 Cleary Building that was a disaster when we moved here...it was put up in 1999 and is nice, but the people that lived here prior to us had 14 horses. The neighbors told us they put them loose in the barn. There was straw, manure and hay bits all over in there...some spots were at least a foot deep. We cleaned out a spot in there for our animals, but some of that mess had to wait. Being there are only 2 of us to handle that mess it toook quite a while to get it cleaned out, but I managed to get the last of it out of there last year. By then it was composted nicely and worked great to hold down the fabric, it provided some nutrients to the plants, held the fabric down which killed off the sod underneath. There were virtually no weeds. This year I removed the fabric and put newspaper down which I saved all winter, more winter stall waste was put on top to hold down the paper. A bit more weeds this year, but we did double the garden size...now there are two 8'x26' sections. Things are growing nicely!

Introduction

~Welcome to my first posting in our blog~For our first entry I am just going to start off with the basics. Our family of 3 lives in Eastern Iowa. Besides the Tornados and the flooding that happened this year things are pretty uneventful. We like it that way, slow and relaxed. Granted there isnt a whole lot to do but thats ok, we manage to entertain ourselves and enjoy living the country life!Our home was built approx 1929, surrounded by 5 acres of pasture. This used to be an old dairy farm with many more acres but as time went on the tillable acres were sold off and are now farmed by other folks. Making up our hobby farm are our 2 horses which are used for showing and trail riding (we took 2008 off from the shows), 10 goats two of which are being raised for butchering, 30+ chickens which are happily free ranging in the yard, 2 ducks & approx 17 rabbits which are going to be used for meat. We have a nice garden, an apple tree, raspberries, rhubarb and a small herb garden that my son & I started this year. The vegetable garden has an interesting story, at least I think so....I will post more about it in a later blog and how we had to do the garden area.