SmartSteader

So that big announcement? We launched our app this past Saturday at a homesteading conference in Virginia! It was an amazing experience and so far so good…we have over 400 people playing with our app! It’s a bit surreal and what’s even more surreal is that since I volunteered to tackle a lot of the business side of things (Neil obviously is the developing genius who is swamped with all the new features we want to add in), I get to re-learn accounting and economics stuff. And yes I do actually love that and am having fun! Our partners (the amazing people behind Reformation Acres ) are heading up social media and marketing (hallelujah) and it’s been so cool to watch it slowly spread. I’m working on refining our investor presentation and business plan so that hopefully in the next few weeks we can start talking with possible investors. When we get funding we can do everything bigger and faster. It’s pretty unique to be able to start a business like this and know that since we funded it ourselves we have no pressure or debt or anything, and we can make this work regardless of if we can get outside funding. It would just be really helpful. The website is www.smartsteader.com if you want to see the promotional video that we put together, featuring the only actors I had at my disposal…the kids and cows and chickens and one handsome farmer man. We are so excited!

[This is Arty. The face of SmartSteader]

I also promised a farm update. Whew! What a season. Here’s a smattering of my favorite pictures then I’ll give you some numbers at the end. Enjoy!

Still can’t really get over the fact that stuff actually grows here…so naturally I completely over-planted. Again.

Before the numbers though some fun things:

I grew peanuts and then made peanut butter! Someday when I have lots of time, I won’t eat any other kind, it’s that good. In the mean time, it’s nice to know that it’s possible and waiting for me.

We put in an orchard and our Asian pear tree just put out blossoms…in the middle of October! (pic is up above)

We have at least 1 female turkey and turkey eggs are tasty…just like chicken eggs only bigger.

I started making soap again with Mei’s milk and lard from our pigs. It’s awesome and I forgot how much I missed making soap.

Some garden/farm stats as of right this minute:

We produced:

• 2,143 lbs of milk (252 gallons) this year
• 1,608 eggs (134 dozen) this year
• 440 lbs of pork loveliness
• 292 lbs cucumbers
• 282 lbs tomatoes (didn’t get to at least 50 more lbs…those went to chickens)
• 70.75 lbs Summer Squash
• 40.5 lbs misc. peppers

We have 11 blueberry bushes, 15 fruit trees, 2 elderberry bushes, 4 turkeys, 3 rabbits, 2 cows, 30-ish chickens, 2 cats, 2 gerbils, and 1 green anole.

Now I just need a partridge to put in my pear tree.

 

 

meat birds

When one embarks on a new hobby, one very quickly becomes immersed in a brand new subculture. And what is culture if not a collection of disagreements on how things should be done? Well, in the “raising my own meat chickens” community there is the conundrum of efficiency vs. quality.

On the side of efficiency you have the Cornish Cross. If you buy chicken of any sort at the store you are buying a Cornish Cross, a veritable miracle of breeding for purpose. These things get to market weight in 8 weeks or sooner and they produce tons of white meat on much less feed in the shortest amount of time possible. Less feathers and large body cavities make for very easy processing. The trade off: If you let them grow too big, their legs break under them. They can have heart attacks. People contend they taste awful or at least not as good as other breeds. They are gross and don’t move around a lot, except to feed frenzy their food.

On the side of Quality you have the Red/Freedom/etc. Ranger. These are a heritage meat bird that can get up to market weight in 12 weeks, but still retain the ability to lay eggs and mate naturally (the Cornish cross can’t do either). They are smarter and don’t face the health problems if allowed to grow beyond a certain age. People say they taste better as a result of being more active and they are prettier running around the yard.

We figured we’d do our own comparison to see which we liked better and had decided to start with the darling of hippie homesteaders everywhere: the much more natural Red Ranger. However, the feed store told us their hatchery had a break out of avian flu and lost all those chicks for the year so if we wanted chicken to eat it was the Cornish Cross for us. In perusing forum threads and blogs, I ran across some advice about managing these frankenbirds. The guy’s point was that one had to be aware of the nature that has been bred into them and work with that. These things are eating machines, therefore giving them free choice feed (like you would do with any other chicken, meat or layer) is a recipe for the above ickiness.  Our birds got fed twice a day and we found that while kind of pathetic and without grace, beauty or charm…these critters weren’t too bad to raise. Also I’m new to home raised chicken, so naturally these guys taste better than store bought to me and until my palette becomes more refined, I have no complaints.

*****Pictures of dead chickens: no blood, no guts, kid friendly*****

Here’s how it went down. We had 16 to process plus two roosters from last year. [Those two gentleman are still pecking about with our laying hens because after 4 hours of work in the hot and humid for both of us, we were done. Some day though, those boys are destined for the stock pot.] YouTube, the internet and books gave us the general idea, plus we did a few in Vegas. The killing cone was new and it worked well. Funny thing about chickens. When you hold them upside down they struggle and flap, but then they go limp and it’s like they just find their zen. This is convenient because then they slip right into the cone which confines them (theoretically) through the death throes. I say theoretically because one managed to flip itself out of the cone and around the shed for a solid minute sans head!

Next the scald pot at 150 degrees with some dish soap in the water. This helps feathers loosen, cuts down smell and presents much less manure to be dealt with while plucking. And yes, I do most everything on the farm in my flipflops.

And my sexy overalls. They do all the farm chores too.

Handmade plucker. It’s not fantastic but did get the areas I especially did not want to touch. It was fine for the amount we needed to do but any more birds and I’d want something more robust. They have motorized drums that can pluck multiple birds in a minute or two. A girl can dream, right?

What’s up? Chicken Butt. [Inner 12 year-old boy back in the box] The husband man and I settled into a fairly good system of killing (him), scalding and plucking (me), gutting (him), final cleaning and weighing (me). Pretty sure he got the short end of that stick.

Not bad for a first try.

After hanging out in the fridge for a few days to chill and relax it was time to wrap them for the freezer. Nifty shrink wrap bags made this part so nice. Bag the bird, dunk in hot water, zip tie. Done.

It still boggles my mind when ever I grow or raise something that looks and tastes even better than store bought. These bird are so tasty and make spectacular stock (once I threw in the feet and necks). One and a half birds turned in to 7 quarts chicken pot pie filling, and another three got pressure canned (canned chicken makes amazing chicken salad).  I still think I prefer rabbit for the overall experience, but chicken will be in the rotation every year. At least one flock (15-20) of them…I mean from chicks to this it was only nine weeks, which is a very easy time commitment. We averaged about 5 lbs and $2.28 per lb. all said and done. We could bring the feed cost down if we were better about moving them to new grass and going with cheaper feed, not to mention a more efficient feeder with less waste potential. I bought the good stuff and it was still very reasonable. New meat source…Check! Next up in November, Turkeys! (We’ll definitely need a bigger cone.)

 

RTDM

As you are no doubt aware, the military has a fascination with acronyms. ASAP, TDY, BHA, it goes on and on. However, you may not be aware that those in the software industry share this particular penchant for strings of seemingly random letters. The similarities between these groups doesn’t end there. As a general rule, with a few notable exceptions (My hubby), most members of these groups tend to favor colorful language not suitable for mixed company. Thus the above acronym. Read the Dang Manual. I’ve made the necessary modifications to write it on my kid friendly blog…in fact have a kid reading over my shoulder as I type.  Point being, so many problems and misinformation could be circumvented if people would just RTDM. Keep this in mind, I’ll be coming back to it.

Last week the husband man was back in Las Vegas for work. We knew that the earliest our cow could calve would be May 20 and that would be if the bull had got right down to business the first day she was available. But there are some things that can theoretically increase the chances of early calving. We figured that the best way to get her to come early would be to have Neil leave town. It’s how life tends to roll for us. Given this possibility my handsome lumberjack built me a stanchion before he left so I could start getting Mei used to the idea.

It’s a thing of beauty. Truly. Mei is getting good at it and it has been a lifesaver for this woefully out of practice hand milker.

Well he left on Monday morning, and Thursday evening I went down to feed Mei her evening Chaffhaye.

I screamed and almost hyperventilated when I realized there were more legs than there should have been. Squeaking into the phone, I told Neil that the baby was here and that I had to run but I’d call him back oh my gosh she had her baby oh my gosh!

This was the best case scenario as it meant Mei was able to deliver a perfectly healthy baby with no outside assistance at all. Carefully we introduced ourselves, and I made sure little one had figured out nursing. It took some time before I could get up close and personal enough to ascertain gender, but we confirmed that it was a girl. Naomi (resident animal namer) christened her “Star” and since everyone promptly agreed (hallelujah) it was official. Baby cows are dreamy. Silky smooth, adorable and so feisty. We are old hands at goat kids (who have the small thing working for them) but I’m pretty sure we are sticking with cows for a while…everyone fell in love. Not that there hasn’t been a learning curve.

With in the first hour we found out the electric fence does not contain our particular baby cow. So we’ve been lucky enough to play several rounds of “find the calf” over the last 8 days. Luckily she gets tired and just hunkers down when she realizes she’s lost. We are surrounded by woods and understanding neighbors, so it’s not a terrible ordeal.

The first few days, when I was on my own, I could bear-hug her like the above picture and just haul her back to her mama. But a few days ago she out grew my strength, making me grateful once again for this guy.

Now back to RTDM rant. Dehorning her was what we decided long ago for a lot of reasons, just like we did for our goat kids. Goat kids got disbudded with a disbudding iron  and that is probably the best option for goats. To the internets we went and after much reading, we opted to go with caustic paste. We read a ton and went to  YouTube and watched it done and it seemed like an excellent option for calves. Once we got the paste we read the instructions and we quickly realized why people hate caustic paste. It’s because they do everything the instructions say NOT to do especially with goat kids. People, a goat kid is an entirely different creature than a cow calf. RTDM!!!

Well we followed our own advice and after reading we got it done. Best way to dehorn.

One key is to do this early. She was three days old when we did it. First, shave the horn buds.

Next, apply petroleum jelly in a ring around the horn bud to contain the caustic paste. Now to back up a minute, when I say caustic paste I’m talking lye, and some other nasty highly basic chemicals. It reacts with everything and ultimately eats away everything including the horn bud. Not something you want to touch with bare hands. It will literally burn you away. Seems mean, right? Many, many people think so and naturally studies have been done to see just how mean this is. Turns out young calves (like days old) show slightly fewer signs of discomfort with this method compared to a disbudding iron where the skin and horn bud are burned off, with no anesthetic. Older calves are usually given some sort of pain treatment. It is quick and one of the most humane ways to do it.  [I can’t find the study because I found it on my phone not on the computer I’m currently on. If you absolutely need the research and links I will happily oblige, but right now a certain almost 4 year old is demanding my attention.]

Paste is applied with a Popsicle stick. We applied the amount specified in the instructions. If you apply too much it will keep reacting, eating down further into the skull. People who apply too much, naturally will have some issues. RTDM.

I must state that at this point our calf was just cranky at being held down. She was making no sounds and was not even really struggling. Compared to our goat kids who screamed and fought through the whole disbudding process, this felt so much better. Calmer and much less dramatic. Didn’t even smell singed hair.

Picture on the left is 24 hours-ish afterwards. Picture on the right is about 4 days after the fact. There was no blood, so no fly problems and after about 6 hours of keeping her tied so she couldn’t rub it onto herself or her mama, she was good to go. I could touch it and she didn’t notice a thing.

I highly recommend this method for dehorning calves if you can do it early enough that there isn’t any pain (can be within the first 2 days). Not that you can tell by Miss Sassy Pant’s expression, but she does actually like us and is settling in nicely. Now that we are separating her at night so that I can milk in the morning, our only real issue is my hand strength. It is a race to get as much as I can before Mei finishes the bucket of yumminess I bring her in the morning. My hands are doing ok, I’m just terribly inefficient. Sigh. To be fair, Meushi has been an angel and even stood patiently for me to keep milking this morning even after she had finished breakfast.

This mornings efforts. That is a gallon jar, and the goal is to get at least one of these every morning. Hopefully, we will both get better at this game and Neil can fill in for me with his huge lumberjack hands if my forearms fall off.

 

 

Harvesting

Because the garden currently looks like this:

And my cow had icicles on her fur and ears:

And because I devoured The Intelligent Gardner and Teaming With Microbes in 6 days. And because I can’t stop thinking and scheming about this year’s garden and my massive garden expansion plan. I realized it would be a good idea to take this downtime (between hog butcherings, chick acquisition, indoor seed starting, etc.) to finally get out a recap of our first gardening experience on our new homestead. [As a quick meandering tangent (oxymoronic, no?)…I’ve decided that the moniker “homestead” is indeed the most fitting for what we are building. Farm is too big and we aren’t (currently) selling anything, Garden doesn’t cover what a large part animals play in this thing. Farmstead would be an option but I prefer homestead and all that it implies. We have settled on an actual name too! That will be reveled later, but for now? Glad we got that sorted.]

Rather than drone on and on about the minutiae that doesn’t really interest anyone but me (even my husband is kindly polite when I get going on all things garden), I’m just going to show you some of my favorite pictures from the season. While there was a bit of a learning curve (Fungal disease from too much moisture was not something that happened in the desert. Ever.), growing stuff here is amazing. It gave me a glimpse into a world where I really could produce superior food for my family and make a substantial dent in our food bill. My previous successes were limited to “Hey, something grew! And it almost looks normal!”  No more, friends. We can garden for reals now.

Quick note: Morning Glories are weeds here. We had to work hard to grow some for Naomi in Vegas and even then only got a few. Best. Move. Ever.

The spider’s name is Quatro.

We probably got 20 lbs of pecans from our pecan tree that we didn’t even know we had until a few months ago. And there are still about 5 pounds on the ground because holidays commandeered my pecan harvesting time. I think only homemade bacon from my own pig has rivaled the joy and pride from serving pecan pie made from my own pecans on Thanksgiving Day.

I love canning. Do you love canning? If no, Can I can for you? Because I love it. I have an entire attic space that is now an attic pantry full to bursting with everything from bread and butter pickles to wild black berry jam to chicken pot pie filling. Happiness radiates, nay…exudes, out of there from under the door. Seriously, it looks like puffs of yellow glitter.

Final counts:

• 44.5 lbs summer squash
• 22 cantaloupes (averaging 4 lbs each)
• 58 lbs sweet potatoes
• 112.5 lbs cucumbers
• 105 cups wild blackberries from our woods
• 157 lbs. tomatoes
• 6 lbs. peppers
• 25 ears of corn
• 6 watermelons
• 5 big pumpkins
•  9 lbs. green beans
• a few small cabbages and cauliflowers
• a ridiculous amount of arugula
• 2 large acorn squashes
• handful of small random squashes

 

 

 

 

how we arrived at boudin noir

So boudin noir is the French take on the German blutwurst which is the corollary of the Spanish morcilla, but in England it’s pronounced blood pudding. Kind of. Something like that. No matter the ethnic nuance you start with, it’s basically pigs’ blood mixed with some spices and some other stuff then cooked and eaten. I also think it has the greatest ick factor of all the weird things I’ve done in the past two weeks. Bottom line, though? It’s tasty. Just like head cheese and fried kidneys are tasty. It’s commonly agreed upon that Pork as a food group is good eating, but these other things that our culture has left behind take eating pork to a whole new level. The catch, of course, is that it’s kind of vital to have crazy fresh and super clean ingredients and that, well, means raising and slaughtering and butchering the pig yourself. Or trading your first born to someone who did raise the pig. As I like our son, we chose the first option. I would like to share with you one of the coolest things I’ve done thus far as a homesteader.

***Graphic pictures ahead, because…well…the pig had to die to make a transition. He went from pushy, greedy garbage disposal (who also enjoyed basking in the sun, letting me scratch his ears, and snooting up the ground with his snout) into food for my family. I liked him and knew his personality. There is loss but it’s loss with a purpose, so there you go. Blood and cutting is part of that transition. You’ve been warned***

I’d love to write a whole post just on our experience at a Pig to Plate workshop we attended two weeks ago in Ohio. Realistically, with Christmas in 3 days I’m impressed I’m getting this post done. To condense: best money we’ve spent on educating ourselves and regaining a connection with our most complicated dietary aspect…meat. Quinn and Bill Veon of Reformation Acres hosted, Andy and Doug from Hand Hewn Farm taught. It was truly life changing and I’ll be forever grateful for that change. They will be hosting more workshops and if you are ever remotely interested in home hog production…get thee to a workshop!

It really doesn’t matter if someone warns you about leaving the hose out the night before you need it. Most likely it will be left out and you will be grateful that as the guys at the workshop related their personal experiences with such an oversight…they also joked about a solution. Hence we ended up with about 120 feet of garden hose in our bathtub at 9 am. Stranger things have happened.

I got back from dropping off kids to hang out with grandma for the afternoon. This wasn’t because I was worried about them seeing the process, but because I knew I needed to be able to work hard without chasing munchkins. Eventually (probably next year) they will stick around. Anyways, we went into the yard and the pig stood still and just stared at Neil. Big Man (you can’t feed something twice a day for 7 months and not give them some sort of name) was shot and down and bleeding out…and it went crazy fast. It’s weird how the mind messes with time perception in high adrenaline situations. We realized later that we didn’t get a great bleed, but even with that, the shot was good and our boy died quickly and peacefully. Well. To an outside observer it wouldn’t actually look peaceful. When an animal dies their body has an awful lot of energy still running through it and so most will thrash around for a bit and with a big animal it can seem pretty violent. (Although the first rooster we killed, scared us so much with how much he thrashed, we nearly second guessed this whole farm thing all together) Death Throes are a real thing.

We had some guys from church come to help and we got the pig on a tarp to carry a few yards to our set up for scalding and scraping.

Getting an accurate weight was important to me so I can keep track year to year, and also to know our dress-out ratios.

Ok here’s what happens once you get the hog hooked onto the gambrel (back legs in the barrel first so you only have to flip once): it is dunked into warm water, 149ish degrees to be precise. This temperature allows the outermost layer of skin to loosen and the hair to start to loosen as well. It only takes a few minutes. Longer time or hotter temperature can actually set the hair, making scraping nearly impossible. I have it on good authority that shaving the whole carcass takes about 11 years.

After the proper dunk time you grab some back hair and see if it comes out easily. If it does, you hoist the pig out and start scraping. On our way home from Ohio we stopped at  Lehmans, a store that actually carries tools for this scraping. They are called Bell Scrapers or Hog Scrapers.  Unfortunately, they serve a large Amish community and it’s that time of year…they were out. We improvised with a coconut shell-er thing and a thing that was once a part of a lamp (I think) and it actually went really well. One advantage to our warmer southern winter…the dense winter hair hadn’t come in yet. The head and front trotters didn’t scald well so we didn’t use the trotters and Neil, being awesome, later poured boiling water over the head and cleaned it so that I could still use it. He is good stuff. Once the hair is scraped, you shave what ever is left, then blowtorch anything after that. Yeah, a working blowtorch would have been great…last minute Christmas gift to my husband?

Next is evisceration. Things to save and use/eat: small intestines (and large if you are feeling brave and masochistic), heart, liver, lungs, spleen, kidneys, and caul fat. Wait! What’s that? All that sounded familiar except the caul fat?

This, my friends, is caul fat and it’s culinary potential is nigh unlimited.

After you save the good bits and bury the bad bits, you remove the head and split the carcass with a bone saw so it can thoroughly chill. The weather could not have been more perfect for us. It took us about 3 hours from shot to getting ready to split so I had to run and rescue grandma. The kids were equal parts fascinated and disgusted. They were so disappointed that while I did save the bladder to blow up like a ball…I didn’t put it in its own container and it ended up covered in bile. Ain’t nobody touching nothing that smells that weird! And there we called it a night.

Day #2: Break it down now. Leaf lard came out first (top left). This is the stuff pie crust dreams are made out of and so it is treated with respect. Then we cut one half into primals outside. A hog is divided into 4 quarters or primal cuts. Then each of these is broken down further. At the workshop we got to practice this process on someone else’s pig, which made doing it on our own sooooooo much easier. Not saying we couldn’t have YouTube-ed it…it just would have been a horrific mess if we had. We brought in one quarter at a time. Our babies helped for a while and then peacefully destroyed the house while the adults kept at it. This day was long, but we managed…and it feels so great to have a freezer full of beautiful white packages.

Our work was not finished with all the fresh cuts being done…oh no.

Stock was made, lard was rendered, small intestines were turned into sausage casings which were in turn made into blood sausage (which i love, by the way).

During the next few days the madness continued.

Scrapple, Headcheese, Christmas Eve Ham put into brine, fried kidneys. And it all tastes so delicious.  Offal is my new favorite ingredient…I must have some sort of mineral imbalance. 

Nearly 40 lbs. of bacon is a strong argument for raising your own pork. We finished packing the ground pork today, it still will be turned into various typed of stuffed sausages. 

I’ll be happily  nibbling headcheese and rillettes for the next two weeks while we celebrate the holidays.

Final counts and thoughts:

• Live weight – 365 lbs.
• Hung weight – 281 lbs.
• 124 lbs. fresh cuts including ribs
• 38 lbs. bacon
• 45 lbs. ground pork
• 9.5 quarts lard
• 4 gallons stock
• 11 lbs. scrapple
• 4-5 lbs. head cheese
• 5 half pints rillettes
• lots of lbs. of liver, kidneys, heart, and spleen. (all of which have been used)
• 60 feet of sausage casings and caul fat (going to become Crepinettes on Christmas Eve and roast rabbit once I have rabbits in the freezer)
• skin (not finished with this so don’t have a total. Doesn’t matter, we have enough to make cinnamon sugar pork rinds and change the world one mouth at a time)

It was an incredible experience and I wish I could write more. Oh wait I can! We are doing this whole thing again in a few months when we process our girl! There are big plans for her given our success this time round and I will probably write all about how my life and the life of my family has been changed forever by doing this. That sounds melodramatic, I know. But seriously, now that I’ve started to take more control over what I eat and had a taste of the satisfaction it brings…I’m not sure I could ever not being doing this. Don’t know that I have a choice anymore and that makes me happier than I can say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More chevon for my freezer…

**** Warning: Pictures of raw meat that used to be our goat Dwalin*******

When you castrate a male goat it is referred to as a “wether.” They make awesome pets because they are docile like does, but can never get pregnant (obviously) and they don’t get as big, aggressive, or stinky as an intact buck. We had a boy born last summer and he was a very sweet little wether. However, like most wethers he was always destined to go into the freezer. That happened yesterday. It’s not too bad for me because I still get to maintain something of a disconnect between my animals and my food. He left as Dwalin and then my husband brought back two sides of chevon that I’ll be breaking down Tuesday. For those of you who are interested…

17 month old Nigerian dwarf wether: live weight = 56 lbs. Hung weight = 27 lbs. actual yield = to be determined on Tuesday.

  

Rather than slaughter and dress him on our back porch, the husband guy opted to take advantage of a company in a neighboring city that will kill and field dress anything from a little goat to a huge steer. It was $25 for someone else to do all the work, plus Neil got some good ideas on how to do it if we ever process a goat at our house in the future.

Little man went along for the ride and was eager to see everything (minus them actually shooting the goat).

  

Neil sent me this picture on my phone and my first thought was that “wow, he had a lot of fat!” When I texted Neil that, he replied that everyone where he was at thought our goat was really lean. Guess butchering pigs gives you better perspective for that sort of thing. And that’s what a goat liver looks like. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with it, but at the very least it should make our cats happy. You better believe that if the liver and heart make it into people food, I’ll be blogging about that.

  

A reciprocating saw! Brilliant! We just need to get a different blade, and the husband’s newest toy power tool will be way more versatile than we thought!

Neil has Christmas Eve off, so all we have to get done during the day is breaking this loveliness down in to a more useable form and toss it all into the freezer. I’m really curious to see how much meat we get and in the mean time, I need to go look up recipes for BBQ ribs a la Dwalin.

goat pregnancy test

I’d like to give you your Saturday night laugh at my expense. You’re welcome. The original plan was to keep Wishes. So we put her in with our buck, Buffalo, so she could be bred and have babies in the early spring. Then the plan changed to include two new goats of a different breed, so Wishes will be finding a new home. Unfortunately we were not 100% sure if she was pregnant, and that kind of matters to people looking to buy a goat. Since the internet knows everything, I thought I’d check for ways to tell if a goat is pregnant without having to do a blood draw or see a vet. Success! Score one for resourceful cattle ranchers! Ranchers realized that if you mix cow pee with bleach it will foam up if they are pregnant because the progesterone (or something) reacts with the bleach. Goats and cows and sheep are all very similar when it comes to all things baby-ing, so people reported good results with this method. I had bleach, I just needed some goat pee. Turns out Wishes is shy and goats must only need to pee once every 24 hours or so. I rigged up a washed-out bean can on the end of a stick (I’m serious) and hung out in the goat pen for probably 5 hours all together. One night I was calling it a failure and as I opened the gate to come in, she peed. On the ground. But it didn’t seep in so I scooped up the pee and now mud into the can and we got enough that it made the bleach foam. I then bleached my hand and happily moved on with my life vowing to buy tests and learn to draw blood because what I just described is ridiculous…even for me.

  

A company in Canada makes easy to use tests for cows that also work for goats and sheep. When they arrived we got to it. Milk or blood serum can be used (not pee…hallelujah) so all we needed was to draw some blood. Again, for the 8 millionth time in our farm career, it was to the internets!

First you shave a big patch on the neck on either side. I think I might buy my husband new clippers for Christmas, so these can be for the goats and he can have his very own set that isn’t shared.

Then you (or a helper…me in this case because I wanted to watch him a few times before I try it) hold the goat, feel for the jugular vein, insert the needle and draw the blood. Easy, right? Actually once he found where to go it was super easy. Our new Kinder girls were very easy to work with.

  

Some places say the blood will clot and the serum will separate on it’s own. Other places say you need to spin it in a centerfuge. Yeah, we don’t have one of those…but we do have my sons bike! Perfect! Oh and these are my new “farm” jeans thanks to a stupid fence and greedy goats poaching for animal cookies.

 

Lots of spinning later these are our conclusions:

– Totally got mixed messages on wether or not Wishes is pregnant. I think she is.

– We have a lot to learn about working with the blood once it is drawn, but we know we can get blood easily on our own for when we start testing. Yay!

– Spinning it on the bike did nothing to make the serum separate.

– Josie’s blood clotted and separated beautifully, while the other two girls’ didn’t at all…we barely got enough for the test. And no idea what we did differently or if goats are like people in that some cooperate and some don’t.

– According to the test (which might be off because our breeding dates were a bit off) none of the three is pregnant. That is sad because we were hoping that the Kinder girls were bred when we bought them. It may be a good thing though because one of them is really too young to be bred. So in November, Josie will be hanging out in Buffalo’s pen so they can shamelessly get it on when she goes into heat. ChaCha will go in there in December.

–   The mating habits of goats are almost as funny as those of rabbits. Almost.

Disbudding

**** WARNING: Not sure what to say here, but you’ve been warned! ****

It is common knowledge that goats naturally have horns. However, in the modern farm setting, horns tend to cause more problems than they solve and so it is now the norm to remove them. Removing full grown horns from an adult goat would be a horrific experience for everyone involved, thus the practice of disbudding.

Disbudding is the removal of the horn bud from the skull of a baby goat. We thought it was supposed to be done at a few weeks old back when we were total noobs with regards to all things carpine. Nope, that’s why you get scurs (partial horns that grow and can curl back into the goats skull, killing them). Our wether, Dwalin, has scurs because we had him disbudded way to  late. He has knocked them off once, but as he is destined for the freezer, we aren’t too worried about removing them again. Well, we know better now and since we are going to be having a lot of kids in our future farming experience we figured it was time to learn to do it our selves.

A brief run down of the process: you shave the kids forehead, hold a burning iron (think circular branding iron) around the bud, let it burn down to the skull, release baby. We are not the first people to do this so we turned to the internet to learn how to best do it from the experts.

 

If bow ties are cool, then power tools are sexy.

 

The best way to hold the baby goat still so that no one gets hurt when you are using the disbudding iron, which has a tip with a temperature of 3 bazillion degrees, is to build a box. There are lots of different plans online, but Farmer Guy liked this one the best and it will work with both our Nigerian kids and our Kinder kids, when ever they come.

  

We decided to start with the boys, because their horns grow in faster. Thus the need to disbud much earlier. We took them through the process one at a time but I thought I’d just show the pictures for each step together. First up was haircuts!

   

Now there is the actual disbudding with the iron. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to hold their heads (wearing thick leather gloves while Neil did actual burning), and take pictures. I was kicking around the idea of having Garyn take pictures, but quickly decided I didn’t want any human kids near anything that is 3 bazillion degrees. Maybe I’ll figure it out today when we do the girls. The white on the inside of the circles of left boy’s head is bone.

Now to explain some things. This is the most humane thing you can to with regards to horns, unless you have a good reason to let them keep the horns, which we don’t. The kids cried and freaked out way more when they were getting their hair shaved, than when the burning happed. The iron is so hot it cauterized any nerves almost instantly, so really the goats are more angry and scared about being held still in a box than what is happening to their heads. As soon as they were out of the box they were happy as could be. I’m proud of my husband guy, because he was big and brave and did an awesome job on his first go. He was always meant to be a farmer, apparently.

Baby Goaties! Again!

So this is the real secret behind our family’s popularity with our homeschool group. No one else can offer this kind of educational experience in nearly as awesome a package. I have several friends coming over this weekend to take in the sheer cute that is a 2 day old baby goat. Or four. Did I mention Frosty threw QUADS? She did! She’s my favorite for a reason.

 

These are the twins. They were born first and the one on the right is a girl (she has blue eyes….so pretty!).

 

This brown boy also has blue eyes and he is so handsome I understand how goat owners become “weird goat people.” If there was room in our herd for a gorgeous Nigerian buck I’d totally keep him. I might make room, because honestly, I’m already weird goat people. He looks just like his sire and if he is anything like him, this baby would definitely be worth keeping. The other is a sweet girl (Naomi named her Rapunzel…shocker) with solid black ears (that’s how we tell her apart from the twins).

 

 

I called this “Science” for the day. Here is what happened:

I was going to change Corra’s diaper around 1:30 in the afternoon and I glanced out the window and saw Frosty cleaning up two wet kids out in the yard. What the what?! When Ginger was kidding we heard her yelling a mile away. Not Frosty apparently. And no cushy, comfy shelter. No. She’ll birth in the dirt, thank you. Well I moved her kids into the shed after I cleaned them up a bit. She followed and I ran in to check on my human kids. I went back out to check on her about 15 minutes later, and there were the other two, wet and sticky. After I dashed into the house yelling for my kids to come out and grabbing towels, we went back out to clean up the new babies. We got them clean, made sure they were nursing, then let Frosty do her thing. She is a wonderful mama and seemed so much happier to have them on the outside. She and I bonded over being stupid huge pregnant in the summer. I empathized with the relief wafting off of her in a big way. In less than an hour she single hoofedly almost doubled our goat population. Well done, Lady. Well done.

 

When Neil got home, we all went out to play with the babies. Including kitten, who took it upon himself to be the big guardian watch cat of the goat yard.

So now the babies are a bit bigger, frolicking around the yard when they aren’t head-butting their mother nursing.  If you’ve never seen a baby goat frolic, you should add that to your bucket list. It will restore your faith in all that is good and sweet and awesome in the world. Next up is disbudding. I’ll do a whole post on this but it won’t be for the squeamish among you. Now I’m going to go stand at my window and laugh at my new babies.

Circle of Life: first part

These next three posts really could have come in any order. So I’ll go in the order in which we got excited about them. Our last circle of life experiment (Aquaponics system) kind of succumbed to the horrible desert rock situation. Highly alkaline rocks = no plants that would grow = dead fish. Funny thing though…The whole system has been dismantled and repurposed except the fish tank. Turns out gold fish like the flavor of abuse we’ve been dishing out and they are happily living in their tank (which looks a lot like a pond now).

I digress. I forget now how the idea popped into our heads again. We had considered it before but thought… “no, not worth it.” And now it’s back and makes perfect and complete sense. Weird. Rabbits are going to be a regular addition to our farm. After researching like mad for about two days (because that’s how we work) we settled on two different breeds and got in touch with some breeders. Our circle will start with rabbits and their poop.

 

Bunnies need places to live, and kids need worth while holes to dig. Win-Win.

 

The run is right outside the kid’s window in a spot by our house that is mostly shaded during the day. We were planning on splitting the yard in half (Now the plan might be different but nothing for sure yet) so we bought a dog kennel and my brilliant husband rigged up an extra door. There will be a tarp over the top of the whole thing to help with shade and rain and more dens and play things to come with the additional rabbits. Right now we only have Trix.

 

Trix is a Harlequin. They are a smaller breed (6-8 lbs) that has smaller litters (5-9 kits at a time) but have excellent temperaments, are great mothers and have super cool coloring to boot. Sometime the end of May we will hopefully be getting another Harley doe and buck and can start breeding them the end of June. We have really enjoyed her and she seems to be adapting really well to her new, bigger (if dirtier) home.

In mid June / July we will be adding a breeding trio of Silver Fox rabbits. They are bigger (10-12 lbs.) and have bigger litters (9-12 kits). They are supposed to be great in the heat, good temperaments and just great all around rabbits. More on them when they get here.

So just to be clear, all you tender hearted readers. We will be naming (after cereal mascots) the bucks and does that will be with us for a few years as our breeders. They will be pets, however, at some point they too will be eaten. The litters will be raised for 12-16 weeks and then butchered for our own private consumption. (And just so you know it is way, way easier to go from bunny to dinner than it is to go from chicken to dinner). All our rabbits will be pedigreed, and so can be easily sold as pets and any of superior quality can be shown in fairs or rabbit shows. I’m kind of excited about that, and hopefully my kids will be too.

Why, you ask? Why kill a cute furry creature for something so base as eating? Here are some stats for you (and I just found out the going local rate for a dressed rabbit is $22 for a 3-4 lb. rabbit…glad we are doing it ourselves) : found here

• Rabbit has the lowest cholesterol value of any meat product. Compared to the next two lowest, chicken and pork (both with a value of 230 mg per serving), rabbit has a mere 164 mg of cholesterol.
• Rabbit is the lowest calorie meat per serving at 795 calories per pound vs. 810 for chicken, 840 for veal, 1190 for turkey, and 1440 for beef. Pork weighs in at a whopping 2050 calories per pound
• Rabbit meat is the HIGHEST in protein compared to chicken, fish, lamb, pork and even beef
• Rabbit meat is highly digestible and recommended by the USDA for children and the elderly.
• The USDA also proclaims rabbit meat “the most nutritious meat known to man”
•  Rabbits are one of the most productive domestic livestock animal there is. Rabbits can produce 6 pounds of meat on the same feed and water as the cow will produce 1 pound of meat on the same feed and water.
• Rabbit meat makes fantastic jerky because it is so lean. One of these days, I’ll write about my love affair with my dehydrator, and I have big plans for super yummy jerky.

So that’s that. I’m excited and will of course be posting more on our Rabbitry as it gets up and running. Next up…What eats the rabbit poop?