Time's toll.

The goats are gone, but we still have chickens, guineas and two dogs (one of which is Brisket - who was born in 2008... and Chops, born about 9 years later),  one pig (Mimi).
When you have a farm and you flood as extensively as we have, there's a certain depression that goes with it - and the inability to think that anything you create isn't going to be flooded out. In that regard, it is difficult to find the energy to fix fences or to clean up the debris - even from 2007, our first flood that destroyed stuff.

This time, on Halloween in 2015, the water came from the dam water being released upstream. Which means instead of pouring through our barnyard, it simply rose from the ground. It took six hours to get home that day, and when I did, everything was fine. Mike and I went to watch a movie and when we came back downstairs, the water was four feet high and threatening to come into the house.

So we have decided to move, retiring to a different place that doesn't flood.

I hope it works out. It will take us about four years and a lot of money to finish and extricate ourselves...

Okay - so homesteaders - you know most of these recipes. Thought I would put a bunch out there because, you know, you never know.

1. Making laundry and floor soap - works on dogs and cats. Pretty mild.
2. Making dishwashER soap. Not hard. Recipes online.

Seriously. The other things are dog biscuits and such, but I'm not ready for you, yet.

This is August, 2016. We had two floods last  year - one around Memorial Day, the other ON Halloween. Both have been devastating in various ways to us. So we're going to move (too old to do this again and we haven't fixed the last time's major flood). If we were younger.. perhaps.

Signing off - going to start another blog *what* you say? Yeah. But one closer to the heart. Experimental cooking.  Don't roll those eyes. You know who we are. This is an extension of that.

Just because it's been two years since we posted, doesn't mean we've gone away.

We just had two concrete slabs put in - one is 30 x 60 and the second is 10 x 23 feet. Mike has moved his business to our home because he was renting space in a warehouse (for 400.00 a month) that has been sold. So from Buda to Bastrop - he moved about a month and a half ago and we've since purchased a metal building to put on the concrete slab(s) that were poured in the last two days.

Oh, and we have goats again - this time, we are concentrating on Milk goats and have some miniature runts that are 'filler' goats because we also needed to keep our ag exemption.

Let's see... in the last two years? Our deck project has yet to be finished, but we built a house for Mimi, the potbelly pig (whose kids we have parts of in the freezer, still)...

We have a new dog - a female for Brisket, although right now I think he thinks of it as a replacement than as a companion - the way he mopes around and such.

Barbecue is getting much older and has outlived a pyrenees' life, really, but she still enjoys barking and walking around, so she'll be okay for at least another year or so. When she starts pooping in place and can't get up, anymore, we'll have to reconsider her quality of life.

We still have a bunch of chickens and the guineas that we never owned (from the neighbors over there) have reproduced and we have about 20 of them, now. Most of them are not ours and I had to bring the lady from next door over to get her to see that indeed, we don't cage these guineas... we simply feed them better than the neighbors and they like our place, so they stay.

So, as for the building site - this is the way it used to look. And we had a second gate that no longer exists - that was our 'main gate' to the front yard.

Now, it looks like this... um, except there's another slab behind it, as well, but not as big as this one.

It is June. It's hot, but not as hot as normal, at least not for Texas. We just harvested and processed about 200 ears of edible corn - some of which actually made it to the freezer as corn on the cob, some of which is in canning jars on the shelf for adding to things like pizza. That's also corn that's been smoked.

Mike bought a BIG GREEN EGG and has been smoking things quite a bit lately. Pork shoulders, ribs, chickens, chicken wings.. and we are going to smoke the bacon we 'harvested' some time ago from our pig(s) when the pork shoulder is done and the smoker is just hot enough.

The turkeys on the edge of the smoker are simply... practicing. Some of them will eventually be big enough to go inside. These are Rio Grande Turkeys, but one of them seems to be white - the Rio Grande is a native to Texas.

The new BGE is a conundrum for Mike simply because he does not have to tend to it at all and the temperature is so constant, that there's no fiddling. He likes to fiddle. The old New Braunfels smoker sits, lonely, unused because of this new BIG GREEN EGG. Awww... It will have use again, I suppose, when we smoke the turkeys for making tamales.

I have begun attending online-only classes to some day achieve getting a master's degree. That, along with all the other things we do at our little farm, is quite enough for three people, but since there's really only me during the summer, it's a bit overwhelming. Mike's job requires that he stay out late to finish what he does since he hasn't hired someone else this year to help him out. It's hard on him and hard on me - since I'm the one that now has to do most farm chores as well as prepare meals, make lunches, tend animals, etc.

Right now, though, life is dangerously good. It feels good to go pick up stuff from the garden and bring it in, then ten minutes later, have it on the table to eat. And no chemicals!

The corn isn't Monsanto corn. I used diatomaceous earth to keep the critters off.

I am now making liquid soap, deodorant and lip balm along with dishwashing soap, laundry soap and dishwasher soap. All of which also take time, but I sell some of it and use the rest at home.

We now have three small goats - Gouda, Swiss and Cheddar. All of them are just as adorable as you can imagine and because the weather has been so mild, there is much for them to eat right now. That may change in summer, but by then, they will have grokked what alfalfa is and what alfalfa pellets can mean to them - and dried corn.

The young turkeys (all six birds) are just as happy as can be. I think we're going to have three males and three females this year. Going to harvest one of them early because it looks like a mixed breed and if SHE has kids, they won't be Rio Grandes, but probably a mix of white turkeys and Rio Grandes.

It's time to taste those luscious, BGE-smoked ribs that Mike is making. And perhaps have some corn on the cob from the garden.

Chow... literally.

Kristi

It is now April, 2013 and we are still on the farm. The weather this year in Texas is quite amazingly cool and it has been pleasant actually working in the garden and being outside.

We sold the meat goats last year - had to because of the drought and were pretty happy about it, but then decided this year to start over with milk goats.  We bought two purebred Nubians from a woman who toured with her golf-playing, human-like dog named 'Burrito'.

"Swiss" and "Cheddar" are now in the buck pen that we had Recoil (the older meat goat, boer buck we had that had pinned me up against the wall at one point).

I was trying to figure out what we do at the farm - how it's different from our previous life simply in what we do and what we create these days when normally we would have bought stuff...

Here's the list and I might go and change it as I am menopausal and not really remembering everything all the time.

• Liquid soap for hands
• Hard hand soap (goat's milk)
• Deodorant
• Laundry Soap
• Dishwasher soap
• Dishwashing soap
• Dog biscuits
• Chicken stock
• Canned items such as sundried tomatoes, jalapenos, etc...
• Kahlua
• Naranjacello
• Limoncello
• Amaretto
• Grand Marnier
• Hydrosols
• beef jerky
• Dried herbs
• lip balm
• wine - prickly pear, ginger, grape, plum

grown things:

• Herbs
• tomatoes
• peppers
• all things garden
• Pomegranates
• pecans
• pears
• plums

processing;

• chickens
• pigs
• turkeys
• guineas 
• goats

 Off-the-land stuff;

• compost
• charcoal
• firewood
• barbecue wood - oak, hickory, mesquite (very little mesquite)
• prickly pear

 Made stuff (infrastructure):

•  gardens
• chicken tractor
• whizz-bang chicken plucker
• gambrel, killing station

More later. 

Sigh. Nearly a year without a post. It's been BUSY okay? Life gets in the way until it doesn't. Goats have been born, lived and sold. That's the condensed version. Early on we decided we would take a vacation this year. We would drive to California to spend some time with family. What's it been three or four years since we've been out there? That was our last vacation too. It's about time for another one. It takes some pre-planning to leave for any length of time. The dang animals insist on being fed and watered. It might be possible to leave a huge quantity of alfalfa pellets in the barn for the goats, but goats are, contrary to popular belief, very fussy eaters. After a couple of days the pellets would become stale and the goats won't touch it. You almost have to have someone come over and feed them every other day. Then there's water. I've built 2 automatic water systems for our creatures over the years but they break down often. Cheap plastic materials in the floats or valves cause most of the problems. A break in a line or freezing weather would be doom. The drought of the last 10 years in Central Texas has played havoc with our fencing. What were once strong goat resistant fences have become loose and wobbly. Goats are clever creatures and they are always looking for a means to subvert any system designed to contain them. The older goats have taken to jumping over the top of the field fencing and through the electric lines. Since they are not in contact with the ground, they don't get shocked. Clever rascals! The younger goats have taken advantage of where the pigs had pushed up the fencing and they nose under it. Fortunately the pigs are now enjoying freezer camp and won't be damaging fences in the future. Electric fences work great until a twig comes into contact with the wire and grounds it out. You are always having to walk the fence-line to fix it. Several years we would have large quantities of Walking Stick insects walk along the fence wire until they get to a post. As soon as the bug sets foot on the post the bug would be killed and it's body would short the fence. One bug won't bring the whole fence down, but there are dozens. Last week I came home from work on a Monday to find 11 goats in the middle of the street! They had gotten out and couldn't figure out how to get back in. I tried to herd them with my motorcycle, but that was surprisingly ineffective. So I parked the bike, opened the main gate, got behind the little buggers and walking along in full motorcycle gear (helmet riding suit gloves and boots) flailing my arms and yelling I got the herd back in. A month ago we got an angry note from a neighbor that our goats were getting into their yard and eating all their feed. The neighbor said they were next door but neglected to mention what direction and the name on the note was different than who we knew our neighbors to be. They did include a phone number so I left a message. In the mean time Kristi and I went to find where the goats were getting out. We found a spot that had a trail leading away from the other side of the fence. While the fence looked good this was the only spot we could find that was a possibility. This was in a far back corner of the property and the woods are too dense for any mechanized transport. After an hour of locating tools and supplies to repair the fence, we got to work. By then the neighbors had gotten back and we found we were fixing something that wasn't a problem. It was a different neighbor. He told us the goats were coming in via the creek. That's on the opposite side of the farm. We found another spot where it appears that our dog Brisket, had dug a nice hole under the fence and the goats followed him through, then they'd go down the creek which is mostly dry this time of year and to the neighbors. It doesn't help that they have decided to install a hunting for hire setup and they are putting down corn every day. There is no food that goats like more than corn so one plus one definitely equals trouble here. After fixing that hole we have only seen the goats over there once. The new hole was fixed and maybe we're good. We cannot have the goats getting out to wander the street while we're gone. We have taken a bit of a drastic step to solve these problems. We have sold most of our herd. Most of the power goats went to 2 buyers. One fellow wanted them to clear his 25 acres and eventually he'll bring in cattle. The other buyer trades animals and I guess he gets a good enough deal from us that he can make a profit on them. We are left with 11 young castrated males, "wethers" and between now and when we go, they will be harvested and join the pigs in the freezer. We will get to take a little time to get fences repaired without having to worry about goats dodging cars in the street or neighbors corn being eaten. We are also looking forward to doing some traveling! Taking weekends off from time to time and seeing Texas and neighboring states. Probably shooting WAY to high here. It's nice to dream.

Oh, boy. It's kidding season, once more. We have six new kids - four females and two males. Hopefully, the balance will be such that we can fill out our herd and have females for sale (instead of just male kids for cabrito) in 2012.


We've replace the wire mesh on the stalls with hog panels - a gradient variety of 6x6 squares - they start off at the bottom with 1.5 inch gaps and go up from there. These are great for kidding stalls because the young kids can't get out of the stalls or get away from mom. The regular fencing worked to a point, then we have goats that just like to bash the sides of the stalls for no damned reason at all. So the wire mesh gets banged up pretty badly. The hog panels are pretty sturdy and will withstand a lot more bashing, as well as being able to be pushed back into shape once the goats have done too much damage.

Mike set off two burn piles today. It's been a while since Bastrop County's Burn ban has been lifted and since it's been raining a bunch (not enough, never enough), the ban is off temporarily. So Mike did two burn piles (one with the amount of dead trees, old decking materials and average damaged wood stuff would have set a pile off that was too high).

The neighbor lady came across Shiloh yesterday while Mike was on a bike ride and I spoke with her. She's an ex-RTF person and is semi-retired. She moved down the road from a much larger house to the one she has and in the past, has raised hay (mostly for her horses). She seems all right. Her mother is 93 years of age and living in San Antonio. Mimi (our potbelly pig) tends to visit her when Mimi's in heat and yesterday, the woman had Mimi and her kids in tow when she came to the second gate (the one that separates the front yard from the fields).

Life is a little stupid right now. It's been a very tough year financially as well as emotionally for both Mike and I. It has been an extremely complex year, one that we both tend to want to put behind us. Next year will be better. It better be. It can't get much worse than this year. Drought, disease, issues with government agencies and a general depression that comes with a few of those tended to make us a bit... weary this year.


Later,

K