Killing holiday time

It's Texas and ya know yer holiday's gonna be fine when you start it off by killin' somethin'.

Thanksgiving, it was a goose. Yesterday, well, it was time to clean out the tack room and fill some holes in the walls so the rats couldn't get in. Well, they were already in. We already figured there was a rat's nest in the old cabinet, built with quarter-inch plywood and needing to be replaced. Inside this cabinet, we kept various things for the farm -- like bee stuff, oyster shell calcium for the chickens, extra heat lamps and old waterers. I pulled a bunch of the stuff out and when I located the stuff at the bottom of the cabinet - and keep in mind there's very little good light shining into the cabinet, I heard a squeal, or thought I did. I was making enough noise so that it could have been a squeak of a mechanical kind, but it wasn't, as I was to find out shortly. I was using a shop vac to vacuum all the paper mess that was at the bottom and suddenly I see this very thick, very long tail heading toward the corner of the cabinet that I'm NOT vacuuming.

Then the squeal came from me and Mike came running. I'm not usually that squeamish about stuff, but when the 'stuff' is live and possibly pissed, it's time for reinforcements. Mike came with a shovel and by that time, the mother rat had disappeared (the tail, the tail!) and we uncovered six babies. Mike whacked them all over their heads and killed them. They were the size of full-grown mice.

That was yesterday. Mike already knew that there were dead rats in the chicken water tank (an oblong, four-foot tank that sits on the ground) and today we checked it out, emptied it and there were five dead rats in it. Mike buried them in our pet cemetery area so Brisket couldn't eat them.

Today's adventure is all Mike's -- finding dead snakes hanging from a net under the joists under the house.

This past month, a few things have happened, some good, some, well, typical. Number 20's tumor is getting worse (she still sounds like darth vader) and we're thinking of culling her so that she doesn't suffer more and so that she doesn't eat more feed -- you have to think about these kinds of things because feed isn't cheap and we're about to have another set of kids here, soon.

In the goat arena, some goats have figured out they LIKE dried dog food and thus it's nearly impossible to feed Brisket (who stays in the barnyard) because the friggin' goats just bully their way and eat all his food. So often as not, one of us guards his food while he eats it (usually me) and the other one feeds the rest of the creatures.

The goats are heading into kidding season and a lot of them are getting huge with their pregnancies. Since this is the year we switched billy goats, these are still likely to be half-breeds because Billy Goat was in charge and had his work pants on when we sold him. Recoil, however, has definitely buddied up to some of them who rub against him in their heat. Since we now have a fine billy goat pen, we stuck him and 201 inside it for a few days and marked the day. It takes 155 days for insemination to produce a kid and it will be easier if we know which nanny and when from now on.

Recoil has just leaped up in size, as well, and his collar, once very loose around his neck, is not quite as loose, anymore. He's now about the size of one of our largest nannies. I suspect he will be in total charge this coming year.

The geese. Oh, the geese. Six left, still. They have to be fed in their own stall and getting them there is a challenge when you have 36 goats hanging around the tack room door. So as soon as the goats are fed, the hugely noisy geese get theirs, then the chickens, then the dog.

During this last freeze, we covered the water pipe that comes into the barnyard and up through the ground with one of those foam pieces meant for that kind of stuff as well as blue paper tape.
The geese thought this was amusing and proceeded to eat the entire thing, tape and all. So no protection for the pipe. Today, Mike put another foam thing around it and this time we put a short coil of hardware cloth around it, as well, so the stupid geese couldn't eat it.

The white chickens - the second batch of Cornish this year (since the first batch are tough as leather, we needed to have quality roasting chickens and bought 25 more, 25 of the kind we know and love), were mucking up their area so badly that when we had to catch them at night after the first rain, I almost puked. The area was muddy and full of crap and piss and felt like tar underneath my shoes.

So we moved the white chickens (not quite ready to 'process') into the backyard. It's been more than five weeks, so they're fully feathered and can take the cold without getting hypothermia. They all generally stay in a group and are closer to the killing station for when the time comes. But they don't know that, though. Usually, we would begin harvesting them and wanted to do this during vacation, but they're not big enough. They eat twice a day, but that doesn't seem to be enough to grow them to the proper eating size.

Our little barred rocks - the 25 or so we purchased along with the cornish cross, are doing great! Mike and I finished the inside-the-inside chicken coop early this month and that's where the little ones stayed. Mike opened their area up about a week ago and allowed them to come and go -- and they just happily and without incident (mostly) cohabitate with the other chickens and the guineas. We now have about seventy-five birds in the chicken yard and could probably raise another hundred in there, but this is enough and we don't like overcrowding creatures.

The chicken yard, by the way, is holding up REALLY well. One chicken got past Mike this morning (unusual, these days) and into the larger barnyard and the side yard. However, by the afternoon, the chicken voluntarily went straight back into the chicken yard when Mike opened the gate. That means the chicken yard is now their home and they WANT to be there. Yay.

Brisket, being a livestock guardian dog, had his first really bloody battle yesterday. We were quite worried about the little guy. Mike heard the dogs go off in the early morning hours and for a much longer time. There are places in the fence where other dogs can get in and we think one of them did, but probably didn't fare too well from the looks of the blood on Brisket's coat - it wasn't his blood. He seemed to be limping a little, but all that's gone today. We spoiled him with a nice large rib with meat on it yesterday because of the extra work he did in protecting the goats and the chickens and the geese, etc...

How our Thanksgiving is different

Let me list the ways:

We raised and killed our own goose. The day before Thanksgiving, we had foie gras and crackers - my homemade crackers with Parmesan and pepper, some with just butter and a few whole wheat crackers.

On T-day, there's no sports, unless you want to include herding the goats into the long driveway to eat what remaining grass there is. Oh, and avoiding the geese (the six remaining ones). It is the lean time of the year for the goats.

Mike made me Parker house rolls - which I haven't had since I was a kid. And they're delicious! Even though dinner's not ready, yet, we each had one to try them. MMMmmmm...

We're having potatoes - layered with a layer of yam in the middle of it -- this way of prep looks very cool and we have goose fat to put in it - fat that Mike rendered this morning. Beans, spinach salad with mandarin slices in it (and pecans) with goat cheese medallions.

With this, a bottle of Newton unfiltered that we had for a while. It is a celebration of a debt paid that has been going on monthly for the past 11 years (minus one year).


I made a pecan pie yesterday, one that came from my Grandmother on my father's side that was given to my mother and I put it into our 'recipes we actually use' notebook. That notebook is getting quite full.

We sat in the front yard and watched as a tiny finch-like creature graced us with its presence. Yesterday, I was working in the garden (getting it ready for next year) and an armadillo strolled through the main part of the garden on its way to the creek.

And I was driving around picking up firewood and saw a killdeer again - this time hurrying in and out of the tree area I was driving around in. They lay their nests on the ground in the rocks, so I just turned the cart around and made sure not to bother them. Today, Mike and I wandered out there to see if we could find the ground nest, but no luck. They hide them really well and it could have been that this bird was scoping out a place for a nest and didn't already have one.

All the goats that are pregnant seem more so this week. Maybe that's because we're home to spoil them. We bought some cheap, cheap beet greens for them a few days ago.

While wandering around the garden today with Mike to find the armadillos, He stumbled upon a rotting watermelon that I'd forgotten was there. I took it back and threw it high into the air into the chicken gulag and it splatted nicely. The chickens love the fruit and the rind... leaving the very thin outside shell (until they get desperate and eat that, too).

It's been a good day. And in a few hours, the goose will be cooked and dinner will be served.

I bet your day wasn't like this one.

Vacation Days 3 and 4.

It's already starting to be a blur... yesterday, we killed and eviscerated a goose - one of the African geese because we want one for T-day and these geese seem to have the loudest sound to them and are the most aggressive. Mike did the killing (took two shots to the head), then eviscerated it (see photo with him with his hand up the goose's butt).

We picked up the cart (yay!!!!) and it works! All that was wrong with it was some bad battery leads. We could have fixed it (having already replaced the solenoid (Mike, again) as well as the brushes in the starter/engine).

The weather is in the low 40s for the low in the mornings, which isn't really too cold. We're heating the house with wood (abundance here) and I volunteered to help a friend out by burning her old records (checkbooks, account statements, etc...) , so that becomes our starter paper for the fires.

Mike has been cleaning out his garage (ah, THAT's what we did Monday) while I was doing other things. He needs to paint the garage and get going on putting up french cleats. Should be interesting.

The chickens are getting fatter and healthier with our regime of more protein-based foods as well as supplements of whatever we have in the house, including eggshells and leftover vegetables. We throw in a cup or so of dried cat food now and then for added protein. The eggs are normal again (not rough on the outside, normal-ish sized and good yolks.)

Brr... it's kind of cold and I need to start moving around or these old bones will start to creak more than normal.

Relaxing Vacation? That's for wimps

Vacation, day two.

It's Sunday and the requisite guns went off in the afternoon. Very near, from the sound of them. This is, after all, Texas.

Today's stuff: We finished the 'inside-the-inside" chicken coop, captured and relocated the barred rocks (that lay and are NOT for eating.) They seem happy, spreading their wings and turning over on the concrete blocks that Mike put underneath the heat lamp (so it doesn't burn the barn down).

I cleaned out the little chicken coop - which means rolling up the feedbags that rest on top of the hardware cloth. By the time it needs to be cleaned, the smell is overpowering. If this was summer and we were raising chicks, the hardware cloth would be all that was on the bottom and the poop and stuff would just go to the ground. But it's coolish outside and we got these chicks on the 5th of November ("remember, remember, the 5th of November...") and it's cold outside. So I use empty feed bags to line the bottom of their cage. This works quite well and is easy to roll up.

Everyone says that chicks have to be at a certain temperature before they have all their feathers, but that's just plain poppycock. We have a heat lamp in this little coop and open the small door, and guess what? The chicks don't opt for heat, they opt for freedom (the chicken coop is about three feet off the ground, has a ramp and opens into a five by seven or so yard just for them).

While I was cleaning out the chicken coop, I left the door to the main coop open and Mike was yelling - Did I want the goats in the chicken coop and did I want the chickens to come out? - He was being facetious and angry - but you know, it's not like it's life-threatening. I screamed at the goats to get out and only two chickens escaped -- both which came back or were captured during the day and brought back.

I also gathered a bunch of leaves from the backyard and dumped them in the middle of the chicken yard. Chickens love to scratch around in the dirt.

Finished digging up and re-potting the three Thompson seedless I thought were pretty dead, but one of them has a leaf - a GREEN leaf on it that's coming out (the weather has been quite mild in Texas this winter - so far). I think another one of them is still alive, but we'll see. I repotted it (and put the new container in a container of rainwater, only to lift it out and have the water pouring out the bottom of the pot - right onto my jeans.

Mike has begun to prep for painting the garage - which means moving heavy equipment around so that the walls are bared. He cleaned out the garage and cleaned off the workbench. With all his shiny new equipment, it's kind of cool to watch him transform our garage into a workshop.

We also let the goats in the front yard for the first time in a long while -- and had to sit with them so that they do not destroy the fruit trees by getting on their hind legs and leaning on the branches.

We saw a tiny bird today - not familiar with it, but Mike saw it hopping around the trees a bit. So he put out a thistle feeder and I had already refilled the bird feeders today.

I also cleaned out the pond filter - and Mike noticed that we now have three frogs living there - or I should say three MORE frogs, because he swears that these are not any of the ones we got out of the pond when I cleaned it a few weeks ago and drained it.

Last night I didn't sleep so well (a combination of hot chocolate, caffeine and over-tiredness). And now I just want to snooze like there's no tomorrow.

Signing off.

Murder in the afternoon

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Okay! ARE YOU READY??? OKAY, NOW, RELAX, DAMMMMMITTTT!!! Or, otherwise titled, "Vacation, Day One."

We always say we're not getting out of bed until 9am on vacation days, but we always get up right around 7. Maybe stay in bed an extra thirty minutes, each of us thinking about the day ahead. Which is a waste, you know.

Yesterday, Mike called the Kenfield Golf Carts on Pond Springs Road, way the F)*()#$# on the other side of Austin - to find out that they're open today from 9 to Noon... and it would take us - or so we thought - about 50 minutes to get there from the house. So Mike starts a little after nine am to get the cart put back together (he replaced the brushes in the starter/engine and the solenoid a few weeks ago. Neither made it go). The starter wheel now just turns slightly. But it still don't go.

In two hours, Mike has to put it back together, fill one of the wheels with air in the back and reseat the bead on it. We cleaned it up and then tried to get it onto the truck bed. After two hours of exertion and while we're just leaving the farm, Mike said: "If I was going to have a heart attack, I would have during all this," We only had just slightly over an hour and ten minutes to get the cart to the cart shop and finally, we were on our way. Out the gate, then to the second gate near the road.

"Wait! Stop!"

What now?

Barbecue had escapes the confines of the farm and was just casually walking down the road. Great. Stupid dog. Get her into the driveway, close the outer gate -- which means she'd be without food or water until we got back home.

Then we head to the shop, but Mike insists on taking the toll road to 620 and then to 183 or some such nonsense. It takes a long time, we're both stressed and when we pull into the shop at 12:05, everything looks closed. We catch someone who says the manager's inside and we plead our case... we've come from Bastrop and, implied, it's a long drive. They let us us. It is Mike's way of pushing it, you know, but even he was getting frustrated by slow drivers, red lights and, um, driving for miles out of the way. (ducks).

We headed to Der Wienersnitzel (one of those places we don't have on our side of the world, but it's a Kristi place, not a Michael place.). I had gotten a Saveur baseball gimme cap in the mail while Mike was enclosing Barbecue in the driveway and wore it to the fast food place. Oh, the irony.

So we come back and hey, it's time to rest, right? I was a little restless having been in the truck for three hours and went to take the rest of the hay from the hay stall (we always let the goats in to clean up after we've fed them all that's in there). I look and what looks back at me is a sleeping possum. I run like hell to the house while Brisket, the dog, who's not used to seeing me run so fast, barks like crazy at me.

"Get the .22!" The possum must have been there a long time under the pallets that we put on upright cinderblocks. It had made a nice little nest. The last time I raised the pallets, I noticed that the hens had been laying there... at least there were a ton of eggshells everywhere. Now I know why. Mike suspects that when we let the goats in to graze the final bits of hay before we put in the new stuff, that they ate away part of the top of this creature's 'hole' in the hay. Also, this is probably the same possum that both Brisket and Barbecue had cornered in a tree a few weeks ago.

It was a convenient arrangement: The possum simply lays around, waits for the hens to lay or goes and gets them from nests in the barn and eats them, then goes back to sleep cozily under the pallets. I'd been wondering about Brisket and his harming chickens enough to kill them, but now I think he had some help. Also, the goats tend to stand around and stare at something with their ears on high alert when something's off or odd in the neighborhood. We just haven't been paying attention.

Mike put his boots on -- after thinking we were, you know, going to have some downtime, and gets the .22 from the place we keep it, goes to the barn and shoots the possum in the head. I feel completely helpless as I grab a shovel and went to our pet cemetery to start digging a hole, leaving Mike to shovel up the creature, find something to put it in, then collect the bloody hay in the hay stall, as well. My hole was in the wrong place, of course, and was dug into very hard dirt (as really, no rain and all that creates a very hard tundra here). So Mike dug a new hole, as well.

So finally, we can rest a little, lay in bed a bit... but then we're just laying there after all the commotion and it's hard to close our eyes, much less sleep.

"Hot chocolate?"

"Sure!" Why not, the day is young.

One of the reasons we moved out here to the country is to have more "active" lifestyles (I  have a lifestyle???!!) 
At our last place it was too easy to sit before the TV and vegg out.  So now we have these 15 acres and around a hundred and forty some odd animals and things are busier.  Very busy.  Just a partial list of what needs to be done.  

The aforementioned trailer repair.  You never know how much you use something until it's unavailable.  

The cart.  That gets used daily for transportation around the place, as a wheelbarrow, for cleaning out the barn, for planting, harvesting, moving machinery, collecting animals, and sometimes it's nice to drive out to a seldomly visited area and have a glass of wine and discuss things.  

The deck.  I've been working on it for nearly a year and it's woefully incomplete. I'm redoing a section now and I expect some progress to happen here pretty soon.

The backyard fence. Bad dry rot.  It doesn't help that the goats rub up against it to scratch.  Several posts are leaning precariously.  This is a big project as there are 52 posts that need replacing.  

Vineyard gate. To provide easy access without having to go through the barnyard.  When you open the barnyard gate there are over a hundred animals that all want to stand on your feet and see if you have anything to eat. Avoiding them whenever possible is a good thing.

Herb Garden. Kristi had built a large, great herb garden.  Basil higher than your waist, even if you are a tall person.  Oregano, thyme, fennel, Lemon balm, catnip, rosemary and others.  Alas, it was build over a buried electrical line that runs between the house, the shed and the pond.  As we watered the herb garden, it would short a splice in the wire and the power would go out to the shed and pond.  So the garden had to go.  It needs to be relocated before spring.

Greenhouse. I had chosen a rigid clear plastic panel for the roof and walls.  Unfortunately the plastic I used was very brittle.  Just 2 months after I built the greenhouse (converted a large animal shelter) we had a hailstorm that battered large holes in it.  I have to remove all the panels and replace it with a different material.  The time for this project is right now. Since the greenhouse is best used Fall, Winter and Spring.

Pond. I have to put something in for geese and waterfowl.  We only have a barrel for them now and it's too small and gets fouled to easily.  This won't be huge, but maybe a couple of hundred gallons with a liner.  Then the geese can swim and dive and produce more geese for the freezer.

This is only a partial list and there are new items that pop up frequently.  Of course there are projects that look like emergencies and have to be done immediately.  Those don't appear on any list.  Well, gotta get to it...

Finished stuff

Finished: The buck pen. The pea chicks. One of them drowned and one just disappeared. I suspect the hawks that have been squealing in the mornings here, but it's just a guess. With raccoons, possums, dogs, coyotes, etc... there's always some predator or the other around to let you know that life is fragile.

Unfinished: The deck project. Fixing the trailer so that we can go pick up compost and such - which means replacing all the rotten boards - basically all of them. When we last put the tractor on it, the wheels crashed through the boards. It's time.

We have made progress this last year, though... finishing the chicken coop, figuring out how to rotate the fields so that the goats have enough to eat all the time, fixing the fencing (but not the long part) so that the goats can't go eat the neighbor's pasture. Buying a livestock guardian dog, buying stuff for Mike's eventual creative works in wood (and cabinetry)... it has been a big year.

Oh! And we bought twenty merlot grape vines (two-year-old vines) to plant in the spring. This will require putting in a new gate on one of the fenced in areas where the previous guys who owned the place had a horse shelter (a lean-to). The whole area is divided in two (not evenly) and is about 20 feet wide and about 100 feet long. We had grown gourds successfully there a few years ago and are now going to make that our vineyard. It only has a foot gate in it right now, so that will have to change and put a gate in large enough to accommodate our tractor and cart.

Right now, I make wine with a mash of black, seedless grapes from the store, with regular yeast and sugar. It works and is probably better than what we've been drinking. I put a balloon on top of the glass jug the mixture is in and when the yeast action is over, the balloon will deflate and it will be ready to rack a few times for clarity and to get the yeasty taste out of it. Then it will be drinkable.

Oh, the cart. It's broke. We just replaced the solenoid and it still didn't work. Advice online says it might be brushes in the starter area (technical term) and those will come via UPS in a few days.

We also ordered a new replacement canning element for our stove. We have three and when we lit this particular one up a few weeks ago, the rods in it sparked and hissed. Time to go.

Just made pea soup and the first batch of fruited sorbets for the year. Low-fat, but higher in cals. However, it IS something sweet and if I had my druthers, I'd probably just eat chocolate.

Who wouldn't?

Fall blues (and greens and yellows...)

Our chickens were beginning to tell us that they didn't have what they needed -- they gave us a very wrinkled egg one day and I went on the warpath. More oyster shell (free choice), more protein, better and fresher water... And so far it seems to have worked. We have 36 chickens... wait, we have more, but that's coming... we have had 36 chickens for some time and lost three of them. One to Brisket - perhaps two, really, who thought the chickens were play things and were a little rough with them. We lost a few red hens - the ones we were supposed to eat, but couldn't catch (ten of them hid in the forested area behind the barn), and one more, I think, just died of a heart attack.

But we weren't getting any eggs, so Mike, almost single-handedly, added another three feet of fencing around the chicken area and completed the last segment of regular fencing. So now there are only three of them that can get out. The other 33 stay in the large area which has a ten by 20 space inside and about double that outside. Now, with the regime of very clean water, with oyster shell and more protein, we get about a dozen eggs a day. This still isn't very good, so what did we do?

We bought more. And because we bought some really foul fowl (cornish, instead of cornish-cross), we were looking at a whole year of not having good roasting or smoking chickens. So guess what? We bought more!

We bought 25 more cornish-cross (The right ones this time), and 25 more barred rock chicks (for eggs. they'll produce in another 5 months).

The photo shows them in the old chicken coop, with a heat lamp and feed. Mike had them shipped and when he arrived at our tiny little post office in Bastrop, he could hear them in the background being quite noisy. A few people stopped him and were surprised that anyone still purchased chicks through the mail, anymore. "Oh, how cute!"

We also have a rat in the tack room. We bought some traps and are hoping to capture it at some point.

The geese are fine. Too damned fine, if you ask me. I think I saw two of them mating this afternoon - they were using our stock tank (which now needs to be cleaned out) to do this deed, even though there is a piece of plywood floating in it (it should be hung over it, but it fell and the bungee cords are also in the water, now).

More later if there's time...

Continue to Continue

Some days, life is better than other days. This week has been kind of hellish. My brother-in-law, one of the people that manages the Yahoo folks who create all those ads, discovered he has Leukemia. Mike's sister is still in shell shock. But there's been a good trend with the chemo he has had, knocking down the 'count' from 320 or so to less than 80, where this 'count' should be.

If there ever was a cure, now's the time. This man has two children, Alice and Johnny, very nice, well-behaved and creative kids who just love their father - a man who can't help but smile and make those around him want to, as well.

You have to think about these things, as I do, when planting new plants for the fall, knowing that Winter will cut out some of the harvest, as early as mid-November. Such is life. But we still plant, still hope and wonder what it would be to have our own lives cut short or pulled from our current path onto another one that's not so bright, not so brilliant. You have to think about these things when you go through life normally, day-to-day, without the affect of a disease of your own blood, without worrying whether you will be retiring one day, or living your life as an invalid, whatever life you have left on this old planet. Maybe 'think' isn't the right word. You are blessed if you are not thinking about these things. As I am.

So today I am thankful, wholly aware of all that is good around me -- the animals, the farm, my guy who sits across from me (as I write) this learning about new woodworking techniques with his new equipment.

I wonder about those out there who have discovered their loves have shortened lives or lives that will be very different from the way it has ALWAYS been. I wonder if they realize how much strength they will need just to continue to continue.

And so I sleep, a heavy heart, but one that need not be - for it is not my life, right? For it is another's, one that is distant from mine that suffers, right? No, it remains with me, this weird feeling that I am so lucky to not have this trauma in my life, to not know the dread of having to be in hospitals, of blood testing, of some set of doctors watching over my progress or egress from this life.

I am so very lucky. I hope you are, too.

Billy be gone

Ah, the sound of the country in the morning - the birds and sleepy nature waking gently with the morning sun, the slow rising out of bed to meet the quiet, new day...

NOT!!!!!!!!!

Noisy geese wondering when we're going to get our butts out of bed to go feed them... and all night, the sound of a horny Billy Goat in rut, keeping us awake... the guineas in alarm over what? A leaf that's blowing in the wind, probably. Hummingbirds attacking each other outside our windows over the juice we give them... it's just... just... well, noisy.

But yesterday, thanks to some accommodating neighbors (well, far away neighbors) and some good people, we now have one less noise-maker in the barnyard.

Our billy goat has moved on to a new home, one that has fifty acres, not 15, one with more goats he can... rut with than just our mere 30 or so females...It's not sad, but it does mark the last of the remaining goats that we started with four years ago (yesterday marks our fourth anniversary here).

He was the leader - when he called the pack in, they came. When we opened the tack room in the barn, he was always the first there to partake in whatever we had to feed him. He was the greediest goat, but when the very young came and challenged him by simply eating out of the same bowl, he was gentle with them, just kind of moving them away with his head and not goring them, like any other mean goat would do. He really is a very gentle goat. When he would rear up because of something I was doing, I would however, let him know who's boss and chase after him, yelling and screaming to not ever do that again. He only did it a few times, but I think we got things sorted out. :)

But really, the rut makes goats nasty-smelling because they not only pee on themselves, they smell the females' butts and generally ask for them to pee so the billy can put his nose in it, raise his head afterwards and breathe in the fine... smell of the piss. It's just gross. But it's a goat's way. Luckily, us humans don't behave that way. I can't imagine what the world would be like if we all ran around naked and, when some guy was rutting and we were in heat, we'd have to squat, pee and then watch as the guy raised his head and opened his mouth to savor the.... oh, it's just too gross to think about.

The peachick is getting bigger and has survived.

The geese are very large, but really still cute. They are spreading their wings more every day and run around the yard in packs, almost in pre-flight.

We are in negotiations about a fall garden. Mike will have to get his tractor out and I have to specify where and when and all that. We've never really had a fall garden, but the spring garden didn't work out all that well, so we're going to try a Texas-style fall garden. "Texas-style" because we really do have two growing seasons here.. but who wants to get out in the middle of the heat and plant stuff? But we'll do it. Probably put in onions and garlic, tomatoes, peppers, cilantro and maybe some beans and a few other things. I never know until we get out there and start doin' stuff.

We still have to put the buck pen in. We (more Mike than me) set the posts, but we haven't attached the fence to it or cut out the door in the barn that we need to go along with it.

We need to buy a new pump for the pond and Mike's made a sand filter out of a fifteen gallon container, sand, large rocks and pea gravel (see photo). That will be attached to the pump so we can get the sludge out of the pond - the geese have left this legacy for us. They are no longer allowed in the pond - they also leave a trail on top of the water of oil - and we have goldfish who need air (especially when there's no pump) and so away the geese go. They have other containers to float about in and we're looking for a used, plastic kid's swimming pool that's a little bigger than what we have. This is the time to find them pretty cheaply.

Off to do some of those things we have to do. Like drink more coffee.

what a weekend

A tragic loss: On Saturday, as we were getting ready to sit with the goats (which means a Geraldine on my lap, Mike scratching 71, recoil, 205 behind the ears), I went into the chicken area, saw that the peahen only had one of the pea-chicks with her... and then I found it... a peachick was dead inside the chicken waterer, a water tank made of metal that has a 1 foot side to it. Dunno how the creature actually got there (the peachicks are about the size of a racketball), considering. I used a red scoop and took it out of the waterer, then showed Mike before I tossed it into the wooded area. Very disappointed that one of them had bought it. So just in case we needed to put water out (a shorter, more accessible waterer) for the peahen and her chick, we did... but not until a day later.

Then on Sunday, a day we've spent not doing much of anything (well, I made a pecan pie, kahlua, tortillas and several other things), we were sitting out with the goats again, and up drives our neighbor. He is a very large man with a mustache and owns some sort of contracting business - a home-building type of sorts. His wife was with him, a lady that seemed to come directly from Spain, including the attitude - she seemed put-off to be there, despite the fact that she wanted the chickens. When people come to the farm, Mike greets them because I'd prefer it that way.

I caught up with them in the barnyard, where he was heading to the chicken coop. We still had one red rooster from our disastrous Cornish-cross year. The rooster was a little rough with our chickens and we were glad to get rid of him. We were able to give these folks that one as well as two hens (for eggs). The hens are still quite young and their eggs aren't quite large, yet, but they will be. These are the Cornish that evaded capture when we tried to 'harvest' them and they had scooted to the forested area behind the barn, literally flying over a six-foot fence to do so. So it was a weekend.. and the neighbors were interested in paying for them, but Mike and I both figured they did us a favor... the red rooster was probably preventing the red hens from laying and was just a pain in the ass, pulling out feathers constantly and stressing out the poor hens. The neighbors said they wanted the roo to eat, but didn't want to say that directly in front of their kids. We got the hint. Now it's gone and our hens can breathe a sigh of relief -- there's only one barred rock rooster left and he does a good job. He had been beaten up, as well, and we suspect the red rooster did it. C'est la vie. Goodbye red roo. We won't miss you.

Anyway, and for whatever reason, the hot tub works tonight and we're going to use it for the first time in ages.

Update - we put bromine tablets in it yesterday and the foam from it causes me to gag and cough and generally not do well this evening when we tried it for the first time. Ah, well.. tomorrow. I know my bones will like it and my muscles will relax once it's back up and running. It's been way too long.

Another picture of the geese

(For Esther S (from work), who graciously gave me seven of these wonderful creatures a few months ago...) I'll upload more as I take them.

The Peahen's brood!

Woo hoo!

I'm about to leave work right at 3pm today and I get a call from the outside, so I pick it up.
"The peahen has chicks!"

Woo hoo! Last we knew, the peacock wasn't able, because of his lameness, to mount our peahen. So this is wonderful and cool! She'd had four eggs under her for the last four months, but we think rats or a snake got two of them, so to have any alive is a true miracle. She laid them directly on the dirt inside the barn - against a barn wall, unprotected and in a stall that the goats can access. We're thinking that putting hardware cloth around her stall and feeding her like crazy might keep the rats and the snakes away and protect her and her brood a little more. I'm THRILLED! This is SO cool...

Fresh air, a dead chicken and a little ranting.

The geese are so BIG already! But these are so easy to handle, it's a wonder why people don't just adore them. They only go after folks if backed into the corner or provoked. These were 'hand raised' and are just wonderful to work with.
Here, they're trying to eat Mike's shoelaces.


Last night I was in the barn looking after Seventeen, who's got a nice cyst on her jaw. I wanted to pick up the eggs in her stall that the errant chickens laid (they refuse to stay in their own enclosed area behind the barn) and smelled this awful odor. Could it be a rotten egg? We really haven't had many of those, but when we do (like, for instance, when we occasionally have to collect them from the top of the tack room), we throw them far out into the forested area so the smell doesn't carry. Or we bag them and trash them.

But this smell was horrendous and one egg couldn't have produced something this vile.

I looked around and behind the milking stand that's also in Seventeen's stall, I saw a BUNCH of tail feathers of a chicken. Then I did the only natural thing I should do -- I ran into the house and got Mike.

He grabbed the shovel and I retrieved a small white trash bag. We've done this before... finding little dead bodies after the raccoons have had their way with them, or when an attack has been spoiled, but a few seconds too late. It's one thing to kill the chickens for our own edification, but it's really something disgusting when another creature kills one - and leaves the body to rot in the barn.

I fear for the peahen and for her eggs. She is on the other side of the barn in an open stall, laying on four eggs. All day, all night. (at least this time they're not chicken eggs). We've lost one peacock to a raccoon attack and don't want to lose her. She's one of few left that were here when we bought the farm in September, '04.

But I am suspicious. If it WAS a raccoon that attacked the chicken in Seventeen's stall, why didn't it come back and finish the meal? Could it be that this chicken, when I was rounding up the others, also died like the one that had a heart attack in the small coop the first day we started processing? It was possible.

Nonetheless, poor Seventeen was having to live in the stall with a decaying chicken. It should be better today and the "fresh" country air should come back -- at least without the chicken.. the smell of the barn is something else entirely.

On a totally unrelated topic, I stopped at a local Mexican grocery store yesterday on the way home and bought five quarts of strawberries and two bunches of grapes. Both were on sale. Both have wine potential.

It's funny to me how easy the strawberry wine was and how tasty it was. This world has pushed everything to the nth degree where you feel you're doing something wrong if you're not part of some expert group (like a wine club or a wine-growing forum). But really, this isn't how all this started. The lesson of the growing of grapes and smashing them for wine.. or the experiments that made strawberries or plums into wine -- these are things that we all can still do, especially since the Internet can bring us the most basic recipes (and the most snobby complicated ones that require special yeasts and particular types of fruit).

What happened to just plain ol' food and plain ol' living? Making one's own wine was out of necessity and poverty, not out of some desire to best the neighbor or to perfect long traditions of smashing grapes with feet or just simply letting fruit ferment to get a drinkable solution.

Okay. Enough ranting for today. Maybe.

Brisket and Barbecue

We haven't written about our new livestock guardian dog, a great Pyrenese named Brisket. Now Barbecue has a friend. Well, sort of. We literally rescued Brisket from this asshole in the city where we live... I couldn't believe the way this man was manhandling the tiny puppy who was not only shaking with fear, but infested with fleas, sticker burs and who knows what else. Mike looked at me and kind of gave me a 'do we really want this dog' look.. to which I replied by opening my eyes really wide and shaking fervently. The man was asking 75 for it and we gave it to him and got out of there. I feel like we did our good deed in rescuing this puppy. The dog smelled of oil because the man had kept it in what looked like a horse trailer that held some kind of old fire engine in it. The water bucket was at least a foot taller than the poor dog and the food was scattered everywhere. The man picked the puppy up roughly when he showed it to us. The dog just seemed so helpless and terrified. It would take a few months before it trusted humans again. It would take a few weeks for the poor dog to realize that the container that held his dry food wasn't edible and how to eat out of it. I just feel like kicking the bastard that sold it to us. REALLY hard.

Then we got it home and tortured it by giving it a bath and flea treatment and combing the sticker burs out of it. Poor thing.

But Brisket we have for livestock only. Barbecue seems to want to protect only us. Brisket stays in the barnyard while Barbecue stays in the front and back yards. It works. Except when they both want to keep us up at night by barking non-stop.

The photo shows the poor dog with Eight, a goat without horns that Brisket seems to be very fond of.

I saved Brisket from the brutality of Nine the other day because I heard a yelp in the barn and went to check it out. Nine was in another stall and Brisket was in the corner of one. I put him into the middle of the barn, he went across the way to yet another stall and Nine followed him, then just began to bash the living hell out of the poor dog into the wall behind it. Brisket hasn't forgotten and steers very clear of Nine and her kids right now. When I saw Nine ramming Brisket into the wall, I pulled her goaty tail and swung her around, yelling and screaming at her. STUPID GOAT! But then again, Brisket has to learn which goats play nice and what he can get away with. Soon, he'll be as big as they are and they won't mess with him much. I can't hardly wait for that time. For now, we will take care of each other. Brisket lets me pet him, now, something he hasn't risked for many moons.

Strawberry Wine and a taste of the future

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Success! Strawberry wine and goat cheese! Yay. I was beginning to give up hope with regard to ever producing good-tasting wine from the fruit that we buy or grow. But last week I experimented with strawberries and made a REALLY good strawberry wine out of a quart of them. VERY tasty.

I bought 3.5 lbs of plums and found an easy plum wine recipe online. It takes about two weeks to finish, so I'm hoping this works, as well, now that I know that if the balloon goes down, it's ready. And then mead. Would love to make mead that actually tastes proper. Last time I tried making it, it turned into vinegar. I didn't test the pH.

But the best news is about the cheese... I made cheese with curds and whey (with my new rennet that we processed from the stomach of the goat we killed) and it worked! I bought a small cheese press that's REALLY cheesy-looking and chintzy - it would never work for a commercial cheese production kitchen. But nonetheless, I was pressing and turning the handle to create pressure after I wrapped the curds in cheesecloth and put them into the pvc pipe that has a wooden base (never use wood... too much acid in the whey which has already stained it). The curds 'gave' as the day went on and then finally, I released the press and put the whole thing in a tupperware and stuck it in the fridge. The reason it doesn't stay on a cool shelf? This is Texas. Between the cockroaches, fruit flies and other assorted bugs, it was just best to keep it cool in the fridge.

Anyway, I had to wait for almost a week and then when I opened the container, it was cheese! Not imperfect cheese, but cheese that looked like cheese and tasted like milk and a hint of cheddar. Oh, it was wonderful! So now I am going to seal the other half of it in wax and really put it on a shelf to age. I hope that works.

So two successes in a week. I hope there are a lot more. I'm counting on it.

Dialogs with Geese and other interesting things.

My friend, Karen, has a fabulous voice and has had a modicum of success in the music industry in Austin, a feat few, apparently, are ever able to achieve.

But here's the deal: She's going to be moving to the country (Virginia) and doing many of the things we do, possibly. But she'll have family around to teach her things we only pick up through the internet, a way that's pretty void of real character. I envy her, envy the generational passing of information that seems suddenly so important in this old world.

But this life is hard - having a full-time job and attempting to start a manufacturing kitchen (didn't I tell you?) and still having so many projects on the burners - front and back, that it seems impossible to think that we could ever accomplish them all. But we must. And we will. But not today.

I can tell you there's not a muscle in my body that isn't sore most of the time, there isn't an animal I haven't cursed for some reason or the other such as eating the wrong species' foods or getting into the front yard when it's not allowed - and there isn't a patch of ground that we haven't explored, thought about or developed on this piece of land. It's hard and it's fabulous. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to the white noise of the city, to listen to the cars outside my front door or the neighbors yelling at their kids. Traffic here consists of riding herd on the goats to get to the barn door. The neighbors are the mockingbirds, the caracaras, the bluebirds that inhabit one of our bird houses, the cardinals always chatting that there's never enough seed left out for them... and the white noise is that of total peace - at least peace as far as having 100 or so animals can be peaceful.

And I can walk around nude and nobody knows but me or Mike. I can rant at the goats for some infraction of rules they don't understand... I mean REALLY scream at them... and no one can hear me - except the goats and the dogs, cats, etc... and they just look at me like I'm insane.

People worry about whether I should get out more or do more social things with friends, but I can't wait to get home from work, to fuss with the geese, goats, guineas, chickens, peafowl, cats, dogs and the rest of the creatures here. And I HATE leaving this place, even to go shopping or do what I must to make a living. It's very difficult to get up and go to work, much less leave this farm for something like social intercourse.

No, dialogs with geese are not as informative as dialogs with those who've watched great movies, have opinions and supposedly a wider world view, or eat out at places I've never heard of. But with the geese, they talk back, tell me that they don't care how I dress or what I say -- as long as I let them get into the pond or let them eat the grass. They intrigue me in ways humans just can't anymore. This is home to them, and we are their keepers. They talk amongst themselves. We just listen.

Enough said.

two or 28 chickens in every pot

Ah, nothing like chicken slaughtering time to start off the weekend! We had 39 of the 40 chickens we purchased from Callahans.. chickens that we should never have purchased. The woman who would normally sell us chickens was having surgery and this new person innocently asked if we wanted white, red or black Cornish Crosses this time. We chose red. What the heck.. If it's the same quality as the white ones (bred at Texas A&M, I think), then great! Bring them on.

Except that these red hens (crossed with something like an aurecana, certainly not pure anything or cornish crossed with anything else..) are lively, they are sentient creatures, unlike the white ones that basically eat, shit, piss, sleep and eat some more. The white ones that we normally get are barely able to move and are bred to be eaten. The red ones, however, are tough, chewy and not very tasty at all. So we've wasted a whole year's crop, chicken that we love to smoke. This breed will be okay with stews and anything else that tenderizes them beyond recognition, but it's disappointing to not smoke our own chickens this coming year.

This is the second time Callahan's has done us wrong, though. The first time was when they sold us barred rock chickens that were actually half leghorn.. the eggs are white, not brown. The only difference in how the birds look is that a white spot appears on the chicken's ear, marking them from our regular, plump barred rocks. Lesson learned. No more Callahans for this. They get their stock from Ideal Poultry in Texas.

Anyway, so we've put off actually doing the deed to these birds until this past weekend. The biggest saving grace, I'd say, is the new Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker that Mike made from plans he found online. He's pretty handy that way.. coming up with contraptions that make things easier for us. The chicken plucker takes about twenty seconds to de-feather two chickens. This has always been the rudest part of trying to get the processing right for us. Now it's a breeze.

So I caught the red hens and roosters from the chicken coop area... uh, the roosters I caught first because they've begun to crow (something no decent white cornish cross would do.. ever) and if you've ever heard 11 roosters in the morning, even on a farm, you'd feel like doing harm to them, particularly if you're trying to sleep past 5:30 in the morning. On Sunday, the rest of the red hens, after we'd done most of them, disappeared, hiding in the woods behind the barn. I was using a fishing net to capture them two at a time, but some of them flew over the wire that is on top of the fence that surrounds the outside chicken coop, which is a huge space for the amount of birds we have. One of the birds died and we think it had a heart attack. Maybe it saw what we were doing to its mates in the back yard. Hmmm..

It took two days to finish off the birds. I caught them, wrung their necks (Mike helped with the ringing part). Then we let them hang and bleed for a little while. Not much blood in a chicken. Then Mike eviscerated them, removing the bowels, the anus and the lungs (with the gizzards, the fat, etc.) To me, he had the hard part. I was trying to help by chopping off the heads and cutting off the bony calves and feet, along with the necks... The feet and necks were placed in one container of ice so that I could make stock with them... which I did, both days. We wound up with 18 quarts of really thick, wonderful chicken stock.

Then, after letting the chickens rest for a day or so, I took them out of the ice chests and vacuum-sucked them with a Foodsaver device. On Sunday morning, the Foodsaver device worked and then just STOPPED. Luckily Mike was able to fix it and now it runs much better. Usually, appliances that go south just stay south and we have to buy new ones. Not this time.

I collected the gizzards and the livers and, on Sunday, the fat from the chickens and bagged them all separately. The gizzards will be ground up and given to the dogs and cats, the livers made into a pate' and the fat will be used for something tasty down the road.

Oh, yes... and Mike smoked a shoulder roast on Sunday, as well. It was a busy weekend and I'm sore and tired.

The geese are doing great.. and now have their own sleepy-time area in the yard. We put them into this overnight, so that the raccoons and possums don't get them, then let them out to eat grass in the mornings. We are still feeding them chick feed pellets, but they seem to roam around and get what they need from the area. Trying to keep them out of the stock tank for the goats is another matter, however.

Long month

The longest months on the face of this earth for me are the summer months. It's Mike's busiest month dealing with his customers and employees who get a bit touchy from time to time. To me, he's an absolute genius at customer service. I don't know how many times I've heard him chatting with irate customers only to turn them around and have them laughing by the time he's finished talking to them. It's truly an art and he's a master at it.

My rental in Corpus needs work. My father left me his house and his debts and mortgage. Luckily, the mortgage is affordable even when there's no rent coming in... like the last few months.

The property manager told us the place needed paint. Boy, that was the least of it. He didn't bother to say it needed a refrigerator, too, as well as a total overhaul as far as maintenance goes. Bad tile, broken doors, door strike plates, bad bathroom fixtures, a broken gate, falling fence boards... you name it. I felt like a slum lord when I saw how bad a condition it was in. So we spent the first two weekends in July in Corpus, away from the farm, working very long days on the house and needing to do a lot more, for sure. We took our refrigerator from the house down to corpus and bought us another one, a fridge-only, for the house. Unfortunately, it took a week to come in and so we had to live out of ice chests for the entire week.

The animals were okay, though, in our absences. We have geese, now, seven of them. They're so cool! They're not quite as loud as most people make them out - at least not yet, but we herd them from their little sheltered area to the back yard and to the pond so they can swim around and act like geese.

We have four 'African' geese (actually Chinese) who have black bills and black backs. The other three are Chinese geese, whatever that means. They're about a month old, now.

I've been absolutely exhausted the last two weeks after coming back and work seems to take it out of me these days, as well.

Finally, today, we got rain from hurricane Dolly that hit the Texas and Mexico coastline and brought that rain north as it veered off to the west inland. I still remember hurricane Celia that hit August 3, 1970. Today, there are many warnings that come from NOAA and other sources and we're all aware of what's coming. In 1970, we had no idea and were in the middle of it, sopping water from the windows and watching things be destroyed around us. My sister watched the garage collapse from the back door and we watched several cars flying through the air. There was only about an hour's warning, if I remember and we were supposed to go to my Grandmother's apartment, but Mom insisted on staying home.

After Celia, we had no electricity for several days. As we had just purchased a half a cow's worth of meat, we served meals in our backyard over open fires and with a camp stove. I remember bathing in cold water and having candles everywhere so we could see what was going on at night. But if you've got a true neighborhood, despite all its problems, people will come together and support each other in these times. That time in that house, long since passed on in ownership, was probably the most memorable time in my childhood.

But back to the farm... Mike fell yesterday, tripping over some wire that was wrapped around a tree at one time to keep it from being ravaged by goats. He fell hard on his side and has had to deal with that while servicing swimming pools for his business. Not a happy Mike.

When we killed the goat for cabrito, we took the fourth stomach (the large one at the bottom) and cut pieces from it to make rennet - about three, one-inch strips. I tried to use the rennet tonight -- after freezing it when we had no fridge.. and it worked! It curdled a cup of milk just fine! And it left whey in its wake just fine! Woo hoo! Now I have over a pint of the rennet for our cheesemaking. Rennet is so expensive, so this will work until we get tired of doing it this way.

It's been a long week, even though I've had several days off, now. Still exhausted and so much to do.

Process them!

We finally did it. We worked up the nerve to slaughter our first kid goat. Saturday we thought out our list of supplies. A sharp new knife. Rope to hang the carcass. A bucket of water for rinsing hands and knife. A hose to wash off the inevitable hair. A fan to control flies. A wheelbarrow full of hay to catch blood and entrails. The .22 rifle and 4 cartridges (after my taking 3 shots to kill a raccoon last fall I wasn't about to depend on my marksmanship).

While feeding the goats a special meal of hay and oats, I snuck up on my victim. I this case it was 12's kid. He was the biggest of this years kids. 26" in girth, which translates to roughly 61lbs of goat it's amazing he was only born in January. A lot of milk grass and hay went into that goat.

While he was nibbling at some oats with the other goats, I grabbed him by the rear leg, picked him up and carried him to a stall. Many of our goats are used to being handled. He wasn't one of those. So he fought and struggled. Somehow he gouged my arm drawing blood. The first round goes to him.

I locked him in a barn stall for later. Our plan was to get up at about 6 and do the deed while it was still cool. Cool means 77 degrees at dawn in Texas this time of year. So naturally we got started at the crack of 10am. We had watched a few YouTube videos about goat skinning. This helped prepare us for what was to come.

We lured the herd to the driveway which needed trimming, one of the few areas we have left where there is come green grass, and locked them in. They are used to this, we do it several times a year so I can avoid mowing it and they get full bellies. A win win for everyone. So with the goats out of the way I was free to proceed with:

Step 1. Kill a goat. This is something I had never done before. Well, not intentionally. It required some thinking through. How would I immobilize the kid? Since he doesn't like to be handled, he isn't likely to stand there while I put a bullet in his head. I opted to snap a collar on him and tie a lead to the bars of the stall. Then I put down a dish of grain thinking he would bend down to eat the grain while doing that I could take aim. However, he was too nervous to eat. Making sure that Kristi was safe in case of an errant shot, I aimed and fired while he was in a quiet moment. The first shot was a good one and he died instantly. I loaded him on the wheelbarrow and took him to the back yard for:

Step 2. String him up. I had prepared an area for the skinning by throwing a rope over a suitable tree branch. I used an old broom handle to mount the carcass. A cut is made between the bone and the Achilles tendon and the broom handle is inserted into that cut. This makes it easy to spread the goats legs and make all the parts more accessible. The pole is then tied up at the ends to the rope and the goat is raised to a good working height. I positioned the wheelbarrow under the goat to catch the blood and offal. That will make a good addition to our compost.

Step 3. Bleeding the goat. I made a cut in the goat's neck and fortunately I got the jugular on the first try. The blood began to drain into the hay in the wheelbarrow. I removed the head and let it fall into the wheelbarrow too. A layer of hay went over this.

Step 4. Skinning the goat. This takes some time and since this was my first time, it took a while. We didn't look at the clock before we started, but by the times the photos were taken, the whole process took from about 10 am to 11:07 to complete. Not bad for a couple of newbies!

I used a new, very sharp Chicago Cutlery 5" boning knife. This knife has a high carbon blade which holds an edge better and is easier to sharpen than a stainless steel blade. This is the knife that Chicago Cutlery made its reputation on. First thing I did was cut all the way around the anus.

I pulled out a few inches of the colon and put a tie wrap around the tube. I cut off the anus itself and put it in the wheelbarrow. That part has a lot of bacteria and could taint the carcass. With that done I can proceed to skinning. I cut up the inside of the legs under the skin, taking care not to cut the meat. Then across the bottom through where the anus was. I removed the tail.

At this point I could alternate pulling downward on the skin and loosening with the knife until I was basically turning the goat inside out. There was some fiddly work at the legs and neck and then the skin was off. Kristi was spraying the carcass with water to help remove hair.

Step 5. Disemboweling. This is another one of those processes that isn't really fun, but it's a part of home butchering. Working from the hole where the anus was, I slid the knife in between the anal opening and the membrane and slit down exposing the innards. There were a LOT of innards. This was a well fed goat. working along the backbone I cut and snipped all the spots that were holding the viscera in place. Suddenly out it all came PLOP into the wheelbarrow. I had to reach way down inside to cut through the trachea and a couple more snips and it was all out.

Aside: We are very interested in making our own goat cheeses. There are age-old stories about shepherds storing the mornings milking in goats stomachs and, by the time they're ready to drink the milk, all they get is a fine liquid substance (whey). As the shepherd traveled he would notice that the milk turned to chunks. The chunks tasted good and the love of cheese was born. Goats stomachs contain natural enzymes that comprise rennet. Rennet supplies bacteria that helps an unweaned kid goat to digest his mothers milk. Rennet is necessary in cheese making. What this is leading up to is that when the stomachs (4) of the goat were removed we collected a nice piece of the fourth stomach to be made into rennet for our cheese-making. At this moment it has been cleaned and is heavily salted in a bowl to dry. When the stomach piece is dried, the whole thing will be rinsed and then placed in whey or with vinegar to create a whole bunch of rennet, with which we'll make (Uh, Kristi will make) cheese.

Step 6. The carcass was once again hosed off and is now in a cooler with ice to rest for 24 hours. Once the meat has relaxed, we'll cut it up into usable pieces and run it through our vacuum sealer for freezing.

Paneer Tikki

Latest news: The Paneer Tikki worked very well (needs salt) and I tried it with goat milk, thinking, what the heck... might as well try to make goat cheese. I've never been able to master the putting of the cheese in containers to let them sit forever, so this method works very, very well... and it's tasty! As soon as Geraldine is old enough to breed and then freshened, we're going to have a bunch of goat milk to make cheese with.. and now that I know I can get it through a simpler method, it will be easy!

The one thing that I didn't understand at first is that the curd, in goat cheese, is half the size of the smallest flea and I added a little too much lime juice (didn't have any lemons on hand) because I thought the curds should be bigger. But when I strained the milk through cheesecloth, all the individual curds and coagulated nicely. Oh, this is dangerously good...

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I discovered a recipe for a simple cheese called, "Paneer Tikki" in Flatbreads and Flavors. This book has all sorts of great recipes collected by two people who traveled to different countries seeking flatbreads and local flavors. Excellent book.

Paneer Tikki is made with regular, store-bought, two-percent milk and lemon juice. That's IT.. there's nothing more to it.

Then the pulled pork from yesterday's adventures (Mike starting the Boston butt and me finishing it.. seems to work well.. low temps (between 200 and 300) with hickory)..

Meat, cheese... hmmm..

Enough for today.

Birds and Bees and D.H. Lawrence, oh, my!

I have been reading, for about the 20th time, Lady Chatterly's Lover. One might think that it's the erotic nature that draws me back repeatedly, but what I find myself realizing is that each time I read it, I learn something else, am in a different mind frame to FIND that something else, and enjoy it just as much as the first time I read it. Lawrence, once banned in the U.S. for his risque' novel, wasn't like the crude, but rudimentary Henry Miller at all.. he wrote about a woman's orgasm, wrote words that still resound today in their wisdom.

But enough of that and back to the birds and bees... We have a pile of hickory branches that need to be cut down, but that, it seems, will be put on the back burner, now. What Mike discovered Saturday morning was that a Bewick's Wren baby was under all the branches. It must have just come out to learn to fly, which means the egg would have hatched about three weeks ago or so. We saw the bird as it attempted to fly into the house and reached a window, then dropped to the ground. It made its way back to the hickory pile and Mike captured a beautiful photo of it.

Ah, the bees... yes, we finally opened the hive again, this being week 9 in our beekeeping extravaganza... we have had success, but the bees are not filling out the entire hive as we thought they would. We know the queen is busy because there are lots of eggs in the hive and we took pictures that we captured with Picasa and exploded them... finally seeing the queen in all her long glory, with the telltale white spot on her head. She's been very busy.

The goats are hungry. No rain and little to eat.. I clip branches for them from our forested area every other day or so - and they eat lots of hay, but I really, really wish it would rain.

Brooster the mean rooster - RIP and good riddance.

After Saturday's ordeal with three unwanted goats, we still had a ton of work to do and the thought of doing it kept us IN bed and not really wanting to start the day.

Then I heard the wretched squeal of a hurting animal. We have a brand new dog, another Great Pyrenese and one we rescued from some nasty folks in Bastrop who, if they didn't abuse it, came close to it. The way the man handled the dog spoke worlds about why the dog cowered in a corner of their horse trailer and feared humans. He was flea-infested and sticker-bur saturated, not to mention smelling of oil that came from a cart that was also inside the horse trailer. This man didn't deserve to have a dog or any of the other creatures, including the horses and goats they owned.

The dog was born to one of his livestock guardian Pyrenese and the man said he found it in the field. He thought coyotes had gotten the rest of the puppies. He advertised this puppy on Craig's list claiming that the dog was 8 months old. When we saw it and what it looked like, I watched Mike's face and read it as "I don't think so" but he asked me quietly if I wanted it and I was adamant about it. Yes. I wanted it. If nothing else, to save the creature from this horrid human being. We paid 75.00 for it.

We've had the dog, which is really about 8 WEEKS old (not 8 months) since last Monday. As soon as we brought it home, we proceeded to terrorize it by bathing it and giving it food (it didn't recognize what a container was and tried to eat the container instead of the food). Then we put him into a stall for a few days with lots of food and water. We let him out on Thursday and he found a cozy, hidden place behind the shed and under some wood piles to hide and sleep. Unfortunately, we didn't know this and spent an entire evening trying to find him on the 15 acres. After a few hours of this Mike and I were pretty depressed about losing it and around sundown, I wanted to check one last time, to see if we'd just missed it... and sure enough, I saw him coming out from behind the shed. We fed him more, but we didn't put him back in a stall. The next day, he did the same thing and again, we thought he disappeared. Just before evening, he came out again from his hiding place. (who WOULDN'T want to hide during these hot Texas summer days?)

Fast forward to Sunday morning. We didn't want to get out of bed, but I heard this yelp from the barnyard and looked out the bedroom window to see Brooster attacking the poor puppy (who's literally no bigger than a bread basket.) Brooster reared up and rolled the puppy on his back and then attacked again.

This isn't the first time Brooster had attacked creatures and we thought he'd grow out of it, but he didn't. We can't have a mean rooster because we have some many docile creatures and young goats. He's even attacked Barbecue, our older Great Pyrenese. This rooster, though, is a little funny and would often put his head in a corner of the barn, talking to himself and stomping his feet.

Mike and I get dressed quickly, go to the barnyard and go through the ordeal of capturing Brooster. Mike wrung his neck and although that's normally my job (wringing chickens' necks), I think it was good for him to do it.

But then this means it's chicken processing time. We get to try out the new chicken plucker that he built for me. I killed another roo that we raised just for eating. If you think this is cruel, examine your eating habits and discover where the chicken you eat comes from. You'd understand WHY we want to raise and eat our own birds. It's healthier and the chickens are fed better and not treated inhumanely.

Anyway, when you process chickens, you have to let them sit a few days in ice to let the meat relax. We tried killing one of the birds and eating it fresh, but were very disappointed in the small size and quality of the bird. We have around 40 of these birds and now do not know if they'll be good enough to supply us with chicken for the year. Having to go back to store-bought chicken? Yuck. Yuck.

So Brooster is no more. And now the animals will feel more comfortable in the barnyard and maybe this little puppy, who's been bashed by humans, goats and a rooster, will survive and thrive. He's still around. Maybe he'll stay. I'm definitely giving him a piece of chicken when Brooster's ready to barbecue.

Stupid Goat Tricks

Saturday morning might have turned out to be okay - maybe a little hot, except for the unwanted goats that everyone kept trying to herd into our property... "Hey! You have goats! These must be yours!". The first time was around 8:30, when we go outside to start the morning and I see, in the distance, three goats coming toward the inside gate (about a tenth of a mile from the outside gate) and a car that is parked behind them. Someone is trying, I thought, to tell us that the fences are bad and we have goats that got out.

I take my golf cart to the first gate and realize that these aren't our goats! Someone has dropped them off and just assumed we'd take them. With feed prices so high, it's easy to see why people who can't afford to feed their animals would want to dump them. These were two very large billy goats and a female Boer goat in heat. I get to the folks standing at the outside gate and we do the introductions. They're neighbors. The goats, at this time, have traveled down the driveway toward Mike, who's looking a little perplexed.

We manage to get them out the gate and close it, so they can't come back, but the electric fences are not working properly and we have to monitor them, so they're not tempted. Goats are herd animals and they've seen our herd and want to join them. The goats that were dropped off look very healthy, but we can't allow them to interact with our own herd because looks can be deceiving. Also, one billy goat per herd is pretty standard and I am willing to bet that these just got two old for the owners who probably bought them for their kids or as roping dummies. Yes, the thought makes me sick, animals purchased for the pleasure of torturing them. Some of our neighbors have this mindset. We do not.

So, the goats, with the help of a car that came along ("do you want us to move them to the gate so you can get them back in?") "No! they're not ours... if you could just herd them further along, someone might claim them..."

Fine. So they're gone. Or so I thought. Next thing I know, I'm hearing a sheriff's car horn and seeing flashing lights an hour after the goat ordeal. Then I see the three goats. AGAIN. They've been herded back into our property. The sheriff actually opened the gate to let them in! Another man, who has stopped to help the sheriff herd the goats into our gate, stands by them. I'm in my cart, shouting, "No... no! These aren't ours... Don't... no!" Waving my hands, etc...

The sheriff has the audacity to ask me if I'm the one that put them 'out' as if out into the street. I tell him that they were dumped at our place, but they're not ours. The guy with him named Cal, says that he'll take the goats, but he has some errands to run and is towing a long trailer at the moment.

Fine. We try to keep the goats in the driveway until the guy comes back to claim them. The sheriff is gone, now, and we've got the goats. Cal says that he has about 15 acres and the only thing that gets dropped off at his place are mangy dogs.

It's a LONG time before Cal returns and at this point, we've decided to shoot the goats and are looking at tanning procedures on the web. Goat skin can come in handy or we could sell it.

In the meantime, two of the goats, the female and one male have escaped the driveway and are mingling with our herd. We capture them in the barn and herd them into stalls, each in their own and right next to each other.

About 2:00 pm, we're out working fences to make sure this doesn't happen again and to keep our goats on the inside of the fence. We're up near the street and Cal shows up, pulls up along side and says that he's having all kinds of problems, but that he still wants the goats. We tell him that we've got a cage (mike made it) and that the cage will hold the animals and he can take them now if he wants. We knew the hardest one to get will be the one in the driveway because it can and will still go through the fence, but it must have been shocked because it not only didn't go through the fence, it was a little wary of it. This worked nicely to our advantage.

The chickens that we had in the cage on the lawn (fattening them up for slaughter), had to be moved. That was my job. We had three red roos and one barred rock roo that was being mean - this was Brooster, the female rooster. I put the three red roos in the shed (where we feed the cats - who will probably never forgive me) and let out Brooster. He'd been in the cage terrorizing the three red roos for a few days and he's easy to catch (pretty stupid), so I let him out to forage.

The cage was fastened to Cal's trailer and we got the two goats from the barn in (although they didn't want to go). I jokingly said, "hey, you want two more?" Cal said sure, he'd take a few more - he got 8's older wether and 215's older wether. These are (castrated) males that are too old for eating, so we gave them to him.

It ruined our day, but turned out slightly better than it could have. We got rid of two useless wethers - a present, no doubt, for one of Cal's daughters whose birthday was that day.

It was a long day and maybe people don't realize what a burden it is for weekend farmers who don't have the time to deal with their castoffs. It's just rude to dump animals on others when you don't want them, whether it's mangy dogs or unwanted livestock. If it happens again, I'm going to get a nice goatskin rug out of it. I've been learning a lot about tanning a hide and I'd rather it be yours than some poor, unwanted pet that your kid outgrew.

Weekend ritualistic self-torture

Nice and cool this morning, but it's turned into a bugger of a day - muggy, hot. Texas.

We finished putting the fingers into the chicken plucker and had quite a few fingers left over. Mike's finishing the rest of it today (or getting really close to finishing). The 'rest of it' involves pulleys and a motor to drive it, etc...

This morning, we fenced off the main garden so that the goats would have another area to eat today. We are managing the pastures and have about six different areas that can be gated or locked, so it works out great. This is the first year we've really gotten into moving the goats around, but it's working out well and we've got some fat goats.

Mid-day -

Just finished hoeing up an area to plant the perennial vegetables in - the onions and the artichokes. Will probably move the ten or so asparagus plants in the fall to this new area, but not during the spring.

Also mulched the potatoes again - they are growing like crazy.

And checked the gourds in the backyard which are filled with both good and bad bugs - shield bugs bad, wheel bugs good. leafhoppers bad, ladybugs good. So we're going to leave them alone. I might spray them with molasses water and bt later to keep the worms and the ants away, but I've already got a ton of egg gourds on them thanks to the bees. The bees are so heavy with the orange pollen they get from the plants that when they go back to the hive at night, they can barely make the landing platform.

Just watered the grapevines and the one surviving blackberry plant.. correction, make that two, but the other one is still in the backyard area which means it's survived us - and several years of neglect. The fig tree seems stressed (either too much water or not enough will do that), yet there are four figs on it! We also harvested our first peach from the peach tree in the front yard (one of several, as well), but we're not going to get very many this year... just not a good year for them. Maybe next year. Because we've got bees, now, the trees will have more fruit. Just not this year, although for the first time, the trees are absolutely gorgeous. We've had to spray them several times with bt to keep the web worms off of them, but it seems to have worked.

The pear tree, although it had fire blight last year (which is purported to be the death of a tree) has wonderful new growth this year. I sprayed the tree with a combination of orange oil and bt last year, because I think that fireblight is caused by creatures, not a disease. All I know is that it seems to have worked.

We had a happy hour with some of my friends last week and when we got home, we discovered that the goats managed to get into the front yard and backyard and destroyed many branches of redbuds and the oaks, and tore up my herb garden as well as some prized bushes. Luckily, we had nets around the fruit trees in the front so we didn't lose any branches. Goats love to browse, which means eathing grass and bushes and trees, oh my.

Later in the evening:

I made crackers - great recipe that's very forgiving. And it's very simple. Water, oil, salt and flour - then some kind of seasoning. Easy to do and you can make all sorts of flavors. One batch fills up one baking sheet.

Shoveled dirt into the cart to put down on the raised bed (onions, artichokes, etc..), but will need to turn it again because the weeds have taken control of it, as always happens when you turn your head for ten seconds.

Sat out and watched the goats in the evening. Their bellies are so full that they can barely move and all the females look very pregnant again, but they're not.

Planning on planting the basil, the beets (it may be too late for them in texas), the Salvias I've grown from seed and a few more things from the greenhouse before it gets too hot.

And then there's the goats that need to be tagged and given their worming medicine and their hooves need to be trimmed and we need to go grocery shopping.

Gah.

Mother and child

Last night, both Mike and I were completely exhausted after work, ready to do the DVD movie thing. We had delivered pizza for dinner - a treat when you are on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

Mike was idly looking out the window at the goats and saw our most pregnant goat, 71 (as we affectionately call her) lying on her side away from the others in the barnyard.

This wasn't right. Her udder had grown disproportionately to her body - she-goats walk kind of funny when they're all 'bagged up' back there with milk.

We arrived to discover that she was oozing... the stream of goo coming from her backside isn't a very pleasant thing to see, but it did tell us that she was ready to give birth. So we dragged her (it took both of us) into a stall, spoiled her with alfalfa, apple treats, grain and other stuff.

However, we'd been keeping her in the same stall because we already knew it would be any day that she'd give us a kid or two. But today, Mike fed her really well and then let her out for a bit to get some sunshine and nibble on the green grass. She didn't eat much of what we gave her. This we should have noticed. She's not one to pass any food by if it's within butting distance.

So when we dragged her back into the same stall because of the goo sticking out of her hind side, we knew it would be a matter of no more than an hour when she would grace this world with another kid. Her last one died late in the year last year. We're hoping this one doesn't. We've had a great kidding season with few losses, so we're crossing fingers and toes.

Mike loves to take pictures of the goats' most intimate moments, such as, you know, giving birth. So we have a whole series of her grunts, pushes, standing up and then lying down again (repeatedly), and then finally the bubble of amniotic fluid that comes out with the kid's hooves and nose - they come out with head and hooves positioned as if for a long dive, with hands above one's head and put together, then head down for the jump.

The kid enters this world pretty slimy and screaming for food. Mom is busy cleaning it all the while and within ten minutes, it's up on its feet and ready to chow down on Mom's teats. This time, it's another male.

The kid was born at 7:45 last night and is probably the last kid of the kidding season. Last year, 71 kidded on Mike's birthday in July. She's the odd one out, as the rest of the moms usually kid in late December or in January and February.

It was molasses water (for energy), more feed and privacy for 71 and her newborn. For us, it was an early night and no movie. Perhaps tomorrow. You just never know what's going to happen from one day to the next when you live on a farm.

This morning, the rain hit just as we were leaving for work. It's likely to rain most of the morning and the goats stay in the barn during the storms and eat hay and grain. At least 71 won't be alone. She'll have 41 others to keep her company.

Advantages of an organic world without the organic hype.

Let’s face it… sometimes a household consists of two different political perspectives, two opposites that can’t agree on politics, but can still sit down to a fine meal, take walks within the confines of one’s property or simply sit out and enjoy the earth. Living without chemicals –organically, if you will, doesn’t require a political stance. It requires common sense and a love of nature. You don’t have to belong to any group or be a fanatic to make the switch and enjoy the benefits of living WITH nature and not working against her. The alternative of ugly chemicals is not practical and it's expensive, not to mention deadly to the creatures that can help you out. Life is about balance. Getting that balance for your property may take time, but it's certainly worth it.


When my gourd and vegetable plants spring from the ground, it is tempting to bring in the heavy artillery (RoundUp) to take away the weeds that pop up with them – weeds that grow faster than my plants do, no matter how much I fertilize with compost or mulch them to protect the soil from drying out with the Texas heat. But with weeds come one truism that I’ve heard from the die hard organic culture: The weeds are a good diversion for the leafhoppers, grasshoppers, cutworms, and other little buggers that tend to ruin a perfectly good harvest.

Granted, I spray my vegetable plants with Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT. Green Light puts it out in what looks like white and green oil bottles (oh, the irony). BT is found at most big box stores or nurseries and isn’t anything that requires a degree to use. It isn’t a part of any ‘system’ calling itself organic. It is simply an off-the-shelf product that could save your tomatoes and eggplants from the little creatures that like green leafy things as much as you do. I let the weeds take the hit from the bugs in the garden, not my vegetables.

I’ve also discovered something amazing after nearly four years of keeping the harsh chemicals from the farm and garden – the good bugs are taking over. Those good bugs – ladybug larvae, ladybugs, army beetles, dung beetles, frogs, lizards, etc. have returned en masse – When I see a plant with aphids, there are at least three ladybugs on that plant eating them.

Sitting out and watching the birds or the goats is one of our favorite pastimes. Because our place doesn’t stink of chemicals or perhaps because the bugs are so prevalent, we’ve seen a three-fold increase in the number of birds around – from nighthawks, caracaras, owls and woodpeckers to blue jays, bluebirds, scissor tails, mockingbirds, cardinals, Bewick’s wrens, chickadees and tufted titmice. This kind of noise pollution I can handle.

Fire ants are, of course, problematic in Texas, but we've managed to keep them out of the garden by acquiring a backpack-style sprayer and using molasses and water. It doesn’t kill them, but does keep them from building temples on my property. A couple of tablespoons of molasses to three gallons of water covers my entire garden. I did one massive spraying in February and that's lasted even to now, mid-May. Molasses is also purported to enrich the soil, as well and I need all the help I can get.

Taking walks where you can stop and smell the roses (if we had any) without the attack of fire ants makes this extra effort worthwhile.

So whoever’s in office doesn’t matter when dinner’s on the table and the food tastes like food, or when we’re taking a walk and stumble upon a bird’s nest that’s well guarded by the squawking jay or cardinal. We can stand silently, listen to the birds frantically chirping for us to leave, and not feel the nasty sting of fire ants on our feet. At least... not near the garden. And life is good. Today.
-----
ope

watching the clouded day
grace tormented ground
we hope
for the ever-elusive: hard rain.

the pulling wind sucks old air up toward
the menacing clouds
and rumbles walk behind the streaking glare
of lightning’s first approach

and as the isolated sprinkle
touches hats of straw
the wind twists and turns around
chasing our disparaging souls
inside.