On a day like this, I forget there was a day like yesterday. Yesterday was milking in the rain with a cow that insisted on standing in a puddle, and that was just for starters.
Today we have sunshine and pluot blossoms.
On Days Like Today
March 4th, 2010When life gives you ducks….
February 26th, 2010Well, we had a little duck disaster a few weeks ago, and I ended up with 7 ducks that were not too pretty. Of course, I could not waste all that meat. It was cosmetically challenged, sure, but the meat was fine. I had been wanting to try some duck breast prosciutto, so I searched the internet, compared several recipes and started out.
First, I cut the meat off of the carcasses.
I planned to make confit out of the duck legs, so I put them atop a layer of salt and covered them with some fresh oregano and more salt. Pretty much the same for the duck breasts.
I covered them up with a solid layer of salt and put them in the fridge for 24 hours.
Then I took the carcasses and skin and any fat that was left and put it in a big pot and cooked it very slowly to render out the fat.
The next day, I rinsed the salt off of the meat. It looked darker and felt firmer.
I put the legs into the crock pot, covered them with duck fat and some lemon and orange slices, and set it on the lowest setting.
About 6 hours later, I fished them out, deboned them and packed the meat into small jars. I covered the meat with the liquefied duck fat and put it into the fridge. It should keep in there for a few months, and we’ll savor it slowly.
The duck breasts were supposed to be wrapped in cheesecloth. That’s when I remembered I didn’t have any. I tried 3 stores and finally opted for a roll of gauze bandages. It worked great.
The duck breat had to hang for a couple weeks to finish curing. I hung them up in the extra fridge. In the end, we liked the confit more than we liked the duck prosciutto.
Preg Check
February 24th, 2010So, do you think our goat Lily is pregnant?
Getting to Know Ewe
February 23rd, 2010For some time now, we’ve been thinking of adding sheep to our farm. This has come mainly from my interest in using milk to make cheese, and wanting to learn to make several different kinds of cheeses. Never mind that I have not yet even attempted to make a hard cheese.
The plan was to look around and, when the opportunity presented itself, get a couple sheep that we could milk. The cheesemaking skill will come when it comes, sometime after I start making soap with the goats’ milk. I have a long to-do list, believe me.
So, while sheep were in the plan, I wasn’t actively looking for them. Then I saw a listing on Craigslist for sheep that had been milked. They weren’t a typical milking breed, but they had gotten used to being milked. That counts for a lot.
We ended up getting 3 ewes. One is a California Red. She is the tamest and the one that has been milked the most. The other 2 are Icelandics, one of the oldest breeds of sheep.
One of the Icelandics was bottle-raised after being born very small, so she is pretty tame and she has been milked. The smallest one is a little more wary of us, but she will come close if the others do. A handful of oats is enough to get them close, and we are establishing a friensdhip.
The Icelandics are a triple-purpose breed, raised for meat, fiber and milk. I”m thinking that milking a sheep is kind of like milking a goat, so no worries there. Shearing, now that is a different story. Something else to add to the list.
Raw Milk Victory in Canada
February 3rd, 2010A judge in Canada has ruled in favor of a farmer who had a herd share program. We’ve been paying attention to such things since this is something we hope to implement here on the farm. More here.
And sad dairy news here. I’m wondering if this tragedy had something to do with the craziness that is the dairy business. Sad.
Is What I Eat Anybody’s Business?
February 2nd, 2010We eat eggs. Whole milk. Raw milk at that. I put real, fresh-from-the-cow cream in my half-caff coffee every single morning. Sometimes in the afternoon also. We also eat a lot of green, leafy vegetables that we get from Farmer Jim or the Farmers’ Market.
Who gets to decide what I eat? I say me. But if you pay for my healthcare (which so far, you don’t), do you get to vote? I think more people should eat pasture-raised meats and whole foods. I oppose fast food restaurants in general. Do I get to vote?
Yet another benefit to eating pork
February 1st, 2010I’m not sure I can (or should) even comment on this one….
The wife of the Prime Minister of Argentina made some extraordinary comments about how great pork is.
Might want to order your pig now, they’ll be going fast if word gets out!
Greener Grass
January 31st, 2010I think we solved the mystery of Mocha’s Wild Adventure. She had been leaning over the fence in search of taller, greener grass. She is in a pasture that was never intended for an animal as tall as she is, so leaning over the fence was pretty easy. And the more she leaned, the easier it got.
Once she was out, she got frightened. She is very gentle and sweet, and she likes her routine. Being on the outside is not in her routine. She huffed and puffed and went out to find Big Lily. Big Lily is protecting a young calf and so she was not particularly welcoming. Then there was the issue of the electric fence. Lily is inside an electric enclosure and Mocha has never been in one, so she got a few shocks which agitated her further.
She is now pretty happy in a small pasture next to Big Lily. I milked out there today, in the fresh air and sunshine and it worked. Mocha was spooked a few times with the activity out front, but when she was done I put her lead on her and took her for a walk around the front pasture (not yet fenced) where she got to feast on some lush green grass. We’re working on fencing this area for the cows, so she got a bit of a preview and then happily took a rest, chewing her cud in the sunlight.
Well, we’ve been thinkin’
January 30th, 2010Folks who know us know that we aren’t afraid to try new things. Sometimes, we get in over our heads, sometimes it all works out in the end and we heave a sigh of relief. Case in point: over the past year, we have raised/cared for pigs, calves, dairy goats, dairy cows, worms, laying hens, meat chickens, guinea fowl, ducks, geese, rabbits, and a donkey. Somewhere in that year, we had another baby. We’re a bit overwhelmed at present, and we’ve been focusing on ways to simplify.
One thing we have thought of is a better way to house our chickens, both the laying hens and meat birds. We need access to pasture on a rotating basis, but moving them is a royal pain. Watering gets to be a problem too, especially in the summer, so having a way to set up an automatic watering system would be great, but moving it daily would not be so much fun.
So we thought it over. We made diagrams. Every discussion centered around this problem until we finally developed our plan for a chicken mansion. Pictures and more information will follow.
Last weekend, about 20 friends (and a few nice people we’d never met) descended upon our farm to help and more than half of the chicken mansion was completed, along with a new and improved roosting system.
As we’ve gradually inched the chickens’ fencing toward the new mansion, we’ve pulled out their old shelters, thinking that they would be curious about the new place and go check it out.
Some did. Others, not so much.
So today we were thinking that it was about time to pull out the last shelter so the hens would just go into the mansion roost area and roost.
Only, while we were thinking, the chickens weren’t. They aren’t real bright actually. Tonight Brian and my daughter spent an hour picking them up from all over the yard and taking them into their new chicken mansion shelter.
Of course, that was after we caught the cow.
Again, it started with thinking.
Right now, I milk 2 cows every day. Mocha came without a calf, and she only gives a gallon a day right now. We will be drying her up in May in anticipation of a July calf (if all goes well). Her production is low for several reasons, one is because she didn’t get milked for the first 3 weeks of her very first lactation period and the other is because she got sick in November and her supply never got back up to the 2 gallons she’d been giving. I put her on once daily milking and now we get along just great with a mid-morning milking.
Big Lily gets milked in the afternoon. She calved a couple weeks ago and Blackberry gets all the milk she wants and then I take off 1-2 gallons in the afternoon.
Mocha is in the back with the dairy goats (currently dry, awaiting March kids), and Big Lily is up front. Today I was thinking that it would be nice to have Mocha up front with Big Lily. Brian has plans to put a stanchion up front for me so I can do the milking up there and we can plug in the milk machine and try to get that working, but he has been working on the perimeter fence and the chicken mansion.
Today as I finished with Lily I was wondering how we would get Mocha up front. She isn’t real excited about coming along on a lead rope, so I want the perimeter fence finished so that if she gets away from me, she is still contained.
Mocha had other ideas.
Tonight as we came home from church, she was running in the driveway, parallel to Big Lily’s pasture. Both of them were having a bawling fit. Mocha ran all over the place, into the neighbor’s orchard, and out toward the road before she finally calmed down and decided to follow Brian and a bucket into a small pen next to Big Lily.
I still can’t decide if she is anxious to get in with her or trying to get away from her. I am hoping they will be able to get along.
It took a while for our hearts to stop hammering. Mocha was pretty skittish. My daughter checked the gates in back and everything is closed up tight. The goats and donkey are in their little shelter, seemingly unaware of the events of the evening.
That leaves us wondering if someone came by and let her out or if she jumped the fence. If she jumped the fence, was she scared of something? Sometimes we hear coyotes and sometimes we have dogs come around which is why we have Bonny our donkey.
So far, Mocha isn’t telling us. Perhaps in the morning we can look over the tracks and figure out where she got out. Right now I’m just glad she was in the driveway when we got home–if she had been just running around in back we might have just come in and not even noticed.
Just Farmin’ in the Rain
January 20th, 2010
We’ve had some serious winds the past few days. This is the first chicken hoop house to flip. Another one flipped today, and that one landed on a chicken. The one that flipped over today really messed up the nest box so it will require major repairs to get it back in decent shape.
Our plan for the coming weekend was to revamp our chicken housing with a fancy new design, but these old shelters were going to be used in part of that. Now our mission is even more critical as the hens need shelter and a place to roost and their available working shelter has been reduced.
In other news, we have mud and standing water everywhere. No fun.
