Sunday Projects

We had a nice long list of projects to complete today, but to be reasonable, we prioritized them and expected that not everything would get done.

First order of business was to skim some more milk. We now do about 8 quarts at a time as I just don't have the storage containers for more than that. We moved the separator from the workbench in the basement up to the 'desk' in the kitchen. This made a HUGE difference in the 'dread factor' as the process is MUCH easier when it's in the kitchen and I won't be dreading the next batch when the time comes. Bascially, we have to warm the milk up to 100F. I do this while my H assembles the unit. Then while he's turning the crank, I pour 4 quarts of HOT water into the feed bowl. As H turns the crank, this water flows through the unit to heat up all the machinery.

Hot water running through the machine to warm it up for the skimming process.

Then, once all the water is out, I pour the warmed milk into the feed bowl. When the crank is turned at a consistant speed, we get cream out one spout and skimmed milk out the other. While this is going on, I have to keep track of how full each contatiner is getting so that we don't overflow anything. We end up with 2 half gallon ball jars of skimmed milk, one half gallon pitcher and a little more than a quart of milk to freeze. We also get about 2 cups of fresh cream. The last batch went towards making butter (which is delicious) and this batch will go towards making ice cream later this week.

Milk getting separated: skimmed milk on the right, cream on the left

We also had 'working on the chicken coop' on our list for today. While I cut a pattern for a light floor out of cardboard, my H began work on building nesting boxes. We have 12 chickens, so we need 3 boxes (4 per box). We suspended the boxes in the coop so that they were essentially using 'wasted' space. We are also going to put down a heavy duty cardboard floor next weekend. We are waiting because we are still 'collecting' the chicken poop for the garden. Once we move it off the garden, we'll install the floor and fill it with shavings. This will allow the coop to get a little warmer now that winter is moving in quickly. The floors will not be permanent, so come next spring, we can remove them and start the rotation around the yard once again.

Nesting boxes - filled with pine shavings and ready for eggs!

Lastly, I continued work on winterizing our row garden area. We've already covered the entire area with quite a bit of chicken poop by methodically moving the coop across it, one week at a time. Then we covered each poop-laden area with either soiled hay from the goat shed, or with leaves from the apple trees. Lastly, we are laying cardboard over everything. We figure that this will allow moisture to soak in, but it will retard the growth of grass and weeds. In the spring, we'll remove the cardboard and get to planting.

Row garden area: back left is covered with black plastic from last summer (to kill weeds), back right (near white posts) is garlic planted under pine straw mulch. The front left is where the coop was last - still needing straw or leaves before we cover with cardboard. Right front is the area that we covered today.

The Pressure Canner

My new All-American pressure canner!

My new canner arrived the day before Thanksgiving. I managed to hold off on putting it into use right away by making myself read the entire user manual before I was allowed to use it. I'd bought a big bag of carrots at Costco earlier in the week, so I knew that was the first item I was going to work with.

I used the 'raw pack' method where I basically just packed raw carrots into the jars, poured boiling water over them, and then processed them in the canner. They look great...I have no idea yet how they taste, but I hope to try the first jar sometime this week.

There are now 9 pints of baby carrots sitting quietly in our pantry. The first home-canned vegetable to grace our shelves!

After we enjoyed our turkey on Thanksgiving, I decided that I wanted to use the carcass to make turkey stock. I found a recipe using the carcass after it was roasted further in a hot oven. I had my H chop it into manageable sized pieces, and then I roasted it until it was nice and browned. It then went into a pot with the drippings from the bird, carrots, celery, spices and water. After a few hours of boiling this, I strained out all the 'stuff' and then let the broth cool. Once the broth was cool, I skimmed off the fat and then prepared to can it. This involved simply bringing it back up to boiling and then ladeling it into quart jars. After processing it in the pressure canner, I now have 6 quarts of rich smelling turkey stock. I actually had about a pint of extra, so I have that in the fridge and I'll be using it to make rice later this week.

The roasted carcass turkey stock - canned and headed to storage.

I wanted to make a point of including something about this book, and this is as good a place as any. A few weeks ago, while I was in search of the Ball Blue Book of food preservation, I came across this book. I bought the Ball Blue Book used at Powell's for like $8, and this one was also there for only $5. This was a very, very good use of $5!! This book was published in 1981 and it is chock full of great ideas for food storage, pantry rotation, and recipes using those foods. If you can locate a copy (and keeping a working pantry is important to you), I'd highly recommend it.

Thanksgiving Dinner for Two

We found our dinning room under a mound of boxes and promptly set a table for two.

My husband and I spent thanksgiving with just the two of us. My brother and his wife went on a cruise and my parents couldn't make the trip from Florida this year. We were invited to head down there, but with all the animals to care for, it really wasn't going to be practical. So, I reserved a free-range local turkey and planned on cooking dinner for the two of us.

I got up at a reasonable hour and began preparations. I had planned to cook our pumpkin pie using the two pumpkins that we got from our garden. I wasn't sure they'd be big enough (we planted late), so I had a can of pumpkin as a backup. Turns out, I did need some...so I'm glad that I planned ahead. I then dressed up the turkey and stuffing and put it into the oven.

We spent some time outside. We free-ranged the chickens, fed the goats, took a few pictures and generally gave our thanks for the happy heathy animals that reside on our land.

Me with seven in my arms.

After a few hours doing a little cleaning around the house (including digging out the dinning room from under boxes and 'stuff'), we were ready to have our dinner. I served sweet potato souffle (using three different types of sweet potatoes), garlic butter french green beans, turkey, sage laced bread stuffing, cranberry jelly (in the shape of a can!) and parker house rolls with home canned blackberry jam. For desert we had pumpkin pie made from 2/3rds home-raised pumpkins. Everything turned out wonderful!

The 'bird' - roasted and ready!

We are both very thankful for the opportunies afforded us in life that allow us to build this homestead in this wonderful place where the only negative is that my family is so far away.

Maple - almost full-grown!

My apologies!

I've been back for a few days, but haven't had the brain power to update. I will post about the China trip (with pictures) in the next couple of days, but I need to get some of the photos from my boss's camera first. Until then, you'll have to be content with an update about life on the farm!

I actually got home on Thursday afternoon, but I had to work on Friday, so there isn't much to report about last week. Both goats and all the chickens are doing fine. Starting last weekend (while I was gone), my H started saving the milk once again. By the time I returned home, the fridge was full again! Good thing too...since we received our cream separator last week. That was Sunday's adventure.

But, first things first. On Saturday, we had a nice long to do list (as usual). We started with free-ranging the chickens. This allowed us to do some updating to the coop. We moved it to a new location. I cleaned out all the poop on the inside and raised the perches up a few inches (the birds are getting big!). My H set about enlarging their door. He made the opening wider and taller, and he redesigned the door so that it works better and is more secure than it was before. When we put the chickens back in the coop, we put Seven in there with them. After a few squabbles, they all settled down well enough. She's now been in there with them all for a few days, and everything seems to be fine. Phew! We were worried that we were going to have to find her a new home and since she's the only chicken who lets us pick her up, we didn't want to! It's funny to watch them use the new door...some of the chickens still squat down to go through it like they had to when it was small! I think that they'll eventually realize that squatting is no longer necessary! The next projects will be to weather-proof the outside and to add the nesting boxes.

We also cleaned out the goat shed. We used the soiled hay to cover the row garden area where the coop has already been. This way, the chicken poop and hay (and leaves, which we also added) can work into the soil and enrich it for next year. I then covered this area with cardboard and weighted it down with big rocks. I used cardboard to retard the growth of the weeds by not allowing them light. We think that cardboard is better than plastic in this application because it'll still let moisture to get into the soil. When it comes time to plant in the spring, we'll just remove the cardboard and we should have good rich soil in which to plant.

I spent a good part of the day working on the garden boxes as well. I weeded them all, cut off the dead plants, mulched the two plants that are still growing (cauliflower and swiss chard) and put the trellises away for the winter. Next weekend I'll mulch over the boxes to discourage weeds until spring. I also added a few more clips to the greenhouse to better secure it. My plan is to use some leftover hardware cloth to cover both of the open ends to discourage the cats from using it as a litter box. I found a few cat prints and a few little 'surprises' left for me from the week I was in China. I also caught our cat starting to use one of the other boxes while I was standing there, so I threw a clip at him. I doubt that will discourage him for long...but we'll figure something out come spring!

Cream separator in action (sort of). The near bowl holds the skimmed milk, the far one holds the cream. This shot was taken as we were winding down, so the milk/cream flow is low.

On Sunday we tried the cream separator for the first time. It's much heavier and 'beefier' than I thought it would be. We bought the hand-crank one sold at Hoegger Goat Supply and I think it was priced fairly. Apparently, milk should be goat temperature when you separate it, so while my H milked Sass that morning, I heated another 5 quarts on the stove (it holds 6 quarts) up to 100F. We ran 4 quarts of hot water through the separator to warm up all the parts. Then we ran the milk through it. It was definitely a team effort - while my H cranked it and tried to keep the rpm constant, I emptied the skimmed milk container into cleaned jars (spilling milk everywhere as you can see in the photo!). We skimmed all 6 quarts and got about 1.5 cups of cream. I then quickly chilled the skimmed milk back down (using an ice water bath) and my H put the cream into a jar in order to make butter. While I cleaned up, he shook the butter jar. After everything was washed (we ran another 4 quarts of hot water through the separator to flush it before washing all the parts), I joined him and we took turns shaking the jar. About an hour later, we had our first butter! My H removed the butter milk and rinsed the butter well. We later tasted it on fresh baked spicy gingerbread and it was very good!

And the best part? Skimmed milk!! I'm not a big fan of full fat milk. In fact, I can't even drink full fat cow's milk at all (without gagging). I've been able to adjust to the goat's milk which is lower in fat (about 3%), but even then, just drinking it was difficult and I could only really handle a small glass. The past two days, I've been using the skimmed milk (which I am going to guess is about a 1% level) and it's wonderful! I'd forgotten that I actually LIKE milk when it's not all thick and creamy. My cereal is better, my coffee is better...and drinking it out of a glass is truly enjoyable! Yay! As soon as this skimmed milk is used up, I'm going to suggest that we skim another 6 quarts from the milk in the freezer. Besides, I want to make more butter and eventually ICE CREAM with the skimmed cream. I think the biggest barrier to skimming a ton of milk at once is our lack of containers in which to put it. I need to make a plan so that next time, we can do more than just 6 quarts at once.

The greenhouse - such as it is

Our little 'greenhouse'

I'm almost embarassed to post this as it's so pathetically ugly...but whatever. We don't have a true greenhouse. I really should add it to my side bar (perhaps I will before anyone even reads this!), but our plans do include buying a kit and building one ourselves. It won't be big...we certainly don't need big. But it would be nice to have a real one with vents, and doors and such.

In the meantime, I wanted to try something so that we could see how growing in the winter would work in our climate. I got this idea from the Square Foot Gardening book and I modified it a little to suit my needs. This is one of our garden boxes with a temporary greenhouse installed over it. I made sure that both ends opened so that I could reach all the plants easily enough.

The inside where you can see the duct tape, the top bar and how the ends go into the soil.

This is how it went:

1) remove all dead debris from boxes (including acorns...where did they come from??)
2) bend 2 10ft 1/2 inch PVC pipes in arches over the ends and stick them in the dirt
3) cut a 4 ft piece of pipe to be the top crossbar for stability and screw it in place
4) cover the ends with 3mil plastic, securing it with duct tape to avoid cutting/tearing it
5) cover the rest of it with the same plastic and secure the base with 4ft leftover 'grid' boards and nails
6) spend a week trying to decide how to best secure the top plastic to the end pieces
7) find plastic spring loaded clamps at ACE and use those to secure the plastic in place
8) mix compost into each square prior to planting to add more nutrients
9) plant!

Here it is all closed up. You can see the plastic clamps holding the plastic to the pipe.

We have mostly leafy greens planted. I did add a couple of onions, leeks, and one broccoli plant, but I have no illusions that those will actually work with our temps the way they are now. It does get to 60 during the day still, but with not much sun, I think the soil is too cold to sprout most things. Hopefully the lettuces, spinach, kale and chard will work, though. Again, late planting...I need to break this lousy habit!

I got word this evening that my visa was approved and that my passport is on its way back to me right now. I should receive it tomorrow which means that I am all set to depart for China on Saturday. I'll be vising Dongguan and Zhongshan, neither of which are tourist destinations. That's probably a good thing since I'll barely have any time outside of when I'm working to see anything anyway. I am flying into Hong Kong and supposedly staying at a really nice hotel, but I'll only be there for one night and probably won't get to see too much. It's an awful long way to go for 3 days. If I had my way, we'd not be wasting the money, the time or the crazy amounts of fuel to go there just to schmooze (essentially). But, when it's important to my boss..it has to be important to me.

I may or may not have internet access - so this may be my last post for awhile. I return next Thursday and once I've recovered from what is sure to be severe jet lag, I'll be back to posting. Until then "Zai Jain"!

Another busy weekend!

Roasted veggies - half from our garden, half from the organic grocery

Another busy weekend under the belt!

This weekend I wanted to remain as on top of things as I could be. This is mostly due to the fact that this will be my last weekend open to do things for a few weeks. Next Saturday morning, I leave for China, for a week, so anything that was falling behind on the schedule needed to be addressed right away.

The first thing on this list was to put up the gutter that has been down since we had the work done on the front entryway. Without it up there, rain water comes down the roof and dumps in the mud to the left of the door. We were afraid that if this continues, it would eventually soak into the basement! So, we got that up this weekend and we changed the flow direction so that it empties to the side of the house were eventually a rain barrel will go.

I had to make a crisp to take to dinner with friends on Saturday night. I wanted to make something I'd made before, but I didn't have time this past week to try out something new. I had a recipe for an apple-blackberry crisp, so I thought I'd give it a shot. One ingredient appeared to be missing and the topping was only flour and I tend to like ones with oatmeal in them. So I made the exective decision to experiment even though it was for 'company'. I went with the filling from one recipe and the topping from another (cutting out a little of the sugar) and luckily, it was delicious! I'll definitely be making that one again - particularly when the occasion calls for guests!

The evening out was really fun. Good food, good company, good conversations...and a nice break from 'farm life' for a few hours. It was well needed. Sunday was one of our busiest days yet, so having a 'civilized' break on Saturday night was well timed.

On Sunday, we had to clean out and move the chicken coop. That happened during breaks in the rain. We moved the coop to it's next location in the row garden area. This spot was FULL of weeds and grass for the chickens to devour, so I think it's a good spot from their perspective! My H also cleaned out the goat's shed. He pulled out all the 'soiled' hay and we spread it over the row garden covering the spots were the coop has already been. He then filled the back corner of the shed with pine shavings instead of hay this time. It's good for smell (smells fresher longer), but unfortunately, bad for Buddy! The pine shavings stick to his fleece, so this morning he looked like a snowball! Live and learn. Next time, we'll try putting down the pine shavings and then covering it with clean hay in the hopes that we'll get the benefits of both beddings.

I planted the garlic finally this weekend. I wanted to do it a couple of weeks ago, but things got in the way. The advantage to waiting was that the ground was very wet, so it was relatively easy to hoe up all the weeds in the area I wanted to use. I made an area that is about 6ft by 5 ft, marked it with white fence posts (from the old electric fence), planted 9 rows of 3 types of garlic and then mulched it with about 6 inches of pine needle straw. I'm excited, because I've never grown garlic before! I picked the spot I did because it's the one corner of the row garden that neither of the sprinkers will reach. This way, if we have to water the rest of the garden after June 1st when the garlic is supposed to remain dry, we can without worry.

Then I set about building a mini greenhouse out of one of our 4x4 square foot gardening boxes. I picked the one that had no trellis on it already, installed two 10 ft 1/2 inch pvc pipes in an arch at each end and then covered it all with 3mil plastic. I cleaned up the soil prior to doing this, so planting should be quick and easy. I do still need to locate some type of clip to hold the plastic in place in a couple of spots, but once I do, I'll take photos. I think it'll work really well in our temperate winter weather. I'm not sure it would be very effective in places were it gets really cold except as a way to get seeds started once spring comes around.

By this point, I was wet (it was raining off and on) and covered in mud. I went inside, threw my muddy stuff in the wash, and set about doing my kitchen tasks for the weekend. I re-made the cinnamon grape preserves. When I did, I ended up with an extra half pint of preserves that wouldn't fit in my waterbath canner, so that jar is in the fridge awaiting my first taste test. The other 7 pints are happily resting on the counter. The best part is that it gelled this time!! Yipee!! And look at what a pretty color it is:

Cinnamon Grape Preserves - take two!

Then I washed out the pot and started making chili. I made a double recipe so that we'll have plenty to freeze for those nights that cooking is just not in the cards. Then I started on dinner. I'd bought a free-range organic fryer chicken at the local 'foodie' grocery store, so we decided to have that on our vertical roaster. It's a roasting pan like this:

Vertical roaster - great for chicken!

I did the chicken with a citrus rosemary grey salt rub, and the veggies with the same. I roasted small potatoes from our garden along with two different types of carrots (pictured in my title banner). To that I added parsnips, rutabaga, purple potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes from the organic grocery. Everything turned out beautiful (see photo above) and was awesomely delicious except for the rutabaga. We were not impressed. I still have one more, so I'm going to try cooking it a different way next time.

Sunday night after my H milked Sass, we administered the dewormer to both goats. While Sass was on the milking stand finishing her grain, we did Buddy's. I held him while H gave him the injection. Immediately after we did, he started screaming and rolling on the ground! We both freaked out a little and thought that maybe we'd done something wrong. Within a few seconds, he'd calmed down. Then my H remembered that the vet had said it would burn a little. Buddy is pretty much a pain wimp, so in retrospect, his reaction was normal for him. Then we did Sass's and she did not like it, either. She didn't flip out quite like Buddy did, but she clearly was not enjoying the sensation. I felt so awful! I hate inflicting pain on them!! I'm SOOO glad that I'd already ordered the hermal dewormer for them. It's supposedly pleasant tasting and it definitely won't cause any pain. That should arrive this week, so we won't have to do this injection for them again.

Lastly, we had an unexpected task to complete on Sunday. While I was out in the garden most of the afternoon, Sass was very vocal. That's unusual for her - but she was bleating away, very loudly. That's a common sign of estrus for goats...just one we've not noticed from her in the past. We also discovered that she was very affectionate to us (prior to the dewormer incident!), so we had a feeling that her last encounter had not impregnated her as we had hoped. H called the buck's owner and we arranged to bring her over there late Sunday afternoon. When we put them in together, it was totally different from last time. She did not play hard to get and we watched the deed at least three times before she indicated that it was time to go. We have no doubt that she is impregnated this time and that last time was clearly not the full act. Oreo (the buck) was not quite as 'cute' as he was the last time we saw him after a month of making himself 'presentable' to the does. Bucks actually pee on their beards and face during the breeding season making them extra gross and stinky. Last time, I think it was early enough in the season that Oreo wasn't all grossed up completely yet. This time, we could smell him when we got out of our truck! We both agreed on the trip back home that our property is not big enough to house a buck during mating season unless we want to live with that smell in everything! Ick! Anyway, we are now 100% conviced that Sass has been impregnanted and that we'll have kids the first week of April. :-)

Friday updates

Canned apple pie filing heated up and served over pancakes - YUM!

I don't have anything earth shattering to share, but I thought I'd throw a few updates out.

First of all, Sasafras is doing much better. She is back to eating her full amount and her milk production seems to be back to normal levels (which means she's well hydrated again). We are still milking her, but we are throwing out the milk. Right now, the milk is sort of yellow due to one of her medications. Tomorrow she gets her last penicillin injection, so we figure we'll wait at least a week after that before we start drinking it again. Lastly, I think I'm going to give her the de-wormer injection tomorrow as well, so that gives us until next Saturday before we should start drinking the milk again. Not having new milk coming in is actually a good thing as it's allowing us to catch up on the back log in the fridge! I also discovered that getting goat medication on your hands is something to avoid at all costs. I spilled a little on myself last night and my hands STILL stink. I've washed the hell out of them in the past 12 hours, too! Ick!

The weekend to do list:

pick up CSA share of beef & pork
make apple blackberry crisp
reprocess grape jam
can apples and apple pie filling
clean out goat shed
enlarge chicken door
start work on chicken run
make soap and/or cheese

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Where the buffalo roam

Our tiny plot of land is essentially a square. It was once part of the playground of an old school. After the school was closed (in the late 50s), the land was divided into three lots. The lot we have is the middle one. The one to our north is our neighbors' lot where they have a house similiar in age and style to ours. The lot to our south is about half the size of ours and still houses the original school house. We are bounded on one side by the road on which we live. The last side (the back) is backed up against a much larger plot of land. This land actually surrounds all of the land that originally belonged to the school house. The owners of this land use it to house a herd of buffalo (American Bison, to be exact).

The first time we saw the bison, they freaked out our goats. Now our dogs continue to bark at them in the early morning, but somehow learn to live with them as the day wears on. My H has taken up feeding them apples. He will fill a plastic bin with the windfall apples and toss them to whichever bison feel brave enough to approach.

There was always one bison who kept apart from the rest of the herd. It was a big one, and clearly had been around for awhile. This bison had an injured leg (slight limp) and horns that looked like they'd seen some fighting. We made the assumption that this was an older male bison who was no longer (or maybe never was) the dominant one of the herd. It was a bit thinner than many of it's herdmates, but we figured that was due to age. This bison had a strong affection for apples and would come right up to my husband to get them. Eventually, it got to the point where it would take them from his hand. Last weekend, it took one from my hand! We even got to see this bison nose to nose with one of our dogs - with no aggression or fear from either party.

This particular bison got used to hanging around. On Sunday, it brought a friend with it on it's visit. H fed them both apples but the 'friend' was obviously wary. He dumped a pile of apples there so that they could eat them while we contintued with the apple picking. Next thing we know, our dogs are barking like crazy. A truck had pulled up to the fence (from the buffalo field). It was the owner of the herd and he came looking for this lone bison. He was wondering why she kept hanging around down here and he needed her up at the main barn. Yes, you read that right...this huge bison is a SHE! And apparently, her companion was following her around because he thought she was 'available'. Our neighbor 'herded' the bison across the field and over the hill with his truck.

About 20 minutes later, he came back. He wanted to appologize for being short and to introduce himself. We all chatted for about an hour. He apparently lives down the road a ways, but owns the land that surrounds us. He uses the original barn on the property, but the tiny house remains vacant. He sells his bison meat through a CSA - so we got his card and we hope to sign up for a share next year. The reason he came looking for that bison and had to get her up at the barn? She was due for slaughtering on Monday. Turns out that she was more than 23 years old and was having a hard time keeping on the weight. She'd lived a full life and he felt it was time for a culling before she froze to death this winter or something. We were feeling a bit guilty for feeding apples to someone else's buffalo, but after hearing that, I was glad that we did. She deserved to spend her last day in the warm sun enjoying an endless supply of apples!

On Tuesday morning while I was milking the goats, I saw the bison heard come running over the hill and into the field behind us again. It was a smaller herd...but such is the circle of life.

Making apple cider

Lady apple tree - this is the tree before we started picking the apples.

Over the weekend, we picked over 300 lbs of apples. I know it was this much, because I weighed just one of the many boxes we picked and it was over 55 lbs. We picked six of these for apple cider and a few more smaller boxes for eating, storage, giving away and baking.

Red delicious on the tree

On Monday, I left work early to pick up the rented cider mill/press at a home brew supply store on the other side of Portland. The press is clearly homemade by someone, and it's got a mill on one side of the frame (where the apples get pulverized) and a press on the other side of the frame. It came with two 'barrels' so that we could be milling and pressing at the same time.

Set up to start milling (the second barrel was sitting to the side)


Apples being washed

We started by washing all the apples. We had 4 varieties that were going to go into this cider, so I tried to make sure that each batch had some of each. This turned out to be more important than I had originally thought because as it turns out, a variety of apple sizes in each load helped keep the mill working smoothly (I faced a few jams prior to figuring this out).

The hopper loaded up - this did not work, apples had to be fed in a group of 3-4 with only one going in at a time or the mill would jam.

Basically, I was feeding the mill and my H was doing the pressing. He also washed the apples, ran the used pulp to the compost pile and filled the containers (using a strainer) with cider in between pressing loads. It took a lot longer to mill one barrel worth of apples than it did to press it, so his undying movement kept the process running smoothly. The mill had a wooden box with a round hole cut in the top that fit over the top of the hopper. My original plan was to skip this box so that I could put the apples in faster than just one at a time. Yeah, not gonna happen. This mill spit apple guts EVERYWHERE! Seriously! Without that box, I would have been inches thick in apple guts. As it was, I had it in my hair, on my face, and all down my legs below my knees (where the bottom of the mill was). As you can see from the pictures, we also had apple guts all over the porch, the boxes, the press itself...we even saw a few pieces fly up onto the roof! What a mess!

Me - feeding apples into the hopper.



Apple cider flowing from the press - note the apple guts everywhere!



My H working the press.

Once we'd done this for about 2 hours, we took a break to warm up and get something to eat. We resumed work not long after and set a goal of getting all the apples done. We filled up a 5 gallon container we'd bought specifically for this, a 1 gallon plastic jug, 3 half gallon ball jars, and half a cooler. The plan was to use all the cider in the cooler to fill freezer bags to save for long term. Fresh un-pasturized cider will keep for about a year if frozen. It will keep in the fridge for about a week before it starts to ferment. Our plan is to keep some frozen, give some away, drink a ton and ferment a container or two. All in all, we got more than 11 gallons of cider from our 300 + lbs of apples.

The last little oddity about this event is our hands...mine in particular. They are stained! When I first noticed it, my hands were kind of red, but I assumed it was mostly from being wet and cold. Then, after I washed them (and warmed up), I noticed that they were kind of a light brown. By the end of the evening (after showering and scrubbing), they were darker brown! Even today, two days later, they are still discolored - my hands look like they are dirty. Weird, huh? So if anyone is thinking of making their own cider - I would recommend wearing gloves of some sort!

It's not as obvious in this photo - but my hands (particularly my fingers) are stained from the apples!

Oh...and I should mention that the cider is absolutely delicious!!

Finished cider in a ball jar.

Playing doctor is not as fun as I thought!

Sasafras and Buddy using the fence as a step stool before the 'apple incident'.

Before I get into this, let me start by saying that I really appreciate all the support from everyone. Sass is doing better. She greeted me at the gate this morning, ate some grains/ration (for the first time) and generally appears to be on the mend. She did NOT want to get on the milking stand, but after last night, who can blame her?

Let me back up a bit. When my H brought Sass home from the vet, he brought with him a big bag of medicine. He said that he learned how to give her injections and that we'd have to do it quite a bit over the next few days. I was hesitant since I didn't get a lesson on how to do it, so I was content with letting him be the goat doctor. Well... what I hadn't realized was that he had to travel for work on Wednesday (today) and wouldn't be home until late. I had to learn how to do this, STAT.

So last night, after we made a run to the grocery store, I started sifting through all the meds. Between the invoice from the vet and the labels on the bottles, I was able to make out everything. I did a little research and figured out what each item did. I was also able to set up a mental schedule for us...which meant that we had to give shots immediately. So we collect all the supplies (good thing for big pockets on my 'farm' coat!), grab the lantern, and head out to see Sass. She has an idea that something is going on and does her best to avoid us. H manages to get her on the milking stand and gives her a little grain (which she proceeds to ignore). Then we start with the SC (subcutaneous: under the skin) fluids. This is a bag of saline that we administer to her by injecting it slowly under the skin on her shoulder. First we do 2 ml on one side and then 2 ml on the other side. It was slow going: H holding in the needle and trying to hold Sass steady while I kept the bag elevated and made sure it flowed. Once that was done, we gave her one more shot in the shoulder/neck area under the skin and then we gave her 5 cc's of Probios (to help equalize her rumen) in her mouth. She had less issues with the needles in her skin than she did with the syringe in her mouth...even though it supposedly tastes good! I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do this alone, but I'll figure it out.

Then we let her down and made sure she had fresh water. She didn't seem to worse for the wear after this, but I was tired. Unfortunately, I spent most of the night tossing and turning and imagining that we did that all wrong and that she was either in horrendous pain all night, or that she'd die on us! It was awful (for me). Luckily, it was all my stupid vivid imagination!

Tonight after work, I'll have to give her two shots and some more Probios. I think we can skip the SC fluids since she seems to be drinking water just fine now.

In our little medical bag of goodies, we also got dewormer injections for both goats. We are going to hold off on that until we are sure Sassy is back up to speed. I don't think she needs even more things for her body to worry about right now. We will treat them both at the same time, and then start them both on an herbal de-worming program that is safe to use on pregnant goats but that the worms will not develop a resistance to (like they can with orthodox ones). We did make sure that this injection we got from the vet is safe for pregnant goats, too.

My H and I are both feeling pretty guilty about this whole thing. I knew about bloat and I knew that too many apples could cause it in horses and that it can be life-threatening. I also knew that it is important to keep a goat's rumen in balance. BUT, I thought that goats were supposed to be able to do this on their own. I didn't know they could over-eat something like apples! We obviously still have a lot to learn when it comes to raising livestock. Hopefully Sass, Buddy and all the chickens will survive the learning curve!

It's been a busy 24 hours...

So we self-diagnosed Sass's illness as bloat and began treating it as such. I had already put in for a half day yesterday because we reserved an apple cider mill/press for the second half of the day. I left at noon, went to pick it up on the other side of Portland, stopped to get bloat medication at the farm store on my way home and get home around 2:30. Sass is still no better but she is walking around and severe bloat will leave the animal unable to walk. We administer the new meds and it doesn't help. I get out my phone and start calling around until I find a vet that treats goats. The vet is 30 min from us and is closing in 30 min. The doc agrees to stick around and we get Sass into the truck and my H takes her down there.

Meanwhile, I lug the apple press onto the back deck and set about washing the 300 lbs of apples we had picked over the weekend. Then I find out that the mill part of the press isn't working. I call the store and they are of no help. They offer to fix it when I bring it back and not charge me, but the next day that it's available is after I'm already in China (and our apples would never make it that long). I'm PISSED. I call my mom to bitch and I can barely hear her because Buddy (the other goat) is crying at the top of his lungs. He's been doing this constantly since we took Sass away. He hates to be alone! Anyway, while I'm bitching to my mom that all our apple-picking work this weekend was going to go to waste, my H calls from the vet. Sass doesn't have bloat, she's got a rumen imbalance (I forget the technical name) and is severely dehydrated - 70% chance she'll live. They are giving her all kinds of treatments (well, making Rick do a lot of it so he'll learn) and she's being a trooper.

He gets home with her around 6 pm. We put Sass back in with Buddy and look over the huge BAG of medication we have to administer over the next few days. $178 later - she *might* survive. And hell, we only paid $100 for her! Not that it matters - she is our responsiblity now, and we will do what we can to both ease her suffering and to save her. Oh, and the vet said that it's highly likely that she is pregnant, too.

So now my H takes a look at the cider mill, tightens one screw, and it's good to go! (can you read the frustration in my words at the time I've now wasted?) We start processing apples (I'll explain in a separate post) and about 2 hours later, take a break for dinner. We have a quick dinner of leftovers and then get back to work. By 9:30, we've done all the apples and we are both frozen solid. The mill spits apple guts EVERYWHERE, and I'm covered with it. My H is frozen from washing the batches of apples in ice cold hose water. We are both soaking wet, too (him with water, me with apple juice). We washed everything off, and put the cider inside. Now I'm standing in the laundry room, covered with apple, so I strip off my clothes and throw them in the washer so as not to trapse apples through the house.

I take a quick shower and crawl into bed.

This morning, my alarm doesn't go off. I awake to my H's alarm set for 7 am (a full hour and 15 min later than my alarm was set for!). I get up and immediately start calculating what things I can do and what I have to skip because the plan was to leave the house by 7:30 am to get into Portland by 8:30 to return the mill/press and get back to work by 9:30. Anyway, I'm getting things set for milking in the kitchen when I decide to throw the items in the washer into the dryer. Oh look...there's my cell phone! It had been in my back pocket because of the goat situation and it went into the washer when I was covered with apples. Great.

I go out to milk Sass and she appears to be a little better. She's munching on some hay and she greeted me. She didn't want to get on the milking stand, but I'm sure that was because we'd used it to administer therabloat yesterday and she was not a fan of that. I got her up there and while she didn't want any of the goat chow, she did stand still so that I could milk her. We got very little milk and it was kind of yellow in color. I dumped it (we had planned on that) but we wanted to keep milking her so that she was comfortable.

We load the apple mill/press into the car, I get dressed and I head to Portland only a half hour behind schedule. I actually ended up making it to work by 10 am and luckily I didn't miss anything. I couldn't even call my boss to tell him I'd be late because I have no phone! I'll have to run by the shop on my lunch break to see if they offer any warranties for idiots like me.

Anyway, Sass is doing a little better. My H is home with her again today, so he'll give her today's medications. Tomorrow, I'll have to do it because he'll be traveling for work, but we are hopeful that she'll be ok. Phew.

Craziness reigns supreme again

What madness my life has become...

I was super busy all last week and never got time to post here. I had a mini-breakdown on Wednesday night (freaking out about everything I had to do) but then got busy and made Cinnamon Grape Preserves that evening. They turned out tasty and beautiful, but they did not gel properly. Ugh. I do have directions for fixing it...so I'll give that a shot later this week.

On Thursday, I did exactly nothing towards our 'farm life' outside of normal chores and doing some reading. We went out for sushi and just relaxed a bit. It was nice to forget that we've got new responsibilities for a little while. While we were at home watching the World Series, I did some reading about building farm structures, composting and wine making.

By Friday, we were prepping for the weekend again. On Saturday we were up eary to run some errands before picking up our local pork/beef CSA share. Turns out, they had to cancel the pick-up but we didn't know about it because I didn't have email access on Friday night. Bummer. We were able to pick up a few supplies though. We needed some pieces to reinstall the front gutter after the construction work and we needed some type of container in which to put our apple cider when we make it. We spent the afternoon free ranging the chickens, spending some time with the goats, harvesting the last of the carrots (the parsnips were planted too late and didn't develop), cleaning out the chicken coop and moving it and various other little tasks.

Sunday was apple day. We spent the entire day picking and sorting apples. We picked over 300 lbs of apples - most for cider but some for storage and cooking. As it turns out, one of the varieties on our property is a very old heritage strain. It's called a Lady apple and it's apparently one of the oldest apple varieties in the US. It's also a good keeper, so we set aside a box of these for storage. They are small, sweet apples, and Sassy's favorite. In fact, as we were picking, we let Sass and Buddy out to munch on the ones we dropped. Turns out, that was a bad idea, but I'll get to that in a minute. We also picked a couple of boxes of red delicious, a box of the tiny apple and a box of a late variety that I have not used for anything just yet. There were TONS of this particular apples, so after we do the cider, I'm going to can a bunch of these. I will be picking up the cider mill/press in about a hour and then we'll set to work with it this afternoon. I wasn't sure how much cider we will get from the apples we picked, but after we had picked them, I went online and did a little research. My calculations (totally an estimate because type of apple, temperature, type of press, season, etc all affect juice quanitity) tell me that the 300 lbs we have will give us about 25 gallons of cider. OOPS. I had no idea we'd get so much!! We do NOT have containers for 25 gallons...not by a long shot! This should be an interesting evening.

Anyway, this morning when I went to milk Sass, she was acting odd. She did not greet me at the gate like usual. She was standing still with her head down, clearly not feeling well. I tried to see if she'd respond to me at all, and she kept walking away from me. I decided that I had to at least get the milk out of her, so I led her onto the stand and while she burped and refused food, I quickly milked her. I heard no activity from her rumen (usually she gurgles about once a minute or so). Her milk production was way down, too. I gave her fresh water and went in to find my H. I explained her symptoms to him, got ready for work and headed out. He was working from home today and was going to check on her. After a little research, we are certain that she has bloat. Too many apples and now her rumen is off! We think it's still a mild case, so he started with walking her around, massaging her stomach, and helping her burp. He's also given her a mixture of karo syrup and corn oil to help her better release the gas. When I go pick up the cider press, I'm stopping at the farm store to buy a horse syringe and some medication. Poor Sasafras! I feel so badly, for her...she's obviously miserable and if we can't help her release the built up gas, it could kill her. I don't think she's that bad yet though.

I'll post an update later this evening or tomorrow (hopefully with good news). Think good thoughts for our sweet Sass, will you?

We gave the dogs baths on Sunday night. Charlie usually gets cold, so he wanted to lie on the moving blanket. We tossed the top of the blanket over him to keep him warm and next thing we know, Kitty had made himself at home on top of Charlie!

Yesterday was a day of good things happening.

First of all, our lye arrived. I ordered 4 lbs of NaOH (lye) to use to make goat's milk soap from a farm/distributor in Arizona. It arrived yesterday, so I'm excited to add soap making to our list of accomplishments sometime in the near future. My H also ordered some from a CA place, and that should arrive later this week as well.

Secondly, yesterday was the day that Sassafras should have been showing signs of estrus. Not only did her milk production not dip like it usually does during this time, but she wasn't acting in her usual way. I think we may have a pregnant goat on our hands! I'm going to keep track and watch her for one more cycle, just to be sure...but we may be expecting baby goats next March. Awwww!

Thirdly, I have secured an apple cider mill/press for us!! I called a local home brewery/winemaking supply place and they have a press that they rent out. They only have one, so it's usually very, very booked up this time of year. I got lucky and managed to get it for next Monday. It's only $20 for the day, and we should be able to press all our left over apples in no time! All we have to do now is 1) pick them all this weekend and 2) locate containers to put it all in...

Lastly, I prepped a meal for tonight that is one step closer to being a 100 ft meal. It's actually about a 50 mile meal. I am making a baked pork with apple raisin stuffing dish. The pork grew up (fed on organic grass) about 10 miles from us. The apples and raisins are from our yard. The bread was from a stuffing mix from Bob's Red Mill which is local to the Portland area. The only thing that isn't local is the beef broth - and I used only a half cup of it...so it's not too bad. I'll be serving it with zucchini from our garden. Hopefully, it'll taste as good as it sounds when I read the recipe!!

The chicks are becoming chickens!

This is Joe - one of our two roosters. We believe that Joe is the less dominant one, but so far, we have not witnessed any fights.

Every weekend we take at least one day (if not both) to herd the chickens into the fenced goat area so that they can free range. They love to peck around in the goat shed (presumably eating bugs?) and they seem to love running to perhaps stretch their legs.

The goats don't pay them much mind, though we have caught Buddy occasionally runing into a group of them just to see them scatter. If goats could laugh, I'm sure he's doing so!

Yesterday we ushered the chickens into the goat area. We basically just open the coop and follow them as they head for the gate. In the begining, it wasn't so simple. It involved a lot of chasing of chickens while in my head I had thoughts of some common phrase about the wisdom of hearding cats. Chickens aren't much better! Eventually, they got the hang of it so that now, one person can pretty much get them to go where they need to go. While they are in there, we take the opportunity to move the coop and to fill both the water and food containers. We've noticed how lush and green the grass is growing in areas where the coop was housed. We've put together a plan to use the chicken coop to fertilize our row garden area this fall. Once we get the whole area essentially covered with chicken poop, we will throw some leaf mulch over it and cover it with cardboard or plastic for the winter. In the spring, we'll lift off the cover and plant in our nitrogen rich soil!

Yesterday, I was able to snap a few photos - they are getting close to being full grown though I expect that they'll fill out some still. I think we have happy and healthy chickens.

This is Seven. She is growing tail feathers and will likely be joining the flock again as soon as I can build the extension to their coop.

This is Maple - still the smallest but definitely growing!

Two Rhode Island Reds - not sure of their names... I only recognize Seven and Atilla and these are neither of them!

Rhode Island Red and a White Leghorn - the leghorn could be Bonny, but Bonny happens to look just like her sister and again, we can't tell them apart!

Quick weekend recap

Grapes, grapes and more grapes!

While I had to put off a few things on my list, I'm pleased with what we accomplished this weekend.

We completed quite a bit of painting. We now have the front, both sides and half the back painted. There is still quite a bit of trim that still needs to be done on one of the sides and on the back, but I'm feeling like we are making good progress. We have not done the back part that surrounds the deck, but we feel like we need to do that with paint brushes. I think we may get sun next weekend, so we may still get this task done this year! We have decided to put off painting the deck. It's butt ugly dark teal, but it's painted...so winter rain won't damage it. It can wait until next summer.

We purchased a chest freezer!! I'm so excited. We decided to put it in the basement instead of in the laundry room, so it's not as convenient as it could be, but that's ok. I think I'd rather have the extra room in the laundry room anyway. We went with a 7.2 cu ft freezer - we were originally going to get the smaller one, but if we end up raising our own chickens for meat next year, we'll need the extra space. We just got it downstairs this evening. so tomorrow morning (once it's cold), I'll get to move some milk and meat down there. Yay!

We trimmed the goats hooves. That was an adventure! First we had to level the goat's shed, so while I watched the level, my H jacked it up. When we got it level, he propped it up. Then we decided that since we were both right there, we'd try the hoof thing. We started with Buddy since we thought he'd be the most difficult one. He wasn't loving it, but it wasn't too bad. He did cry out a few times when he was getting frustrated (it took us awhile), but there was no pain for any of us. Buddy did pee on my H though! I did Buddy's hooves first, and it was hard because he's so small. I should have started with Sass. Anyway, once I figured out what was what, it wasn't too bad. My H had to take over for me at one point because I was having trouble clipping and Buddy was getting restless. He actually did better with me holding him and H working on his hooves. Then we did Sass and that was harder. She is much stronger and she doesn't like her feet messed with! Her feet weren't as over grown though...so it was quicker overall. I'm so proud of us! Both goats are now happily groomed. ;-)

On Saturday we went to an apple tasting at the Portland Nursery. I'll write more about the apples later, but the event was neat. We met some friends there and had a nice time. My H tried apple cider fo the first time in his life (I was stunned!) and he really liked it. We asked about renting a press and the guy wasn't much help. I'll keep looking though! Afterward, we went to a local brew pub and had the worlds most garlicky hummus and some hard pear cider. It was interesting, but not something we'd want to drink a lot of... It was fun to hang out though...it's not something we do enough on the weekends and it helped us feel a little more "normal".

Lastly, we got up close and personal with a mass quantity of grapes. Many of the grapes we had picked last week were spoiling, so we had to use them up pronto. We destemmed the entire lot, separated 16 cups for a recipe that I'm going to make (Cinnamon Grape Preserves), and then juiced the remainder. I tried using a juicer that we'd gotten as a wedding gift (and never used!), but it pulverized the grapes. I ended up going with the food mill instead. We would have had about two gallons of juice if I'd used all the water we boiled the grapes in, but I dumped most of it before realizing that I should be including it. Oops. I did keep the last of it....and I figured that if the resulting juice is too concentrated, I can always add water. Right now, the juice is resting the the fridge. I'll pour off the clear part (leaving behind the sediment) tomorrow night and can it then. I'll also do the preserves then as well. We also filled a dehydrator full of apple rings, tomato slices and grapes (raisins). I did not get to make more apple pie filling, but I will do that this coming weekend (or maybe this week). Our neighbor gave us a big bag of apples from her tree (Jonagolds, we think)...and they will make delicious pie apples.

Lastly, I did not get to the greenhouse. I'm ok with it, though. Next weekend, perhaps. :-)

Friday stress

This photo was taken about a year ago when we rode our bikes to the farmer's market in North Carolina to buy pumpkins. Now this is the bike that I ride to work when I can. My how things change in a year!

How many people do you know who get to Friday and start to feel the stress setting in? Seriously, what does that mean? That I try and do too much on the weekends? That I set my standards too high? That I perhaps should stop trying to work a full time job and a farm? UGH.

So yes, it's Friday and I'm already stressing about everything I need to get done this weekend. The list is too long for two days, but here it is anyway:

Paint the house - we should have decent weather, so we need to get more painting done. This means hand painting the trim and then covering it and the windows and renting a sprayer to spray the walls.

Trim hooves - both goats are in need of a hoof trim. This should be about a quarterly task and we've had Sass for about 3 months now. We have instructions and the tools...but neither of us have done this before. It should be an interesting experience.

Build 'green house' - The weather has warmed a little, so we've been able to put this off, but I have the materials necessary to build a green house of sorts over one of our garden boxes. The plan is to build it and then plant lettuce, spinach and other colder weather items in it. This is definitely an experiment, but it's one we have to start very, very soon!

Process grapes and apples - we are still up to our ears in grapes and apples. I got a neat grape preserve recipe that I'm going to try - and we are going to juice as many as we can. I also need to keep working on putting up apples. My goal is to fill two dehydrators full of red delicious and to do at least one (if not two) canner loads of apple pie apples.

There are lots of other little things (like buying dog food), but these are the BIG ones. Let's hope that we can knock a few things off this list!!

Edible weeds on our land

Acorns! I need to find a good local source and collect some. I want to try making acorn flour.

Last night we attended a class at our local REI where TrackersNW sent a representative to teach a class about edible plants native to the PNW. It was interesting. The guy who gave the presentation defintely showed a passion for the material, but he wasn't the worlds' best public speaker. It was cool though. The presentation he shared with us not only pointed out some poisionous plants, but a TON of edible ones. I was most surprised by what we have growing in our own yard!

I already knew about this one. I'd looked it up when we first moved in because the plant was so different from all the other weeds in our garden. It reminded me of my mom's jade plants (poisionous house plants she had when we were kids), so I wanted to know if it was safe to feed the goats. Come to find out...it's not only safe for goats, it's actually chock full of nutrition for humans! This is purslane (the wild variety) and it's growing all over our garden:

Wild purslane - high in vitamins and quite tasty (similiar to watercress, apparently).

I did taste it - and it's nice. Mild but flavorful. I can see how it would be a great addition to salads.

Then last night, we found out that all of these 'weeds' growing in our yard are also edible:

Plantain - the leaves are edible and suposedly tasty.

Bull thistle - the tap root is supposedly sweet and filling when harvested in spring.

Chickweed - we have this growing in our row garden area. The goats sure love it!

White oak acorns - the acorns make a nice hearty flour if processed correctly (remove all the bitter tannins).

We have this one other plant that grows super fast and is very watery. The goats eat it often enough to keep it in check (it's mostly in the area that we fenced in for them) and it doesn't appear to spread at all. We still have not identified it. I'll take some photos of it this weekend and post them...perhaps one of my readers who are more educated than I am about this area can ID it for us. If it's edible - I'd be thrilled since it's so prolific!

In addition to the 'weeds' listed above, we also have tons of wild grapes and wild blackberries along the perimeter of our property. Food abounds in the PNW when you know what to look for...