Meet Luna!

Hope everyone had a fun, safe holiday weekend. Things were pretty crazy around here. Crazy like good crazy, and not the other kind of crazy. Crazy like we went to the animal sale in Delano, where usually all the really good stuff  is sold by 9:30 am, (oh, and it starts at 9!) and yet, somehow, when we got there at 10:15, there was the sweetest little saanen mix doeling, still waiting for a home (and at a really great price, to boot!). We walked around, looked at everything, talked about the astonishing fact that no one had bought her yet, and how we weren't ready to bring home a goat just now, bought a few other things, and then wandered back around to the corner to see that she still had not been sold. Unbelievable. And then.. and then! Davey (wonderful, wonderful man) looked at me and said... "Well, I guess that's your goat." People, I teared up a little. Not even kidding (haha). I practically ran down the aisle to grab the card from her cage (some other woman was eyeing my goat!) and back up to the table to pay for her before anything could go wrong. I have wanted a dairy goat for so long, and up until recently, I couldn't even get Davey to consider goats, much less actually buy one. We had other plans for our farm money for the year, and goats were further down on the list, after cattle and maybe a greenhouse. But we both thought that it was just meant to be. And, I mean, who could resist that sweet little face?!?

She's still very young, so it will be a while before I get into the milking aspect of having a dairy goat.
I'm also on the lookout for a second goat to keep her company. She's a herd animal, and she needs friends. We learned that lesson the hard way.
For now, though, I'm just enjoying spending time with our new girl. I'm not kidding people, she's like a dog that mows your grass for you. And doesn't try to hump your leg. Love.

fresh strawberries: a love story

Nothing beats fresh-from-the-farm strawberries.

We're absolutely blessed to be surrounded by strawberry growers here. The nearby town of Dayton even has a strawberry festival every year.

This was an especially good year for strawberries. Aren't they just luscious looking?

We finally made it to the pick-your-own farm down the road from us this year. Punkin had a great time helping us pick "apples".

But somehow I still didn't end up with enough strawberries to make any jam. Oh well.. there's always next year!

Mr. Beefy - The conclusion

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Sorry -  I just can't seem to quit talking about this dumb steer. It's pretty much the biggest thing going on around here right now. Literally.



seven cubic feet of Beefy

Oh my, ya'll. Beefy came back from the butcher the other day, all nicely paper-wrapped and stamped. All SEVEN HUNDRED and EIGHTY pounds of him. For the record, that's a serious lotta beef. I'm still a little giddy over it. Our chest freezer proved to be woefully inadequate, only holding a little more than half of it. I spent most of the morning scrambling to throw out just about everything in our other 2 freezers to make room, and we still needed my parents' upright freezer and 3 coolers. We managed to unload about 250 lbs or so on friends, neighbors, and coworkers, but we still have the chest freezer and the upright freezer full to their tiptops with beef! I wish, wish, wish that I had gotten a picture of the back of the minivan (it took 2 of us over an hour just to unload) - the whole back, from the front seats to the back hatch, was stacked 3 feet deep with little paper parcels. Unreal.  I DID think to get pictures of it in our freezers. I only wish I had also driven over to my folks' place to get a picture of their freezers, too. SEVEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY POUNDS.





I had to throw out nearly everything in our freezer to make extra room (but I couldn't bring myself to part with all those chopped bell peppers from last autumn!).





Even Big Ugly had to get in the mix. That's what we call our extra refrigerator. Doesn't everyone have an extra fridge in their kitchen?

There was still an extra couple hundred pounds of meat that wouldn't fit, so we took it to my parents' place, which is fortunately right next door, and filled their upright freezer to bursting, and still had to use 3 coolers to hold it all. That left us with six 2-gallon bags of "dog bones" to do something with. I managed to fit 2 bags of them into 4 soup/stock pots to start cooking down to boullion.  

Doesn't that look tasty?

I'm actually not entirely sure what happened to the other 4. I'm pretty sure one got thrown outside to the neighborhood dogs. I was frankly too tired and overwhelmed to even care about the rest... though now I'm wondering if they're still around and I can make them into broth. I can't help it. I'm hard-wired to find a use for everything.

And speaking of thrifty - I did the math, and at the end of all this, Beefy clocked in at just shy of $1.00 a pound. Shut. Up.

Mr. Beefy - part 4

Our plans to have a neighbor drive Beefy to the processors fell thru, which meant that we had to work something else out, and fast, because we'd had enough damage to our cars already. So. I made some phone calls and did some finagling, and ended up on an early friday morning with 2 friends, a rented trailer, a borrowed truck, and one very suspicious steer. I handed Terry a pitchfork, and Scott a stout stick (you know, to make them feel safer. Ha.) and climbed into the back of the trailer. Beefy really, and I mean REALLY, wanted the grain I was offering, but he just couldn't quite work up the nerve to go for it. He charged and snorted and shied away and came back again for about an hour, strrrrreeeeeeetching his neck into that trailer, until he finally stepped in halfway, and Scott pretty much shoved him the rest of the way in by closing the door on his butt. And then it got really fun. Beefy hadn't been on a trailer since he was a weanling, and he decided it wasn't for him. He bucked and kicked and reared and dang near threatened to overturn that thing. The next 10 miles took us roughly 30 minutes, because the trailer was fishtailing as he threw his weight around in it. Every time the truck came to a stop, he went nuts again, shaking the trailer and the truck. People in the cars next to us at stoplights looked nervous. I think I actually saw someone lock their doors. But, we managed to get him there and off the truck and into the holding pen at the slaughterhouse in one piece.

Now. Right about this time I'm sure that some of you are feeling very sorry for poor Mr. Beefy and all the trauma I just put him through and blah blah blah. So I'm just going to tell you right now: No. He was a jerk. And also to reassure you that he got the last laugh, because when we were done, I had to clean the trailer. 'Cause it was rented, and that's how it works. And oh, people. I wish I had taken photos. I really do. I'm pretty bad about not having my camera around to capture the really great stuff as it happens, or in being just too wrapped up in the moment to think to take a picture. So let me just try to 'splain. There was 2 inches of cow crap all over the inside of the trailer. Have you ever tried to remove a 2-inch thick layer of cow crap from the inside of a livestock trailer with a pressure sprayer? I got cow crap in my mouth! In my MOUTH, people. It was everywhere.  It was so bad that Scott was a perfect gentleman and stood way off to one side while I worked so I wouldn't get any of it on him. And I don't blame him for that for one second. It could have been an episode of that "Dirty Jobs" show. It should have been. In it's own really disgusting way, it was kinda glorious.

Mr. Beefy, Part 3

more on our first beef cattle experience here and here.

I've already discussed how our steer, Mr. Beefy, is the bane of my existence. I look forward daily to the thought of his beefy-ness gracing my plate. I will not be sad to eat him.

We bought a few weeks of peace with him by having him castrated, but the peace was to be short-lived.

One week after castration (or A.C.) he was still pretty mellow. He politely asked for his grain. Frankly, he seemed a little pathetic. And I was glad.

Two weeks A.C., he seemed to be getting his gumption back. He even had the gall to charge the fence once as I walked down to the garden. 4 strands of barbed wire seem mighty insufficient with 1000+ pounds of steer coming at you.

Three weeks A.C., and we were back to business as usual. He snorted, he bucked, he demanded his grain with a wild look in his eye that plainly said that he knew darn well he could take out that fence if he really wanted to. We stopped walking down to the garden and started riding down on the lawn tractor.

Four weeks A.C., it happened. I felt him go thundering by, even as I saw the black and white blur whoosh past the front of the house. "He's out again," Davey said, and went to strap on his boots and work pants. This time I knew exactly why he was out. We ran out of grain a few nights earlier. He wanted his grain and he wanted it NOW. So. I snuck out of the house while he beat the crap out of the grain bin and the lawn tractor and went to get what he wanted. This time there was no 2-hour wrangling. He charged right through the gate after that bucket.. and I nearly peed myself. We closed up the gate, and Davey fixed the fence where it had been pushed down. (That sounds simple enough, but the job included breaking 2 large sticks over Beefy's nose to keep him away from where Davey was working. He finally got the idea.)

After all was said and done, we got to survey the damage:



I'm sexy and I know it...



 And this is just what he did to the van. Davey's car is just as bad. It helps keep us humble.

It's not like our cars were ever beauty queens to begin with, but any illusions of "niceness" are definitely gone now. It was right after this that we learned our biggest mistake was in keeping Beefy alone. Cattle are herd animals, and without a herd to hang with, they get crazy. Clearly.

We live, we learn. And maybe next time we raise sheep.

My early Mother's Day (several days late)

I totally meant to have this post up on Friday night, Saturday at the latest, and now, it's the next Thursday. Life happens, and I'm a sucker for good life. There will be more on the craziness that was this week later, (maybe MUCH later, given my track record). But for now, 4 days late, Happy Mother's Day!

Friday turned out to be one of those really great days. I had some errands to run, but nothing particularly pressing, and the weather was gooooooorgeous. Seriously amazing. The girls and I headed out to the farm market, just the 3 of us, and then I decided that, what the hey, we'd make the drive out to the bigger farm market in Delano (more about that here), just because we could. And because they sell great garden plants usually and I wanted to see what they had. And also because it's one of my favorite places on earth. Especially when the weather is gorgeous.

See what I mean?

It was so gorgeous, in fact, that once we got there, I didn't really want to leave. So instead we had a little picnic in the parking lot.

 

The girls absolutely loved the novelty of lunch in the shade with the van doors open, and I love how easy it is to please this mama and two little girls. 

The farm market in Delano sells homemade baked goods, including pizza rolls, which we devoured before I remembered I had a camera, and this beauty:

 I'm pretty sure it's not Weight Watchers friendly. Oh well.

I made up for it by eating pretty much the whole basket of these. Snap peas are my favorite!

 I really want Davey to build me one of these...

And some day I'd like to have one of these for trips to the market. It just seems right somehow. Even though it would turn a 10 minute drive into a 30 or 40 minute drive... it would be totally worth it.

About half-way through our impromptu picnic lunch, I decided that this was my early Mother's Day celebration with my girls, and it couldn't have been more perfect. Sometimes the best things just happen. I love that.

After our little party, I drove into town to take the girls to visit Daddy at work, and Punkin decided to stay and help the residents play their Friday bingo. I snapped this picture as they were walking away and was instantly struck by how BIG Punkin is getting - that little girl is my baby... only she's not a baby any more! 

Mr. Beefy, Part 2

You can read more about our adventures in owning our first beef cattle here.

Spring sprang early this year. We had decided that Mr. Beefy would go to the butcher when tax returns came back. I am not an April 15th-er. If I get my way, our taxes are filed by the first week of February, and I get antsy as all get out if I can't have them done by the end of February at the latest. This year was no exception. By the end of February we had the money in hand and were ready to go, except for one thing. We heard that bull meat can have a strong flavor*, so it was decided that we would have him castrated, and then wait a month to let him work out all that excess testosterone before we took him to the slaughter-house. I'm not even gonna pretend that I felt bad about it. Frankly, after watching him beat up my van with my 2 precious daughters inside, and go head to head with my equally precious husband, I was perfectly ok doling out some retribution. So we had him emasculated. And I watched with smug satisfaction.
Truthfully, it was pretty fascinating. And I really felt, well, farmy. I mean, we had a large animal vet here at the farm. He talked cattle and told his war stories about old bulls and skittish cows and being gored under the armpit, and wrapped it all up with, " I love it. Never worked a day in my life." YES.
So, Doc managed to get a rope on Beefy, and then, calm as he could be, walked in to the pasture with 1,000+ pounds of angry, snorting cowflesh, and hit him with the sedative. Heart in throat, over here. AND I was holding a stick to wallop him with should the fencepost he was tied to not hold. Fifteen minutes later, Beefy was down, and Doc went to work.
It only took about 10 minutes to do the whole job. Snip and clamp, that's pretty much all there is to it. I texted this picture to Davey when the job was done:

He laughed for a solid 10 minutes when he saw it. Until I started telling him all about how to prepare "mountain oysters" for cooking, anyway. Doc showed me, even though I assured him I had no intention of serving those ....ummm... boys <ahem> up for supper. Still, I like to learn new things, and so if you ever want to know how to fry up a bull's dangly bits, give me a call. I'm told they're quite tasty. I'm going to stop talking about this now.

Beefy woke up an hour or so later. I'm guessing he felt pretty strange. And for a solid 3 weeks he seemed pretty subdued. We thought we had won. We were wrong.


*we found out after the job was done that this step probably wasn't necessary. According to Doc, there can be a stronger flavor, but he's never noticed it personally and most don't. Europeans actually prefer bull meat to steer meat. Next time I think we'll save the vet bill.