Spilled Milk

You may have noticed I've grown my hair out (among other things) and colored it.  James seems to approve of the changes.

We've been getting so much milk lately I have to make cheese at least every other day and sometimes a few days in a row.   Much as I like making cheese, sometimes I want more days in between making it.  I need to find other uses for it - things I can do quickly, besides give it to the pig.
 
We eat homemade ice cream quite a bit in the summer and the recipe we use calls for a small can of evaporated milk.  James suggested I make some from our own milk.  Why not?  Turns out it's very difficult to do.  The ingredients?  Milk.  Tools?  A stove, pan, spoon and cheesecloth.  Read this very closely so you can do it yourself.  Here's the difficult recipe. 
Pour 1 gallon of milk into a large pan.  Place on stove.  Bring to boil then turn down to medium heat.  Keep stirring to keep the film from forming on top and milk from burning.  When milk is reduced to 40%  (this took me maybe an hour and a half) of original amount strain through cheesecloth to get out any clumps or skin.  I know this sounds challenging but you can do it.

Did that sound simple to you?  Well, it wasn't for me.  Sure the cooking part was easy but after that I ran into trouble.  In my last blog post I told you how I was having trouble getting into the swing of things.  That hasn't changed much.  I've been kind of numb for a week and a half.  I'm lazy, distracted  and not very interesting or interested.  I guess I wasn't thinking clearly because I poured the hot milk into a glass bottle which then cracked and my evaporated milk spilled all over the place.  It seemed to me like I should have cried over this but I didn't.  I don't think I even cursed, not out loud anyway.  I cleaned it all up and then strained what didn't get spilled into a pan.  It was slow to drain through the cheesecloth so I picked it up to swish it around a little to move things along.  How'd that work out?  Yeah, not so good.  I spilled more of it down the side of the stove and onto the floor.  I don't know how much evaporated milk I got out of my one gallon because I stuck the pan in the refrigerator, put some clothes on and went out to walk my donkeys. 

I may try this again on a better day.

ReEntry

James and I went away for 4 days.  It was a great trip and all was well taken care of at the farm so I had no worries.  As much as I enjoyed our time away, it was great to come home.  So why do I have a hard time getting back in the swing of things?   Does everyone/anyone else feel this way after a trip?

I was informed folks were tired of looking at peas on my blog.   I even had a hard time getting back to blogging.  I just didn't have anything to write about or maybe nothing seemed interesting to me.  I don't really know what it was. 

I'm happy to see the animals and the animal "chores" aren't that big of a deal now that I have a milking machine.  Yes, I broke down and finally bought a used one.  It's great.  I love it and I'm pretty sure our farm sitter appreciated it too.  Yesterday James and I moved all the boy goats over to the field so now I need to milk at night too.  The machine will really save my hands.  We got about 3 gallons of milk today.  Tomorrow has to be a cheese making day.

Roxie (the pig) is due in 2 weeks.  I'm looking forward to piglets.  I hope all goes well since I know very little about raising tiny ones.  I'm counting on Roxie to know just what to do when the time comes.   I wonder what sow milk tastes like.  I may have to steal a little.

The turkeys are growing fast and are having a harder and harder time getting through the fence but yesterday a woman stopped to tell me she threw one back over our fence that was out by the road.  I thanked her and gave her a bottle of goat's milk lotion.  I hope they don't fly over the fence once they're too big to walk through it.  While we were gone the turkey with the bad leg disappeared.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised but I felt bad for the little guy. 

July looks like a busy month for us with lots of company.  Summer has begun.  Tomorrow I hope to be back in the groove. 

Peas, peas, peas

I'm sure I blogged about this in the past, how we tend to eat the same vegetable night after night when it's in season.  I think we ate asparagus for a few weeks and lots of salads when lettuce was coming out our ears.  Well, now it's pea season. 

We've probably had peas every night for the past 5 nights.  Tonight we had friends for dinner and I wanted to make the peas a little more special.  What I did to them wasn't anything special but we all loved them.  I brought some water to boil then blanched them for no more than 2 minutes, then drained them.  If you're not ready to serve them yet you should put them in ice water so they don't continue to cook.  We were ready to eat so I left them hot and added a mixture of 3 Tbl. butter, 4 chopped up leaves of basil and 1 tsp. of grated grapefruit zest. 

Once the butter melted over them they were ready to eat.  I really loved the flavor of the grapefruit zest on them.  I'll do this again.  I had planned to use mint instead of basil but I couldn't find mint in our garden.  I don't know what happened to it.  The basil was nice though.

I went to a friend's for dinner earlier this week and she served a fruit galette for dessert so I copied her and made one today.  Again, another simple thing that tastes special and requires so little work.

James froze about 30 quarts of strawberries this year and today picked a bunch of black raspberries that grow around the perimeter of our property so that's what I used, mixed with a little sugar and flour.  The crust was just one of those Pillsbury refrigerated roll out crusts.  This was topped off with some goat milk ice cream. 

What's next?  I think the next thing to ripen in abundance is green beans.  I bet the basil butter and zest would be tasty on beans too. 

It takes two to tango

Last night Adam texted me a picture of a stirfry he and Melissa made.  Adam grilled the chicken on their deck while Melissa cooked the rice and vegetables.  After a few texts back and forth he said, "it's more fun cooking with two people".  I agreed.  I can't imagine any dinner could taste bad from their deck though.

I told James about their meal and he said, "you and I prepare meals together".  He's right.  We may not share the kitchen or deck but it takes both of us to get our dinners on the table. 

James' gardens are beautiful this year.  June is a good month to take pictures so I did that today.

Here's an artichoke that won't make it to our dinner plates but it's picture-worthy, I think.

Keri and Lex are doing their own version of the tango in the garden where they don't belong.

This is not in James' garden but our cheese will be served alongside the vegetables he grew.  We have 40 lbs of cheese aging downstairs. 

I love that we both contribute to our meals, whether it be cooking it or growing it.  Adam's right, it's much more enjoyable when 4 hands prepare it.

The turkeys are winning me over

It was hard getting excited about the turkey chicks' arrival since they showed up right around the time Rosie was dying.  Finally they've caught my attention.  Two days ago I was going to blog about them with a heading reading something like stupid turkeys.  I never got around to writing about them because the donkeys and bucks seemed more interesting.  Since Cooper and Jimmy's (the bucks) pen was vacated I decided to move the turkey chicks over there and get them out of the stinky shed.  I carried them in a plastic bin and set them free to run in the tall grass.  I had forgotten how turkeys make this peep peep peep all the time and this is how they call each other. They looked very cute wandering and peeping.  It took no more than 10 minutes and they discovered they could walk right through the fence and into the driveway.  Shoot!  I thought they were too big to fit through.  Actually, I hadn't really even thought about that. 

They were way more adventurous than any chicken we've ever had.  They covered a lot of ground in a very short time.  I was indoors and heard the familiar peep peep peep very close to the house only to find them on the basement steps.

I wasn't sure if they planned to stay there or if they'd find their way back so I loaded them in a box and returned them to their new space.  It was getting dark and half of them were heading out again until I chased them back in.  How frustrating.  I was sure they were going to be eaten during the night.  They finally settled in. 

Today they got lots of exercise but seemed to stay in the pasture area where most of the chickens and goats are and kept returning to their own pen.  That was nice to see.  I think they're getting the idea where they belong.  I drove the lawn mower into the pasture because the grass was so long it was hard to see the turkeys.  They came running after me, which reminded me of the turkeys 2 years ago that climbed onto the lawn mower and I had to quit cutting so I wouldn't cut them up before their time.  These little guys decided it was too noisy and ran off when they got close.  Good.  Maybe they're smarter than our other turkeys were.  The jury is still out. 

There is one turkey who can't cover as much ground as the others.  I haven't named him/her because I'm afraid he might not make it to November but he's begging for one.  He's got a bad leg and has to hop on just one.  He works so hard to get around. 

We went out to check on them tonight and they were all cuddled up in a pile in their fence where they belong.  What good turkeys.  Stay tuned. I'm sure there will be a stupid turkeys blog post eventually.

Oh, Willo

Willo is one of my beautiful mammoth donkeys.  She's the one I "ride" most.  She's the youngest of the 3 and the peppiest.  She was the first to shed her winter coat and I think she's feeling pretty good because of it.  She looks like a different girl to me.  She's almost white instead of fluffy red, white and black.   This week I introduced a few things to her.  The first was a riding crop.  You know, I didn't even spank my son (except for one time) so it was kind of a big deal for me to actually use the crop on my sweet girl.  Well, it worked.  She moved forward when I used it.  Trust me, I didn't hit her hard.  My farrier assured me the sound is worse than the sting and that my other donkeys kick her way harder than I hit her. 

The second introduction was to two of my boy goats, Cooper and Jimmy.  I built the guys a shed in the field and moved them over there on the other side of the fence from the donkeys.  I gave them a day or 2 to meet through the fence and decided maybe they might like to do more than touch noses.  The boys may have been a little overwhelmed by Willo but they weren't too terribly afraid.  Jazz and Earl weren't near as interested in the goats as she was.  She decided Cooper was hers and no one else should mess with him.  If Earl or Jazz came near she kicked at them.  She kept draping her head over Cooper's back.  At the end of the video it appears Willo is in heat. Cooper is a pretty stinky buck so maybe this was the attraction.


At first I thought the boys didn't like it because sometimes they ran from her but this morning I separated them again and later I saw the boys cozied up against the fence by the donkeys.  Before I had separated them I saw Willo come out of their 8X8 five foot high shed.  It's amazing she fit in there.  I've decided to limit their togetherness for now just in case Willo gets to be too much for them.

Today James and I painted the donkeys' barn.  We got quite a bit done even with the assistance of our equine helpers.

Willo and Jazz both thought red paint might make for pretty lips.

The red lips really add to her sleek new feminine look.  I don't know, would you call her a paint donkey?

It takes a lot of shampoo to bathe a hog

Roxie came home from the breeder with lice.  Gross.  She didn't want to eat for a day and a half and seemed lethargic so I thought maybe it was the lice getting to her and I needed to do something about it so I could get her in good condition before her babies arrive.  A friend gave me some lice shampoo she got for her goats and I mixed it with some Shaklee Basic H detergent to make enough to cover a whole pig.

Yesterday she laid in her mud hole while I shampooed her and when I was done doing one side she rolled over for me to do the other.  I could tell it felt good.  When I was done she had a mud bubble bath.

I still saw lice on her today so I gave her another bath, this time with dog flea and tick shampoo mixed with Basic H.  These lice are big enough you can see them easily.  They're the size of a good sized tick and they're black.  I hope today's bath does the trick, if not I'll be spraying her with some "hobo oil".  It's a secret blend of ingredients a friend of mine gets from another friend who got it from someone else.  I have no idea what's in it but it smells like turpentine and some other familiar smells that bring back my childhood.  I can't figure out what it is but I kind of like the smell. 

The humane way to castrate?

I had a new experience today, not one I enjoyed so much.  I've probably castrated about 15 to 20 goats in the past but I've always banded them.  You know, you put a tiny rubberband around the top of the scrotum and the testicles dry up and fall off in a few weeks.  I've read and been told it's more humane to cut the scrotum and remove the testicles and there's less chance of infection or things going wrong.  At the goat jamboree a friend  described to me how he does it and convinced me it was a better way than banding.  I know this is how veterinarians do it so I thought it must be best.   

I gave Otto a shot of Banamine (pain killer) about 30 minutes before I was ready to do it.  Next I drug James away from his work to hold him.  I poured alcohol on his scrotum (Otto's, not James').  Ok, grab the scissors, deep breath..... cut off 1/3 of the scrotum and pull out the first testicle.  I was surprised how hard it was to pull it out.  Yes, I pulled it and broke the epididymis.  I think that's the right word.  I didn't cut it.  Even to a woman it seems painful.  There were just a few drops of blood, really, just a very tiny bit.   After removing both testicles I sprayed some iodine on him, gave him a tetanus shot and put him back with his herd.  He walked with his tail tucked between his legs.  It's been about 3 1/2 hours now and he looks depressed and is hiding under the little playground in their pasture.  You know a goat doesn't feel good when he's removed himself from the herd.  Every now and then his mom goes to be near him.  As a matter-of-fact, right now all the goats are hanging out near the barn and she's calling to him to come but he won't.  I feel really bad and I'm not so sure this was the best thing to do.  Maybe tomorrow I'll feel differently.

Another reason I did this was because it's how you castrate a piglet only I'll use a scalpel instead of scissors because they don't dangle like a goat's.   I have till July or August till I have to worry about cutting piglets though. 

Oh my.

Welcome home, Roxie

Roxie was returned to us today by the farmer who handled the breeding.  He said what a nice pig she is.  Of course we knew that.  I met Roxie's boyfriend a few days ago.  He's pink, kind of.  It's hard to tell through all the dirt.   I wonder if she misses him.  She doesn't seem to mind not having to share food today.  She ate quite slowly which she never did when Velma was here. 

She was bred March 12th so her babies are due somewhere around July 4th.  The gestation period for pigs is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days.  I think her teats are bigger but now I forget what they looked like when she left here.  I gave her some ear scratches and she seemed very happy. 

One of the first things she did when she came back home is some important housekeeping.  She dug her mudhole and dumped some water in it to take a bath. 

A tub full of fish

Today the fish wagon made his delivery to the Farmer's Co-op.  I wasn't sure if my hot tub was ready for more fish yet but I didn't want to wait another month or 2 for the fish man to come back because it would take even longer to grow them to eating size.  I took a chance and placed my order for 100 six to eight inch channel catfish.  I really only wanted 50 but there's a minimum order of 100.  I hope I didn't overdo it.  The fish man said, "I have some even bigger", so I said, "ok, give me 50 of the smaller and 50 of the bigger".  This way some will be ready earlier.  They're beautiful and they look very cool in the hot tub.  They look bigger in the pictures than they do in person, I think. 



I hope I don't find them all dead tomorrow morning.  I planted some more plants in the grow beds hoping to support more fish.

So far 2 of the 5 red golden pheasant eggs hatched.  These chicks are soooo much smaller than chickens.  I should have expected that since their eggs are half the size of a chicken egg.  They also don't cuddle together like chickens and turkeys.  I looked at them in their rubbermaid tub awhile ago and they were on opposite sides looking dead. I touched them both and woke them.  Oops.  Just checking.  One is darker brown and the other has more yellow on it.  I hope one is a girl and one is a boy.

Cute little guys.  I hope the cricket in there with them doesn't keep them awake.

Recess

I've been letting a few bunnies out of their cages at a time for recess.  A friend gave me a little fence so they could feel grass on their feet.  I thought mama bunny would like it best since she's cooped up with 8 irritating babies.  I put all 9 of them in the playground.  I did not know baby bunnies can climb fences with ease.  They loved playing in the woodshed and under one of our outbuildings.  Three got out and it took me till dark to finally catch the last one and put it to bed.  The big rabbits behave and have stayed in the fence so far.

 The turkeys have more room to run now too.  I moved them into the shed the rabbits used to inhabit.  Three rabbits still live there but they're up off the ground in cages.  The turkeys look so tiny in this space.  In just one week they had outgrown their rubbermaid tub.  What a relief to get them outside.  I hope they don't escape.

Tonight the goats and donkeys got a special treat too.  James and I cut the wheat and afterwards let the goats and donkeys in that garden to browse.  They've been wanting to get in there for months. 

A little frog was using my window screen as a jungle gym tonight.  He was even better at climbing than the baby bunnies.   Soon after taking this picture he leapt to the ground like he was flying, probably because I kept touching his feet to make him move.

Fixin' cheese and lamps

It's been a busy and good weekend.  Yesterday I attended a goat jamboree.  Few of us really know each other very well because we live so far apart.  This is a mid-atlantic minis (goats) Yahoo group.  It's fun putting faces with the names we know only from emails.  It was a good crowd and we had some good discussions and learned a lot.  I'm posting lots of pictures for those who were there.

 Tattooing an ear.

I love this picture and think this little blue eyed guy is adorable.

This year was my turn to be a demonstrator at the event.  About 14 of us gathered in the host's kitchen and made some cheeses.  It was a lot of fun (for me, anyway) and the cheese turned out as I had hoped.  I love when a group interacts while I'm doing something like this.  It's so much more fun. It was a pretty lively group and they made me feel very comfortable.

This is our guest veterinarian stretching cheese.  She had lots to offer yesterday and we had lots of questions for her.

It was fun being with folks who share a common interest - goats.

Today I was the guest speaker at a very different gathering.  I was invited to speak to a group of widows.  They meet once a month for dinner or to discuss a certain topic and have a potluck.  Today's topic was "when things need fixing".   I really had no idea where to begin.  I was led to believe it was a younger group (my age) so I was going to tell them how much I use the internet to learn how to do things.  Most of these women were older and I realized they probably would not be Googling or Youtubing anything so I decided to go about it in a different way.  I let them tell me what they struggle with and I would try to explain how I would go about fixing it.  I also showed them some of my favorite tools and how I used them.  We talked electric, plumbing and hanging things on walls.  One of the leaders brought an old lamp she wanted me to rewire so we did that.  It was a little more complex than I had anticipated because there was a small light in the bottom that needed an additional switch which we didn't have.  We got it working again and she was pleased.  I think the older ladies enjoyed watching me struggle at times and then they applauded when we plugged it in and it worked.

The husband of the host showed us how to sharpen knives and tools and check fluids in our cars.

I think all 6 widows left with my phone number in case they need help fixing something in their home.  It will be interesting to see if any of them call me.