Downsizing

It's time for tough decisions. Brian will start pre-vet classes full time in the fall. There will be less time for him to do things around the farm. I will still be working full time. So we are downsizing.

We'll be cutting back to 4 Red Wattle sows and 1 boar. We will offer the available animals to the folks that are currently on our waiting list. It's not been easy deciding who gets to stay. All of the hogs have personalities and traits that we have grown to love. With the smaller herd, we will continue to have RW pork for sale from the farm.

I'm planning to keep 4 Shetland ewe lambs and 1 ram lamb from this years crop of babies. The balance of the flock will be sold or sent to the processor. If you know of anyone who would like some very hardy Shetland sheep -  I've got them. We have been breeding for worm load resistance and great mothering ability on pasture. We will be selling brown, black, gray, and white Shetlands. These animals would make a great foundation flock for handspinning or a homestead flock for both wool and meat.

This flock reduction means we won't have any lamb for sale in 2011 but lamb will return for sale in 2012.

We will continue to have free-range eggs available at the farm. As soon as I can build up my flock of Buckeye chickens we will also have dressed birds for sale. And garden produce will be available at the farm stand.

Bringing down the house!

When my nephew, Johnathon, was a teenager he built a tree house - for his Grandma. That's right he built a treehouse so his grandma could go up and sit to watch the sunsets. He built it very well: spacious, solid floors, no leak roof, nice stairs, wrapped it in green lattice around the lower half of the walls. He did an awesome job. We all called it Grandma's Castle.

Fast forward to last summer, our almost tornado. Winds that ripped down 2 dozen trees on the farm including the main support for the treehouse. We debated several options for the Castle: tear it down, shore it up, just let it fall. ... none were very satifying. Then Brian suggested that we could use 2 tractors and their front end loaders to lower it to the ground. Sounded scary to me!

Well, Sunday my middle brother, Dan, came down with his tractor and he & Brian brought down the house.
Gently, slowly, in perfect coordination. Whew!

Now the Castle is going to get a second chance as our farm store. We'll be moving it over by our driveway, adding screening to the sides to keep bugs out, a screen door,  shelves for produce, a fridge for eggs and a freezer for our farm fresh meats. If all goes as planned the farm store will be open for business around May 15th.

And on the first day of my vacation...

Mom's White Park cow had her calf.

A "skunk" baby like last year, but with more white on it's legs. And this year it's a heifer, so we'll be saving her to replace her momma.

Other news from the first day of vacation:

The Wenglar sows won't cooperate with Brian's no stress moving technique. They refuse to go into the stock trailer to eat. There's just enough yummy grass and it's warm so they've been ignoring the treats in the trailer completely.

In the morning after breakfast, Emily and I started 2 loaves of bread in the bread makers. I don't like the way bread turns out when it's baked in the breadmaker. So we use the dough setting then bake in the regular oven in standard bread pans. Letting the bread maker do the kneading and raising means we can go do something else. Only this time the bread slipped our minds. God Bless my mother who noticed and got the dough out before it flowed over the pans.

Brian and I worked on the barn some more. He's just about got the roof on the south side done and I've got all the sow stalls laid out. I've got boards on the back walls and I'm starting to put up the hog panels. Each stall is 8' X 10' with a corner sectioned off in the back so the piglets have a place to get away from mom and snuggle.

We helped Anders get two loads of his things moved over here and he and Emily put them all away. They also got their teepee poles oiled with the second coat. They hope to be living in the teepee by the weekend.

It was late when we all got in from working, because we didn't want to waste any daylight. I grabbed a quick shower and threw together some dinner. Dinner was beef stroganof over whole wheat pasta, salad and brownies for dessert.

By that time my pillow was calling so the dishes got loaded into the dishwasher this morning.

If I only had a roof!

Now the sides are up it is raining, but as soon as the rain stops the roof goes on. Then it's stall building time.

And once the stalls are in,  it's time to go to Illinois and bring our Hazel home. I can hardly wait!!

Stocking up as a way of life

This book is going to be my near constant companion this year. January 2010 begins a year long experiment in not only eating "locally" but in producing most of what we eat. I spent more than a little time trying to calculate how much food we need to put by.
104 quarts of greenbeans (that's green beans twice a week or less if we have company over for dinner)
52 quarts of corn, about the same amount of peas. Brian's not fond of peas but mom and I are.
200 pounds of potatoes
50 quarts of whole tomatoes
50 quarts of tomato juice
As many cherry tomatoes as we can dry... I love to eat them like raisins. Yummy snack.
24 pints of pickled beets
18 quarts of saurkraut
A batch of my Grandfather Chili sauce- this recipe is huge. I only need to make it every other year.
32 quarts of greens-kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, spinach
24 quarts of broccoli
As much cauliflower as we can manage. Cauliflower is sooo finicky. Some years we get some and some years we don't. We'll see.
Brussel sprouts - yes we are trying again. This year I think we'll grow them throughout the season under row covers. Maybe then we'll get some sprouts!
Carrots- this year we'll experiment with keeping carrots either in the ground or in the root cellar to eat fresh through the winter.
Several bushels of winter squash including pie pumpkins, butternuts, spaghetti squash and banana squash.
Onions - I'm planning on curing them in the garage then braiding them up and hanging them from the rafters in our dry basement.
Garlic
A bushel or more of Sweet potatoes.
12 + quarts of pickled okra and about the same frozen. One of Brian's favorite foods.
Relish: corn relish, chowchow, zuchini relish, pepper relish at least 48 pints.
Pickles whatever comes out well. I am pickle making challenged. Surely this year I can make some that are crispy.
We'll be hanging whole cabbages upside down from the rafters this year to see how long they will keep.
Turnips and parsnips - like the carrots this will be an experiment to see  how long they will keep.
If the melons do well this year I want to try to make some syrup. If they don't do so well, then we'll just eat them all fresh! or made into sherbet.
Elderberries will be made into syrup. Elderberry syrup is one of my favorites on pancakes and waffles.
We should have a few apples and some pears. The pruning continues on our  much neglected fruit trees. For now we'll go up to "Apple Works" for their yummy apples.
Blackberries- yes I am going to brave the chiggers and go out for the wild ones. :)
In the meat department we plan on butchering a steer after Christmas, at least one hog during the year, 2 lambs and about 100 chickens. We will possibly have a few juicy ducklings to add to the larder. And in the fall Brian insists he is going deer hunting. That  means venison loins and lots of deer jerky.
Miss Hazel will supply us with milk, cream, cheese and kefir.
We aren't set up yet to grow our own grain, but my son has a grain mill so we will settle for milling our own grain. Maybe we'll try grain growing next year.

Wow! I just looked over my list.... we'd better get busy!

Be careful what you wish for!

A couple of months ago, I said to my daugher " I wish someone would come in and reorganize this kitchen. It just doesn't work at all."

Three days ago she started doing just that. Now we have a special cabinet for tea and coffee, a neatly organized place for herbs and spices and she found all the food containers that have lids and made them a home. The orphaned lids and bowls were delegated to the "Good Will" box. After two days of rearranging, things came to a complete stand still.

We had talked about clearing out the closet in the laundry room to use for a pantry. Clearing it out meant removing a century's worth of family photos. All of those photos were just too tempting and much organizational time was lost in reminiscing over pictures. (Though I did find several I want to add to my "Are you new here?" blog.)

Once the closet was empty, we had to convince Brian he wanted to install three shelves. This didn't take much convincing when he saw all the groceries piled on the kitchen floor!

Now the shelves are up and tomorrow Lydia doesn't work, so I'm hoping she'll come out and finish up.

Then it will only take us a week or two to find where all of our neatly organized stuff is!

A whirlwind tour of Illinois

So we needed a vacation. We got up early fed and watered all the animals extra well. We talked our son in law into walking the dogs. Got my son to agree to gather the eggs, put up the hens and generally keep things on an even keel and we were off to Illinois.

Why Illinois? Well because we want a milk cow and our friends at Green Acres Dairy happened to have one they would be willing to sell. They also wanted some feeder pigs from us. So we packed up the piglets and headed northwest. I forget sometimes how flat the upper 2/3rds of Indiana and Illinois are and just how barren it all seems in the dead of winter. Good thing Brian and I had much farm "stuff" to talk over on the trip. Otherwise Brian would have had to listen to me sing along to the radio!

We arrived at Green Acres Farm midmorning Keith and Donna came out and we all helped unload the piglets into their new barn home. Nice digs! Lots of straw and Freddy the herd dog really wanted to play with them! Then we got reaquainted with the three pigs we had sold them earlier in the year: Cagney, Lacey and Mad Max. They are really growing! After the pig rangling Donna invited us in to warm up.

Later we went out to meet the cows. There were black one, black and white ones, mousey gray/brown ones, red ones and golden tan ones. We found the perfect Jersey for us. She's not to big, not too young and very friendly. That last one is most important since this will be Brian's first experience with a milk cow.

After the tour of the milking mommas we headed in for lunch. Home made chili with crackers and big glasses of raw milk followed by home made blueberry buckle. Yummy!

I spent some time picking Donna and Keiths brains about marketing all natural pork to restaurants - article to follow in the Red Wattle Hog Association Newsletter - Spring edition. Then it was time to head on north to visit our friend Clyde in Rockford.

We took a detour out to see the sows who are expecting before we took off. They looked really happy in their pasture with the Piggy Palace Keith built.

Here are couple of pics of the happy pigs at Green Acres Dairy - Oh and of Keith and Donna!