Just another Day on the Farm

Sorry for the MIA

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Hi Gang,

Rough couple days at the farm this week, Not going into detail on this, its just to raw to me, so going to touch on it and then we are going to move on..

As you know I lost my big old ram, it was a awesome boy and it was a blow, every time I see the flock, I feel him missing..

Then came Girl, I had not planned on moving Girl out, I knew logically that it was a good move but I was not there in my heart, then Girl pushed the issue with her “I will be top cow” and so she got moved out, I remained standing and pushing though, but the cracks were showing..

But this week, was not expecting it.. I have a goodly number of hounds, and a number of them are older, as in into their teens and I baby them and we have all kinds of things in place to give them the best older years possible, but I was not expecting one of “middle” age hounds to get sick and it was found that he had cancer, and he went downhill very quickly, it was a very hard choice that needed to be made and I know it was the right one, he passed over the bridge to the other side.

But that does not change the fact that it has hit me like a brick wall, Rest in Peace my lovely boy! You will be sadly missed, you were as quick with your tail wags as you were with your tongue, you loved your head snuggles and your special run, hit the door, turn a full 360 was filled with joy.. you were always filled with life, kindness and love..

For all of you who share your world with critters, hounds and purrpots, you know just how much of a void they leave in your life when they go..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 9 Comments

Farming and injuries..

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

I love sharing my recipes, photos of the critters, the lovely newborns, the cycle of life on the farm, the garden and more with you all.

There are a few subjects that don’t get covered as much on other blogs that I read, and I am trying to a point to cover them when needed on mine, as an example, last year when I got kicked by the cow, I shared the injury and the recovery in pretty good detail.

Of course, I didn’t talk to much about the knee being weaker, and that I have now done month and months of workouts to strengthen the leg and the muscles that support the knee itself.

Which brings me to the lastest of my ow’s, Now if you have been following from the beginning, I have a amazing ability to find any nails that are flipped and step on them, I can slide and fall in winter, like no body’s business..

These kinds of things I consider my own fault and so be it, but this time is the not my choice for getting injuried, it was girls, three days before she was to leave (a couple days after she had a run in with being “over the top boss cow attitude” with my hubby, she took a run at me, it was over quickly and I handled it well, she was fine afterwards, and I had only taken two cow head butts.

However, they were good ones, and I went to bed the first night and rested, I took it easy and I did my stretches and I did my standing DVD and in truth I thought I was healing pretty good.. I really did, I felt not bad, energy coming back up, until I went to see Isabelle..

O my, we could work and put hips and neck back in, but I have pulled/moved my left ribs cage.. and its not nice, not nice at all, when she went to work on it, I about came off the table, I love that girl but at that moment, I didn’t know if I wanted to scream, curse or hit something 🙂

I went with a low moany wail of pain, she went with, massage, ice rub and you need to book in for a message before I can even begin to work on that, and I will be seeing you much more often till we can get it fixed..

Sigh.. not only is the cow costs unplanned but now I can add in several hundred dollars worth of extra medical that I was not expecting either, thankfully some of it will be covered our medical plan, but that means that I won’t have that coverage later in the year.. sigh.

I can let it scar now, and deal with it later in life or I can deal with it now.. I prefer now..

We don’t talk much about the little bumps that farmers get, and I get why, we just deal, its part of life, I mean, broody hen, fresh laid egg, of course I am going to peeked yesterday when I made her move..

Yes, I got a small burn when canning, and every time it gets near heat, it burns, a reminder to not be so careless next time.

Feeding out grains, sheep are not polite, they will bump you as they mill around, you can use a dog to hold them back if you want to do so, but none the less, bump, bump, bump..

Out riding in the bush, dodge a branch, thawk.. you get the idea..

We move on and we get it done, but that does not mean that we don’t get strains, bruises or even true injuries, we just tend to post cute photos, interesting stories and recipes..

Thankfully, its all worth it!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 7 Comments

Jan 2014 canning Update

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

So far, its been pretty slow really, but I am ideally going to be canning a bit more before the end of the month, we will see how it goes..

The plan is to just do one monthly canning update, with some photos of the end products.

So far I have done up pineapple, its a very frugal canning project, twice a year, the local sales go on for a extra large pineapple for one dollar, (no tax) and each one makes two pint jars per.. so if you buy 20 pineapples, you get 40 pints, as pineapple is one of the fruits that can be canned in water, you don’t need to use a sugar unless you want to, and if you are reusing jars/lids, then the only costs are new lids, and power, so each pint jar of will cost around 60 t0 65 cents per, which is excellent compared to regular dole pineapple tidbit pricing, (granted if you don’t can, you can watch for excellent sales on those cans of pineapple but the can just keeps getting smaller)

If I can more, I will update it on this post, and then will add the single months post to the canning log on the top of the blog 🙂 A little bit of fresh sunshine on a cold winter day..

Posted in Canning | Tagged Canning Pineapple, Canning Update jan 2014 | 2 Comments

Roasted Guinea fowl

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

As promised, I have some fresh meat in the house, both a guinea fowl and a rabbit was done this weekend, today I roast off the Guinea fowl on a bed of celery, onion and garlic, served it with butternut squash, yum!

nice full flavour, like a dark rich, just a little gamey chicken. its a got a real depth of flavor to meat, despites its smaller size, we will get three regular meats and then I will pick the bits of for a small pot of soup.

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Roasted Guinea fowl | Leave a comment

One Repair/Fix or Re-Build Monthly Challange 2014

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

So the goal for 2014 is get more repair work done on the house and the farm..

Ok, so far in Jan we have had a few repairs, including putting more foam insulators around the indoor pipes in the celler, adding more insulation to the cellar walls, and redoing the vapor plastic.

But that does not really count to the challenge, While all repair work should ideally be noted, what I am looking for is something that challenges us, something that makes us reach just a bit into new or needing to be renewed skills.

Today’s was plumbing, I had thought that I would need to buy a few things and crack out some of my rusty skills but instead, we learned that there are new things available and we were able to get loaned a few things from friends, so we were able to cut and remove the whole section, replace it with new gear for just a tad over 30, which is awesome because we had given ourselves a budget of 200.

We worked as a team and only had one moment of snark, which was settled with, this is why I see it this way, and the other stopping and going, O, and sure enough it did the job and we moved on.

There will be few more things related to plumbing that will get a upgrade of the year, now that we know that we can do it this way that’s for sure..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Repair it/Make it 2014 Farm or House Challange | 6 Comments

Frugal Friday- Lamb coat or little doggy vests

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

small little vest, , flip over and bing bang boom, a sweet little water proof, fleezed inside, just zip it up.

You can also do a little sewing on jacket, a bit of elastic and it slips over the head and around the legs and they are good to go.

Got the vests and the coats for a dollar each at the second hand shop.

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The geese are full grown now..

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

I know that I am keeping the one female, the one in front, of course hiss is staying, still up in the air on the other two.. first I need to sex them, and second, I don’t know that I want more then two breeding females, I have been very pleased with how well they are overwintering

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

Doing the math- Milk for the farm..

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Girl (Full sized cow) on average eats 600 dollars worth of hay per year, she eats 360 worth of grain per year, and she uses 200 dollars worth of straw bedding per year, time wise, when in milk, she adds two hours per day to the farm chores, total hours 112, plus an average increase of 3 hours per week in barn chores, Hours in barn chore time this past year for her 144 hours.. Hard cash costs 1160, time costs 256 hours Equal to working a fulltime 8 hour job for 32 days of the year.

Milking sheep

It would be 300 for the year if they were like girl and are fence breakers and therefor have to be tied out, but they are not, a milking sheep would be able to go on pasture for six months of the year, so assuming good quality hay as a secondary treat for a milking sheep as well as pasture.. 200 for the sheep per year in hay.

Milking ration for the sheep- 120 per milking cycle, no increase in bedding, as the milking sheep or a milk goat would not require its own sleeping pen and therefor would get a equal share part of the bedding used for the sheep flock, which is typically 200 for the year, split ten ways.. 20 per year.

Time, I can milk my current milking sheep in about 15 min twice a day, for a total time of 30 minutues, or a total of 120 hours for the full milking time in a year. As for extra cleaning time, say two hours per month, because I like to scrub the milk stand down from top to bottom so often, otherwise no extra cleaning required.

Total money costs 340 and time costs 136 hours or Equal to working 17 full time eight hour as day job per year.

So extra cleaning time around 16 hours over the eight months.

Now the washing of dishes, straining of the milk and use the milk is not being figured out here..

I have figured out that our household does not require more then a liter of milk per day and that a gallon of milk per day is lots of making the amount of yogurt, cheese etc that my household requires, anything over that, is just going for critter food, I would rather only spend the time, effort and money to get the milk that is required for the household.

I think its pretty clear which one not only will save us money and time. Time which I can move over to other area’s of the farm and its needs.

Wow, I have to say that these would NOT have been the numbers I had come up with when I wrote it all out on paper in terms of what it would take, but there were factors that I didn’t expect, such as not being able to use the “cow pasture acre plus ” because the cow would not stop breaking though both a sheep and barb wire fence and therefor, needing to be either feed in her stall and or brought out and teathered, therefor while she did get to graze, she never properly got to use her own pasture which would have cut hay costs. Plus hay was cheaper as was straw when we made the plan, it went from 30 per large bale to currently at 50 per large round bale, straw went from 30 per large square bale to 50 per large square bale (delivery costs included in those prices)

There was no way to see the amazing rising cost of grains when I was making the plan three years before and was using those costs to figure It out, the weather, the floods and so forth has cause huge increases in feed costs for farmers across the board.

The other issue that must be shared but was included, we had to buy a truckload of water in the height of the dry spell, it worked fine, and it was split over all the animals but the cow added 60 plus gallons of water use per day when we were using the well, 60 to 80 gallons of water per day adds up, and can give drinking water to a lot of sheep.

I am not going to even add in the water hauling time in the summer because that is just my farm, feast or dry.. I either have more water then I can use or have to be super careful..

So while each farm will have its own costs and clearly if you have a auto milker or grow your own hay or grain, your costs are and time will be different.

However, I figured you guys might like the break down..

Posted in Critters | 7 Comments

Thank you warmer temps and longer light

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

The Hens are starting to lay again! so excited to have more eggs starting to come in each day.. Wordless Weds, still warm eggs are a tiny moment of sweetness and light in my life.

Posted in Critters | Tagged Farm Fresh Eggs | Leave a comment

A little update on the goals.

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Well lets see the hauler is booked, the Butcher is booked and Girl will be gone in a matter of days heading to freezer camp.

The feb letters are written, and ready to go in the mail

Some of the nails are done, some of the grooming is done, I also did some bathing and blowdrying! Some Pineapple is being done, the chickens are loving the trimmings