Just another Day on the Farm

Tomato soup.. sort of!

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Ok, maybe I will be the only one that finds this funny or interesting but I am sharing anyway, so I made my regular tomato soup, canned tomato sauce with spices and then I added in my whole 3 day old raw milk, it had a cream line and I used about a quart of it, I just needed to heat it though and serve, it made cheese! it was not clumps in the sense of curdle, it was little bits of cheese LOL

It may not look very good but it was so yummy, we both had seconds and cleaned the pot, it was like you had grated cheese and then stirred it in to melt.. I have made this recipe for years and never had my store got milk do this?

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Glenda is One Week Old!

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

Felted Soap.. The process.. in photos..

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Posted in Carfts an Hobbies | Tagged felt covered soap, felted sheep milk soap, felted soap, homemade felted sheeps wool luffa | 6 Comments

My first roughly done wet felted sheep milk soaps

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Works well for first try, lots to learn and many more to go, but honestly, homemade sheep milk soaps in inside a homemade felted sheeps wool luffa.. awesome!!

Posted in Carfts an Hobbies | Tagged felted soap, homemade felted sheeps wool luffa, sheeps milk soap | 6 Comments

Raw Fleeces came home today..

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Four bags for a number of different raw fleece came home today for different projects, right now, the big push will be to get them cleaned and dried so that I can use the wool as I have time..

Posted in Carfts an Hobbies | Tagged Cleaning raw wool, felting wool, raw wool fleeces | 1 Comment

Homemade Peppermint Bag Balm

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

My folks always used bag balm, and its a very good product in the sense that it does just what it say, but as a big old grown up now that can read the sides of packages, I just shook my head, no way do I want to rub some of that into the skin of my cow’s teats..

But you need to treat the teats with a nice salve if you want to help prevent issues with dry teats, or sore teats or scabby teats..

So I decided to do a little research on this and found that most of the organic salves or creams are peppermint based.. fair enough and easy to do..

So here is my 1st version of farmgal.

Girl’s Pepperment Bag Balm -Makes 8 oz

3.5 z’s of clean rendered lard

3.5 oz’s of high quality olive oil

1 oz of pure organic beeswax

15 drop of peppermint EO

5 drops of lemon EO

5 drops of lemongrass EO

Measure out the amounts, I want to make this fresh as needed so I made enough for two 4oz canning jars. I used my soap making scale so it was bang on in weights, then I slowly and very gently melted out the lard/beeswax, allowed to cool, then added the EO, mixed and poured into the jars. This is a nice thick but easily gotten out of the jar salve that melts perfectly at body temp, and girl seems to love it.. the top notes are very much the peppermint with the nice lemon undertones.

Posted in Famiy Mik Cow | Tagged Homemade Bag Balm, Homemade bag balm for milking cow, Homemade pepperment bag balm | 10 Comments

Garden Update May 18th-25th

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Costs in the garden outputs this week- 36

Total Garden Outputs (including seeds/plants) for 2013- 468.15 dollars

Total Garden imputes in terms of harvest for 2013-746.91

Currently = In the good by 278.76

Total Garden impute in terms of free, gifted or foraged plants for 2013-767.88

Planted this week-,Friday to Thursday

Tomato’s
Five rows of greens
potato’s
onions
Dill

* Between the days of rain an the cow calving on a week that should have been heavy in planting it was in fact very light.

Plus Greenhouse seeding plantings.. but I am not going to go over those, they will be talked about when they make it out to the main gardens.

Currently prepping and working on different garden beds and everything that is coming back from next year..

Harvest this week..

Nettles-20 cups (will make these equal to basil herb) -20 **
horseradish Greens- 3 bunches- 3.99 at the Chinese market-12
Garlic greens/bulbs- 2 bunch (count them as green onions) 1 .98
Fresh Mints- 30 cups – I weighted this out and its 2.29 per cup -89
Mirco greens- equal to one box-5.99
Wild flowers-Lilacs- * 36 cups -108
Beet Greens-1 bunch-3.99
horseradish- 3.99

Total this week –244.95

** 46 cups fresh used, and the rest are dried, I finally got to the health store and got a current price on the dried stinging nettle pills, and will using it to help me figure out what my dried nettles are worth.. (did a big list of things I am growing an drying and wow, so glad that I am doing it on the farm, and not buying them!)

Went to my mountain herb and other online herb sites for prices on these..

Extra’s..

Pig plow update: Cleared 192 square feet this week

total Plow this spring so far 1216 square feet..

compost used from the farm – Three wheelbarrels- equal to 12 large bags at the store.. 2.99 per bag- Savings on compost this week-47.84

Savings on compost for 2013 -112.64 (including tax)

Gifted to us this week-

Gifted Seeds this year-

Beans
Ockra
Luffa
Blue Dent Corn

Gifted from us Total to date : 279

300 pds of well composted farm compost–45
six rhubarb root in a pot- 60
8 apple mints-48
2 -Beebalm Red 20
1 Beebalm Pink- 10
Peppermint (little)- 4
4 Wild Violets ( big pots worth) -40
4 Nettles- (normally can only order seeds so will use that)-12
2 virgina creepers- 20
4 Creeping Charlie- 20

Posted in gardens | Tagged Frugal, Garden, Garden food report, Growing your own food | 2 Comments

Glenda..

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Posted in Life moves on daily | 3 Comments

A short little Milking Video..

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Posted in Famiy Mik Cow, Life moves on daily | Tagged Milking the cow video | Leave a comment

Super Thick Yogurt

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

So this was my first yogurt that I have made from Girls milk, this was skimmed milk in the sense of the cream line was skimmed off but it would still be considered whole milk if you were buying it, I mixed in two tbsp. of regular active yogurt culture, heated it to the right temp in my shuttle chef, took it off the heat and into my double pot and left it for eight hours.. wow, is it thick.. that big ladle picked it up and its a good three inches plus over and its just holding its shape..