Just another Day on the Farm

Basic Breakdown on costs and returns on Angelo over the time we had him..

Costs:

• 200  hundred to buy him
• 20 in gas
• 375 in feed costs
• Shipping cost- 10 dollars
• Butcher Costs including tax 212.44

Returns

• Eight Large Black Piglets (if we have bought them at six week weaner size locally-800 hundred dollars value
• Return of 220 pds worth of cut/trimmed/wrapped meat for the freezer*-1100
• * All the local current large black farm gate sales are at 11 dollars per kg

Total output 817.44

Total output cost directly related to pork back.. 3.72 per pd

Total Return Value at Market Prices- 1900

Savings by raising him ourselves in straight meat costs.. 1.28 per pd

Total savings if you include his offspring’s value into it-1082.56

Hi Folks..

We first and formost raise our lambs for ourselves, but when our ewes have a few to many lambs in a year we sometimes find ourselves with a few extra that we are willing to do farm gate sales on.

We have 3 whole lambs still available for sale, we will sell half or whole lambs, this lamb was raised by their mothers till they naturally wean around the age of six to eight months, on pasture, they never had any vaccines, antibodics, they were not grain finished.

They went to a small family run local provincal approved butcher, and they are cut in a tradional cut, one pds packages or four to six lamb chops, roasts, legs of lamb, lamb ground meat etc

Despite the increased costs in hay, hauling and processing costs, I have not raised my price on them per pd, its the same as last year.

Select limited amount of yearling grass-fed beef and Large Black Pork is also available, I am willing to mix and match a bit of all three if folks are interested in that combo.

Write me in the comments and I will get back to you and answer any questions.. I would be happy to help you find ways to use the different cuts of meat, please check out the recipe area of the blog for many ways to prepare your lamb.

Support a small local farmer.. Enjoy fresh local ontario lamb..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colostrum

“Colostrum is crucial for newborn farm animals. They receive no passive transfer of immunity via the placenta before birth, so any antibodies that they need have to be ingested. This oral transfer of immunity can occur because the newborn’s stomach is porous. This means that large proteins (such as antibodies) can pass through the stomach wall. The newborn animal must receive colostrum within 6 hours of being born for maximal transfer of antibodies to occur. The stomach wall remains somewhat open up to 24 hours of age, but transfer is more limited.^[23]

Livestock breeders commonly bank colostrum from their animals. Colostrum can be stored frozen but it does lose some of its inherent quality. Colostrum produced on a breeder’s own premises is considered to be superior to colostrum from other sources, because it is produced by animals already exposed to (and, thus, making antibodies to) pathogens occurring on the premises. A German study reported that multiparous mares produced on average a liter (quart) of colostrum containing 70 grams of IgG.^[24]

Bovine colostrum is produced by cows for their newborn calves. In many dairy cow herds the calves are not permitted to nurse; rather, they are fed colostrum from a bottle or by stomach tube and later milk from a bottle then a bucket.”

Put up just shy of one qaurt of sheep colostrum in small portions into the freezer between yesterdays and todays morning milking. I am freezing in trays and then double bagging the frozen cubes for future use if needed.

http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/colostrum.html

The link above is to a excellent article, and they talk about what I am doing, the gold standard if you need to help a lamb out is to be able to give colostrum from older adult female ewe’s from your own flock, as they will have the best shot possable for providing protection for your own land and barns.

Starting up again after my nap..

• Head to the cellar to get a pint jar of stew lamb meat, one pint of homecanned corn, one pint of homecanned potato cubes, and one jar of homemade tomato sauce to which I added a cup of frozen diced red and green pepper and a cup of  frozen diced pinnaple, bring it all to a simmer(I rinced the potatos, but added in the juice on the corn) It was just lovely and it came together in five min and was on the table in 15.. got to love quick meals like that.
• Evening chores, and critter feeding of all kinds, a basic quicker repeat of the morning chores, water, feed, and barn checks but with two of us instead of one and it gets done much faster.
• The evening is my down time, I tend to read a book(one on tanning hides is on the menu tonight), watch a movie(3rd rock from the sun), visit with my hubby on the day’s events, do a little knitting.
• Looked online for larger hide scraping tools and everything seems to be from the states, and I went to the local (an hour away) hunting and fishing and while they had alot of things for trapping and hide work, no scrapers.. Finally went to Lee Valley Tool Site and I can see at least three that would work very well if I can’t find anything “offical” locally.
• Dh came in after finishing his round of chores and said, can we head to town, turns out his favorite Peanut butter is on sale at half price and he wants to pick another flat of it, so we are about to head to town.. this will go into the food storage but not to be used
• Pulled a full bowl of frost bitten veggies out of the one small freezer and set it aside for pig feeding tomorrow.
• Cuppa hot tea before bed, and I’m done..

Well that’s about it folks.. that’s a pretty typical day in my world on the farm.. somethings are always the same, household chores, farm chores and what seems like a never ending quest for knowledge on “something”, brief touches of the outside world, but mainly just centered around the house, the critters, the land, and the weather.

This was a lovely easy dish, Baked Chicken Breasts with onion, celery, turnip and sour cabbage, very tasty and easy to turn from a baked dish into a soup with a bit of cutting up and adding broth..

Round two..

• Hot soup, while reading the CBC and National Post sites, along with a hot cuppa tea.
• Put a pot of black eye’d pea’s on to cook and be made into a dish later today
• Dishes
• Floor Washing
• Put the wet gloves on the drying tubes
• Folded laundry and put it away
• Feed the fish
• check the barn/lambing/lamb
• Cuaght Pippin, petted him, and picked up front feet and gave him a cookie
• Adjusted Brandy’s head halter, it gets loose when wet but can tighten back up a bit to much when it dry’s so needed a adjustment
• Cleaned, wiped down my horse harness, it was a bit dirty from the last times used and a dirty harness is not a good thing.. the perk of my harness is that its super easy to clean, just wipe down and then dry and down.
• Go to town cloths load next, coats are dry and hanging up.
• Took the hounds out and gave them a run, they are now currently crashed in patches of sunshine snoring..
• Groomed a purrpot, and cleaned her ears as well.
• Worked for an hour on scrapping the rabbit hide, plus softened it,and then did its final salting for a couple days yet before I will smoke it and then finish it off with fine sandpaper, and then run it over the back of the chair a number of times and rub it will saddle soap and then fluff it.. I’m very pleased with how its coming.
• Barn check, still no second lamb and no signs of contractions, momma sheep is settled, lamb always seemed to get milk only from one side, so I striped the other side, and sure enough it had a plug on it.. This is one of my regular milking girls and her bag is huge! and very, very  full, I figure I will give the baby another hour or two and then I am going to go tie her up and milk her pretty much out and put the colustum in the freezer in portions for just in case. This is one of the girls I have been waiting for, last year when share milking with her lamb, I was still able to get a full quart jar of sheep milk from her per day, thats pretty much a liter of milk or close to two gallons per week, and her milk is so rich that it has cream rise to the top of it (which they say is not to happen but it sure does!)
• Put the water on for a big old pot of herbal tea, when made I will pour it in the thermo for the afternoon use.
• General Tidy
• Milk the sheep and freeze in little jelly jars for future use.(should do a post on that)
• Have a Nap with lots of warm furry bodies all snuggling up.

Morning Guys, so I am going to do a day in the life of farmgal, It will be broke down into at least two parts, maybe three?.. I will do my best to follow out the list I had prepared last night while doing extra’s as they pop up, I wrote the to do list without this post in mind, so if I can follow it fairly closely then it will be a “typical” day as close as I can get it, instead of a boy lets make this day really interesting just cuz I’m blogging..

Alarm went off at 5am..

• Hounds outside, Purrpots feed, Water Dish redone
• Bathroom use for the human(of course we come after the critters 😛
• Pop outside to throw hay (this is because the big old horse figured out that she could break into the second bale of hay in our old way, so now one round bale in the feeder, and then we have the second set outside the fence and we fork it into the feeder, and we are in the fork over stage)
• Pop down to check on lambs by lamplight
• Back to the house, and its breakfast, get ready for work time for Dh
• Moved the laptop from the downstairs to main floor
• Put away the clean, now dry dishes
• Headed outside take cow hide head into the house, put in sink and trim, wash and do first picking on the flesh side. Leave soaking in cool water
• Head back outside to get the 40 pd bag of plain salt, haul into the house
• Head back outside to get a five gallon bucket
• Clean, scrub and bleach out the bucket, then rince well, mix up the salt/alum mixture, and transfer the hide into the water/mixture, put it away where it will sit in a cupboard on the floor for two days before I change out the water, and soak it again.
• Clean out and bleach out the sink, fill the sink with hot water and was the hound dishes and allow to start air drying.
• Get my Barley soaking 5 gallon bucket, measure out the barley and fill the bucket with cool water and set aside to soak for 24 hours till ready to be moved over to the trays to start sprouting.
• Put water on for coffee
• Start a load with the farm winter jacket(it really stinks)
• Stop and have a coffee, Sliced Apple and a orange, (add the orange peels into the quart jar filled with white vinager to make a citrus vinager cleaner.
• Work on this blog post.. (this is either going to be a very interesting one or the most boring ever LOL)
• answer blog comments
• Fill two five gallon buckets 1/3rd full with beet pulp, fill the rest of the way with water to soak.
• Research unprocessed soy bean and its effects on pigs.
• Popped outside to look at the new feed I got, its a ground mix of corn, wheat soybean and 2nd cut hay, its perfect as is for cows, sheep and goats, but while it has been feed to pigs by others, its not recommended for pigs or horses due to the unprocessed soybean in it..
• Offered some to girl and she attacked it, the sheep are in love but the horses really want it as well, in fact I had a losing battle on my hands trying to keep the horses from sneaking nibbles, so I will have to lock up the horses when feeding it and or I will need to lock up the cow/sheep to feed it, either way, that is a bit of a pain in getting that worked out.. on the postive side, that’s awesome that Girl likes it so much as its perfect to support her in this stage of her pregancy.
• Mixed it with the layer feed for the birds and they are crazy for it as well, so now to see if anyone in fact has issues with th soy in such a low percent or not..
• Back outside, hauled and filled the main hay feeder, feed the birds, collected eggs, fresh warm water for the birds, rabbits, and pasture critters.
• Walked down and got the mail.. A seed catalog and a invite to this years eco farm day 2013, which is all about water management, You need to pick three for the day, as well as the key note speaker, which is a auther Maude Barlow, I have a couple of her books including the global water crisis and the coming battle for the right to water.. for her alone I would attend, wonder if she will do a book signing? But for the other three, I am interested in Peraculture and the fight for water, Soil geology, drought, drainage, and water retention, and then either Intensive rotational grazing or Pushing the envelope with cover crops. I never do the evening gala/supper, really sixty dollars for grass-fed meat with local veggies, I can do that at home! and nothing on the sunday appeals to me either. Its possable that Dh might want to come to hear the keynote speaker.
• Hauled down warm water and two buckets of warm breakfast for pigs(well sledded really, so you can take all four, made note that the wind is blowing in the path)
• Got to barn to see that I have a new lamb, still a bit wet, but strong and active and momma still having afterbirth, and still in labour from the looks of it with lamb #2.
• Move momma and lamb into the jug, spread a layer of clean straw overtop of the bed pack that is already there..
• Back in house, started a bucket of warm molassies water, prepped the baby Selemium shot, the dip for navel and will prep and sled down hay and a bowl of the grain mix for momma, hang out for a bit, take a photo or two, and basicly get a feel for how its going, ideally watch the first baby nurse, milk the mom to check for plugs if I don’t see tail wags from the wee one. Sex the baby..
• Back to the barn, momma had passed the afterbirth, looks good, baby is another little girl, nursing and tail wagging has been seen, momma active, bright and interested in her food, still expecting a second baby, shot and dip done, water, feed and hay deployed.
• Back to house, coat in dryer, household load next, changed table cloth, went with a pretty green one today.
• Ready for coffee and something warm to eat, reheating up a dish from the other night with chicken and veggies, going to cut up the chicken breast, and the bigger veggie peice and make it into a hot soup.

I will get a photo up I promise but not today..

So here is what has been added to the house X2

• six red apples
• six oranges -Who’s peels are going into vinager to make a orange cleaner
• six grapefruits-Ditto on above
• 1 extra large Mango
• 5 banana’s
• 1 avacodo
• 1 head of calflower
• 1 big head of romane
• 2 large purple onions
• 2 pds of carrots
• 3 pds of potato’s

I am pleased for sure..to have it in the house is wonderful, it will certainly open up meal planning for me, I did however had to laugh, the veggie of the month was beets and not a beet to be found in the box 🙂 o well, i have a good amount of them in the cellar, and a fair amount in the freezer to boot.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/03-hidden-epidemic-tapeworms-in-the-brain

The closer scientists look at the epidemiology of the disease, the worse it becomes. Nash and other neurocysticercosis experts have been traveling through Latin America with CT scanners and blood tests to survey populations. In one study in Peru, researchers found 37 percent of people showed signs of having been infected at some point. Earlier this spring, Nash and colleagues published a review of the scientific literature and concluded that somewhere between 11 million and 29 million people have neurocysticercosis in Latin America alone. Tapeworms are also common in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Asia. “Neurocysticercosis is a very important disease worldwide,” Nash says.