Just another Day on the Farm

I didn’t have cloudberry which is the tradional jam, so we went with apricot, which I think would be fairly close, I have had cloudberry jam and its was the most close I could find in my own cellar. I really enjoyed it with the warmed cheese.. its was delightful..

There are some very excited grandchildren, he has a little white mini mare to keep him company and they were kind enough to give us a upkeep/feed reward on finding him.

Brandy had a complete meltdown when they took him away, I have never seen her so unhappy before,  I knew they had bonded but this was beyond what I expected, I mean I had taken him off property to work him and she was fine, but it was like she knew what was happening and so that was my tipping point..

DH is dealing with a crying mess of a Farmgal at the moment..

I know it was the right thing but it does not take the sting away at the moment..

Hug your furry and or hairy friends today and whisper secrets to them, because you never know when you are going to loss them.. all to often it is far to soon.

Well, I am 99.9 percent sure that Pippin’s aka Elvis owners have been found, and if all goes as planned he will be heading back to them tomorrow.

It appears that he is not in fact a mini horse, but in fact a very! young pony, who was quite scared after his trip home and broke out (I can agree that he is certianly able to do that) and took off.

I am quite amazed at just how far he came from where he left that day to where he was found, but there is paperwork, correct date of when missing/found, and I had a hold back question and a red herring that I had put out on the blog/facebook and the gentleman was easily able to correct me on it, when I asked about it. as well as photos on his phone from when he bought the pony to show me tomorrow.

So, SO glad that his owners have been found, just wonderful, I just wish that it had been a week or two ago before I finally named him and starting bonding.. sigh..

Give myself a shake..

Enough of that.. hope everything goes smooth tomorrow and I am so glad that he is going back to a home that wants him for many years to come.

LOL, what Can I say, I love eggy pie, typically this is made with beated eggs, milk, a bit of nutmeg, or pumpkin pie spice, a touch of suger, a tbsp of flour and beat together and its a make your own crust custard type pie.. Its wonderful for anyone that’s not feeling well or for those with not alot of teeth or a upset tummy..

So when I went looking for recipes to use the Extra Colostrum, I was very pleased and surprised to see recipes for making custard like puddings, and cheese’s..

http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/cooking-with-colostrum

The other thing that caught my eye was that it can be used to replace eggs in setting a dish, and that 8 oz’s is like two large eggs.. you know that when farm gal reads something like this, she has to see if its true or not..

So late this afternoon I whipped up a batch of eggless Eggy Pie..  I used two cups of sheep colostrum milk, 2 cups of regular sheep milk, 2 tbsp of sugar, 1 heaping tbsp of flour, a pinch of salt, and a good sprickle of pumpkin pie spice with some fresh grated in nutmeg, all whisked together and put in a slow over and baked for 40 min and O my, so pretty, can’t wait to taste it..

Well, they say that the truth in the tasting and in that regards there are few things to share, first, yes it will indeed set a dish like eggs will and do it beautifully!

Second, this is not eggy pie in taste, in fact this darn near made a cheese pie all on its own.., I am so going to make the cheese recipe using some of my other jars of the colostrum milk, I think I want to try making Finnish Sqeaky cheese. I only have two more milkings from my girl before we move over to full milk and I am hoping to make a small try of a few different things while I have the chance, it will help me figure out what I want to do with the extra from girl.

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.