Just another Day on the Farm

Monday Morning High’s and Low’s

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Ah Monday, you have arrived and Dh is back at work, his group had little office shuffle over the weekend, so he is unpacking in his new office, and still a bit pouty that he lost his window but at least his office is private.

Well, I have to say that my weekend was not what I expected, first Miss Piggy continues to nest, continues to develop in the teat area and I can see baby movement when she is laying down resting but no little ones to report yet and as long as she is cool about it, I will be as well.. but the extra trips up and down to the barn are starting to add up, still the walking is good for you..

The garden had lots of wonderful things ready this weekend, there was green beans, greens, lots of peppers, a few tomato’s, melon’s, and I am thrilled to see the corn is starting to make its cobs, we didn’t get near the heat they said we could, in fact saturday was fairly pleasent over all considering, and when it was very hot, we stopped and used the pool..

Then on sunday it was raining by the time we got up and it rained off and on all day long, this was wonderful for the gardens, pastures and for filling up our many rain barrels, we even transferred water into other storage and let the barrels fill again.

However I ended up lightheaded and dizzy on sunday, ended up getting my blood pressure checked, which I do weekly, and I am always in the optimal range, well not this weekend I wasn’t, I had very! low blood pressure, and boy did it show in how I felt and how dizzy I got off and on thoughout the day.

After going down the list of things that can cause low blood pressure, it was prettty clear that I was reacting to a major hormone surge, so the fix is simple, rest when dizzy, add a bit more salt to the menu, drink lots of water, have a good diet, and wait for it 🙂 Breath.. as in yoga, deep breathing etc and keep a record and check back in later this week for follow up.

Let me tell you, when you get dizzy and almost trip your way down stairs, suddenly your man gets all weird, he won’t let you go up and down the stairs on your own, he won’t let you do most of your plans for the day either.. thankfully, he didn’t take away my knife, so I was still able to help with meals/prep work etc. Anita, I will get to the butcher posts later this week, sorry that it will be a bit later then I planned.

So today, I am under take it easy orders from, well everyone really.. so its going to be a putter day.. I wonder if a short kettlebell routine is still considered easy?? Otherwise, I thought I might do some more veggie prep work for drying, clean the fridge, and see if I can get my regular daily chores all done in smaller bursts of work.

I do need to get out and take off my first batch of ready elderberries, they are dark black and full of juice, I will let them dry a bit yet today in the sun, but I need to get them off before they break the branches and therefor effect my over all yield as only about 30 to 40% are ready and I want the whole crop over the next two or so weeks..

Hope you have a great monday!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 7 Comments

Happy Long Weekend to most folks!

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Its saturday for what is a long weekend for most folks! Hope you are going to have a wonderful weekend filled with friends or family, or if you are like us, a great stay in, working weekend with a few little fun trips here and there!..

They say that the heat is going to be bad this weekend, thank goodness for the water delivery on thursay of 3200 hundred gallons, it filled the wells and the pool, so we can have a dip or two to cool off as required, the truth is we are only running the pumps and cleaners but not going to have the pool for very long as we set it up as a extra water holder so we got everything we paid for in our truck load and so its being used for garden.

Even already having only been able to water daily for the past couple days has done wonders for the plants, and given the coming heat they say we are going to get, I think without it, we would have been in some trouble..

Miss Piggy update.. still big, still growing the size of her breasts and still fussying but no little ones yet, but no hard labour either, still eating and drinking, so what its a wait game, as I don’t know when she got breed, I don’t know when she is due, so that does not help me.. I will keep you posted and yes, lots of photos..

Planning on picking some black chokeberry’s this weekend, and my big time out is to go to the feed store, the farmers market and then we are going to picnic at the river, otherwise we are just working on and around the farm, the view out of my window is so sweet, the house cow is grazing, the yard sheep are out, the birds of all kinds free ranging, the garden growing and Dh puttering around, my own little bit of heaven..

Now to stop writing about it and get out and live it.. Enjoy your weekend!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

O the fun of working with large animals..

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Hmmm, when the close to 400 pd expecting and I am pretty sure in labour pig breaks out, and decides that she is going to dig her own ditch to be in, no amount of bribes, cookies, water or feed means the slightess thing to her.. so what heck can I do.. I built a panel pen around her chosen spot, hauled her fresh water,picked up the rocks that she had flung out of the dug bed and wait for J to come home and hope to heck that with two of us, we can have better luck then I did..

At least watching her was interesting, the dug bed had to be two full bodies long, a body and half wide, and half a body deep, with flattened and packed slooped sides.

Having said that, I really want her to birth in the just cleaned, fluffy bedding in her pen..

Pigs can be quite dangerous, and new mothers can be awesome or they can turn on a dime and become the most stubborn, protective homorone filled bear of a momma, and the idea of trying to move the piglets crying is just bad news all the way around, I like birthing to be calm and relaxed as it can be..

Update two: I would love to tell you that Dh coming home made the differance but I would be telling a tall tale, I would like to tell you that I figure it out, but again.. not so.. Miss Piggy just stood up, walked to the gate that I had not closed, gave a push, and went around the barn, into the barn, down to her stall and walked in and had a drink, at which time I close the gate which I had already fixed and which is currently being re-enforced by DH right now..

Two hours of work in part of the hottest part of the day, and in the end, she just say.. naa, I will head back to my pen, thanks for the visit.. Update to follow..

Posted in Critters | 9 Comments

Thusday- Health Day update..

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, this week I got in two new cookbooks to give me a helping hand on figuring out interesting and tasty meals, I got Paleo comfort foods by Julie and Charles Mayfield and Primal Blueprint quick and easy meals, The quick and easy one is ok, give it 3 out of 5.. but I really like Paleo Comfort foods, part of it is that its just a eye popping almost a coffee table book feel to it with a full page of pictures to go with each recipe. I can’t say that I read them and think, I will make this or that recipe, its more like.. hmmm, that’s interesting, now how I can I make that with what I have on the farm and go from there.. Still I am happy to have gotten them as I was finding even in my veggie area’s of many of my cookbook’s they use wheat and or carbs in alot of the dishes.

While I should wait another five days to say its been a month, I am going to jump it this month and move it to the first thursday, so I am down just over 20 pds, but the other side effects are more important to me, the “heat/sweat rash” that I have had to battle for a number of years that the doctors told me was due to being heavy and that those folds of skin touch is gone, and my “morning” allergy of sneezing, running nose and itch eyes has been reduced to nothing..

Having said that, I want to talk about the cost of this change, its not cheap at all, I am lucky to a point that I have a good amount of meat on the hoof so to speak that is ready right now, in fact I easily have my years supply of chicken, duck and turkey ready to be butchered out at the moment, with lamb/beef in the fall, and will have pork ready in winter/spring.

The sooner I butcher out the birds, the more cost effective that will be in the long term, as the price of feed is sky high, Strangely the rabbit feed is not going up at this point and so I am switching to get more of it and will be breeding more litters of them for fresh meat during winter. I will keep back my core laying hens, and my core breeding group of ducks for both eggs and so I don’t have to rebuild breeding programs.

The garden is starting to produce reasonable amount of daily fresh use items and some good amount for storage (potato’s) etc, however even with those covored and the milk products in storage from the farm/pantry, I am still putting out around 40 to 50 dollars more per week over my normal outpute.. now its worth noting that I didn’t have to use my allergy pills this morning so that saved me $50, which can be going towards the food costs, same as saving on the monthly cost of the treatment for the rash. Now some of this is going towards building minor stores of things I don’t normally have, but not nearly enough of it, nuts, and different flours just cost alot more money period.

Now I touched on it a while back about the fact that we are still wanting and working towards having a thrid child, as our daughter an son both passed as wee ones being born to soon, so this is really a mix between the fertilty diet and the wheat belly diet, which blends perfectly to a point as they both want wheat gone, low carbs with moderate excerise.

Where I am finding the twitchy part is

A)the fertility diet wants a very well balanced diet at around 2100 calories a day for the best shot, while everyone else seems to think that 1400 hundred is about right for working towards losing the weight at a max, and then there is the wheat belly that does not want me counting calories at all.. now I have been tested at 2100 hundred calories, I will not lose weight, unless I put in lots of workouts to increase my own daily calorie output.. so it has to be under that to loose weight. So open to thoughts, aim for 1600 to 1800??

b) tied right into this is the fact that the fertility diet wants me to lose 7 and half percent of my starting at the month weight, which is the goal they want me to have in front of me, which is interesting, it certianly makes it alot easier to have that much smaller number written out as the goal, but, having said that, I can’t quite figure out how to apply that, let me explain..

a) If its 7 percent of the starting weight since the first of the year- Goal done!
b) if its 7 percent of the starting weight since July when I got home, -Well on my way, only need another 5 pds to make it happen

Then what, do you reset it?? to that starting weight, measure out the 7% and go again.. would you hold your weight as much as possable for a month at that goal or just keep trying to go forward while its still being easy to do so?

Now remember that 7% is not attached to your end or ideal weight, its attached to your current weight and you increasing your own fertility with that target mark for weight loss.

So how was your week overall?

So these are my goals for the coming week..
Contine to stay on my choosen eating path -Yes, No wheat eaten, and limited the rest,only had 2 opps but was still under the calorie load.
Workout min 3x a week -Yes, one 4 am walk with the fussy old hound so Dh could sleep, two kettlebell workouts, lots of small weights.
Get to that blasted Gym, I am paying for at least once a week-either swimming, aqau-fit or the weight training class. -NO.. sigh..
Continue any and all requirements for the fertility diet/testing etc- Yes..

This coming week, same goals as last..

Posted in Personal Care | Tagged Fertility diet, Goals, Weight Loss, Wheat belly | 8 Comments

Rabbit and Wild Rice Sauage Recipe..

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I had some fresh rabbit that I want to use up and in a much different way then I had done other kinds, I am limiting the amount of rice we are eating these days but as this is wild rice, its not really the same thing.

So the orginal recipe for this was out of my Home Sauage making by susan perry but I messed with it a bit.. Now I didn’t case these, I just did a roll and baked them in tinfoil, cook it, let it cool and put it in the fridge overnight, sliced it into rounds and in a hot pan with some coconut oil, just lightly browned each side while heating though!

This means that everyone can make these, serve them right away hot, or you can cool them, and serve them as breakfast sauage and or for a wonderful supper patty with a side salad..

Rabbit and Wild Rice Sauage

1 1/2 pds of rabbit meat
1/4 pd of duck fat but what ever fat you want to use, the orginal said chicken..
1 cup of apple cider
1 cup of cooked wild rice
1/2 cup of dried cranberries
1 teaspoon of course salt- I used pink salt
1/2 tsp of fresh ground pepper
1/4 tsp of all-spice
1/4 tsp of cinnamon
1 tbsp of lime juice.

Prepare your meat to be ground like normal, or buy pre-gorund meat like turkey, chicken, or rabbit etc.. Cook your apple cider down till its only about 3 tbsp or so, then let cool.. combine your meat, fat, reduced (cooled) cider rice, finely diced cranberries, salt, pepper, cinnamon and lime juice. Mix well, then form a thick rolled log in tinfoil and twist off the ends, place in a baking dish and bake at 350 degree oven,

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged Food Production and Recipes, Rabbit, sausage, Wild Rice | 3 Comments

Grilled Salmon and Leek tortilla Recipe..

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

The orginal version that inspired this recipe is out of “the ontario cookbook” and it was for a smoke trout and chive tortilla.. but I had leftover grilled salmon, cold baby potato’s and fresh leek to use up which lead to this lovely dish below..

1 large potato or 4 small baby potato-Leftovers are fine, or you can fresh cook these and use them hot
1 tsp of butter
6 eggs- beaten or four duck eggs-which is what I used..
1/4th cup of washed finely diced leek, equal mix of green or white
4 oz portion of cooked salmon
A touch of salt.
Extra- I personally also used some finely washed and diced horseradish greens to add a little heat, could also use black pepper to get the same effect, but it would not be near as healthy to do so.

Heat your butter in a cast iron pan, mix your eggs with potato, leek/greens and salmon, pour into your med-high pan and leave for about a min, when the base is almost set, sprinkle with the rest of the remaining leek and slide under a broiler to finish, At this point, you could do a very light grating of cheese on top if you wanted to do so..

Don’t brown this up to much, you just want to finish cooking it, serves two main meal portions for supper with green salad on side or serves 4 for breakfast portions with fruit on side..

I liked it cold but Dh never likes cold potato’s in these kinds of dishes, he only likes them warm or hot.. try it both ways and see what you think..

Posted in Food Production and Recipes, Life moves on daily | Tagged Food Production and Recipes, Frugal, Garden, Greens, Health, leeks, salmon | 2 Comments

I want to make a homemade version of this bench for outside..

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Clearly the seat and backing is easy enough to do, I can get them at the local hardware store, the issue is finding big enough logs, and getting them cut to do the bench.. While I know that it would not look as pretty, I wonder if I could make cement logs built in place, I know how to use the color powders to make a nice brown cement stump, and then do the wooden over it.. Still mulling it over.. Think I might need to stop in at the local sawmill..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

Pork Summer Garden Stirfry Recipe..

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Supper tonight was super fast and easy but o my goodness it was eye candy and the flavours just burst in your mouth..

This was made as a serving for two but I put a full 3rd portion in the fridge.

1 full pork loin chop, or in my case, the bits left over from makings a loin into butterflies cuts.
half of small onion- About a 1/8th of a leftover purple onion, the sweet went perfect
1/4 cup of white and green leek parts- Green onion would work as well- its just what I had at the time.
1 large fresh tomato, diced with core out.
1 med size zucchini, ends off and diced
1 cob of fresh sweet corn, shucked, and cut off the cob for nibbles..

I did a swirl of olive oil to start the med-high (6) pan off and cooked the onion, leek and pork till cooked and pork started to brown, added the rest in and let the zucchini and the tomato cook just a touch to bring out enough juice to get all the brown bits up.. cooked maybe 3 to 4 min, everything still fresh, crisp, with soften melting bits of tomato goodness.

Salt and pepper to taste.. no other seasonings, I wanted the just let the fresh flavour come out in this dish. Lovely!..

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | 1 Comment

Doing the snoopy dance! – Girl didn’t cycle this month!

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

I’m so excited, I’m so excited!! LOL

Well, Girl was cycling perfectly, then she got breed, and this month, nothing.. I have been checking her daily and nothing, Marty agree’s with me.. no heat this month.. which means that the odds are very good that she took!

I will need to do one more month to be sure and then I will have to decide if I will break down and have the vet come out and do a ultrsound to confirm the month afterwards but I think I will do my best to buck up and just trust in nature 🙂

Now I need to plan and prepare for a winter pregancy for her, and that means making sure she gets the very best that I can give in terms of hay, feed and fresh extra’s, I would normally be looking at putting away into the cellar a number of extra big bags of fall apples but that is so not going to happen this year, root veggies are not doing that well this year.. and even my squash, while producing, are not anywhere near where they should be.. sigh.. I might have to break down and buy green cover seed and just do sprout trays.

I hope that she has a lovely baby boy, and I am stilll thinking about talking to farmer R and buying a second calf from him for her to raise up as well, she should? produce right around 6 or more gallons of milk a day, so 2 gallons for her calf, 2 gallons for the house per day, and that leaves me with 2 gallons of fresh whole milk, or 2 gallons of skimmed milk to be used for chickens, pigs or ??

I don’t know if I want to pick up that second calf or just reduce the feed costs on the chicken flock by feeding fresh milk to them? Time will give me the answer..

Posted in Critters | Tagged Calf, cow, Family Milk Cow, Raising Beef Calf | 17 Comments

Food, Health, this and that.. Wheat Belly etc.

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, Thursday’s where my health update days and I really would like to get back to making a weekly update and goal list, I am doing a journel but I found knowing I would need to write it out, that it helped make sure I got that extra or final workout..

In regards to local food, I am still doing well at this time, the garden is producing fresh goodies to bring in the house, the freezers are getting down there, in fact, I really should make it a project to go though them, move them into one and defrost and clean the big meat one, then shift everything over and do the same with the smaller veggies/fruit one before the big push for the fall butcher begins. The cellar is holding, with around 500 jars of things in it, give or take.

A few extra things have been brought in for the wheat belly eating, and some I have been able to source locally and others, not so much but I have made a point in going organic in some, and or plain, no oils or salt etc in others, I will admit to being worried about how to eat within my own planned budget in winter, I know that I can use the four season grow box’s to keep me in greens and a few other fresh things until Dec, and I can sprout and have pots of greens growing in the house ( I am planning on bringing in a couple good pots of horseradish roots this year) but any way I cut it, I am going to have a good three month gap in being able to get the fresh stuff in the kitchen and in winter, Itend to be a meat/potato’s, stew, soup, with bread, muffins, pancakes etc kinda gal..

Which brings me to my third week on my own modified version of the “Wheat Belly”, its a cross between a feritily diet and wheat belly diet, so while there is no wheat, there are a few other things I know others avoid, If I react to them, I do remove them but if no reaction, then I stay with limited amounts of them, example, I know that they say, no potatos, but I am growing 500 plus pds of them, and I will be using them, having said that, I make sure they are eaten within a meal, with protein and in very limited amounts, so far, no blood sugar rush that I can tell and the important one for me, no eating trigger..

While the weight loss has been nice, the biggest thing for me is that I have had the feeling of the need to eat taken away, I love it, I still find it amazing to be honest, for many, many! years, It has always been a battle between will power vs an insane at time craving for just one more, O I learned tricks to break the routine, go for a walk, ten min workout, sleep, play wii, anything that had a chance of getting me back on track was used..

I thought that it was just me setting my mind that I was going to do this but that’s not it, I can see the triggers, if I eat correctly, I truly have no cravings to go snack between meals, I have no issues walking away from extra on my plate, I have no issues tasting something with a bite or two and then saying.. No, I don’t feel like that and walking away.. you have no idea how odd yet impowering that feels to me.

Moving on, I got a few new on sale workout video’s to give me short 15 to 30 min workouts, one is a dance one, one is a kettlebell one, one is a stretching etc. but to be honest, my main workout is shoveling manure in the barn, gardening and keeping up with the critters/farm. Having said that I am going to start going to the weight training once a week.

Speaking of health- My mom was just at the stage of being able to drive for the first time this week and she went downtown, walked a store and back home agian, which was lots for a first trip out but it went well!! Way to go mom.. she seems to be healing well and the knee is coming along really well, I am so proud of her!

So these are my goals for the coming week..

Contine to stay on my choosen eating path
Workout min 3x a week
Get to that blasted Gym, I am paying for at least once a week-either swimming, aqau-fit or the weight training class.
Continue any and all requirements for the fertility diet/testing etc

We will see how I do.. So how are you all doing in your personal goals in regards to food choices? Your personal health goals? Did you have a good week? Did you have a struggle and if so, want to share it? Had a moment of total bliss?