Boundaries are an important thing.

Our cow had a traumatic birth this go round.  It effected her more than I realized.

I sent 2 of my daughters out to handle the baby, since this needs to be done at an early age so they trust humans, and the mother butted them.  This is a tame cow, handled all her life, and her heifer was not in any danger.  I ran down to check on things and to make sure every one was okay and she butted me in the knee so hard my knee is sprained.

A good reminder at how dangerous animals can be, even when they are trained.  Every one is okay.

That night I sat outside just observing my cows.  The quiet helps me to think and the quiet helps me to remember.    Cows fight, cows get along... Cows are cows.  It was an interesting day.

The next morning, I went to the milking parlor to milk the other cows, and she was waiting at the gate for "her turn".  I did my chores, and when it was her turn, I opened the gate.  I cannot move quickly on account of my sprained knee... and if I did not know her so well, I would not have trusted her.  But she is a good cow.  Something was not right before and she was communicating like a cow... with her head and 400+ lbs.

I opened the gate and she went in and jumped on the stanchion.  Nibbled at her pellets.... baby moooooed.  I stayed out of the way.  Mama stayed.  I did not fasten her to the stanchion.  I brushed her and washed her like the routine goes.  Baby mooooooed again.   I stepped out of the way...mama went back to baby.  So that was the end of that day.  No one got hurt.. no one was mad.  Cows don't get mad at each other.  They move on...but they only move on if the boundaries are respected.  She was fearful for her baby.

The next day, she was waiting again... just like always.... she was not nervous or upset... but did keep looking back to her baby.  When it was her turn, we did it again.  This time I hobbled up on my hurt leg and snapped her in.  went through the whole routine... and even milked out a quart of milk, not to make her dry.  Baby never mooooed, but mama stayed calm.  I unclipped her... and fed her in her pen.  Mama cow introduced her to the cows in the next pen.. then let me touch the baby.  What a difference a day makes.

Thanking God for Happy Endings

One of our Dexter cows was due last week.  I thought I had observed her in labor and had a child watching her.  She calmed down after several hours and did not deliver.  False alarm.

Fast forward a few sleepless nights and she is still pregnant... I decided that if there were no more signs I would call the vet on Monday.  After all, the cow was eating..pooping and peeing properly.... she is probably fine.  She is my favorite cow, so I am probably over reacting...right?

Monday comes and she eats her breakfast, like a cow.   Then the tail lifting starts.  I call at 8 to get an appointment as soon as the Dr can come.  10-2 is my time frame.  I watch her every 20 mins and the tail lifting becomes tail wringing ....10am....11am.... ugh.. lay down...pace around..... 12:00.  I decide that if he doesn't come 2:00 is the time I intervene.  I start tearing my house apart (nesting?)

Vet arrives at 1:00.  Cow is NOT happy about a stranger in her pen so we move her to the palpation shoot... The vet thinks it does not look good for the calf.. I am in agreement (Save my COW!!)

 Figuring out the problem.... feet are there...nose is there... probably not alive though....

 Applying the chains.... poor cow is MOOing and MOOing.... I am so sorry girl.

Vet has my youngest daughter help.

You can tell she is homeschooled and a country girl, no problem.. I will help and in my PJ's still at 1:30 (inst every one?)

 First signs of life.. feet are twitching a bit.... But will she be strong enough?

 DEFINITELY alive.... but we are still worried that she is not going to make it....

Here is the happy ending picture... she is alive and well.... nursing and walking within a half hour..

Now we need to name her :)

Ranch Spring Cleaning

In the spring we do a deep cleaning for all the animals' pens and beds.

Drainage ditches are repaired and redirected as the water problems are fresh in our minds and the ground is still soft.

 Inside our chicken and Turkey houses we bed them with rice hulls.  Rice hulls are inexpensive, sustainable, and do not cause mushrooms like the wood chips do during decomposition.

In the winter we do let the droppings under the roosts get deep.  It may sound dirty, but the deep rice hulls and the droppings actually keep the room warm for them.  It is also under the roost...where they don't walk around.

Even the goats like to help with spring cleaning.  

Planting Potatoes.. the way we do it.....

 When I was young we grew potatoes in garbage cans.   Potatoes are easy to grow, easy to come up with the "seeds" and the return on your time and investments is astounding.  With just a few garbage cans you can easily double the food you get from your garden with a product that is easily stored in the typical home.

I usually start with 5 or 6 inches of soil in the bottom of the can, and there I plant my potatoes.

 The potatoes will grow and as they grow you need to slowly over time add soil to the top of the green.  Yes, this means cover the leaves.  It will continue to grow....

 And you need to continue to add soil.....





How to Grow Potatoes 

Until it reaches the top..... then you just let it grow.

We try to pick the flowers off the plant as they come, but it does not always happen... you can begin harvest any time after they start to flower.. or leave them in the ground for a while.

The beauty of growing in the cans is that you can dump the whole can out... harvest the potatoes with a screen and use the dirt in rotation of another bed.  This plan keeps surprise potatoes from ending up in a bed, and rotation easier.

Sowing Seeds

I need a lot of time alone.  Most people don't understand that, but most people are extroverts.  I am an introvert.  By that I do not mean that I am a quiet wall flower.. I am not.  By introvert I do not mean that I do not get along with others, I do.  By introvert, I simply mean that I need time alone to re-charge, to process thoughts and to remember who I am.  

Today in my garden I was contemplating all the changes that happen so fast in life.  And I was contemplating the little patch that I call the "kitchen garden" as it is right off my kitchen.  My kitchen garden is small and is mostly comprised of herbs, spices and salad fixings.  It has never grown very well since the soil is not very good.  My husband helped me tear it all out and roto-till and improve the soil with amendments from our farm.  Things are growing much better there.

The thoughts I was having are this:  I planted and and fussed and cared over this garden for several years before my husband had the time to help me.  No matter what I planted nothing really worked.  This ends up being so much like a relationship.  You can plant the seeds and tend the land.. but if you are planting in the wrong place you will just end up tired and empty handed.  

I would not go so far as to say I am empty handed right now, but a recent turn-of-events coupled with hurts and losses of the past make the loss I am dealing with very painful.  There is a never ending misunderstanding between introverts and extroverts and I grow weary of it.  

The Ginger Beer Fiasco of 2013

Try it they said...it will be FUN they said....

It all started normally... I fermented the ginger....several days..... then I made the rest of the ingredients and bottled them up...... all was wonderful.... until it happened.

there we are trying to have a nice evening and from the kitchen comes KAH-BLAM and POOOOF and the sound of shattering glass then AGAIN and AGAIN!!  well my ginger beer exploded.... glass was EVERY WHERE not to mention the drink.....

Next time, I will try Honey Mead.

Bread Baking Day

I love time saving methods.  Any thing that saves time, saves money and is healthier is a triple whammy.

I was introduced to a book called Artisan Bread in 5 mins a day.  I LOVE it.  I made three types of bread this time:

grain grinder is in another room so we don't have to hear it

 whole wheat... and pumpernickel (to go with our sauerkraut coming soon)








And white bread, for company coming....

Insemination Equipment

LIKE CHRISTMAS!!

The tank was found on Craigs List.  A tank like this is generally VERY expensive.  I got mine serendipitously from a vet in the area that was no longer wishing to provide his clients with AI.

We think we will call him "Big Papa"

 and the Kit itself came from Bovine Elite.  I chose the KimbiColor AI gun since I am still new at this, and this gun is supposed to be the best gun.  I thought I would just start with that..with the added benefit that it handles .25 and .50 straws.  I will not have to keep both sizes and sheaths etc.. on hand.

Now we wait for straws...........

I Love Colloidal Silver

I LOVE Colloidal Silver.  I will go so far to say that if it were not for colloidal silver I would not be the woman I am today.  I use it for so many things, and it has saved more than one of my animals that others said would not make it.

This little piggie was too sick to go to the market.  You can see that her eye was swollen shut.  Mamma had rejected her and we missed her.  In this photo she is nearly a week and her eye looks lost.  And indeed we believed it was.  We began with getting FOOD into her (no shortage of raw cow's milk) mixed with a mega dose of Colloidal Silver.

the next DAY it was looking better, there was a little opening forming by the corner of her eye and yucky goo coming out.  We used a needle-less syringe and filled the abscess with CS.   Every time she ate, she got CS.  By this second day, her apatite was up and she was moving around more.  She was actually screaming when we took this picture....like a normal pig. 

This day we are seeing MUCH improvement as the abscess was forced open with the syringe and the CS and all the puss drained out.  We were still fairly sure she had lost the eye.  We could not get it open and there was no evidence of a sparkly eyeball.  

 Day Four of the ongoing CS treatment and the dead flesh is falling off, you can see the beginnings of a sparkly little eye in there....see it? (YEA!!)

 Day five.... dead skin falling off more and a bit more drainage.  She can blink the eye to sunlight, so we know she is not blind.

 Day six.. wound healing nicely.  NO more infection.  AND she eats like a ....PIG!!

 Here you can, on Day seven see her looking into the camera with that eye we thought was dead!!  Hair is already starting to grow back too.  I have no doubt there will be some scarring, but a life saved is worth it!!
Colloidal Silver is my go-to thing for so many problems on the ranch.  Most folks would have culled and not bothered with her.  A penny saved is a penny earned.

Today in my garden

Today I spent most of my day in the garden.  

I am happy....  I wish I had the time to run up to the house, get the nice camera then shoot the pictures, but by the time I got to the house the laundry would need changing.....so I use my iphone...

SATAN's ANIMAL!!

We generally live peacefully with the predators around us.  We have a resident Mountain Lioness that lives down the street, a single male bobcat that lives in the thicket on the adjoining parcel, and numerous hawks that fly over head.  None of them bother us.  We keep our animals in such a way that we have never lost one to those predators.

The Raccoon in the area  are another story entirely.  Somehow they figure out locks, slice through fencing, tear off walls....and many other horrible things to get at our animals.  I hate them.

I know, you are probably thinking "oh, how cute!!"  Any thing that tears the head off of another animal just to leave it to die is NOT cute in my book.  These two in particular have been horrible.  AND they refuse to be trapped.

Our ranch dog treed them (she was tired of their shenanigans as well!!).... I was trying to figure out how I could get both of them, since if I shot one... the other would run.... when my husband came along side me with both of our shotguns.  I used my .410 and he used his 12g.   One....two.....THREE... down they came tumbling...NEVER to kill a chicken again.

Artificial Insemination Class Completed

So, I finished the three day course for certification in AI.

Here is the little cow I qualified on.  This is not for the weak of heart... just for the folks that want to improve the genetics in their cows.

In the world of the Irish Dexter we have a saying "for a Dexter".   In other words folks will say..."Hey, that is a nice udder on that cow, for a Dexter"  "Look, that little steer will produce a nice carcass  for a Dexter" , do you get what I mean?

I would like to stop doing that.  I own a really nice, well bred bull.  But if he were any other breed, he would be a cull.  Not that there is anything too horrible about him... but he is not perfect.  There are several bulls around the world I would like a chance to breed to that are much closer to perfect.  With a breed like the Dexter, we need to breed the best and eat the rest.  It is the mantra of the Livestock Conservancy, and I think more of us that are bringing the old breeds back, need to take it seriously.

This is my bull:

He is really nice.....(did you say it?) for a Dexter!!  I have him for sale... but would not be sad if he did not sell, I love him...he is a sweet boy.  

Learning to Love April Showers

All my life I have worked outdoors.  Chores are no fun in the cold and wet.  When we were in the petting zoo business it was even worse!!  Rain made for wet animals.... people still wanted us to come.  UGH!!  wet, cold, rain... I learned to hate it.

Life has calmed down a bit now.  This morning the rain is coming down.  A soft spring rain that helps grass grow.  Even though my shoes and clothes are wet from the 2 hours it takes to feed, milk,muck.  The house is warm and I will be able to change clothes (unlike when we would go from party to party in the rain).

Pictures of the rain....

A Potted Watched (or not, as it were)

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have burned a pot, all from multi-tasking gone awry.
Fixing a burned pot.

Grmblegrmgelgdasdlgrmmmblelel

"smoked soup" seriously... I doubt I will be able to get the kids to see anything good about this soup.... pig food.... (so glad I have the pigs, I meant to do this....)

So here is my secret for cleaning burned pots...

a scoop of Tide.... yes Tide.....

let it simmer.....

and simmer... make sure it doesn't run out of water.. and further burn the pan...

after a while...maybe 30 mins of simmering.... see if it has softened.... and when it is soft enough it should scrub off with no hard scrubbing.

and within a few minutes you should have your pot back!!

The bread in 5 minuets a day has revolutionized my life.  I know, technically speaking, sour dough is more sustainable and healthier, but sometimes I need something that is easy... there will be a season that I will have the time to make sourdough, and with the super hydrated dough stored the way it is in this method.. it does ferment a bit.  I love getting up in the morning and getting a few loaves going.  By the time I am up from chores, I can toss it in the oven.... who wouldn't like to wake up to the smell of their mother baking bread?!

Artificial Insemination is NOT for the weak.....

I know this because today, I started a three day seminar at U.C.Davis on just this.  I borrowed my husbands car to make the daily drive... I rarely get time alone in the car and since his little car feels like a RACE car, I turned the radio up really LOUD.  The first song when I hit the freeway was "Ride into the Danger Zone" the theme song from Top Gun.. I laughed out loud and deemed it my "theme song of the day"!!

I was so encouraged when I arrived at the facilities to see that there were several women, and most of them had less livestock experience than I did.

After a quite lengthy lecture and discussion regarding the reproductive organs of the bovine we were allowed to handle, dissect and try to insert an insemination gun into cadaver bovines.  Although this seemed horrid.. it was really reassuring that it could be done!!

Oddly, after handling all that "meat" we then had lunch.  I was already exhausted from all the new information swirling in my head.. and the lunch was yummy... but after handling all that.. and anticipation of the next thing... I could not eat much.

That is when we got to "The Danger Zone"  a WHOLE line of Holstein cows just waiting for a bunch of students to palpate.  What I found interesting was (besides how BIG these cows are compared to mine) is how quickly fatigued the  muscles in my arm became.

Poor girls.... but I am projecting myself on them...they all munched on hay while we were feeling their reproductive organs.  Since most of them were coming into heat, they did not mind.

I am looking forward to a long good sleep and more class tomorrow.

Fodder Beets

We are trying to grow most of our own food and that of our livestock.. and although I am the happy breeder of Irish Dexter Cattle. I do own a Jersey.  Belle is pictured here eating beets that we grew to lower our feed costs.  This year I am going to try planting more.  My Aunt suggested Mangels... so I am going to till up an extra spot on the property for just that.  Who needs shredded beet pulp...besides that is a GMO.