Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Root Cellar
My Dad
In the past couple of years my Dad lost his job, his income, and insurance, had surgery on his neck twice, and is now getting disability through the state.
Anyway my point of this post was the above picture. Since Dad is now getting money again he has been feeling better about things. He has been cleaning the house and even putting the heat on. Last year he had the house at 50 degrees and lived in his bedroom with a space heater. When I was there last week I noticed on the window ledge where his bronzed baby shoes sat- the kid's baby shoes in between them. How cute is that. The kid adores him and he adores her. He is a great Grandpa!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
High Maintenence?
Chuck says I am high maintenance, and not in the treat me like a princess way. For crying out loud I live in a 384 square foot house and my bathroom is an outhouse- so no princess here! But while coming home from work (I will get to that later) I hit a deer, and now I have whiplash and have to go to physical therapy everyday this week. I have to say things started going down hill for me when I got pregnant. I mean my brain sort of went mushy, and not that I think I am a great driver but I am pretty good, hitting the city bus- not so good. Anyway then there was the whole spilling boiling water on my arm, besides other things I shall not get into. I think I need a time out from accidents for a while. Other than that things are staying busy. And oh yes the job. Well winters are slower for us so I decided to try and get a part time job to bring in a little extra money. Nothing fancy but something to keep me even busier. When I was in college I worked for a big box store doing loss prevention (fancy term for catching shoplifters), then I moved on to a grocery store and then a big box hunting and fishing store, and now I am security again for an establishment not to far from where we live. It is not bad I work two to three times a week when Chuck can be home with the kid.
Next week the ram goes in with the ewes, so we should be expecting lambs in May, a full month before this past year. The average butchered size this year was around 40 pounds- not bad, next year maybe closer to 50 pounds, which for 100% grass fed is right where we want to be.
As for the butcher that we went with this year, we were fairly pleased. They really worked with us when it came to getting the animals in for processing. However I was told that we would be getting nitrate free bacon, ham etc. but that turned out to not be true so we have found another processor that we are going to try next year and they are nitrate free. Thing is that I had to schedule the processing dates already and they are booked already into next October! We are thinking that we will raise 12 pigs again next year we have orders already in for half of them, even the lamb spots are filling up fast! We have added 2 ewes so we have the potential to have 20 lambs if everyone twins, but I doubt that will happen so maybe around 15.
It is a weird feeling to be just finishing up one farm year and already feel overwhelmed for the next one. I have already been receiving seed catalogs, and I am not even done with preparing my garden for next year!!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Knitting and soap
I learned to knit from an boyfriend's mother when I was in college. It was so fun to turn a ball of yarn into something, like a washcloth. I never really branched out only learning to make a plain scarf and those washcloths. Then when a male friend who just learned to knit made a hat I figured I should be able to do that. I learned to knit a hat in a round, make a hat on two needles stitching the ends together, but that was where it ended. Until earlier this year when I joined a local knitting group. I am now trying all sorts of things- having a kid that I want to make things for helps. Eventually I would love to spin my own yarn- having sheep is a start!

And since I was feeling so brave I decided to make soap. I used suet from our cow, rendered it (now called tallow) and made soap. It was not to hard and to my surprise it worked- it even lathers!!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
A beautiful day to have a baby!
Yesterday was quite an exciting day at the farm to say the least. Chuck came in from morning milking saying that he thought Lu Lu was in labor. Sure enough I went out about a half hour after that and her bag of waters was out. Chuck had to run into town and when he came back she had pushed the feet out- only problem was they are supposed to come out hooves pointing down and these were pointing up.
Labels:
calf,
Farm animal pictures,
Farm cats,
Farm life,
LuLu
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Okay two more picture
So we have a whole cow in the freezer- the kid is loving all the meat she is definitely a meat a potatoes kinda kid. Anyway we had gotten done with dinner and I was making M&M cookies and as you can see there was some steak left on the table - little miss climbed up and instead of eating the cookies she chose the steak- now what does that say about grass fed beef!

A root cellar and water!
We sometimes grapple with the idea of what we are doing. Really what the heck are we doing? Farming? I have been thinking lately of trying to come up with a better word that describes what we do. A week or so ago we watched Food Inc., if you have not seen it or heard of it check it out~ it is a must see no excuses if you eat then you need to see it, I am not sure I want to be lumped into a system that I do not believe in. Farming has gone from small family owed businesses to huge corporations. It is just sickening. And then here we are living in a 384 square foot home with only a battery to power our lights, propane to power the refrigerator and the stove, wood to heat and no running water. What are we doing? We still have no idea but as the days pass us we learn so much. Is this how we are going to live forever? Who knows but with two freezers full one of meat the other of veggies and fruit we are sure aren't complaining. There are plenty of people living in a big house full to the gills and they are buying cheap food.
The root cellar is almost done. We need to put all the soil back in around it and then move the coop on top (once we do that I will explain more about the coop). It has taken much time from start to finish- and we are so thankful to our friends (Brad, Jamie, Rowland, Nia and Corey) that have helped! Looking at these pictures they all seem to dress alike- I m not sure what is with the black t-shirts. Anyway once done hopefully it will be full of potatoes, squash, apples, onions and well anything else we can think of.
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