More memories from 2004...
On Easter Sunday, in April 2004, our dogs dug up a cottontail bunny nest. Dh brought the little critters with their eyes shut tight in a wheelbarrow and knocked on my bedroom window. He didn't know what they were. We estimated them to be six days old since their eyes were sealed shut.
I did some research and found that it's not true that the momma will abandon them if you touch them, but you have to put them back and leave them alone. The momma only visits them in the morning and in the evening, so the experts said. We put them back in their nest and secured it so the dogs couldn't get into it. We checked the next morning to find that two little bunny tummies were full, and the other's tummy was very empty. By the next morning, only one bunny had a full tummy, so we ended up bringing them in the house. Here they are at 9 days old.
I looked and looked for a "bunny rehabber" because the experts said you can't raise a baby bunny on your own, you have to have someone who knows what they are doing. But the bunny rehabber's phone number had been disconnected. Since I'd raised abandoned kittens in the past, I had an idea what had to be done. With the information I'd found on the 'net as to how much to feed and how often, I started to take care of them. We had to help them potty by gently wiping their bottoms with a warm, wet washcloth.
Between dh and I, we helped them learn to eat from a dropper. We gave them raw goat's milk. I lost the one that hadn't had a meal for the longest, the one with the empty tummy that next morning. Apparently the momma stops in to nurse the babies and if one has crawled away from where she expects it to be, it doesn't get a meal at that feeding. The other two thrived. Here's "Bunny Bunny" at 17 days old. Isn't he tiny? He was so adorable. The other was named Squinty Eyes. Squinty Eyes never liked the humans quite as much as Bunny Bunny did.
The experts say you have to start putting the baby bunnies out in their natural environment by the time they are about 4 weeks old, or they will become too reliant upon the humans caring for them. So we made the two bunnies a safe place to adapt to being outdoors.
Pretty soon they were making their way out of this "safe" area and around to other parts of the yard. Bunny Bunny continued to come back and visit us when we'd call him for several weeks. Here he is at 56 days old. We would call "Here Bunny Bunny" and he'd come running to get what we had for him to eat. We'd bring carrots some days, greens from the garden on others.
Here he is walking toward dh, showing no fear of the human.
Eventually Bunny Bunny moved to the property next door and it was so funny when we'd call him and then throw a carrot over. All the other cottontail bunnies would scramble madly, running and hiding, while Bunny Bunny would come running over to pick up the carrot and then run off with it. He came to visit us for many months, and then he would only show up every other day, then every few days and after a while he never came when we called. We figured our Bunny Bunny was finally too grown up to visit with his human parents.
Stay tuned for more memories from 2004 tomorrow with Part III of III.
Until next time.
Monday, April 27, 2009
It's Amazing How Fast Times Flies - Memories from 2004 - Part II
Labels: Memory Lane, Ranch
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Fog in the Desert
Labels: Just Stuff, Ranch
We don't get fog very often but apparently the conditions were perfect this morning. Missing your camera, Kev!!!
Ironically on this weekend, when Kev is gone with our good camera, one of my coworkers needed to have the company camera which I foist around with me everywhere I go. We used to have two of these cameras at work, but another coworker had it in her car, when her car was stolen (from the parking lot at the building where we work at 2am in the morning - which in that neighborhood she shouldn't have been there carting things in and out of the building to her car at that time). She claims she bought a replacement camera, but when I ask her about it, she just offers to let the agency "borrow" one of her personal cameras, "that one doesn't take very good pictures." Grrrr. So I'm stuck using our old family digital camera - the Samsung Digimax 301. I digress. Here's the pictures I was able to get this morning.
Until next time.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Where's the Beef?
Labels: LJ, Ranch, Self-Sufficiency
550 pounds of it currently resides in our two upright freezers.
We took our remaining two steer in a couple of weeks ago. We borrowed a friend's horse trailer and took them ourselves. It was really stressful getting them into the trailer, and a long drive to the processor's. I finally got some shots of LJ licking the steer's nose. I talked about the day a bit on this post.
Please dear family members who contributed money toward this venture... claim your "share" as soon as possible. ;-)
Typically the hanging weight of a whole beef is 600 pounds.
Our steer were on the small side, weighing in at 400 and 404 pounds each.
Here's what we have:
11 Arm Roasts 34 pounds
25 Chuck Roasts 60 pounds
6 Filet Mignons 2 pounds
Hamburger 145 pounds
6 New York Strip Steak 3 pounds
12 Porterhouse Steaks 8 pounds
30 Rib Steaks 18 pounds
16 Rib Steaks 2" 17 pounds
24 Round Steaks 48 pounds
4 Rump Roasts 14 pounds
Short Ribs 26 pounds
32 Sirloin Steaks 40 pounds
6 Sirloin Tip Roasts 15 pounds
Skirt Steak (for making Carne Asade) 3 pounds
24 T-Bone Steaks 13 pounds
2 Tongues 5 pounds
Dog Bones 52 pounds
Misc Box containing liver, stew meat, soup meat 53 pounds
Until next time.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Happy 20th Birthday, DS1
Labels: Bargain Hunting, Ranch
Ds1 was born at 12:02am on the 16th. Coincidentally, I worked for the State Department of Revenue, tax division. Everyone else was hard at work, while I was in labor with my firstborn. 3 minutes earlier, and he would have been a tax baby.
Speaking of taxes, I've worked since 1979 and I have NEVER had to file an extension, but the past few months and now the busiest schedule ever, I have not had time to get our taxes done, so this year I am filing an extension. I need some time to figure out how to claim our ranch - I had hoped we could claim it as a business, but I really don't see how we'll EVER make a profit at this rate. Here's a list for farmer's at the IRS site. Here's the entire Farmer's Tax Guide. I've been told you can claim a loss five out of seven years, but Ellie Winslow's Making Money With Goats says you have to claim profit three of five years. I can't figure out which is correct by searching IRS.com. We spent close to $6000 on the livestock in 2006, so I don't see how selling a few dozen eggs and some milk to my family is going to do us any good. I think if I claim the couple hundred dollars "profit" it would be best under the IRS definition of a hobby since then we wouldn't liable for taxes on the measly income.
Plus you aren't supposed to include expenses for anything used by oneself, so we'd have to figure out how many eggs we ate. We actually did very dismally last year at selling eggs. I remember frying up dozens at a time a few times, feeding them to the dogs and chickens. Now that dh and I are both making an effort to sell at our jobs, we're doing very good with not wasting any eggs. We are selling them for only $2.00/dozen though. That's better than last year, when we charged $1.50/dozen!
Filing for an extension will give me more time to think, and will relieve stress.
It was fun thrift store shopping on Saturday during the great desk hunt for ds1's birthday desk. I found some yarn -- mostly acrylic, unfortunately. The first Goodwill we went into I found some Lion Chenille to add to the stash. $1.99 for six small skeins, in a medium brown color. I don't have the yarn here with me, but I think the color is Mocha. Wow. This stuff seems to retail for $6.99/skein!!! I found some pretty soft turquoise (acrylic) that was made in another country, maybe France? Part of me so wants to be a yarn snob and only buy WOOL, but personally I don't find $16 per ball of sock yarn to be inexpensive. (Yarn Harlot says that's cheap when you figure it takes her 16 hours to make a pair of socks, so entertainment at $1/hour for her). I'll have to post about my finds some other time.
The only Saver's we shopped had several clocks. I examined all for the possibility of making this year's birthday gifts, but none would have worked. I found one really cool star one. I wish I'd bought it now. I did pick up a nice oak clock for ds2 for $3.99. We spent $26 there. Oh, I also bought some patterns for making some office clothing for myself. We'll see how soon I get around to that. The patterns were only $0.34 each. One pattern for a full length dress, like I like, and another for making a jacket. The last one is for making shorts. I also have this really valuable book which shows how to enlarge patterns.
Ds2 had this really awesome idea to decorate ds1's cake. He used a stencil that he made! He then sprinkled cocoa powder on top. I thought it was just the neatest idea! When we went out to milk last night, I was wishing I'd bought cake decorations but then we got in and ds2 had come up with the stencil idea.
I snapped a lot of photos, ds1 always acts like he hates his birthday parties. I had to go into his room when he was napping, looking for tape and he always puts a blanket against the bottom of the door, so he knows I went into his room. So he was really grumpy when he got up and was complaining about how I used my key to get into his room while he was sleeping. So I told him I only did it because I was looking for tape! Then he apologized. In this next photo he was cutting the cake into slices and he gave ds2 a quarter of the cake and the thought of having done that just cracked him up to the point he was shrieking with laughter. His eyes are crinkled totally shut, his head thrown back, mouth wide open, he's totally cracking up. Ds2 is examining the huge piece of cake with dismay and it just make ds1 laugh even harder.
Here's the birthday boy with his new desk. Finally someplace to put that SpongeBob lamp (normally retails for $20 but we found it marked down to $5 at Lowe's in June 2006).
I wish I could get here early every workday morning - it would help if I didn't hit the snooze button so many times. Then I'd have time weekday mornings at least, to blog.
Until next time.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Thank You Thirteen, We Love You
Labels: knitting, Ranch, Self-Sufficiency
I remember what beef tasted like years ago, when I was a child. In the past decade or so, it has started tasting really awful, a liver flavor. About a year ago, when dh and I were shopping we had a conversation with the meat guy and he said the reason why meat doesn't taste like it used to is because they don't dry age the beef anymore. They cut the meat and put it in plastic and send it to the store. It ages as it travels!
So on February 5th, we had one of our beef picked up... we called her "13" because her ear tag number was 5116. 
The butcher told us "13" was on the lean side. Her hanging weight was 320 pounds. He said as a result, of course we'd get less meat back. The cost for processing was $204.00. Having her delivered to the plant cost $100. We estimate the cost for hay to be at least $1200. At least $150 in milk. $20.00 in water.
I picked up our beef today. We added up all the cuts of meat, and the weight came to 226. So with those figures, the meat adds up to $7.40/pound.
We barbequed rib steaks, round steak and two t-bones.
OH.MY.GOSH. OH. The taste. Incredibly delicious. I have not tasted meat this good in such a long time. I made a real pig of myself tonight. I must have eaten close to a pound of meat. It was so tender and so tasty.
The only problem with having such a "lean" and small beef is the cuts are all miniature-sized. SIL and MIL helped with money toward this venture and SIL is going to be so excited to see the tiny cuts of meat, lol. The t-bones you see in the photo to the left are about 8 ounces each and are about the size of a deck of playing cards, LOL!!!
I talked with the butcher today and he says to me, "Next time you do this, you should try to grow them a little bigger." ROTFLOL. I chuckled and said, "Well, how do I do that?" He didn't really have an answer, but instead told me how much the steer in the back weighed, the ones he just had delivered from a feedlot. And he also told me about raising his own steer and how they weighed in at 1100 pounds live weight. I asked him how much he fed his steer and he tells me *two* flakes of hay a day. Our three were getting *eleven* a day for the past four months!!!
I bought some yarn today, with a pattern included. I'm going to knit a baby sweater! I can't wait to cast on. I bought the size needles I needed, plus a size smaller and a size larger.
I also had an idea of what I'd love to do. I'd love to open a yarn store. I would just love to do that. My town doesn't have one, but it is one of the fastest growing cities and we just got a Starbucks, and it is filled with yuppies. I am sure it would be a hit. I was thinking I should start writing up a business plan and just see if I could get a small business loan.
Until next time.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Old Horses
Labels: Ranch
Oh man, I came so close to acquiring *horses* yesterday. I am still bummed about it, but not getting them is -- I guess -- the right thing for us to do. There is a lady placing two old horses, I believe their ages were 25 and 26, in new homes because she is moving out of state and cannot keep them. She said the mare and gelding have been together 15 years, and cannot be separated. She said they are easy keepers and she has taught all her children and many others to ride on these two. She said they are great city horses, can walk alongside the road and aren't scared of cars. She had lots of stuff to give away with them, and could sell us a saddle for $200 and we could make payments. Coincidentally, her daughter is driving a goat out to where we live, which is about 75 miles from where they live. The only condition is that she wants the two to have a good life until their end and be put down humanely and not sent to a slaughterhouse.
It seemed like a perfect thing. I mean, how much more could one ask for? Free horses, perfect for folks who know practically nothing about riding horses, being delivered right to us? Then I sat down and looked at our budget and even though things will ease once our 10yo vehicle is paid off in a few months, it is going to really create havoc now to feed two horses. The estimated cost is about $50-$75 for each one. Plus, we are working one extra job that we'd like to give up and once the vehicle is paid off, we can do that, but if we have two more mouths to feed... not to mention we have five does pregnant and will have lots of baby goats here within a couple of months.
Plus, one immediate family member voted nay. My mother was oohing and aahing and so excited and hoped we got the two. As was my sister and niece.
I've decided to leave it in God's hands. If He wants us to have the horses, for what logical and practical reason I don't know (except to give us the desires of our hearts which He is surely willing and able to do that)... then the lady will email and ask if we are still interested. I'm sure she has found a good home for them already. Maybe something will fall through. If she does write back, I'm taking that as a *sign* and we'll take them.
Owning horses would be a dream come true for me. One part of me is squealing with delight and voting YES, YES, YES! However, the more practical side votes no. For today, I'm going to have to go with the practical side, and leave it in God's hands.
