We've had a lot of rain in our area and the desert is greening up nicely. The mountains in the distance look green, fields which were formerly brown dirt are green with desert grasses, weeds are springing up all over. Our neighbor who is vacationing (from Illinois) in their winter home said he was tempted to just let the weeds keep growing, they look so pretty and green. I told him he'd better rethink that and drag his property while the weeds are babies. We've lived here for six summers and when the preceding seasons bring lots of rain, we have a terrible fire season.
It's a big thing out here in the country, where most of us haul our water from the community well. Some people do have their own wells. Out in this area, you're looking at $20,000+ to dig a well that will have to go down at least 400 feet or more.
Since we don't technically have running water out here, we also don't have fire hydrants every few blocks. Actually, we have NO fire hydrants whatsoever.
The nearest fire fighting vehicle is 8 miles away and it belongs to a grain processing company. It sits there in the event that they has a fire. Its tank holds only 500 gallons. That's all our portable tank holds, but we have access to the community well, while they don't.
The next nearest fire engine is in the small city north of us. They are 15 miles away, but apparently they don't like to come out and help fight fires since that would leave their city in danger. There is a station on the Indian reservation about 15 miles away. The next closest station is to the east about 20 miles away.
On Sunday, on the way home from church, Kev received a phone call from one of our neighbors. The one for whom he hauls water, we call him "The Thirsty Wolf". The call went like this:
Thirsty Wolf: "Hey, uh, Kev, this is Alfredo, uh, could you bring some water? (his first language is Spanish and his accent is very heavy).
Kev: "Who is this?"
Thirsty Wolf: "This is Alfredo, you, uh, haul my water? I'm your neighbor?"
Kev: "Oh, hi, you need some water today?"
Thirsty Wolf: "Yeah, my house is on fire." (During the entire conversation he was very calm)
Kev: "WHAT?!"
Thirsty Wolf: "My house is on fire. I need some water, and so does another guy."
Kev: "YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE!?"
Thirsty Wolf: "Yeah."
Kev: "Okay, I'll be right over. We'll hammer out the details later."
The details meaning he wasn't sure what the Wolf meant by someone else needing water, too.
Since we weren't home, Kev called his dad who ran to the front door, looked out and saw the neighbor's roof bursting into flames only five acres away. He stopped making cheese and ran out to take our tank to the well and get water. That's what we do out here. When there's a fire, everyone gets their tank, goes to the well, fills up with water and heads for the smoke. Bring your shovels, too!! No telling what's on fire. Is it someone's house? A car? Barn? Just a field of desert grass traveling toward property that holds someone's home and life?
Kev and I were on our way home, we'd stopped to get gasoline when he received the call. We saw the smoke from miles away.
I felt relieved, seeing the smoke was white because that usually means they almost have the fire out.
Unfortunately, the first engine there ran out of water not too long after arriving. My dh arrived right when they ran out of water, but we didn't have any way to pump water into the fire fighting truck! They don't either! I couldn't believe that someone hasn't had the foresight to think since we don't have hydrants out here, but 80% of us have 500-1500 gallon portable water tanks, and we store our water in underground tanks of 1000 and bigger (ours is 2500), and in fact, Thirsty Wolf probably had 500-600 gallons in his own underground tank, that the fire trucks aren't equipped with pumps to move water from an outside source into their tanks!
So when we got there the fire was really moving all over the Wolf's house. Dh told us a guy had come by not too long ago that had a pump on his truck and was able to pump water into the fire engine. But the Indian reservation fire truck arrived and now the guys were being told to stop helping.
The fire fighters worked on fighting the fire for a couple more hours, and then I guess they just left. Now the fire fighters that we knew growing up (dh's uncle was a fire chief) would never have left a fire without making sure it was out. Especially not with the way the wind has been blowing!
At 9pm, Kev and I looked over toward the Wolf's house and it was still glowing with fire.
The next morning as I was leaving for work (I was late on Monday morning, usually it's pitch black when I leave) I saw a thin trail of smoke coming from the Wolf's house.
I went over to have a look, and it had burned to this point, and was still smoldering.
Later in the day, the smoldering embers finally ignited the rest of the place and it went up in flames again. Here's how it looks now.
On Sunday evening, dh started talking about getting a water pump, so we'll be better prepared for fire season.
On Monday night, when he saw that the house was STILL smoldering, he decided to fill up the tank and go over and dump some water on the embers, to see if he could have any effect on extinguishing them. With the wind blowing, there was still the chance that fire could ignite the weed filled properties to the east of the Wolf's and move to our property.
While at the well, he saw a sign with two water pumps for sale. He called the guy and went over to check them out after dumping the 500 gallons onto the smoldering embers.
Actually, they are small engines that hook up to go-carts and one had a water pump hooked up to it. Here's the 5HP engine, with the water pump hooked up.
If you look at the larger version of this next image, you can see how the water is just dribbling out by gravity feed.
Whoooo!! Here it is pump driven!!
Kev's trying to get the nozzle onto the hose while it's running. Doesn't he know the nozzle is too big to fit onto the hose? ;-)
And here he is all soaked.
So now we'll be much better prepared for fire season.
Until next time.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Fire Season is Coming
Labels: Self-Sufficiency, Things You Don't See In The City
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.
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.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Bad Body Thoughts and Potato Salad
Labels: Body Acceptance, Memory Lane, recipes, Self-Sufficiency
I've probably already used today's header (okay, not exactly, probably didn't include potato salad prior to now) for a previous entry, as this issue crops up every once in a while. Once in a while isn't so bad, as many women experience "Bad Body Thoughts" on a daily, even hourly basis.
According to Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter's theory discussed in their book _Overcoming Overeating_, Bad Body Thoughts are never about our bodies - no matter how much we want them to be. They're always about something else going on in our heads.
My Bad Body Thoughts started yesterday, when I pulled out a pair of coveralls that I haven't worn for over a year, and they were tight on me. Immediately I started feeling like crap. My dh knows how sensitive I am about my weight, and thinks women are much too hard on themselves. To his credit, one of the many reasons I love him, he also does not think I'm fat. When I asked him if he thought the coveralls were too tight on me, he said they weren't. I complained that it feels as if I've gained weight and that it seems this will be my fate, to just keep gaining weight and gaining weight, every year, year after year. Because at the mere thought of going on a diet, I begin to overeat and continue in that vein. Gaining weight, losing
weight, I eat. I recall a couple of weeks ago, feeling that my pants were a bit baggy. It's like somewhere in my mind, a celebration begins. "Now we can EAT!"
I'm wearing a pair of shorts that are cutting an indention in my waist.
Then suddenly it occurs to me that it IS that time of the month... and customary for me to have some bloating at this time.
Having Bad Body Thoughts are a way to avoid the real issues. When we focus on our bodies and our dislike for them, it is a convenient way to get our minds off the real problems. I've been following this theory for over ten years now, and it seems to be correct. Because when I am feeling happy and content with my life, I do not focus hatred toward my body. When I stop to ask, "Why the Bad Body Thoughts? What else is going on?" I am usually able to find something underlying that is bothering me.
For the first twenty-five years of my life, I ate whatever I wanted, when I wanted, in the quantities I wanted. I know that I even overate some foods, like pasta. I was slender and my body was beautiful, but at that time, I was unhappy with it. The way my belly pooched out, and on and on.
I began to diet and bodybuild in my late twenties, for a few years into my thirties. It really did a number on me, psychologically. Messed me up big time. I feel like I'm broken, when it comes to dieting. It doesn't help that 1) all the advertisements for weight loss have skinny SKINNY people, size TWO and then in tiny font you see the words, "Results Not Typical" 2) Studies show that 95% of dieters gain back the weight they lost, and usually more. I have done that, and I wish I'd never dieted in the first place. I feel certain I'd be at least fifty pounds lighter than I am now.
Anyway, enough of that. I know I've fonted on about it in past entries. I need to print out all my entries and put them into a notebook binder for quick reference.
For the faint of heart, you may want to skip over this part of my entry as I blog some fact of life farm details. I will italicize it so you can skip over it to the potato salad recipe. Just skip down to the next set of dashes.
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Today we harvested one of our wethers. It is the second time we have done a four legged critter on our own; the first time I was not present. I cried when I heard the details on the first one, and I cried today -- just for a few seconds I got teary-eyed, but then it was over and we were worked to process the carcass. I think today went much more smoothly. We were taught back the procedure on Memorial Day 2005 by a friend of ours; he came over and demonstrated the process. We had two Barbardos Black Bellied Sheep to do. He did the kill with his bow and arrow, which did not phase him a bit. He is used to hunting and killing, and grew up in PA and his family raised and processed their own animals, so it is easy for him. This is the most difficult part for us. We had the backstrap with our dinner tonight. Chevon is not really meant to be BBQ'd or fried, because it is so lean it should be slow and moist cooked. We have four more to go. Three are youngsters, which really makes it a lot easier. The fourth one is going on a year and a half. I am planning to make some goat bone broth, and I saved the liver and heart for a day when I'm more ambitious.
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I did make my potato salad, here is the recipe, but bear in mind I don't do exact measurements:
- 5 pounds russet potatoes, boiled, peeled and diced
- 1 bunch radishes, diced (about 10 or so)
- 2 ribs celery, diced
- 1 medium sized cucumber, diced (seeds removed)
- 1 large whole pickle, diced
- 1 - 6 ounce can whole black olives, sliced
- 2-3 Tablespoons pickle juice
- mayonnaise to taste
- salt and pepper to taste
I have been working on getting a contact form to work for one of my client's website today, and have finally gotten it done!
Until next time.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Loading The Water Tank
Labels: Self-Sufficiency
My first try backing up, I'm pretty darn good at this! 
Here's how close I got after I finished backing up a bit more. Then I had to get up onto the yellow truckbed and shove the tank over to the trailer. It's time like these that I'm so glad that I weigh what I do, because I can just use my body against things to move them.
Here's a picture of our front gate -- remember a couple weeks ago I knocked it down? It's a huge gate! If you look for the green star, that's where the community well is at. It is 1/5th of a mile from the well to our underground tank. We are lucky to be so close to it.
Now I'm at the community well. The green hose is connected to the well where the arrow points, then I climb up onto the trailer, open the lid on top of the tank, poke it in, jump down and turn on the well.
Here's how the trailer looks when the tank is fully loaded. I noticed once the tank was full that the driver's side tire was a bit flat! At first, I always wanted to tank shoved forward as far as it would go, but then the trailer shifts its weight to the front of it, which means it puts all the weight on the back of my vehicle, then my vehicle is dragging way down. The tank should ride centered over the tires of the trailer for the best ride.
I managed to be a newbie at getting water... I haven't helped get water in a long time, maybe two years?! I unhooked the hose from the well, but I left the hose in the tank. When I lowered the hose to the ground to empty it... what do you think started happening? The water from the tank started siphoning out onto the ground!! I panicked for a moment, pressing my fingers tight around the hose, stopping the flow of water. "What do I do, what do I do?" I thought wildly. You have to understand, by now it's like 104°F and I'm dripping sweat, my face is red, all in the name of being neighborly, aghhhh!!! So then I remembered if I raise the hose end above the height of the other end, it will stop the siphoning thang. It worked!! I bet the people in the red truck behind me were laughing. Oh well, I've laughed my fair share at well newbies. ;-)
I took one load to our neighbor and he was very grateful to me for making the trip. He offered me bottled water, which I gratefully accepted, and thanked me over and over again. I don't think he wanted to put me out. The really cool thing is, I had never met him prior to last Monday. My dh wanted me to come with him, and bring LJ to pick up a few sheets of OSB. Dh wanted our neighbor to meet LJ, and wanted LJ to get to meet him and the guy's dogs. The neighbor has a young female pitbull with markings like LJ. So this way, when I showed up in a different vehicle with water, at least the guy knew who I was. I like when things happen that way. I like to think God was watching out for me in that little way. It sure made things a lot more comfortable for me, since I had met the guy already.
I called my dh and let him know I'd dropped the one load and he said I should go ahead and do a second one, since I was already out. So I went back over and his tank only took 200 gallons, so then I came home and dumped the rest into our underground tank.
Oh and I'm so excited. I figured out how to link the pictures that I uploaded to ImageShack without having to wait 15-20 seconds for each upload through Blogger. I just hope it works once I publish this post. More on that another time. And I love my new purple colors on my blog. I didn't know I liked purple so much, to be honest with you.
Until next time.
This post is part three of the Hauling Water series:
Water Hauling High Hopes Part 1 of 3
Water Hauling We Jes' Call That Bein' Neighborly Part 2 of 3
Water Hauling Loading the Water Tank Part 3 of 3
We Jes' Call That Bein' Neighborly
Labels: Self-Sufficiency
At the end of my last entry, I was going to haul a load of water for our neighbor, since my dh is out of town until Monday. There's no way that guy could have waited, if he was almost out. He has no way to haul his own water, and frankly he pays us well to do it for him. He also has been giving my dh stuff that he gets from his job site, like a box of nails, a dozen sheets of OSB. So it's been pretty good so far. I noticed today, this actually boosted my impression of him a few notches... no beer. I saw a couple of cases of bottled water, a 12 pack of Sprite, but no beer. I can't help it, I have a prejudice against beer drinkers. I realize that maybe there are a few that are not alcoholics, but alcoholism has been too close to my life, and in fact, nearly wrecked our lives for several years.
Anyway! I took pictures of the process of getting water. It actually ended up being much more of an ordeal than it should have been. As I said, I had to unload and hitch up the trailer. You can see some of the sheets of OSB there against the side of the trailer. So I moved all that stuff. Next I backed my vehicle up to the tongue of the trailer. Pretty darn close for my first try. I tried to lift the trailer just enough to plop it over the ball, no go. My dh can, but I don't have anywhere near that kind of strength.
So that means I to get creative.The white star marks the spot where the truck hitch and the trailer tongue are right next to each other. The red star shows where the trailer's jack is located, it is jacked up as far as it can go. The yellow star is where I stacked several 2x4's with the vehicle's jack on top, then I had to jack up the trailer tongue so it would clear the ball.
Once I got the trailer tongue high enough, I had to move my vehicle into place.
Whoops! Overshot by a few inches. If I had gone back much further, I would have banged the trailer tongue into my vehicle's bumper.
Back to the driver's seat, to pull the truck slowly forward. Once I got everything in place, I couldn't get the trailer tongue to sink down around the ball properly. There was an inch gap. That just won't do. I could lose the trailer if it's not hitched and secured properly. Since my vehicle's jack was as high as it could go, and the trailer's jack was hovering off the ground, I had to shove a couple boards under the trailer's jack and then proceed to jack it up enough so that I could jiggle that little apparatus inside the trailer tongue's hitch which was blocking the tongue hitch from securing itself down around the hitch ball!!
Apparently Blogger doesn't like me adding more than a couple of pictures! I am growling weary, I mean GROWING weary of trying to compose this post. I've saved as a draft several times, and I'm even being nice to Blogger and not loading all the pictures to its servers, but linking to ImageShack.
I have had lunch, talked at length with my mother, then my sister, while wiping out, reloading and inventorying the big freezer, and periodically trying to finish this post, which no one but me cares about anyway.
As my patience grows thin, you may be implored to simply use your imagination... or better yet, maybe I just need to make 10 more blog entries for today...
To be continued...
This post is part two of the Hauling Water series:
Water Hauling High Hopes Part 1 of 3
Water Hauling We Jes' Call That Bein' Neighborly Part 2 of 3
Water Hauling Loading the Water Tank Part 3 of 3
High Hopes
Labels: Self-Sufficiency
Remember the lyrics, "High hopes, he's got. . . high hopes, he's got, high in the sky, apple pie, hopes"?? That song's kind of echoing in my head today. Only because I feel like I have some desire to do something, and that something seems to be clean the refrigerators and freezers. Yes, I meant plural. We have three refrigerators and two upright freezers. Where else do you think we put all the milk, eggs and fermenting foods? ;-)
Seriously, all my life I used to think my mother and one of my sisters were a little bit stooopid for having more than one refrigerator. I used to think it was just making them more work. I held firm for years with my family, refusing to allow us to have more than one refrigerator. When we moved out here, I was told about a lady that was selling her upright freezer for $50. I acquiesed. Next thing you know, we get chickens, then goats. The second year we had does in milk, and 3 dozen hens, it became obvious we needed another refrigerator. Then somewhere along the way, we acquired a third refrigerator, and then a second freezer!
Two of my guys, dh and ds2 are out of town for a couple of days. They have a job they are working on and in order to save gas, they are staying overnight tonight and maybe on Sunday night, too. So ds1 and I are home alone. I should just take it totally easy, and do NOTHING. After all, no one would know what I did for two whole days. But I decided maybe I'd clean out the refrigerators and freezers this weekend. I have already started on the freezers. One is already empty. We have it on the porch, but we emptied it and unplugged it due to the heat of the summer. We think it would take too much energy to keep it running out in the heat. That is where I put my foot down. We can fill the house with freezers and refrigerators, but we aren't going to have one outdoors in the heat! During the winter, yes.
I removed all the food from the indoor upright freezer, turned it off and have it thawing out. I am planning to do an INVENTORY of what is in it! No one ever knows what is in there. We are continually buying more food, because we are out.
The whole high hopes thing is about all the things I'm hoping to get done. There is a bag of chicken breast thawed out in one fridge, and a pork loin in another. I finished cooking a goat shoulder yesterday and need to clean the meat. You know, pick the meat off the bone so it can be used in something. And there is only ds1 and I here, so we won't need to eat all this meat. I may be freezing some of it again.
I also brought home a good 8 hours worth of work from my job, since I'm going to be off on July 4th. I could go in and work on Monday or Friday, but I would just as soon work from home and save the gas.
Let's see what else... just general housecleaning. The living room needs some attention, picked up and vacuumed, the kitchen, the bedroom, bathrooms. Then I need to pay bills, and figure out how it's going with our money. And work on some computer stuff. Oh yeah. Got my whole weekend planned out.
We haul water for one of our neighbors. Let me clarify -- dh hauls water for one of our neigbors. He usually delivers water every Tuesday, but the guy's tank only holds about 300 gallons. Maybe 500. But the guy usually calls on the weekend, too. So of course, I just got the call that he needs a load. Since dh won't be back until Monday, that leaves me to deliver water. It's not that big of a deal... but the big truck is gone, so that means I get to unload the trailer, back my vehicle up to the trailer and hook it up. Then back up the trailer to where the water tank is (easier said than done), then shove the water tank off our other truck, onto the trailer, then leave the property. OH, let me take pictures. I'll be back in an hour or so.
This post is part one of the Hauling Water series:
Water Hauling High Hopes Part 1 of 3
Water Hauling We Jes' Call That Bein' Neighborly Part 2 of 3
Water Hauling Loading the Water Tank Part 3 of 3
Until next time.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Eating Alone
Labels: Aggravation, Memory Lane, Musing, Self-Sufficiency
I hear a lot of people talk about not liking to eat alone, but I love it. I grew up in a large family, and was a loner as a child. I never had many friends, usually one "best" friend in each grade. We moved a lot, so I went to a different school every couple of years.
Yesterday, I didn't have any leftovers to bring for lunch, so I went to a local fish and chips joint all by myself. I brought a Guideposts magazine with me. A friend brings me his copy after he's finished with it. Guideposts always gets me teary-eyed with the inspirational, spiritual stories. I have to say though, I'm dismayed at how it's filled with medical prescription advertisements. I don't think I could bring myself to purchase a subscription and pay for that. Anyway, I sat there all by myself at a table with four seats. I really liked the feeling of being all alone, by myself, reading, not having to act any certain way for anyone I was with.
New Topic: I remember when I was young, how the "old" people would complain about things like customer service, and the quality of things, and how it was so much better in the olden days. Well, more and more I'm hearing myself complaining about the same kinds of things. If it was so much worse when I was a youngster, how much worse has it gotten now? It's pretty bad, if you ask me!
And just how people are in general, how they don't seem to think before doing things. Like this morning. The sun was just beginning to rise, and I got off the freeway, and in the right hand lane there was a man and his car broke down. He was obviously out of gas, as he was holding a large red plastic gas can. There was a highway patrolman behind him, in an unmarked dark green SUV. The patrolman had his flashers on (not his flickering lights) and he had the man get into his vehicle, apparently planning to take him to a nearby gas station. I was looking in that direction, but not making eye contact with the patrolman. However, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the patrolman was making "thank you" gestures to me. I realized that he thought he had my attention and had asked if he could cut in front of me. Lucky for me that I can read gestures well.
So he pulls in front of me, and amazingly, neither one of those men bothered to turn on the flashers of the disabled vehicle. It was a small dark car -- and remember, it's still dark out, the sun is just beginning to rise -- right in the path of traffic coming off the freeway. The cars coming off the freeway round a corner, and THERE'S this car, sitting here.
I don't understand why they didn't do something else, like 1) Maybe push the car one block to put gas in it? 2) Turn the flashers on to warn oncoming traffic?
The way that this off ramp is situated, you can't get back to where the car was at, without going a mile down the road, getting on the freeway again, then fighting through a mile's worth of morning rush hour traffic. Maybe the patrolman was planning to use his flashing lights and go backwards through the traffic over to the disabled vehicle?
I was so puzzled by this lack of using one's brain that I actually walked back over to the convenience store where they were getting gas, to tell the patrolman that they forgot to leave the flashers on, and they'd better hurry back to that vehicle. They pulled off as I got over there. (This particular convenience store is a couple of buildings from my job).
One more thing. I found a website today that made me cry. I have come close to being a vegetarian in my life, but I believe that God provided us with animals to eat their meat. I believe it is necessary to our health. The only thing this website did was make me want to hurry things up as fast as we can, and stop buying meat from the store. It was a short movie about how inhumanely animals are treated. Chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs. I'm sure the group that produced the movie used the worst possible situations they were able to find and put them together, to portray the entire industry as a bunch of abusive humans.
It didn't turn me into a vegetarian. Actually I felt better about what we are doing. We are raising our animals humanely. Our chickens don't have a huge pasture to range free on, and they don't eat organic food, but they aren't jammed into cages together and electrocuted. They can fly and run, jump up onto high perches to roost, sunbathe and take dirt baths. We probably overfeed them. When we got our dairy bull calves, they were so young that they could not use their legs too well. Apparently some young cows are kept in small cages so their muscles cannot develop to produce veal. Ours run and enjoy the sun. When we "harvest" one, they are killed quickly and humanely. They don't suffer needlessly on a long trip to a slaughterhouse packed and crammed in with hundreds of other frightened animals.
Kind of a depressing entry. I've been going through a period of not wanting to talk much to anyone. It was therapeutic eating alone.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Still Learning NT
Labels: goats, Nourishing Traditions, PTL, Self-Sufficiency
I hate to say it, but I can't believe my last entry was in SEPTEMBER? 5 months can pass by like such a flash. It was a whirlwind.
On the NT front, I tried a new kind of sauerkraut, Sally's Latin American Sauerkraut. I didn't want to chance the whey making it taste goaty, so I used twice the salt. It was good, but so salty.
In October we tested our does' milk separately and found that two of them have subclinical mastitis. I thought perhaps the extra bacteria could cause the whey to go goaty, and so I tried a second batch of LA Sauerkraut with only kefir whey from our doe with clean milk. Same results. Goaty flavored sauerkraut. What a disappointment.
Five of our does are bred and we are confident four of the five are settled. The fifth one we are not so sure, but fairly so. We expect our first kids in March, and the last to be born end of May. The fifth doe is a 75% American recorded grade, bred to a purebred buck. Her kids can be registered as full American.
We bought a new milker to help us through the dry period. My sister is very grateful as her young son has developed a rash from drinking cow's milk when at school. The new milker is quite talkative, as she was bottle raised. She is just one year old. She aborted due to the family moving about 1.5 hours away, but came into milk. Her owner hoped we could increase her lactation to over 4 pounds daily, but so far she's staying steady at about 2 pounds. Every little bit helps.
We finally harvested one of our wethers. The meat is wonderful. It took months to finally do the deed, and now we are glad we did. Unfortunately, that probably won't make the next harvesting any easier. The meat probably costs $20/lb due to our procrastination. At least we know we can grow and eat our own meat. Some people absolutely will not eat their own goats. I can see their position, it is a difficult hurdle to jump. Mentally challenging.
The most significant thing is once again the path the Lord has led us down. I was thinking last night, how awesome that we were led to buy a dairy goat. So impulsive of us, but such a strong feeling. We are raising some dairy calves, but it is going to be quite a feat to process them. Goats grow faster, are ready for harvest sooner, are smaller and much easier to process. I can't quite put into words. I guess it boils down to being another miraculous blessing. The feeling of being cared for and loved is huge.
Until next time.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Butchering
Labels: Nourishing Traditions, Self-Sufficiency
We had two dairy calves that we purchased a few weeks back. Well, now we only have one calf. The other died on Friday morning. We think due to snakebite. We purchased the two calves for $40. We did what we could for the calf, naturally, because we weighed the situation and decided that a visit from the vet would cost a lot of money, and the calf might not make it with costly intervention anyway. There were two choices for how to dispose of the body. 1) Dig a big hole 2) Practice our butchering skills. We chose the latter. It was a good learning experience. We were taught how by a friend of ours back on Memorial Day.
That only started out the day. Then we went and cleaned four buildings. The last three usually take 6 man hours, but today it took 10. Our butchering teacher works there, and so we had to talk to him for awhile.
I'm really proud of us for being practical and using the opportunity for learning. Not many people will share my opinion.
I had some meltdown this weekend. Probably PMS or perimenopause. At any rate, I can usually take a lot before I'm crying like a sissy. But not this weekend.
I tried some of my kombucha tea yesterday. It has been brewing for 10 days. It was still sweet, with a bit of a fizzy taste. I thought it wasn't that bad. I asked how it should taste, and was told I should let it brew some more and try it again at 14 days.
My olives still are rather "pungent" tasting. Meaning, they still taste pretty yucky. But not as HORRID as they are before any preparation.
