Spring Chatter

 Meet Daisy.  

Our new (to us) Jersey.  She has a moo more like a dinosaur than a cow, and has high-tailed it off to the neighbors' houses on more than one occasion and can be downright ornery sometimes but she gives us good milk when we didn't have any before so we don't complain.  (Too much.)

I didn't take any pictures of the lilacs in bloom and I barely made it to admire the fruit tree blossoms up close and personal before they too had vanished.  I feel like the year 2020 dragged on and on at a snails' pace and 2021 is going warp speed.

Let's not make up for lost time, shall we?  

I'd like to linger a bit longer.

Judah was making grilled cheese sandwiches and as head chef, he felt he needed a chef's hat.

I suppose a dixie paper bowl would have to do in lieu of a real one.

Vases of daffodils are cheery, vases of forsythia brighten any mood and waking up to a vase of lilacs by my bed is quite possibly the most luxurious thing ever...but when I begin to have enough flowers to make multifloral vases, well, that is when I have the most fun!

The first multifloral vase of the year:

Grape hyacinths, apple blossoms, a few sprigs of pulmonaria and white lilacs... and it smelled lovely!  

Moses drinking from a big boy cup....oh the tricks he can do!

Let's talk seeds for a moment, shall we?

I try and overbuy seeds (which I was thankful for after last years' seed shortage fiasco!) so I have quite a few seeds to use from previous years.  As I have been busy putting in the garden, I realized I was out of yellow wax beans so I headed to the store to get some (I love me some three bean salad!) and discovered the large packages of seed corn and beans at Tractor Supply were $10.99!!!!!  

I thought that was a pretty crazy price but when I came home and checked the package price of the ones I had from last year (same size, same veggie) I realized how crazy it was.

Guess how much they were from last year?

$3.99

Unbelievable.

Inflation is on the rise and I don't see an end to it any time soon.  When the media finally TELLS you that inflation is a problem as they have most recently been doing, you know it has been a problem for a lot longer than they let on and that it will get a lot worse.  I am trying to stock up as much as possible, I hope you are too.

In other seed news, am I the only one who hates tediously putting a single seed or two in each little pot to start seeds?  Ugh- I hate it.  

I also dislike murdering little baby seedlings when two come up at a time- it seems counterintuitive to gardening.  

(Does anyone else feel like a plant murderer when thinning plants or is this just me?)

AND, as I said, I have older seed that may be less reliable than new seeds.  Taking all these things into consideration, I decided to experiment with a new way of seed starting this spring.

I scattered a bunch of seed in larger pots and then, when they were big enough, I separated them each into its' own little cell pot.

Let me tell you friends, it worked like a charm!  

I found separating the seedlings much more enjoyable than tediously planting (and watering) two seeds at a time.

And the best part- every seedling that came up got to LIVE!

Happy little seedlings!

I guess the hard part may be starting a particular number of plants... but I think that this problem can be planned for.  Over scatter and then give away (or sell) the extras!

Now that we have Daisy, I am making daffodil colored butter and homemade cheeses once again.

I have also been on a canning bone broth kick.  It warms the house up on colder spring mornings and is very handy to have on the shelves.

I always kinda thought making bone broth was a waste of good vegetables (that are boiled and then tossed out) but then I read this book and discovered how much I had been missing before.

A good bone broth can taste like an entire meal.

When I made my first batch Matt said it was like he could drink it with a fork.  I loved that.  

It has been wedding and graduation year- four weddings and four graduation parties planned for this summer!

Here is one wedding in which I snapped a quick pic of the family per my mother-in-laws request.

Why is it that when I finally go to plant a strawberry bed that it suddenly becomes a three ring circus?  

Daisy, bellowing for her original home...

(Yes, we DO need a new fence... why do you ask?)

And look who else joins us on the farm?

Some of the cutest piggly wigglys there ever were.

It's Friday night!  I wonder what we will do....

Anyone have any good movie recommendations?  

We do not have TV so we are relegated to movies when we want to watch something.  Lately, we feel like we are scraping the bottom of the barrel and could use some good recommends!  

Happy weekend, all!

Spring Fencing

 

 

 

Though the weekend was a bit stormy, we were able to begin the first big project of the year~ fencing off pasture ground.  Matt had split the fence posts several weeks ago, using as much locust as he could find and supplementing the last of it with soft maple.  Soft maple won't last as long as locust, so I am told, so we kept the soft maple toward the back of the pasture, in the wooded area.  We'll have to replace them sooner but they will work for a few years, anyway.





I have to say, I upped the ante of 'farm girl' status by running the post pounder.  That thing was scary.  I was SKEER-ED.  Imagine a metal beam slamming down at you full throttle just inches away from your precious hand and then landing with a huge BANG, shoving the post deep into the ground.  It was THAT CLOSE to doing that to my hand.  And then imagine doing it about 4-5 times per post... for over a hundred posts.  Yeah.  This is my lot in life.

And that face up there? Only one of the many facial contortions I mustered throughout the ordeal and by far the least impressive.







Andrew, too, felt pretty empowered when he was able to drive the truck with posts through the field.



8 year old boys like that sort of thing.



It was difficult to decide where to put the pasture.  It seemed silly to put it across the road from the barn since we'll have to be hauling animals twice a day across the road.  But then again, the only running water source (a creek) happens to be BEHIND the house and to put the pasture there means not having to haul 20+ gallons of water a day to thirsty animals in the summertime.  Eventually, Matt just put some posts in the ground and there was no going back.

I don't really prefer the pasture fence being so up close to the house.  I call it the 'prison fence'.  Matt says I have come a long way~ from being a 'city girl' to feeling claustrophobic and boxed in by a pasture.  But there it is. 

I hope to eventually get used to it. 

 

In the meantime, two sides of the pasture are lined with fence posts.  Two more sides to go.  And then Penny (our Jersey) and Skeeter (our mini dwarf horse) can roam free as birds. 

Or as free as Jerseys and dwarf-horses.

May my fingers and hands stay firmly intact throughout the remainder of this pasture project. 

Monday, Monday

(Country dogs have it SOooooooo good.)

(I got the most delicious Peppermint soap I have EVER SMELLED for Christmas this year. EVER. Judah thought so too.)

It is the start of a new week. It is the end of this first month of '12.
The sky is blue. We have peanut butter in the house.

Life is good.

Notes from an Aspiring Farmwife: D Day (Death Day)

Journal Entry: 11-20-2010, Butchering Day

Today was the day. Since the time we have gotten that cute little calf we have known his purpose. We have cared for him each morning and evening. We have rubbed his ears. Combed burdock from his back. Fetched him when he got out. Watered and fed him and gave him apple treats. But we have done so knowing right from the beginning that his was a higher calling than just pet.

He was for our table.

We would joke about how we should have called him Hamburger. We would talk about Butchering day like any other day. We talked about it a lot so the children would be used to the idea and not completely flip out. But inwardly....secretly....
I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it. The butchering. The cooking. The eating. All of it.

Frankly, I was quite content to unwrap meat from plastic wrap and Styrofoam and was perfectly happy thinking meat came from the grocer aisle. It is comfortable to see only meat, without thinking of the big cow eyes that looked back at you so many times. It is awful handy and clean and orderly and tidy to buy it from the grocery store. And a lot less work.

Maybe I am not ready for this...

But am I so naive as to think that the beef that come from stores didn't once have sweet eyes too? Didn't they breathe and live and feel? Because I didn't experience it, THEN the death has no sting?

Silly, foolish girl. Life is about more than just being comfortable. Or staying blissfully ignorant. Someone has to work to put food on the table. Perhaps we have lost something in that someone always being someone ELSE ~the someone who everyone knows ABOUT, but no one actually has seen.

If nothing else~ I want my children to be thankful for their food and all that went into it. To know what went INTO that food. To know that the food they are eating took work. To see the beginning and the end of the process. Maybe being a part of the process would make us all a little less likely to be ungrateful and wasteful of our daily bread.

This part, the unpleasant part, is just as valuable to us as the sustenance.

Matt decided that he wanted to butcher the cow himself, despite the discouragement of some. He had never had any experience doing it but rather than be scared, he took it as an opportunity to learn. Bravo. In doing so, he learned a new skill, became more self-sufficient and saved us more than $600.00 butchering costs alone. This man of mine makes me so proud.

~~~~~~~~~~

I saw the shot. I didn't mean to, I didn't WANT to, it was an accident. Andrew, on the other hand, saw it all. And MEANT to. Every. last. moment. He didn't flinch when the cow went down. When he bled out. When he got hung. Got skinned. Got cut up.

He didn't care at all. Neither did the girls.

To them, this is just how you get meat. A part of life.

Maybe my own blind naivety came from the mere fact that meat had always just come from the grocery store? Maybe I had been too Bambi-fied? Maybe both. But I envy them their comfortable acceptance of death.

~~~ January 1st 2011 , A freezer full ~~~

The meat has hung in the winter barn, curing for 21 days and today the weather warmed up just enough so that Matt and my brother Jonathan started cutting it up. SO thankful Jonathan was here as the frozen cow halves are HEAVY to carry and even HEAVIER to lug onto a cutting table.

Matt made a cutting station of clean lumber and sawhorses where the big cow-half could be. We brought our patio table into the barn for the wrapping and grinding station. The children ran around pleasantly as if this is just what people do on the first day of the new year.


I still marvel at how small the actual meat portion of a cow is compared to how big Jedidiah was in the pasture grazing and loafing about. Even still, cutting up one side started in the morning and didn't finish until long after the sun had gone down. The other half hangs frozen to be done later.
Matt had a book to go by, but I do hope to research more how to get the different marvelous bone-in cuts. For now, he cut all the meat off the bone. After lunch, my brother had to leave so I took over. We cut steaks, hand-cranked ground beef, I cut the beef into strips for stir-fry and chunks for stews and had plenty of roasts.

The air was milder than it has been, but handling the frozen meat made your fingertips burn with cold. When they got too cold, I would take a turn at cranking the meat grinder. I, once again, was thankful for every huge bowl I own and lamented a few times not owning more.



When the sun went down it got so cold we brought the rest of the meat indoors to crank there. Everything went into the freezer this time around. Corynn and Andrew labeled most of the packages. When the last of the meat had been taken care of, we were ready to be done with it.


The hardest thing about butchering your own animals is not the work, necessarily, but the time. Work was as it ALWAYS is....work, but not particularly DIFFICULT. Devoting days to something that could be done in a 15 minute trip to the grocery store is the hard part. Butchering day was from morning until night. Today, cutting up and wrapping one half took another entire day. We still have another half to do which will take another day.

AND THEN THERE IS THE OTHER COW. oh dear.


The question still remains though....will I be able to COOK this meat? Will I be able to stomach the thought of eating Jed?

(Ruby doesn't seem to mind...)

~~~ January 13th 2011, Edible ~~~

Tonight, for the first time, I cooked our own beef. I admit, I was scared I wouldn't like it so I chose a dish that would "ease" me into eating Jed by hiding most of the meat flavor.

We had sloppy joe on kaiser rolls with provolone and oven roasted potato wedges. And guess what?

IT WAS GOOD!

What was I ever scared of?!?!