A Month of Thankfulness - Day Four

 

Today I am thankful for always having enough to feed my family.  It may not always be the things we love to eat, but it is always enough to keep us from going hungry.  The blessing of raising much of our own food means that even if there may not be much money, there is always a meal.  

A Month of Thankfulness - Day 3

Today I am thankful for my "simple" life.  I live in the country, we raise our own food and the kids know the value of a little hard work.  It's gratifying to look out the back window and see the rabbits and ducks.  I love the sound of the rooster crowing.  Merlin, our Great Pyrenees, barks all night letting predators know he's protecting our stock and I'm able to sleep soundly.

It's a pretty good life.

A Month of Thankfulness - Day Two

Since I made my day one post on November 2nd, you get two posts today.

Today I am also thankful for my children.  Even when they drive me nuts, I can still look at them and be amazed.  They remind me to stop and really enjoy the small things in life.  When I was young I never gave much thought to having kids.  It wasn't that I didn't want them (as some people seem to believe), it was just that it didn't matter to me if I ever had them or not.

Now that I do have them, I have been blessed to experience a whole new view of life by watching them grow and being privileged to guide them as they grow.

A Month Of Thankfulness - Day One

Many people participate in "A Month of Thankfulness" on Facebook by posting something they are thankful for every day in the month of November.  I have decided to post mine here.  I've wanted to revive my blog for quite some time now.  So what better way than this.  I'll have a month where I know every day what I'll be posting about.  And it will help me to really see all the good things in my life. 

So......

Today I am thankful for all the friends in my life.  Thank you for not giving up on me.  Thank you for still being there even when I'm too busy to call.  Thank you for understanding when I'm having a bad day.  Thank you for making my bad days better.  Thank you for just being the wonderful group of people that you are.  If you are my friend, that means that you are important to me.  Even if I don't talk to you often, you are in my heart.  I cherish each and every one of you.

Finding Balance

When you raise livestock predators are one of the biggest worries you will face.  After having a fox in our front yard this morning I have been thinking about the balance we try to keep with nature while still protecting our livestock.

Like most who raise animals, we have had to shoot the occasional predator who was threatening our livestock.  I will admit there is a certain feeling of satisfaction for me being a woman who is able to handle these situations.  Yet at the same time there is a feeling of sadness for the animal who's life I had to take.  An animal who is doing the same thing the rest of us do, just trying to survive.

We have fences for some of the animals, but some of the chickens and ducks roam free.  We have losses, but do our best to keep them to a minimum.  We could confine these animals like we do our goats, but they would not be happy with that and their diet would not give us the healthy, flavorful meat we are trying to provide for our family.

We have also added a beautiful Great Pyrenees dog to our homestead.  Few predators venture into the area at night now because they hear him bark and growl.  They know that there is a fierce protector ready to do battle if confronted.  The hope is that it will mean less loss of life both for our homestead and the wildlife around us.

The fox we saw today was run off.  Yet it now knows what is here and that there may be a meal to be had.  So I am forced to ask myself if I could shoot such a beautiful creature if it becomes necessary.  The answer is probably yes, but only if I had no other choice.

I have learned that some times we face things in life that are hard.  We have to balance safety and security with respect for what is around us.  It's one of the hardest things we do.

Yippee!

I decided to go looking for morels today.  Unfortunately I didn't find any.  However I did find this nice, healthy looking gooseberry bush growing near the edge of the blackberry patch.  Now I'm excited!  (Yes, I'm aware how little it takes to excite me.)  That makes four that I know of now.  Maybe I really will get to make some gooseberry jelly soon.  

Salad!

Sorry the picture is a little fuzzy.  I took the picture with my phone and had not intended to blog about it.  Then I ate it and it was too good not to share.

You can't really tell from the picture, but that salad is HUGE.  That is a small serving platter, not a dinner plate there.  The best part, besides being delicious, is that the whole platter of food is all of 275 calories.

It's very lightly dressed.  Just enough to add flavor, but there is no actual dressing feel to the salad.  If you think you just could not possibly have a salad that isn't coated in calories dressing you must try this trick.

Dressing Ingredients:
1 tsp Red Wine Vinegar
1/4 tsp Olive Oil

Yes, you read that right.  I dressed my salad with just 1 1/4 tsp. of oil and vinegar.  Simply combine the oil and vinegar.  Then toss it in a big bowl with with the greens for your salad.  It will coat your greens in an amazing flavor that will leave you wondering why you were ever skeptical.  Seriously, try it.

Now for the rest of the salad:

2 Cups Salad Greens (any of your choice)
1 Tbs chopped Green Onion
2 oz Cooked Chicken, diced
1 Large Hard Boiled Egg, roughly chopped
1 oz Part Skim Mozarella Cheese (I used sliced string cheese)
Salt and pepper

Toss the greens with the dressing in a large bowl.  Put the greens on a plate and top with the onion, chicken, egg and cheese.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Because I'm a food snob to some degree, I'll add that you really should invest in a pepper mill so you can have fresh ground pepper.  The flavor difference is amazing.

On the side I just had 8 spears of steamed asparagus.  If you actually just counted the spears you will notice that two never made it to the plate.  What can I say, I love asparagus.

Now, go enjoy a salad.

Babies!

The best part about spring at our homestead (other than the melting snow) is goat babies!  Cream Soda gave us two healthy bucklings last week.

Gratitude

Along with being absent from my blog so much this past year, I also have fallen away from the gratitude posts I had been putting up every Monday.  As I was complaining about something recently, I realized that I needed to get back to this.  It is important for me to remember all the things I have to be grateful for.

Today I am grateful for:

• A husband who accepts when I am overwhelmed and goes above and beyond to help me.
• My new job.
• The ability to live where I am surrounded by beauty and solitude that helps me refresh without planning a weekend away.

What are you grateful for today?

September Soup Of The Month: Avgolemono

Some friends and I have decided to try a monthly recipe thing again.  This time it's going to be soups.

This months soup (pictured above) is Avgolemono.  It is a Greek soup who's name translates to Egg And Lemon.  The recipe we used can be found HERE.

I apologize for the poor picture, the battery was dead in my camera so I had to use my phone. 

Now for what I thought of the soup.  In short, it was good.  Not great, but good.  However, I think it could be great.  I followed the recipe exactly, as I normally do when I make something for the first time.

I found the lemon flavor to be a bit over powering.  My lemons were on the rather large side though, so in retrospect I probably should have used just two of them. 

I also found the whipped egg very hard to incorporate.  Next time I may not whip them quite so much.

Other recipes I have looked at call for a measured amount of lemon juice, eggs whipped until just foamy and more egg yolk.  

While I did find it to have too much lemon, the soup did leave me wanting bite after bite.  The egg gives it a very silky mouth feel and the pasta just enough chew to leave me satisfied. 

I can't wait to try this soup again.  I think with minor adjustments it would be a fast family favorite.

Fair Week 2012

It's  been a few weeks since fair ended.  Yet I still find myself going back to this series of pictures for a smile.  

You see, Miss Meg was not too excited to get up and show her animals in front of everyone.  She is so terribly shy.  Everything had gone so well with the rabbits and guinea pigs.  All we had to do was get though the goats.  I should have known it wouldn't stay so easy.  

The first sign something might happen.  "What's that over there?"

 "Oh wow, the grass over here smells so different."

"Oh, am I suppose to be behaving myself now?"

 

And that was it.  She was off.  And through it all, Meg survived.  She didn't have a breakdown and she didn't get mad.  She just got determined.  The goat may have been distracted, but Meg did not give up.  She even had fun.  I'm so proud of her.

Wow!  I knew I had been neglecting my blog, but somehow it did not feel like it had been six months.  In that time all of my kids have had birthdays.  Both of my goats have had babies.  One of my hens hatched out chicks.  Not to mention all of winter has come and gone.  

Life has been busy.  At the same time, nothing really profound has happened.  I have to wonder if that is because what we do now just seems normal, or if I am really that boring.  I prefer to think it's the former.

At one time having goats be born on our homestead would have been at the very top of my list of profound things.

And wouldn't you know, as I was writing this Rob came in to tell me that Stormagedon (one of our goat bucks) was out.  There's a first for us.  Too bad I wasn't smart enough to grab my camera.  Luckily he was easy enough to get back in the pen.  All it took was a little hay.

Here is a picture of Stormagedon from a few months a go.  He has since lost his winter coat and is almost completely white!

Cream Soda with her baby when she was just a couple hours old.  I think this should be on a Mother's Day card.

Nigerian Dwarf baby #1.  

Nigerian Dwarf baby #2.

This picture I just love for some reason.  It cracks me up.  She looks like she belongs in the latest vampire movie.  All that is missing is the fangs.

That's all I have time for now.  I'll try to do better.

He Wants To Be A Model

Otis is looking for a new home.  We had planned to get pygmy does at one point, so at the time getting him seemed like a good idea.  Unfortunately things fell through concerning the does so we really don't have a reason to keep him other than as a pet.  

If any of you reading this has buck goats, they will know why they don't always make good pets.  When they are in Rut, they can get a little aggressive, not to mention smelly.  Also, when he can smell that the does we do have are in heat, it is stressful for him.  

So you can see  why it would be better to find him a home where he can be more useful.  Although I'm not sure he's planning to stay with farm life.  He seems to want a modeling job.  He's working on his portfolio now.  Here are his current head shots:

All of us here at Bramble Valley Homestead (our now official farm name) hope that you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving (if you are in the US) if you choose to celebrate it.  

Gratitude

I can hardly believe it's been nearly three months since I last posted.  Life has been busy this fall and sometimes things fall by the wayside.  Somehow it seems it is always those things I enjoy the most that get pushed aside when I get busy.  I have missed posting and hope to be doing it on a semi-regular basis at the least from now on.

Being that it is November and a Monday I thought it was the perfect time to get back into it with a Gratitude post.  As hectic and stressful as the last few months have been, I think I need it.

Today I am grateful for:
1) Knowing where my food comes from.
2) Good friends I know I can always count on.
3) The hugs of my children that somehow make the worst day seem worth while.

What are you grateful for today?

A Sandwich Fit For a Husband

Now and then I come up with something that just begs to be called man food. This is one of those things. It is simply two slices of turkey lunch meat (fried), two fried eggs, a slice of cheese, some mayo and some good German mustard between two slices of whole wheat bread. Delicious.

Family Reunion In The Rain

When summer events are planned, everyone always hopes for the best weather. Unfortunately it has to rain sometimes. As dry as this summer has been, the rain was welcomed in my garden. However, I don't think the family was really in need of watering.

Regardless of the rain, it was a great time. I really enjoyed the time with my mom's side of my family. It was the first time some of them had met my family, and the first time I had seen some since I was a child.

Here are some pictures of the rain:





Thank you to my cousin Camilla for all the work you put into making this happen. Rain can't ruin family bonds. We love you all.

Facebooking Bunny

Meg has decided this little guy is going to be her new showmanship rabbit. She brought him in the house today. Somehow he ended up on my desk and took over my facebook page for a bit.

What The Girls Have Been Up To

Not long ago Jade and Meg decided they wanted to try breeding their mini-rex rabbits as a way to make some extra money on the side. They need to make some repairs to their hutches and feed is getting more and more expensive.

The first couple of breeding attempts were not successful. As the saying goes, third times the charm. Here are a couple of my favorite mini-rex babies we have right now.

This one is a red broken. I can't tell if it's a buck or doe yet though. It seems to have very good color. If I could convince the girls to part with a some of the pet only rabbits that we have, I might let them keep it long enough to see how it does on a show table.


I would love to have better pictures to show you of this one. It seems to be hard to get good color distribution on a tricolor like this. If this one has good body type when it gets bigger, I think I will try to find a way to let the girls keep it long enough for one show and then sell it.

Most of the babies are what are called "Charlies" in the world of rabbit showing. That means that there is something about them that would disqualify them on the show table. This one and possibly one hymalayan colored baby are the only ones we have out of nine that have any chance of being show worthy.

If we do get rid of these ones, I think we will try to sell them straight off the farm rather than through Family Farm & Home like the girls plan to do with the pet quality ones.

Otis Gets A Friend

Otis has been a wonderful addition to our farm. But since we don't want the girls kidding in December (or January for that matter) we have had to keep him in a pen by himself. I have felt very sorry for him being all alone. Goats are very social and Otis is no exception. He would stand at the fence and call to us until someone would come out to see him.


As you can see in the above picture, he is a very nice looking boy. I was very worried about getting him because I've heard horror stories about pygmy goats being a bit on the wild side and this boy has horns! I love his horns, I think they make him look old and wise. I am so glad that he is loving and kind. Even being in full rut with the girls just on the other side of the wall he has never been the least bit aggressive.

Jade has been saying for the last year or so that she wanted to do a market goat as a 4H project and we have toyed with the idea of raising some goats specifically for meat. Since our budget this year is rather tight with needing to buy hay and already being stretched for our angoras (coming in just two weeks!!) we had no money left for breeding stock.


So Jade opted to spend her own money on this little guy. He is full boar and just six weeks old. With any luck he will be ready to breed in just another two months or so. Then Jade can breed him to Cream Soda, who is part boar, in hopes of getting a nice market goat to take to fair next year.

Normally we would keep new goats separated from all the other goats on the farm for two weeks just to observe them and be sure of their health. Since this buckling is only six weeks old and was just pulled from his mother, we opted to take the chance of introducing him to Otis right away. We felt that would be better for the baby since boars do tend to stress badly when first separated from their mothers.


I love this picture because you can see here just how small Otis really is. He is so muscular that all alone in pictures people tend to think he's much larger than he is. While he is barely taller than the buckling, he is much longer and wider. I wonder how long it will be until the younger one is bigger than him.

So now our only dilemma is what to name the little boy goat.

If anyone is wondering, yes the little boar has horns. We have having them removed on Thursday. I debated since they are already over an inch long and it will be an ordeal. The main reason that I decided to go ahead and get it done is because this goat is for a 4H project. That means that Jade will be the one primarily responsible for handling the care are breeding with him. Yes, we will be helping her where she needs it. However, she is only 10 and boar goats are strong and a boar goat in rut is protective of his females. So I don't want to leave him with weapons that could cause serious hard to any of my children. Wish us (especially him) luck with the dehorning on Thursday.

Next up....adorable baby bunnies.

Still Alive and Well...

It's been brought to my attention that I haven't posted in quite some time. We have been so busy with various projects and family things that I just haven't taken the time from my sleep schedule to post.

Since I have nothing going on this evening, I thought it would be a good time to post a bit of an update. So here's the good and bad of what has been happening here this spring and summer so far.

First off Jade went to the 4H Rabbit and Cavy Expo at Michigan State University in June. I don't remember the full results. I think her Junior team took first place in Cavy Judging. I do know that Jade took second place over all in the state for individuals in Cavy Judging. I'm very proud of her. She is really learning her stuff.

On a sadder note, we lost two goats this year. The first was Ginger Ale. We aren't sure why she died. She had no signs or symptoms of any kind. She was never as energetic or curious as any other goat I've ever met. She just wasn't very "goat like", for lack of a better way to describe it. We wonder now if she may have had some sort of genetic defect that we didn't know about. The other goat we lost was Leah. With her it was coccidiosis. Unfortunately by the time I realized something was wrong with her it was too late. We started her on medication, but it wasn't soon enough.

Luckily the other two goats are as healthy as ever and have been treated for coccidiosis as well to avoid any more tragedy.

On a happier note, it's the time of year for ducklings and chicks.

We have an abundance of ducklings this year. We thought we were limiting the number of eggs in the nests, but it seems that those mother ducks are sneakier than we realized.

We don't have the abundance of chicks that we were hoping for with the bantam chicks though. It took three clutches for us to finally get a hatch, and that hatch only has seven chicks. Seven would be a great number if we were only hatching for ourselves, but we have had a few 4H families that have wanted chicks this year. With any luck we will still be able to get another hatch this summer and maybe make some kids happy.

We also have added our first buck to the goat herd. He's a pygmy goat that I'm head over heels in love with. His previous owners called him "Shaggy", but we decided that the name "Ottis" is more fitting.

We are considering some new options with our goat herd over all here. The kids aren't crazy about the goat milk and although I like it, I'm not a big milk drinker. So adding more dairy goats to our herd really doesn't make much sense.

Jade would like to add a boer goat to the herd so she can raise market goats for the fair. I've also been offered a pair of nice pygmy does. We are also considering adding some angora goats to the herd.

Whatever we decide we need to add either another buck or a wether to be a companion to Ottis. I think the pygmy and angora options are both good ones since I can cross them and grow a nice fiber herd. I'd love to have my own ready source of fiber instead of having to buy it.

Other than animal stuff going on, there is the garden. As always it needs to be weeded. It seems like no matter how much I weed it still needs to be done.

I planted purple beans this year and I am so glad that I did. The plants them selves are such a dark rich green with a hint of purple hue. Then the blooms start out as dark purple buds that slowly lighten as they open up. I love seeing that sort of beauty in my veggie garden. It makes me happy. I think I will grow them every year.