No apologies, just more fun

I thought about apologizing for the long wait for the next post, but we will skip that and move on to the good stuff. We are well into early summer now here in Springfield, Missouri. We had some cold weather last week when it got down into the 30s at night and we had some frost on the grass in the morning. Now it is in the 60s at night and well into the 80s during the day. We got the swimming pool up and running a few weeks ago and with the warm weather this week the kids are swimming nearly every evening, which is great. The best thing for a pool is for it to be used nearly every day.

I have it in mind to cut my own hay and put it up in haystacks. Now I don't know anything about haystacks and haying, so this is all a learning experience. I used to have a hay baler but I sold all my haying equipment some years ago thinking I was just going to raise cattle on our land and didn't have enough land for that and for hay, too. But now that we are doing pigs and other small animals I am going back toward haying. So, the plan is to see if I can buy a hay mower and hay rake and then make haystacks instead of bales. That way, they don't have to be stored in a barn and I don't have to have a baler. I am always coming up with ways to spend money on farm equipment. Actually, with the last hay equipment I had, I bought it for about $1,000 and sold it for $2,500, so it turned out okay. (that's probably the last time I will ever make any profit on this farm)

We had some real excitement a few weeks ago when I decided to burn the grass out of the fence line and the fire took off into the field next door. We had to call the fire department and it took them about 3 hours to control it. Actually all they did was to keep it from getting into the yard of the house and keep it from jumping the road. It ended up burning 30 acres. The property owner came over and thanked me for burning off his hay field, as he said it really is good for the grass to be burned off every year. It scared me to death.



Brenda and the kids are watching the fire department trying to control the grass fire.  The neighbors are watching from their pickup truck.  They asked me if I wouldn't mind burning the rest of the field, but I didn't think the firemen would appreciate that.

  I was just thankful the neighbors weren't upset with me for burning their field for them. I made the last meal for the summer on the wood cookstove. The weather was cool, and I had just enough firewood cut for one more meal. I cooked the meal on the stove and baked bread in the oven. The meal was great, but the bread was a bit too wet in the center, probably because I let it get too hot, so the outside was getting too dark before the inside had a chance to cook completely. I will practice some more come cool fall weather.




Two pots on the stove and the bread is rising on top of the warming oven.

 Well, we have another newest member of the family, his name is King but we call him Matthew, as it sounds better.



Matthew enjoying his dinner.

 Matthew is a meth baby, his mother and father are in and out of jail for drugs and other assorted offenses. He is about 6 weeks old now, and is doing very well. As far as we can tell he doesn't have any long term problems from the meth. He will probably be with us for a while, as it normally takes a year or more for legal stuff to be done so that he can be available for adoption. Easter has come and gone, it was nice to have our friends' kids the Zachary family come over and help the little kids coloring Easter eggs on Saturday before Easter.






Most of the color ended up on the eggs.  We did have one spill, but that's not too bad, considering.

 Brenda made lots of devilled eggs for the Easter breakfast at church and lots more over the next few weeks.



It's interesting what a little bit of food coloring and some ordinary vinegar can do.

 My next brainstorm was to buy some baby chicks. Lots of baby chicks. Lots and lots and lots. Like 60 of them. The idea is that we buy chicken at the store almost every week. So, why not just raise them myself? Originally, I thought that the hens would lay eggs, and sit on them, and raise the chicks, and then we would eat them. But I think the hens got wind of this and so they have refused to sit on the eggs. So, we get eggs (we have eggs coming out of our ears) but no chicks. So, I bought 60 chicks from the Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon, which is not too far from here. It really was a good deal, I got 50 rooster chicks for about 50 cents apiece, which was really good, and then I got 10 pullet chicks to replace the hens I have now when they stop laying. The rooster chicks are cheap because most people don't want a bunch of roosters running around, but I plan to kill them all before they start crowing.



This is what 60 baby (one day old) chicks look like.  It was kind of a shock to see how much 60 baby chicks will eat.

My buddy Tyler Zachary came over and helped me build a new chicken house for these chickens, as the old one is full with the 4 hens and a rooster, there would be room for that many chicken in there, anyway. Since these will all be in the freezer long before winter, it didn't need to be weatherproof, nor did it need any insulation. In fact, if anything, it needed lots of good ventilation. So, I got some used barn roofing tin sheets and used that for the sides and roof. I built it on 4x4 skids to make it easier to move around, as I plan to move them down with the pigs when they are big enough.




Lots of "helpers."

  Actually, considering my complete lack of construction skills it turned out very nice. We were able to complete the whole thing with just a little bit left over.






All I can say is, praise to the Lord God for helping me get this all figured out.  Usually with these things I end up having to run to the store for more of one thing or another, sometimes more than one trip.

 We needed to do something with the rest of the venison that we still had in the deep freeze and we were buying a lot of pork sausage, as Brenda is allergic to beef. So, I decided to grind the rest of the venison and use that instead of ground beef or pork sausage. I boned out the rest of the venison we had and ran it through the electric grinder (the new meat saw has a grinder attached to one side). It worked great! I ended up with about 17 lb. of ground venison. We have been using it for meals since then (tacos, lasagna, spaghetti) and it tastes great! I really can't tell the difference from ground beef, but maybe my taste buds are just not very refined.

Packed in one pound portions in zip lock bags and then into the deep freeze.

I let the chicks out into their little pen during the day and then lock them up at night to keep them from being eaten by the wild animals around here. The pen is small enough to protect them from hawks.


It was interesting how big this area was when they first started to go out, and how small it is getting now that the grass is getting beaten down.  I will move them to a new patch of grass soon.

 I built the chicken house with space for the water and feed containers, but I found after a while that it worked much better for the feed and water to be outside, unless it is raining. They don't mess it up as much, and they don't dump it over so much when it is outside.




They have 3 tiers of perches, I don't want to put one perch above another, as they would poop on each other.  I think there's enough room for all 55 of them to roost at night when they get big.  There's 55 because 5 of them didn't survive the first week.

  The plan is to butcher the white female hog this weekend. I haven't weighed them so I really don't know how much she weighs, but I figure probably between 250 and 300 lb., which would yield about 175-200 lb. of pork altogether, including the little bits that make sausage, and the lard for making soap. Even the little bits like ears, tail, pig's feet, everything can be used for something. I have saved some wood ashes from the stove and fireplace to make lye for making soap.




My boar pig.  He has Hampshire markings, but he is half Hampshire and half Yorkshire.  The plan is to breed him with the Large Black sow.

 It's hard to believe that last September they were so small you could hold one in your two hands.

Bottle babies, one week old, last September.




Automatic garbage disposals.  Last November. about 60 lb.

 

Feed, lots and lots of feed. I can tell you, it doesn't save us any money, but I do enjoy taking care of them.





Pork. Pork chops, pork tenderloin, pork shoulder, pork sausage, ham, bacon, ribs, yum!