Category: Around the Homestead

Animals, Around the Homestead

The baby lambs have arrived…

Gretchen

As of this morning we had six baby lambs alive and kicking.  We have two boys and four girls.  Yea!  I’ll take some pictures over the weekend.  Taking pictures of them in lambing pens isn’t very easy.

Randy and I are in a disagreement this morning over Dish Network.  There are few things I find as big of a waste of money as cable/satellite television.  Originally he convinced me it needed to be a part of our lives because he wanted it for football.  Okay, fine.  Well, they have yet to have his team on the channels we are offered, so every year he complains about it.  This year Dish Network moved the NFL package to a higher package and it would cost us another $200/year to get it.  Hello, I’m already freaking out about the $400/year we already throw in the toilet for it.  The TV shows we do watch every once in awhile are all on the local stations and we live too far away to get cable.  I would much rather use the $400/year on entertainment outside the home whether it be concerts, movies, or even buying a season of our favorite television show when it is released on DVD.  Who cares if we are a year behind?

In other news, it was 61 degrees on my way home last night and supposed to drop to 18 in the night.  Whoa!  Gotta love Kansas weather!  All the animals are on lock down today because it is only supposed to get up to 25 degrees today and snow tomorrow.  Randy and I agreed we don’t want the chickens out an about without Hank (our guard llama) out and about to protect them.  We have caught a coyote sneaking up in the daytime, so it’s better safe than sorry.

We are still trying to eat out of our freezer to make room for half a grass-fed beef we are splitting with another couple.  We started off with 25 or more homegrown chickens, half a pig, a deer, catfish, and a lamb.  Not to mention all the things I have frozen along the way (broth, cookies, fruit, etc.).  We aren’t doing too badly.

Last night for dinner we had venison fajitas which turned out really well.  Randy grilled four venison steaks on the grill the night before, so all I had to do was cook up an organic onion and red bell pepper in some olive oil, add the meat to heat through, and wa-lah!  I did have to break down and buy ww tortillas because I didn’t have time to make them Monday.  We also had brown rice with homemade ro-tel and taco seasoning added and topped our fajitas with homemade yogurt and ro-tel salsa.  They were really good!  We will definitely whip this meal up again.

Hope everyone is having a great day.

Animals, Around the Homestead, Homemaking

Pet Litter Freshener & Humidifier addition…

Gretchen

I was the only being who could walk upright (not including the chickens) on the farm Friday.  Breakfast consisted of old-fashioned organic oatmeal topped with raisins, walnuts, and one teaspoon sucanat. 

It was a whopping 15 degrees when I went out to do morning chores.  My morning chores consist of:

Breaking ice on the stock tanks

Turning off the barn lights

Looking over all the sheep for signs of sickness or labor

Breaking ice on the chickens water

Opening the chickens doors

Feeding and watering the cats

Letting the cats out to roam

Changing the litter box and sprinkling with Pet Litter Freshener

*I used to use Mrs. Meyer’s Pet Litter Freshener, now I just make my own.

Pet Litter Freshener:

1 cup Baking Soda

5 drops Orange Essential Oil (be careful with citrus EO as they can cause skin irritations

10 drops Lavender Essential Oil

We use the inexpensive litter or floor absorbent from the auto parts store, so this freshener helps keep down odor so the cats routinely use the litter box and don’t decide to go elsewhere.

Once inside I make our bed, continue doing laundry, and refill the humidifier.

Humidifier:

3 gallons of Water

20 drops Tea Tree Oil

20 drops Eucalyptus Oil

I’m also on a mission to consume more Red Raspberry Leaf Tea to help with cramping.  So at 5:30am, 8:30am, and 10:00am I treated myself to tea.

I managed to get our files organized and all our manuals (kitchen appliances, shop tools, etc.) filed away in a nice orderly fashion. 

Lunch consisted of leftover Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken and brown rice.  Oh, don’t forget breaking ice on the stock tanks.  I also check on the sheep every two hours since it’s lambing season.

In the afternoon I headed up to Grandma’s to get four five-gallon buckets of barley/corn for the sheep this week.  I also filled all four of our bird feeders with sunflower seeds.

By then it was time for evening chores which consist of:

Breaking ice on the stock tanks

Turning on the barn lights

Looking over all the sheep for signs of sickness or labor

Breaking ice on the chickens water

Feeding the chickens

Collecting eggs (or egg this time of year)

Feeding the cats

Cat Fight…..

Later in the evening just before dark we lock up the cats, chickens and the sheep for the night.

I also try to play fetch with our blue heeler, Ash, at least twice a day so she doesn’t drive Randy crazy the minute he walks through the door.

Like she tends to annoy Koal all day everyday.

Or how she annoys me by barking all day.  If you have ever heard a cattledog bark you will never for get it.  It’s a high-pitched yip that makes your temples ache.

So we aim for this…..

She’s a lot cuter when she’s shut down.

Around the Homestead, Gardening, In The Kitchen

Organic Gardening & Tamale Pie

Gretchen

I am already getting into spring mode at our farm.  This weekend will be spent pruning our fruit trees and shrubs and starting a few seeds.  Organic Gardening offers an Almanac where you can select your region and it will give you a month-by-month guideline for things you should do each month.  February is pruning month for my area. 

We are still awaiting the first baby lamb of the year.  The girls appear as if they could go at anytime, but still no babies.

I made tamale pie for dinner on Monday, it was really good.

Tamale Pie

1 lb. of hamburger

1 Onion

1 T Olive Oil

1 qt. Frozen corn

3 T. Taco seasoning

1 qt. Ro-tel

Topping:

1 ¼ c Whole wheat pastry flour
¾ c Cornmeal

2 T Sucanat
2 t Baking powder
½ t Sea salt
1 c milk, buttermilk, or fresh cream
¼ c Olive Oil
1 large egg or two small eggs

Cook onions in olive oil in a cast iron skillet until transparent.  Add hamburger and cook until no longer pink.  Once the hamburger is fully cooked add ro-tel, taco seasoning and corn.  Simmer 5 minutes.

In a bowl combine milk, oil, and eggs and mix until well combined.  Add dry ingredients and mix with a fork until just moistened.  Don’t over mix. 

Pour the meat mixture into a 9×13 casserole dish.  Top with cornmeal mixture.  Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

We top our’s with a little ranch dressing and homemade salsa. 

I try to make the NT salsa whenever possible.  However, now that tomatoes are out of season and I refuse to buy them at the store here is what I do for salsa.  I have a lot of canned ro-tel in the pantry, so when we run out of salsa in the wintertime here is what I do.

Quick and Easy Salsa

1 qt. homemade ro-tel

Chili powder to taste

Place ro-tel and chili powder in a food processor.  Tah-dah.  It’s quick, it’s easy, and it taste pretty good too.  You could always add cilantro, garlic, and other seasonings if you would like.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week.

Around the Homestead, Herbs

iHerb

Gretchen

I just found a pretty great site.  Keep in mind I have not ordered from this site yet, but would like to know if anyone has used it.  I was on Katie’s site reading about her love for Wahini rice and went in search of it in bulk.  I came across iHerb and as always pick a product (this time it was a 25 lb bag of Lundberg, Organic wild rice.  I waited for it to calculate the shipping for the usual $10-$20 usually charged.  What, $4?  I added another bag to see if it would increase, recalculated, $4!  So, I started perusing their products and found some interesting stuff. 

I’ll let you know if I order and how it goes!

Have a wonderful day!

Animals, Around the Homestead

A warm and windy weekend…

Gretchen

In Kansas you learn fast you have to take the good with the bad.  If you have a 72 degree in January with gusts up to 30 mph, you still think it is a nice day.  We took advantage of the nice weather over the weekend and got quite a bit done.

Friday, Randy was off work because he had worked really late the night before.  So, we went to a town 30 minutes away to get our passport pictures taken and saw a girl I went to high school with and had a nice chat.  Randy and I went out for a nice lunch and spent the remainder of the afternoon hanging out together and stopped to visit our neighbors on our way home.  Saturday, we picked up limbs around our house from the ice storm.  We are MAYBE a quarter of the way done.  It is really a mess.  Sunday, we spent the better part of the day building our shute. 

Halfway There

The finished product.

Here are the girls and Hank just relaxing and doing some cud chewing while we worked and slaved on their shute.  Randy tried to lure them down the shute with a bucket of corn at feeding time.  Our registered Texel ewe, June, was the only one who followed and got hand fed a bite of corn.

Here are the Banties roaming.  We have chicken wire between the dogs and where the chickens roam.  The little black dog in the background doesn’t look like much, but he is a cold-blooded killer.  Notice the ice we have been scooping out of our stock tank.  The sad looking cedar trees have been converted to back scratchers for the girls, notice all the wool.

Sunday, we were invited to Mom and Dad’s for dinner so after we finished up our evening chores we headed down there the hang out with them and eat.  I also took a few pictures of his baby lambs to send to my cousins in North Carolina. 

Spooky and I had a little photo shoot two weeks ago, so I thought I would share.

Gotta love camera strings.

and of course a self portrait

This is what our older, wiser cat, Cooter, thought of the photo shoot.  He high tailed it out of my reach.

I have also started using some of the things I got in my Mountain Rose Herbs order.  Their coconut oil is wonderful and less expensive than I could find it anywhere else (even including shipping).  I used my citric acid to make mozzarella over the weekend.  And hope to get in my lip balm tubes I ordered on eBay so I can make lip balm this weekend.

We have started using Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar on our dog’s food to try to combat some skin allergies Koal is having.  We use one teaspoon morning and evening.  We didn’t know if they would eat their food with the ACV on it, but it hasn’t affected their eating at all, and Koal is a very picky eater.  Hopefully it will help neutralize their little systems. 

Monday was house cleaning day since it didn’t get done Friday.  I also made homemade corn tortillas (I’ll post this a little bit later), enchilada sauce, and crockpot enchilladas.  I also made mozzarella, cream cheese, yogurt, and kefir, so I had a pretty productive day. 

Now it’s back to the office to work!

Around the Homestead, Homemaking, In The Kitchen

Monday at Home…

Gretchen

Monday I was home by myself.  It was extremely cold, so I tried to get chores over with early in the morning so I wouldn’t have to dread them any longer.  I drug a hose out of the building and everyone got fresh water, fresh salt and mineral, and I Everyone was doing well.  The sheep and llama don’t seem to mind the cold very much.

I got a slow start on housework when I returned indoors.  It was just one of those days I was really dragging.  I baked bread, walked on the treadmill, worked on our taxes, and did some reading and note taking.

In the afternoon I made another loaf of bread called:

Quick Sourdough Bread

I used all olive oil (4 T.) instead of butter just because it was easier, whole wheat bread flour, and sucanat instead of sugar. 

Any tricks on how to measure out flour without having to sifted would be wonderful.  I think I would make this again if I didn’t have to sift three cups of flour.  It’s not bad.  Mine didn’t need 40 minutes to bake, however.

I also whipped up a pot of Broccoli Soup that was really good.  I used “fresh” cream I had frozen and it worked great.  We had Sloppy Joes and Broccoli Soup for dinner.  It was a perfect day for soup since it was so cold and yucky outside. 

Sloppy Joes:

½ lb hamburger

1 cup beans, cooked (I use leftover pinto, black, whatever I have)

Ketchup, Mustard, and Sucanat to taste

Served on homemade bread with canned sweet green tomatoes, Yum!

As promised, here is the ketchup recipe I used this summer to can homemade ketchup from tomatoes out of our garden.

Ketchup:

2 gal. tomato pulp

*This consists of the juice, ran through a food mill, and boiled hard for one hour, you should have 2 gallons remaining once it’s boiled.

1 cup cane juice crystals

1 cup sucanat

3 cups white vinegar (could possibly be decreased so it’s thicker)

1 t. ginger

1 t. allspice

1 t. ground mustard

1 t. cinnamon

3 T. sea salt

Tomato Paste

Once you have boiled the tomato juice hard for one hour, add one add sugars, spices, and salt.  Boil for another 30 minutes.  Bottle and seal.

I canned mine in pint jars although it was still pretty thin in consistency.  When I was ready to use it I took two pints of the ketchup, put it in a pan, added one 6 oz can of tomato paste, cooked on low until the tomato paste was dissolved, and then placed in a quart jar in the refrigerator.

Hope everyone is staying warm and had a nice weekend.

Animals, Around the Homestead

Friday…

Gretchen

I’m going to do something a little different this time around.  I’m going to make separate entries for the different days I was a away from the computer and couldn’t post them.

Friday it was really cold and windy here.  First thing in the morning I got started on laundry, cleaning the kitchen, made the bed, and baked bread.  Once the sun came up, around 7:30, I headed outside to do our chores which include feeding, watering, and changing the litter box for the cats, opening the door, feeding, and watering the chickens, and breaking the ice on the sheep’s water, looking them over really well, and turning off their building lights.  I also try to fill our four bird feeders at least twice a week with millet or sunflower seeds.  Then I head back inside to warm up with a cup of hot tea.

Dad and Randy went to an auction to look at a tractor for us, and a grain truck for Dad.  Dad’s hoses were frozen that morning and he couldn’t get his sheep watered.  So, once the sun had been out for an hour or so I headed down to their house to water his sheep.  An hour and a half and 16 tubs and stock tanks later everyone was watered, and I was on my way home.

Once I got home I still needed to vacuum the house, get dinner started and do the evening chores.  I vacuumed first then headed outside to do the chores.  We were out of corn, so I loaded up four five gallon buckets and headed to Grandma’s where the corn is kept.  I gave the sheep their corn, collected eggs, and fed the cats.  When I got inside Randy called to see if I had started dinner yet, “nope,” he suggested we go to dinner, just the two of us.  I can’t even remember the last time the two of us had gone to dinner together, probably on our California trip in September.  It was so nice.  We went to a nice little restaurant in a town 20 miles away (that’s about as close as it gets here).  We talked and laughed and just enjoyed each other’s company.

Remember the dog we found last week?  Well, no one had claimed him and his time was coming to an end.  So, we were debating what to do.  We felt responsible since we were the one’s who found him and picked him up.  So, we decided we would bring him home with us and as long as he got along with our dogs, couldn’t jump the fence, and didn’t harass the sheep, he could live with us.  We would go the next morning to pick him up and bring him home.

Around the Homestead

Sunday…

Gretchen

Sunday was cold and windy again.  Randy set a heater up in his shop and worked on the engine for a pickup he is trying to get up and running.  I stayed inside, walked on my treadmill and made lemon squares.  My cousin came over mid-morning with his loader and unloaded our orange VW Bus off the trailer so Dad could have his trailer back and Randy could start working on it. 

I wish I had taken pictures.  It was really amazing how he unloaded it in the wind and cold and didn’t hurt it a bit.

My Grandma invited us up for lunch since my cousins were out visiting, so we headed up there to eat and visit with everyone.  Afterwards my Aunt and Uncle came to our house to visit and check out the VW bus we are restoring.  Luckily the house was clean; my biggest fear of people dropping in is that our house will be messy.  Whew!

In the afternoon we watched the last of the playoffs (Chargers vs. Patriots).  Sorry if there are any Patriot fans out there, but I just keep thinking of the saying “cheaters never prosper” and wonder when it is going to kick in.  We were cheering for the Chargers all the way. 

In between games we ran to my cousin’s house to get a tool back he had borrowed and visited for awhile with them.  He has a nice round top shed with a hug wood burner inside.  It stays nice and toasty in there, but whenever we leave Randy and I struggle from the dry heat.  It really makes us rethink a cookstove or woodstove if we build a house.  Hopefully a big pot of water will balance it out.

We also stayed up for most of the Packers vs. Giants game.  My family (Dad, Mom, and Brother) are huge Packers fans, so Randy and I cheered relentlessly for the Giants.  Now the Super Bowl, Patriots vs. Giants, Go Giants!

Around the Homestead, Gardening, Green Living, In The Kitchen

Cold Weather and a “Green” Air Purifier

Gretchen

It snowed here yesterday, so I got to leave work 1 and 1/2 early.  Yea!  I got dinner made and over with early so we could relax a bit.  I cut out the pattern for a shirt I hope to make.  I took a sewing class awhile back, but I’m still not completely comfortable yet.  I figure the best way to learn is by going for it, trial and error.

I have been adding some supplements to my routine over the past few months in hopes of missing out on all the winter illness that goes around.  Randy and I have both started taking MonaVie.  It seems to be working really well combating bugs.  I had a sore throat off and on, but it never progressed into an infection and no other symptoms joined in so I was pleased.  I also used to have extremely painful cramps and no longer have to deal with that monthly inconvenience as the MonaVie seems to have given my body the boost it needs to overcome some of the things I was struggling with.  I have also added liquid kelp and brewer’s yeast to my diet to help with thyroid support.  I just add the recommended 4 drops of liquid kelp to a glass of water and sprinkle 1/2 t.-1 t. brewer’s yeast on my oatmeal or mixed in my kefir shakes for breakfast.  The brewer’s yeast has a fairly strong flavor, so I only use what I can disguise in tasty food.

This week’s menu turned out nicely.  The only adjustment was spaghetti last night instead of baked spaghetti due to our homemade mozzarella going bad.  We are having the ham and beans tonight and homemade cornbread topped with homemade maple syrup.  Yum!  We also use ACV on our ham and beans to help with digestion one of its many benefits.

I’m also on a mission to increase the number of house plants we have.  House plants are a great way to purify the air inside your home.  I am lucky enough to have a neighbor with established plants who starts them for me.  Try finding someone who will let you take starts off the plants, put them in a jar of water until they have rooted, and then transplant to a pot.

This is a fun little website on houseplants.  I have two Schefflera (these will start from a cutting), a Pothos, a ton of Aloe, and a Philodendron (of course).  I also have a Bouganvilla staying indoors with us through the winter.  Not the handiest plant to move around as it has thorns and is a climber, but I “just had to have it.”  If you have pets/children be sure you are aware of what plants are poisonous so you can keep them out of reach.  I doubt this is a comprehensive list, but will at least get you started.  Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean we have to breathe the same stagnant, stuffy air day after day.  One other suggestion, be sure to watch for heat vents.  Placing a houseplant too close to a vent can be bad news for the plant.

It is almost the weekend for me.  It’s going to be a cold one.  I am hoping to make some progress on the shirt I am making, clean the house, finish the laundry, and of course baking and cooking for the week ahead.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Animals, Around the Homestead, Homemaking

Baby Lambs, Homemaking, Stray Dog, and a VW or two…

Gretchen

I am off work on Mondays and Fridays and work 10 hour days with 2 hours total on the road Tuesday-Thursday.  I get some grief from my family because I’m a “part-timer,” however; it works out for them from time to time also.

Friday, I was up bright and early to send Randy off to work.  He had been sick with an upset stomach the day before and still not feeling 100%.  I spent the morning cleaning, baking bread, and doing the outside chores before heading to my Grandma’s to vacuum her house for her.  She was in the hospital the week before Christmas and given strict orders vacuuming is not to be a part of her activities anymore.  So, she has asked me to tend to the vacuuming and any other housekeeping chores she cannot do herself. 

I got home in time to start making dinner, to vacuum our house, and finish up the laundry.  Finally, at 2:30 I sat down on the sofa to snuggle with the pups and do some reading.  Five minutes later my Dad pulls in the driveway and tells me he needs help with a ewe.  She has been laboring for some time now and not having any luck delivering.  As a recap, my Dad broke his ankle last spring and can’t maneuver very well these days.

So, I grabbed a few birthing necessities, changed clothes (thankfully), and headed to their house to assist.  The ewe is a first timer and smaller/younger than Dad likes them when entering motherhood.  He had a ram clear two fences and made his way into the pen of ewe lambs.  Dad thinks about 6-8 of them were bred by the ram.  This ewe was the second one to go into labor.  Anyway, as I began checking her I could tell she hadn’t dilated, I only found one foot at first, then two but couldn’t tell if they were the front or back legs.  (Keep in mind I am still new to the world of sheep birth.)  I began pull the lamb and finally felt the head.  Whew!  She slowly dilated a little, but still not enough to pull the lamb.  To make a long story short, I ended up lying on the ground with a sweatshirt wrapped around the lamb’s legs, Dad was holding the ewe so she wouldn’t lay down, and we pulled, and pulled, and pulled until finally a bouncing baby girl arrived.  Mama and baby are fine, but it was a scary little event.

It was kind of weird in my last entry I made reference to the fact if we happened to find another dog we would make it our own.  Well, we found a dog along the side of the road Saturday evening.  To make a very long story short, it smelled faintly of skunk and had a cut on his face, the vet said we would have to quarantine the dog 6 months with minimal contact to make sure it didn’t have rabies or have the dog put down.  We slept on it and decided to keep the dog, borrowed a 6×10 dog run, wired the bottom, and attempted to clean the cut on the side of his face.  As I was cleaning the cut I noticed small little pieces of something coming out of his cheek.  It wasn’t a skunk after all, but a porcupine.  My cousin called to let us know she had found the owner of the dog.  They came to get him and told us they were going to have the dog put down because they didn’t want to deal with it (they had the dog a grand total of one day, are in their 70s, and both disabled, eh hem).  Some friends of theirs had found the dog as a stray and asked them if they wanted it, and they agreed take the dog.  The wife came to get the dog and borrowed our collar and leash to take him to the vet.  As she was leaving said she would just have the dog doctored, pay for it, and deal with her husband when she got home (he is the one who brought the dog home and also the one who decided to have it put down).  When Randy stopped in to pick up our collar and leash the next day he asked what had happened to the dog.  Apparently he had previously had surgery on his face for a broken jaw, they had wired his chin to a metal plate they had placed in his cheek, and the wire-like stitches were protruding back out of his skin (not porcupine quills after all).  So, the vet fixed him all up and is kenneling him for one week while the current owners try to locate the previous owners.  Obviously someone has put some money into this dog and may be out there looking for him.  If the owners aren’t located he will either go into the humane society or be put to sleep because the current owners have decided they don’t want him anymore.  People absolutely amaze me, but that is beside the point.  Randy and I are tossing around the idea of whether we would like to take the dog on or not if a home is not found by the end of the week.  There are just a lot of things to consider before we can commit to another animal (will he get along with our dogs, can he clear our fence, will he hurt our sheep or chickens, can we afford another dog, etc.).

Monday I helped my mom on the computer.  She is taking over my Avon business so I can use my time to make my own soaps, shampoos, etc. as opposed to buying the chemical laden type.  My afternoon was spent working on our taxes and making meals for the week ahead of time.  I also made bierocks with homemade ketchup.  We liked this ketchup better than the NT recipe, so I will try to remember to pass it along this week.

We are going to try a new routine.  We have taken on yet another project of restoring a VW bus.  Since the days are noticeably starting to lengthen we have decided to rearrange our evening schedule so Randy will have time to work on the VW, and I will have time to do yoga before eating since you are supposed to do it on an empty stomach.  We are pushing dinner back about 45 minutes to one hour to give us time to do our own thing before eating.  I don’t like eating too late, but 6:30 or 7:00 shouldn’t be too bad.

Without further ado……

This is the parts bus (engine, etc.)

And this is the keeper.  Kind of hard to tell the difference, huh?  We are thinking green for the color, but as you can see we are a long way from paint.  First things first it needs an axle and tire to get it off Dad’s car hauler.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day.