My Holiday Wish List

1. A Pressure Canner

My 2012 resolution to stop freezing and start canning never got off the ground.  But the freezer is chock full of goodies! I was recently reminded of how easy it is to can, especially milk. The gallons of milk frozen and stuffed into every crevice in my freezer would be gone and I could simply fill the shelves with quarts of pasteurized, canned milk that only takes about 10 minutes to process. Goal for 2013.

2. A Giant Mudroom

Not white, for sure. A place where dripping muddy boots can leave puddles on the floor, where bucky smelling clothes can hang alone without contaminating our 'good' clothes. Where hay bits and goat berries can fall off our overalls without getting dragged into the house. Maybe in the next house. After I win the lottery.

3. An Amish boy with a pitchfork.

They work hard. We need help!

Although, substitutions can be negotiated on a case by case basis.   Good thing Rog never reads this blog.  I found these on ebay, if you select priority shipping they will get here before Christmas.

4. Hay. Alfalfa. Green, lush, non-shitty hay.

Prices are high, quality is low. I swear the goats give me the stink eye when I feed them.  Were spending 3 x normal  expenses to get poor quality hay. Next year we will load up early, drought or no drought. We did, however, just trade some cow-quality round bales for a new haywagon, so its not all bad. 

5. A maid, preferably live-in.

Someone who enjoys following us around and picking up hay bits and wiping up dog prints and nose prints.  A bonus would be if he/she enjoyed picking hay bits out of our hair and clothes as well. Also who is specially skilled to clean the drips of milk that inevitably seem to spill between the glass layers on my oven door where they would otherwise stay for all eternity. Also is passionate about cleaning milk bottles and plastic goat nipples. 

6. A milkroom

Shiny, clean and smells like bleach. No flies, climate controlled, hot water, oooh! and a window.  I'd get rid of my plastic hawk that currently hangs above our milk stands to keep the tresspassing birds off of them. Really I'd settle for a canvas sheet / wall. And maybe some concrete on the floor. Or maybe Rog will let me move his hunting blind in to the barn and I'll sit in it. 

7. A sickle bar mower

This is for Rog. The last item to make us self-sufficient at baling our own hay and not having to rely on a neighbor to cut for us. Selfishly its for me too, so I can stop hearing about it and stop finding issues of farm and dairy and farm tek littered with post-it notes and page markers. 

8. Chickens

Why on Earth would a girl who hates birds be asking for chickens?  Because I'm asking for chickens that don't peck eggs and eat them. And don't perform daily Houdini escapes to poop in our bucks' water buckets. Who roost on roosts, not Capone's back. Who lay eggs in nest boxes, not hay racks. Only a select few are misbehaving, I'm going to start picking them off soon...

9. Head Gear

For when I get brave and try to catch the chickens. And to protect me from the  little wrens that made a nest in the loft in our buck barn and scare the pants off me daily when they dive bomb my head. Also for when Hemi tries to attack my hair. 

 10. A joyful and healthy 2013 for yours and ours.

Time flies

Today = 2 months until kids start arriving. Yikes! I feel like I just bred them! As it stands now I have 17 bred does, but I just decided to post a couple for sale so we will see. If they weren't so stinking cute I wouldn't put myself through this every year...

We have some breedings we are excited about this year, our 2012 doe kids are all quite strong, so we are hoping to fine tune things this year. In the Alpines, We have the majority bred to Bugs and our first Bugs daughters, Sage and Lottie will freshen this year and we can get a better indication of what he can produce. We bred both Cammile and Sage to *B Windrush Farms Kona Samson, whose dam, SGCH Windrush Farms IRS Saffron is just beautiful and finished high at Nationals the past few years.

In the Saanens, we bred to Mickey again, I didn't dislike any of his kids so far and I want more of them! Mona Lisa was bred to Bugs out of convenience. She will be a first freshener this year and after we evaluate her udder we can choose a more "planned" breeding next year.

For the Toggs, Elina, Emilene and Macy were all bred to Capone. Now that we are off his "all buckling" streak, I admire and have retained most of his daughters and now we will have a few more. Mallory is breds to Rowe's Fairtrade Freetrade, who will hopefully pass down more lovely Rowe genes that she received from Macy's sire, Rowe's Falcon Redbird. Esmerelda and May were both bred to GGF Alpha Snowbuck's Jerry, Snowbuck has several impressive progeny and Jerry's dam, Jayla, is beautiful as well.

Soon anticipation will turn to excitement, then to exhaustion as they arrive by the dozen! For the coming weeks I'm going to enjoy the reprieve from milking and keep stockpiling hay. I am not overly excited about pulling out the bucket feeders and the many many hoses that come with them...

Prepping and waiting for winter

Another winter like last year would certainly make my commute more enjoyable. Probably too good to be true though...

A mild winter thus far follows a summer drought and results in hay prices so high that my shoe collecting is on hold. Gotta feed those expectant momma goats well so every week we search for usable alfalfa and grass. We are down to 2 months until the spring babies start arriving, it seems to go faster every year. Just last week we cheered in celebration of hanging up the milk lines for good as we finally managed to get all of the does dried off so they can store their energy and focus on their growing kids. Based on the growing bellies in the barn we will have plenty of multiples this year!

So the turkey newbies screwed up...we realized a couple months back that we had two males, they strutted and displayed their feathers proudly. So we assumed a lot of their girth was just that .... feathers. They dressed out at 35 lbs...each! That's a lot of turkey for a household of two, especially since we were only planning on 6 for dinner. Luckily we had the foresight to have them halved, planning to smoke some and roast some. Half went to the neighbors who kindly pointed out that the turkey leg would be plenty to feed them both. Half went in the freezer for Christmas-time. The two smallest halves went in to a brine for Thanksgiving dinner, the necks made an extremely rich gravy, they were so large I had to put them in the crock pot overnight. Here is a wing on a standard 10" dinner plate. Needless to say we had plenty of leftovers.

Post holiday pig-outs gave way to hunting and gathering mode. Spreading manure to boost next years harvest, turning over the garden and planting rye grass to serve as mulch for next years veggies. We harvested the last few carrots of the year.

The first deer hunting day of the year was a success for Rog and we quickly processed the doe for the freezer. As soon as we find some spare time we plan to load the smoker with homemade jerky and sausage made from the venison, goat meat and ground piggy-pork.

We have to take time to enjoy the few remaining pleasant nights before the winter dull settles in. We may not see the sun until May!

More evidence that we are destined to eat cheese...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121212134044.htm

Dec. 12, 2012 — The first unequivocal evidence that humans in prehistoric Northern Europe made cheese more than 7,000 years ago is described in research by an international team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, published December 12 in Nature.