Apple Cider'ish Jelly

Rhiannon loves apples.  I'd bet she eats at least one every day.  Since we go through so many apples, the chickens get a lot of apple cores.  And even though I feel giving the "waste" to our chickens isn't a waste at all, I still felt like I should somehow utilize those cores for something other than chicken snacks.

Then I read someplace that you can save the cores and skins in the freezer until you have enough to make jelly with them (now why didn't I think of that???).  So since before the beginning of Summer, I've been cutting up Rhiannon's apples for her so I could put the un-chewed and un-toddler-slobbered cores in a bag in the freezer.

This weekend I figured I had enough for making a decent batch of jelly:

I cooked the apple cores down with some water and was thinking I'd just make apple jelly.  But the smell reminded me of apple cider, so I threw in some cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves to make it more "festive".  After everything cooked for a while, I strained and smooshed the apple "stew" through a fine sieve then strained it through several milk filters into jars:

Almost a gallon of apple cider'ish juice.

It was getting late so I just put the jars into the fridge and would make jelly the following day.  The remaining apple pulp went to the very grateful chickens.  And you though I just screwed my biddies out of their apple snacks.  Now they had apple cider snacks.

The next day I took the apple cider'ish juice out of the fridge and started the jelly making process.

The end result:

This is what you get when your toddler "helps" you set up what
was supposed to be a professional looking shot of the cider jelly.

Heavenly Autumn smelling apple cider jelly!  (No dinosaurs were harmed in the making of this jelly.)

I think we're up to over twenty-nine pints and twenty-two 1/2 pints of blackberry, grape, and apple cider jam/jelly in the pantry.  Guess we're set for PB&J's for at least a year now!

N.S.O., Week 2

Well, the second week of No Spend October was a total bomb.

The wood splitter (the mechanical one, not Paul) threw a belt so that was twenty bucks.  And when Paul was fixing that he found a problem with the carburetor so that was another twenty.

Then when driving the truck, Paul noticed a plastic burning kind'a smell.  Some switch in the dashboard that controls the lights was melting. We knew exactly what it was because the same thing happened a few years ago........although I don't recall it costing close to a hundred bucks for the little piece of plastic.

As if a hundred dollar molded piece of plastic wasn't an expensive enough outlay for the truck, one of the inside back tires got a flat.  Normally Paul will patch a flat if it's a clean puncture, but unfortunately it was in the sidewall.  Meaning it's not fixable.  Off to the tire store for two new tires.  At a hundred and eighty bucks per tire!  And we didn't even get the really expensive ones.  Technically it would be best if we got all six tires (it's a dually), but the others still have a bit of life in them and I just couldn't cough up eleven hundred bucks right now.

After shelling out all this cash for stuff, I got a bit depressed.  So Paul took us out for Little Caesar's pizza.  Yes, I understand the irony of curing a money-spending depression with spending more money.  At five bucks a pizza it's not a bank buster, but I still felt like I cheated because it really wasn't necessary.  But I didn't feel as guilty once we were were all chowing down. :)

Oh, and I picked up a bunch of apples for Rhiannon.  We were out and I couldn't say "No".  Try explaining to your toddler that she can't have any apples, not because they are unavailable or unaffordable, but because Mommy is trying to stick to a self-imposed budget of almost nothing just so she can prove something to herself and post about it on her blog.

So yeah, I bough the apples.

And here is my horribly spendy No Spend tally for NOS Week 2:

Truck light switch thingy, $96.90
Two tires for the truck, $359.10
Wood splitter parts, $40-something*
Pizza out, $10.60
Apples, $8-something*

Total $514-something*

Oh well.  There's always next week, right?

*The "somethings" refer to the fact that I tossed the receipts in the trash before I wrote it down and didn't feel like digging through squirrel guts to get to them.  Explanation of the rodent innards to follow shortly.

A Bit O'Canning (and complaining)

My kitchen counter tops have been a disaster this past week, much to my Mom's dismay. (She's a neat freak.  Yes, you are Mom, just deal with it).

Anyways, with the last of the garden pickings piled up on one counter, pickling spices, large containers of sugar and salt, canning jars, lids, bands and boxes cluttering the other remaining counters and huge pots of boiling water or liquid fruit sugar on the stove, to say that my kitchen was a complete mess would be a gross understatement.  My socks would stick to the kitchen floor from various syrups dripped from stove to sink.  I'm afraid if one of the cats came through there they would be relieved of the skin on their paw pads.

And I didn't even do more than three half-days of canning.  Our garden was a flop this year so there were no red tomatoes to can.  No strawberries, raspberries or blueberries to make into jam.  What I did can was lots and lots of green tomatoes:

Ginormous Bowl number One of Four, filled with green tomatoes,
cabbage & onions.

I got a recipe from Hoosier Girl over at Blessed Little Homestead Life for Chow Chow.  I kind'a followed it.  I didn't put in the green peppers as I already cut them into strips and froze them (saving them for Italian sausage sandwiches) nor did I use jalapeno peppers ('cause I'm a wimp and don't like spicy stuff).  I tasted the Chow Chow just as it was ready to be put into the jars and decided that I wanted it a little sweeter so I dumped another cup of sugar into the pot.

I also made a batch of pickled green tomatoes with onion.  Which then put my green tomato relish count in at six quarts and 11 pints.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it all.  I mean, how many side dishes do we eat a week that would require the addition of a green tomato relish?  I'd love to have it with fish, but we don't eat fish much at all.  Yes, we have a 70,000 acre (give or take) lake just 3 miles away.  But apparently I don't give Paul enough time away from the homestead work for him to go out and catch a walleye or two.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the mess.

I admit, this shot of the counter top mess was after I had already started cleaning up.  And I didn't have time to take a picture of the stove top after the apple jelly boiled over the pot as I was too busy trying to wipe the burning liquid sugar off the heating elements without catching the towel aflame and fanning the smoke away from the eardrum splitting noise of fire alarm.  Paul came home from work that day and immediately asked why the house smelled like burned caramel apples.

The chickens have been enjoying the spoils of canning.  Apple mush left over from jelly making.  Cores and icky parts of tomatoes.  Seeds, peelings, parts and pieces.  If it weren't for the voracious appetites of the Cornish meat birds, I don't know what we'd do with all the leftovers from the garden.  But the Creepy Meats (who do I give credit to for coining that phrase???) are only going to be around (i.e., alive) for another three weeks.

Well, we could get a baby pig to raise for the freezer.  We are running out of bacon in the freezer.

Paul's Take
No, no, NO!  We are NOT raising a pig.  I mean it.
And if I wasn't busy making pasture, cutting timber, screwing with fence and putting up with your homesteading projects, I would be on the lake.  You know, the lake that brought us down here in the first place.  The lake that I've only been on a dozen times since we've moved here....seven years ago.

Unsupervised Goats

Hay.  We feed the goats hay.  Like 12 months out of the year.  Because we have no fenced pasture.

So, what does one do to cut down, if even a little bit, the hay bill when there is grass and green-goat-munchies all around but no way to keep the goats from 1) eating the garden and fruit trees 2) jumping on top of the car 3) eating all the chicken scratch and 4) wandering the countryside?

I've been putting them out on long leads to graze.  Where they will wind themselves around any stick, twig or rock sticking up more than 2" out of the ground.  In like thirty-four seconds.

Paul will occasionally make four cattle panels into a small enclosure and put them in there for the day.  We even tried putting up a small electric paddock, but Nettie just walked right through it.  Getting zapped is just something some goats will suffer through if it means being able to get to the "better" grass on the other side of the electric fence.

A few weeks ago, I started doing something irresponsible.  I've been letting them out, walking them to a particularly nice and yummy looking patch of greenery....and leaving them to roam "free".  Well, not for long.  And I do tie one of them up.  It seems that as long as one goat is semi-stationary, the others tend to hang around.

I've been setting a timer in the house for twenty minutes and will pop out there to make sure no one has wandered too far.  Or to make sure that no one has decided to bulldoze through the garden fence:

Yes, that's a goat in the garden.  Luckily she only managed to
defoliate the green bean plants and didn't find the blueberries.

I haven't let the new Boer kids out though as I don't trust them to hang around.  Not to mention the fact that I have to keep the male Boer kid separated from everyone else as he is most interested in the females.

And speaking of the new Boer kids, my Mom named the female Lily (since she was born on Easter) and when I told my sister,  she said that I should name the male "Herman" then.  She waited for a reply from me, but I just said, "Uh hugh."  I didn't get it.  She eventually told me her reasoning.

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who didn't get why Christine picked "Herman".  Please.

N.S.O., Week 1

Well, let me think for a minute.  I was going to say that the first week of No Spend October (NSO) went swimmingly, but I did end up make a few purchases.

$4 on a winter jacket for Rhiannon
$2.19 for ingredients for a cake (for a fellow firefighter who's retiring)
$4.50 on books at the library book sale (beekeeping & homeschooling)
$10.50 on a goat medication

$21.19 for the week.  Not bad.  Not really a "no" spend week though either.

I'm also going to have to spend some $$ on garlic today.  I've got a fridge full of already-cut-up green tomatoes and one of the recipes I want to make includes garlic, which I have none of.  So we're only six hours into the second week of NSO and I'm already planning on spending money.

It was a busy weekend.  We had the annual Pig Roast for the fire department so both Friday and Saturday were pretty much filled with off the homestead work.  But I made up for it on Sunday.

Not only did I cut up all three overflowing bags of green tomatoes (which are sitting in the fridge, staring at me every time I open the door), but I made a batch of yogurt - which DID set up! - started making jelly, successfully make a batch of mozzarella cheese, cleaned out the chicken pen and I'm almost finished putting the berry garden to bed for the winter.

Today is going to be spent in the kitchen canning something with green tomatoes in it and finishing up the jelly.  And maybe a loaf of bred.  Or soup.

What's wrong with this picture?

Now if you said to yourself, "Myself, why is there a watermelon on top of the wood stove?"  You wouldn't really be the only one wondering that.

I too wondered at the oddity of eating a watermelon (picked from the vine not three hours ago) while it's cold enough in the house to justify starting up the wood stove.

We're expected to get down to 32 degrees tonight, so I did a last-minute walk through the gardens and pulled anything that I didn't want frozen:

The watermelon (no, it did not stay on top of the stove) wasn't really totally ripe, but Rhiannon and I ate some anyhow.  The melons went in late this year, then the heat must have cooked all the flowers (there were tons of them on the vines) so we only got three watermelons and three cantaloupe.  And if it wasn't going to get down to freezing tonight, I would have kept them on the vine hoping for some more ripening time.  Oh well.

So now I have a crapload bunch of green tomatoes that I have no idea what to do with and a bag full of hot peppers that I have to do something with.  I made green tomato chutney last year, but Paul didn't care for it (and I still have three small jelly jars of them sitting in the pantry).

Anybody have any recipes for green tomatoes?

Goat Breeding Basics, FAIL

Let me be the first to tell you that I am not a goat expert.  Nor did I do exceptionally well in my high school biology classes.  But there are a few things that I think everyone should know before getting into goats (or any type of livestock or domestic critter).

I've been debating on doing this post because it makes me feel like an uneducated and unsavvy livestock owner.  But I promised myself that this blog wouldn't focus solely on the "Fuzzy and Cute" aspects of homesteading.  And I have to get it out.  So here goes:

The wonderful gentleman I bought the brother & sister Boer kids from was very nice.  He has a beautiful clean home, a secure and well equipped area for his goats, a well behaved Great Pyrenees livestock guardian.  The goats looked to be in good health.  The goats I was going to look at for purchase were already in a small holding pen for me to see.

We traded cash for goats, I put them in the back of the truck in separate cages and off we went.  When I got home, they both went into a large kennel until I could put the doeling in the larger goat pen and put the male in with Pan, our other buck goat.

The short time that they were in the kennel together, the male kid attempted to mount the female.  There wasn't any connection, but I wasn't supervising them the entire time.  We got them into separate quarters ASAP.

Boy goats are capable of breeding at a very, VERY young age.  Just because you think they are too "young" to be doing such things, does not mean that they aren't doing it.  A male kid that is intact (i.e. still has his package) can try, and may even succeed, breeding as young as eight weeks of age.  And if his eight week old sister happens to be in heat and in the same pen as him, he will try to breed her.

The concept of incest or statutory rape is of no concern to them.  They don't carry around little packages of caprine condoms.  And they don't even require permission from the female goat (although it does make things go much more smoothly if she's a willing participant).

But here's where I feel like a fool.  I emailed the man back for some more information and asked if he let the male kids (both intact, by the way) run with the entire herd.  His answer was, "Yes, but I haven't seen either of them try to breed the females."  So basically he was letting his six month old intact male goat kids run with the herd.  A herd that included two other females that were also only six months old.

Once again, I'm no expert, but if you've read even one stinking book on raising goats, or read one online article on goat keeping, there is something that is mentioned again and again.   And that's the fact that all intact male goats must be separated from the does by eight weeks of age.....not six months.

So, what are the chances that I now have a six month old doeling that is pregnant?  I honestly don't know.  But I do know that she is too young to be pregnant.  Yes, there are probably lots & lots of kids born to young does, but it's really not in the best interest of the doeling.  She should be putting her energy into growing herself, not a kid.  And if her kid is a large one, there could be potentially fatal results in birthing, for her and her kid.

As for her being bred by her brother?  Well, that doesn't bother me as much as being bred so young.  I can get over the inbreeding, but the young pregnancy is something that has me worried.  I'm pretty sure at her age she's already gone through a heat cycle.  Pickles, who is only just over three months old, just went into heat a few days ago.  But I'm not worried about Pickles being pregnant because unlike the previous doeling's owner, I don't let my bucks run with young females.  I don't know if I'm more disappointed in myself for not being more diligent in asking questions, or in the man I bought them from (i.e., was he really ignorant of the fact, or did he not want me to know that she might be pregnant?).

I know that there is a pregnancy blood test available, but I've never drawn blood before.  I could have the vet draw the blood & do the test (cha-ching).  Then if she is pregnant, there is a shot that can be given to abort the fetus.

Oh fellow keepers of goats, do you have any suggestions or first hand experience you'd like to share with me?  Am I being paranoid?  Should I just figure nature will take it's course?  I'd be most appreciative for your replies.