Freezer Festival

Well, we didn't take Rhiannon to the hog butchering this weekend.  And we ended up staying home as well since it was such a beautiful Saturday.  Paul spent several hours on the bulldozer, trying to get the fence line for the new pasture area leveled and free of huge boulders & nearby dead trees.

While Paul was busting his hump, Rhiannon and I spent some time introducing and supervising the interactions of the new and current caprine crew.  In other words, we played with the goats all afternoon.

It started raining Saturday night and all the way through until Sunday afternoon.  Although I longed to be outside, the rain is much needed and greatly appreciated.  Since we were stuck inside for half the day, Paul started organizing the chest freezers.  I love the fact that we can store half a hog, dozens of chickens, ground beef, two deer and lots of veggies in the huge freezer, but it does occasionally pose a logistics problem.  As in: "Didn't we have more chicken?", "I could swear we had a brisket in there!" or "I wonder how old these almonds are" and my new favorite, "So that's where those squirrels went!"

When we got the last deer, I had planned on canning everything immediately, but that didn't so much happen.  The roasts and big hunks of meat were just bagged & chucked into the deep freeze.  The meat has just thawed, been cut up into chunks and is ready to be pressure canned today.  I also found about two gallons worth of frozen blueberries from last year.  Some became a impromptu cobbler kind'a thing and the remaining were made into blueberry jam and jelly.

I also had to do the unthinkable and toss several bags of frozen veggies.  One bag had a "Use By" date of 2009 and while I don't mind using "old" food, they were so freezer burned it looked as if they had been dehydrated.  The chickens were pretty happy about my lack of rotating the frozen goods though.  The dogs weren't left out of the freezer-food-festivities they each got frozen squirrel-sickles for lunch.  What a treat!

If you're a dog.

Input / Opinions Needed

This weekend we've been invited to a hog butchering event.  The "festivities" start tomorrow around 8 am when the six or so hogs are going to be sent to pork-chop heaven via a lead projectile in the cranium.  Then gutting and hanging.

Sunday will be spent doing the butchering & packing.

Anyhow.....I was thinking about bringing Rhiannon with tomorrow because it's supposed to be warm & Sunday we're expecting rain.  Paul thought that it would be too traumatic for her.  She's seen us kill & butcher chickens before (although not very interested in it so not sure how much of it sunk in), but I'm thinking it's a little different with such large animals.

So, what say ye?  Do we take her with or drop her off at Grandma's for the morning?

And, am I just a heartless and pathetic mother for even considering bringing my 4 year old with?

Slothwoman is on the move

I'm like weeks behind schedule, but I finally got my lazy sloth bum in gear and started some of my seeds!

Three types of tomatoes, green pepper, basil, chives, cilantro, oregano, parsley, dill.  I also found four lonely old eggplant seeds from 2008 and planted them in a small cup; figured if they didn't sprout, no biggie.  I've also got several grocery store sweet potato slip starts that are looking pretty nice.

I've got room under my single lonely grow light for five more egg carton (i.e. hillbilly) seed start trays.  I'm going to try very, very hard to not start any cucumbers, summer squash or winter squash.  Two years ago I started squashes indoors and when I put them outside I also direct sowed seeds in the same area.  After about a month & a half you really couldn't tell which one was started early and which one was started right in the ground.  Going to direct sow the peas and beans as well.  I saved a bunch of green & yellow wax bean seeds last fall.  The beans were so tough last year because of the drought that I just let most of them go to seed and dry up on the vines / bushes.

About a week ago I placed an order for four mulberry trees, twelve hazelnut bushes, six blackberry and six raspberry bushes.  There's also a nursery in town that is advertising gala, fuji and honey crisp apple trees for like twelve bucks!  They are ones I've been wanting to get anyhow so I'm planning on getting two of each of them.  Speaking of trees, I never finished pruning the pear trees.  Wonder if it's too late to do that.  Paul also mentioned looking up taking a cutting from the pear trees and trying to get it to root.  I bought some rooting compound last year (where it is, however, is anyone's guess) so figured I'll give it a go.  Have any of you rooted fruit trees using cuttings before?  I'd really like to try it.  It's like free trees!!

Paul's Take
So I guess that means that I'll be the one digging holes for all these new bushes and trees.

Can you smell that?

We disbudded Annette's buckling yesterday afternoon.  Since it was so windy / cold, I set up the disbudding box and iron in the garage since I didn't want goat hair blown up my nose (we shave his head before disbudding) and wanted to make sure the iron didn't get cold.

Everything went smoothly and all was right with the universe when mother & son were reunited.  Annette did give her son a good once-over as he did stink like burned goat hair.

I went into the garage this morning to toss some recyclable items into their respective bins and was overwhelmed with the smell of bunt goat hair.  Ahhhh, the wonderful odors of farm life!

Gratuitous Pet Pictures

It's windy outside.  And cold.  Well, not Mama Pea & Susan kind'a cold, but cold enough that I don't want to spend much time outside other than to feed / water / check on the critters.

The wind is also freaking out the dogs, so they've been avoiding the outside elements and hanging out around the wood stove.

Slow-cooker Beagle.

I can't wait for the weather to warm up so I can keep the dogs outside.  Not only to keep some of the dog hair / mud out of the house, but because Charlie is the messiest drinker / eater.

Charlie makes up for the dry indoor air by drinking lots of water.  And slopping it everywhere.  After every drinking binge, I have to not only wipe his muzzle down (Rhiannon calls them "Sloppies"), but mop up the tile surrounding the water dish and occasionally empty the boot-tray-turned-water-recovery-system from the copious amounts of water that is sloshed and slopped directly around and within four feet of the bowl.  I hate, hate, HATE Charlie's Sloppies.  Makes me want to gag.

Outside Kitty is hunkered down on the back deck and occasionally has staring contests with Susan through the window.  Evil Kitty absolutely hates Outside Kitty and she does the archy-back, Ffftttt-fffttttt-ffffttttthhhh thing when she sees him.

Outside Kitty getting a snack of warm milk.
Would you just look at those pumpkin-orange eyes!  

Evil Kitty supervising my blog photo insertions.

Crackers on her pillow.
Couldn't care less who or what's outside.

Black Susan contemplating her next nap.

Wee-ner!

Well, since Miss Crabby Pants Sleepy Puss doesn't want to participate in the drawing for the note cards, I did a Random Number Generator thingy on the computer just now and the winning numbers were 3 and 2.

So just who was in those number spots you ask?  Well, I'll tell ya!  (As soon as I go back to the post and figure it out myself....brb!)

Number two (not like #2 in, well, you know, but the actual numeral) is Mama Pea!  Congrats!

It seems that number three is Susan, but she didn't want to participate so it looks like I have to go back to the number generator thingy AGAIN (heavy sighing.....Susan is soooo difficult.  brb....again).

Number 4!  (once again, have to go back to the post to look)

It's Kristina!!!

Congratulations to the both of you!  Just shoot me your email at carolynrenee at centurytel dot net and I'll get the cards out to you asap.

Thanks to everyone who joined in the Monthly Letter Writing Challenge and lets keep those mailboxes full of good mail!

A Year of Letters and a Giveaway!

Several days ago I challenged my readers to send a real letter (pen, paper, envelope, stamp) to someone once a month for a year.  And since I'll be nagging reminding those of you that decided to partake in this little act of electronic-mail defiance, I figured I should also provide some encouragement.

In order to help you reach your goal of at least twelve letters a year, I'd like to offer a little package of twelve note cards along with a squishy-nubby pen:

So if you want to officially accept the Monthly Letter Writing Challenge and try your luck at winning the above cards, just post a comment on this page and I'll have my personal assistant draw two names at the stroke of Midnight on Sunday (or in all honesty, sometime Monday morning when Rhiannon wakes up and shuffles her PJ-wearing body out into the living room).

Good luck!