Funny, but I don't recall planting Butternut this year

But we had a side of butternut squash with our squash boats last week:

I didn't buy any butternut at the store (especially at $1.19 a pound!).  It wasn't given to us by anyone.

It was from LAST year's harvest.  Yep, you read that right.  I cooked and served up a squash that was harvested sometime in November of 2011 and fed it to my family.

Waltham Butternut harvested in November of 2011

They sat on the bottom of one of the baker's racks on the main floor of the house, and throughout the year I only lost two or three of them.  I'm sure they would have kept better if I had stored them in the basement utility room where it's much cooler and darker.  The one pictured above was a bit drier than a newly-picked squash, but still very usable and smelled good.  I baked it, mashed it up with some butter and a bit of maple syrup.  Yum.

I planted Waltham Butternut late in the season last year, so I was still harvesting them close to the end of November.  I don't remember how many plants I started, probably four or five and they did take up one whole section of the "berry" garden.  We did have squash bugs take over the zucchini, but they didn't seem to wander over to the butternut much.  No powdery mildew either although I don't know if winter squash are prone to that.....unlike my Patty Pan and Yellow Crookneck this summer.  And although I'm a bit upset at myself for not planting any this year, I now know that it is most definitely on the list of "Things to Plant" next year.

If you're thinking of planting a good-keeping storage vegetable next year, give the Waltham Butternut a try.  I'm sure you won't be disappointed.  Unless, of course, you don't like to eat them.

Oh, did I forget to mention that they are an heirloom plant?  So you can save those seeds!  How much better can it get??

So, anybody remember this?

Pay-It-Forward Handmade Challenge

You know.  From like over eight months ago.  I was sucker enough to sign up for two of them, so I have a total of ten homemade gifts to pass out.

And guess what?  I haven't started a single one of them.

But ideas, oh do I have ideas!  And seeing as it's the eleventh hour, I suppose I should get my backside in gear.

I do, however, have a problem (no, not that problem with the cupcakes).  When I posted my Pay it Forward Challenge, I only got two suckers takers on it, namely Tom and Donna.  So I need a little help from the rest of you.

If you weren't around for the original post and you feel so inclined, please feel free to join in.  Technically I still have room for eight more participants.  But do know that if you want to participate, you too will commit yourself to making five handmade gifts and giving them out before the end of the year.  The upside is that you'll get a homemade gift from me!

Now if that deadline didn't scare you and you still want to join in on this last-minute gift making / giving party, feel free to comment on this post and say you're in!  The gifts don't have to be elaborate, expensive or time consuming.  Just something you made and you'd like to share with someone.  And if you don't have a blog, don't worry about that either.  Just give your gifts out to people you know, or even people you don't know in your neighborhood.  If I don't get an additional eight people to sign up, I still intend on making my ten gifts but will pass them out around the holiday time at the Salvation Army.

And as for Susan, the apparent originator of this home/handmade challenge, I'm having a bawling, stinky goat buck sent to you via FedEx.  Oh, she's also hosting an awesome week-long book giveaway on her blog (it is not, a goat, I promise), go check it out.  Wait.  Don't check it out.  I don't want to reduce my chances of winning.

No Spend October

Erica over at Northwest Edible Life is doing another No Spend Month and I thought I'd join in on the Fall Frugality Fest.

We did a "no spend" month last August and it went pretty well.  It's not like I'm a Starbuck's junkie or go to the mall three times a week just to blow the non-existent wad of cash in my purse, but I think it's always a good idea to take a break from - let's face it - unwarranted and unneeded spending.

Paul insists that I go out into town too much.  And really, he's right.  There are times that I just feel like I want to get off the homestead, and those jaunts usually end up costing money.  Not just the fuel used in getting to / from town, but since I'm out I may as well stop and get myself a carcinogenic half gallon cup of Diet Pepsi.  Or if Rhiannon is with me, she's been such a good little girl I'll just zip in the drive through at McDonald's and get her a small fry (yes, my daughter and I LOVE McDonald's french fries, damn them to hell).

Then there's the Goodwill and Salvation Army.  Don't get me wrong, I've saved tons of money by getting stuff there, but I may have gone a bit overboard this summer on Rhiannon's clothing.  It's SO hard to pass up a cuter-than-a-button (what the hell is so cute about a button anyhow??) outfit or pair of jeans for fifty cents.  But those quarters and dollars add up.

So without further ado, I'd like to jump in on No Spend October (N.S.O.) and invite you to do the same.  Or not.  Or kind'a join in.  Like instead of vowing to not spend any money at all, just try to limit your "wants".  And every time you refrain from spending money where you normally would have this month, put what you think it would have cost you into a jar or envelope each time and and the end of the month see how much you've saved.

Technically, we're still going to spend money this month.  I really, really do wish that we could do a literal NO spend month.  But as there is the electric bill to pay (I'm not ready to do without electricity for an entire month.......although that may be an interesting challenge), fuel to put in the vehicle for Paul to get to / from work, health insurance premiums and animals to feed, those necessary items will be exempt from N.S.O..

Ready, set, GO!

Anybody got an Ibuprofen?

Because I've got a splitting headache from all the noise.

It sounds like we're running a slaughterhouse here.

I'm currently weaning Pickles and she's down to one bottle of milk a day.  Every time she even thinks she hears the front door opening she screams like somebody is killing her.

The two new Boer kids are missing their herd mates.  And they are continually screaming.  Like somebody is killing them.

Annette is in heat.  She's tail flagging, mounting everyone that isn't smart enough to move out of her way, pacing the fence line where Pan is.  Oh.  And occasionally bleating out.  Like somebody is killing her.

And Nettie just so happens to be in heat as well.  She's tail flagging, laying down by the fence near Pan, and yelling like......well, you get the idea.

When I was milking / feeding Annette and Nettie last night, I noticed they were both getting sticky in the behind (isn't it amazing how intimately one gets to know the private parts of their livestock??).  So early this morning I brought a very willing Annette to Pan's pen.  Two good hits and she was done.  I love that about her.  She's a very no-nonsense kind of breeder.  She's more than helpful in letting you know when she's in heat and when I take her into the breeding pen, she stands still until a good connection has been made, then immediately wants to leave the pen.  Not that I blame her as Pan stinks beyond any literary definition.

Even though Nettie would be more than happy to get in a little goat luv'n with Pan, she'll just have to wait until her next heat cycle.  Not only because I'm still trying to secure a Saanen buck for her, but because I don't want to have two kiddings at the same time.  I like to have the kiddings spread out by at least two weeks so the new mom and her offspring have the large barn pen to themselves for that time.   After a week I'll open the pen door and let the kids wander around outside.  This also gives me several days to get the pen cleaned out for the next birth.

Wow.  Breeding season is here already.  And in five months, kidding season.  And spring gardening season.  Is there ever an off season for farmers?  Oh yeah, that would be winter.  Which I'm kind'a looking forward to.  Because it will be cool enough to get some of those outdoor projects started / finished that we didn't get done during the summer.

Ugh.

Oh me so horny

(How many internet search hits do you think I'll get with that blog post title??)

I love the look of a horned goat, but I do not care to keep any on our farm for purely selfish reasons.  As I don't want to have to get poked in the eye by one, butted in the backside, or have to remove the head attached to those horns out of the fence like fifty-three times a day.

Our original goat acquisition consisted of Nettie and Chop Suey, already disbudded as kids by their previous owners.  With the exception of one male freezer goat several years ago, every kid on our farm has their horn buds burned off within a week of birth.  So Krazo Acres has been a hornless-goat operation.

Until today.

Introducing the yet-to-be-named Boer goat kid duo:

Yes, those are horns you see poking out of their skulls.  But I couldn't help it.  I saw an ad for them yesterday in the trading paper (I have got to stop looking at that darned thing!) and went to pick them up this morning.  The price was right, and I got to see their dam, where they grew up, and who raised them.  But there was still the horn issue.  Obviously I got over it, but not without much deliberation.

You see, getting a Boer goat around here is almost impossible - don't ask me why.  Getting a hornless Boer is impossible.  And horns aside, we can't justify spending $450 - $650 (and up!) for a registered kid.  And although I can appreciate the time and pain in the butt it is to have and keep registered animals, it's just not something we felt was necessary for us here.  Technically, Nettie is a registered purebred Saanen, but don't tell her that because she'll get a complex.  Anyways......

I guess we could have gone to the local sale barns to find one (with horns of course), but I'm always leery of those places.  I'm sure that there are plenty of good animals that go through there for one reason or another, but it just seems that the sale barn is what happens to animals that aren't good enough to be sold outright or that the seller may be trying to hide something like unhealthy herds or deplorable living conditions.

I think I really lucked out with Pickles.  Yes, she's a screaming-mimi right now, and a little annoying as she's a bottle baby, but it seems like adopting an orphan at a few days old was the only way I was going to be able to have a hornless Boer goat.

So back to why I now have two horned goats on our place.

Pickles is going to need to be bred next year.  For two years straight, I had been putting ads out looking for a Boer goat for stud with no luck (I was going to breed Ishtar to a Boer).  When it comes time to start thinking about having Pickles bred, I don't want to have to go around begging & pleading for somebody to let me rent out their male Boer - assuming there was anyone I could even find to listen to my begging and pleading.  

We now have a Boer buck and a second Boer doe to start our meat goat herd.  I can now have Pickles bred, right here on the farm.  Except that I still need to find another Boer.  What, you say?!  You now have a Boer buck, why do you need a second one?  Well, because the new goats are brother and sister.  There is such thing as "Line Breeding", which is technically a nice word for inbreeding, usually between father and daughter or granddaughter, but usually not between brother & sister.  In/Linebreeding isn't necessarily a bad thing, but one doesn't really want to do in indiscriminately (i.e. oops....didn't separate the male kids from the female kids soon enough and brother bred sister) but to breed for desired traits.

So although Pickles has her buck, I still have to find someone with a Boer buck for the new doeling.  But I will not, repeat, will not, be keeping another buck.  I'll just have to scour the countryside for a stud for rent.  If worse comes to worse, I'll be at the sale barn to buy a buck, use him, then immediately sell him.  If I can't find or or buy another buck, I can have him breed his sister, and hope that no funky / bad / lethal genes come out in the offspring.  Which would not only be a bummer, but a waste of an entire breeding year.

This still does not remedy my horned goat situation.  At least not immediately.  My theory is that the kids from Pickles and the new doeling will be disbudded and depending on how those kids turn out, decide if the two horned goats will stay or go.  And if they do leave the farm, I'll have to do this all again.  Ugh.

My head hurts just thinking about it.

Where have you been.....

....my entire crust-rolling-out life??

I've heard of pastry cloths.  I think one of the blogs I follow actually did a post on the wonders of the pastry cloth several months ago.  But I never got around to buying one.  And besides.  How much easier could a stupid overpriced piece of cotton material actually make rolling out crusts?

A billion times easier, that's how much!!

There are so many pies, so much pastry goodness that I never attempted to make for the simple fact that I hate hate hated rolling out dough!  I don't care how much flour I "sprinkled" on the counter top and on the rolling pin, it still stuck to everything.

My first foray into rolling out dough on a pastry cloth:

Chicken pot pie, with a "real" crust!

When I make pie crusts for things like quiche, I usually just smoosh the dough into the bottom and up the sides.  But now, I can make proper pie crusts without all the swearing usually involved with my old rolling pin method (and save having to sweep up 3+ cups of flour off the kitchen floor).

Now armed with this new, wonderful, space-aged material, I had to try making cinnamon rolls again.  The last batch I made was very yummy, but I haven't made them again because of the mess on the counter top and the memory of sticky dough and flour covering everything.

Cinnamon roll dough - easily rolled out!
No sticky dough sticking to the counter top!

I think I may as well just go out now and buy some jeans in the next larger size.  This pastry cloth is A-Freaking-Mazing.  Why did it take me so long to get this in my arsenal of cooking gadgets?

I can't wait to try making croissants!  Or puff pastry.  Or more pies.

Oh, my bulging thighs.

Autumn is in the Air.....

....can you smell it?  You know, the cool, crisp morning air.  The smell of burning leaves.

A sudden overwhelming whiff of buck goat piss.

Pan is back.  

And he's just as smelly as I remember.  He's also gotten bigger.  Not sure if the guy we gave him to fed him better or if he finally reached his full size while away. But he is definitely meatier.

It's about time to have the goats bred, and we needed Pan back for breeding Annette.  I'm still up in the air about who I'm going to have breed Nettie.  So we went to pick up Pan yesterday and put him back in his old pen.  The girls weren't too keen on seeing him, so I'm assuming that I already missed their first heat cycle.  Both Nettie and Annette were unusually vocal about a week and a half ago, so maybe that was it.

Pan, of course, is ready for action.  Pissing on himself and making the back 40 stink to high heaven.  I haven't had any interactions with him yet other than feeding & watering him so there hasn't been any goat wrestling on my part.  And honestly, after Annette is bred, the only wrestling happening will be me cramming his sorry butt into a crate to take to the sale barn.  I am not going to put up with any of his shenanigans this year.  I almost broke a wrist trying to wrestle him to the ground last year.

Yes, it's convenient having a buck on site.  If we have our own buck, I don't have to worry about contracting any nasties from another herd.  It's much easier to tell if the does are in heat.  And I don't have to haul the girls to another farm in order to be bred.  But then I have to take care of the buck for an entire year.  Feeding, watering, medicating, hoof trimming, etc.  I used to scoff at a $75 stud fee, but now I know better.  It's well worth the money if I don't have to screw with a piss-reeking goat with a serious Napoleon complex.

So, if you want to come visit our place, just go South, take the first right past the county line and follow your nose.  Either that, or just listen for the screaming baby goat.