To My Team!

To my team:

Ok ladies, this has been running though my mind of what I would say to you guys on bout day if asked because it seems whenever the captains ask what am I feeling, how am I feeling or if I am ready and I can’t ever really seem to spit it out.  I am actually thankful that noone asked on Saturday because I fear I would have lost it with tears.

My Team - Harbor City Roller Dames
photo credit - JS Photography

I just want to say that I LOVE all of you!  

My family and I have been big followers of HCRD’s and always came to the DECC to watch the bouts.  If I had it my way, I would have started derby when Red put out the original call for people to join derby.  I did email her and she sent me all the info for their first get together.  I never went though because my husband had said there was no way I woud be able to do it and I am not cordinated enough and was he afraid I would get hurt.  

3rd practice ever.
Please don't hit me!

A few years went by and the urge was still there.  By this time, my kids were skating every weekend with grandma at the roller rink and loving it.  I did some snooping around to find out about junior roller derby and that is when I found the other area team offered it for young kids.  There it was!  That was my in!!  If the kids could do it, I could too!  

Here is a peak on how “The Udder Woman” began:  

My very first bout.
Foster skated for another team.
photo credit - ChipPlaza Photography

May 2011 - I told the kids when they got home from school that we were going skating but not at the roller rink.  They were excited until I explained that they had to wear helmets and pads (not telling them its roller derby in fear that they want to go).  They were really confused saying “grandma never makes them wear that!”.  I just told them that the place we were going required it.  So that was the start, they actually started a week before me as I didn’t have any skates.

By luck, I found a $25 pair of skates (in my size - what are the chances of that!?!?!?) on craigslist, hubby bought me pads and helmet and I was all set.  First time on the skates....ummmm....yeah....could barely stand up but was expected because it had been about 20 years since I had last been on skates.  My dreams of being able to skate at the DECC like some of my HCRD idols were looking pretty slim but I guess you have to start somewhere.

Fast forward to Oct 2012:

I made some amazing friends but I had some big decisions to make.  The drive to practice was starting to take a toll on me being that it was almost an hour drive one way (and road construction made it worse), the bout schedule was from late spring into summer which wasn’t working for me being that I usually have a wedding to photograph every weekend in the summer, and that when there was an away bout that I could actually go to - it was way too far for me to travel being that I have goats that need to be milked daily in the summer - can’t really tell the lady goats “hey, I will be home in a couple days - sorry, you are going to have to wait to be milked”....doesn’t work that way when you have a farm!

Final Score:  HCRD 161, FMDG 157

So it was either hang up the skates or consider transfering over to HCRD (which I totally thought I did not have the skills nor the coordination to be able to competively skate with their team and that I would probably make a huge fool of myself).  Plus, I had always heard rumors (and not from other team) that they were all a bunch of b!tc#e$, there is a ton of drama, you won’t like skating over there, etc., etc.....with all that said I have to say I was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY nervous about checking out a practice.  

The Udder Woman
photo credit JS Photography

Fast forward to now:

I just have to say that all the rumors I heard are untrue!  You all have made me feel so welcome since I joined!  I am very glad I made the decision to keep skating.  My skills have grown tremendously from six months ago when I first laced up as a Roller Dame.  I want to thank all of you for continually pushing me at practice and giving encouraging words and support!  It was AMAZING to have skated at the DECC this past Saturday in front of such a large crowd WITH my HCRD idols.  I would have never believed anyone two years ago that you would be hearing “The Udder Woman” annouced as a rostered skater with HCRD at the DECC.

So proud be able to call you all my teammates!  You are all wonderful!  I don’t care what anyone else says but HCRD ROCKS!  

Come join us!  www.harborcityrollerdames.com

For all you blog followers, if you set your mind to it - you can do anything.  Have you ever thought of trying derby??  If so, you should!!  Or if you feel you cannot skate but would still like to be involved with the team - we are always looking for volunteers.  For more information, please check out my team's website:  www.harborcityrollerdames.com

Snow - Balls - how fitting!

So my sister has been patiently waiting for another blog entry and I am sure a few of you have too.  

Poop puddle

I am going to use this entry to vent but first a quick update on the goats - All of our ladies have kidded and babies (just shy of 20 total) are all doing good.  The babies are loving this snow but I am not!  I am sick of the snow.  SOOOO, SOOOOOO SICK OF IT that I am starting to think that we should sell the farm and get the hell out of dodge.  I just want green grass - that means no more throwing hay or walking knee deep mud when the white stuff melts.  Or hauling hay from another farm every week since we ran out of what we bought for the year.  (And that is another story in itself since there is a hay shortage and prices are through the roof!).  

Getting muddy

Today’s adventure.....it appears that my daughter’s little "steer" that she showed at the fair last year is not a steer after all.  When we bought him he was already banded and taken care of.  Well, the idiot who banded him missed a ball - how that F do you miss a ball!!???!!  (I am the bander when we do ours and let me tell you, missing one will never happen, even if I have to fondle and massage the damn things back down. - gross but it has to be done!)  I discovered Ralphie's issue a few months ago after he kept trying to mount me when I was doing chores.  Let me tell you when you are in the middle of filling water buckets or stuffing hay into the feeders and out of nowhere something huge is clambering on your back  - it freaks you out.  And then when you realize its your "steer" trying to get his way with you - OH BOY, out of the barn he went to live with the big boys and girls.  We were hoping "he didn't work".  Well, that hope was shot out the door today after seeing his wiener come out today while trying to get on one of the heifers (who is quite larger than him, not even sure he could reach)- he had to be moved ASAP and the hubby had to leave for work.  

Whoops!!

All fixed

Ofcourse - the corral needed to be blocked off, new wood put up where boards were missing, calf huts moved to the corral plus a bale of hay put in there cause I am NOT picking off a round bale and moving it by hand in there.  (I already pick off bales in the barn to feed in there and move about 2400lbs of hay by hand a week, I surely do not need to be moving hay by hand across the pasture too).  Started out with fixing the boards, not a problem, I can handle a hammer and nails.  Then I had to find something to block the corral off.  Dug out the buried in snow cattle panels and drug them up the road and through the yard, rigged them up the best I could to make a gate.  Back out in the pasture to move the calf huts.  Ok, maybe not....After snapping a shovel in half trying to dig out the calf huts, I was swearing like mad and I went in the house in tears.  I called my husband and he said to leave everything until he got home.  I didn’t think that was a good idea....cause the “deed” could have already taken place by then and that would NOT be good!  There is no way in hell that we need to have calves being born in the dead of winter.  

Rigged up gate

I hate asking for help with things but I sucked it up and called my neighbor.  I felt bad calling her since she works midnights and was sound a sleep but she came to the rescue to operate the skid-steer (thinking maybe I should learn how work that thing even though I REALLY don't want too cause then I will be expected to use it and if something breaks- it will be my fault!).  Once she freed the stuck calf huts and helped move them in the corral along with a bale, I thanked her profusely and told her I owed her lunch next week.  

She offered to stay to help get Ralphie in the the corral but I figured he would be easy to get over there since he is halter broke so I told her no - go home and get some sleep.  I should have just had her stay.....Ralphie was NOT going to cooperate getting the halter on.  Finally got a rope on him, then a nice drag through the mud I went.   Phew - he stopped and I cornered him between the gate and the barn and put the halter on - upside down and backwards!!  That wasn't working so as I was fixing it another steer came up behind him and mounted him, well that freaked out one of the heifers and she squeezed though the little section of gate I had open to move Ralphie through.  Not to worry, she was still in a fenced in area but now she was in with the goats.  AHHHHHHH!  That was real fun chasing her around to get her back over to the gate (which I had now shut otherwise all the goats would have been on the cattles side). Successfully got her back over, was able to fix the halter situation, now it was time to move.  NOPE - he was not moving!  I pulled and tugged and all he did was fight it and go backwards.  It was like 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards.  I decided I would try and push him (hoping he wouldn’t kick) and steer him with the halter rope in one hand and the rope around his neck in the other hand kinda like driving a cart.  I managed to get him though the gate without anyone else crossing to the wrong side, around the barn we went and back up the other side towards the corral.  I was getting exhausted as the snow is not plowed, I kept sinking and I was fighting him the whole time.  As I was pusing him with my chest right on his rear, he decides he is going to poop!  FABULOUS, who doesn’t like cow poop smeared across their chest!!!???!!!!!  That last 50 feet to the corral seemed like a mile and when I got him in there it felt like I crossed the finish line.  Too bad nobody was cheering for me!

Hmmmpppfff - would rather lay in
the hay instead of the hut that
he normally chooses to
squeeze his fat body into.
Glad I went through all the effort
to move it in there.

Now it was time to bring him a buddy.  #50 was going to join him.  I walked into the barn to get him and realized he would have to wait, I was out of energy - heck I will never have enough energy to move him myself.  #50 is about 9 months old and is very strong.  When we wormed the calves earlier this year, he wanted NOTHING to do with it.  In his craziness, he plowed through the pens in the barn, knocked my husband down & ran me over scraping my arm along a cattle panel (to which I now have a pretty 5 inch scar on my arm).  He is going to be a two man job to move if not three.  

One-baller Ralphie

So that was my exciting 4 hour barn chore morning.  Lots of swearing, LOTS!  Hope the next time I drop F bomb when I am out there that all the animals don’t come running to me.  From the way it was coming out of my mouth, they may think that’s all of their names!  Ooooopppps!

Love Affair Gone Bad

Just over 3 months ago I gave up my love affair with Coca-Cola.  Let me tell you, it has NOT been easy.  I really depended on all the sugar and caffeine - consuming about 6 cans a day to keep me going.

In fact, it substituted as breakfast.  As soon as the hubby drove off for work, my first can was cracked and gone within 5 minutes.  Loved the feeling of the fizz and most importantly, it gave me the urge to poop.  I know, I know - TMI (too much information) but seriously if I didn’t have a can of coke, there would be no toilet time.

Just say NO!

With addicts, they remember their last time, just one last fix.  Well, my one last can wasn’t planned nor did I see quitting even coming so the words “one last time” didn’t apply.  My last can happened at my step-mom’s birthday party on Dec. 15th.  I hadn’t had a coke all day so when we got there I happily cracked open a coke.  Little did I know that the next can would become the last.  I sipped away on the second can until we were ready to go and that’s when it happened - the love affair abruptly ended.  Not because I wanted to...it was more because I didn’t have any left at home and I refused to buy a 12 pack at the local country gas station for $6!  So for two days I was without....then the migraines & nausea set in.  WOW, I was miserable!  That’s when I decided enough is enough.

Here is my parting letter the day I said I was done:

Dear Coca Cola, 

We have been together for a long time - from thin to thick (which I thank you for contributing to my midsection muffin top), and in good times and in bad. You have been there for me to keep me going when sleep is hard to come by, help control/maintain my bitchiness, give me enough energy to juggle two businesses, a farm, kids, bowling & roller derby and finally stimulating morning bathroom duties.

After this weekend and having the last can out of your case and being totally out for two days, you punished me with an awful, awful migraine and even made me throw up my delicious Grizzly’s dinner. That was totally uncalled for. How DARE you make me waste an entire day of not being able to get anything done!! I have dreaded the day that I would say this but I am ENDING my love affair with you. No, I will not be bringing home your buddy Diet, he does not meet the expectations as you had fulfilled.

Sad to see you leave my life but here’s to the beginning of a new, hopefully healthier new year!!

Signed ~

YOUR FIZZLED OUT LOVER

The first few weeks were really tough.  I craved the sugars so bad.  I almost gave in but was able to hold on and be strong.  I think one of the toughest days was going from derby practice to a beef meeting and sitting besides someone who had a can of pop (and not even a coke at that!).  It looked like GOLD and was sooooo tempting.  As she lifted it up to her mouth, I felt like ripping it from her hands and guzzling it down.  Now obviously I didn’t do that but I do wonder what the rest of the members would have thought if I did that!!  Crazy, pop deprived mom dressed in fishnets and shorty shorts stealing pop.  WOW, that would have been a sight to see!

Boring black tea

I must confess that I did not cut out the caffeine.  I LOVE plain, black, boring tea so I now consume MANY cups of that a day.  I do use the same tea bag for the whole day so I am not getting as much caffeine as one would think, in fact by the end of the night, its pretty much plain hot water.  However, there have been two nights that I must not have had too many cups during the day thus making my night tea caffeinated which then resulted in me being up until 3 or 4am.  Lesson learned - no tea after 6pm or make a decaffeinated cup instead.

Scale today!

So here it goes......the best part of this whole “ending my love affair” is.......the scale!  I went from over 200lbs to just hitting the high 170’s.  23.6lbs to be exact.  That equals out to be a small child or a bag of dog food or 3 gallons of milk!  It’s crazy how much I have lost just with cutting out pop.  I am sure the 2-3 practices of roller derby a week sweating for an hour and a half each time has contributed to the loss but I know that from practicing I have gained a lot of muscle.  Not only does the loss show on the scale but it shows in my clothes too.  My jeans that I bought last fall are falling off even with a belt, shirts that wouldn’t normally fit actually look half-way decent again and....my underwear are all too big!!  Body wise - my love handles are getting smaller, my belly is somewhat looking flatter again (despite the ever lasting butt looking appearance it has from the emergency c-section) and my boobs are once again sticking out further than anything else on my body!  YAY!

Way too big!

Looking into the future - I think with a little bit of a diet change and/or added daily exercise besides barn chores and derby, I could easily see being down to 160lbs or less by the end of summer.  Is that my goal??....Well, I am not sure yet - get back to me in a month!

Until then - cheers with black tea!

And then there were cattle....

Part 2 of the start of the farm....

White faces from a few years ago.

A year went by and I got the “honey, we should get some cows”.  My answer - NOPE!  NOT HAPPENING!  We knew nothing about cattle and were still very new to the horse thing that I didn’t think it was a good idea.  My husband would still bring it up now and again and finally one Sunday while I was doing a photo shoot consult there was a knock at the door.  It was the farmer neighbors from down the road who we buy hay from.....and annouced that our steers were here and where could they unload them.  WTF!!!  I flew off the handle!  (Thank god my photo consult was a good friend otherwise I might not still have them as a customer.)  I went outside cursing my husband, I was SOOOOO furious!!  I couldn’t believe that this was happening!!

A jersey that we raised up bottle
feeding dressed up for a contest as
Marilyn Mooooo-nroe.

They unloaded them into the horse corral which was where they were suppose to stay until they settled down and learned the electric fence.  Well, apparently one had no intentions on staying in there.  Have you ever seen a steer jump?????  Well he did that day....He jumped over the 5ft high boards smashing them to pieces and proceeded to run straight through the fenced in pasture with the horses chasing him.  Do you think he stopped when he got to the gate on the opposite end?...nope....kept right on going busting through the gate and into the second pasture.  HOLY CRAP - there goes $700 running away!  &#$^#(%(!!**%#&#*(%)%*@&^#@%#@*Q%(&*%(#*&%(Q*#^%#@*&^*@$^*&#^%#^%&)##!*@  (I think the farmer neighbors learned some new words from me....all profanities!!  The one even commented that I might have scared the other from dating!).

Since he ended up in the second pasture (or so we hoped....), we were told just to leave him and let him settle down.  And that if we didn’t see him in a few days that we might have to go “hunting”.  The next day we spotted him at the fence line and let him back in.    So that is how we got into beef cattle!  

Stay tuned for more...still have goats, bees and chickens to go!

Work, Work and MORE Work

We have a baby!!  Ok, she is a week and a half old now...I am slacking on blogging.  But seriously, there hasn’t been any extra time to blog.  Last week was a whirl wind with no relaxation in there.  

Baby girl Onyx

Somewhere between Thursday night and Friday morning, Brownie had given birth with no complications.  It was a nice surprise to start Friday off with - a cute little black baby girl.  Ok, she was actually pretty big since she was the only baby.  Brownie needed that though as last year she had triplets and I think she needed a break as those babies are demanding!  I took the baby into the house in the later morning and did a quick photo shoot with her.  She was so sweet nuzzling up to my chin trying to nurse on the way up to the house.  Momma wasn’t to happy though.

On to Saturday and the kids had their beef spaghetti dinner/silent auction fundraiser.  Spent the whole afternoon into the evening from setting up to serving to taking down then home to do chores in the dark.  

We started off Sunday with barn chores, then going down the road to pick up calves, back home to clean the barn, band, tag, worm & vaccinate all the calves that were already in the barn.  I am the lucky one who gets to do the banding....for those who don’t know - that entails putting a rubber band around the calves balls.  Usually its pretty quick but there are some instances where they suck their balls up so you have to massage them back down.  Yep - fondling cow balls!!  Sometimes you even get crapped on in the process too - thank goodness that happens about 1 in 20 times and I was lucky to stay crapless this time.  By the time we were done with everything and back in the house it was 6:30pm.  We were both exhausted.  Catching those 4-6 month old calves really takes a toll on your body.  I was on the ground and run over WAY to many times.  Got a nice bruise and cut at least 6 inches long on my arm from trying to catch and hold a calf but resulting in my arm not holding and scraping down the cattle panel.  Then was plowed to the ground and had my pelvic bone stomped on by #50.  He is NOT a people person and was not about to be caught.....Seems to me that he cause the cut on my arm too.  And I know my husband ended up on the ground from him as well.  

Relaxing in the truck
after getting a cast.

Monday I spent the morning at the vet with a goat.  She must have gotten underneath in the herd, got stepped on and broke a leg.  LOVELY!!  So there I was putting her in the front seat of the truck, she refused to lay down and was standing up the whole way into town.  I got some weird looks at the stop lights as who expects to see a goat looking at you through a window when you are at a red light.  We got there and she decided to poop, good thing I had a blanket on the seat.  I plucked her out and put her on the ground and then she peed!  THANK GOODNESS she was outside because she had a river flowing!!  Into the vet we went.  After the exam and xrays, she was casted.  They said she was the best goat patient they ever had, didn’t cry, try to get away or anything.  I carried her back out to the truck and she finally laid down.  She had some learning to do with this cast on her leg as she wasn’t sure what to do.  Next it was time to spray out the  bed of the truck from hauling calves.  Went to the first car wash, no dualies or ext. cabs with 8 foot boxes allowed.  Called the hubby and he said go in anyways....I didn’t as the owner or manager was in the office and I didn’t want to get yelled at....

Glad to be home!

I headed across town, dropped eggs off for a customer and then pulled into another car wash.  Since there were no signs - I drove in barely fitting.  Now for the fun job....Let me tell you I will NEVER spray the bed of the truck again.  I was covered in spattered cow crap from head to toe!  Disgusting!!  I felt bad for the person who was waiting in line after me.  There was even poop splattered on the car wash garage doors!!

Next was the post office and ofcourse I would run into someone I know....remember, I am splattered in poop looking my finest.  Then it was a quick run into the sandwich shop to grab lunch and meet my husband since I still had an hour before I picked up grain from the brewery.  

Creative way of moving a 500lb
barrel of grain to the calves
at the back of the barn since
the 4-wheeler trailer had a flat tire.

Finally headed home, got the goat settled into a pen then started chores.  Still super sore from the day before - dumping 2000lbs of wet grain for the animals was a little difficult but I did get it done.

The next day was more farm work - headed to pick up three of our butchered steers and deliver them.  That meant more lifting....1000 lbs of meat - UGGHHHH.  Who needs to work out????

Finally got a break on Wednesday to get some computer work done - my only day of the week so I had to use it wisely.

My brother unloading hay.

Back to farm work on Thursday hauling hay.  We were down to one bale and the person who we buy from didn’t have any extra to spare since he had semi loads hauled out to the south where there was a shortage on hay.  Thankfully, I found another local person who had some hay to spare and didn’t charge me a $100 a bale like some other people in the area are doing.  Glad to know there are still some nice people out there!!  But before I could get on the road with the trailer I had to get it out first.  I hooked up to it and tried to go - NOPE, stuck.  The tires of the trailer were frozen in ice.  My brother (who was over to help unload since I do not know how to use the skidsteer - more on that in a different blog) had to lift up the back of the trailer with the skidsteer to get it out of the ice.  Perfect, try to pull forward again - NOPE.  The yard where the trailer was parked was pure ice so the tires on the truck just spun and spun, there was no moving this big, heavy trailer.  He tried pushing the trailer from the back while I tried going forward - NOPE.  Just great, I went from getting to the farm to pick up hay early to now going to be late.  One last option, he was going to pull the trailer backwards while I was in reverse.  YAY!!  It moved and I was able to get out.  It was smooth sailing from there.  I even got to practice (ok, it probably wasn’t practice since I really needed to do it) backing up the huge trailer numerous times  to turn around and by the end of the day was able to do it on the first try without having to pull forward numerous times and start over.

Selling goat milk soap at the expo

Friday was spent getting ready for the women’s expo the next day where I had a booth to sell my goat milk soaps.  Mad scramble as always to get everything ready and NOT forget anything!!  I would say that I was pretty successful as the only thing I forgot was my business cards but I was able to make some generic ones so it was no big deal.  Expo was a success, sold a lot of soap, met a lot of people and even got to talk “goat” with some goat owners.

PHEW!  That was the week and a couple of days in a wrap, now you see why there was no blogging!  Glad it is over, now I have to plant my butt in my computer chair to get caught up on photos.  Oh and don’t worry, I have more to share on the start of our farm.  You won’t want to miss it, I PROMISE!

The Start of the Farm.....Part 1

Today I was suppose to go to a women’s farm conference but instead I am at home with a puker.  I was really looking forward to going as it covered a variety of topics such as balancing a farm with everyday life, keeping safe on the farm, managing farm records (ugghhh - I totally could have benefited from this one!!) & a great opportunity to network with other farm women.  Plus the day ends with cheese, wine and door prizes - totally bummed I am missing this!  I am hoping that one of my fellow farm gals will fill me in later with all the details and information that she took from it.

Instead of sharing about the farm there, I will just blog about it instead.  Let me just start by saying that neiter my husband or I grew up on a farm, worked on a farm, nor did we have any experience in livestock.  We kinda of fell into where we are now.

START OF THE FARM - PART 1 OF THE 4 PART SERIES

Never imagined that this would
eventually become a pasture and
where the pole barn would be.

It all started almost 10 years ago with a phone call from my husband.  I remember I was shopping with my mom and sister at Kohl’s when he called.  He asked me if I knew anyone who wanted two horses (for free) as his mom’s friend had passed away and they needed to place them somewhere.  The first thing out of my mouth was - “we could take them”!  What the hell was I thinking?????  Oh yeah, that we had 50 acres in the country and had LOTS of room.   So that  phone call was the start of the farm and my husband reminds me of that quite frequently.  Since we didn’t have fencing or shelter for them, we needed to board them down the road.  It was a learning experience from the get go with them.  We had have a vet do coggins checks on them & make sure they were geldings otherwise they couldn’t be boarded at the place we found.  We also had to rent a trailer for a 2 hr drive.  When we got there, we were able to catch the quarterhorse but the pony - WOW!!!!!  He was so afraid of everything that it took hours of us chasing him around, cornering him in this shed and that shed-  round and round we went.  Finally we were at our witts end and loaded the first one we caught and sure enough, the other followed right in the trailer.  Guess we should have just tried that first instead of exhausting ourselves.  Then it was time to hit the road - in a blizzard!  Just fantastic!  We were both nervous as could be hauling LIVE animals and then to have crappy road conditions just put the icing on the top.

Picture please!  Always
had to get his nose up to the lens.

Enjoying the sun
and the green grass.
:)

We made it to the horse boarding place safely and unloaded.  They took off into the herd running everywhere and causing mad chaos with all the other horses.  The one that we were able to get loaded first seemed to be picking fights with all the large draft horses, we figured that they had to get their pecking order all figured out before things would settle down....or so we thought!

Nervous pony

The boss

A few days later I had a farrier scheduled to come trim their hooves.  When he was trimming the quarterhorses hooves he called me over and asked me if I knew that the horse was a stallion.  I gave him a confusing sort of look and didn’t have a clue what he was talking about - I mean the vet verified that these horses were geldings.  He then told me to reach up underneath the horse and feel......HAHAHAHA!  Nope - wasn’t going to do that - no fondeling of a horse for me!  I trusted him and made a not so nice phone call to the vet explaining that the farrier had informed me that the horse still has his balls.  She insisted that he didn’t and sometimes they will have fatty deposits in that area.  We went back and forth on this and eventually she said that she would make a farm visit the next day.  You should have seen her face when she realized that she screwed up!!  Now what???  Are we going to have a bunch of pregnant horses out there???  She assured me that because its the dead of winter (like 3 days before xmas) that it was highly unlikely that anything had happened.  So the next step was to take care of the “issue”.  I was totally unprepared for this and if I knew what was to happen, I would have made sure that my husband could of been there.  A little surgical operation needed to be done and I was the lucky one that had to hold the flashlight!  Ummmm.....yeah.....it was not pleasant!  The vet had to “cut them out”.  WOW!  What a great experience to have 3 days into being a horse owner!

About 9 months later we finally had some land fenced in and a pole barn built for shelter so we were able to bring the horses home.  My husband and I were so anixous to work with them and try to ride them.  Riding never did happen with those two as they were rescue horses that the lady had rescued from being abused.  So we ended up getting some riding horses and slowly learned from there.

Stay tuned for Part 2 - CATTLE....

D-Day is coming!

Babies first drink.

Getting ready for D-day (delivery day)!  Per my calculations, our first babies should be here by the weekend.  Apparently Brownie didn’t want sloppy seconds and let herself over to the Kenny’s side a month early.  I totally expected Kenny to tell her to get back on her own side and that she needed to wait another month - LOL - wait, who am I kidding - He’s a male!  He wasn’t going to turn some action down!  What male does??

She could have picked a better day to “get some” though as I was on my way out the door to photograph my cousin’s wedding when I caught her “in the act.”  Normally, I would have put her back on her own side and hope that nothing happened but I let her be because there was no way I was going to try and get two horny goats away from each other and not get that nasty buck smell on myself.  That smell is terrible to get off and definitely didn’t need to smell like that at a wedding!!

One of my 2011 Easter
photo shoots.

New babies

This means I will have goat babies for Easter photographs this year too!!  I usually do a weekend of Easter photo shoots with a live bunny and baby goats (if they’ve been born) and all the kids LOVE it.  Last year was disappointing though as babies were scheduled to arrive the weekend after the photo shoots.  But not too disappointing......I had 10 shoots scheduled for the day and just was getting started on shoot #2, my youngest came running in telling me that she just watched Whitie have a baby!  WHAT??!!??  Are you kidding me?!?!!  We finished up the shoot and I borrowed the kids some poop boots and out to the barn we went where there was a brand new little girl.  The kids thought that was so neat to see a new baby.  I continued my day with photo shoots and Brownie decided that she was going to give birth too.  Why not???  I mean it’s not like I didn’t have time to keep running out to the barn in between shoots to make sure there are no issues!

This week is a busy week for me and I am sure it will happen at the most un-opportune time but hey, I plan for that as that is just how it goes around here.  :)   Until then...stand by for the birth announcement...

Who follows a recipe to a T? NOT ME!

Pork from down the road,
beef from our backyard.

I love to cook but with my busy schedule most of the time I just slap something easy together.  Not yesterday.  Thumbing through one of my cookbooks I bought from an area restaurant, I came across their recipe for pasties.  It was a bit different from the usual recipe I use so I thought I would give it a whirl.  Ofcourse, I didn’t have all the ingredients (which is usually the case when I start to make something) so I had to modify and substitute.  

Browning the meats

This recipe called for 1lb of burger and 1lb of mild Italian sausage.  Burger - check!  Mild Italian sausage - hmmmmm - how about pork breakfast sausage that was raised down the road??  Sounds like it would work....guess I am not sure how different of a taste the two really are but thats what I was using for a stand in. 

Now for the vegetables - carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic and rutabaga.  Wait....rutabaga?  Why the hell would I have a rutabaga just laying around to be cooked??  I couldn’t even tell you what one looks like & quite frankly - it sounds gross!  Guess I will be substituting for that too!  I used extra carrots, potatoes and my newly added ingredient - celery to equal what I think would equal a medium sized rutabaga.....

Filling all ready

Chopped everything up and browned the meat, added some seasoning and pepper - the insides were ready.  Time for the crust.  Good gawdes...it called for 3 cups of shortening...I was already feeling my arteries starting to clog up just reading that.  But if thats what it called for and I had it then I was going with it.  Combined that with flour, eggs, white vinegar and cold water and it was ready to roll out.

I should have probably taken the advice of the cook book and seperated the dough into 12 equal balls but I didn’t.  I just grabbed a big blob and rolled it out, put the filling in and sealed it up.  When I put it on the large cookie sheet it took up 1/4 of it!  This was a jumbo pasty - over 9 inches in length and 5 inches across!!   Next blob of dough was a bit smaller but not too much.  In the end, I ended up with 1 jumbo pasty and 9 almost as jumbo pasties.  Shorted myself two pasties by not following directions - whoops!

One pan went in the freezer and the other in the oven for dinner.  I have to say it was nice to have dinner all cooked up and ready to serve by noon besides the fact that I was the only one here!  Good thing these are good reheated or cold cause thats how the rest of the family was going to eat them!  I served myself up one for lunch.  Job well done, it was awesome tasting...that was until later...when I kept burping it up the whole time at roller derby practice.  Nothing like tasting it again and again and again! 

Final results!

The hubby and kids liked them, recipe (or shall I say modified recipe) is a keeper.  I will most likely modify it a bit more the next time and reduce the vinegar in the crust though as it had a little bit of a vinegary taste.  Oh yeah and I forgot to mention I didn’t egg wash the inside or the outsides of the crust....another whoops!  So maybe I will add that in next time.