Thursday, February 21, 2013

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....



Monday, February 18, 2013

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...


Thursday, February 7, 2013

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.


Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Carrot of Memories


While doing barn chores this morning I was contimplating on my next topic for today's blog.  I have tons of different things I could write about so I started making mental notes of what they would be.  I had my mind made up on todays topic until I was in the kitchen chopping carrots while the kids were getting ready for school and a chunk of carrot fell to the floor.  In an instant - the dog gobbled it up and memories came flooding back from almost 15 years ago.
Lily's scrapbook.  The only
scrapbook I have successfully
created (my kids are still
blank pages).  
It all started when I worked at a gas station and my friend’s friend had pulled up in a truck with this big, slobbery, wrinkley faced dog in the back.  It was love at first site.  I knew I needed one.  I searched the papers for months and finally found an ad that said “english bulldog puppies - $800.”  I made the phone call and they had one female left and that someone was going to come the coming weekend to take a look at her.  Well...I WANTED her but the problem was I was a poor college student that didn’t have $800!!!  Where the heck was I going to come up with that kind of $ that day??!?!?  It was about 4pm in the afternoon and I got this brilliant idea to call the loan officer at my bank (had done a few loan transactions with him prior with vehicles and I was in good terms with him).  I probably sounded like a crazy lunatic on the phone and explained I really needed this puppy and it would be an investment and planned breed her when she was old enough - I mean if I am paying $800 for one puppy - imagine how much money 10 puppies would bring in (which I never ended up doing - THANK GOD)!!!  Somehow I managed to convince him that she was that important and managed to get a loan for her.  HOLY CRAP - what kind of bank gives a loan out for a puppy and let alone to a 19 year old poor college student!!??!!  So I called the people back and let them know I was coming tonight and where were they located.  I drove an hour and a half away to pick her up.  She was sooooo tiny, cute, rolly and wrinkley.  It was hard to believe that she was all mine and that was the day I became MOM to a 6 week old English Bulldog who I named Lily.  

Sleeping with mom,
best snuggler!
She quickly became my best friend and helped me through such a rough time in my life through the grieving process of the loss of my human best friend.  Lily went everywhere with me - to the bars (yes, I managed to get into bars underage), to late night parties, family events especially to grandpa’s to eat turkey- everywhere.  She even slept with me in bed....under the covers.  She was also a great listener and never told anyone my secrets, she snuggled when I was sad and just know how to brighten my day. 


So many memories from my dad naming her “pig dog” (her pink skin shown through her white fur when she was little) -to cleaning out her kennel and bathing her every day because she liked to poop in her kennel...totally contradicting that dogs won’t poop where they sleep! -to taking her to puppy school where she was beast of energy -to the day she snuck out of the house as a pup in the winter and ended up at the pound -to taking baths with me and LOVING it (I know, I know.....weird!!) -to chewing up a plugged in extention cord at my mom’s house (not sure how she didn’t get hurt!) -to her checking out “the new baby” after coming home from the hospital - to loving to run through mud puddles at full blast.  

Our first Xmas - crazy ears
that stood up.  Figured she
might have had some french bulldog in
her  despite her purebred english papers.

Taking a bath with mom.

She even was my first model in my photography career (not that I knew that I would become a photographer back then).  I used to pose her with things and take pictures, then distibute all the prints to my family members.  To this day, I am pretty sure my mom still has a framed “i love grandma” Lily pic up at her house.  


Now I am sure you are thinking “how the heck does this story relate to a carrot??”.  Lily LOVED carrots.  She discovered them one day while I was feeding the rabbits and after that they became her favorite treat.  I am sure the grocery store clerk thought I was a really healthy eatter when I came through every week buying a 5lb bag of carrots - little did she know they were for the dog!!

YUM! CARROTS!
Posing

Such great memories!  I had the pleasure of having her by my side for 12 awesome years (which is longer than the average lifespan of 8-10 years).  During the last year of her life she started to deteriorate.  She had lost a lot of weight, was diagnosed with lymes and diabetes and then pneumonia.  Towards the end she wasn’t feeling good so one night I made sure the kids gave her lots of extra hugs, kisses and pets.  Before I went to bed, I laid with her and told her she was such a good dog and that I loved her.  I also told her that if it was her time to go, then it was ok - go.  3 hrs later I awoke to her final breaths.  I was heartbroken.  The grieving processed started all over again but in a different way from when I brought her home.  She will always have a special place in my heart - my first “baby”.






Friday, February 1, 2013

DeJunking!


For those of you that know me - I am not an organizer.  If stuff is organized, I can’t find anything that I am looking for.  If I have a heaping piles, I know what’s in each pile.  This frustrates my husband, ok - it drives him absolutely CRAZY!!  I would love to be able to do a 31 day of declutter as my friend Michelle did and blogged about:  http://www.michellemuckala.com/category/31-days-to-a-de-cluttered-home but seriously - I need to be realistic cause I need a hell of a lot more time than 31 days!!

365 days - my goal to get my house organized this year!!  Think I can do it???  Here goes nothing....First off - I need to dejunk and part with things.  This week, I made the move.  Laundry was the number one on the list.  I have not been able to see the bottom of my laundry room in forever.  Is the flooring tile?  Cement?  Carpet?  I managed to get a peak of it after MANY loads of laundry.  Then the fun part comes - putting the stuff away.  You see, I can get the stuff washed and dryed but then it comes out to the living room and hangs out on the big chair.  There it sits until someone is looking for something, or the dog decides to bury himself in it.  Half ends up on the floor and I am sure half of that ends back up in the laundry.  Imagine 8 loads of clean laundry piled up, guess it was time to get started on the dreaded job, even my kids groaned when I said it was time to put it all away.  But first they had strict instructions to go through their closets and dressers pulling everything out that they didn’t wear or like anymore.
The laundry chair

Laundry room after the girls
cleaned their room one day.
That was fun to wash
all of that! 

One trip, two trip, three trip, four!  OH MY!!  Had enough stuff for 3 regular sized garbage bags of clothes and that was just theirs!!  Thankfully I had already gone through my closet back in Nov and had managed to come up with 3 bags myself.  There was actually a lot more but I had sold some of it on the online rummage sale.  I would have loved to sell more but quite frankly it was a hassle taking pictures of everything, listing the stuff, replying to people if they had questions and then also setting up meeting times for pick up.  And that means the stuff is still here until it sells and if I need to dejunk - I need it gone NOW. 

Up until last year I usually donated all of the kids clothes to Head Start but since my kids are older than the kids that go there - Head Start has no use for the bigger sizes.  I really wanted to be able to donate all the clothes somewhere where people that needed them didn’t have to pay for them.  The kids clothes went to a church where they have a clothing restore where people in need can come in and get clothes for their kids and my clothes along with two bags of the kids toys went to a community center that offers them just like the church.  As long as I don’t see “our” clothes end up on the rummage sale site I will continue to donate to those places.

PHEWW!  Just like that - 8 BAGS GONE!!  That is 8 less bags of clothes I need to wash!!!  But I better not get too overly excited though as there are at least 6 more loads of laundry piled up on the chair again.......not to mention the 3 baskets of socks that are hiding out in my bedroom that need mating.....Wonder how many more bags of clothes I can come up with to exit the house??  Goal for next week - 3 more!