I used to be such a good blogger

A friend of mine told me yesterday that she can always tell when I’ve been busy because of the silence on my blog!  Things have been so crazy here, I don’t even really know how to give an update!  But to hit a few highlights…

The girls just had their last recitals of this semester and they did a WONDERFUL job!  I’m so proud of how hard they’ve worked and how much they’ve accomplished.  We’re all going to miss lessons during the break, but looking forward to the time at home, too.  Maybe we can take this time to catch up on our schoolwork… and housework. 

Speaking of schoolwork, we just switched to a new curriculum and are LOVING it.  At a friends suggestion, we looked into Sonlight, which is a literature based curriculum.  We love it because we’re learning lessons about history and science through stories, and doing a lot of discussing in addition to written work.  It seems to be a lot like My Fathers World, but not nearly as scripted and feels a lot more flexible to me.  So the kids and I have been doing a lot of reading and we’re enjoying it very much.

One of our sheep just gave birth to twins – a boy and a girl.  We lost the girl despite our best efforts, and mama wasn’t terribly interested in the boy, so we’ve been bottle feeding him (every three hours, around the clock!  Whew!)  He’s sweet and adorable, follows us around everywhere, and I just discovered that he’ll also be one of the most dangerous animals we could possibly have on our little farm when he grows up!  Apparently bottle fed rams (and bulls!) become SUPER aggressive when they hit maturity.  Hard to believe this little guy who sleeps with our kids would one day try to injure them, but we won’t be taking any chances!  As of today, it’s back outside for him, and limited contact with us in hopes that he’ll figure out that he’s a sheep and not a human (or rather, in hopes that he’ll figure out WE’RE humans, and not sheep for him to fight with/mate with!)  Some year when I have time, I’ll try to post some pictures. 

We’re milking the mama sheep so that we can have milk for the lamb (and because the more animals I have to milk, the happier I am!)  We’re going to try our hand at making sheep’s butter and cheese soon, and I can’t WAIT to try it – I’ve heard it’s absolutely delicious!

And because I can’t find this information ANYWHERE on the internet… We are milking a Katahdin sheep and in her first week of production, she has given about 16 ounces (half a quart) each day.  I’ll update that every now and then, for anyone else who is trying to figure out how much milk Katahdin sheep give at various stages of their lactation cycle!

I now realize that we got entirely too many chickens and I will be very glad when the meat birds are ready for freezer camp.  That’s all I’m going to say about that, because if I say any more I might just start to cry.

And the last and most exciting news… we’re taking steps toward putting our house on the market and/or trying to purchase some land near us!  We would really like to start raising jersey cows and some type of meat cow in the very near future, and we’ve felt God leading us to start taking steps in that direction!  If you feel led, we’d really appreciate your prayers regarding this – specifically, that we will have ears to hear God’s voice directing us, and the strength, knowledge, and presence of mind to follow where He leads.  There are a LOT of options out there, and we want the one God has for us and no other!

Cleaned the house, changed a tire and wrangled a wild sheep, all before lunch

“The sheep’s vagina fell out again.”

I really never know what to expect around here, anymore.

We’ve been monitoring our oldest ewe for a couple of days now, we think she’s pregnant and has had a recurring vaginal prolapse (apparently the womanly parts that are supposed to stay INSIDE are capable of coming OUTSIDE.  Not a pleasant thought.)  We tried to fix it ourselves with a little help from Google, but today what should have been obvious to begin with became clear: this was not something a little baling twine could fix.

Jon was out of town, and our sheep are semi-wild (two of them have already escaped once), but I was hopeful that the kids and I could catch her and get her to the vet with a bit of communal effort and lots of prayer (just to give you an idea of what we were facing, the last two times Jon and I tried to catch her, he jumped out of the way and left me grabbing on to 100lbs of running, bucking, sheep fleece and it took both of us to wrestle her to the ground once he jumped back into the fray [to his defense, he's not as used to animals as I am, and five incredibly strong sheep charging toward you at lightning speed is not a comfortable sight!])  In faith, however, I made a spot for her in our animal trailer (otherwise known as the back of the family van) and we were on our way to catch her when my son noticed that our tire was flat.  COMPLETELY flat.

I’ve never changed a tire.  I’ve never watched anyone change a tire.

Changing tires falls firmly under the category: JON’S JOB, along with taking out the trash and cleaning the bathroom toilet.

But it had to be done, or our vet was going to have to make a house call on a Saturday.  $50.00 just to get him to step foot onto our property, for a sheep who was destined to become dinner.  Not a happy thought.

I won’t go into all the details.  I won’t bore you with how I tried to jack up the van in the wrong place and almost broke some metal doohickey that looks like a pretty important part of the vehicle.  Or go into details about the thirty minutes I spent just trying to get the spare tire off of its anchor thingy.  Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get what I thought were lug nuts off the hubcap (I now know how to identify actual lug nuts) and got slammed in the head when a gust of wind blew the trunk door into the side of my head (I’m really not making this up.)

What I will say is that I finally manged to get the spare tire on the van.  By myself (well, almost… it took me and two of the girls pulling together to get those lug-nuts off the tire!)  And I have amazing friends who called at perfect moments with encouraging words and advice (and didn’t make me feel stupid for crying!)  Friends who watched my kids while I took the sheep to the vet.  And fed them lunch.  And came over to visit.  And brought dinner.  And coffee.  And chocolate.

Then took the tire home with them to fix it.

In the end, a really stressful morning turned into a really wonderful afternoon and I’m happy to say that I now know how to change a tire.  And our sheep has all of her womanly parts back where they belong.

That’s something I never really imagined myself saying.  Farming changes you, people.  It really does.

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Category:  Farming

Related Articles:  We are THAT Family

We are THAT Family

We’ve been slowly ruining our reputation as upstanding citizens of our small town for a good while now, but I think as of yesterday we’re well on our way to becoming the local tourist attraction.  To give you a small sampling of the things that have led to our reputational demise…

We’re keeping 5 goats, 60-something chickens (I lost count a long time ago), and (as of yesterday) 5 sheep on a one acre plot of land.

To accommodate these animals, we have three stationary pens made of chain link and cattle panel strategically stationed in various areas of the backyard and one dog pen rotated daily around the front yard.  I’m pretty sure no one around here has ever heard of mob grazing and sure as heck wouldn’t dream of doing it in their front yard.

We go to the feed store and ask questions like: “do you have feed for sheep?” and get answers like: “well, sir, I recon we call that hay.” 

We go to that same feed store to purchase our cattle panels (which we load into the back of the 15 passenger van, with the doors open and the ends practically dragging on the road), our dog pens (which we strap to the top of the van with ratchet ties), and the straw we use to cover the floor of the van whenever we transport the animals (in the back of the van, with the seats taken out.)  We get strange looks at the feed store.  Always.

My husband gets his workouts in by doing sprints up and down our driveway and, during the spring and summer, jogging behind the push mower.

I get my workouts in (or used to!) by running distances of 10+ miles on our main highway and was once asked incredulously: “what do you GET for running a 12 mile race?!”
“Well… there’s a tee shirt….”
(Actually, I told him we’d get a medal.  He didn’t seem impressed.)

We go to photo shoots around the neighborhood with crazy props and have been stopped by both neighbors and police officers who want to know what we’re doing and we once went into a public building to ask directions to “the brick wall.”  It was my German friend Manuela who did the asking, and I’m pretty sure they thought she was a tourist from another country, looking for a different wall.

We set up huge tents in our back yard every year for Tabernacles, and most Friday nights my husband goes around the yard blowing the shofar, which I’m pretty sure can be heard for miles around.

We play capture the flag in our front yard with airsoft guns designed to look like semi-automatic weapons.  I got into a bit of trouble on that one, when Manuela and I donned my husbands camo gear and went traipsing through our neighbors woods.  He didn’t seem to think that hiding from my husband, who was trying to shoot me, was a good enough reason for me to go trespassing on his property.

(At this point, the fact that we also have a 15 passenger van bench serving as our front porch furniture, a milk stanchion on our back porch, a junk pile in the back yard, and I wear a headcovering in a area where cultural and religious diversity is not exactly venerated is hardly worth mentioning.)

But the worst of it (so far!) came yesterday when two of our sheep got out and went crashing through the yards of several of our neighbors.  Nevermind the fact that it was a Saturday, I think every person within a 10 mile radius passed our house at least once and saw us running top-speed after those two sheep.  Personally, I have a feeling they got on the phone with each other and wanted a glimpse of the show.

I think we’re officially THAT FAMILY.

… you know the ones.

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*(I snagged that title from a blog I enjoy.)

The Baby Goats are Here!

For more information about our Nigerian Dwarf Goats, visit our website: Faithful With Little Farm.

Our girls, D’Claire and Mini Pearl have finally given birth!  Claire gave birth to a pretty little black and white doeling we decided to name Peppy Le Pew (after her great-grandsire, Pepe Le Pew), and Pearl produced an adorable brown and white little buckling we named Cinnamon Swirl (after his champion great-granddam, Cinnamon Red Hots.)  Here they are a few hours after birth:

We’ve been bringing the little doe in at night, both so that we could milk mom first thing in the morning and in an effort to get her used to us.  She has become SUPER friendly… she’s small enough to slip through the fence and whenever the kids are playing in the yard, she runs out to play with them!

She’s also gotten quite comfortable in the house, and pretty much walks in whenever she wants, thanks to a little help from the inside:

We haven’t yet brought Cinnamon into the house, we plan to let him get a little bit older before we do this, so we don’t have to bottle feed him (that didn’t go so well with Peppy!)  But we’ve all played with and petted him since the very beginning and he’s just as friendly as Peppy.

They are both absolutely adorable and SO much fun!

      

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Related Articles (and more pictures!)

Five Little Goats

Why I’m Not a Vegetarian

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Nigerian Dwarf Goats, Bowling Green KY

The Baby Chicks are Here!!!

Here are a few pictures of our newest additions!!!

The Dorkings (who, if all goes according to prayer, will be producing next years meat birds)…

The Penedesencas (at least, we THINK these are the Penedesencas!)  These are our egg-layers…

And just for fun, one of our meat birds this year, the Naked Neck Turken:

They’re kinda cute when they’re little, but not so much when they’re big:

And we have a few more, coming soon!

Why I’m not a vegetarian

“I don’t want someone needlessly dieing so that I can have a meal.”

Since we got our goats, I’ve been thinking a lot about my practice of eating meat.  Our original intent was to raise the goats for both milk and meat, but it didn’t take long before we realized that this was going to be a lot easier in theory than in practice!!!   Now that we’re interacting with and loving on them, I’m realizing that the idea of butchering one of these animals (or their offspring) is going to be very, very different than the actual practice of it.  And I have to ask myself: can I do it?  Should I do it?

Of course, my personal version of schizophrenia comes into play here, because I’m perfectly okay eating meat that someone else has raised, so long as I don’t have to love on or care for the animals myself.  Isn’t it incredible, what autonomy can do?  But, as a friend recently pointed out to me, what if I could walk alongside every animal I eat – be a part of the cows life from the time she is born, to the time that she dies and love her as intimately as I love my dog our cat – to know the cow or chicken or deer as intimately as God knows him?  Would I eat him then?  Should I eat him then?

And with that in mind, is it more right for me to eat someone else’s meat – meat taken from animals crowded into feedlots and poultry houses, subject to abuse by their handlers, fed massive quantities of foods they were never meant to eat – or to eat meat from an animal I have nurtured myself, an animal whom I have cared for and loved?

Some, including the above quoter, would say I shouldn’t eat either.

Here is what I think:  I want to see the cow, the goat and the chicken, the way that God sees them.  The person who wrote “I don’t want someone needlessly dying so that I can have a meal” falls short in his application of the word “someone.”  By this word, they mean only certain types of “someones.”  But what about a carrot, a tomato, or a pepper?  These things, too, must die so that we may have a meal.  And please, before we get into a debate regarding vegetarianism, understand my point:

In Gods eyes, is the carrot any less valued than the cow?  I think it’s easy for us to use typical arguments like “carrots don’t feel pain” or “carrots don’t have emotions” to justify our consumption of them versus the cow, but in God’s eyes is there a difference?  Is the carrot any less loved by God than the cow?  If I could see the carrot the way God sees it, what would I see?  Would I still hesitate more at butchering the cow, than at harvesting the carrot?

For reasons I can’t begin to understand, God has set us up in a world where living things must die so that other living things can live.  Even humans are not exempt from this all-encompassing rule of nature.  Every living thing, at some point, becomes food for another living thing.  None of us can survive, otherwise.  In light of this, my consumption of beef should make me value the carrot more, not less.  It should make me more willing to raise my own animals for consumption, than to consume animals raised by others. In light of this, I believe I will not only be able to raise my own meats, vegetables, and fruits, but in doing so, I will be able to view all of God’s creation with just a little more awe, a little more humility, and a lot more love.

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Five Little Goats

DIY Hydroponic Fodder System

We’re currently feeding our goats and chickens organically for 6 cents a pound.  This is how we’re doing it:

I have friends who are SO much smarter than I am!

This is a hydroponic fodder system (“hydroponic” basically means growing plants in water, without soil.)  Using this system, we are growing roughly 6lbs of edible – and more nutritious – barley grass for every pound of barley seed.  Other people have written about this, before (just do a quick google search for “fodder system”) but I’ll run through the basics of how it works before I explain how we set our system up (or rather, how our awesome friend Patrick set it up with a little bit of help from us!)

To do this simply (without the really cool shelf and pump system pictured above), you can get 15 appropriately sized tupperware bins (the size will depend on how much seed you’re sprouting,) and drill small holes into 7 of them.  The holes should be just a bit smaller than the seed your using, so it won’t fall through.  I drilled my holes along the front of the bin, so that I could saturate the seeds and tip the containers up in order to drain them.  I did this by setting them up inside the second set of bins (the ones without holes) and tipping them forward a bit so the water would drain toward the front and out the holes, into the second set of bins (I then re-used this water, later.)  The last bin is used for your pre-soak.

Day 1:   Pre-soak your sprouting seed in water (if you have problems with mold, a solution of bleach water is recommended.)  This is left to soak for 12 hours (I usually start these in the morning and soak mine in a bleach solution [I'm currently experimenting with apple cider vinegar] until bedtime, and then rinse well and soak in plain water until morning.

Day 2: Drain your soaking seeds and spread them evenly into one of the plastic tupperware bins that have holes in the bottom, and set this up inside a bin without holes, for drainage.  The common recommendation is to spread them roughly 3/4 inches thick.  Start a new bin of seeds to soak.  From this point on, you’ll be watering your seeds four times each day.

Day 3-7: Each day, you’ll start a new bin of seeds to soak, and water the rest of your bins approximately every four hours.  The easiest way I’ve found to water them is through “flood and drain.”  Just pour enough water in to wet the seeds, let it soak for a little while, and then drain it off.

Day 8: Harvest your grass.  Just lift it out of the container, cut or tear it up into smaller chunks or pieces, and feed it to your animals!  Wash out your container with soap and water and use that container for the seeds coming out of the pre-soak.

In this way, you’re harvesting feed every day and starting a new set of seeds each day!

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Now, this system has one major downfall.  As much as I love a good excuse to stay home, it just wasn’t very practical for me to water my barley every four hours.  “No, I’m sorry, I can’t come to visit, I have to water my barley.”  So my husband and our friend Patrick built me an automated barley sprouting system!!!  Using wood, PVC pipe, zip ties, and a few other simple things, they built a shelf that would hold my bins at a slight angle, pipes that would run water to each bin, and gutters to catch the excess (which ends up in the large bin at the bottom, and is pumped back through with a submersible fountain pump.)  It’s plugged in to an automatic timer, so it turns itself on every 4 hours, and turns itself off after running for fifteen minutes.

I don’t have expect specifications for anything, but here is a picture run through of how it works:

In this picture is the tube that comes out from the pump and attaches to the PVC pipe, to take it up to each pipes that run over the bins.

Here’s a full length shot, and you can see the pipes coming off and over the bins:

The flow of water is “regulated” with valves:

(I use the word “regulated” loosely here… we have some learning to do, regarding plumbing, as it took quite a bit of fenagling to get the pressure right… too much or too little on any of the bottom three made the top turn off altogether!)

Here’s a picture of it, running:

Each bin sits on top of the lid it came with, which is screwed into the wood, to stay in place.  This keeps the bins from sliding and also works to catch excess water if the bins get too full (I don’t have a picture of it, but we drilled large holes near the top of the bins, for overflow.)  The front of the bins and the lids both have holes for drainage, and PVC pipe cut in half acts as a gutter for the water to drain into, and vinyl tubing takes the water from one gutter to the next, and finally into the bottom reservoir:

And I thought I should probably mention one of the most important parts – the overflow pipe:

See how the pipe goes just above the last line of sprinklers, and water can bypass the sprinkler and go into tubing (which also drains into the bin at the bottom)?  This is so that any water that doesn’t go through the pipes to water the barley can still make it back to the reservoir (and my system doesn’t explode.) 

Here is a picture of the barley in various stages of development:

Day 2 (just out of the soaking bin)

Day 4:

Day 6:

(Notice our bins are much larger than what we need right now.  We did this so that we’d have plenty of room to expand when we get our meat birds, and when the baby goats come.)

We haven’t worked out all the kinks yet, I’m still trying to figure out what kind of lighting is best (which is why I have a couple of baby blankets covering the bottom half of the windows), and I’m still trying to make it fool-proof so it can be left automated even when I’m not home (today I accidentally put one of the bins in backwards, so it wasn’t draining!  SO glad my daughter caught that before 110 quarts of water ended up all over the kitchen floor!!!)

But all in all I am absolutely THRILLED with it!  It makes things so incredibly easy and the best thing is that I’m going to be able to feed ALL of our animals organically for even LESS than what we’d pay for non-organic feed!  Pretty cool, huh?

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Related Articles:

Five Little Goats