Catch up May - July 2012

Swiss chard and Indian Blankets

Onions and potatoes

May

The hens were beginning to act a little broody.  Two hens were apparently nesting together in a roll of old chainlink fence.  Near the end of the month, two chicks hatched out.  We had no idea, at the time, that they were the first of many!  Also, Daisy was due on May 29th, and on May 30th, she gave birth to twins at 7:30am.  Goats are so nice about giving birth within a day or so of their due date.  The twins were both white and bucklings.  Liam named them Fruit Punch and Snowflake.  Almost twenty kittens rounded out the babies born in the last month at Hill Top Farm!

June

Sexlink chicks on their first outing

A hen hatched out some chicks under the brush pile around June 10th.  There were about seven baby peepers out there for a week and then, she decided to move them to a different spot.  That night, I heard a chick peeping and I was afraid he had gotten separated from the group and was going to bring nine kinds of predators down upon the nest.  So I grabbed a flashlight and went out to see what was going on out there.  When I shined the light in the brush, I saw two little chicks out, the mama was freaking out and there was a snake curled up in the nest with a poor chick in his mouth.  Grr!!  I ran back in to get Jason and he took the snake off (nonvenomous) while I gathered up the hen and chicks and packed them into a box in my laundry room.

Daisy and her twin bucklings

The next day, I set them up in a chicken tractor in the garage.  In the next week or so, another snake came into the garage and snatched a chick or two.  Snakes really like chicken.  This nest was the only one to suffer from snakes this year here on the hill.  One evening I did catch a huge snake heading into the yard and we quickly took him far away before he could enjoy a meal.  However, Dad, down in the valley, ended up losing many chicks and he killed at least 10 snakes over the summer in his chicken house!


 

Potatoes, chard, peppers and tomatoes

July

We were so excited to get two Yorkshire pigs on July 12, from a young man in Bridgeport.  They weighed approximately 30lbs and were about eight weeks old when we bought them.  I brought them home in pet carriers in the backseat of our car.  These were commercial hogs and were destined to live a life on concrete.  They were so happy when we put them in their little garden pen - the boys immediately put their snouts in the dirt and started rooting around.  Our plan is for them to root up our garden and then, when they outgrow our garden, to send them down the hill and let them root up Dad's garden.  We named the larger one Squeal, because he is never quiet (especially when we bring out some goat milk) and the smaller one Grunt.  I was a little worried about my choice in Grunt because he's so quiet and I was afraid he might be sick or slow to grow compared to the more agrressive Squeal.

Grunt and Squeal sniffing the squash

Catch up post Jan - April 2012

Liam patrolling the new fence

Well, now that I've slacked off all year, I've decided to write a month by month review.  I'm sure that it will be a good memory exercise and I have my handy calendar here beside me!

January

Liam practicing 'duck herding'

We weren't able to get the does bred in the fall, partially because of the lingering hot weather.  Also, the buck we were planning to use died.  So, I found a nice Nubian buck in Chico and got Daisy bred on January 3rd.  The rest of the month was uneventful - the weather was pretty mild and we go over three inches of rain late in the month.

 The runner ducks still hadn't visited our pond (which filled in the fall after going completely dry last summer), so we decided to try to encourage them.  With lots of patience and grain, they enjoyed their first swim in the pond!

February
We decided to try an extended lactation experiment with Lacey.  She is an Alpine with excellent production and I thought this year would be a perfect opportunity to try it.  She is now in her 11th month in milk and is still producing a solid 6 lbs a day.  I only milk once a day and supplement her free forage diet with about 1 1/2 lbs of alfalfa pellets/14% horse feed. 

March

I've missed green!

The winter has been so mild this year that on March 4th, I saw prairie larkspur blooming and the next day there were mesquite trees coming out on the hilltops!  Mesquite trees are notoriously late to come out, so you can usually count on no more frosts once their leaves arrive.  This is by far the earliest I've ever seen green on the mesquites. 

Full bloom March 30

However, a couple of years ago, I did see a few mesquites in the valleys get caught in a frost and they actually died (back to the ground).

The Lady Banks rose usually blooms after Liam's birthday, about the second week of April and this year it started blooming in March! 

Archduke Charles rose

 April

Spring is here, complete with roses, wildflowers and swallows.   We planted onions, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, Swiss chard, lettuce and all sorts of miscellaneous seeds in the garden.

Our red sexlink pullets

 
We bought eight Sexlink pullets from TSC because we were so impressed with the beautiful dark brown eggs that my parents get from their hens.  We added two Americanas from H Brand to the group a week later.  We can't wait to move them outside to the chicken tractor!






 Our big project this year was to add a pergola over the patio on the East side of our house.  The combination of brick walls with concrete patio served as a very efficient oven during at least six months of the year.  The temperature on that side of the house (in the shade) was often 120F+.  We considered adding a metal roof, but Jason preferred the pergola and it proved to be cheaper, as well.  Also, it turned out to be considerably more beautiful than metal!

Patio - before

Pergola in progress

Shade - success!

Thank you, Aaron Harris - we love it!

  Sunset decks - more of Aaron's work

New Driveway

Driveway down in the pecan bottom

It's the new year and we have new high speed internet out here in Jack County!  We are very excited about our new treats like videos, games and Skype - they work pretty consistently with the new service.  Another bonus is that pictures upload so much faster than on dial up.  Last year, it took me over an hour to post a blog, not because it took me that long to figure out what to write, but because each picture took about 10 minutes to load!  Such luxury is worth getting excited for, especially when it only costs $10 more a month.

Freddie and our driveway

 Our family has owned this little place for ten years, now, and we were very pleased to have our driveway graded last fall.  Our drive runs straight up a hill and when the rains come, the water runs straight down the driveway.  Only the most daring visitors would venture up the treacherous half mile driveway up the hill to our humble abode.  On a positive note, the road would keep their speed to a minimum!

Jason's handiwork

Lacey on the drive

 
Jason would go and work on the driveway periodically over the years, by hand with a bucket, sledgehammer and a shovel.  He would fill holes with rocks and crush them flat. 
A local bulldozer operator came out to look at the driveway and I was surprised to learn that he would grade it for less than $500.  He came out a couple of weeks later with a huge motorgrader.  So much for buckets!

Mr. Marley's miracle motorgrader

 I shouldn't have been surprised about the capabilities of heavy equipment, but I was pretty impressed.  The first trip up the driveway completely changed the lay of the land.  After Mr. Marley drove about six trips up and down our tortured driveway, gravel was redistributed, rock was sliced and holes were filled.  The spectacle was pretty amazing to watch.

After the first pass

Motorgrader at work!

After the motorgrader came up the house the first time, Liam and I hiked down the driveway to see the action.  We were already thrilled with the progress.  We jogged down the driveway and proceeded to hide in the trees in the cliffs overlooking the drive so we could watch unobserved.




From our vantage point in the trees, we could see the driveway being reshaped without the unfortunate dust problem that we would be faced with if we were lower down.

I think that Liam enjoyed getting to see a piece of heavy equipment busily doing its job.

After a couple of passes

Dad was the first to try out the new driveway along with his Ford Taurus - he seemed to approve.  Jason's mom visited us at Christmas and could not believe the improvement.   Hopefully, the road will last another ten years before it needs grading again.


Our next professional project - a metal roof for our east patio before summer comes...

Summer of 2011

Bella and the other bantams enjoying the lush flowerbed in June

I'm back after three months of absurdly hot, dry weather.  Jason wanted to keep the computer off when the temperature was over 87F in the house - which was all of July and August!  We had many plans and ideas for the summer - gardens, new animals, flowers and being outdoors.  Our climate had other plans.

Things I learned this summer:
1. When the days begin to consistently have highs in the 100's in May, expect trouble for the rest of the summer.
2. Texas has a 30 year drought/heat cycle that seems to peak in excessively awful years - 1880's (I think the worst year was around 1887), 1910's (1918), 1950's (1955 - I think), 1980 and now 2011.
3. I do not like drought and heat.
4. A drought/heat combination is not compatible to subsistence farming (try it in the Sahel region or the plains of Ethiopia - results in starvation).

The baby runner ducks exploring the green yard

5. In 30 years, I will not be living west of the I35 corridor, or necessarily in Texas at all!  In the 1880's, people took their animals and left the drought stricken areas - I think they had the right idea.
6. A Cactus looks really sad when it dies of thirst (so do trees and other plants).
7. Watching animals pant for 2 months straight is not pleasant and is something I hope not to see again.
8. This is probably the most important one - be extremely suspect of living somewhere that has no evidence of humans having lived there before - there is probably a good reason!

I usually consider myself pretty adaptable to things.  I have lived without running water or even a water source within half a mile without too much trouble.  No indoor climate control is pretty obvious and also easy to live without.  We actually did use air conditioning during the last two months of this 90 days or so of ungodly heat.  We set the thermostat at 90 during the day and opened the windows at night.  I felt like I was living in amazing luxury (and I was) when that air kicked in during the day and it barely affected our electric bill.  However, every time I went outside to add water to all of the animals' buckets during the day, they all looked miserable.  They don't get to enjoy that relief, and for that reason, Jason always feels guilty using A/C.  Anyway, you can get used to many different situations, but when there is no water falling from the sky, you are in trouble!

The trees on the north slope (the mesquite are still green) in August

We have received 6.9 inches of rain this year.  Three inches in April, three in June (during VBS), a half inch in August and now .4 for September.  Phoenix, on average, receives 8 inches a year - the city resides in the Sonora Desert for Pete's sake!  When you look around at their vegetation, you see things like cactus and creosote.  We live in the cross timbers and prairies region of Texas characterized by bunch grasses, prickly pear cacti, cedar elms and (present day) invasive mesquite.   The majority of our trees are less than 50 years old (hmmm) and most of the older ones are cultivated.   Our drought has surpassed the one of the 1950's and I think it was rivaling (and maybe passing) the drought of the 1880's.  Assuming the desert is not expanding eastward, the Jack County climate is not really made for many trees, certainly not long lived ones.  The low humidity, lack of rain and temperatures over 100F for so long have hurt the trees pretty badly, especially since this winter is supposed to be warmer and drier than normal.  The good news is the drought should turn next year sometime - the question is what will survive beyond it?

Unfortunately, I like trees and plants and flowers and things that are green.  I have decided that I have chosen the wrong climate to live in.  I am looking forward to the next ten years here that will have above average rainfall and maybe they will soften the memory of this summer.  However, I'm pretty sure that I will still be ready to look for a new home in the east!

Rooster issues

OK, so I am pulled from a deep sleep this morning by my husband yelling at a chicken through the window.  I guess this works as an alarm in the country.  For once, the rooster didn't wake me up (at 3 or 4am when he first starts crowing).

Here are a few ways you can effectively stop a rooster from waking you up in the morning:
1.  Move rooster's cage from underneath your bedroom window.
2.  Sell rooster.
3.  Give away rooster.
4.  Pay someone to take rooster.
5.  Kill and eat rooster.

Here are some slightly less effective tactics that my husband employed this morning:
1.  Curse rooster and all his descendents.
2.  Yell out window telling rooster to 'shut up'.
3.  Run outside and open rooster's cage and beat him with a stick.

Well, now the rooster's out and is chasing around the other loose rooster.  Yes, we have multiple roosters - both large and small.  One of Jason's coworkers had raised some meat chickens and he offered him three.  He thought that was a wonderful idea, so he brought them home where they had to be kept in separate cages so they didn't kill each other.  To be fair, Jason actually processed one of the birds and it wasn't too terrible, but I still had trouble eating it.  That was about two months ago and I keep hinting about giving away the other two, since we have three Bantam roosters (who crow very well, thank you) already.  Also, one of our adolescent chicks is a young rooster and a Barred Rock so I'm planning on putting him in with the big hens when he's older.  Ella Mae is raising a new brood of five chicks and, if I don't miss my guess, at least one of them will be male, also!  Does anybody need a rooster?

Poor little innocents

 

Two more babies

My mom and I drove down to Burnet over Mother's Day weekend.  My sister and her friend were meeting us to run the Jailbreak race on Saturday.  Our Nubian, Daisy, was due to kid on Mother's Day - I figured she would kid late like Lacey and have her babies when we got back from our trip.  Of course not!  Friday night, Jason called at 10:30pm and announced that we had twin baby girls!  He said that they were doing well, but he wasn't sure if they had gotten their colostrum.  So then I began to worry :)  He went back to the barn and completed the fun task of forcing the kids to nurse, just to make sure.  About midnight or so, he called back to say that they were okay - whew.  I finally got to sleep after worrying about the girls for a while longer.

After the race

Saturday morning we drove out to the race site and enjoyed playing in the water and mud on a nice trail run in the Texas hill country.  If you haven't tried one yet, mud runs are pretty fun - this Jailbreak was about 3.8 miles and we finished in under an hour (no, we didn't win :)  My training consisted of chasing Liam around playgrounds about once a week, gardening, hiking, taking the goats foraging and playing indoor tag.  This turned out to be pretty effective for a fun run!

After the race, Mom and I drove on to Fredericksburg, a German town that was founded in 1846 - pretty old for Texas standards.  There were some great old buildings there - both log and rock.  We ate lunch and then breakfast at the Old German Bakery - yum!  Freshly baked bread and Danishes, German pan fries and pancakes, etc.

We shopped Main Street and the local antique malls.  I bought some honey that came from Rogers, TX and we learned from the seller that bee stings can help your arthritis - good to know.  I also got a harmonica and a little flute to bring home for the boys.

We left Monday and headed for Enchanted Rock.  We planned to take the hike to the top and back.  Mistake #1 - Mom is afraid of heights and we learned that the trail is not for the faint of heart.  Mistake #2 - So we detoured to walk the mile and a half around the base.  The first quarter mile of that trail was covered in tumbled down rock (boulders).  The trail leveled out around the back of the rock and then the descent back to the main trail was pretty steep.  Mistake #3 - Not taking a walking stick (or 2) for the climb down.  So, basically, the trail wore Mom out!  All the Autry girls got a workout this weekend - Shonda and I in the race, Mom on the hike - we rock!

Sunny and Margie

We returned home Monday evening and I finally got to see the sweet babies.  We decided to name them Sunflower and Margarita, in honor of their mother.  A couple of days later, when Daisy's milk came in, the daily goat rodeo began.  These are her first kids and so her first milking experience, as well.  The daily show also became my new strength workout.  Jason said he was laughing with me, not at me - yeah, right!  We didn't have a headlock, so she'd try to hang herself by jumping off the front of the milkstand (she was tied by her collar).  In other words, fiasco :)

Our friend, J, gave us a metal milkstand the next weekend - a lifesaver!  I wired it to the post (set in concrete), then added a pallet constructed of 2x4's and 2x6's for the headlock and another pallet for the side (to keep her from leaping off the opposite side.  This set up doesn't budge (otherwise, she'd probably flip it!)  Now, she is getting much better with her milking.  She is a naturally gentle goat - just a little ticklish underneath - who could blame her? 

The Daisy clan

Our first goats milk soap!

The soap just dumped out of their molds

First, I want to apologize for my excessive use of exclamation marks.  I cannot help it if I get excited about many things that happen and that I am seemingly unable to write anything without loads of hysterical punctuation.  Let me assure you, this state will probably not change.

My friend and mentor, Carolyn, is teaching me how to make soap.  Jason and I have been anxious to learn how ever since we began having an abundance of milk.  Carolyn is a very experienced soapmaker, but she hadn't made goats milk soap very much (if at all), so we were both excited to try it.  We used her tried and true recipe, substituting milk in for the water.

Basic Soap Recipe

12 oz lye                                          1 oz glycerin  (opt)
32 oz cold (even frozen) milk            1 oz glycerin & rose water (opt)
16 oz coconut oil                               1/2 cup ground oatmeal
70 oz (4lbs, 6 oz) lard                      1 oz shea butter
Essential or fragrance oil                  1 oz lanolin
1 tsp vitamin E oil (opt)

You have to wear goggles and gloves when using lye.  It is pretty caustic and you don't want it getting on your skin, children, etc.   Work in a well ventilated space with glass or ceramic (we used enamel) bowls or pots and wooden spoons.  Also, Carolyn used a scale to weigh our ingredients - this was especially useful for the frozen hunks of milk.
- Gently pour lye into half frozen milk.  Be careful not to splash.  Our milk came out of the freezer, so we thawed it partially in a pan.  Stir gently and be careful not to inhale any fumes.  Remember our grandmothers sat around a fire outside in their yards to make soap!  Set aside to cool.  We were shocked to see our milk turn orange when we stirred in the lye.  I found out later that we had probably scorched the milk.  So even using partly frozen milk, you might also add the lye in small amounts, letting the milk cool a little in between additions.
- In a large pan, heat the lard and coconut oil until they melt together (both are solid at room temperature).  If you add the optional fats like glycerin, lanolin or shea butter, you need to decrease the lard by the amounts you use.  You want to keep the fat to lye ratio the same or your soap may become greasy.  Incidentally, if you use too much lye, your soap will be too strong.  The idea of this 'cold processed' (or any) soap is that the lye saponifies the fat, changing it into salts of fatty acids and releasing glycerin (in commercial soap, they take that glycerin out because it is more valuable separate to be used in more expensive soaps and lotions).  This soap is considered 'superfatted' because it is not 'pure' soap, but also has all the nice fats in it to promote skin health.
- Cool the pans of lye/milk and oils to 100-105F, with no more than a 10 degree difference between the two.
- Wearing your safety gear, gently pour the lye milk into the oils.  Mix with a stick blender until it forms a 'trace'.  Carolyn dipped out small amounts into a blender where we could use different fragrances with each blender batch.  A 'trace' is what you see when you drip a few drops off the spoon and onto the surface of the mixture and it leaves a trace on top.  It's very similar to when you're making pudding and the pudding begins to leave a trail on top when you lift the spoon.  You want the soap to be very thin pudding.
- Add the essential or fragrance oil, also the ground oatmeal if you want.  I don't think we added the oatmeal to our batch (unless I missed it!)  Add the Vitamin E oil, if desired.  Mix in the additions well.
- Pour soap into molds.  We used long plastic rectangle container (drawer organizers), that would be easy to cut into bars.  We also poured soap into a couple of other plastic squares.  It's helpful if the plastic is flexible so that the soap dumps out easily.  Silicone works well.
- After 24 hours, dump the soap out of the molds and cut into bars.  Set in a dry place and allow to cure for 4-6 weeks before using.  This is the really hard part - waiting 4 weeks before getting to use our new soap!  I got to have a trial run while washing the soap off of the tool I used to cut the soap into bars.  It was nice and bubbly and left my hands soft - yes!

48 bars of goats milk soap!