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!