A New Schedule

Today is a good day to make cheese, but we don't have quite enough milk.  Jerky's old enough that we decided to milk all four quarters this morning for the extra.   It filled more than a single bucket, measuring out at 3-1/4 gallons.  Carrying two buckets into the house was a new challenge.  I was a little worried how the cows would handle the schedule change, but Christina took it in stride.  Jerky wasn't quite so accepting, but did fine.

I'm out of sterlized milk and it's time to culture a starter. I started by canning quarts of milk.  30 minutes in a boiling water bath and they are sterilized.  Today I'll culture mesopholic for cheese.

We out grew out little cheese frig and got another.  These are wine frigs so we can set the temperature at 55ºF and the racks allow good air movement.  The red cheeses are the waxed ones — cheddar, colby, and jack.  The yellow ones are italians that dry to a form a rind — parmesan and romano.  My husband pointed out that if I want to make more cheese, he could build a rack and stack these frigs right up the wall.

Those cheeses without wax get mold easily.  I'll wipe any mold I find with vinegar.

Today we'll also churn butter, bake bread, make something for snack like zucca bars or brownies, and then we need to figure something out for dinner.   And our newly three year old son starts formal homeschooling.  It's just read an assigned story, listen to a nursery rhyme, and play with blocks, but he likes having a "schedule" like his big sisters.

Little Ones

We're still letting jerky take some milk.  Christina is giving us over four gallons a day so we don't need any more.  Jerky is so big now, but he's still Christina's baby.  It's so cute how he cuddles up to her as he nurses. 

Today our baby turns three years old.  We made cream cheese yesterday that we'll use for frosting.  If you look at the ingredients for commercial cream cheese, you'll find several things besides cream and culture.  Ours is only cream, culture, and one drop of rennet.  It's thick but not quite as smooth as commercial cream cheese.  However, when I get it in the mixer with some powerdered sugar, it whips up smooth and rich.

Today we'll bake a cake and make spaghetti.  And we'll probably finish off a three-pound block of colby.  This is the first cheese I made after Christina freshened (calved) and the last one with the old nasty press.  It looked so nasty when it came out of the press that I almost didn't take the time to wax it.  But even with holes it in and pretty mild from only two months aging, it has good flavor and better texture.  This container was completely full when I cut the block up yesterday and now it's mostly gone.  Our little one turning three has done most of the damage. 

Life Without TV

We are successfully getting water out to the cows with hoses. This is a big improvement over carrying buckets. And with the new stock tank, we only have to fill it every few days instead of twice a day.

When my husband and daughter were filling the water it was just above freezing and overcast.  My husband was dressed appropriately but our daughter's internal combustion must have been working well.  Not only was she wearing only a tank top and skort, but she swung her arms around as she waited.  I remember the days when I could have pulled that off.

Most every evening we pause for reading aloud.  My 9-year old's are studying early American history and we just finished Johnny Tremain.  While I read they take turns churning the butter.

With our evenings full of reading, butter churning, and milking, we haven't watched TV in over a year.  When people hear all that we do on our little homestead, they wonder how we fit it all in.  Freeing up those several hours a day the average person dedicates to TV makes it easy. 

Only a few years ago I was a high-functioning TV addict.  I watched regularly but I still held a job. I couldn't imagine going a few days, let alone a week without TV.  Now that I'm fully detoxed, I have to admit that I don't miss it much.  In fact, I don't miss it at all.  I have time for good novels, for cooking great food, and for doing things with my children.  I'm a little embarrassed to remember those hours of stillness, letting my consciousness be lead around by commercial interests. We still watch movies, but commercial-driven TV is a thing of the past.

Hiding in Plain Sight

My youngest was feeling tired and wanted to cuddle.  We laid down on the bed at an odd angle, he with his bottle and me with my arms around him, and looked out the window.  We had a nice view of our big sycamore.  I rarely look out the window at this angle, but there it was.  It filled the whole view, a beautiful array of branches and stems and leaves.  The breeze moved the leaves in unison like a gentle dance.

Laying there, holding this little one of my heart, and finding such beauty hiding above our heads reminded me of the many ways that God's beauty and presence is all around us, but we just don't look up.

Sometimes in life it feels as if God is distant, or not relevant, or maybe just not paying much attention to me.  But the truth is that God is all around, I'm the one missing it.  That can be an easy enough thing to say, but it's another thing to know.  Looking up at that beautiful tree was a tangible reminder of the ways God hides in plain sight.  That tree had been there all the time, right outside my window, but I was the one who didn't see it.  It was only when I was quiet, some time devoted to nothing other than loving and looking, that I found it.

Just like God, that tree is strong, big, and old.  But also just like God it has thousands of little parts, branching in complexity, bigger than my mind can take in.  That tree has been watching over us, steadfast, surveying the changing seasons and our near constant rushing around.  The tree has been gently just watching even as our busy-ness made us frustrated and was more about experience-gluttony than real need.  But the tree never grew frustrated, it kept standing, waiting for us to notice.

The gentle stillness was like a moment out of time, laying on the warm bed, a sweet little one cuddled up to me, a lovely tree showing off its wares, and contemplating a gentle, persistent God.  After a while of just looking, everything changed.  The whole tree changed color right before our eyes.  The dull brown transformed into a bright orange.  It was the sun breaking through the clouds, each leaf catching the low light like thousands of little reflectors.  The effect was a dazzling orange-red of earth tones like someone had hit "enhance" on the world and the tree itself was glowing.

I asked my little son, "did you see that tree change color?"  His breathy "yeah" was an eyes-wide-open exhalation.  We watched the color fade brown to orange and back to brown and burst back to orange.   It wasn't just the tree that was hiding in plain sight, there was a dynamic vitality there, waiting to be noticed.

In that moment, God wasn't just an idea, a dogma, or a being to study, in that moment God was real, shining light into my life and noticing me.  God couldn't be contained in the metaphor of a tree above, standing still, and strong, God lept into the metaphor of the light, of constantly changing, uncontrollable, and unattainable, the energy source of all life on earth.  And then God waited for me to notice.

Our First Breeding

God willing, we have a knocked up cow.  Today was three days since we gave Christina the shot that's supposed to throw her into heat.  Our poor cow has had to deal with the cow-version of clomid.

Dairy cows run on roughly an annual cycle of calving to keep the milk flowing.  They give the most milk after they calve (freshen) and then it slowly goes down.  After two months dry they calve and freshen again.  If we don't get her pregnant, her milk will slowly go down and there will be no calving to get everything started again.

The breeder guy came this morning.  He brought the semem from a bull named Plus frozen in liquid nitrogen.  It's a two handed job, one requiring a glove to the shoulder, but it was fast.

Afterward she needed another shot.  Thankfully he gave that one to her.  He walked up to her thigh, hit it twice with his fist, put the shot in, gently squeezed it and only then did Christina react.  She stepped away from the shot and onto my husband's foot.  We joked that she was punishing him for letting in that guy with the shot.

Beefy kept trying to ride Christina and getting in the way.  She stepped away from him but beefy was persistent so we tied him up out of the way.  The breeder guy said all that riding is a good sign that she's in heat today.

The breeder guy also said she has good flesh on her.  I think that means she's not skinny.  He said it's not easy to keep flesh on a dairy cow so we're doing a good job.  Whew!

In three weeks we'll watch to see if she goes into heat, although wouldn't it be ironic if she did and showed us?  Not going into heat is a good sign that a cow is pregnant, but if she goes into heat and doesn't show us, how would we know?  I think a vet can check her in two months to confirm she's pregnant, and we might do that, just to be sure.

If everything was successful today, 280 days is Nov. 1st and our time off begins Sept. 1st.  ...hmmm... that's a nice time to travel.

After Months of Preparation

I thought the biggest difference in growing our food would be the growing.  But in fact, the biggest difference has been the cooking.  We don't fill up a grocery list with any old thing that comes to mind anymore.  We eat what we have, unless it's something special and then our planning begins way in advance.  That's how it's been with my husband's favorite thing — jambalaya. 

Last summer we planted okra for the sole purpose of jambalaya.  They've been sitting in the freezer waiting for this day.  Okra is native to the humid subtropics of the gulf coast, so it was kind of a funny joke growing it in desert Idaho.  But it grew and it did fine.

Those chorizo's he worked on last week went in the pot, along with some black beans we grew.

We crock-potted two of the chickens we raised last summer.  They made the whole kitchen smell like hearty dinner.  Our daughter stripped the meat off the bones.  The fat and skin went to the chickens, but we tell them it's pork.  That seems OK, don't you think?

It was a long day of cooking.  At the same time I was working on a parmesan.  We had to negotiate for stove space.

Although my husband and kids love it, I've never liked jambalaya.  It's too hot and the sausage is gross.  I usually just eat oatmeal on jambalaya days.  But I must admit, this stuff was actually good.  It was still hot but had good flavor.  The sausage was flavorful and not too fatty.  Everyone agrees that of all the jambalaya's he's made, this was the best.  Which is good because he made enough to last for days.

All of this cooking got me to thinking about our next batch of meat chickens.  I think I'd prefer to raise one large of batch rather than two smaller ones.  So we'll plan on getting baby chicks in late March which would give us a butcher date of early June.  My nine-year-olds want to raise some chickens for themselves too.

Right now in the dead of winter with the land silent, it is an exercise to think forward to warm days and the growth of spring.  But it will come.  Just as those silent times of our spiritual life always give way to warmth and growth.

Late Winter Living

Our baby plants have become toddler plants.  The cabbage leaves have grown large enough to shade the stuff around them. The lettuce looks strong and is putting on its second set of true leaves.  Praise God!  Last year I had so little success getting plants started, but these look great.  They aren't too leggy and are growing strong.  Broccoli is next on the list to get started.

Those sausages my husband made turned out pretty good, but pretty hot.  He just loves hot dogs so he had to find a solution in this self-sufficient lifestyle.  He's enjoying fine tuning the recipes to be exactly what he wants.  Our youngest likes them a lot, but after chewing up a bite he runs around saying, "hot... hot..."

After this success, my husband is saying that we need to get beefy done into just hamburger.

That's right.  Score for lower-carbon living!  We cleaned out the laundry room and set up racks to dry clothes.  We dry clothes outside in the summer, but the winter has required running the dryer.  I've read that electricity used for heat is the most inefficient.  We were able to get about three loads on these racks and they dried in under a day.  Praise God!

Tomorrow jerky turns ten weeks old.  Our friends with a family cow wean their calves at ten weeks.  But I think the dairy we got Christina from keeps their calves on milk for four months.  Since we've started making jerky wait to nurse until we're done milking, the process has become pretty comfortable.  With over four gallons a day coming in the house, we don't need more milk.  We're thinking about letting him keep going for the time being.

That Was Awful

Today was the day to give Christina the shot.  Since my huband did the shots when she had milk fever, he said it was my turn.  Oh no.  I've been praying all week that she'd go into heat on her own and we wouldn't have to do the shot.  But she didn't, so we do.  It went badly.

I tried twice to give her the shot, but I was overcome with weakness and shakes.  Each time the needle barely went in.  Blessedly, my husband took over.  The first time she jumped away from the needle.  The second time he got the needle and serum into her.  So poor Christina got poked four times and had to deal with uptight, nervous people.  I feel like such a woos.   At least it's over.

The breeder guy comes on Tuesday morning and hopefully the breeding will be successful. 

With the new pedal grinder, our teenagers are now calling flour grinding exercise instead of work.  My 13 year old happily sat up, read her book, and pedaled away.  Only when my younger daughter demanded a turn did she stoop.  That's what we like, kids fighting over wheat grinding!

Learning to Adjust

We got two eggs yesterday and we are happy!  Since the days have gotten dark our flock doesn't lay much.  We could put a light in the coop to get more eggs, but instead we're trying to live with God's design — chickens don't lay much in the dark.  Last week we went several days with no eggs or one egg.  That was hard.  Then we got four!  We were so happy.  I've learned to modify many of our recipes for fewer eggs.  Last summer when we were getting eight to twelve a day, I modified recipes to use more eggs.  This sustainable living means constantly adapting to the reality of the food God provides for us.

My husband is making a big batch of sausages he is calling chorizo.  He mixed the meat, spices, and curing salt three days ago.  Today he rolled them out into logs using wax paper.

He laid the logs out on roasting pans and dried them in the oven at 200ºF all day long.  The house is full of smell.  Each time he comes into the kitchen he said, "oh, that smells good."  Each time the girls and I come into the kitchen we say, "ugh, what is that smell?"

I made a monterey jack cheese two days ago and it bombed.  I tried cutting the curd in a different way but it didn't knit together well.  This time, I went back to my old way and things turned out better. But not perfect.  I wonder what I'm doing wrong?

We have been eating that jack that didn't turn out, with kids raving about how good it is.  It's so bland, but there is a hint of good flavor.  It is good to have a slicing cheese.

Last Potatoes

Christina is nine years old today. We'll help her celebrate by milking her at the time she's used to, and feeding her the food she's used to.  Cows do like predictability.  Although we do plan to give her a few more turnips because she loves those.

My friend who came over to teach us to make fudge recommends that we do it often so that the memory takes firm hold.  The kids think that is a great idea.  My nine-year-old daughter and I whipped out this batch.  It wasn't obvious to me when to pour, so we stirred until our arms couldn't stand it any more and just poured.  It squished out a little thinner than we would have liked, but it hardened up quickly and was fantastic.  We didn't even bother putting it on a plate, we just ate it off the counter.

I made a monterey jack cheese yesterday and it didn't knit together.  I tried cutting the curds in a different way and I think they got too small.  As I was loading the curds into the mold, my daughter grabbed some and said we should just eat it that way.  Since the pressing didn't work out, we sliced it up fresh and ate it straight.

With a little sun shining we were hungry for hamburgers and french fries.  We dug out the last of the potatoes from the cellar, and it's only January.  We need to grow a lot more next year.  Thank God we can buy more at the store. 

Some potatoes have started to soften.  We grew three varieties, all close together, and they got harvested together.  Next year we'll plant them in separate spots so they are easy to keep separate.  Some varieties keep a lot better than others.

As we fight the mice in the house, we've ignored the mice in the cow shed.  This morning a mouse was in Christina's feeder when we milked. The mouse ran underneath it but was squashed when Christina moved the feeder around.  Christina is a mighty mouse hunter!  We threw the little dead body to the chickens.  The fastest of them grabbed it and ran.

Done!

We got everything on the to-do list done yesterday.  That's not normal, and it wore me out.  I made mesophilic starter (which I use in cheese), butter, monterey jack cheese, and zucca bars with cream cheese frosting.   We got the last of the grain corn popped off their cobs and sterilized it by putting it in a 200ºF oven for a few hours.   My husband started sausage by mixing the ground meat with the spices and curing salt.   We got a full homeschooling day in and I cut my husband's hair.  And we moved hay.

For days we have been digging hay out of the "portable" carport and carrying it over to the cows.  We have an area in the cow shed for hay, but it's emptied out.  

It wasn't nearly as nice outside as the day before, cooler and overcast.  But the heavy work kept us warm.

Driving the baby tractor makes the work fun for my teenagers.  One drives and the other walks along to keep the hay from rolling out.  My husband, impatient to get it done, just carries the bales over one by one.  I think he's crazy.

We ran out of gas just as it started raining, so we called it done.  Maybe sixteen bales were moved over, enough for about three weeks.  Then we'll do it again.  A tractor with a bucket would make this easy work ...we are suffering from tractor lust.

We made frosting from our cream cheese for the first time.  It's just cream cheese and powdered sugar.  When I invited the girls to try it I expected complaints that it didn't taste "normal."  Instead they loved it.  Loved it!  We slathered it all over the zucca bars.  I thought it was way too much; everybody else thought it was just right (they now claim it was too little).

We have another to-do list made out for today, but failed to put "rest" on it.  Oops.

Sun & Thawing

It was a warm sunny day.  Really warm.  In fact, it was nice.  We took the opportunity to move the new water tank out for Christina and beefy.   

The hoses have been frozen and we've been waiting to try them.  Carrying buckets of water to the cows is getting old.  We unrolled the hoses, connected them, and water flowed.  It flowed!  We danced in celebration.  After the tank was filled, we drained the hoses out.  As soon as it freezes we'll know if they fully drained.

Beefy kept cuddling on my husband while he was working.  He was trying to keep his shorts clean, but finally gave in and hugged back.  Cows do leave a smell on your clothes.

Still no signs of heat in Christina.  Our friends with a family milk cow said the first time their cow went into heat they thought she was dying.  She moo-ed incessantly for a whole day.  So we figured it would be easy with Christina, but nope.  She's quiet and dainty when she's in the mood.

After talking to some professionals, we have a new plan for getting her bred.  It's possible that she hasn't gone into heat, so we'll keep watching.  If she doesn't by Saturday, we go on to Plan B.  We'll give her the shot that the Vet left with us, that will be twelve days after the first one.  Then we'll breed her three days later on Tuesday, along with another shot that the breeder guy will bring with him.  This will give her a due date of Nov. 1st, which sounds pretty good to us.

Our battle with the mice continues.  We thoroughly cleaned out the pantry, ready at any moment to find a small mammal, but we never did.  We found a few droppings on the floor and bottom shelves, but the higher we went the less we saw.  There was no indication of long-term residence.

So the mouse is gone, but where is it?  Did it go back into the garage?  Or is it somewhere else in the house?  Oh, I can't hardly stand to think about it.  We left mouse traps around.

It was so warm that my nine-year-old daughter took scraps out to the chickens with only a tank shirt on.  Those chickens come running as soon as the back door opens.  By the time she gets over to them, they are a convecting unit until the bowl is emptied.

I'm reading "The Good Life," about people who opted out of the cash economy in 1932 and built a sustainable life for themselves.  They had no animals and lived a vegetarian life.  They state that they wanted no dependents or dependence.  It's an interesting idea.  We do spend a lot of time taking care of animals.  If we didn't have chickens and cows, winter would be awash in relaxation.  But the milk and meat and eggs that our animals provide are a real source of joy.  Christina cream in my coffee alone is a daily occasion of gratitude.  And the animals themselves are fun.  But I hear that relaxation is good too.

It's War

OK, it's not war. We don't do war.  But we are in a heated disagreement with some mice about where they are to live and eat.

Saturday morning, we found that a cheese had been enjoyed by something small in the pantry.  Ack!  I wiped it down with vinegar, so the cheese is saved.

This is where the city girl in me comes out.  I can't stand the idea of mice in the house.  Even worse, in the pantry.

I pulled every plastic bag out of the pantry, checking for holes gnawed in the bottom. None.  Whew.  We got some more mice traps and set several up.  But after two nights, the traps are still empty.  That means the little critter is probably still there.  Today we'll empty out the pantry and see if we can't find it's happy home.  And destroy it.  This is just awful.  I'm trying not to think about it.

Over the weekend we made an unplanned purchase — another flour grinder.  When we researched flour grinders there were two that came out on top: the one the family got me for Christmas and this one.  A friend of a friend was selling their Country Living grinder that they had rigged up with pedals.  It's all mounted on a cabinet, the pedals are easy to adjust, and they included a motor if we want to run it on electricity.  It was too good a deal to pass up.

This morning my husband did almost the full grinding job by himself.  I easily finished it off.  We are finding that there are some adjustments we'll make, but this will be a very good set up.

It's sunny and 50ºF.  What a wonderful day.  Even the cows like it and are out on the pasture.  After a week, Christina has shown us no signs of heat.  Chances are, she has been in heat, but if she did anything to show it, it was in the privacy of the cow shed and we didn't see it.  Dang.  It's hard to breed a cow when you don't know when she's in the mood.

Thick and Rich

We finally brought all those acorn squash inside and cooked them up.  There were a lot.  My husband cut them in half and my 9-year-old daughter scooped out the seeds.  The chickens were happy to receive those innards.

The squash filled three cookie sheets, stacked tightly.  Over an hour at 350ºF and they were soft.

After letting it cool overnight, I scooped out the good part and ran it through our hand crank food processor.

The squash came out smooth and thick.  This will make wonderful pie and zucca bars.  Our three squash a week quota cooks us to about a quart and a half.  These acorn squash resulted in six quarts — in pie units that's 12 pies or in weeks it's four weeks.  Although we might just let them sit in the freezer while we eat the rest of the squash in the cellar before it goes bad.

Heavy Cooking Day

It was a heavy cooking day.  The stove was full culturing sour cream, cream for butter, and milk & cream for ranch dressing.  I had a cheddar cheese going and afterward we made ricotta from the whey. 

We also crock-potted two of our home-grown chickens that we'll make into chicken pot pie today.  Plus, we made cream cheese danishes with the butter layer that's been lounging in the frig for too long.

Sometimes cooking piles up on us.  All of a sudden there is so much to be done, and I often don't see it coming. It makes me feel ADHD to have so many things going at once, things that need constant care and watching.

And then God soothed me this morning. The sunrise, glowing out our back window, was a gentle warmth to my shivering brain...

Thank. You...  Thank. You...  Thank. You...

Christina hasn't shown us any signs of heat.  Well, she seemed a little restless yesterday, but we can't use that to tell.  We'll watch closely again today, but we may miss it.   If we don't know when she's in heat, we can't breed her, and we want her bred in about three weeks.  We called a lady who knows what she's doing and she said there is another way.  We may have find out more about it.

Food Promises

A friend came and over and taught us how to make REAL fudge.  Not having been taught by my grandmother, I've not had much success.  My friend grew up in a remote area of northern Alberta where if you wanted candy, you made it.  And she wanted candy. So she made it.  And she learned to do it well.

We got everything boiling until a bit dropped in cold water rolled up into a soft, pliable ball.  We whipped it over to a sink of cold water to cool.  After the pan was just warm, we started beating.  It was smooth and syrupy at first.

We kept beating and stirring and slowly the string off the spoon got thicker.  The surface stayed glossy, but as it got thicker and more difficult to stir, the surface developed a velvety look.  She told us to watch closely, because we needed to catch it just before it was ready to go solid.  We kept stirring, looking at the string off the spoon until it was good and thick.  One last beat and we poured it out on a buttered counter.

As it poured out, she lamented that we had poured too early; it was spreading out too much.  I thought it looked pretty dang good.  After fifteen minutes of cooling, we cut it into squares and tried it.

Oohhhhh... Wow! This is not only the best fudge I've ever made, it's possibly the best fudge I've ever had.  Of course, it has Christina butter and cream.  It is smooth, rich, and the flavor runs deep.  The kids think it's a little dark, which makes my husband and I like it better.  But they still finished it in one sitting.

My friend said she'd come back and teach us to make taffy.  We can't wait!

Those seeds I planted last week have germinated.  Praise God!  They look so good.  In fact, some of the lettuce germinated at a higher rate than I expected and are too full.  Step 1, germination.  Check.  On to step 2, get them past the tiny stage without getting all leggy. 

My friend said that her mother had greens growing under a bank of lights all winter long.  It would be -40º outside and they'd be eating greens.  I think her mother had the right idea.  This flat is a promise of salad at the end of February.  In the meantime, we go without.

Jerky Drama

My daughter was right — jerky is dramatic.  He got his first halter yesterday.  He's eight weeks old, really older than he should be, so we figured we better get started.  We got it buckled on him, and he flopped down, just flopped himself right down on the ground.  The halter is just the part that wraps around his head, so he wasn't tied up at all, he just had some straps on his head.

My husband said, "jerky, we can see your eyes, we know you're not dead."  But he just lay there, and shut his eyes.

After a while, we got him up and he spent the rest of the afternoon backing up and shaking his head.  It was really very dramatic (and funny).  This time Christina wasn't alarmed, but she did show up to comfort him.

This morning he was handling things better.  Then we tied him up during milking to keep him out of the way and it all started again. This time he pulled back as far as he could on the rope and fell over sideways.  He laid there, still, with his head pulled by the rope.

Eventually playing dead got old so he started playing tug-of-war.  He would tug a while, flop over on the ground, then get up and do it again.  It was hard to keep our mind on milking with all the entertainment.

We expect Christina to go into heat tomorrow, but today we'll start watching closer.  I hope we catch it this time.