The Sadest Words: No Milk

It's over.  Christina had dried herself off.

Her milk and been dropping and dropping.  We were making do and hoping it would level off, but then one evening we went out to milk and there was nothing there.  Well, there was a little bit there, but after a while of milking and only two cups of milk to show for it, we knew it was over.  Christina was dry.

For the first time in almost two and a half years, we have no Christina milk.  The last two times she dried off, we were prepared with milk and cream waiting in the freezer.  This time we hadn't prepared because we hoped she wouldn't dry off.  We were wrong.

After growing used to drinking two gallons of milk a day, we have to suddenly learn to live with a whole lot less milk.  In less than two months Sunflower is due to calf and we'll be in milk again, but in the meantime we have to buy milk.  And it won't be that nasty commercial milk either!  We'll drink raw jersey milk or we'll skip it.  Luckily we can buy raw jersey milk in town, but it costs an awful lot.  Ugh.

The silver lining is that we get the rest of a dry period.  The first evening of not milking, we watched a movie right after dinner, because we could!  We'll have to do more of that.

Lard Honor

When jerky went to the butcher, we had the presence of mind to ask for the fat.  Normally they throw the fat away, but we had read about rendering lard and figured it wouldn't be that hard.  I've read that lard from grass-fed beef isn't nearly as bad for you as "regular" lard.

When we arrived to pick up our meat, we got six boxes of meat and two full boxes of fat.  Some people render lard on the stove top, but you have to be careful not to burn it.  My solution was to use the oven.  I filled my two big pots as full as I could get them and set the oven to 325ºF.  About eight hours later, we found much reduced kettles with lots of amber liquid.

We poured the liquid through a cheese cloth, using our big milk funnel, into gallon jars.  It didn't take long for the liquid to cool to solid.

It took three batches and three days to render all that fat.   In the end we got seven gallons of lard which we'll store in the frig or cellar so it won't go rancid. 

I've heard that lard is best for pie crusts, so we promptly tried it out.  Sure enough, it was very good pie crust and much easier to work with than butter.  We've already had apple pie and chicken pie.  With seven gallons of lard, we can have pie most every day!

It was some effort rendering all that lard, but not that bad.  It feels really good to make better use of jerky's sacrifice on our behalf.  Now his meat *and* his fat is nourishing our family.

Stinking Frost

The frost is coming at the normal time this year, but it feels way too early and I'm not happy about it.  It's not that I mind the cold mornings, although I do.  It's not that I mind wearing a jacket in the middle of the day, although I do.  It's not even that I mind having to light a fire in the morning; I love that!

The problem with frost is that it makes work for us!  The peppers were hit lightly by frost last night and they can't take another one.  We either let them die or we save them to ripen under cover.  We opted for the latter.  After pulling the whole plants, we hung them in the garage to let the peppers redden up. These will become our chili powder for the year.

My husband and several of my children love hot peppers.  The jalapenos don't have to ripen, so we just emptied off the plants.  This basket full of peppers was off only six plants, and that's after a sizable harvest already. You don't need many jalapeno plants to get a lot of jalapenos.

You Had to Know It Would Happen

Last year at this time, Christina was dried off, awaiting the birth of her calf.  This year we are still working on getting her pregnant. 

Last month her milk production suddenly started to drop.  She was giving about 4.2 gallons per day.  In three weeks that dropped to 3.0 gallons a day.  It was scarey when it was dropping so fast, but it does seem to have leveled off now.   One blessing is that as her production has gone down, the cream content has gone up.  This gallon from a few days ago is almost half cream!!  That's half-and-half on tap.

We've bred Christina six times since last January and we're still working on getting her pregnant.  The dairy we bought her from said that some of their older cows get to where AI (artificial insemination) doesn't work, but a bull will get the job done.  The problem is that full grown bulls are extremely dangerous animals.  They had a solution — a young bull.  This guy is only 10 months old, old enough to get the job done, but young enough not to be aggressive.  We are borrowing him for a while until Christina gets pregnant. 

He's young and small, so we're not sure he can reach, but we are confident he'll be motivated.  We may actually have to help by holding Christina down in the ditch so he can reach better.  We've been laughing about it all day.  My husband said, "Christina's needs a Mai Tai and a spry guy."

It was a long day going out to get him.  We took Christina with us and got her hooves trimmed.  When we got home he wasn't so sure about where we were leading him, so two of us pulled on his halter and two of us pushed him from behind.  Pretty soon he was running all over the pasture.  I hope he's happy here.  I really hope Christina turns up pregnant.

As we were driving home, we were thinking about how enormously helpful the dairy farmers we bought her from have been.  If we didn't have them in our lives, we are pretty sure we would have given up on cows by now.  There have been so many things to learn that no book covered.  But because they've always been available and helpful, we feel not only successful but confident.  Like so many times, God has provided wonderful people who have made this life possible.

How to Butcher a Chicken

Start first thing in the morning, the colder the better.  We have a spot set up on the other side of the barn so the chickens can't see what we are doing.

Start with warming a large kettle of water  up to 150ºF.  We use our 9-jar canner.  You'll use this to scald the bird and loosen the feathers.  The temperature is important.  If it's too cold the feathers won't loosen.  If it's too hot, it will cook the skin and come apart.

Other set up includes a table with a waterproof table cloth, two really sharp knives, a trash can for feathers and guts, and a cooler filled with ice water and some vinegar.

The hardest part for us, and the fastest, is the actual kill.  We use a killing cone that holds the chicken upside down and secure.  With a thumb on their chin bone and holding the neck secure, make a fast and deep cut.  They die instantly but don't thrash around like they would if the spinal column was severed.  They'll shake naturally for about two minutes, but don't worry, they're not alive.  After about two minutes of bleeding out, cut the head off completely.

If you don't have a killing cone, you can tie up their feet and hang them upside down.

Holding by the feet, swish the bird around in the hot water for a minute or two.  Swish it around so the water gets down into the under feathers.

The longest step is plucking feathers.  They come out easily, but there are lots of them. 

I don't think butchering chickens smells that bad.  It's not pleasant, but it's not terrible.  My daughters disagree so part of their butchering garb is nose covering.

Evisceration is next.  Start by cutting off the feet. First make a cut right on the joint.  Then bend backwards to break the joint and slice through.

Holding the neck toward you, slice along the collar bone, through the skin, but be careful not to cut any of the guts inside.  Better to make several small cuts than one too deep.

With the windpipe and crop exposed, slide your knife in between the tubes and the neck, near the collar bone.  Slice upward.

Free all the tissue from the body and pull the neck skin back and all the way off.  Throw away.  Cut the neck off by slicing, bending back to break the joint, and cutting straight through.  Keep the neck.

Time to work on the other end.  With the butt pointing toward you, slice along the base of the rib cage, through the skin and into the cavity but be really careful not to puncture any guts.  If you puncture guts, it can be messy, or worse, it could ruin the meat.

After you've opened a hole up big enough for your hand, reach inside and pull everything out in a neat ball.  You have to reach way in and pull hard.   Some of the organs will stick to the back pretty tenaciously. 

Keep rolling it back until the guts are out of the cavity and it's only attached at the bottom.  Slice very closely along the pin bones on each side, releasing them.  Finally you'll have a ball of guts out on the table only attached by the tail bone. 

Cut through the tail bone and it's all out.  The goal is to get everything out without spilling any poop or gall.   

The chicken goes promptly into the ice vinegar water in the cooler.

There are some giblets that can be saved.  We cook them up and give them to the cat.  The heart is triangular shaped and needs a small slice at the top to release it.

The liver is dark colored in the center.  As you slice it away, be very careful not to knick the gall bladder (green) and release gall.  If any of the green liquid gets out, throw everything away it touches.  It is extremely bitter and quickly flavors anything it contacts.

The gizzard is the large, hard organ that the chicken used to chew its food.  Slice the guts away from it.  Later, slice it open like a peach, empty out the contents and peel away the inner layer.

We can get about 30 chickens done in a morning.  When you're all finished, bag up each chicken and pop in the freezer.

The last step in our family is to take a shower and leave the chickens be in the freezer for at least a week while the memory fades.

I strongly recommend timing your butchering so it is freezing at night and the bugs are gone.  That hasn't happened yet for us and it only took the wasps and flies about two chickens to figure out what we were up to.  They were way too close for comfort. 

The first time we butchered three years ago it was pretty difficult emotionally, but we got through it.   Now we know what to expect so it's not as bad.  I also think that we do a better job now of not upsetting or hurting the chickens because we're not so upset ourselves.

Harvest Taskmaster

The school calendar may say it's Fall, but the garden thinks it's still Summer (so does the sun).  Our harvest is coming in hard and strong.

The roma tomatoes are just starting.  This full bucket was today's harvest.  We'll wash them, cook them down, run them through a food mill, and have amazing sauce.

Our green beans didn't do well this year.  They didn't come up that great and we didn't replant.  We probably have about 12 feet of row whereas last year we had about 75 feet.  The difference in the freezer this winter will be obvious.

We went about a week without picking zucchini and they went crazy.  Those are baseball bat sized!  And our freezer is already pretty full of zucchini.  I think we'll make "Stuffed Zucchini" tonight from my favorite cookbook, Simply in Season.  The chickens will probably get some too.

Our sweet corn has hit the end.  We've had corn on the cow for dinner for a few weeks, but last night it started tasting starchy.  We harvested the last of it for the freezer, and then down came the stalks for the cows.  Corn is just a giant grass and cows love it. 

Christina & Sunflower quickly abandoned their hay and came running.  It didn't take long for them to strip off the leaves and start in on the stalks. 

The morning work in the garden didn't take long, but now our day is full — cutting corn off the cobs, cooking tomatoes down to sauce, grating zucchini, and snapping green beans.  Harvest is a taskmaster.

Uh oh, Time for Pickles

While I was weeding yesterday, I sent the girls out to pick cucumbers.  It wasn't until I came inside that I realized how many they had.  That's a lot!  I'm surprised the basket didn't break.

I just looked at it for a minute before admitting that it was time to make pickles.  Pickles are one of the easiest things to can but I don't like them so any effort is difficult to put in.  But the kids love them.

Praise God, we have some dried dill left over from last year.  This year I didn't get around to planting any. 

Instead of weeding this morning, we worked in the kitchen.  One sliced the bigger cucumbers up.  One filled jars.  Another stuffed in sprigs of dill.  While they were working, I got the brine hot (water, vinegar, and salt).  I added some mustard seed to each jar, poured the brine over, and screwed on a lid. 

They only spend 15 minutes boiling in the canner.  Being able to pack them at room temperature so we don't deal with hot stuff makes them so easy.

That big basket yielded 21 quarts.  It is a good way to preserve a large cucumber harvest, so I feel good about that.  And everyone in the family except me loves pickles and they rave about how good these are, so that's nice.  ...But it still feels like a hassle.

Fodder Muddle

We've been sprouting barley for the cows and chickens for months and just when I think I have it figured out, everything changes.

The seeds had stopped sprouting well.  I noticed that the ones on the bottom of the bucket weren't sprouted while the ones on top were.    So we split each day's seeds into two buckets to keep the weight down.

But that didn't completely solve the problem.  As the temperature warmed over the spring, the fodder did better and better, until it got really hot.  Then the seeds stopped sprouting.  When we moved them indoors, which we keep under 80ºF, things got back on track.  It's a hassle, but the seeds are sprouting nicely now.

Things were okay for a while, then we got a new problem.  Mold.  After several weeks at 100ºF, mold had become a constant obstacle.  Some days the entire fodder crop was lost.  And it smells pretty bad too.

The easy solution would be to take the whole apparatus inside, which we'll have to do this winter anyway, but we are lazy and moving it will be a big project.  So we are experimenting with every other possibility.  A tarp was laid across the top of the greenhouse to give full shade.  We are doing two extra irrigations during the day to replenish the cool water.  A fan runs most of day, providing several degrees of evaporative cooling.  Finally, we're only growing the fodder to 7 days instead of 9, giving the mold less time to develop.

The results are mixed.  When the high stays below 95ºF, we're doing pretty good, but above 100ºF it's a problem.  The forecast for the next week is really hot, over 100ºF.  We should move it inside, but we're so close to some fall cooling, that I'm lazy.  We'll just muddle through until the weather is nice and the cows have thick, perfect fodder again.

The Spirituality of Dirt

So many holy people have written about the spirituality of dirt.  They name time in the garden as a regular re-grounding in the presence of God.  God, they say, is waiting in the soil to be discovered.

When I'm not in the garden, I feel the same way, but when I'm actually digging stubborn roots out of rock hard soil, I'm more aware of sore muscles, fine dust covering my skin, and the impending heat.  Now in mid-summer, we do our gardening in the morning, right after milking.  Even then, we still come in sopping and overheated.

The garden does have spiritual lessons to offer.  God is a god of abundance with harvests of 10, 20, and 100 fold.  These peppers started from little seeds indoors. The plants have grown strong and are putting on fruit that will fill our freezer.  We may have provided good growing conditions like water, soil, and weeding, but God does the growing.  God gives the abundance.

And if we forget, God offers reminders.  The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  We filled this row with green bean seed and only one plant came up.  A lone bean plant sits in an empty row.  This will not be a 100 fold harvest.  Perhaps the seeds were too old.  Perhaps the soil conditions weren't good.  Or perhaps God just felt we needed a reminder, lest we think that our food is a result of OUR efforts and not a divine gift.

But when it's time to garden, I forget all these things.  I just work.  I  look for the next bed that needs weeding.  I search for the next crop that needs picked.  And I hurry to beat the heat.

Maybe 4th Time's A Charm

Christina spent the day bellowing.  She and Sunflower did lots of jumping on each other, but Christina never stood for it.  This morning all was calm, so we figured Christina had gone into standing heat in the night.

The AI guy came over this morning to breed her.  As soon as he was finished, Christina jumped around and the AI guy cocked his head. 

"This may be a false heat," he said.  He's done this enough to know when things feel different, and they did.  He said they sometimes do that on the 2nd cycle from conceiving, which this would be. 

We had a farm visit scheduled with the Vet for next week, which we were going to cancel, but now I think we'll keep it.  The Vet can do a preg check and maybe he'll find a little baby calf!  Or, maybe he can figure out what's going on with Christina.

I'm struck by the AI guy's attentiveness with Christina.  So much of good farming boils down to listening well.  Of course, there is the application of talents and knowledge, but if you don't pay close attention to the animals, the crops, and the land, much will be missed. 

That is the spiritual discipline of growing food.  It demands that you pay attention and listen well.  I think it is a discipline that God is going to have to spend a good many years teaching me.

5th Time's A Charm?

For the fifth time this season, Christina is going into heat again.  We bred her in January, February, April, and June.  And now she's mooing her head off, a sign that standing heat is coming.

We've learned the progression.  First she starts mooing.  Then she gets kind of hyper.  Finally, she goes into standing heat, when other cows jump on her back side and she stands for it. 

Today she mooing incessantly, so we watch.

We asked the dairy farmer who we bought Christina from if there are other ways besides getting jumped on to tell if a cow is in heat.  She pointed out the eyes.  She says when a cow's in heat, she has kind of wild eyes, not content.  So my daughters have been looking in Christina's eyes.  I think those are wild looking eyes.

So now we wait for standing heat. 

But this is the fifth time this year.  Something is going wrong.  We have a shot from the vet that will prompt ovulation to use when we breed her.  If that doesn't work, the next step is to put her with a bull (I really hope we don't have to do that, it will be such a hassle).

This is the part of homesteading that doesn't follow the rule books.

Cherry Harvest

When we started this urban homesteading adventure three years ago we planted a bunch of fruit trees, including this cherry.  For the first time, this spring it was loaded with fruit.  A week ago it looked like this.  Things were getting ready, but not yet.

This morning the cherries were ripe and ready to pick.  We headed out with buckets and cleared the tree.

Then into the house we went and started pitting.  My husband used the pitter and my daughters pitted the old fashioned way.  It's a sticky mess, but we got it done.  I fired up the canner and soon quarts were bubbling away.

By the end of the day we had 10 quarts of pie cherries and one cherry cobbler in the oven.  Since this was our first real harvest, it was also our first real taste.

The cherries were amazing.  Tart.  Plump.  Tangy.  And not a worm in the whole bunch.  Our hope was that having the fruit trees in the chicken pen would prevent worms as the chickens ate them all up.  So far so good!

Beefy's Meat

After enduring butcher day and waiting two weeks for it to hang, we finally got the meat back from beefy.  As we drove home with 518 pounds of hamburger, steak, roasts, and soup meat, I worried.  How would it taste?

When we've told people that we were raising him on grass only, many have advised against it.  If we don't grain finish (which means to fed grain the last 8-12 weeks), the meat won't be any good. It won't be marbled.  It'll taste bad.

But, I reminded myself, I've eaten grass fed beef before and it was good.   So we stuck to our guns.  Beefy started on milk and then ate only pasture and hay.

It was an experiment, and not a cheap one.  In beefy's 22 months, I figure we put at least $1,000 in hay into that steer.  Butcher, cut and wrap was another $400.  That works out to about $2.75 per pound. 

I was excited and trepidatious for that first taste.  We made hamburgers.  The smell was promising.  Then we tasted.  And tasted again to be sure.

The meat is good.  Wait!  It's not good, it's great!  I think it may be the best meat I've ever tasted!

As I enjoyed that amazing hamburger, suddenly beefy's face flashed before me.  This amazing meat came at a sacrifice.  It was a gift from God and a gift from beefy.  My heart filled with gratitude and reverence.  

One of the reasons we started this life was to get away from the industrial food system. Today I found a gift I didn't expect.  I have never reverenced meat before, and I suddenly feel the hollow that left in my life.  I have lived my entire life in deficit because I didn't experience the depth of honor that meat brings.  Today God gifted me with a reverence that makes me feel like a more complete human being. 

New Cow

After all the planning and thinking and waiting, we finally got a new cow.  Sunflower is a heifer, expecting her first calf in December.

She just a little bit bigger than jerky.  She was nervous and hesitant when she arrived, but my husband was able to walk her out to the pasture.

At first Christina and Sunflower jumped around and did some head butting, but quickly they settled down to their favorite cow pastime, grazing.

Sunflower's udder looks so tiny, like a little girl udder.  We're told that it will swell up so big before she calves that we'll wonder how she walks.

Fodder Production

After our experiments with fodder, we are convinced it will work out and have moved into full scale production for the cows and chickens.  Our capital outlay included a 9'x9' greenhouse we got on sale, two shelves from Costco, and 56 seed trays. 

These need to be rinsed twice a day.  We also milk our cow twice a day and run sanitizing water through the milking machine just before we use it.  We are using that sanitizing water to rinse the sprouts and haven't had any mold growth.

We start by soaking the seeds for 24 hours.  Each morning I measure in enough seed for eight trays, about ten pounds, and cover it with plenty of water.

The next two days, the seeds are put under pressure to sprout.  I've read this increases the germination rate, and it does seem to help.  We use a plate with weight on top.  The buckets are covered with a tarp to keep the light out.  Each bucket has holes drilled in the bottom to drain and are sitting in another bucket to catch the water.  They get rinsed twice a day.

Each morning I spread out the next batch of seeds into trays, day 3 for the sprouts.  Their first day in trays they are put underneath another tray to keep out light and add another day of pressure.

By day 4 they have lots of roots and are swelling up to fill the tray.

The ones at day 5 always worry me.  They look dry, but I think they are shedding their hull.  They have the first hints of little grass.

Not much seems to be happening on day 6, but those roots have formed a solid mass and they look less dry.

On day 7 things are starting to happen.

Day 8 shows another inch of growth, but it's uneven.  They must have different conditions at the front and back of the tray.  We found that if we just move them straight up, one end looks much healthier than the other end, so now we rotate them each day and it's evening out.

By day 9 they are strong and healthy.  Frankly, I'd like them bigger.  We are finding that temperature makes a big difference so we started running a space heater overnight.  That seems to help them grow faster and stronger. 

Underneath, the roots have grown into a solid mass.  We pull these into bite-sized pieces to give to the cows.  The chickens just get a full biscuit to peck at.

Each evening I rinse the used trays in the sanitizing water and quickly wipe them down to prevent mold growth.  Each morning I start another batch soaking and spread out the seeds from day 3.  Every tray gets rotated and moved up.  Morning and evening everything gets watered.  There are holes drilled in the bottom of each tray so they drain into the one below it.  It's like a big rainfall.  We have tubs at the bottom to catch as much water as we can, but part of the reason we are doing it outside is so I won't care if some spills on the ground.  With reusing water, the sanitizing water from the milking machine, and the water for soaking, we have enough water to keep them all hydrated and rinsed.

The next step is to run little sprinklers on the shelves and automate the watering. 

We are working the animals up to four trays for our milk cow, three for the two steer calves and one for the chickens, keeping an eye on their health as we go.  The steers and chickens love it.  They come running when they see it.  Our dairy cow gets her fodder at milking time.  Right now she's getting three trays a day and we've dropped her grain from twenty pounds per day to four.  Her milk production has stayed up and she seems healthy.  We haven't seen big drops in hay yet, but we're not up to full production yet.