Babies Everywhere!

Our goat, Callie, just had a kid.  The fourth kid of spring.  More on that in an upcoming post.  But there are more babies this spring.  I wish I could tell you it was a new calf, but we're still trying to get our cows bred.  They've been exposed to the bull, but so far, it hasn't "taken."  I was talking to a neighbor today who has offered us his Jersey/Holstein cross to breed our cows in the event that Nick, the bull, is sterile.

The other new babies I'm speaking of are on our back patio in a chicken-shaped planter with English Ivy growing in it.  A momma house wren picked out that spot for her home and she began bringing straw, sticks and feathers to fashion a comfy nest.  We watched her as she built her home.  I didn't want to be too nosy, but the sudden change from bringing building materials to the nest to bringing worms and bugs let us know that our little wren friend had laid eggs and hatched them!  Here she is watching us with a worm in her mouth.  She doesn't want to give away her secret home address and location.  She's got  babies to protect.

That tiny bird assembled quite a nest!  As soon as she flew off, I quickly peeked into the nest.  I think I spot four baby birds.  I didn't want to give away the secret, because Ginger, our cat, would LOVE to find the nest.  She'd quickly indulge in a four piece chicken dinner.

About a week later, I peeked in again. The baby birds are growing!  I clearly see two birds in there looking back at me!  The other two must be in the back bedroom.

My hearing is damaged, so I can't hear very well at all, but Tricia confirmed that she doesn't hear the baby birds chirping.  Perhaps the birds have muted their conversations, so as to not alert Ginger, the cat to their hidden nest.  Stay vigilant, my little wren friends!

The Sweetest Thing in the Garden

(Other than my wife, ha ha!)

Sweet Peas!  Just the name of them gets your taste buds anticipating a sweet, crunchy taste.  I usually plant them in the fall and then again in the early spring.  They don't like hot weather.  The ceiling for the high temperatures for them is about 70 degrees Fahrenheit and we're already 14 degrees above that on an average day.  Their yield will soon fall off and they'll succumb to the South Louisiana summer sauna.  I'll be harvesting every other day to try to get what we can off of them.  I like to eat them right off the trellis while picking them.

The sweet pea puts out stunning white blooms all over the stalks, attracting honeybees and butterflies.

I have two varieties growing.  The first is the Oregon Sugar Pod.  They are my favorite as they produce a big, wide and flat pod that is tender with small peas inside.  The second is the Sugar Snap Peas.  They have a smaller pod that is rounded, with bigger peas inside.

The peas have thrived in the location of my trellis.  I alternate sweet peas with cucumbers and fertilize with fish emulsion and composted chicken litter.  They climb on a cattle panel I have supported with t-posts.  You can't see perspective on the height, but they are approximately seven feet tall and growing!  Even though their tendrils attach to the cattle panel, the weight of the plant causes the entire plant to sag.  To remedy this, you can see that I've taken some baling twine, tied it together and fashioned a "seat belt" to hold the plant firmly to the panel.  If I didn't do this, harvesting the peas would be virtually impossible.

I generally walk out to the garden with a kitchen colander and pick the ripe ones off.  I generally circle the trellis a couple of times since many of the pods are hiding in all of the foliage.  The goats come up to the fence hoping for some sweet peas, but, no dice, goats!

We are picking pretty decent quantities and we'll be blanching and freezing quart bags real soon.  Other than eating them raw, and it salads, we like to sauté them in a skillet with butter and salt.

Delicious!

Update on the Honeybees

The warming temperatures and blooming flowers all about have really gotten the bees working, well, as busy as a bee.  I let our cilantro go to flower in the garden because the bees really love it.  They are all over the cilantro flowers in the garden.

I don't know where this girl had been prior to stopping over in the cilantro patch, but take a look at her "pollen sac" on her legs.  They are filled with a reddish-purple pollen.  I don't know where that came from, but she's taking that back to the hive, but not before she collects some nectar or pollen from the cilantro.

The colony of bees that have resided in the column on our side porch left last week.  We think they swarmed.  We were very fortunate to have caught TWO swarms in the yard last week.  More on that in a moment.  In a swarm, the old queen generally leaves with half the bees.  The weird thing about that is that there was NO activity in or out of the column for several days.  Then all of a sudden... BOOM!  Bees repopulated the column!

For the two swarms we caught, we went to check on them the other day.  Here's Tricia in her bee suit about to open one of the boxes for inspection.  

The swarm is not a huge one, but they fill two or three frames and were buzzing away, very busy.

In my swarm trap, which is merely a deep box with 5 frames of old comb and foundation, the bees were already drawing out comb - not where I wanted it.  Time to get the remaining 5 frames in the box.  When bees swarm, they carry honey, wax, pollen, everything they need and when they find a new home, they get right to work.

If you look to the right center of the photo below, you can see that the queen has been busy.  Can you see the bee larva?  It is the little white worm looking thing curled up like the letter "c" in the cells.

Here's a photo of some younger larva in some fresh comb.

If there's larva, there's got to be a laying queen, and THERE she is!  Can you see her?  She's in the center left of the photo below with the long yellow tail.

So we have eggs and larva in both of the swarms we caught last week.  We have capped brood in two of our remaining four boxes of bees.  We're still waiting for a queen in both of the boxes that we split.  When we opened one of them, we did see two queen cells.  We'll check back in on them on Sunday and see if the splits were successful.  

The Hens Rejoice

Have you ever done something that you were proud of?  Perhaps you reached a goal that you had set.  Upon achieving that milestone, you naturally want to crow about it a little bit.  It's the human condition that we like to poke out our chests and strut around like we're something special.  The King of the World, the Cock of the Walk.  What if I told you that things are not any different in the animal kingdom?  When animals do something they're proud of, they like to boast, and crow, and strut around.

I witnessed this on Resurrection Sunday morning.  I was out feeding the chickens and opening up the henhouse so that the girls could run inside and lay their eggs.  Upon laying their eggs, the hens launch into a song they've created to tell the world they laid an egg.  It is a song of hope, of exuberance.  It's a song of victory and pride.  Click on the arrow in the photo below if you'd like to hear the hens' song I captured on my cell phone while listening to the hens hymn:

What did you think about that?  Hens don't make that noise at any other time than after laying an egg.  What a cacophony of clucking!  If I could lay an egg, I'd probably sing a song, too! 

A Mountain of Love

In 1979 country music singer, Ronnie Milsap, recorded "Mountain of Love" which reached #2 on the Country charts.  As I was building my "mountain" shown in the photo below, this song was on my mind.  The mountain I constructed consisted of live oak leaves and grass that I had mowed in the yard and then raked up, put in a wagon and dumped right behind the wood chip mulch pile.  I'll let all this compost for a year or two since it has grass seed in it and I don't want to incorporate it into my garden.

The pile (or mountain) is six feet tall!  You can see the wagon that I use to gather the raked up leaves and grass and then dump on the pile.  I use a pitch fork to continue piling it higher and higher.  It took me several days to do, but I got it done.  Yes, there are easier and more efficient ways of doing this, but I only do this for the first mowing of the season, so it doesn't make sense to spend money for an attachment to the mower to bag all the clippings.  Every successive mow, I simply mulch the leaves and grass back into the lawn.

If I didn't rake up the leaves and grass cuttings after this first mow, it would leave a thick bed of leaves and hay that would crowd out and possibly kill the good St. Augustine grass below it.  Here is a photo of part of the yard after raking.  You can see the grass is unencumbered by any leaves or hay on top.

The reason the "Mountain of Love" song was in my head was a reminiscence of long ago when the kids were younger and still living at home.  I had an old John Deere lawn mower that I would use to cut the grass in the pasture.  I would rake the hay into piles and the boys would help me put it into the wagon that I had attached to the back of the mower.  In fact, the old wagon is still out by the barn.  We use it to put hay into to feed the cows.  Cows tend to waste a lot of hay if you just feed them on the ground.

The wagon has seen its better days.  The floor of the wagon has rusted out.  Tricia and I have talked about making a run to the dump to throw away.

Back to the story.  The boys would bring the wagon-loads of way and would dump it in our barn.  You see, when we built our barn, there was a gap beneath the tin on the bottom and ground level.  The photo below shows a 2x4 that is ground level.  Actually, there's about 5 inches of tin below that.  Between the tin and the ground was a gap that allowed cold winds in the winter to blow through as we milked.  When it rained hard, rainwater would flow into the barn.  Over time all that hay composted down and it became the floor to the barn, effectively raising ground level.   The animals only stay in the barn if the weather is bad, so we don't have to muck out the stalls and through the poop outside. 

Here's a cute photo of Agnes and her Baby girl, Penny.  Like in the previous photo, you can see another photo showing how ground level is about 5 inches higher than it originally was.

It took a lot of work and a lot of hay to be moved into the barn to accomplish this task.  Mountains of hay was brought in and spread out.  My boys did a lot of work!  They moved mountains of hay in our labor of love.

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.  Matthew 28:6

Today is the high point on the Christian calendar.  Jesus rose from the dead, victorious over sin, death, and the grave.  Because He lives, we have hope of life eternal, if only we believe.  Believe what, you may ask?  Believe that He is the Son of God, the foretold Messiah, the perfect atoning sacrifice whose precious blood bought my pardon.  Trust in Him today.

We had a wonderful church service in which the preacher had visual aids, showing graphically the scourging Jesus endured by cat of nine tails whips that had bone, lead and iron tied to the ends.  He also had a crown of thorns.  He brought it all to life and then emphasized that He did that for you and me so that we might be reconciled with a Holy Father.

He died upon that cross, but He didn't stay dead.  As He said, in three days He rose again!  He is risen!!

After church we had a nice meal and relaxed until around 4 PM.  I snapped this photo of Tricia, Russ and Benjamin.

At around 4:30 we headed over to Kinder for a family gathering at my sister and brother-in-law's home.  Mom & Dad were there, and we all had a nice visit and ate entirely too much!

All in all it was a good day.  We hope yours was, too!  The empty tomb echoes 20 centuries later that we have a wonderful savior Who offers a wonderful salvation.  Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.  Because He lives, all fear is gone.  Because I know He holds the future, And life is worth the living just Because He lives!

What To Do With All This Cabbage?

We had a bumper crop of cabbage this year, and we need to do something with it quickly.  We've had cole slaw, egg rolls, cabbage and sausage jambalaya, and sautéed cabbage.  This morning, we decided to make Kimchi.  We used the recipe from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation.  We gathered the ingredients:

The recipe we used is shown below.  I think if you click on the photo, it will enlarge.

We shredded up the cabbage, chopped the green onions, grated the carrots, the radishes, the ginger, and the garlic.  Then we added the pepper flakes, sea salt and whey to the big bowl.  Tricia had whey left over from when she made mozzarella cheese the other day.

Then, with a wooden masher tool, we took turns banging and pounding on the contents of the bowl.  What we're attempting is to crush everything and release all the juices,  After Tricia had enough, she gave me the pounder and I worked on it for a good while.

We used a canning funnel and spooned the contents into each jar, packing it all tight while pressing down.  The juices should cover the vegetable mixture completely.  We have some glass weights the sit on top, pushing it down and keeping the liquid covering everything.

Here's an up-close look at the kimchi.  It has a nice color and aroma to it.

We put lids on top, dating the kimchi and set on the counter.  We'll leave it there for three days at room temperature.  They we'll put it in the fridge and let it ferment and age.

After a few months, we'll pull it out of the fridge and give it a try.  We do a lot of lacto-fermenting.  In fact we've been eating on lacto-fermtented banana peppers that we did last year and have 2 1/2 quarts left. They are still holding up well and taste great, like hopefully the kimchi will turn out.

Passover 2025

You may have been thinking as you read the title to this post, "I thought they were Christians."  We are.  For the last twenty-something years, we celebrate the Passover, but from a Christian perspective.  It's an exciting event we look forward to each year.  Tricia busies herself in the kitchen the day before, roasting lamb with rosemary and herbs, preparing wild rice, roasted beets and kohlrabi, snap beans, cole slaw, squash with chicken, tabbouleh, hummus, with homemade cheesecake and coffee for dessert.

The table is set in the dining room with fine china and silver.  After church we gather for our Passover Seder.  Both Russ and Benjamin joined us for the festivities.  Unfortunately, Laura Lee was unable to join us, but we pray next year she will.  Over the years, we've invited numerous guests to join us as it is a special event to share and celebrate.

We gathered around the table and got ready to begin.  

Mother lights the candles to get things started.

The seder lasts about an hour and we follow a guide called the Haggadah, or the Telling.  It orders the meal, and it is read as everyone follows along.

There are special foods that symbolize different things in the story, there are prayers and rituals, and the audience is invited to participate as we put dots of wine on the plate as the 10 plagues are read aloud.  The story from Exodus is read that recounts Moses leading his people out of Egypt.

Each person participates in reading and asking questions.  Four cups of sparkling grape juice are poured signifying, The Cup of Sanctification, The Cup of Deliverance, The Cup of Redemption, and The Cup of Praise.

The significance of the matzoh being unleavened and striped and pierced is discussed.  We learn and remember the significance of Passover to the Christian.  Just as the Israelites applied the blood to the doorposts of their home so that the Angel of Death would pass over their home, we remember that the blood of Jesus, the Passover Lamb, applied to our hearts give us freedom from the slavery of sin and give us life eternal.

In John's Gospel, John 1:29 to be exact, John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus walking up, said, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world."  It was a very important thing to say.  Jesus is our Passover Lamb!

Image Credit

Passover.  A day of remembering.  A day to enjoy faith, family and food!  Next Sunday we'll celebrate Resurrection Sunday, where we'll celebrate the high point in the Christian life, when Jesus rose from the grave victorious over sin! 

Round Bale Delivery

How are you at rationing things?  You know, like that half gallon of ice cream in the freezer or that homemade cheesecake in the refrigerator that you want to make last for a while.  Well, we do the same thing with hay.  We have a finite amount of hay and when the grass in the pasture is gone in the winter, we have to manage our resources of hay.  We have 75 square bales of Bermuda up in the hay loft and 10 round bales lined up right outside the pasture gate.

In normal years, we can't count on the grass in the pasture to come in strong so that we don't supplement with hay until right around May.  At about the second week of March, we had run out of round bales.  I think we have around 36 square bales up in the loft.  I made a call to a friend that sells me round bales for a delivery.  He told me it was a good thing that I called as he was just taking inventory of his hay stocks in his barn and had exactly 10 bales left.

Mr. Broussard loaded up 10 bales on his truck and delivered them to me.  We rolled them off of his truck and I lined them up between the wood chip mulch piles and the cattle trailer.  While inflation might be raging elsewhere, his price ($40 per bale) was the same as it was last year.  After unloading, I paid him and had him walk to the garden as I gave him a big bag of mustard greens.

Mr. Broussard manages his hay field expertly, taking soil samples and amending the soil with whatever it needs.  The hay is clean and weed-free.  Once he bales it, he stores it indoors in a barn where it is dark so the sun can't damage it.  It is dry in his barn.  The hay arrives in pristine condition.

As it turns out, the lime applied to our pasture appears to be helping out the pasture.  As a result, the grass is coming in earlier than normal.  All the cows, goats and chickens spend all day in the pasture with heads down, eating.  As it stands now, I won't be needing any of these 10 bales until much later this fall.

That leads to a challenge for us.  We don't have a barn to store the bales inside and in the dark and away from moisture.  The best that we can do is cover it up tightly with tarps.  That's what we began to do, covering it and staking the tarps down with tent pegs so the tarps stay secured on top of the hay, sealing it off from rain, sun, and wind.

It normally takes the cows and goats around a week to finish off a round bale.  So we have at least 10 weeks of inventory of round bales, meaning we shouldn't need any additional round bales until perhaps February of 2026.  In the meantime, we'll continue working our way through the 36 square bales as we'll be taking delivery of more square bales in a couple months.  

It's Kidding Time!

Springtime is exciting!  Hens laying more eggs, grass is growing, foliage on trees is a vibrant green.  And, goats begin to kid.  Tricia keeps close tabs on the goat family.  Agnes seemed to be first in line.  When I arrived in the barn, I was greeted by odd sounds coming from within.  Agnes was in labor, pushing, digging holes in the ground.  She was in obvious pain.  We watched as another contraction came on, followed by another.

Two tiny hooves emerged.  We always check to ensure they are facing the correct way.  We don't want to encounter breech.

It didn't take long for Agnes to push out the newest arrival on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  A brown goat!  How does that happen?  The doe and the buck look nothing like that.  I would guess that might be from a recessive gene, but I wasn't paying that close attention back in biology class.

Agnes' motherly instinct kicked in and she began cleaning up her baby.  She diligently licked and licked and gave the little one a proper spit bath.

I lifted up the little goat's legs and exposed two teats and no male 'equipment.'   It's a girl!  A little doeling.  How nice.

We left the barn and walked back to the house to allow the two of them to bond.  The baby was struggling unsuccessfully to stand only minutes after delivery.  She just needed a little time.  When we returned to the barn in 15 minutes, the little critter was up.  Baby goats are funny.  They always try to find the teats, bumping around the wrong end of the momma.  Tricia reached in and gave here some instruction.  Everyone needs a little help sometimes.  She quickly latched on and began drinking the nourishing colostrum which will give her antibodies and a good head start.

She didn't need any help after that.  The little doeling (as of yet, unnamed) was drinking to her heart's content.  We also spotted colostrum-tinged stool, confirming she's getting what she needs for good health.

We have several more goats whose girth is widening.  We'll be on watch for the next to come into labor.  Our goat herd is increasing.  We'll need to sell some of these little ones as they are weaned or they'll eat us out of pasture!