Feeding Cows Like they did in the 1800s

In the 1800s there were times that it was hard to keep your animals fed during harsh winters in the north.  Fortunately, someone smart determined that Mammoth Red Mangel beets was an answer to help feed livestock until the Spring grasses came in.  Farmers would plant fields of these things. They are called 'mammoth' for a reason.  They grow up to two feet long and up to 20 lbs!

I bought some seeds just to try them out and each year I plant a row of them.  They grow large and have an enormous, sweet beetroot and lots of edible leaves that both the cows, chickens, and goats enjoy.  I picked this one just to give the cows a little snack to go along with their nightly ration.

Behold the Mammoth Red Mangel beet

Now this one didn't get two feet long and it didn't weigh 20 lbs when I picked it.  It is time that I pull the beets up and feed them to the cows to make room to plant okra in the garden, so I'm pulling the beets before they are full grown.  Maybe this fall I'll plant them earlier so that the beets have time to reach their full growth potential.  I'd like to see if I could grow one that weighed 20 lbs. or so.

Sweet Snack for the cows

In similar fashion to the way we do with turnips, I slice the huge beets into 1 inch thick disks and then slice them into quarters.  The cows are gluttonous and will eat the things whole if you let them, and I don't want them to choke.

Sliced up and ready to eat

Tricia gave each of the cows bite-sized pieces of the mammoth red mangel beets and they were very happy.

Daisy is enjoying a sweet snack!

The beets are very sweet.  I didn't try to eat them, but I did lick one of the pieces and it was sugary sweet.  No wonder the cows love to eat them.  Fortunately, the grass is growing, enabling the cows to have grass to eat, but they are eating it almost as fast as it grows.  All three of them are pregnant and those girls can flat out eat lots of grass.  The beets provide a little sweet dessert for them.

What Kind of Flower is This?

While I was doing my evening chores something yellow caught my eye.  It was a strikingly beautiful flower beneath the Confederate Jasmine.  The filament and anther portions (remember high school biology?) seemed to almost glow with brightness.  Can you guess what type flower this is?

Beautiful

Backing up the picture a bit, I'll give you a hint as we see three flowers on the plant in different stages of bloom.  If you look closely, you can see part of the plant that is a dead giveaway to tell you that the flower is from a...

PRICKLY PEAR CACTUS!  I don't recall where the cactus came from, but it keeps growing and growing.  Fortunately, cacti don't need much water, because I forget to water it.  It is just watered by rainfall, but yet it thrives right there tucked between the air conditioning unit and the jasmine.

It is planted in an old terra cotta frog planter that I inherited from my grandmother. After reading the following from Wikipedia, I think I'm going to make sure that this cactus stays within the confines of the terra cotta frog!:

Prickly pears (mostly Opuntia stricta) were originally imported into Australia in the 18th century for gardens, and were later used as a natural agricultural fencing and in an attempt to establish a cochineal dye industry. They quickly became a widespread invasive weed, eventually converting 101,000 sq mi (260,000 km2) of farming land into an impenetrable green jungle of prickly pear, in places 20 ft (6.1 m) high. Scores of farmers were driven off their land by what they called the "green hell"; their abandoned homes were crushed under the cactus growth, which advanced at a rate of 1,000,000 acres (4,046.9 km2; 1,562.5 sq mi) per year.

I certainly don't want to be forced off my land by the "green hell."  It wouldn't make me very popular with the neighbors, either!

Keep it contained, frog!

Okay here's another one for you.  I snapped this photo on the same day as it was blooming on the back patio.  It has very distinctive looking flowers.  Do you know what plant this flower is from?

Well, it's from the Aloe Vera.  We keep a huge plant on our back patio and it gets used from time to time on burns or skin irritations.  The plant multiplies like crazy and produces 'pups' on the side of the main plant. I need to divide them and re-pot them into separate containers as this one is quickly outgrowing its pot.

The 'mother' aloe vera with 'pups'

Last but not least, I was checking out the garden and saw this.  What plant produces this flower?

This is the flower of the potato plant and it blooms toward the end of the plants' growth cycle.  It basically is a signal that lets you know that it is about time to start digging potatoes.  Funny thing about it, is that usually the flowers dry up and fall off, but sometimes, they'll form something that looks like a small tomato.  This is the true fruit of the potato plant, but they're not edible.

The potatoes definitely are and we'll be digging them up real soon! 

Making Ruts

During the Spring and early summer, I set up step in posts for our portable electric fence in our yard, separating the yard into different paddocks for the cows to eat in. I'm sure we get odd glances from passersby, but it sure saves time mowing to let the cows do it.  Up until the other day, I didn't even bother hooking the portable solar charger to it as the cows have been shocked before and generally respect just the sight of the poly wire that normally carries a charge!

Oh, but the lure of greener, more lush grass on the other side of the paddock fence is so irresistibly strong.  So strong that our two Jersey cows, Rosie and Daisy, that were in the pasture leaned against the fence in the yard and quickly figured out that there was no electric charge popping them.  Those old girls walked right through the fence and were on the side of the road quicker than poop goes through a goose.  We were eating supper when we heard a knock at the door and were alerted by a passing motorist that our cows were out!  We ran out and put them back in.  Bad girls!!

That's my fault and a lesson learned.  Now I walk across the pasture everyday before I put the cows out eating in the yard and unhook the charger, pull up the ground post and carry it all out to the temporary fence in the yard.  While I'm walking, I just observe and think.  I snapped the following photo of something while walking across the pasture:

Ruts

It is very hard to make out but if you look closely, running horizontally across the photo, you can see some ruts.  They aren't very deep.  There is a slight indentation where your foot sinks into the valley created by the tire tracks.  The ruts are not new. In fact, they were created by yours truly roughly 13 years ago.  Grass covers them and hides them from sight.  You wouldn't notice it if you drove by, but I know it's there.

I can be a very hard-headed and impatient man.  My wife will attest to this.  Years ago, I was borrowing my Dad's Kubota tractor with a bush hog attached to cut the grass in the pasture.  This was before we had cows and I was rushing to mow the pasture.  Trouble is, it kept raining and just when it was about to be dry enough to mow, it would rain again, making the pasture a muddy swamp.  Meanwhile, the grass was getting so tall that I was worried that the little bush hog would be overwhelmed by the height of the grass.  So even though it was wet, I made a decision to go ahead and mow anyway.

The pasture isn't precision leveled and there are some low spots out there.  I can remember turning around as I was mowing through the low spots and seeing ruts that I was leaving, but I kept going.  I had to finish, you see.  Those ruts remain to this day. Oh, they aren't really a hindrance and they aren't going to hurt anyone or the animals.  The ruts are more of a nuisance.  No, they are an ever-present reminder to me of how bad decisions made in a rushed fashion can leave ruts for a long time - for a lifetime, actually.

Beyond ruts in the pasture, I began to think of how foolish, careless words spoken without thought or hasty actions without consideration to the consequences can do the same thing.  They can leave ruts or scars on the heart that linger long after the deed was done.  They can alter the landscape of our lives, leaving grim reminders of relationships lost or damaged.

In the case of the physical ruts, I can purchase some topsoil and fill in the 13 year old ruts in no time flat and I intend on doing that at some point.  More importantly, this reminder of the ruts convicted me to do some self-examination and determine areas that I might need to try to repair figurative ruts I've created over time - while there's still time.

Ephesians 4:25-27   New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.

The Cream Always Rises to the Top

The cream always rises to the top is an idiom that is used to describe people.  In other words, people of high moral character or virtue always distinguish themselves from the others, rising to the top.  I think that the saying comes from a bygone era before the Industrial Revolution when people had milk cows.  The milk they drank didn't come from Borden's or the grocery store and it didn't come in a plastic jug with a handle.

People not accustomed to this nostalgic time probably don't understand the saying. Cream rising to the top?  The fat in milk separates from the water and rises to the top, similar to what oil and water does.  Homogenization came on the scene around the year 1919 as a means of stopping the natural separation:

ho·mog·e·nize

həˈmäjəˌnīz/

verb

past tense: homogenized; past participle: homogenized

1. 1.

   subject (milk) to a process in which the fat droplets are emulsified and the cream does not separate.

   "homogenized milk"

After homogenization, the cream no longer rose to the top.  In this process the milk is highly pressurized and pushed through a screen, breaking down the fat particles into a much smaller size and this allows the fat particles to be combined with the milk.  Homogenization came about when the milk from different herds or dairies were mixed and the need arose for standardization in order to ready the milk for processing, thereby requiring a consistent product.

Fun Fact: Goat milk is naturally homogenized as the fat globules are much smaller than cows' milk and remains in suspension.

Alternatively, if your milk comes directly from the cow, there is no homogenization and this is what it looks like after it cools and sits for a while:

Cream rising to the top!

You can see the cream line, where the milk has separated from the cream.  The lighter fatty portions of the milk (the cream) has risen to the top.  In fact, almost three quarters of this gallon of milk is cream.  This is not normal.  Usually there are a couple of inches of cream on top, but the tender Spring grasses will do this to the milk, making it richer and with a yellowish color.  It is delicious!

Now, we normally do several things with it.  We either shake it up, pour, and drink WHOLE milk, or we skim the cream off the top for our coffee or to make butter, homemade ice cream, or whipped cream.  It's good stuff.  As I was learning about cream and the homogenization process, I stumbled across the following from Natural News:

Homogenization is a more recently invented process and it has been called "the worst thing that dairymen did to milk." When milk is homogenized, it is pushed through a fine filter at pressures of 4,000 pounds per square inch. In this process, the fat globules are made smaller by a factor of ten times or more. These fat molecules then become evenly dispersed throughout the milk.

Milk is a hormonal delivery system. When homogenized, milk becomes very powerful and efficient at bypassing normal digestive processes and delivering steroid and protein hormones to the human body (both your hormones and the cow's natural hormones and the ones they may have been injected with to produce more milk).

Homogenization makes fat molecules in milk smaller and they become "capsules" for substances that are able to bypass digestion. Proteins that would normally be digested in the stomach are not broken down and instead they are absorbed into the bloodstream.

The homogenization process breaks up an enzyme in milk which in its smaller state can then enter the bloodstream and react against arterial walls. This causes the body to protect the area with a layer of cholesterol. If this only happened once in a while it wouldn't be of big concern, but if it happens regularly there are long term risks.

Proteins were created to be easily broken down by digestive processes. Homogenization disrupts this and insures their survival so that they enter the bloodstream. Many times the body reacts to foreign proteins by producing histamines, and then mucus. Sometimes homogenized milk proteins resemble a human protein and can become triggers for autoimmune diseases such as diabetes or multiple sclerosis.

Two Connecticut cardiologists have demonstrated that homogenized milk proteins did in fact survive digestion. It was discovered that Bovine Xanthene Oxidase (BXO) survived long enough to affect every one of three hundred heart attack victims over a five-year time period. Even young children in the U.S. are showing signs of hardening of the arteries.

That's very interesting reading, especially in that the homogenization process has potentially caused some people to have adverse reactions to milk.  Some people that think that they are having allergic reactions to milk are actually having adverse reactions to the homogenization process!  Milk has gotten a bad rap for something that it didn't do and it causes people to stop drinking milk. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water!!!

There's a simple answer to this - drink raw milk.  Okay, admittedly it is not that simple, but it is worth it for health reasons to drink real milk.

Our Own Grass Fed Beef - Rendering Tallow (Part 3)

In Part 1 and Part 2 of our blog posts, we talked about us taking a grass fed steer from the farm to the slaughter house and we showed you our freezer loaded up with meat and organ meats.  We will show you today another product that we got - beef fat.  Well, that sounds disgusting, doesn't it?  Why would you want beef fat?  We'll show you in this post.  We were able to get several bags of fat from the steer.

Now, there are numerous uses for beef fat or tallow, but first you have to process it or render it.  You probably grew up where you can remember your mom or grandma would save the bacon drippings from frying bacon and keep it in a coffee cup or tin can near the stove.  Those drippings would serve as the fat or oil to fry things in similar to Crisco. Tallow is the same thing, except from a beef animal instead of pork.  Here is the first of several bags that we will be working with.

A big bag of fat

You want the fat to be slightly frozen as it is easier to work with.  This is not a job for the squeamish of heart or someone who is a 'clean freak' because it makes a big mess.  Simply take pieces of semi-frozen fat out of the bag and using a sharp knife, cut off any pieces of meat or blood.  You want the fat to be simply fat and nothing else.

The first batch

After trimming the meat and blood off of it, I cut the fat into pieces about an inch square.  I then threw it into the food processor.  I learned, though, that it wasn't frozen enough and it made a big 'gloppy' mess.  I learned that the food processor step is really unnecessary as long as you chop up the fat into small enough pieces.  I probably won't do that step again.  It's one more item to clean.  Plus, it has to be hard on the food processor.

Chopping into mush

I simply took the cut up fat and put in into a large pot and turned the heat on medium.  After a while the fat will liquefy.  Be sure to stir every once in a while so that it doesn't burn.  

Heating things up

It's best to keep the lid on the pot and the vent hood running.  The smell isn't bad, but it is not pleasant.  After it is bubbling pretty good, I turned the heat down to low and just let it cook and cook, while stirring occasionally.

Cooking it down

When crispy pieces float to the top and the bottom of the pot contains clear liquid, your work is done. I pulled it off of the stove top and got a metal colander.  I cut up a t-shirt and laid it on the bottom to serve as a filter and then carefully poured the very hot contents of the pot into the colander.  The liquid filtered through the shirt and into the measuring container.

Filtering the oil

The filter/colander caught all the crispy pieces of fat.  This is similar to what you get with pork: Cracklins.  In French, they're called gratons or in Spanish, chicharones.

Beef  'cracklins'

What remained was 8 cups of rendered beef tallow in the liquid state.  It was still quite hot.  It was clear as the filter caught every little bit of sediment.

Hot Rendered Tallow

I lined a pyrex baking pan with wax paper and carefully poured the hot contents into it.

I let it cool on the counter for the better part of a day.  It came to room temperature, but wasn't really hardening, so I put it into the refrigerator overnight and it hardened just fine.

Yellow Beef Tallow

We used a knife to cut it into squares like you might do with brownies and then we used a spatula to scoop up the beef tallow squares.

We labeled a gallon sized ziploc bag and began placing the squares of beef tallow into the bag. They'll be frozen and then we can pop them out as we need them.

Tallow from grass-fed beef has fats like conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and that is very good for you according to the Weston A. Price Foundation.

So what will we use beef tallow for?  Well, it has many uses.  First, we'll use it to fry things in.  I understand that french fries fried in beef tallow is excellent.  Then, we're going to try to make soap. You can make candles with it and you can even make skin care products (balms) with it.  We'll freeze a bunch of beef tallow and try to make several different products with it.

Our Own Grass Fed Beef - Picking it up (Part 2)

In a previous post that you can click on below entitled,:

Our Own Grass Fed Beef - Organ Meats (Part 1)

we discussed bringing a 1600 pound steer to a slaughterhouse in nearby Morse, Louisiana.  In that post, we talked about how we picked up the organ meats and prepared them for storage while we were waiting for the meat to dry age in the cooler for two weeks before they cut it up.  When we dropped off the animal, we filled out a "cut sheet" that detailed the amount of ground meat we wanted and the amount of steaks versus roasts we wanted, what type steaks and ribs we wanted, the brisket, and the thickness that we wanted the steaks to be cut into.

Two weeks later we got a call that the meat was ready to be picked up.  Thankfully the butcher froze it in his big commercial freezer and fortunately, my Dad came with his truck to pick up the beef. Elliott's Slaughterhouse is in a small town well off the beaten path.  They are very courteous and provide great service.  There is a small sign showing you where to turn off the main road that we originally missed and had to turn around and go back and make the turn.

As we talked about earlier, there aren't many slaughterhouses left.  Growing up, there was one in Oberlin, Louisiana and two in Basile, Louisiana.  Now, slaughterhouses providing custom butchering are few and far between.  As a result of the scarcity, Elliott's Slaughter House is very busy.  There's nothing fancy about the place, but it is one of those places whose reputation speaks for itself.  There's no need for lit up signs or advertising.

Each time we've gone, we have had to wait in a very long line with people purchasing pork roasts, or pork steaks or ground meat.  This is not boxed beef coming from Illinois or Nebraska.  This is fresh cut meat.  While we were waiting, I watched a gentleman purchase a bag of Pork Debris.  Debris is a variety of meats such as heart, liver, kidney, spleen, tripe, brain, lungs, and sweetbreads.  Cajun use this to make a dish called "Cowboy Stew."  You can bring in your calf, pig, sheep, goat or deer and they'll custom process it for you.

If you look just on the right side of the window, you can see a green rectangular sign.  This sign had a slogan printed on it that is perfect for a butcher shop in rural Louisiana.  It stated: "Vegetarian: An Indian word for someone who doesn't know how to hunt."  Classic.  They have huge coolers with carcasses hanging on big stainless steel hooks from the ceiling.  Remember in 'Rocky' when the "Italian Stallion" went into the cooler to practice punching?  Just like that.

There were hand printed signs all over the walls announcing specials on Pork neckbones, Belly fat, stuffed pork chops, stuffed deboned chickens and Turduckens. The smell of smoked sausage and tasso filled the air.

The steer's hanging weight before aging was 1,166 pounds and the butcher estimated the animal weighed 1,600 pounds.  There is some loss in weight from aging and he told us that we could count on roughly 900 pounds of meat.  Since we are splitting with my Dad, that meant 450 pounds for us. It cost $25 Butchering Fee plus $0.38 per pound of hanging weight.  That was broken up into $0.18 per pound cutting, $0.18 per pound wrapping, and $0.02 per pound freezing.

When we went to pick it up, it was all packed in individual packages in large plastic bags and was frozen in a big freezer outside.  My Dad backed up to the freezer and began loading the truck.  We had several big ice chests, but to our surprise, we only had room for 450 pounds of meat.  We made another trip to get my Dad's half and then we still have 6 big bags of fat and bones to pick up.

We had to purchase a new 15' chest type freezer to store the meat in, but will pay for it easily with the savings in meat purchases.  Beef is sky high right now and from what I've read, it will remain high for quite a while.  Back long ago, you could store a chest type freezer on your back porch or in your garage.  Those days are gone. When I talked to a gentlemen selling the freezers, he told me that they aren't made with good insulation anymore and if you tried to put the freezer outside, it wouldn't last very long at all.  So, we put the freezer inside in a hallway and I put some of those sliders for furniture moving underneath it so we could slide it on the tile if need be.

Where's the Beef?  In the freezer, of course.

Benjamin and I made some dividers with some 3/8 inch plywood and we separated the ground meat from the steaks and brisket and another divider for the soup rounds, ribs and short ribs.  We ate the first package of ground meat the other day. Delicious!  A grass fed steer from our farm who lived a good life under the blue sky and sunshine while breathing fresh Allen Parish air.  He is not full of antibiotics, hormones, or medicines and we feel good about the quality meat that we'll enjoy for months and months.  We'll definitely do this again.  

A Tribute To Mom

Happy Mother's Day to all Mothers out there!  Happy Mother's Day to My Mom and Happy Mother's Day to the mother of my children.

Today was a good day.  We honored our Moms.  We called Tricia's Mom in Corpus Christi and talked to her and told her how much we love and appreciate her and then later in the day, my Mom and my sister came over to the house for a time of fellowship and food.

My Mom with Russ, Laura Lee, and Benjamin

In Sunday School, we departed from the Bible Study book that we normally follow and did an expository study on Proverbs 31.  I teach the Youth Sunday School class and we talked about how important this chapter was to them.  First, for the young ladies, it teaches them the type of woman they should aspire to be.  For the young men, it teaches them the type of woman they should court and marry!

After the Proverb goes into detail about the qualities of this remarkable woman, it says the following:

Proverbs 31:28-30 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

28 Her children rise up and bless her;
Her husband also, and he praises her, saying:
29 “Many daughters have done nobly,
But you excel them all.”
30 Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.

My Wife with her children: Russ, Laura Lee, and Benjamin

In Sunday School we discussed the qualities of this woman being described in the text.  She is excellent, valuable, trustworthy and sacrifices of herself for her family. She does good for her family and is a hard worker.  She prepares food for the family, getting up early and staying up late, she is smart and strong.  She is compassionate and giving, making sure the family is properly fed and clothed.  She makes her husband a better man.  She is optimistic about the future and is kind. What a woman!

I am truly a blessed man because I have a Proverbs 31 Mom and a Proverbs 31 Wife!  

Happy Mother's Day, Mom and Happy Mother's Day, Tricia.  I love you both!