Savor the moment

One of the things that can be difficult about living on a farm is that the work is never done.  There is always more work to be done.  Weeds constantly grow in the garden.  Animals need constant care.  There is always something to be planted or harvested.  Things need maintenance.  I'm a list person.  Quite often, I'm adding items to my To Do list much faster than I can strike things off.  My list seems to grow faster than the federal deficit.  Well, okay, not quite that fast.

I definitely need to work on stepping back and enjoying things, savoring the moment, as life passes quickly.  Trace Adkins sings a country song called "You're gonna miss this" in which he sings:

You're gonna miss this,
You're gonna want this back,
You're gonna wish these days
hadn't gone by so fast.

These are some good times,
So take a good look around,
You may not know it now,
But you're gonna miss this...

I need to remind myself to enjoy the simple pleasures of life - to take a step back and live in the moment.  A boy and his dog - now there's a simple pleasure.  Benjamin has a puppy named Promise that we rescued from the Animal Shelter.  Each afternoon Benjamin plays with her and Promise runs, barks, chases chickens, jumps on us, and chews on everything in sight.  She's a happy dog.


Benjamin with his dog, Promise



Just a swingin'

How long has it been since you've been on a swing?  They aren't just for children, you know.  They don't require batteries - just someone to give you a push.



Enjoying a nice sunset casting long shadows

How about enjoying a nice sunset?  Each day I should take the time to observe all the things going around me that daily chores and constant activity causes me to overlook.

Smiles, everyone, smiles. (Taken a couple Springs ago)

Enjoy your family.  Relish the smiles and laughter.  Kids grow up so fast and then move away.  Laura is home from Hot Springs, Arkansas where she's been attending Leader's Academy for ten months and then working on staff at the Summer Camp there.  She will be starting college next week.  It's the first time in a while that our whole family has been together under one roof.  Russ will be graduating from high school in May 2013.  Life changes oh so quickly.

King Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, says,

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

² Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher,
“^]Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

³  What advantage does man have in all his work
Which he does under the sun?
⁴ A generation goes and a generation comes,
But the earth remains forever.
⁵ Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;
And hastening to its place it rises there again.

He says in Chapter two that he built houses, planted vineyards, made gardens, parks and ponds, possessed flocks and herds, acquired gold and silver and treasures, filled his life with entertainment, and had concubines (this idea wouldn't go over big with my wife!).  He said that all that his eyes desired, he didn't refuse them.  You'd think that he would be happy, but then, being the wise man that he was, he says:

Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.

King Solomon concluded that there is nothing better for a man to do than to eat, drink and find satisfaction in his work, because these are gifts from the hand of God.  In the New Testament, Jesus clarifies that we should be attuned to eternal matters though.  We should enjoy life to the fullest, but we should consider the spiritual first and foremost:

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? See All...



Rays of the sun over the clouds in the western sky

 Check in tomorrow.  We'll look around in the garden, harvest some peppers that look to be about ripe and maybe pickle a few jars of fresh sliced jalapenos! 

Tails you win!

At least that's what the cows say this time of year.  Let me explain.  Tails on our dairy cows are more than just decorative ornaments.  They serve a very important purpose. 



Daisy's tail in all its glory

 In the hot summer months their tails serve as fly-swatters.  There are numerous biting insects around our parts:  Mosquitos, horse flies and deer flies (they also bite cows), and regular biting flies.  They will land on your cows and bite them to acquire blood and generally annoy them.

Small biting flies on Daisy's stomach

I really feel sorry for the animals during this time of year.  They don't like the heat and they don't like the constant swarms of flies.  The Good Lord installed tails on cows to help them ward off the flies and biting insects.  You can see Daisy in the process of swishing away the flies, sort of, in the next picture below.  She's so fast with it, it is hard to get a good shot.  She can feel the flies biting, and can quickly whip her tail with precise coordination to the exact spot and pop the fly off.

Daisy's fly-swatter in action

I've read where some folks tie the tails when they are milking to keep from getting swatted in the face while you're milking.  If one forgot to untie the tail when done, it could be disastrous.  The cow could actually pull the end of the tail off.  (Cringe!!) Not only would this be painful to the cow, but she would lose her weapon of mass destruction against flies.  We have another method.  As shown in one of the pictures in the "Got Milk? We do" post, Tricia wraps a 'band' around the hip bones and the back of the cow's legs to keep pressure on the tail so she can't swish it around. 

We also try to help the cows out in the War on Flies.  We want to use natural products so we've ordered Cedar Oil and mix 20 oz warm water, 1/2 oz Ivory liquid soap with 4 oz. Cedar Oil.  We spray that on the cows at milking time and it seems to repel flies - for a while.  It also has the added benefit of making your cows and dairy barn smell like a cedar chest.

One final thing about flies and biting insects - after a rain, the grass really takes off and grows tall and starts going to seed.  This tall grass creates a great habitat for mosquitoes and flies to hide and multiply.  When the grass starts going to seed, as shown in the picture below, it turns a dull brown and isn't as lush and green as before.  Sometimes with this rapid growth, the cows can't keep up and it gets overgrown.  The cows 'cherry pick' the good stuff and the rest of the pasture gets out of hand. 



Grass going to seed from a "chicken's eye" viewpoint

 The grass is using all its energy to produce the seeds and not to grow the nutritious leaves that the cows enjoy.  If the cows can't keep up, it's usually a good idea to "top" the grass with a mower to encourage new growth of leaves instead of seed heads.  The cows appreciate the fresh, new growth.
On another quick topic, when we went to the barn the other day, I noticed a broken egg in the small goat trough that we now use to put free-choice kelp minerals.  That was an odd place for a broken egg to be.

I looked up in the rafters of the barn by the hay loft and discovered a hen who found a secret place to set and try to hatch a brood of chicks. 

We had noticed that the hens' production of eggs was decreasing, but attributed it to the heat.  Now we know where the extra eggs were.  If you look at the far bottom left of the above picture, you can see an egg poking out from underneath her.  She must be sitting on a big nest.  We'll watch her for the next 21 days to see if she hatches any out. 

Raindrops are fallin' on my head

Yesterday afternoon was very hot.  Russ and I had a little work to do on the doghouse that we had been putting off for a while.  When we completed that job, we started some yard work.  The rains caused the grass in the yard to grow quickly, so Russ was mowing and I was weed-eating.  We had just finished we we heard a rumbling in the east.

Before long a nice, soothing rain began to fall.  I love the way a rain cools things off and cleans everything up, settling the dust, refreshing plant and animal and human alike.  I also like the way it smells after a rain.  I've learned that this "after the rain" smell is caused by bacteria in the soil.  When the ground dries, the bacteria produces spores.  When the force of the rain hits the soil, it pushes these spores into the moist air and into our noses where we smell this good, "earthy" smell that we equate with rain.



We try to capture rainwater and use it to water the crops and also keep the water troughs full. After an inch rain, we can sequester about 400 gallons of rainwater in buckets I have positioned to catch the rainwater under the eaves (eavesdropping!) and along the drip line.  For aesthetic purposes, I only do this in the backyard and out of sight.  If you live in a neighborhood, this practice might put you at odds with the Home Owner's Association.



30 gallons of rainwater



Just like a funnel, dropping the rain into our buckets.



This one will catch about 50 gallons in no time



These molasses tubs have a 30 gallon capacity and make great rain collection containers 

 Now ideally what I'd like to do from this point is to have a cistern mounted about 10 feet up in the air and have a low pressure water pump to pump all the water from the buckets into the cistern.  Then I'd use gravity to water the cows and the garden.  Since I don't have this, we do the next best thing - we carry it.  Using two 5 gallon buckets, Russ dips out the rainwater:

He carries it toward the cattle trough: (I have heard that some people have gym memberships and pay for this sort of thing, can you believe?)

And he pours it over the fence and into their troughs:

We'll do this until the rainwater is depleted and then we'll get all uptown and fancy and use a water hose.  The cows tell us they like rainwater better as their sensitive palates can detect chlorine in the tap water.

The Simple Life

I like Bluegrass music.  Ricky Skaggs sings a song called Simple Life.  Turn up the sound on your computer and click below to listen to some good music while you read today's posting:

Simple Life by Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder Live at Charleston Music Hall

I think about the simple life a lot.  Have I sucked out all the marrow of life today or did I get sucked in to the world's system?  Did I live deep today or was my existence shallow?  How many days do we go through the motions of life, confusing busy-ness with purpose, money with success, activity with happiness.  Sometimes we make things so complicated.  In our blitz of activity, we miss out on the simple pleasures of life. 


Banana spider I saw by the barn that had captured a cicada in its web for its breakfast this morning. He must have a big appetite! 

 One of the things that attracted Tricia and I to operating a small homestead farm was simplicity.  In the Apostle Paul's letter to the Thessalonians he states,

"make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you" 1 Thessalonians 4:11

That's some good stuff, right there!  Living a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands...  There's something in that lifestyle that exudes humility, honesty, integrity and is very appealing.  The Bible has countless agricultural references beginning with the Garden of Eden and on through the Gospels as Jesus used agricultural parables to teach about the Kingdom of God.

Shots of the full moon as we walked out to the barn to milk Daisy and Rosie a couple mornings ago

The other thing that attracted us to homestead farming was the ability to grow our own food and being able to sit down to a meal that came from your land.  Food for which you knew with certainty that it came from animals that were treated humanely and crops that were grown and harvested without the use of herbicides, pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.  We wanted foods that were more nutrient-dense and healthy.  Hippocrates summed it up nicely when he said, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

The "simple life" we soon learned, wasn't so simple.  Things aren't easy.  Sometimes animals get sick or predators get them.  Sometimes a beautiful crop can succumb to insect pressure or disease.  Often, it is expensive to be a good steward to the land and animals on it - expensive in both capital and effort.  God takes care of us and we look at each day with gratitude for what we've been given.  We learn new things each and every day.

When we got our first Jersey cow, Buttercup, we purchased the book, Keeping a Family Cow by Joann S. Grohman.  This book contains very practical advice and the book has been used heavily for reference.  I especially like what she says on the last page:

"Advocates of restricted diets foster the impression that if you will cut out enough good food and take enough of the vitamin-of-the-week you'll live forever.  So far this has not occurred.  Even increased longevity is largely a myth created by a reduction in infant mortality.  What we have achieved is sickly old people and fat youth.  This outcome has not derived from a diet of milk, cream, butter, eggs and meat, consumption of which has been declining steadily since around 1880.  What has increased is consumption of manufactured fats, sugar, and refined carbohydrates such as bread and pasta.  The people who built the stone walls and huge walls of America's farms did not do it on white bread and margarine.  Nor were they assisted by vitamin tablets and fatty acid capsules.  Those constituents were found in their food and they remain in the food of people who produce their own.

I can not discuss the cost and work of keeping a cow without also considering the true long term investment in the health and appearance of my family.  The cost of my labor cannot be counted in this domestic economy.  Nothing else I might have done with my time could have matched these rewards.

Cows and grass are recession proof and inflation proof.  In difficult times, the family with a cow is not poor."



Tricia and Benjamin bottle feeding Blackberry with Daisy's milk so that Daisy would adopt her (April 2012)

  Faith, Family, Food, Fun...  The Simple Life - simply amazing!

The Hay is in the Barn

Have you ever heard of the expression, "The Hay is in the Barn?"  It's a saying that means that all the work is done and there's nothing else to do.  Sometimes you'll hear that phrase used by coaches just prior to a big game - "The hay is in the barn."  In other words, we're conditioned, we've practiced and have a game plan, we've studied our opponent's tendencies, we're ready.  There's nothing left to do but go out and execute. 

In an agricultural sense, it means exactly what it says.  The hay has been cut, raked, fluffed, dried by the sun, baled and is put up in a barn to be used later.  The only thing left to do is to bring it out of the barn as needed and feed to your animals. 

Hay is very important to farm animals, especially during the winter months when there's not much forage for them.  Even though our winters aren't harsh in South Louisiana, we still want to ensure that we have enough hay to last until the clover and Spring grass returns.  It is very important that your hay has nutrients.  The nutrient content of the hay is dependent on the leaf/stem ratio.  The leaf contains most of the energy and protein versus the stem which is mostly fiber.

Around this time each year, I call a neighbor about a mile down the road who bales square bales of Jiggs Bermuda hay and request to purchase 100 bales.  This is good quality hay mostly fed to horses, but we feed it to our cows.  Dairy cattle need the best hay, with more nutrients, since they are producing milk.  Milk production draws heavily upon a cow's store of nutrients and must be replaced.  This is especially critical in winter or in periods of drought when there is no lush grass in the pasture.

Our neighbor sells us the hay for $5 per bale picked up in the field directly behind the baler.  If you pick it up later, it is more expensive due to his labor and that makes sense to me.  This year during hay time Tricia was in the Shining City by the Sea, Corpus Christi, visiting her mother and missed out on the fun.  The boys and I hooked up my dad's cattle trailer to Russ' pickup truck to go pick up hay. 

Russ & his red Toyota

This old, trusty trailer was my grandfather's trailer and was purchased in the 70's.  We have hauled many a cow to market, many a sheep, goat, and dairy cow to livestock shows.  We have made many late-night, back road journeys to avoid the highway patrol since the lights no longer work on it.  It has had numerous paint jobs, floor repairs, and patchwork on the frame as rust has taken its toll on the old girl, but she still gets the job done.  I guess there's a lesson in there for us as well - we don't have to be young or pretty, as long as we get the work done!  Anyway, we also use it to haul hay.

So we drove it down the road and into the hay field directly behind the baler.  Benjamin drove the truck pulling the trailer and Russ was in the trailer.  (For full disclosure, Benjamin is 11 years old, but he drove like a champ, didn't run over anyone and gained some good experience.)  When a hay bale came out of the baler, I lifted it and handed it to Russ who stacked it.  The capacity of the trailer and the truck bed is about 50 bales so it took two trips, but we got it done.  It was hot - 98 degrees hot!

When we got each load back to the barn, we had to use a pulley to winch each bale into the loft and stack it.  This involved Russ, at ground level, using a bungee cord on the end of the rope to attach each bale.  I would then hoist each bale up to the loft by walking backward to the other end of the barn.  I did make a process improvement this year.  Last year, once the bale was pulled up even with the loft floor, I would have to hold tension on the rope while I grabbed the bale and pulled it in.  This year, actually using my gray matter, I tied a big washer to the end of the rope I was pulling and hammered a nail in the rafters at the exact length that puts the hay bale at floor level.  After pulling the bale up even with the floor, I put the washer hole into the nail I had driven so that the nail held the tension - not me.  This enabled me to take a nice, leisurely walk to the end of the loft and unclip the hay - a definite improvement.  With the sun beating down on the tin roof in the loft of the barn, it was hotter than a 2 dollar pistol.  Did I mention it was swelteringly hot?



Russ is attaching the bale of hay to the bungee cord.



Hoisting bales up to the loft.



View from the loft with pulley in foreground



100 bales stacked floor to ceiling

Heading down the trap door in the loft

After doing this exercise 100 times we were finally finished.  While it was indeed exhaustingly hot work, it was also an honest day's work.  Work that makes you proud of the accomplishment and makes you fully appreciate a cold shower and a comfortable bed!  THE HAY IS IN THE BARN!

Freedom!

Yesterday we talked a bit about freedom.  Our chickens have freedom and that freedom sometimes costs them their very lives when various predators come calling.  One of my favorite movies of all times is Braveheart. 


Mel Gibson in as William Wallace in Braveheart



Young Soldier: William Wallace is seven feet tall!
William Wallace: Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.
[Scottish army laughs]
William Wallace: I *am* William Wallace! And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men... and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?
Veteran: Fight? Against that? No! We will run. And we will live.
William Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM! [Scottish army cheers]

If that doesn't get you fired up, your wood is all wet.  I think the concept of freedom was given to us by our Creator.  We long for it, and back on topic (sorry), our animals long for it.  We've found that while freedom is good, we need boundaries.  Boundaries provide order and structure. 

A couple of mornings ago, we walked out to the barn to milk Daisy and Rosie and... whoa, there were three bovines waiting.  There should have only been two.  After surveying the scene, we saw that Stryker, our 10 month old bull calf (Daisy's little boy) had staged a jailbreak in the evening hours in order to either engage in courtship or to try to get some milk from his mama.  We had weaned him at 8 months and I know he longs for that good milk again.  Either hunger or love - two great motivators. 

Our mama cows, and our heifer, Magnolia (Maggie Mae) are on a 21 day cycle.  Each 21 days, they come in heat and want to breed.  We try to control this somewhat so that our calves are born at certain times of the year.  Hence the fence!  We have an electric fence powered by a solar charger that will administer a shock of electricity if a cow or bull (or person) touches it.  It must have failed, allowing the amorous or ravenous Stryker to get through.  We feared that Stryker had stolen "our" milk, but once we started to milk, it was apparent that he didn't get it as we got a full bucket! 

I walked out to investigate to determine how he had succeeded in getting out.  Here is the charger.  The panel faces south and collects solar energy to power the fence.

It was pulsing away, red light blinking, sending voltage down the hot wire.  No problem here.  The photo below shows where the "hot wire" connects to the perimeter strand of wire.  All looks good here as well.

AHA!!  Here is the problem.  If you look closely, you'll see a green wire (ground wire) coming out of the charger running straight down.  At the bottom of the wire is a green clip that is hanging.  There is a metal ground rod that is in the center right of the picture.  That green clip is supposed to be clipped to the ground rod.  This ground completes the circuit and allows electricity to move down the fenceline hindering the romantic overtures of a lovestruck bull.  Somehow it came unclipped.  Perhaps Stryker bumped it.  We hope he doesn't remember that trick!

So I reclipped the ground like so and it immediately started popping:

And now I test the fence.  It will administer a pretty good shock.  Trust me, I know.  So I usually pick up a blade of grass and touch it to the wire.  I can feel the pulses of electricity.  All is good!  So time to put Stryker back in his bachelor pad. 

You can tell he is not thrilled with our interrupting his love life.  You may be wondering what that contraption is hanging from his nose.  My brother, Kristian, says it looks like a license plate.  To play it safe, I installed a weaning device in Stryker's nose.  This temporary gizmo clips into the calf's nose (it doesn't hurt him) and prevents him from getting to the udder should he escape again.  They quickly learn how to eat grass with it in by stretching out their nose where the plate lies flat, and then pulling their head back toward their body, grabbing a mouthful of grass on the way.  It becomes second nature in no time.  We'll leave it in for a couple of weeks to ensure he doesn't repeat his escape and then remove it.

In the meantime, Maggie Mae, who is Stryker's 10 month old cousin (and Rosie's little girl), looks on snickering at the funny looking apparatus in her cousin's nose.

 Maggie Mae is in a separate paddock.  As you can see from the photo below, I have a "jump wire" that clips onto the perimeter fence hot wire and runs electricity down temporary fencing running perpendicular to the hot wire.  The poly wire is attached to a reel, making it easy to roll it up and move the cows to fresh grass as needed.

Now that everyone is back in their places, all is right on the farm again.  Freedom, with appropriate boundaries, results in an orderly homestead farm. 

New kids on the block

Our chickens roam free on the pasture.  We like them to be free.  They like to be free.  Freedom is a great thing for man or fowl.  The chickens can go where they want to and eat what they want to eat.  Although I've never really seen our chickens smile, we like to think that they are happy birds. 

We keep a ratio of approximately 10 hens for every rooster.  That is about the right ratio to ensure that all eggs are fertilized and as best as we can tell polygamy is not against the law as defined in the barnyard judicial code of conduct.  The roosters also are very protective of their hens against other roosters in the pasture and will fight to maintain dominance over his "chicks" (sorry, I couldn't resist).  However, there are many predators for which the rooster is not effective protection.  We've only found one bird that is impervious to fatal attack and it is this guy:

We have a hogwire fence around the pasture to protect against some of the predators of chickens in our area like coyotes, dogs, oppossums, and raccoons.  Other predators like hawks and owls are more difficult to avoid.  We lose a few chickens now and then, but c'est la vie (such is life) in the barnyard.  This year, however, we had a catastrophe.  Over the course of a week, we lost 17 hens and consequently, the loss of a lot of eggs.  We discovered that a small dog was able to squeeze through the hog wire and dine on fresh chicken until he was full.  The next day he repeated the carnage.  To my chagrin, this dog ate chicken like a Baptist after Sunday Service.  Finally, after figuring out who the villain was, I purchased some 2 X 4 welded wire fence and put it on top of the hogwire to keep the hungry hound out.  This solved the problem and the massacre mercifully ended.

Hens are a very nervous bunch and seeing this violence freaked them out.  Their egg-laying slowed for a while and it took a while for things to return to normal.  We have fertilized eggs, so we normally collect 42 eggs and put them in the incubator we have.  The trouble with that is that you never have a 100% hatch.  Then, of those that hatch, half will be roosters.  We raise them for a few months and then put them in the freezer for gumbo.  The other half are hens.  Barred rock hens take between 20 - 24 weeks before they produce the first egg.  So you can see, losing hens takes a while to recover from.

To speed up the process, I ordered 30, one day old pullets from a hatchery.  A pullet is a young hen.  They arrive in the mail and the post office will call you first thing in the morning to go pick up your birds.  Of the 30 we purchased, all of them lived and there was even an extra in the shipment.  In Louisiana, we call that lagniappe (a little something extra).  I keep them in a brooder in the garage for about two weeks or until Tricia tells me that they are stinking up the garage.  Upon receiving this "encouragement", I move them out to the pasture.

Here's a picture of the pullets after about 4 1/2 weeks:

They are in a small chicken tractor that I built.  This keeps them safe from predators.  Each day I push them to fresh grass.  In the picture above, I've just moved them to fresh pasture and they are eating the seedhead on the top of the grass.  The picture below shows some of them in the tractor.  The roof of the tractor hinges open so I can feed and water them and you can see that one side has tin siding to protect the chicks from wind and rain.  There are roosts built onto the tractor so they can roost.

 Here are a few more shots of the happy hens:

This one shows a homemade feed trough and a waterer:

In about 16 - 20 weeks, we should see our first eggs from these girls.  They are kind of small at first.  We call them "pullet bullets".  They will be a welcome sight as they will replace the hens we lost and supplement our diminished egg production.

Barred rocks lay brown eggs and our Aracaunas lay blue and green eggs.  I always like to mix them up to add some novelty.  Regardless, of the color, they all taste the same - DELICIOUS and nutritious!

   Have an egg-citing day!