The Departure of Lili

Lili is Maggie's little heifer.  She's a pretty little thing and is almost seven months old. We chronicled her birth back on September 19, 2013 and you can look at that post, if you wish, by clicking on this link: Lili's birth  Lili is still nursing on Maggie along with Amy.  Lili was Maggie's first heifer and her milk is rich and has allowed Lili to grow strong.  Her lines are good and she has a nice long frame.  She has a gentle disposition and is halter broken.

Our little 3 acre pasture is just not large enough to provide enough grass for our growing Jersey herd.  We've always sold any little bull calves that our cows have given us.  This was the first time that we've considered selling a heifer.  Registered Jersey heifers are a hot commodity and it didn't take long to locate a buyer.  We know the purchaser and know that Lili will have a good home.  Since the family that purchased Lili shows dairy cows, we'll be able to see Lili from time to time.  Saturday morning the transfer took place as the purchaser was bringing his trailer to the house to pick her up.

Lili

I put a lead rope on her and walked her out into the front yard to make it easier to load her into the trailer. While we waited she wanted me to take some glamour photos in front of the blooming azaleas.  She's so vain.

Lili amidst the azaleas (with a matching lead rope)

Most of the animal family lined up at the gate to bid her adieu.  Lili's mother is the third cow from the left in the photo below.  Lots of moo-ing ensued.

The Farewell Party

Little Amy (Rosie's heifer) will be lonely, but I don't think that will last as the benefits of being the only child will quickly out-weigh the camaraderie of having Lili to cavort with in the pasture.  Now Amy will get ALL of Maggie's milk and will grow quickly with the increased quantity of milk along with the sweet, Spring grass.

Amy

So Lili was loaded up in the trailer and her halter and lead rope was removed.  

Sad eyes, turn the other way, I don't wanna see you cry...

Tricia and Benjamin were not home for this ordeal so I wanted to capture this moving moment when the "little bird left the nest."

The Trail(er) of Tears

As the truck and trailer made the corner and drove out of sight, I could only think of one thing...

I remembered the "so long" song that Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway sang at the end of every Carol Burnett show:

"I'm so glad we had this time together,

Just to have a laugh or sing a song,

Seems we just get started

And before you know it,

Comes the time we have to say

So Long."  (So long everybody...  *tugs ear)

So Long Lili!

Orange Blossom Time!

I've often said that if Heaven has a fragrance, I think it will be that of Orange Blossoms.  Right now all of our orange trees are absolutely filled with the white blooms and they fill the air with the sweet aroma.  Especially at night, when you walk outdoors, the air is heavy with the sweet scent.

Navel Orange tree filled with blooms

Here is a close-up photo of one of the blooms accompanied by a lady bug.  Even bugs can't resist the aroma!

Ladybugs like orange blossoms

But there is another creature that loves the orange blossoms, too - The Honey Bee! The tree was buzzing with activity as bees went from one flower to the next doing their thing.    Look at the photo below and you can spot the bee in flight at about the 12 o'clock postion in the picture.  He is flying away, so you're looking at his rear end. He's high-tailing it to one of hundreds of flowers he'll visit today.

The Flight of the Bumblebee

In this one the bee has landed on the flower and is making his way to the flower to get the nectar.  The bee will drink all the nectar he can and will pick up pollen while he's at it and will carry it to pollinate other flowers.

Bee on the flower

And in this picture, the honeybee is guzzling orange blossom nectar as fast as he can drink it.

Honeybee drinking nectar

So where is the bee going when he's done?  Well, he's flying back to his colony, which just happens to be inside the hollow column at our side entrance.  The bees have been living there for about 3 years now.  I'm sure there is lots of honey in there, but it is a fiberglass column and I don't know how to rob the honey out of it.  Can you see them all buzzing around the top of the column?

Bees a buzzing outside our side door

Tricia keeps telling me we need to do something about it because it's not very hospitable to have swarming bees right outside the door into which most of our guests enter our home.  But we've had no problems with salespeople or solicitors since the bees have moved in!  Most of the time the bees really don't bother you - you just have to ignore them  Sometimes though, when they are swarming, you don't want to be nearby as the air will be thick with swarming bees.  Maybe one day, I'll get my bee keeping friend to help me jack up the roof, turn the column on is side and rob the honey.

Cole Slaw with Fresh Picked Cabbage

We are still eating all that good cabbage that we harvested.  I ate some that was stir fried just last night.  Stir frying it really gives a great flavor.  Additionally, we've been eating cole slaw.  That is such a nice little side dish that is easy to make.  We take the cabbage and use the nifty little chopper to chop up the cabbage. From time to time we also put the cabbage into the food processor with the shredding blade on as well.

Chop Chop

Next we'll slice up some olives and add salt and pepper.  When we have fresh carrots, we'll shred some of those to add too.  The thing that adds a lot to Tricia's cole slaw, though, is chopped pecans.  Our trees make some little pecans that are hard to shell, but they are so rich and tasty and full of oil.  The chopped pecans add another 'crunch' and taste that we all enjoy.  Next she'll add some apple cider vinegar.

Cole Slaw

Finally, once all the above ingredients are in the serving bowl, Tricia adds several dollops of homemade mayonnaise to the slaw.  In case you missed the post from about a year ago, you can click the link right here:

How to make homemade mayonnaise to go back and read it.  This recipe is healthier for you and it tastes better, too.

Homemade Mayonnaise

We have several heads of cabbage left and over the next few weeks, we'll be eating lots of cole slaw with our meals - and that's okay with me!

The Fig Leaf

Standing in front of Tricia's kitchen window looking due east will cast your focus on one of our neighbor's fig trees.  We don't have a fig tree of our own and don't really need one because our neighbors allow us to pick all the figs we want off of it each year.  They don't have chickens so we barter and give them eggs in exchange for figs. That's a nice trade which happens to be a nice tax free transaction that has an added benefit of being insulated from the devaluation in our paper currency.

In the summertime when the figs are ripe, you can walk by the tree loaded with the sticky sweet fruit and eat them right off the tree.  We also bring them home, wash them, and freeze them to be used in baking or especially added to kefir and local honey and blended to make a healthy smoothie.  You can also make fig preserves which serve as the base for the sweetest cakes in the South!

Fig trees aren't evergreens and they lose all of their leaves each winter.  One of the signs of Spring is when you see the brilliant green baby fig leaves first appearing on the barren fig tree.  At dusk the other evening, I took a few photos of the fig leaves.

New Fig Leaves marking Spring

Fig trees have a neat history.  They are the third tree to be listed in the Bible behind the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Actually Adam & Eve's eating of the fruit of the second tree listed necessitated the mentioning of the fig tree. Genesis 3:7 says that once they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness.

It was also the tree that Jesus cursed because it bore no fruit and is a tree that could refer to Israel.  A most interesting reference to me is Matthew 24:32

"Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near;  

Matthew 24 is a very interesting chapter as it deals with Christ's return.  Harvest takes place in summer and the context of the verse is to BE READY!  No man knows the hour or the day, but he said he would return and that settles it for me.
  

A fresh, new garment!

So the fig tree in the neighbor's yard has become tender and is putting on leaves and I must ask myself, "Am I Ready?"

Be Ready for His Coming

42 “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. 43 But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. 44 For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

45 “Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. 47 Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But if that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’ 49 and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; 50 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, 51 and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

A Final Farewell to our Quail--

We've had our quail since some time back in November 2013.  Neat little birds that were something different for our farm.  We learned that they don't co-habitate well with chickens.  They are at the bottom of the pecking order.  After starting with 18 we were down to two.  Those two quail flourished and grew into pretty little birds. Benjamin dutifully fed and watered them each and every day.

On Tuesday afternoon, Benjamin excitedly told me that they had laid their first eggs! How exciting!  The eggs are a khaki color with black splotches on them.  I think they're really pretty.  You can see them in my hand:

Pretty Quail Eggs

I've eaten pickled quail eggs before and we were looking forward to trying to make our own.  Yesterday afternoon I rushed out to the hen house to check on our quail to see if they had laid another two eggs and was greeted with this discouraging sight:

The open door

The door to the cage was wide open and the quail were nowhere to be found.  I looked and looked with no success in finding them.  The door had a little abnormality that made it a little difficult to close and latch securely and in hindsight, I should have pulled the door off and repaired it properly.  But I did not.  Looking back now is like closing the barn door AFTER the horse quail is already out.

And thus ends our experiment with quail.  I have learned through this experience several things:

1. You must be properly set up to raise different type animals BEFORE you take possession of them,
2. You must gain a working knowledge of how to raise new fowl BEFORE you take possession of them,
3. You must ensure that the enclosures are secure and gates are closed.

Two eggs over easy

One final lesson:  Although we haven't eaten the first (and last) quail eggs produced on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm yet, there's no way that the taste or nutrition derived from them will exceed the time and cost put into producing them.  We also learned that there is truth in some old adages:  

The old adage, "You live and Learn" is true in life and true on the farm.  The old saying, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is true also. Unfortunately, we have NO birds in our hand, and BOTH of our birds are in the bush...

Sunset

Do you ever take the time to watch the sunset?  Sometimes life moves so fast and we're always so busy.  In the late afternoon, it is nice to enjoy the light show that God puts on every afternoon.  The picture below was taken many years ago of me by my bride.  We were living in Houston at the time and decided to make a spontaneous trip to Austin, Texas to watch the sunset over Lake Travis at a restaurant called Oasis Cantina. They advertise the time of the sunset and when it sets, they ring a bell and make a big deal of it.  Here is yours truly enjoying the sunset there many years ago - around 25 to be exact.

Fast forward a couple of decades or so and I'm still enjoying the peacefulness and beauty of a sunset. After a busy day and rushing here and there, it is nice to just sit back and watch the show.

Daisy is oblivious to the sunset

I read a quote the other day that said,

"Don't whine about how good things used to be.  Enjoy the Now.  Because the Now is gonna be how things used to be in the future."

Daisy lives in the NOW

That's some pretty good perspective right there.  This particular afternoon was stellar. God was painting a great picture on the western horizon, there was a slight cool breeze blowing and there were no sounds apart from the sound of grass being pulled from the ground by some hungry milk cows, my belly was full.  Life is good. One must make sure to enjoy it.

We live lives of relative ease and we take things for granted.  In certain parts of the world today, people will put much time and effort into getting water for their family, going down to a stream or walking to a well and hand pumping a bucket full that they'll then carry back to their home.  We simply turn a faucet on and the water is there. We don't even think about it.  Our ease has given us extra time on our hands. Unfortunately, we often use that time to complain rather than being grateful.

I have to watch myself in this regard as I'm prone to focus on things I don't have rather than being thankful for the things I do have.  I don't have to think about it long to realize that I'm blessed beyond measure.

Psalm 113:3

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

3 From the rising of the sun to its setting
The name of the Lord is to be praised.

The Show-off in the Side Yard

If you follow the blog, you know that I've had the cows eating all the clover and winter grass in the yard before I mow it.  No sense on letting that good clover go to waste when Daisy, Rosie, and Maggie can convert it into milk for us.  Once they finish eating a section that I have partitioned off in the yard with electric fence, I mow it.

Our live oak trees are dropping lots of leaves right now and putting on new growth.  I mow swaths where the remaining grass and leaves are thrown to the inside.  This allows the leaves to get chopped up pretty fine. When I'm done, there is one pretty neat row of chopped leaves and grass.  I'll rake it all up and put it in a wagon and bring to the garden where I'll fill the area between the rows with leaves.  Everything goes back into the soil.

If you look between the branches of the leaf-less tree below, you can see Rosie and Daisy grazing in the front yard.  I'll tell you more about the tree in a bit.

Cows grazing in the front yard

The tree with the pink blooms and no leaves (yet) is the redbud tree.  I got this tree free as a gift for joining the Arbor Day Foundation one year.  It was actually not technically a tree when I got it, but a stick.  This is what it looked like when I got it in the mail:

Image Credit

I planted the little stick and it flourished.  I was able to dig it up and replant it in the side yard where it competes for attention this time of year with the Japanese Magnolia.  Both of them put out pinkish colored blooms that really stand out against the landscape.  What's so odd about the redbud is that there are no leaves on the tree, just beautiful blooms.

The Cercis Canadensis (Redbud Tree)

I like the color of the flowers.  When the tree puts on leaves, they're big, green heart-shaped leaves. According to Wikipedia, this tree will grow 20 - 30 feet tall with a 30 foot spread, so this tree will just keep on getting prettier.  As I was standing by it, bees were flying flower to flower doing their thing.  That's another sure sign Spring has sprung.

Beautiful Redbud Blooms

Wikipedia also told me that Native Americans ate the flowers raw or boiled and roasted the seeds for food. I may eat one to see what it tastes like, but I'll likely just stick to looking at the flowers as I keep an eye on the cows eating in the side yard, though.