Liquid Sunshine

Friday it rained and rained and rained.  By the time we got home, gathered eggs, fed the animals and did the rest of the chores, we were soaked.  As I walked to the barn for the evening milking of Rosie, I checked the rain buckets.  They were all full.  Then I stopped by the rain gauge.  Take a look for yourself:


3 and 1/2 inches of the wet stuff

We sloshed through the mud to get to the barn.  With all of the rain, the ground is saturated and unable to soak up any more.  This is when it gets really messy on the farm and you're really thankful to have a dry barn.  The first item of business is to get Blackberry into her stall for the night.  She stays apart from Daisy so we will have milk in the morning.

She is protesting less and less to be separated from Daisy in the evenings as grass is becoming more and more a part of her diet.  She is so very healthy right now and seems to grow every day.  Our plan is to completely wean her from Daisy in another month - when she's about five months old.  We'll time that to coincide with when we dry Rosie up in order to prepare her for the birth of her calf (hopefully a little heifer) which she's expecting around December 16th. We'll stop milking her completely and begin milking Daisy twice a day instead of the current one time a day.  At that point Blackberry will be on her own and grass/hay will be her diet - no more good Jersey milk.  Our plans for her are to eventually move her back to the herd of beef cattle where she'll hopefully raise many little ones of her own.



The girls are happy to be in a dry barn for a while

Most of the chickens roost out in the chicken tractors that I move daily out in the pasture.  We do have a small flock that demands nicer accommodations and they roost in the barn.  We have 3 roosters on the flock - one Barred Rock, one Rhode Island Red, and one Aracauna.  They have sorted it out amongst themselves and there is one "king".  The others submit to his leadership and strut cautiously around him acting very humble.  But they are just biding their time, waiting for a moment of weakness.  At that time they'll pounce.  Old Red, our one-time king of the pasture, was killed by a younger rooster who sought dominance over the barnyard - and Old Red's HENS.  Brutal and sad, but such is life on the farm.  You may be king and on top of the world, but you better enjoy it while it lasts because your days are numbered.

Here's the king of the barn.  He's the old Barred Rock who roosts in the barn with his "harem".  I think he's got a lot of character.


The neighborhood alarm clock!

He roosts in the barn by the window and watches us as we walk up.  In the morning when we turn on the lights, he begins crowing so loudly we really need ear plugs.  I can't begin to tell you how loud it is.  Sometimes I want to throw something at him.  What I want to show you is this guy's "guns".


Don't mess with me, buddy, I'm packing heat.

I can't really give you perspective in this picture of how big the spurs of this rooster are, but I am not exaggerating when I tell you they are two inches long and capable of inflicting a world of pain on another rooster or a person.  We had a neighbor's grand-daughter who loved to come play with the animals.  One day she came over and was attacked by a mean rooster and he spurred her in her thigh, causing a puncture wound.  She had to be taken to the emergency room.  That rooster ended up in a delicious gumbo shortly after that.

Spurs are used for fighting with other roosters to achieve dominance (the pecking order) and become the leader of the hens and also for helping him hold the hens when mating. There is no delicate way of saying that chicken courtship is not a pleasurable affair.  It is vicious, violent and fast.  No romance here.  

 

Since it was too wet to do much outside, I went inside and had a little job to finish up.  The other day we showed how we were making Basil infused olive oil.  We had put it in the pantry for a week to let the flavors leak out of the basil and into the oil.  The week is up.  Today is the day for filtering out the basil leaves.  So Russ and I used a sieve and filtered out the leaves, leaving only oil in a jar.  We then used a funnel in order to pour the basil-infused oil into a new oil bottle.

Here is the finished product:

Now we've got to taste it.  We pour a liberal amount on a plate, grind some peppercorns over it along with some sea salt.  Then we dip some fresh sourdough bread in this heavenly concoction.

What's the verdict?



Ca C'est Bon!  It's good!

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle,
And vegetation for the labor of man,
So that he may bring forth food from the earth,
And wine which makes a man's heart glad,
So that he may make his face glisten with oil,
And food which sustains man's heart.

   - Psalm 104:14-15

We have a winner!