Two Less "Tweets"

"I've got my eye on you two!"

Our Maker's Acres Family Farm is not on Twitter, but with baby chicks running around the barn, we have our fair share of "tweets".  Sadly, there are two less tweets from the original four.  Yesterday's Post (Click here to read) left you with a teaser at the end about the demise of two of momma hen's offspring.

In the photo above, momma hen appears to be alone, but as you can tell she's looking down.  She is protecting her little family by keeping a watchful eye on them. She's giving them freedom, but at the same time she is ready to step in, if necessary, to help them out.  So what is she looking at?  Well, this for starters:

I can't quite get that high up on the gate, Momma

Where's the other one? Ah, there she is:

We'll keep trying, though.  One of these days, we'll get there.

But where are the other two?  This was a great mystery until last week.  Benjamin was at a school function so I was gathering eggs for him.  I picked up eggs out in the pasture in the chicken tractor, then I gathered some from the henhouse, some from the goat barn, behind the freezer we use to store chicken feed in and then some in the nesting boxes in the goat milking stall.  The last place was a couple of nests that hens made atop some hay stacked in the goat milking stall.

When I reached in to pick up the eggs, I'm not kidding you, a five foot long snake was in the nest, coiled around about a half dozen eggs with one in his mouth.  I ran for a shovel, swinging wildly, but the snake escaped underneath the pallet.  It was a snake that is harmless to humans - a rat snake or a chicken snake, as we call them. Although they are harmless, they get huge and thus are scary when you come across them.

They are named after what they eat.  I have a buddy that will NOT kill them.  He calls them 'heat-seeking missiles' that rid his barn of rats.  He's right, you know. But... they'll also rid your barn of baby chicks and I'm 100% certain that that snake had the #2 chicken combo meal off the value menu one day last week.   That's where the other two chicks went.  So what to do?

Well, I'm not like my buddy.  I'm going to kill the snake.  Here's how.  I purchased four ceramic eggs from the feed store.

I'll place them in the nest atop the hay and the snake will eat the ceramic eggs thinking they are real eggs.  Except these eggs will give him a case of constipation that no amount of Metamucil will heal. The snake will be stopped up and he'll slither off and die.  I'll discover the missing ceramic egg one day in a snake skeleton under the barn floor or a pallet and I'll recover it and use it again.

So I placed one ceramic egg in with the other three real eggs in one of the nests.  The ceramic egg is the egg in the 11 o'clock position in the photo below.  Can you see the problem? They look TOO much like real eggs.

I did have to make one change since these look and feel SO much like a real egg - I added a racing stripe to differentiate them.  Otherwise, when gathering eggs each day, Benjamin would mistake the ceramic eggs for a real one and Tricia would discover it when she tries to break it on the cast iron skillet when making an omelet for breakfast.  We can't have that!

Putting a racing stripe on the ceramic eggs ~ They're racing to get into a chicken snake in the henhouse!

The chicks, hopefully, after watching their sisters become snake food are being vigilant and watchful for the snake, seeking protection beneath their momma's protective wings.  We hope the hen is on her guard as well, protecting her babies under her wings.  You know, this story has relevance to humans in addition to our fine feathered friends in the barnyard.  The Good Lord wants to protect us under his wings.  Sometimes, however, we want to do things our own way.  We're hard-headed ( tête dur) and venture away from Him.

There is a Serpent out there that means to do us harm.  He wishes to devour us and that's exactly what he'll do, too.  If we're wise, we'll stay under the protective cover that our Great God provides.

He will cover you with His pinions, And under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.  Psalm 91:4

The Chicks are Growing Up!

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Matthew 23:37

A Chicken Combo

In THIS POST FROM EARLIER IN THE MONTH we talked about the excitement of some baby chicks - four to be exact, that a smart momma hen hatched out in the loft of our barn.  I figured that we'd give you a little update on them.  The hen actually hatched out four little chicks.  They all seem to be barred rock variety - the same breed as the mother.  Since we have roosters from various breeds and since hens will sit on other hens' eggs, we never know what variety we'll end up with.  

We moved them down from the hay loft and into the goat milking stall.  Although they are little fluff balls, a 10 foot drop down to the barnyard floor might not be good for them.  Momma hen pretty much stays in the center nesting box with a chick tucked under each wing.  When we come into the barn, the babies pop out from beneath the mother as you see in the photo above.  The mother hen is really protective of her babies.  She clucks loudly and ruffles her feathers when we get near.  We throw her and the babies some crushed up rice to eat each day.  It is neat to watch the momma hen scratch and peck at the rice on the ground and then see the chicks imitate her. 

They have lost most of their 'fuzz' and have little feathers on their wings.  They are active little creatures for sure.  The momma has not brought them out of the barn and instead keeps a close eye on them within the confines of the barn.  This is probably a smart move since we've had so much rain. I'm sure she'll venture out with them pretty soon.  

"I got your back, Momma!"

Although this wasn't planned, we needed a few replacement hens as I've buried a few hens in the garden this year.  It is normal to lose a few to old age, injury or predators.  Our chickens live out their lives in happiness, enjoying their golden years on green pastures and die doing what they were born to do - eat bugs, worms, and scratch through cow patties looking for a tasty morsel to devour.  Some get injured when they come underfoot of our 900 pound cows.  There's just too much of a weight differential there and if the chicken isn't attentive, she becomes a "chicken patty" pretty darn quick. We hope momma hen is teaching her chicks to stay well away from the relatively monstrous hooves of Daisy, Rosie, Clarabelle, and Luna. Just one misstep and all that would be left of the chicks is a grease spot.

Then there's predators.  Perhaps some of you picked up on the fact that momma hen hatched out four chicks and the photos only show two.  One morning we came out to the barn and two of the little boogers were missing.  We put out a barnyard amber alert, but no missing chicks were found. Sad! So what happened to them?  I know how they met their tragic end.  They punched their ticket in a particularly brutal and macabre fashion and I'll tell you about it tomorrow if the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise. 

Keeping the Milk Clean

In This Post from 2014 we gave a little tutorial on how we milk our cows. Everyone that milks cows does it a little differently.  I was talking to a friend the other day who is in his mid-60's.  He grew up out in the country and he and his brothers and sisters had to wake up in the morning and milk their milk cow everyday before school.

When he saw our milking process, he exclaimed, "Wow, ya'll are clean!"  What he was talking about was our "filtering process," which is simply a clean cotton rag that we tie over the milking bucket.  It is nothing fancy at all. He told me that they didn't do that.  They just milked directly into a bucket.  If it was raining and the cows were dripping water, well, the rainwater went into the milk.  If the cow was shedding hair, the hair went into the milk bucket, too.  (Uggghh!)  Same with hay, dust, etc.  He told me that they would remove anything like bugs or straw that they could see floating before they drank it.

The rag filter is a simple thing that catches any of that prior to it getting into the delicious milk.

Milk doesn't get any fresher than this!

Lately with all of the rain and resulting mud, the filter has really been having its work cut out for it. For one thing Daisy and Rosie will come into the barn with 'muddy shoes.'  Their hooves will be covered with mud and with grass stuck between them.  During the milking process, they'll kick up their front hooves, slinging mud backward onto me and the milking bucket.  Obviously, I am not going to milk through a mud covered rag as that would put mud (and bacteria) into the milk.

The rag is bigger in diameter than the milking pail and so I simply move the mud-stained rag to the side, revealing a clean portion to milk through.  I can only think of one time since 2007 that I had to walk back to the house to get a fresh rag.  It is not just from the front end of the cow that you have to watch out for, though.  The cows love to swish their tails to swat away mosquitoes.  It just so happens when you are milking them that your head is right in the way.  They swish their tail to get a mosquito or fly and the wet tail whips across your face, getting dew (I hope it is just dew!) all over you.  We've learned to tie some hay twine around their back end that holds their tail in place.  You never want to tie their tail to anything, because if you forgot to untie it, they could pull their tail off! Ouch!!

After all of this rain, we've had a mean hatch of mosquitoes.  They are all over the place biting us and the animals alike.  It is just miserable.  It creates an opportunity for patience building as we are milking.  The mosquitoes will bite the cow (or us) and become filled with blood.  Then they are too full to fly and inevitably fly between the bucket and the stream of milk as we're milking.  The blood filled mosquito will crash land into the cloth filter covering the bucket and you have to be really careful to pick the mosquito off of the filter without bursting her and getting blood on the rag.  (I say her because only female mosquitoes bite.)  This makes milking a cow a longer job than it should in order to keep mud and blood and other impurities out of the milk.

But it is a labor of love and the fruit of our labor is worth it as we get delicious, fresh, clean milk each and every day.  Tricia even made homemade Dewberry and Blueberry ice cream this weekend with the heavy cream that we skimmed off the top.  That was a special treat!

Tilling the Garden on a Rainy Day

Today it rained yet again.  August has been one for the record books in terms of rainfall.  I am a little discouraged because I can't possibly pull up rows and plant the fall garden because the garden is muddier than its ever been.  The weeds have taken advantage of the situation and have grown tall and lush.  It may be my imagination, but as we walk to the barn to milk the cows, I think I can hear the weeds mocking me, reveling in their apparent victory over me while claiming the area reserved for edible crops.  It is a sad state of affairs.

When weeds take over

I am not one to give up easily.  Russ was in from college and I enlisted his help on an experiment.  I have no idea if this is going to work or not, but I'm going to give it a try and report back to you after a couple of weeks.  Russ and I erected two cattle panels across the weed-infested part of the garden and secured them with t-posts.

Putting up a cross fence

When I first thought of this idea, I first thought of putting the goats in there, but putting goats in the overgrown part of the garden would require moving them in and out daily since we're milking Annie (momma goat) and also sharing the milk with Darla and Jane (two of her kids).  I don't have a gate and it would be too much work to put a garden gate to the pasture right now.  Maybe later.

My idea involves chickens.  I decided to put some chickens in the garden and allow them to till it up for a couple of weeks until I could get in there and plant.  I threw some rice near the garden as you see below and as they ate, I caught 15 hens and threw them into the overgrown portion of garden. This will be their new home for a couple of weeks while they work the garden for me.  I made a couple of make-shift nesting boxes for their egg-laying out of old buckets.  Russ and I had to place some hog panels against the cattle panels since the openings were smaller and chickens were escaping through the holes into the productive part of the garden.  I don't want them scratching up our sweet potatoes and peanuts!

Nesting boxes in the garden area

I have a big tarp laid out on the ground in this weedy section, too, hoping to kill all weeds underneath it due to lack of sunshine.  You can see the imprint underneath the tarp of the old rows from the spring garden.  The furrows catch and hold rainwater and that will be the hens' water trough for a while until there's no standing water.

Water for the chickens

The chickens were very confused and nervous at first within the confines of their new garden home. They bunched together nervously near the fence, looking at their buddies in the pasture, clucking wildly.  When chickens get nervous, they stop laying eggs.  The first day we put the hens in the garden, we collected exactly ZERO eggs.  I knew this would happen.

But then, they seemed to settle down and began to do what chickens do - SCRATCH.  They first began to scratch in a big pile of composted cow manure that I throw over the fence, alternated with cardboard.  I expect this area to be really cleaned out in no time.

Additionally, I throw rice over the fence for them to eat and they scratch through the weeds, seeking for and finding the rice while scratching roots and eating bugs and grass.  Of course while they are tilling the garden, they are also pooping and this is fertilizing the garden area.  I may throw an additional 5 "tillers" into the garden, because I'm impatient.  I'll post pictures of the chicken-tilled area of the garden in a couple of weeks and we will compare the "before" and "after" shots to see if this experiment was a rousing success or a failure.

Delays in the Fall Garden

I must sorrowfully say that I am way, way behind in putting the Fall 2016 garden in.  If it was due to neglect or slothfulness, I would admit it to you.  I have tried.  I really have.  Let me show you the sad sight of the fall garden:

That is a really nice crop of weeds growing.  Embarrassing, really.  So what's going on? Well, I'll tell you like this.  I track the rainfall daily from totals in the rain gauge. From January 1 through July 31 I recorded 29.8 inches of rain.  That was for the entire year so up to that point at that amount was putting us right on target of our annual average rainfall of 60 inches for the year.

Then...  Then August happened.  From August 1 - August 25th we have received 24.1 inches of rain. Just this month!  So far!  We have almost received the amount of rainfall in one month that it took us 7 months to accumulate.  It is a muddy mess.  The ground is rotten and the mud just stinks.  We are tired of it and the animals are tired of it.

The cows' milk production has fallen way off and Tricia and I have been theorizing about why.  Tricia even asked me if the bull got loose and bred the cows.  (Once they are bred, their milk production diminishes.)  But no, the bull is within the confines of his pasture locked down.

A gentleman who formerly milked cows dropped by the house today and Tricia told him about the reduction in milk.  He said that in his experience this happened because there is so much water in the grass.  He said it is like eating watered down soup - the nutrition value is diluted.  Perhaps that is it.  I don't know.

This looks like a pond in the pasture, but we don't have a pond!

Mosquitoes are all over the place and you cannot stay outside for long without slapping, itching, and being miserable.  The pumpkins I planted on July 1 are yellow and sickly in the water-logged ground. Okay enough complaining about those things.  I'll discuss my main complaint - the delay in the Fall Garden.

I planted tomato seeds, butternut squash seeds, spaghetti squash seeds, zucchini squash seeds and several varieties of yellow squash seeds.

I also planted two different varieties of cucumbers...

And then there are trays of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and brussel sprouts.

All of this should have been in the garden by now, but the garden is a muddy, weed infested swamp, and...

The Garden

instead of having the plants in well worked beds in the garden, the plants are still in seed pots on the patio.  They are getting long and leggy and I may have to re-pot them again in bigger pots soon. Even if it was to stop raining today, it would be two weeks before it could dry up and I could even think about getting things worked up and planted.

I'm a stubborn, persistent guy, though.  (Ask my wife!)  I'm not giving up or getting discouraged.  I'll wait it out and get the fall garden in yet!  Better late than never...

A New Day Dawns…

So Monday of this week I submitted my two week notice at work.  I would like to be able to tell you that at 49 years and 10 months old, I am able to retire and live off the land on our little homestead farm.  Alas, that is not the case.  I wish I could announce that, but I cannot.  I’m going to pursue a job doing something that I don’t have any experience doing.  Sounds like an adventure, doesn’t it?  So at the beginning of September, a new day will dawn for me.

But that’s not really what I want to talk about today.  I’m a creature of habit.  I get up at a certain time, go through the same morning rituals and glance at the clock to gauge my progress.  I know I need to be out of bed at 5:30 am and back inside the door from morning milking and feeding by 6:10 am at the latest in order to shower, shave, dress, grab my lunch and a coffee and be out the door by 6:30 am.  Most days that puts me turning off the road and pulling up on the on ramp of Interstate 10 heading west at 6:36 am and arriving in my parking lot at the office at 7:21 am.

I changed my morning routine the other day and instead of hitting the blacktop road, I made a circuitous route down some gravel roads behind the house to check out results of the recent flooding.  There was a big “Road Closed” sign up across the road as I tried to drive westward, so as I looped back, I was driving due east down the road that runs right by our little church.  The sun was just rising in the eastern sky and if I had my camera versus my old phone camera, this would’ve been a nice picture.

The day was brand new.  There was no traffic on the country road and it was quiet outside if you ignored the roosters announcing the arrival of dawn.  There was a fog rising off of the dew-drenched landscape.  The air was clean and a little cool in the shadows of the new day, as if it was holding on stubbornly before succumbing to the humid, sweltering August day that lay ahead.  A new day awaits.

Regardless of the mistakes made yesterday, we have an opportunity to wake up and try to make things better.  The goals set that we didn’t reach yesterday can be sought after again.  There is hope that the trials, pain, stress, and uncertainty we faced yesterday will be gone or reduced in this brand new day.  It is as if the slate has been wiped clean and you have a new start.  A do-over.  We have 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds to get it right this time.  Unlike in the Olympics, there are no starting blocks and no blast from the starting gun to alert you to get things underway.  There are really no markers to let us know that we are on the right course.

It is up to us individually.  Except it is not.  A new beginning awaits, but we are not alone.  We put our faith in Him to lead us and we pray that we have the good sense to follow Him.  A new day dawns…  And He is Faithful!

Lamentations 3:22-24

²² The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I have hope in Him.”

Some Like it Hot

I like to eat spicy stuff and I love peppers.  Although I like Tabasco Sauce, it’s a little too “vinegary” tasting to me.  For some reason Tabasco (and the strong vinegar taste) works great with rice and beans, but for other dishes, it doesn’t.  A couple of years ago, I thought, “Why not give it a go in trying to make our own hot sauce with Tabasco Peppers?”

At the end of the growing season, the local feed store that we frequent had some leftover Tabasco Pepper Plants that didn’t sell.  They ended up giving a four pack of seedlings to my wife and she brought them home.  I dutifully planted them in the garden near the already growing Criolla Sella Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, and various bell peppers we had growing.  In 2014 we made our inaugural batch of Homemade Tabasco Pepper sauce and chronicled it here: HERE.  It was a big hit at our house.  For some reason more of the pepper flavor comes through and less of the vinegar flavor.

Each year since new tabasco pepper plants have sprouted and we’ve experienced a huge pepper harvest.  It was no different this year.  I figured we’d make some more and post once again on it.  I issue apologies in advance for the lousy photo quality.  New batteries are coming soon for my camera and the photo quality will improve marginally.

I walked out to the garden to pick the reddest of the tabasco peppers on the plants.  There was a big Dragonfly hanging out on the wire cage that keeps the pepper plant upright.  You can see the red peppers in the background of the dragonfly photo.

There were lots of peppers, but I picked only those that were the color red that almost makes your eyes hurt looking at them.  I perhaps picked a little more than a quart of them, pulling the stems and caps off of the peppers and putting them in a colander to wash off any dirt or bugs.

I used a big knife to cut the peppers into small pieces.  I didn’t wear gloves, but made a mental note to NOT put my fingers anywhere near my eyes!  This step could probably be done better and easier with a food processor, but sometimes I find it is easier to clean up a knife and cutting board rather than cleaning up the food processor and blade.

I scraped all the pepper pieces into a pot and added a cup and a half of white vinegar and s healthy smattering of kosher salt and put it on the stovetop until it boiled.  Then I turned it down to low and allowed it to simmer for 15 minutes.  Then I pulled it off the heat and allowed it to come to room temperature.

Then I got Tricia’s handy-dandy immersion blender out.  What a nifty tool this thing is!  I blended the vinegar-pepper mixture until it was an aromatic, fire-engine red slurry of spice.  It was a little thick, but pourable.

I poured the slurry through a funnel and into a vinegar bottle and placed it in the fridge.  Unlike Tabasco Sauce that is made in Avery Island, Louisiana, I don’t have oaken barrels to age the sauce in for years.  I also don’t have the patience to wait for that long.  I’ll “age” it in the fridge for a month and labeled it with some freezer tape to alert me when it is ‘done’. 

After a month has passed, I’ll taste it and assess the consistency.  If it is a little thick, I’ll add a smidgeon of water.  It is a tricky thing.  You want it thin enough to pour out drops, but thick enough so that it doesn’t run freely. Our 2014 batch was perfect – both in flavor and in consistency.

The Homemade Tabasco Pepper sauce next to the raw milk is an interesting contrast.  Although both are fresh and come from our little homestead farm, one is hot.  One is cold.  One is red.  One is white.  One starts a fire in your mouth and one puts it out!

Kids Grow Up So Quickly!

Kids grow up so quickly!  It seems like you just blink your eyes and they go from being babies to grown ups.  At some point you wish you could make time stand still so you can enjoy and cherish them just as they are.  But you can't.  You have to let them grow up, to go out and achieve all that is before them.

As I've discussed, our eldest daughter, Laura Lee began her first teaching job at a charter school in Baton Rouge.  They didn't have school all last week due to flooding.  Today was their first day back. Russ, our middle child and oldest son, began his senior year at LSU today.  He's a Horticulture major and is looking forward to football season.  Benjamin, our youngest, and the only child still at home is a sophomore at a small rural school near us - attending a public school since his freshman year.  He enjoys his social life.

Yes, the kids aren't babies anymore.  They are all grown up!

They aren't the only kids that are growing up.  Speaking of the other kids, Darla is growing up quickly, too!

Darlin' Darla (as Tricia calls her)

And so is Jane!

Jane

In his song, "Jack and Diane," John Cougar Mellancamp sang,:

"Hold onto 16 as long as you can. Changes come around real soon make us women and men."

Yeah, changes come around real soon, alright.

Can a Chicken Get Hypothermia?

Saturday morning before milking, I went about the normal chores, feeding all the other animals, switching the cows from one paddock to a fresh one.  Then I went about checking water troughs, ensuring that they were all filled with water.  We have one main 150 gallon water trough and have two 'makeshift' 30 gallon water troughs made with old molasses/mineral tubs.

As I walk by one, I noticed that it was about 3/4 full, but then stopped suddenly. There was a chicken floating in it!  At first I thought she was dead, but once I removed her from the water, I could tell that she was still barely alive, although her eyes weren't opened.  She was shaking and barely able to stand.  I sat her in the sunshine while we milked the cows, hoping to warm her up.  Chickens aren't too smart.  They fly up ungracefully to the edge of the water trough to get a drink, lean over to drink and some inevitably fall in and die if you don't get to them quickly enough.

I'm no veterinarian, but I would assume that the barred rock hen was suffering from hypothermia. Hypothermia is the condition of having an abnormally low body temperature, typically one that is dangerously low.  This can happen even in warm weather.  Trouble is, about twenty minutes later, once we finished milking, she was not any better.  I knew we must get her some medical attention to save her life.  Fortunately, the doctor was in.  I put the pitiful creature into an empty molasses tub and brought her into the garage.

"Give me your huddled masses..."

I positioned a heat lamp approximately 18 inches above the hen.  I didn't want it to be too close to her as it would burn her and warm her up too fast.  I didn't want it to be too far away though or it wouldn't warm her up.  Up to this point, I wasn't sure if Sally HennyPenny was going to make it.  I had another project going in the garage as we were painting the walls, so I kept a close eye on her.  In about 10 minutes, I checked in and the old gal was looking a little more perky than before.  Still a little wet, but I knew she'd make it.

Heatin' up some chicken

In ten more minutes, she wasn't hunched over shivering anymore and her eyes were wide open.

In about ten more minutes, I heard a big commotion and the hen flew up out of the tub with the heat lamp and was scurrying around the garage.  I caught the old girl and walked her back outside toward the pasture fence.  I set her down on the bridge to make sure she was good to go and yes, she was.

Her buddies were in the muddy waiting room across the fence waiting for her and they were happy she had recovered from her close call.

Birds of a feather flock together

Hopefully, old gal will have learned a lesson and won't fall in the water trough again. We've just had 21 inches of rain in a week's time.  There's plenty of water still on the ground.  She doesn't need to even go to the water trough to drink.  I can't figure out her thinking there, but... she's a chicken. Fortunately the lifeguard got to her in time and performed emergency medical services promptly so that she'll live to see another day and lay more eggs.

A Handwritten Letter

My grandmother that we called "Bumby" passed away ten years ago.  It is hard to believe she's been gone for that long.  I think about her often.  Bumby was a prolific letter-writer.  She liked songbirds and so we often received nice handwritten letters on bird stationery.  Writing a handwritten letter is a rarity and almost a lost art today.  In an age of convenience, 'snail mail' is used primarily for junk mail or bills. Most find it is just too easy to send someone an email or a text or message them on facebook in order to communicate.  Doing so is not only more convenient, but you save the cost of a stamp.

What is it about a personal note received in the mail that just makes your day?  In my opinion, getting a handwritten letter is far superior to the impersonal email or text.  I've noticed that the senders of junk mail often try to disguise their solicitations as a handwritten note.  They know people like to open such mail.  Junk mail?  Not so much!  American soldiers stationed overseas during wars looked forward to mail call.  They relished letters from home, reading them again and again.  Bumby had a chest filled with correspondence from my grandfather, "Poppy," that she received from Europe during WWII.

Image Credit

I find myself saving cards and personal letters in the drawer of the nightstand by my bed.  Sometimes I'll go back and read them.  I have birthday and anniversary cards, notes from our kids from when they were very small, letters of encouragement from my mom and grandmothers, and lots of handwritten coupons from the kids (that I haven't redeemed yet!)...  Occasionally I'll go back and re-read an email, but something is different and special about holding a letter in your hand, touching it, looking at the handwriting of a loved one, knowing that they took the time and effort to communicate with you.  It's just nice and truthfully, I need to commit to doing this more and resurrect this lost art.

Although I'm not inclined to share personal letters I've received, I happened to come across a good example of a meaningful (and classy) handwritten letter written by President George Herbert Walker Bush to incoming President Bill Clinton back in 1993 and left in the Oval Office for the new president to find:  (I think you can click on it to enlarge it)

That to me is a great letter.  It is a simple, one-page, clearly written note that exudes humility, grace and genuine respect.  In this day and age where personal attacks and coarse language litters the political landscape, it is refreshing to read something like this.

But you know, you don't have to go back in time in a time machine to read or write good handwritten letters.  You don't need to be a former president or celebrity to write one either.  You and I can make someone's day by dropping a handwritten note in the mail - just to let someone know that you love them or to encourage them. It can be on Presidential stationery, Bumby's songbird stationery, or just a plain old piece of loose leaf paper.  Trust me, it'll make someone's day!

Keeping Records

For some reason my old Canon Powershot SD600 digital camera is cassé (or broken, in French).  Either that or I received a defective set of batteries and they won’t take a charge.  I’ve ordered another battery just to check, but it might be time to retire the old camera.  In the meantime, the photo quality in the posts will likely be poor and I apologize for that.  I don’t have a smart phone although having a smart phone would make the camera obsolete. 

So, to the topic of today’s post, Record Keeping.  I’m a record keeper by nature.  I just like to track things.  Although I’m not an analytical person, I track all sorts of things to see trends, to chart progress, and to observe history.  I can remember back in college in the mid to late 80’s I took graph paper and taped it to the wall of the duplex I lived in while in college and charted the daily closing price of a certain stock that I had purchased with money earned showing livestock while in junior high and high school.  It was encouraging to see a nice upward trend.  Unfortunately my forays into investing have often resulted in downward trends.  But I don’t just track stock prices, I always like to track the scores of the LSU Tiger Football team on a schedule or calendar, putting a “W” or an “L” on the side of the score.

Later, when rice farming, during harvest, I was the ‘truck man.’  That meant that I drove the trucks full of rice to the storage bins.  The combine would empty the rice into the cart and the cart emptied the rice into the truck.  I knew exactly how much rice was in each truck and printed out logs to capture this information.  This was performed for each field and when you totaled up the number of barrels of rice and divided it by the acreage, we could see the yield per acre.  By knowing the average cost of production per acre and factoring in shrinkage during drying, we could ballpark the profitability of each rice field.  This gave great information that proved helpful in decision-making.

Today, on our small homestead farm, we have numerous spreadsheets that we’ve printed and keep daily tallies of rainfall, milk production, and egg production.  I also track my inventory of seeds and chart the planting date of our vegetable crops and estimated days until harvest.  This is particularly helpful in determining when to harvest those crops you can’t see from observing – crops like potatoes, sweet potatoes and peanuts.  Although we don’t track or weigh most of our vegetable crops, we do weigh our Irish Potato and Sweet Potato production.

We also observe the days that our cows go into heat and have a calendar where we note each of their cycles.  By adding roughly 21 days (18-24 days) to the date that they go in heat, we’re able to gauge when to expose them to a bull for breeding.  This has proved to be valuable information in assisting us to properly plan in timing the transport of our cows to a bull for breeding.  Now that we have a bull, it will greatly assist us in knowing the exact date to put the girl(s) into the bull pasture.

Over the course of several years, trends become visible.  We can see the traditionally wet months and dry months.  

We can see when egg production generally spikes, plateaus, and plummets.  

We can plan the timing of our annual calf crop off of the Jersey cows.  We weigh our Cornish Cross meat birds and chart the weekly weight gain of our birds to ensure that we are butchering them at the optimal time.  Obviously, there are outliers and events that disrupt trends, but all in all, we have found that record keeping is a discipline that pays dividends. 

An Early Morning Shower

On most mornings the alarm goes off a little past 5 am and Tricia and I make use of the ‘snooze’ feature on the alarm clocks.  In the past we used electric-powered alarm clocks, but in our rural area, the electricity goes on and off quite often and we discovered that it is best to use the old battery operated clocks that we each keep on the nightstand by the bed.

Now that we’re milking only two cows instead of three, we were able to set the alarm to give us an additional 15 minutes of sleep.  We have things timed perfectly where we know how long it will take us to get everything done in time to get me out of the door to work by 6:30 am.  That includes mixing up feed for cows, goats, and chickens, feeding the chickens, watering all the animals, calling in the cows, washing their udders, applying Vaseline, feeding and milking the cows and goat, switching the cows to a fresh paddock all in time to get me in to shower and dress and off to work.

Our regimen normally works to perfection, much like a well-oiled machine or a finely crafted Swiss watch.  And then things happen like this morning that throw a monkey wrench into the cogs of the intricate machine.  After the 15 inch deluge we posted about yesterday, overnight we received an additional half inch of the wet stuff as if we didn’t have enough mud already. 

Normally when we turn the lights on in the barn at 5:35, Daisy, ‘the matriarch of the herd,’ will arrive at the barn door first as she’s quite gluttonous and enjoys her breakfast immensely.  We opened the door and brought her in to her milking stall.  Rosie followed shortly thereafter.  All we could say was, “Oh, Rosie!”  While Daisy was as clean and shiny as a copper penny, Rosie had proceeded to lay down in a mud hole overnight and was muddier than a pig. 

When you are at the livestock arena, preparing for a livestock show, there are nice concrete-lined wash stalls to get your animal cleaned up and ready for the show.

The wash racks at the Jeff Davis Parish Livestock Arena - Much nicer than the one we have at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

We don’t have such nice facilities at our barn.  We do, however, have a water hose, so Tricia led Muddy Rosie out of the barn against her will as she was ready for breakfast.  I had to get behind her and push her big muddy, rear end out of the barn.  I fumbled for the spigot in the dark and we washed her up as quickly as we could.  Tick tock, tick tock.  Tricia had to turn her so that I could spray her down on both sides, underneath and behind.  We got her back inside, dried her off and got everything done.

Now we could keep the cows inside the barn on rainy nights, but experience has taught us that cows are horrible housekeepers.  It is not a pretty sight coming into a small barn inhabited overnight by cows.  They knock things over and pee and poop all over the place and then lay in it.  We learned early on that cows need to be outside.

I completed the rest of the morning chores and got inside and took my early morning shower and got out the door a little later than usual – maybe 10-12 minutes later than normal.  In hindsight, its mornings like these when I realize that I shouldn’t have hit the snooze button.  Then again, Rosie would certainly help things out by learning to keep herself clean like Daisy.  

And the Rains Kept A Fallin'

On Friday August 12th, the Baton Rouge area got a huge rain event with major flooding and evacuations.  Many people have floodwaters in their homes and are living in shelters.  Laura Lee and Russ both live in Baton Rouge and both are fine with no flooding.

Saturday August 13th was our turn.  We woke up to thunder and lightning and a downpour of torrential rain that just wouldn't let up.  Here is a picture of the backyard where you can see the rain coursing off the roof.  All of my rain collection barrels had long since filled and overflowed. Rainwater had flooded the blueberry bushes and tangerine trees and was inching closer to the house. Fortunately our home is located on a high place and has never been in danger of flooding.

Here is a photo looking out of the front door.  The rain kept falling and falling and falling...

And here is a view from the side yard, looking toward the neighbor's home.  It looks like a lake.

As far as determining how much rain we got, I'm afraid our rain gauge wasn't of much help.  It only holds 5 inches and I dumped it out twice, but both times, it was full with water splashing out of the top.  So it was at least ten inches.  There was a 5 gallon bucket nearby that was full.  That was 15 inches.  So by looking at that, it was at least 15 inches of rainfall on Saturday, perhaps a bit more, but we'll go with that.  A friend of mine who lives about 15 minutes to the east of us got 21 inches of rain, with water coming dangerously close to his home.

An interesting thing - up to August 12th we had a 29.8 inches of rainfall year to date.  On August 13th we had a whopping 15 inches of rain - almost half of the rainfall amount for the whole year in one day!  That is pretty crazy.

While we were very fortunate in not having water damage, this precipitation put a damper on the gardening activities for a while.  I was planning on putting my squash and cucumber starts out in the garden and planting a row of green beans. That will have to wait for a while until things dry up.

From Walnut Grove to The Big Box

The other day on my lunch break I sat in my comfortable, air conditioned office behind the computer and I ordered something that I needed from Amazon Prime.  It was cheaper than anything that I could find at a local brick and mortar store.  It was delivered to my doorstep in two days.  Yesterday after I quickly ate lunch, I drove to Wal Mart to purchase a spark plug for our lawn mower for $1.87.  I sat in the parking lot prior to going in the store, waiting for a good stopping point from the latest James Lee Burke book I’m listening to by audiobook.

While listening I looked at throngs of people hurriedly entering and exiting the store, I watched an aggressive and ugly grackle pull French fries from a bag of trash that someone left in the filthy parking lot rather than putting it in a trash can.  I opened my car door and the mean grackle looked menacingly at me and angled his tail, giving a loud, unpleasant noise as if to threaten me.  I walked across the baking asphalt into a huge store, dodging shoppers, found the spark plug and was checked out by an impersonal cashier.

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Those two shopping experiences couldn’t have been more different; however, when I think about them, they both have one thing in common – they are BAD for business – local “Mom & Pop” shops, that is.  Many Mom & Pop shops have closed and stand vacant in communities across our nation, with weeds growing up in their parking lots, a memorial to an earlier time.  The grackle in the parking lot, to me, was a harbinger of the unpleasantness of my shopping experience and the unintended consequences of my attempt to save money, effort, and time.

I should know better.  As a former manager of a Family-owned and operated grocery store that my grandfather established back in 1947, I know how difficult it is trying to compete with the multi-national super retailers who can sell their product at a retail price (and make a profit doing it) that is well below your cost.  It was hard.  We offered credit to our customers, knew their names, and carried out their groceries to their cars.

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In the quest for convenience and pinching pennies, we've hurt many small, family-owned businesses to the detriment of our communities.  Supporting local "Mom & Pop's" are beneficial to our communities and we should strive to patronize them when they provide excellent service.  In THIS LINK it lists out 10 benefits of foregoing Amazon and the Big Boxes in order to patronize local friends and neighbors.  The link above lists the following: 

Here’s what happens when you “shop local.”

1. More of your money will be kept in your local economy

For every $100 you spend at locally owned businesses, $68 will stay in the community. What happens when you spend that same $100 at a national chain? Only $43 stays in the community.*

2. You embrace what makes your community unique

You wouldn’t want your house to look like everyone else’s in the U.S. So why would you want your community to look that way?

3. You create local jobs

Local businesses are better at creating higher-paying jobs for your neighbors. When you shop locally, you help create jobs for teachers, firemen, police officers, and many other essential professions.

4. You help the environment

Buying from a locally owned business conserves energy and resources in the form of less fuel for transportation and less packaging.

5. You nurture community

Local business owners know you, and you know them. Studies have shown that local businesses donate to community causes at more than twice the rate of chains.

6. You conserve your tax dollars

Shopping in a local business district means less infrastructure, less maintenance, and more money available to beautify your community. Also, spending locally instead of online ensures that your sales taxes are reinvested where they belong— in your community!

7. You create more choice

Locally owned businesses pick the items and products they sell based on what they know you like and want. Local businesses carry a wid­er array of unique products because they buy for their own individual markets.

8. You took advantage of their expertise

You are their friends and neighbors, and locally owned businesses have a vested interest in knowing how to serve you. They’re passionate about what they do. Why not take advantage of it?

9. You invested in entrepreneurship

Creativity and entrepreneurship are what the American economy is founded upon. Nurturing local business en­sures a strong community.

10. You made your community a destination

The more interesting and unique your community, the more we will attract new neighbors, visitors and guests. This benefits everyone!

*Source: Civic Economics – Andersonville Study of Retail Economics.

Harriett and Nels Oleson were always there to serve the inhabitants of Walnut Grove.  Charles Ingalls didn’t have to contend with grackles in the parking lot, but it wasn’t perfect.  He still had to contend with this:

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