Are You A Small Town Southern Man?

Today I was thinking about a song that was popular 10 years ago.  The life of the man that Alan Jackson sings about in his song, "Small Town Southern Man" just makes me want to be a better man.  Alan Jackson wrote this song about his father, which makes it even more touching.  An unwavering faith in God, good old fashioned character, humility, and work ethic in working the land is what made this country great and this song is a tribute to those out there in America that are raising families and crops and working hard.  Alan Jackson is one of those singer/song writers whose songs tell stories that will send you down a rabbit hole of memories back to the "good ol days."  Also, if you ever get a chance, listen to him sing "Sweet Hour of Prayer." 

I've linked the official video to Small Town Southern Man below.  Push the button, sit back and enjoy!  I've posted the lyrics below as well.

Born the middle son of a farmer

And a small town Southern man

Like his daddy's daddy before him

Brought up workin' on the land

Fell in love with a small town woman

And they married up and settled down

Natural way of life if you're lucky

For a small town Southern man

First there came four pretty daughters

For this small town Southern man

Then a few years later came another

A boy, he wasn't planned

Seven people livin' all together

In a house built with his own hands

Little words with love and understandin'

From a small town Southern man

Chorus:

And he bowed his head to Jesus

And he stood for Uncle Sam

And he only loved one woman

(He) was always proud of what he had

He said his greatest contribution

Is the ones you leave behind

Raised on the ways and gentle kindness

Of a small town Southern man

Callous hands told the story

For this small town Southern man

He gave it all to keep it all together

And keep his family on his land

Like his daddy, years wore out his body

Made it hard just to walk and stand

You can break the back

But you can't break the spirit

Of a small town Southern man

(Repeat Chorus)

Finally death came callin'

For this small town Southern man

He said it's alright 'cause I see angels

And they got me by the hand

Don't you cry, and don't you worry

I'm blessed, and I know I am

'Cause God has a place in Heaven

For a small town Southern man

(Repeat Chorus)

I love the story and the chorus just ties it all together beautifully!  He bows his head to Jesus!  He knows who his Lord is and he serves Him.  He stands for Uncle Sam.  He is patriotic and respectful of our country and thankful to have been blessed to be an American.  He only loved one woman.  Just like the Bible teaches, he is a one-woman man, faithful to his wife and honoring his vows of marriage.  He was proud of what he had.  Even if it wasn't much, it was his and he was proud of it, not coveting what his neighbor had.  He felt that the greatest contribution is the one he leaves behind.  This man left a legacy - a family with great memories of time spent and a life lived well.  He was raised on the ways and kindness of a small town southern man.  I'm not sure there's a better way to live...

I Yam What I Yam

Image Credit

There's a gentleman and his family that we go to church with and they pickle quail eggs in pint-sized jars.  Growing up, when you'd go into a local convenience store, these were always placed predominantly by the checkout counter - jars of beautiful little quail eggs swimming in a highly seasoned brine.  Oftentimes there was a gallon sized jar next to it with pickled pigs feet!  The pigs feet were not very appetizing to me, no sir.  Not at all.

Back to the pickled quail eggs...  So the gentleman from our church asked me if I might have some extra jalapeno peppers that I could sell him to season some of his quail eggs EXTRA HOT.  I have two varieties - one variety is hot, while the other is milder but large.  Those are great for stuffing with cream cheese and chorizo when we make poppers.  Anyway, I told him that I didn't have any to sell him, but I had a lot to give him.  He lives right down the road and when Tricia was in the hospital, he came by and fed the animals.

So Sunday after church I walked out and picked a produce bag full of peppers for him.  The walkway between the peppers had been overgrown with sweet potato vines that I had recently clipped and thrown over the fence for the cows to eat.  There is nothing they like as much as sweet potato vines!  While I was picking jalapenos, I saw a nice-sized sweet potato in the walkway.  I left it there for a few days until Tricia pointed it out and I pulled it. 

Isn't she a beaut!  That is about as perfect of a Beauregard Sweet Potato as I've ever picked from the garden - growing right in the walkway!  Our sweet potatoes never have to be planted.  They come up on their own each year (like weeds do).  One time probably 10 years ago, we composted some scraps and a sweet potato grew and each year since then, we can count on sweet potato slips popping up out of the ground in the early spring.

I have planted another heirloom sweet potato cultivar called "Golden Wonder" a couple of years ago and now those come up volunteer as well.  Usually in October when the first signs of fall appear, we'll dig up the sweet potatoes and cure them in onion sacks hanging from our garage.  If the vines are any indication of a successful crop, we are going to have a bumper crop of sweet potatoes like we've never seen.  I'm telling you the vines are thick and lush and beautiful.  I've caught the cows coveting the sweet potato vines.  I think I actually saw them marking off the days on a calendar until October as they know they will get a gargantuan amount of sweet potato vines to eat.  We always joke that the next day, the milk will be extra sweet from the sweet potatoes.  We'll be sure to post about the sweet 2017 potato harvest.

A Big Day for Benjamin

I rushed home from work today as they were having an assembly at our youngest son's school.  They were going to be presenting the Juniors with their Letter Jackets.  Benjamin was some kind of excited.  Everyone gathered in the gymnasium and announced their names one by one and presented the student athletes with their blue & gold jackets.  It was ninety-something degrees today, but that's okay!

The Letter Jackets they give out today have the student's last names on the back.  That is pretty cool.  Ours didn't have that back when I got mine.

Benjamin and his classmates posed proudly with their new jackets, all with big smiles.

On the flip side...

The sleeve patches on Benjamin's were very cool.

But here's my favorite photo of the evening.  Benjamin and his mother celebrating his new letter jacket.

So proud of you, Benjamin!

Got the Bull Loaded and Delivered

A while back I posted about making cheese and explained how rennet is used in the cheese-making process to separate milk into curds and whey.  I talked about how rennet is obtained from the stomachs of unweaned calves when they are butchered. I also mentioned that there are non-animal based sources of rennet for those who are vegetarians.  I was not prepared for an email response to the post from someone VERY unhappy with me.  The writer called me vulgar names for supporting the killing of calves for making cheese and said they were vegan and I was barbaric for eating meat. This was a very angry person.  (Good thing they didn't read my annual chicken-butchering posts!!)  I believe in freedom.  Personally, I eat meat, but if someone chooses to be a vegan, to each his/her own.

The preceding paragraph serves as background for the following disclaimer:  If you are a vegan or are offended by eating meat, read no further.  In this post we'll talk about loading up our 2 year old Jersey bull and bringing him to the slaughterhouse for processing.  Over the previous week, I had fed the bull in the trailer.  He was getting rougher and rougher by the day.  When he would see me coming with the bucket, he would run at a full clip and try to hit me with his head.  I would run into the trailer with him in pursuit, I'd dump the bucket of feed and then I would exit the side door in the front.

Friday night I repeated those steps, but then circled back and slammed the back door shut.  After Friday night, there would be no more crazed animal on the pasture.  I wouldn't have to worry any more when the neighbor kids wanted to go pick up eggs.  No more buckets destroyed or electric fence reels knocked around. No more water troughs being turned over.  This bull was always breaking something with his hard head!

Saturday morning we took him to Elliott's in Morse, Louisiana and had to get him there by noon. After a teal hunt where we killed nothing but mosquitoes and time, we hooked up the trailer to the truck and departed.  It didn't take us long to get there.  The sign is not very impressive, but they do a great job in processing grass fed beef.

An attendant came out of the shop and directed us to back up to the holding pen. We opened the back gate and unloaded him. In some ways you might say that it was sad dropping him off, but this was the same guy that terrorized the barnyard for quite a while.

When I was a young boy and in 4-H, I showed sheep in the livestock shows.  I worked with them daily and named them and they were very tame.  I can still remember their names to this day (Fluff & Snowball, C3P0 and R2D2).  The problem was that these sheep were market lambs.  I didn't really understand this until the day of the auction and I learned that my sheep were being sent to a slaughter house.  It was very hard to deal with as a youngster.

This taught me a valuable lesson - Never name an animal that you are going to eat. We incorporated this with this bull to a certain extent.  We did call him "Chuck" from time to time, realizing that he was intended to be food.  Speaking of food, we went inside and talked to the gentleman behind the counter, explaining how we wanted the animal cut up.  Two years ago we brought a steer here and didn't request enough ground meat.  We remedied that this year, increasing the percentage of ground meat and having it packed in 2 lb packages, while getting roasts, steaks, soup rounds, oxtail, liver, tongue, bones, and fat.

The animal will hang and dry age for a little while and then they'll cut him up and package him and we'll go pick the beef up and transfer to our deep freeze.

Store-Bought Beans?

With our inventory of fresh-blanched and frozen green beans in the freezer dwindling, I figured that it would be a good time to get our fall crop of green beans planted.  We like to harvest green beans in the fall while it is cool.  One of our favorite side dishes at our Thanksgiving meals is bacon wrapped, brown sugar green beans.  Beans are the easiest things to grow.

August was a really wet month with a lot of rain.  September, on the other hand, has been very dry. Nevertheless, I planted some Contender and Blue Lake Green beans in the garden plot in the side yard and planted a row of pole beans in the garden by the trellis.  In a few days I had beautiful green beans poking up out of the dried out soil.  Each afternoon I pulled the water hose out and gave the growing beans a good soaking.

Everything was looking good but the next afternoon when I walked out to the row of beans, this is what greeted me:

There was not a single leaf left on any of the plants in the side yard.  I went to check on the pole beans in the garden and found the same thing - no leaves only a stem remained.  I immediately searched for the pest that did this, but the guilty party was nowhere to be found.  Was it a bug?  A worm?  Slugs?  Rabbits?  Squirrels?  I do not know.  I've never had this problem before.  Since I saw no worm or bug despite inspecting closely, I feel like it is a rabbit or rat or squirrel.  I'll be setting out my traps to see if I can catch the critter that did this.

Our next crop of planted green beans will be for the spring crop.  Looks like I'll be purchasing green beans from the grocery store's produce section this fall.

Way Better Than Kleenex!

This afternoon I was checking on our new little bull in the pasture.  He's growing and is very healthy. He runs around the pasture with his tail up in the air.  Probably his favorite thing to do is to wait until I feed the chickens and then he goes running through the flock, disrupting their meal time.  He's a little bully for sure.

As I was taking the picture (with Rosie looking on in the top leftt part of the photo), the little fellow did something that we've all seen cows do - he sticks his tongue up his nose.  Apparently, this skill is one that cows are adept at doing.  I've tried to stretch my tongue into my nose to see if that is a trick I could do, but my tongue is not long enough to get the job done.

Believe it or not, there is a scientific reason that cows do this!  If you click on the arrow below to watch a two minute video, you can learn the answer to this mystery!:

Here is the link if you want to watch it again: Explaining Science: Why Do Cows Stick Their Tongues In Their Nose

Summary version:  Cows can't hold tissue in their hooves and haven't learned how to blow their noses anyway.  When they have a runny nose, they do the next best thing: They lick the snot and swallow it.

Every Rose Has Its Thorns

I remember there was a children's book about a king that liked cheese, but mice were eating it.  So he got a cat.  That took care of his mouse problem, but he didn't want cats around, so he got dogs.  The dogs made the cats leave, but he really didn't want dogs.  So he got an elephant, which got rid of the dogs, but what do you do with an elephant?  So he re-introduced mice which again started eating his cheese.  A very circular story about unintended consequences.

The owner of the farmland across the road sold his farm to a developer who is going to make a big subdivision out of it.  We talked about that in an earlier post.  We weren't thrilled about this, but what can you do?  The developer plowed the land. The farmland that had laid fallow for years and had grown up in weeds chest-high was now plowed smooth.  This displaced every critter that had made his home there, including rats.  They all, I presume, packed their luggage and moved on over to our place.

Our cats that were 16 years old both died, leaving us with no defenses.  The battalions of rats flanked us and in blitzkrieg fashion, stormed over the line, setting up a command post in our attic.  One day Tricia said, "Kyle, our telephone isn't working."  We called a repairman and he discovered that rats had eaten through the telephone wires in the attic.  What a mess!  So we got these two with the quickness.

It took them only a matter of weeks before we found them entertaining a rat and then killing it.  The Rat Killers are working!  But there's always unintended consequences.

Our youngest son began to complain about some bumps in his arm and this concerned us. We took him to our family doctor and Benjamin was diagnosed with Cat Scratch Fever.  So we have our rat problem solved, but now we have cat scratch fever.  So, I guess now, in keeping with the story line of the book, we need dogs and then an elephant?  I think not.  We'll take the cats to the vet and if the cat scratch fever doesn't go away, we'll use antibiotics.

It Worked!!

Well, in THIS PREVIOUS POST on September 14th, I mentioned that we have an appointment at a processor in Morse, Louisiana to bring our Jersey bull to get processed.  The appointment is in early October.  Trouble is, he's an aggressive bull and thrashes with his head and comes running at you.  It is high time to get him off the property and into the freezer.

I figured that I would back the cattle trailer into the pasture and each afternoon, I would bring a bucket of feed to the bull.  We've never fed the bull anything - just grass in the pasture and free choice hay.  The plan was to feed him in a bucket and each day move the bucket closer and closer to the trailer.  Then I'd put the bucket at the edge of the trailer and then the next day put it where he'd have to put his front legs in the trailer to eat and then the next day, I'd push the bucket of feed all the way in so that he'd have to get fully in the trailer.  Then, I could shut the door.

I started working on the plan two days ago.  I quickly learned that the gluttonous bull was going to like the feed and the plan could be shortened.  By day two of the plan his front feet were in the trailer. And today...  Well, I'll let you see for yourself. Why do you think the trailer is tilted up in the air?

Well, it is because ol' boy jumped right on up in the trailer to eat!  Tomorrow I'll push the feed bucket all the way to the front.  Shutting the door should be pretty easy.  The only problem is that the second weekend in October is a long way away!  I asked Tricia if we might be able to get the appointment changed to an earlier Saturday, but all of the Saturdays coming are already booked with activities.

Before I started working with the bull to try to get him in the trailer, I figured I would make a ramp to make it easy for him.  You can see it below.  I used some old 2x4 lumber that I salvaged from when we demo'd the chicken tractors.  Some of it was rotten and we burned it.  But others were in good shape and I made a nice ramp.

After talking to a friend about my plan, he suggested that the ramp may scare him off and that he didn't think I'd need it.  He said the bull would jump right on up once he got used to the feed.  You know what?  He was right!

Although it only took less than 10 minutes to make the ramp, I hated to waste the lumber and time making it.  Looking at the unused ramp gave me an idea.  Have you ever seen those mats that cranes use on a construction site?  Or a board-run at an oil drilling site?  That reminded me that I could use my ramp as a mat or a board run around the barn when it rains and gets so muddy that sometimes you step right out of your boots.

Back to the bull, I think we won't have to have a rodeo to get him in the trailer to get him to the processor.  The plan worked, even faster than I thought.  On second thought, perhaps I should wait until early October when I have him in the trailer and on the way before I celebrate.

Trying To Re-Create A Classic Dessert Drink

In the town we live in there is an old-fashioned Drive Inn called The Rocket Drive Inn.  If you Google it, you'll get all sorts of hits with great reviews.  Lots of people coming off the Interstate probably hit up Sonic as we do from time to time, but if they would drive about a mile further, they'd arrive at the Rocket Drive Inn.  In my opinion it's better by a country mile!  We have posted about The Rocket before HERE.  People go to The Rocket Drive Inn for nostalgia, but it has really good food.  My favorite dessert to get there are their Root Beer Frosties.

I figured that I would try to re-create the Rocket Drive Inn Root Beer Frostie for dessert tonight at home.  If you look at the photo below you'll see what I'm guessing are the ingredients:  ice cream, root beer, crushed ice, homemade vanilla extract and... yep, we started milking Rosie again so we have fresh, creamy whole milk.

I tried the following ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• 1 cup ice cream
• 1 cup crushed ice
• 12 oz. Root Beer
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

We blended for about 20 seconds in a blender and poured in a milk shake cup.

Although my photography skills are quite lacking and the photo above doesn't make our attempt at the Root Beer Frostie look appetizing, it was delicious!  However, one thing I need to work on to make it better is the proportions.  I felt like it wasn't as creamy or thick as The Rocket's Root Beer Frostie.  Their frostie is not as thick as a milk shake, but not as 'liquid-y' as a float.  It's somewhere right in the middle. Tomorrow night we will alter the proportions to add more crushed ice and more ice cream.  We will perfect it over time by trial and error.  

Rosie's Young Bull Calf

Rosie's little bull calf is three days old now.  He was born on 9/11.  It will be easy to remember his birthday.  We've separated Rosie and her calf in the "bull pen" away from the rest of the herd.  Chuck, the bull, was head-butting him and we figured it best to get Rosie and the calf away from him.  In fact, we've made an appointment to have the bull processed in October.  Our inventory of beef in the freezer is down to only a few soup rounds.  We'll work with the bull to try to get him into the trailer between now and then.  That is going to be quite a task.  He is not friendly and can get aggressive.  I think I'm more hard-headed than he is, though.  I'll find a way to get him in the trailer.  Beef.  It's what's for supper!

Back to the calf.  The little guy is very healthy.  He drank Rosie's colostrum and is nursing on all four quarters throughout the day.  In the evenings, I bring them into the barn and feed Rosie some dairy ration and alfalfa.  While she's eating, I milk her out.  There is still some colostrum in her milk.  It is a dark yellow color.  Pretty soon that will be gone and it will just be pure milk.  We will do what we always do - we leave the cow and the calf together all day and then separate them in the early evening.  The next morning all the milk will be ours.  Then we will put the cow and the calf together and he'll get all the day time milk.  We share with each other.

So, while I milk Rosie out, I also check out her torn teat.  We have posted about her stepping on her front teat and tearing it.  It is healing and she let's us milk her, but the cut is still open.  In fact, it bled on me a little bit today.  Each day we put iodine on her teat to help keep infection out, but truthfully, I think the calf keeps things clean as much as he's nursing.  Yesterday afternoon, we couldn't find the calf.  We started to get a little concerned, but Rosie had him hidden in the grass.  He was hiding.  I picked him up and threw him over my shoulders, carrying him behind by neck holding two legs with my left hand and two with my right.  He's already getting heavy.  Thankfully, he didn't pee on me.

I got him back to the barn and Rosie moo'd at her baby.  In learning about cows, we read that cows will tend to step on their teats if their hooves get to long.  Her hooves aren't that long, but I figured I would give her a pedicure.  Too keep her from kicking me, I used a device that I blogged about in our Kow Kant Kick Post.  I positioned that over her back and got some tin snips and was able to trim her back hooves today.  I'll try to do a better job tomorrow.

Rosie's milk hasn't fully come in yet, but after milking her out in the evening for the last two days, the calf is getting most of the milk .  The little bit of milk/colostrum mix that we did get was fed to the chickens.  Do they ever love to drink fresh milk! Pretty soon, we'll be drinking fresh milk again, too!

Getting the Teal Pond Ready

Teal season opens on September 15th and runs through September 30th.  My buddy Gary called me and the boys and I met him this past Saturday morning.  It was a beautiful day to be alive.  Gary had stopped up the pond and caught some free rainwater.  We hooked up a plow to the back of Gary's ATV and he began plowing in the flooded duck pond.  The idea is to knock down enough stubble in the field to open up a "hole" where the ducks can see water and light on the pond with the decoys.

We began plowing planks to open up the pond.  Smelly, decomposing grass began floating to the top. Ducks can find plenty to eat in the pond.  I'll tell you what else was finding plenty to eat at our pond - mosquitoes!  They are terrible right now.

Now it was time to go ahead and put the decoys out in the pond.  The decoys in the blue tubs are many years old.  Gary purchased some new teal decoys to add to our mallard drake and hen decoys.

Gary is going to work the pond up with his plow one more time prior to opening day as there was still a lot of grass floating, but we put the decoys out just to see how it looked.  I think we'll be ready for them!

There is plenty of tall bitterweed and cane grass to hide behind at the pond's edge, so we'll just bring 5 gallon buckets to sit on while we hunt.  There is a daily bag limit of 6 birds.  It would be nice to get our limit.  Cooler weather will be here soon and we'd like to build a nice inventory of teal in the freezer from which to make duck gumbo this winter.

The Mind's Garden

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”  ― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

That's a pretty good quote, right there!  It is a great visual to compare your mind to a garden.  This past weekend, the weather was as lovely as it has ever been at the first of September.  I worked up the garden in the side yard, turning over the hay ground cover and weeds with a shovel and working it in the ground.  When I was done the seed bed was void of any weeds as you can see in the photo below.

This is part of that instant gratification thing about farming that really revs up my engine.  You get in a field in the morning that has weeds waist high and after plowing and then hitting it at a diagonal, in the afternoon when you pull out of the field, the weeds are gone.  The field is beautiful.  You feel like you accomplished something.

As the quote above so eloquently says, the land can be intelligently cultivated or weeds can run wild, choking out growth of productive crops like my poor New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins below.  Darn weeds just grow.  I don't plant them, but they grow nonetheless.  Funny how that happens.

You see, the land is going to bring forth a bountiful crop, regardless.  It can be a crop of good stuff or it can be a bumper crop of weeds.  That beautiful seedbed above, if left alone will yield a stunning, mind-numbing bumper crop of weeds.  Oh, the goats will enjoy it when I pull the weeds like I did below and toss them over the fence, but that's not what we're trying to raise here on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.

Here's the other thing.  Those weeds left alone will produce after their kind.  That is a Biblical mandate from Genesis 1:11.  Except we don't want the weeds to produce in our garden, building a perpetual seed bank in our garden soil that guarantees hours and hours of back-breaking labor.  We want order and production of wholesome foods for our family.

Getting back to the quote, that's why the garden is such an appropriate comparison to the human mind.  Our minds are like that clean seed bed that we can either sow good seed into or we can leave it fallow and let all sorts of things grow in it.  It is amazing what sort of bad seed gets blown into our minds.  Seeds of doubt and fear. Of low self-worth and regret and pessimism.  Of envy and bitterness and sorrow. Those seeds can choke out the good seed that is struggling to extend its leaves to the sunlight, but is shaded out, stunted and finally dies, becoming the detritus beneath the healthy weeds in our minds.  Before long, the garden of your mind that was once fertile and clean has now become a toxic field that is unproductive and results in total crop failure.

But there is hope.  The remedy is not easy, but there is hope.  It takes back-breaking, diligent work. One must cultivate the mind, pulling out the weeds of negative thought and turning them under before they go to seed, replacing them with positive thoughts.  Tending your mind's garden is a daily task.  Many times weeding my mind's garden seems to be a fruitless pursuit with the weeds growing as fast as I can pull them out.  Of course, there is a lot of bad seed being scattered today and our minds must be carefully tended, especially with the good seed from His Word, ensuring an eternal harvest:

Philippians 4:8 King James Version (KJV)

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

A New Addition to Our Maker's Acres Family Farm

At the end of yesterday's post, we were wishing that Rosie's calf would come late so that her torn teat would have time to heal.  Tricia took her phone to our veterinarian today and showed him the picture that was in the blog from yesterday.  He said that there is nothing really more that we can do other than what we've already done.  He said that he thinks it will heal up in about a week and our primary concern is if the tear ripped the teat so bad that the milk would not flow.  Anyway, we were hoping that her calving would be delayed.

Well...

Tricia went out to the pasture to find Rosie in labor, moaning with feet sticking out of her.

She finally stood up because the chickens like to gather around and peck at the calf's hooves.  While Rosie was in labor, the rest of the heard is looking on with not much interest.

Almost there...

PLOP!  And out on the ground the calf dropped.  Rosie licked the calf to clean everything up and Daisy came to welcome the newcomer.  Later Rosie ate the placenta.  It's a weird thing that cows do.

This was an interesting photo.  We've never captured this before - a photo of the sire and the dam. The calf was a strong little thing, standing up in no time flat.  Then the calf's father showed up and started head-butting as if to say, "a chip off the old block."  Rosie looked on, tired after delivery.

Tricia checked to see what we had.  She lifted the leg to see what type of 'equipment' it had.  Oh well - It's a boy.  We always hope for heifers as bulls aren't worth very much.  But oh well, we'll have fresh milk soon.

The calf was up in no time trotting around Rosie.  This seems to be one of the strongest calves we've had.

He began searching for a teat and he began nursing on the one that was torn!  He suckled for a while and then Rosie kicked him off.  He looked for another one and sucked the rich colostrum to give him antibodies and strength he'll need to thrive.

He is definitely a cute little fellow.  We have gotten in a habit of not naming the bulls.  I don't know if we'll continue that.  Maybe we'll call him, "Alphonse."  He looks like an Alphonse.

This afternoon he was very curious, coming up to me and then scurrying away quickly.

Both momma and baby are healthy and the miracle of new birth continues to astound us.  The boys came out and looked at the new calf.  It is always neat to see new babies.  We love living on a little farm where we get to see stuff like this!

Rosie is making colostrum now, but in a few days her milk will come in.

We're happy about the calf, but still a bit concerned about Rosie's torn teat.  It will certainly be interesting to see how things unfold.

This Must Hurt!

I walked out to the pasture to check on Rosie.  Rosie is our Jersey cow that will be calving within the next few days.  When the time for delivering gets close, we like to keep on top of the situation to ensure that things are going well.  While observing Rosie, I saw something that was concerning to me.  Rosie had a big tear on her front right teat!  That must really hurt.

We try to do a good job of picking up debris in the pasture that the animals could step on or cut themselves on, so I'm not really sure how this could have occurred, but I have a pretty good idea.  I think she stepped on it.  Ouch!  You can see the tear in the photo below:

So i got her into the milking stall in the barn and distracted her with some Dairy Ration mixed with alfalfa.  While she was eating I got a wet rag and did my best to clean it.  During the heat of the day, the cows lay in the cool dirt and of course, the wound was dirty.  Rosie didn't like this at all!  She started kicking toward me and I finally had to hobble her to avoid catching a back hoof to the head.

We decided to do a little veterinary work ourselves and keep close watch on Rosie.  If we see signs of infection, we'll call out our veterinarian to come have a look.  In the meantime, we took some First Aid Antiseptic and mixed it with some vaseline petroleum jelly and dabbed it on the would.  The vaseline helps it to stick versus drip off.  Then we filled a small yogurt cup with the antiseptic containing iodine.

Using extreme caution, I dipped her teat into the cup of iodine several times so that the entire affected area was coated.

We will repeat this process daily and pray for healing.  We will have to wait and see how this goes. This is very concerning to us as pretty soon, Rosie's bag will be filling with milk and her calf will need to suckle on the teat.  We need it to be healed up as there will not be a convenient way of relieving the quarter of milk if she doesn't allow the calf to nurse or allow us to milk her out.

We were really hoping that the calf would come soon, but now that this happened we hope the calf is delayed in coming to allow Rosie to heal up.  It is always an adventure, but we'll get through this.

Oven "Fried" Okra! Mmmm...

We have a row of okra that are planted from saved seed.  Most of it is Clemson spineless, but there were evidently a a few Burgundy okra seeds mixed in there as well.  With the warm temperatures and intermittent rains, they have been loaded in blooms and you can almost watch them grow they grow so fast!  Each afternoon, I go out to the garden and lift my shirt up and use it as a 'bucket' of sorts to hold the okra I pick.  I never take the time to count them, but it is a nice little 'mess' of okra every day.

Now, we eat okra as a side dish quite often and we fix it in several different ways. We enjoy it, but I ran across a recipe that we wanted to try from the Gotreaux Farms Newsletter.  The Gotreaux's are a farm family that we've blogged about a couple years ago HERE.

We love fried okra, but fried okra makes a big mess.  Eating a bunch of fried foods is probably not the healthiest thing in the world for you.  But this recipe is for Crunchy Oven-Fried Okra (from Love Life and Good Food).  You'll need:

4 cups fresh okra
4 Tablespoons cornmeal
6 Tablespoons Panko Breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 Tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
2 eggs beaten
3-4 Tablespoons coconut oil

First I cut up the okra and preheat the oven to 425F:

Then I assemble my ingredients and combine the cornmeal, Panko breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese into a gallon-sized ziploc bag.  I also crack two nice country fresh eggs in a bowl.

Tricia put the coconut oil on a stoneware baking sheet and puts it in the oven to melt a little while we finish prepping.

A little at a time she mixes the cut up okra in the beaten egg until they are all coated well.

A little at a time, add the egg-coated okra to the ziploc bag and shake until coated evenly.

Add the coated okra to the baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, turning after about 10 minutes. At the end, turn the oven to broil to give the okra a nice golden brown color.

When the kitchen timer goes off, you can remove from the oven.  Looks nice, doesn't it?

I would say to allow to cool before eating, but honestly, quite a few get sampled right of the baking sheet before we ever serve them on our plates.  We really enjoy this recipe and think you will too!