On My Honor I Will Do My Best

I rarely, if ever, post about political things.  This is not a political blog.  Our lives are infused with politics day in and day out.  It is hard to insulate oneself from the angst and animosity between the red and the blue and the left and the right.  My ramblings as I sit down and ruminate each evening are an attempt at a therapeutic pursuit to push out the noise of the dog-eat-dog world and long for simpler times in nostalgia and rural life.

Tonight I want to talk about a topic that many deem political, but I think whatever side of the political divide you find yourself on, and even if you disagree with me on some points, you'll agree that the impending demise of the Boy Scouts of America is truly sad and regrettable.

ABC News tells us:

The Boy Scouts of America is exploring a range of options to address it's increasingly shaky financial situation. Those may include declaring bankruptcy, with the more than century-old organization facing rising legal fees due to lawsuits over its handling of sexual abuse allegations.

I don't think ABC News is telling the whole story.  Boy Scouts was once a proud organization that boasted over 6 million scouts.  That figure is now at 2.4 million members and is hemorrhaging members left and right.  There is a reason for the Scouts' "shaky financial situation" and it is self-inflicted.  Boy Scouts of America was a proud institution that was part of turning many young boys into men, providing training and instilling virtues that truly made America a greater place.  It was Norman Rockwell kind of stuff.

My Dad was a Scout.  I was a Scout.  In Houston I was a Webelos Den Leader, and when we moved to Jennings, for years I was a Webelos Den Leader and Assistant Scoutmaster and spent countless hours volunteering.  My oldest son progressed in the ranks and became an Eagle Scout, Boy Scout's highest rank.  My youngest son was a Life Scout, one rank below an Eagle Scout when we all mutually decided that Scouting was no longer operating in the best interests of the boys and instead began to politicize and change everything it once stood for.  It began to be an organization at odds with its founding principles.  We didn't actually leave the Scouts.  The Scouts left us.

Benjamin's Scouting Shadow Box

It seemed as if the national leaders of scouting were sexualizing the organization and turning their backs on Christian teaching that had been part of the Scouts since its inception.  They began to admit openly gay members and leaders and then transgenders into the organization.  Next, they dropped the "Boy" from the name and began trying to attract girls.  This resulted in a costly lawsuit from the Girl Scouts of America.  It became a mere shell of what it once was.  In a textbook definition of mission drift, it left the tenets of its motto, oath and law.

We have fond memories of camp outs and hikes, campfires and mile swims, cooking outdoors and working on merit badges and Russ' Eagle project where he and his troop renovated a Crisis Pregnancy Center.  We planted trees, built rockets and shot them into the afternoon sky.  We marched in parades.  We proudly wore our uniforms to school.  We made up skits and laughed and enjoyed the camaraderie of fellow scouts.  We learned leadership as boys learned to make a budget, plan events, and encourage and motivate one another.  We sang songs in the mess hall, learned to identify trees by their leaves and how to use a pocketknife and a hatchet, how to shoot BB guns and rifles and bows and arrows, how to tie knots and identify constellations and use a compass to find your way around.

We learned first aid and citizenship and how to protect the environment and leave no trace when you were in the woods.  We canoed and fished and learned how to make a life preserver with our jeans.  We carved a Pinewood Derby race car out of a block of wood and raced it.  We applauded each other for hard work of attaining ranks and being awarded badges.  Good, moral men volunteered their time and money to teach young boys skills vital to becoming a man.  Although scouting was way more than awards, I still have most of my badges from over 40 years ago.  Here's one of them:

This is the compass from when my dad was in Boy Scouts.  Although the box is tattered and worn,

the compass within is in pristine condition and still points to true north.

While we will always cherish our memories of scouting, my boys and I lament the fact that the national leadership (despite understanding how to use a compass) lost its direction and way.  The imminent bankruptcy is not only a financial one, but it is a bankruptcy of leadership and morals by those who should have known better.

On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my Country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. 

A Final Word on Broccoli and Cauliflower

While blogging about roasting cauliflower last night, I realized that there were a few more things to be said about this delicious vegetable. It would have made the post too long, so I mentioned that I would talk about it later.  So here goes:  First is the fact that cauliflower makes one head and then it is done.  Once we pick the head of cauliflower, I trim off the leaves and feed them to the cows. 

Broccoli is a different story.  Once we pick the main head, I leave the leaves and the plant will send out shoots of new growth, producing florets that we are able to go out and pick for weeks after the initial harvest.  It is the gift that keeps on giving.  As the weather warms, you have to pick it daily or the florets will quickly turn into yellow flowers.

Yesterday I mentioned that, especially if there is a warm snap, you must be diligent about checking on your cauliflower.  I harvested the six cauliflower heads that I had allowed to grow for just ONE DAY too long.  Whereas the cauliflower yesterday was at the peak of ripeness, the ones below are a bit over-ripe and have begun to separate instead of resembling a big white snowball.  There's nothing wrong with them and they'll all be eaten and enjoyed.  They just aren't as pretty and perfect as the others.

Since we've got more than we can eat at one time, we'll blanch three of the heads.  We wash the cauliflower as sometimes stink bugs, snails, slugs and other critters will hitch hike on the plants inside.  Then we break off the florets.

We bring a pot of water to boil and drop the florets into the water, allowing it to boil for exactly 3 minutes.

Then we remove the cauliflower from the boiling water and submerge in ice water.  It is important to quickly stop the cooking process.  We leave the cauliflower in the ice water until it is ice cold.  That takes about 5 or 6 minutes.

The result is firm, blanched beautiful cauliflower.  Blanching preserves the cauliflowers color and 'crunch' and stops the enzyme action that deteriorates the texture, flavor and longevity.

Finally, we get some cleaned zip loc bags.  (No sense throwing out perfectly good zip locs if they are clean and free of holes.)  We re-label and re-use them.

These will go into our freezer and we'll enjoy cauliflower long after the season has ended.  We use the exact same procedure with broccoli.  We like to extend the harvest by putting some away in the deep freeze to enjoy later.

By Far Our Favorite Way to Prepare Cauliflower (And Broccoli)

It's been a while since I posted a recipe, but here's one that I've got to share.  It's oven roasted cauliflower (and broccoli) with garlic and oil.  Lately, we have been harvesting a lot of cauliflower.  In fact, we have so much coming in at the same time that we'll have to blanch some (more on that later!)

Cauliflower, when it is ripe, is a beautiful vegetable.  It is a full, white snowball.  I always want to pick it at its prime.  Sometimes I'll let it go a day too late, but it's still good to eat.  In the past, we'd steam cauliflower, and that is doggone good.  But, we discovered a new way to eat it that I think is superior to steamed.  In fact, with all the cauliflower coming in, we ate it three nights in a row last week and I'm still not tired of it.

A big beautiful head of cauliflower

I'll harvest the cauliflower head off of the plant, leaving the big leaves on the stalk.  I use a big knife to separate it from the stalk.

Invariably, the cows will see me in the garden and will come running to beg.  I will relent and feed them the cauliflower greens.  Those girls love fresh garden produce.  They poke their big noses over the fence and stick out their tongues...

I'll harvest the broccoli heads, too, once they've reached their zenith, but I don't feed the cows the greens from the broccoli.  I'll tell you more about that later this week.

So, to prepare oven roasted cauliflower and broccoli, simply break up heads of broccoli and cauliflower into florets.  Don't toss the stalks.  They are good eating, too!  Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  Layer the broccoli and cauliflower on a baking sheet.  Take a quarter cup of coconut oil and drizzle over the top of the broccoli and cauliflower and toss to coat.  Liberally add sea salt and cracked black pepper and mince 5 cloves of garlic.  Sprinkle it all over the top and toss some more.  Put into the oven and roast for 15 minutes.  Stir and continue roasting for an additional 10 minutes.

Then take out and serve.  I double dog dare you not to taste before you spoon some onto your plate.

I'm convinced it cannot be done!

2018 Milk Production - By the Numbers

In the final installment of "By the Numbers" for 2018, we'll discuss milk.  During the year of 2018, we milked 3 of our cows, Rosie, Luna, and Clarabelle.  We didn't have all three of them in milk at the same time for very long.  It is hard to milk 3 cows twice a day and have any semblance of a life.  Tricia often says it would be so nice to have a milk maid.

As with rainfall and egg production, we chart milk production.  Here are figures for 2018:

July was the big month and December was the smallest month, but you can't really glean anything from the times as the primary factor is how many cows you are milking.  It also needs to be noted that we aren't going into this shooting for big production figures.  If that were so we'd have Holsteins instead of Jerseys.  Holsteins produce the largest volume, while Jerseys produce milk with a high butterfat percentage.  Furthermore, our cows are primarily grass-fed, so we aren't feeding them a high protein diet to boost their milk production.  One additional thing to keep in mind is the fact that until the calves are weaned, we share the milk with the calves.  This means for half of the day, the cows produce milk for their calf.  We then separate the momma from the calf and the milk made on that half of the day is for us.  The milk the calves drink is (obviously) not measured.

Nevertheless, the volume produced in our little dairy from our little farm sitting on 3 acres is pretty good, for us:

In total the girls produced 780 gallons of milk that was measured.  Milk weighs 8.6 pounds per gallon.  Over the course of the year, we lugged 6,709 pounds of milk from the barn into our home.  Put another way, Tricia and I carried 3.35 tons of milk into the house.

"You move 3.35 tons, and what do you get?  Another day older and deeper in debt.  St. Peter don't you call me, cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store..."  (Maybe the song didn't go exactly like that.)

2018 Egg Production - By the Numbers

In installment two of our 2018 "By the Numbers," we'll look today at the tally of egg production over the past year.  One of Benjamin's chores is to collect eggs, clean the ones that require tidying up, packaging them into cartons, counting them and notating the number of egg production each day on a spreadsheet we have posted on the refrigerator.  We record daily production, subtotaled by month and summed by year.  The summary of egg production for 2018 is listed below:

In 2018 we picked up 11,573 eggs and that equates to 964.42 dozen.  That's a lot of omelets!  We have roughly 100 hens.  I say roughly because, those girls don't stay still long enough to count.  Two years ago we fed them in the barn and trapped them in there.  One by one we let them out and counted them.  There were a few more that 100, and we've lost some since then.

On average a bird lays 116 eggs per year.  We picked up on average 31 eggs per day, meaning that a hen lays an egg about every 3 days. Below is a 5 year historical trend on monthly egg production:

The first thing that stands out is egg production is WAY up.  With fewer hens in 2018, we picked up 1,823 more eggs than in 2017.  What do we attribute that to?  Nutrition.  During the springtime, the hens find nutrition out in the pasture.  A change we made in 2018 was to begin supplementing the rough and milled rice we feed them with a little bit of laying pellets to add some protein to their diet.
The results were startling.  You'll notice that in 6 of the 12 months of the year, production was up month over month.  Most of the gains in production took place in January and February.  Overall April is the biggest month of production.  Spring grass and nutrition is at its peak and the weather is perfect without any stresses on the birds.  January is the lowest production month of the year due to short days and little nutrition on the pasture.

What do we do with all those eggs, you might be wondering?  Well, we eat a bunch of them.  Of those we don't eat, we give away about half of them and sell the remainder. 

2018 Rainfall - By the Numbers

Our family likes to track things and see trends and use the information, if we can.  If we can't use the information, at least our curiosity is satisfied.  One of the indicators we track is rainfall.  We have a rain gauge outside and each time it rains, I'll go out and get the rainfall totals and then come inside and post it to a log that we keep.  Here are the total 2018 rainfall inches, by month for rain that fell on our farm:

A total of 65.4 inches was recorded.  Just for grins, I searched the rainfall average for our zip code and found that 60.35 inches is the average.  So once again we are above average rainfall amounts here.  As you can see, September was the wettest month.  It was uncharacteristically wet.  The driest month was March.

I've been compiling these records since 2013.  Let's take a look at five year history of rainfall on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm:

One thing that stands out is that the wettest month appears to be August.  However, looking a bit closer, we see that this designation is skewed by the monsoons that fell in 2016 and again somewhat in 2017, and that altered the averages.  The next highest months for rain is April and May.  "April showers bring May flowers."  As far as driest, it appears March wins that category, although November is a close second.

You'll notice that from 2014 through 2017, we increased rainfall totals each year.  2018 we reversed that trend, due to an unusually dry spring.  Although beginning in September and ending in December, we had rainfall totals wetter that previous years.  Normally, a fall garden is easy to put in, but this year, it was so doggone wet.  My fall garden was late and not as big as it normally is, but you do what you can with what the Good Lord provides.  Anyway, it is always very interesting to look at the actual rainfall in comparison to previous years.  We've already begun to track rainfall for 2019...

A New Arrival On The Farm

Friday evening after I got home from work I gathered my bucket and rags and headed out to the barn to do the evening chores.  This consists of feeding chickens, goats, cows, closing up the nesting boxes in the hen house, putting out hay and then finally, milking Luna.  I got all this done and Rosie had still not showed up at the barn. 

This is uncharacteristic of her.  It scared me a little bit.  I had called Benjamin in the afternoon to check on her and he said she was in the pasture grazing.  But now it was four hours later.  What if she was calving and having difficulty?  I better go check on her.  I went inside and got my flashlight and headed out to the dark pasture.  I couldn't find her.  My pace quickened.  Finally I saw something...

Whoa!  A new calf.  And it is up!  Rosie was finishing up eating the placenta.  The calf had already been licked.  The best I can figure is that the calf was probably between 2 and 3 hours old.  I got them into the barn the very next morning so I could get a closer look.  Cute little booger!

Time to determine the sex.  The evening before, I had put my hand underneath and I think I felt the equipment that told me what I needed to know, but here's photo evidence.  Yep, that's a bull calf scrotum.  It's a boy.

In the above photo, there's something a little strange.  You can see four teats.  Just like a heifer.  Why does a bull calf have teats?  Well, all fetuses start out in the womb as a female.  The chest develops before hormones change the sex organs.  The teats on a bull are non-functional.

So another bull!  The last three born on the farm have all been bulls.  We always want heifers.  Maybe when Clarabelle calves later in the spring, she'll give us one.  This little guy is the offspring of a registered Jersey bull from Australia.

G'Day Mate!

He's a strong little fellow.  In no time at all, he had nursed on Rosie and had filled up on all the colostrum that Rosie produced to ensure that the bull got a great head start.

In a couple of days, Rosie's milk will freshen (come in) and she'll have enough milk to take care of her growing calf and our family.  A bull wasn't what we were looking for, but we'll be thankful for a healthy momma and calf and for all the fresh milk she'll be producing.  As far as a name, we haven't thought of one yet.  Since he's a bull we don't normally name them sentimental names since they are destined for the freezer once they are older.  If we did name him, it would be something with an "Australian-flair" since that's where the sire was from.