Tale of the Tape

During the months of December and January, we will be exposing all of our Jersey cows to our Jersey bull so that they all calve within a month of each other. Obviously, since both Daisy and Rosie have been bred numerous times, as soon as we see them come into heat, we've put them into the bullpen with Chuck, the Jersey bull.

The reason we don't just open the gates to the bullpen and let the cows and bull intermingle for the next two months is because of Luna, our Jersey heifer.  She is too young to breed.  Therefore, we keep her cordoned off away from the bull.

Clarabelle, our Jersey heifer, raises another issue of concern.  She's young and has never been bred before.  She was born in June of 2015.  Jerseys' minimum breeding weight should be 550 pounds, but how do we determine the weight without a scale? Well, there is a tape that you put right behind the front legs and it gives a pretty accurate indication of the animal's weight.

You loop the tape around and put it together to give you the weight.  The tape has markings for Jersey, Guernsey, and Holsteins on it.

The Jersey weights are shown on the very bottom of the tape and this clearly shows that Clarabelle weighs 620 pounds, so she is well above the minimum breeding weight of 550 pounds.  Now that we have that determined, we feel much better about putting the bull with everyone except Luna.

Clarabelle weighs 620 pounds

Here is ol' Chuck.  He's happy to be with the ladies as he hasn't been in the same pasture with them for months and months.  In a really strange turn of events, he ran to Rosie, his mother, and began trying to nurse on her!  Rosie began kicking him away.  That is a good thing as he is almost the same size as her and we don't want him drinking our milk.  He continued bothering her and she continued kicking her away.  Unfortunately, during evening milking, Rosie kicked and kicked as Tricia tried to milk her.  I guess she assumed that Tricia was her bull calf, Chuck, trying to get her milk.

Hopefully we'll get all the cows except for Luna exposed to the bull to be bred.  That will give us calving dates of September - October 2017.

A New Roof for Promise

Promise is our rescue dog that we rescued from the Animal Shelter in Lake Charles. She's been living at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm for quite a while and she inherited "Cutie Pie's" dog house. Cutie Pie was a cute puppy that we got for Benjamin that went missing.  We think maybe someone picked her up.  Promise doesn't seem to mind that "Cutie Pie" is stenciled over the door to her dog house, but it just may be that she can't read.

The roof to her dog house was in need of repair.  Over the years the roof has just dilapidated.  This past Saturday poor Promise was in her dog house, but I noticed the rain was falling inside on her.  For shame!  I started to put a 'blue tarp' on her roof, but that is a short-term fix and I wanted to get this thing done the right way - or the best way that an unskilled carpenter can do.  First, we pulled the roof off.  it was rotten and in bad shape.

Both sides of the broken roof

The roof is a simple design.  All you need is two pieces of plywood screwed into a 2x4 positioned across the top to hold both sides together.

I like to salvage things and give old things new life.  A good friend of mine had given me some cabinet doors that he was going to throw away and I had them stored up in the rafters of the barn. This project would be perfect for them, and I'm glad I remembered that they were there.  The cabinet doors nested together perfectly.

I had some left-over architectural roofing shingles in the attic from when we had roofed our home and I sent Benjamin up to the attic to retrieve about 6 shingles.

The 2x4 that held the roof together was still in good shape, so we reused it.  18 wood screws later, we had framed up the roof.  It was solid and should last a good number of years.

We nailed shingles to the roof decking and then installed the roof back on the dog house.  Promise was happy with the new roof and promptly went inside out of the rainy weather.

This is one of the nuisances of home-ownership or dog house ownership - there are always maintenance issued to contend with.  Fortunately, this repair was cheap (free) and quickly done.

Tart and Tangy Tangerine Juice

While I really like orange juice, tangerine juice is so much better.  It is tart and tangy.  We have five tangerine trees and they are all loaded up with fruit.  Unlike satsumas and oranges, tangerine peels stick to the fruit and is very hard to peel off. Generally, I'll just quarter them and eat them right out of the peels versus peeling them.

But my favorite thing to do is to just make juice with them.  On this dreary, rainy weekend I had Benjamin go snag a bunch of tangerines off the smallest tree.  He brought them in and filled up the vegetable sink with them.  Even though it had been raining and the fruit was wet, I scrubbed some of the fruit that was dirty.

Tangerines

I like using an old fashioned glass citrus juicer to squeeze out the juice.  Tangerines are so juicy.  For being a small fruit, they are loaded with juice.  They have their share of seeds, but we strain those out.

The juice from an average-sized tangerine will almost fill the hand juicer.

I pour the fresh-squeezed tangerine juice through a strainer or sieve to strain out the seeds and some of the pulp.  I'll use a spoon to stir around the seeds and pulp in the strainer so that every last bit of the juice all goes in the quart-sized, wide mouth mason jar.

In addition to tasting SO good, especially when it is chilled, tangerine juice has the most beautiful neon orange color.

While we drink a lot of it fresh, we'll pour it into quart sized Ziploc bags, seal them up tight and lay them flat in the freezer.

That way we'll have plenty to thaw out and drink in the summertime.  Delicious, nutritious - Tangerine juice is my favorite citrus juice.

What to Eat on a Cold, Soggy Weekend?

Hey wait, it's not supposed to rain on the weekends, is it?  As a cold, drizzly, non-stop, soaking-rainy weekend enveloped us, there were many questions to be asked: When will it end?  Answer: Monday Night.  Will we see the sun again?  Yes, Tuesday morning. How much rain has fallen?  5.1 inches. Will the church Christmas caroling hayride be cancelled Sunday afternoon?  The hayride was, but we still caroled at two nursing homes and the VA home.

And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain? -CCR

But the big question on that Saturday afternoon was: What can we eat that will warm us up both inside and out? Answer: Homemade Chicken Soup.  Good for the body and soul.  Let's get together some fresh ingredients (or fresh frozen: the chopped carrots were blanched and frozen last year.)

The big fat hen was also frozen after we butchered her this past spring.  We had her boiling in the pot for a while, making a nice, rich broth.

I ventured out in the rain to the garden and picked a bunch of Swiss Chard, Kale, Bok Choy, and garlic chives...

The rain washed them down to where I didn't really need to run them under the faucet in the sink to clean them up.

Everything was chopped up and put in the big pot on the stove and allowed to simmer for the better part of the day. Some spiral pasta was added as well. The kitchen warmed up and smelled fantastic.

As a little something extra, Tricia sliced up some homemade corn tortillas, fried them and topped the soup with them.  She also made some cheese toast to eat along with the homemade chicken soup.

A heart-warming and stomach pleasing meal

I'd like to be able to sit here and tell you that I followed the rules of etiquette and ate this soup without slurping, but I wouldn't be being honest with you.  Not only did I slurp, but I tilted the bowl to get the last remaining drops of deliciousness.  It was a good day to eat homemade chicken soup and enjoy a lazy day indoors by the fireplace.

Dollar General in the Country

Hathaway, Louisiana is a very small town where my son goes to school at the only school in "town." We live between Jennings and Hathaway, Louisiana.  Hathaway High School is PK through 12th grade and has 493 students.  I called Hathaway a town, but it would be hard to really call it a town, though. A village, maybe?  A rural outpost?  A clustering of houses in the country?  There is no McDonald's restaurant or any other chain-type store. Apart from a convenience store/gas station across from the school, there's not much.

Well, that's about to change.  The other day while driving down Highway 26, I passed by the following construction going on in the middle of a horse pasture. Whoa, Nellie!

I asked around to see and found out that this is going to be a Dollar General dollar store.  A Dollar General Store in the middle of a pasture.  I checked the distance from this construction to the Walmart Super Center in Jennings and it is 8.3 miles or 11 minutes away.  In a month or so, inhabitants of Hathaway won't have to make a trip into "town."

Dollar Stores have been experiencing astronomical growth.  According to THIS USNEWS Article, Dollar General stores are booming, with an increase in the stock price of over 162% over the past five years.  Even in small towns there are Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree stores practically on top of each other. Whereas the parking lots of Wal Mart stores are packed, the Dollar Stores have their fair share of customers.  While the Dollar Store shoppers' average purchase is between $10-$11 dollars, Dollar Store overhead is low and they are obviously profitable. They have been successful in siphoning people's dollars away from Wal Mart.  People in Hathaway will probably stay nearby and patronize Dollar General for some purchases rather than driving into Jennings.

I may be nostalgic, but seeing that former horse pasture cemented over makes me a little sad.  I hate to see sprawl and agricultural land being converted into concrete. But who knows?  Someone probably groaned when the Oleson's broke ground on the building project in the village of Walnut Grove shown below:

Image Credit

Whoa Nellie, indeed.

Nuts and Bolts, Screws and Nails

This weekend Benjamin and I had a minor project we were working on that required the use of some roofing nails as well as some two inch wood screws.  I knew exactly where to find them.  They were in any number of containers on my work bench.  As I looked for the items, I had to laugh.  I'll bet most people are like me and have old coffee cans on their work bench that contain nuts and bolts, nails and screws.

While I do have some miniature coffee cans labeled with contents, I have other containers as well. The other containers are 'see-through' and don't require labels, for instance a roasted almonds container and some Juice Plus Gummi cannisters.

The older cannister with the green "5" sticker on the top that you see in the photo above had washers and brass fittings in it when I unscrewed it.  That cannister brought back some memories.  It is around 42 years old as best as I can estimate. It originally contained grit from a rock polisher that I got as a Christmas present when I was around 8 years old.  Did you ever have a rock polisher?

Rock polishing was so much fun!  You would put these ugly looking rocks into the tumbling barrel, add a little water and the grit and turn it on.  The little motor would spin for weeks on end, tumbling the rocks over and over.  From time to time, you would turn it off, open the barrel and wash off the rocks.  It was always fun to see the change that the friction caused to the stones from the last time you opened the tumbling barrel.  Then I would put in the next grit and start it tumbling again.

This would go on for weeks, repeating the steps above, until finally, you would open the barrel for the last time and your rocks would look like precious gems.  There would be blue stones, green ones, yellow and shiny black.  With the tumbler unplugged, the house seemed so quiet after listening to the rock polisher tumble for week after week.  It was nice to hold the polished stones in your hand, remembering the rough ugly stones and what they had now become!  They would make a 'clinking' sound as the smooth stones hit against one another in the palm of your hand.  I remember the rock tumbler box contained rings with settings, earrings, necklaces, along with some glue.  I'm sure my mom received some homemade jewelry that my brother and I crafted together.

Rock polishing was a lesson in patience and perseverance - knowing that at the end of the process, a beautiful reward would be found.  As soon as I had kids who were old enough to appreciate it, I bought them a rock polisher, too!  They enjoyed the process as I did when I was a kid and it made memories I still relish today.  One day my kids might even buy their kids a rock polisher after finding an old grinding grit cannister on their work bench that contains roofing nails!

Writing it on Your Barn

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:

5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

The Shema is a Jewish Prayer and the first part of it is from Deuteronomy 6:4-9. As Christians we see it as a declaration that the LORD is one and that we should love him with all our hearts.  We should keep these words in the forefront of our lives and always on our minds.  It stresses that fact in that we should even write them on our home and gates, so that we are always focusing on them.

On the way to work the other day, I pulled to the side of the road outside of Crowley, Louisiana, to take a picture of a man who took Deuteronomy 4:9 literally:

Almost.  He painted, "GOD IS LOVE" on the side of his barn with the "O" in Love being a heart. While some paint "See Rock City" on their barns, this gentleman made a more meaningful sign on his barn that conveys an encouraging proclamation to the millions that pass by on Interstate 10.

God definitely is Love... and more and more need to experience that love today. Thank you to the barn painter in Crowley that is spreading words of hope.