Debbie's New Digs

The Big Man and I have both been a little under the weather - and with my recent trip - there have been a few projects that have gone undone. One of them is to separate Debbie - again - from last spring's doeling, Dahlia.

Debbie's new digs - in the turkey house.

Our prize milker, Debbie, may or may not be pregnant after her time with Too Short. But its hard to tell if she is making an udder - a sure sign of pregnancy - when Dahlia keeps sipping off her. Unfortunately the best place to put Debbie is in the turkey house on the side where the meat chickens are currently living. But they are still....well.... living as we haven't been able to send them to the freezer. You could say we were stuck between a silly goat and a meat march. Then it occurred to me that the turkeys sure did have a nice coop.....

So today I shoveled out the turkey-coop-side of the turkey house, shuffled them right on out and into the smaller auxiliary coop....and marched Debbie right in. She hated it. The turkeys were a little confused but I think it will all work out.

Debbie has a nice big coop to herself...and nest boxes to jump up on. Debbie! Get down from there!

The only downside, along with Nibbles and Dahlia screaming their heads off all afternoon because Debbie was gone, was that Debbie immediately jumped up on the turkey nest boxes. So I had to block her from doing all that hopping around. At one point she made a break for it and ran directly back to the goat yard fence. Dog #1 ran after her and there were a lot of sad faces, mostly Debbie's. I marched her back to her new digs with steam coming out of her ears. The dog smirked. (So did I.)

The plan is to keep Debbie separated for the next couple of weeks. She won't like it at all but at least she will either make an udder and have some babies... or she will just dry out and prepare to spend the saddest summer of her life with a sign around her neck that says "This is what losers look like" and listening to me tell her to put that coffee.. I mean.. hay down and get back to grazing because "hay is for milkers only."

The good goats news is that Nibbles is looking bigger and bigger everyday and her udder has just about filled out. She still has another week or so and I hope she can keep those buns in the oven. The other great news is that today Dahlia had a nice round handful of udder going. So it looks like Too Short really was Just Tall Enough.

That's the word in the barnyard. How about you? Anybody else have does making udders and getting fatter?

Happy Thursday everyone!

Prayer For A Traveler

"Oh Lord... thank you for getting me home...."

Within minutes of my plane touching down I verily threw myself down on this Good Land and kissed it. I escaped, once more, from civilization. No traveler was happier to get home to this funny little farm than yours truly. It was ridiculous. Those people are mad.

And not just crazy, I am here to tell you they are mad. All of them. Mad and angry and scold-y. You'd think they'd be happy. That part of the world has largely escaped the economic hardship that the rest of us labor under. Out there money falls like leaves from trees and washes up on the beaches like seaweed.  Those folks have everything they could possibly want.  But they are, by and large, very unhappy. Or at least that's what you'd think based on their behavior.

My country bumpkin-ness was apparent by the foolish way I tried to smile and be friendly. Apparently I walked too slow and I didn't get out of my parking spot fast enough for that expensively shod, luxury SUV driving nitwit. She slammed her "truck" in reverse and hit ramming speed before I could even pull out. For heavens sakes, you'd think if she wanted that spot so bad she would have put down her phone and let me out. I can't make any excuses for the dimwit who parked, I am not exaggerating, an inch off my bumper so they wouldn't have to walk that extra 15 feet from that other parking spot just across the street. I wished for my big truck so I coulda just rolled right over that little "car," such as it was. 

Pretty quickly the shine wore off of that big city penny.  I drove around giving out imaginary tickets for Driving While Self Absorbed, eating an inhuman amount of (very expensive) french pastries, and randomly yelling "I drive a big work truck and butcher pigs in my yard" just to shock 'em, y'all. Then I told them to triple bag my groceries in plastic just to watch their eyes roll back in their heads. I didnt recycle. On purpose.

You don't wanna know what happened when I got into a lively little debate about varmint killin' - I guess some of them folks are too tenderhearted to hear about how I lined the fence posts with pelts as a warning. Before they could burst into tears I told them that living in the peaceable kingdom was "all fairy dust and rainbow farts" until you go out and find some vixen running off with your favorite duck. There were some tears. Not mine.

I dared them to say one thing to me about how farming was bad for their environment  - just so's I could tell them that the carbon footprint of our pork equaled to the amount of gas used by our old tractor to drag them pig carcasses up the hill. I had hoped to make them spit up their out of season, grown-in-Chile nectarine on their expensive Italian leather shoes - you know, just for the irony of the whole thing.

The lowest moment.... realizing the "Johnny Cab" I was riding in was..... a Prius.

Of course, there were some bright spots. My BFF was completely generous with her time and drove me around to the best coffee houses. I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a while, and of course my hosts reminded me, in a hundred tiny ways, how much I loved them.

I came home to a tail waggin' good time to find The Bubby is now almost as tall as Kai. The cats even sauced out to say they hadn't noticed I was gone...that much.  And there is nothing new to report with Nibbles.

We'll be back in the fracas now that the dust has settled off my traveling shoes. But for now I'm just gonna sit here, enjoy the fire, and say to myself, "There's no place like home... there's no place like home..."

Happy Wednesday everyone! Don't think for a second you're missing anything in civilization.  If you haven't done it lately, run right out and kiss the ground that sustains you.  Praise God for our life, for this Good Land, and all of the living things has make up our little world.  Amen and amen.

Get your hands off my bagged lunch

You know all that rantin' and raving I've been doing lately about the food police, and raw milk and how your government shouldn't tell you what you can and can't eat?  Chances are you're sitting there thinking, "Who cares? That doesn't apply to me, I don't have a cow.  What do I care about raw milk.. that OFG... always the alarmist."

Got a kid?

Got a kid in public school?

Firmly under the heading of "Reasons why home schooling may not be such a bad idea" - have you seen this story?  Mom sends her preschool kid with a sack lunch and the lunch inspector decides her turkey sandwich and stuff wasn't good enough - so they take it away and makes the kid eat chicken nuts?

What about that story horrifies you the most - that there is a "lunch inspector," that they took away the food the mom sent, or that the better option was chicken parts mashed together, reglued into an unidentifiable chicken part, breaded, deep fried....then reheated?

I have to say the more I thought about this the madder I got. I don't have kids but I tell you the truth. If a "lunch inspector" took away what I sent for my kid to eat and gave them the crap that parades as school food?  Oh, Friend.... that would be bad. I would go up there. Not, you know, to have a sit down meeting with the principal - I mean to tell you I'd Go Up There.  And it would not be pretty.

So that we are clear, I don't even let anyone feed my dogs. I would not allow the transfer of my responsibility to feed my kid - by action or inaction - to the school or any body else. Ever.

Honestly,  I thought this story was a joke or a hoax. But if you click on the links - including this one - you'll see that that state requires child care facilities to make the better decision for the parents. I'll just quote it for you but you should read the whole thing.

CHILD CARE RULE .0901 Food From Home When children bring their own food for meals or snacks to the center, if the food does not meet the nutritional requirements outlined in the Meal Patterns for Children in Child Care, the center must provide additional food necessary to meet those requirements.

It might sound well meaning and innocuous and I could possibly imagine the lunch lady saying, "Hey kid would you like some carrots?"  But take away the parent-provided lunch?  Maybe if the parents sent a bag of chocolate chips, corn nuts, and a beer for the kid to eat, sure I could see that someone would give the kid a better meal. But the mom sent a turkey sandwich, a banana, potato chips, and juice.

Even I can't find anything wrong with that and you know how I am. Chances are if you are sitting at a desk and reading this at work, you' probably having a turkey sandwich and chips. Better look around, friend, that lunch inspector could be headed your way.

Is child obesity a problem? Yes. But there is a world of difference between telling parents "you should" and "you must." You should send your kid with a healthy lunch....but for the state to define what that should be? And then to inspect it and take that lunch away? Are you kidding me? Lets not even get into what your kid prefers to eat, or maybe they just didn't want carrots that day, or maybe you didn't put the carrots in the sack....just throw all that aside.  Let's call this what it is - a state defined diet. Just let that sink in for a while. 
 
You should be mortified.

The grandma is quoted somewhere as saying, "This isn't China, is it?"  I think we should all stop and think for a minute about past governments who took over "parenting" their nation's children. Even if the "lunch inspector" did not say directly to the kid, "Your mommy isn't doing it right, but I'm here to help you."  The intent was pretty clear.

I don't know what your school districts are like, but the school lunches and food allowed on the schools around here are a joke. A healthy snack for the grade school kids is defined as chocolate milk and a bag of Doritos. I'm not even kidding. We were witnesses to this and could not believe it. And to make sure the kids don't get too much sugar, instead of removing the soda vending machines from the school - they replaced all the regular sodas with diet and energy drinks. I hope that you are shrieking with rage at reading this.

Apparently the school in this story apologized. But are you as parents satisfied with that? How about, "The school apologized, fired the lunch inspector, and spent the money improving its lunch offerings to the children by hiring an actual chef who cooks the food on site from real ingredients. Further, they used the money to better educate parents on what good nutrition is - instead of taking away a kids lunch."

Where I came from, the only one who stole your lunch was the class idiot.  And chances are the other kids were giving him a redneck style beat down because they wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing. Especially since everyone knew your mom packed the best lunches.

Parents, I can't speak for you but I hope you are outraged at this. Raw milk may not affect you but when your government takes away your kid's lunch and substitutes their judgment for yours?  There is a lot of mocking about a "slippery slope" but you can't pretend that the next step isn't that "they" are gonna show up and take your dinner off of your table.

If I were you, Parents, I'd grab my sack and tell the government to keep their hands off my kid's lunch.

Hog Harvest 2011 - What Really Happened

We can't say enough about those Tamworth hogs. They were so incredible - I'm even looking forward to getting this year's pigz! So while I'm dreaming of setting up the new hog lot and all the bacon that we'll get next winter - I thought I'd tell you about Hog Harvest 2011.  But first, a disclaimer.....

Gentle Readers, due to the mature content of today's post,  the very young, vegetarians, and folks who don't want to know where their food comes from should look away. There will be pictures! We'll talk about blood and guts and there will be shooting and meat flying everywhere.  Don't read this or scroll down if you might burst into flames or puke on your keyboard! Look away! Here! Look at Nibbles instead! I'M NOT KIDDING. Consider yourselves warned.....

So you may be wondering why I'm even gonna show you? Easy - far and away the single most popular post of my blog is the How to Hog Harvest Step by Step.  You'd think it would be fluffy little ducks or something but nope. Its how to butcher a pig in your own yard.  More and more people are saving money - and learning how to be empowered - by raising their own food. So I figure you'd like to know. Here goes. Ready?

Best day ever - pigz, tractors, and booze. Whoot!

Unlike our sweeping saga (Parts One, Two, Three, and Four) there really wasn't a lot of drama on our butchering day. Actually there wasn't any drama. It all went off without a hitch. We had to wait until the second weekend in December to butcher. This was a little late but we had to wait until we had a couple of really cold days - and we had to coordinate our schedules with our pal, Bourbon Red.

Altho you can butcher in other seasons, waiting until its freezing has its advantages. First, if the ground is frozen you don't have to work in a big muddy mess. Second, its best to allow the pork to hang overnight to chill. You need below 40* weather for food safety and the meat is easier to cut if its well chilled. It also works out better for me if I have a couple cold days and nights in a row. That way I can work on the cutting at an easy pace over a couple of days. When it gets cold our big garage works great.  Of course if you have a huge meat cooler you wouldn't need to rely on "organic refrigeration." 

Bourbon Red and his kids ("the Poults") showed up the night before as its a pretty long drive. After some coffee the next morning we all ran right out to get to work. A couple days before we had set up a pen outside the hog lot so we were ready for action. We set up this pen so that we could confine the pigs for easier handling. And to stay out of the mud that the pigs worked so hard to make all summer.

Leading them out to the new pen where the ground was frozen.

A bucket of corn helped lure the pigs into the holding pen. We secured the gates and then someone sent me up to unplug the electric fence - which we should have done before. By the time I got half way up the hill the shooting was over. By the time I started back down the hill the pigz were being bled out. And that was it.

We used our ancient garden tractor to haul the carcasses up the hill to our work area beside the garage. Once there we used a hose to wash all the dirt and stuff off the carcasses and propped them up on their backs so we could do the gutting. True to our hillbilly ways, we used a 4x4 and a tire. It totally worked.

That's how to gut a pig.

I eagerly stood nearby with my biggest kettle during the gutting so I could get every precious piece of leaf lard - and all the usable organs. The rest of the guts went into a feedbag to be disposed of later. I think for one of the pigz we were so excited that we didn't saw off the head first... I'll admit we were very eager to get to the liver. You know how I love my pate!

Once we got the carcasses gutted we rinsed them really well and had to heave-ho them up onto our makeshift skinning table. This is really why you need a couple of big guys - even field dressed those pigs were huge! We removed the trotters with our handy meat saw.

Making short work of skinnin' them pigz.

For me, skinning is the hardest part. I'm just not very good at it. The trick is to keep your knives extremely sharp, to pull the skin toward you, and make a series of small cuts to keep as much fat on the pig as possible. Start at the hocks on the forelegs and work your way back. Once you've worked your way down the sides and skinned the back leg of the pig,  you can roll the carcass on one side and work on the back, then roll the other way to release the hide.

Then its just a matter of sawing the carcass into halves. Of course.... there's the hard way and the easy way. We grabbed a sawsall with a new blade and made short work of the halving. Yes we did.  Why cut them in half? So they will cool quickly and so they are more easy to manage.

Hanging the carcasses from a rafter in the garage makes sure they are far enough off the ground that your barncats cant reach the meat, and will allow the air to circulate around the meat to chill it as quickly as possible. I think it was about 25* the day we did this which was perfect. Just cut a hole in the meat between the bone and the big tendon in the back leg, push a piece of baling twine thru, and string it up on a hook. We used a 'come-along' secured over a rafter and just cranked it up to the right height.

The skinning table is really just some 2x6's whacked together on a couple of saw horses.

Then there was nothing to do but march victoriously into the house and have some cinnamon rolls and a bunch of coffee. All told it took several hours to get this done. But we weren't in any hurry so we took our time. We had a great day , the work was interesting, and we were wow'd by the size of the hogs and the quality of the meat. And the lard! Oh so much lard!

About this time there is usually some questions so I'll toss out the most common ones and you can let me know if you have more....

Q: Did you cry? Where you scared? Eeeewweeeee! How could you do that?!
A: Nope. Nope. And please calm down. If we can do this, you can do this. We aren't emotionally attached to the pigz at all and by the end of the season, frankly, we are sick of feeding them. But if this isn't your thing then that's OK, everyone has their limits. If you are interested but freaked out, try and find someone to mentor you. Or see if you can help or observe a mobile butcher that will come to your place. Or call these guys up and have them come and teach you.

Q: Why don'tcha just take 'em to the butcher or something?
A:  Why not do it at home? Provided you don't have problems like these jokers, there's no reason you can't. The tools are simple and just about anyone can master the technique. If you are scared, pray for courage. If you are freaked out, focus on the task. If you need help, ask - almost everyone knows someone who hunts, see if they will assist you.

It would have been silly for us to spend the entire day trying to get 2 huge pigs up the hill and into a scary stock trailer just to pay someone to do the work that we can do ourselves. And you know who cheap I am. The only reason we'd take them in to be processed is if for some reason we had to butcher out of season - and the only reason we'd take them in is because we don't have a big enough cooler for a whole pork.

Also I read on another blog that someone got their pork back from the butcher and the liver was funky. They didn't want to take a chance that the pig had been sick or whatnot. So they tossed all of the meat. That breaks my heart. I'd rather be able to see exactly what is going on and have everything under our direct control.

And I think its easier on the pigs. All they knew was that one minute they were happily munching on some corn and the next minute someone was handing them some bacon-angel-wings. They didn't even know what hit them.

Q: Why did you skin them? Aren't you supposed to scald them?
A: I'm not sure that having that much hot water around is such a great idea. And trying to heave-ho these monster pigs into a vat of hot water just sounds like it would be fraught with danger. I don't even think they would fit in a 50 gallon drum and I'm not sure there would be any benefit in buying some kind of specialty tub. One year we torched the pigs and all that really did was remove the hair. We ended up skinning them anyway. I don't think we'd be gaining much by not skinning them - for most of the cuts you'd take the skin off. Besides what I really want to get to is all that lovely fat.

Q: What about hanging them up to gut them? Why didn't you do that?
A: Ugh. For us that just sounds like more work than necessary. Bourbon Red tried this method and it ended in just a big pile of guts everywhere. Gravity is not always your friend.

Q: What tools did you use?
A: Check out this page for a complete list. You'll notice that we just used everyday stuff. And a sawsall. 

Q: What do you do with all the leftover "stuff" and "residue" and um.. heads?
A: Depends. If the weather is fitting we have a huge burn pile. Sometimes we let the chickens peck on the hides for a while. As for the heads... the local garbage guy knows not to look to closely at anything we put out there at the end of the drive.

So that's the way of it. Everyone still with me?

Remember this was just an overview - you can check out the detailed step by step directions of how to butcher a hog here. 

Do you want to learn more about where to get pigs? 

Or what you need to know to get started raising pigs?

Or how to feed pigs cheaply?

Or the benefits of putting pigs on pasture and feeding them from your barnyard?

What do you think - are you ready to give this a try?  Who's excited to get this years feeder pigs and turn them out to pasture?

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Nibbles

There she is....

Nibbles. Large and in charge.  Can you believe she still has about three more weeks until her babies are due?!

Congrats to my pal "J" who's doe just had some stunning kids!

Any body else got babies on the ground?  Happy Monday!

A Complicated Bolognese and a Stunning Lasagna

Back when I lived in civilization I used to make a lasagna which took about six hours to create - this included making the sauce, the pasta, and baking it. At the time the only thing I didn't make was the sausage...and even at the time I thought I could, given the chance.

It all started with bacon that I grew, butchered, and smoked. in my yard. 

Now that I have the chance, not only did I make the sausage - I even grew the pork and butchered it in my yard! I gotta say I'm pretty excited about that. I'll make this again in the spring, when the goats are in milk, and the only thing that won't come from my yard is the wine, a few of the spices, and the wheat for the pasta. But give me time, friends, give me time.

Most of the recipes I post are trying to show how easy it is to make your own food. But if you have a couple of cold days, and the inclination, you can make a complicated bolognese sauce for a stunning lasagna made entirely from scratch.

The battuto gaining flavor.

The bolognese ragu (meat sauce) recipe I have came from someone's old Italian nonna.The instructions are inexact (use "some" of this or "enough" of that) and cover an entire typed page - its more art than science.  But here is a good starting point.  Although I don't support Sunset magazine anymore I do refer to this recipe.  For the pasta, as with all things Italian I start with Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.  I also use her method for cooking the béchamel sauce and assembling the lasagna. Technically you can make this in several hours.

But if you really want to immerse yourself in slow food... do it like this...I stumbled across this site while I was searching for links for this post - can't you just fall into these pictures? See how he says that it takes 3 or 4 hours (at least) of simmering to make the sauce?  That's how to get 'er done. However, I cringed when he used canned tomatoes. Heaven forbid! Can your own, friend.

Marcella and I diverged from these instructions on one just one point - she and I add the milk to the meat and aromatics first...then the wine, tomatoes and such.  What's the difference? In "our" method you cook down the milk until its mostly evaporated and then add the wine so there is less of a milk base. I've done it both ways and for whatever reason I like this way better. But everyone's nonna has an opinion, I'm sure.

I actually made the sauce the day before and let it chill in the fridge overnight.  It must have cooked for about 5 hours until it was rich and hearty.  When I was ready to start working on the pasta I just put the sauce over gentle heat until it simmered.

I don't need no pasta maker (you know who you are).

One of the things I like best about Marcella's book is her stubborn (and correct!) adherence to doing things the old school way. She says in no uncertain terms that using the new whizbang gadgets will not produce the same results as just using your hands and the simplest of tools. Although she begrudgingly provides the instructions for using a pasta machine, there is only one way to make pasta for her and I. We go at homemade pasta mano y mano.. with a rolling pin and a knife.

Lasagna noodles waiting for the pot.

Buying a box of pasta is easy and cheap - but making your own lasagna noodles is a snap and I think my cost of goods was about $0.10. The eggs from the hens were on my counter and I didn't need much flour. There were no real measurements for Marcella's pasta - she says that how much flour and eggs you use depends on things like humidity and the size of the eggs. I used about a cup and a half of flour and 2 good sized eggs and one small pullet egg. The dough was smooth and yellow and beautiful. Did I use semolina? Nope just regular old all purpose flour.

The odds and ends became fettuccine for a quick snack.

Once the pasta was cut, cooked, rinsed, and ready I started assembling the lasagna. Unlike some instructions, Marcella says to butter the bottom of the pan and start with a layer of béchamel sauce, not tomato or meat sauce. And then you just build up the layers. I finished with the béchamel over the top of the noodles and then dotted with some basil I had in the freezer. Then heavily dusted with some of my grated goat cheese and into a hot (400*) oven. About 20 minutes later it was bubbling, browned, and stunning.

Is it worth it to spend two days making one meal? Couldn't I have just grabbed a Stouffer's frozen lasagna? Or just purchased all the ingredients at the store and thrown it together in about 15 minutes? Sure I would have saved time. But what is it worth to taste and enjoy a tradition? What about the value of experiencing what our grandmothers did for us? Wouldn't you love to connect with past generations even if its over one meal?

Most folks are so far removed from their food and their traditions that sometimes you just have to stop and smell the bolognese. Make food with your hands. Remember the effort and work it took to get that food. Breath in the heady smells of summer from that jar of tomatoes and that basil. Retrace all of your steps and all of the effort for making that pork sausage, starting with the day you went and got those feeder piglets. Enjoy being part of the process to make food.

Or you could just go to Olive Garden. But then after a mediocre meal you'd wonder what all the fuss is about and ask yourself, "Who on earth would waste all that time making something from scratch?"

Friends, sometimes you just have to live the traditions to fully appreciate life.

Medieval Life - how fun is this?

Has everyone seen "Christina: A Medieval Life" from BBC? Wow... I'm totally sucked in. I gotta watch the rest of it.

The other thing I'm excited about is the online version of Our Farm Of Four Acres and The Money We Made By it by Miss Coulton.  Thanks to PeterPansDad or the suggestion!

These should keep me entertained as this cold weather comes in. How about you - whatcha reading or watching?

Happy Thursday!