In which I chronicle the advent of a bottle lamb

Last Sunday (01/19/2014), I came home from church and inspected Dottie, our new mama ewe, her 5 day old lamb.  I noticed right off that Dottie obviously didn't feel good, so after consulting my dad, I raced off to town and bought penicillin and wormer in the hopes of saving her. It did nothing for her and she died later that evening.  Herself and I caught the little lamb and brought her inside the shed and put her in the crate; I had some milk re-placer that I used for the hogs so stuck a feeding tube down her throat and gave her some just to keep her in calories until I could get some real formula for her.

After that, I spent hours trying to get her to take the nipple from a bottle; it was quite foreign to her, and the milk just trickled in for several days until Wednesday, when she truly figured it out.  Now that she knows where the milk comes from, she knows who her mama really is: ME!

Christmas break, part 2

It is soo nice when there is nasty weather around Christmas time, it is a naturally slow time for us, and it turns into a VERY slow time for us! (work wise)  I get to soak up some days at home, get some stuff done, hang out with my kids, etc.

Here are my "Curly-Cuteys;" rag curls are a Christmas eve tradition by now, done by family friend and hair specialist Haley.

Below is our first turkey butchering; the oldest boy and I raised them, fed them, and butchered them together.  He did a really great job of being responsible for them when they were alive and was super interested and helpful in the butchering and the processing of this first one as well.

I smoked it last night, but alas, it did not turn out that great.  It was pretty dry; I don't know what I did wrong... But it may have been a little tough naturally; his name was "Blinky" because he could only see out of one eye, so maybe he had a hard time foraging.

Christmas Break 2013

During this break from school, with all the kids being around and without as much direction as they are accustomed to, I felt that they needed some encouragement to get along with each other, as direction-less children often lead to conflict.  We packed up and headed to Panera Bread for breakfast that first Saturday morning, and they suffered through Daddy lecturing on and on and on and on and on about being Generous, about being Selfless, but mostly about being Respectful Of Each Other.  I told them that any time we hear angry yelling, hitting, or arguing, that was an indication of 2 people handling conflict incorrectly.  The correct was is to state: "It feels you are being disrespectful toward me because..."  To which the answer is ALWAYS: "I'm sorry that you feel that I was being disrespectful; I will stop doing...", even if they feel that they weren't being disrespectful.
The reason for that is because the point I'm trying to get across to these kids is that it is really about how our actions make the other people in our lives feel, not our intentions.  I know, this seems a little elemental, but in our house there seems to be a lot of conflict. We look at friends and family who have similar sized and aged kids as we, and are rather amazed at the lack of conflict in their home.  I don't understand this; is it me? Or is it just my DNA structure that I have passed down to my kids, the DNA that doesn't mind conflict?  Anyway, this is my experiment, it seems to be going well the first 5-6 days.  The nice thing of it is, the lack of structured days allows those who don't catch the vision to sit in their chairs quietly for a period of time, or in extreme cases, in their room for extended lengths of time.  We are usually busy enough that neither one of these two options are very viable...
Mostly, I posted this to look back and see; to be able to remind myself of doing this, and to gauge the effectiveness.  At some point in time, my kids will read it and roll their eyes and say "Oh yeah, I remember THAT Christmas break!"

Butcher day

Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was this little piggy's butcher day.  This was the first time that I have slaughtered a hog with the intention of butchering it.  I did it twice last year, with pigs half this one's size, and just cooked the whole hog. This year, even my smoker trailer couldn't have accommodated this whole hog; it weighed in at 340 pounds!!!  That is around a third larger than the average butcher weight of 225.  He was remarkably not very fatty; he was in great shape from spending most of his life with plenty of room to run around.  I had friend James Alongi along to help, and good thing, too.  Jason Nather also swung by to chat and wound up elbow deep in pig blood; he couldn't help himself from jumping in.

Below is the carcass, ready to be reduced into primal cuts.

One side of pork belly:

I know this is a funny picture; but I included it, because it is me illustrating out loud how stinking heavy just one of  these hams were.  It was nearly everything I had to haul it across the room.

My kiddos, on the job! Pulling all the little scraps off the bones for the "grind."

Bacons and Hams brining away in the fridge, getting ready for the smoker next week.

We did something different this year, Wifey even got on board with it.  We rendered lard!  The by-productof making lard is cracklings, which I ordinarily love, but I didn't feel so great when I woke up this morning, so when I walked into the butcher room to check on them; I about lost my cookies.  The smell of the fat rendering overnight in a little room was a little overpowering for someone who is sick.

And of course, the lard, gelling nicely.  

Anyway, this proved to be a bit more difficult than I expected, but in a sense, I expected that, and didn't care.  I know I get in over my head on most of my projects, but I usually find my way out of them okay...

A feckless moment!

Wednesday, in honor of my 14th anniversary, Wifey and I decide to go out to coffee together first thing in the morning. She was coming into town anyway to work in the office, so I told her I would take the kids to school, since I wasn't going in directly to the office; I wasn't in my usual hurry.  I got the kids all loaded up in my pickup and while giving them my usual schtick and jive, this time about not being able to find the way to their school, since I'd not taken them before, and hoping to not forget to stop and let them out, etc. I didn't hardly realize it, but the 2 youngest boys were eating it up, believing it. So after it dawned on me that they were believing it, I took a "wrong" turn, avoiding the highway, and went a way that they had never gone before.

This was a total blast because the boys were in the back, nervous as cats at a rocking chair factory, telling each other "Ohhh, I don't want to be late!" and "I just want to go to school!" and me in the front, pouring fuel on the fire: "hmmm, none of this looks familiar..."  and "This doesn't look right at all..."  and, of course: "I know what we can do; we will just follow the first school bus we find to IT'S school, and you can just go to school THERE!" The girls were hip, though, throwing in their own comments like: "I'm pretty sure I recognize that house from last time we went to Missouri..."  and "We are soooo lost!"

Anyway, we drove right there, maybe 5 minutes slower than they usually take, and by then I had them thoroughly convinced that we were approaching Wichita, and that I was going to push them out the door at the first school we found.  I thought the jig was up as we approached their school, but I guess they didn't recognize it since we approached it from the North instead of the South, the younger one sees all the kids unloading from school buses, and says: "Hey, Daddy, that school says 'Yoder!' Oh! Ooohh!"  (the realization dawns...)

Poor kids... But darn, I do love to be a daddy.

As a side note, here is a picture of my youngest after he walked into our creek that was completely covered in leaves.  He wasn't very happy about the picture...

a horrible place to wake up...

Heh; is there anything else really to say?  So, I'll say it again; Heh.  I guess on a chilly November night, one might be looking for somebody to snuggle with, but really?

Why do I do this to myself...

Sometimes I find my life really rewarding; sometimes I find it really overwhelming. I just came in from building 7 little 4X4 sheep pens around the places where I'm going to have fruit trees planted here sometime in the middle of the week.  The term "sheep pens" is something of a misnomer, though; they are going to keep the sheep out as the sheep like to eat small saplings and bark and leaves.  I spent all stinking afternoon out there, barely finishing before dark, and spent probably 25.00 per each on them, (yeah, not counting the stupid tree) between the panel fencing and the posts.  I bet I've planted (counting re-planting) close to 35-40 fruit/nut trees, not even counting the maples and Austrian Pines, and thus far received nearly nothing out any of them. So far, we've eating roughly 6 Apricots, 1 Peach, and maybe 5 Pears.  I've dumped Hundreds of dollars into these stupid trees.  I thought my turkey meat was expensive!

Someday, I'm certain, it's going to really pay off.  I'm sure that there will be a year that I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands, we will be close to starving, I've done a good job of taking care of the trees, it will have been a good wet year, there will be hardly any bugs, and there will be lots of fruit on them.  I will pick all this luscious fruit, can it, and we will all be full and happy and watch everybody else slowly starve to death around us, and we will just sit back and laugh and laugh and wonder at the cleverness of me...  Why else would one go to sooo much trouble just to have fruit or nut trees.  Jeez, it would be one thing if I had nothing else to do.

I think that I will issue a self imposed moratorium on fruit trees for my farmlet.  At least until I start reaping and benefiting from some of my labor.