2013 Missouri Vacation

Earlier this summer, Herself came out of the house while I'm building the fence around the "back 40" and tells me she wants a pop up camper so that we can go camping.  She makes a convincing argument; togetherness time for our "tween" girls and younger boys, and both of us really feeling like we have this really brief window in time with these kids- and that window was wide open, but wouldn't be for long.  (Since this conversation we have really had some paradigm shifts in parenting- maybe more on that later)  Herself thought that camping trips would be a good way of doing that.  Neither of us are wild about sleeping on the ground or a tent, so that is what I wound up getting. An older, used Pop-up camper.

 So, we left Sunday morning and headed to The Lake of the Ozarks for a little summer vacation.   We had never been before; Herself, of course, did her usual vast amount of research and preparation, ready to eat meals, agenda, itinerary, scheduling, etc, etc.  So maybe I feel a little guilty about it, but my preparations involving this vacation can be boiled down to this: I bought the camper, then I hooked up to the camper when it was time to leave.  Oh, and yeah, I carried some stuff to the truck...  It is such a blessing to be married to a VERY well organized person!  We lacked nothing, save her camera, which seems to be her only Achilles Heel.  So all camera shots are with phone camera. (It always makes mad to not have her camera)

Anyway, we made it safely with camper trailer to Lake of the Ozarks State Park, on the East and southish side of the lake.  If you haven't ever seen it, Google it, its kind of amazing.  Of course it isn't natural, it was a river dammed up in the late 20's, covering up and destroying dozens of tiny towns, and according to one local, 720 different cemeteries. It powers a hydro electric plant, so of course we had to go check that out!

It wasn't all just field trip for daddy, though.  We did fun stuff for everybody.  We visited some amazing Ozark caverns, (couldn't take our camera in; dumb bats!) We did some shopping at some tourist traps,

and we went to a movie (at the theater!!!) Monster's University, the prequel to Monsters inc.

And of course, we did a lot of swimming, the water was great! refreshing but not too cold.

And we spend a lot of time at the camp, cooking, eating, etc.

One other high-light was we went over these 2 "swinging bridges".  They were really old; the first one was made with 2x6's with 1x12's laid down where the tires were supposed to go.  It was really scary and intense, I told the kids that I wouldn't have done that in any other country but the USA, as it looked totally unreliable.    It was also quite noisy; the growling and groaning of the boards was quite disconcerting.  The second one was way worse; it was shorter and gave the appearance of looking stouter.  As I began to drive across it, I said "oh, this one is steel structured", but nope!  It just had roofing panels laid perpendicularly across it!  That one really popped and squawked!! It was soo loud outside the truck, but inside?  Deathly quiet!!

That was our trip in a nutshell. It was a quick one, and it does seem like it was quite abbreviated, but I need to ease into these changes slowly.  I don't get off the farmlet very often, and its kind of hard to get away from my livestock.

Here are some more random pictures:

LOTS of pictures of Mr. Take My Picture Daddy, Please.

Take my Picture, Daddy Please, again.

Summertime is upon us.

So Herself was busting my chops yesterday about not blogging; like so much of my life, I do it in bursts, rather than slow and steadily. We have had  quite a few changes around here since I blogged last, and I do need to catch up with chronicling some things.  Right before Jonathon and Michaela returned to China, Jonathon and I decided that I just needed to take the plunge and get some sheep.  That's fine and all, but what are sheep without fence? Somebody else's sheep, that's what.  So Jonathon and I proceed to create fence around the "back 40" of our place.  It was really fun to show Jonathon all the details of building fence that I learned as a boy: making (the visible part at least) really straight, posts uniform distance apart, and the same height, and actual fencing nice and tight. Oh, and corner posts really strong.  All of this was pretty foreign to him culturally, but made perfect sense to his personality.  He really got into it.  Unfortunately, we only got about 1/10th of it done while he was here; unfortunately for him, and unfortunately for me, as well.

Anyway, I got it done by myself; well, I had a lot of help from my kids.  Wifey encouraged me to take the kids with me, and I sort of thought that they wouldn't be that much help to build fence, but I was really amazed at how much help they really were to just have around.  That, and I have always found my own company exceedingly boring, so its always nice to have company.  But I got it completed after several weeks of obsessing about it every evening and all weekend long, and brought home 2 meat sheep that I bought from a friend.  I just bought what she had; one Katahdin, and one Dorper, both ewes. Then last week I threw the family in the truck and ran down to Ark City and bought a pair of lambs, one ewe lamb, and one Ram lamb; they are called Painted Desert Sheep. Here is a picture of my lamb's sire:

The coloration is different; mine is nearly all black, but the horn structure is what is impressive, so I thought I should show a picture of what he will look like rather than what he does look like.  The DPS's are also a hair sheep, so they don't need sheared, same as my other sheep. They are a meat sheep as well.

This weekend, I put a small gate into the back pasture area from the chicken pen so that the chickens could get out and forage in the pasture.  I always liked the idea of free range chickens, because it truly changes the taste and color of the eggs, but Herself has always been opposed to chicken poop all over the sidewalks and porches, (me too, actually) but couldn't bring myself to build pasture fence just for chickens, now they have it! They are really tearing up the bugs and greenery and loving it!

I was thinking about how hands off the sheep are; I don't need to feed them at all, when I got to thinking that I will have to feed them over the winter when all the weeds and grasses are dormant.  So I was considering planting a little area of wheat so that they can pasture it off in the winter and reduce my out-of-pocket expenses.  I had about given up on the idea, because I don't have the equipment to till the soil of that large of an area, nor do I have the motivation to till it with my rototiller or shovel, when I remembered that I have 5 little tilling machines!

They don't look like super motivated farm workers; I realize that.  But when I had them in my garden prior to planting it, they were sure little tilling machines! I've sectioned an area off and fenced it; but I really feel like I need a super duper good fencer to make sure they don't wander off into the neighbor's pasture, so I'm waiting to heal up a little from buying all the sheep before I make another farm oriented purchase before I turn them loose in my new little area. I think it will work out well; one doesn't plant wheat or rye until the fall, and I usually butcher the hogs around October, so it seems like it will work out swimmingly.  I am really interested in this concept of pasturing hogs, I could see this going somewhere.

The oldest boy is interested in turkeys; tonight we're going to do a little research to see which breed would be best fitted for our farmlet.

Oh, and by the way, the last batch of Root Beer turned out great!

burn out

The strangest thing happened to me this morning; I woke up about 3:00 am (this is not the strange part) and was thinking about what I was going to do around the farm today. Then I realized that I was mistaken and that I thought today was Saturday, but was actually Friday.  When I realized that, I really was discouraged about going in to work.  That is the strange part.  I never don't want to go in to work.  Its not that I always want to do everything that I do at work, and its not like I don't love my time off, but over all, I love what I do.  I think that this was the first time that I actually did not want to go to work just as an over all feeling in the nearly 5 years that I have owned my own business (or businesses).
In my Sunday School class, we have been talking about Christian disciplines.  Oddly enough, writing a journal was the first on the list.  That seems strange to me; I guess I can see the merit in it, but when I think of Christian disciplines, I think of things listed in the Bible like fasting, regular prayer, meeting regularly with the saints, etc.  But whatever, my blog needs some attention anyway, and I can't stand to pick up a pen and move it around at a snails pace, so I guess this morning I will use this as my format, and journal about my work discouragement.  So here is my analysis:

Work:
I push myself pretty hard. That's how things get done, is by me pushing. I don't push hard all the time, all day long, and I don't feel like a work-a-holic or anything; in 5 years, I've only worked one or two Saturday mornings, never on Sunday, and I'm home by 5:30 or my wife knows about it by 5:00. Its true that I go in pretty early some days, and catch up on office stuff, but I figure on days like today that I am up anyway, it doesn't even count as time away from my family.  If they are all asleep, what difference does it make?  But anyway, it feels like I seldom turn down a job or a responsibility.  I am not at all opposed to delegating, and have excellent people to delegate to; but feel like if I have a few days that all my responsibilities come home at once to roost, it is really over whelming!  I guess that was what yesterday was about.  Thursday, I personally dealt with: gutters, gutter covers, fascia repair soffit covers, window well covers, siding, screen replacement, patio covers, bidding large commercial awnings, pouring small concrete footings, window replacements, and then on the roofing end of it we had to deal with a standing seam metal roof, asphalt shingles, structural metal panels skylight panels, and perhaps worst of all: helpless, hapless insurance adjusters that want to argue about details of an upper-end "designer" metal shingle that they admittedly don't know anything about, but still argue when you answer their questions of "how did you come up with this number" with the statement "I know this because I was on the roof the LAST TIME THIS STINKING ROOF WAS DONE!!!" THAT'S HOW I KNOW IT, how many of these $900.00 per square roofs have you installed?  Its a little different when you're standing on the roof doing it than reading about it." (I didn't really say all that last part). Anyway, the list goes on: then body shop stuff, whether to advertise or not, and a firearm transfer... is that all? Man, I'm already tired.  I guess on top of all this is maybe since Gary has been gone so much lately.  I kind of feel like he doesn't have that much involvement in anything but his newest business, but maybe in his absence I've come to the realization that he does more than I think?

Home:
Home is generally much simpler, much easier.  However in the last couple of weeks, I've been pushing pretty hard here too.  I've been building fence like a fiend, cause the sheep were coming, whether the fence was done or not.  Evenings and all weekends, after doing all the chores of the existing livestock (I don't do the rabbits); the good part of this is that thanks to Wifey, I've realized how much help my kids can be; if they are just outside with me and willing to help.  So building fence a planning the next project,  the back porch or deck area.  We have live here for around 7 years using a rickety trailer house style portable stairs to access the back door.  Well, mama's gonna get a new deck!  Maybe.  We will see how much it costs.  I bought a pop up camper to go on vacation, I need to take the time to mess with it and see what needs done to it before we leave with it.

The main thing is this; none of this normally feels like work to me.  I don't feel really ambitious or like I want to take over the world or anything (necessarily, I mean, I would be fine with that...) its just that, firstly, I thrill at getting things done, finishing things, and taking on new challenges, and secondly, have really been forced to diversify my company/companies in order to keep things going as our economy drooped and insurance work dried up.

In which I describe one failure and one success...

First, I'll start with the good news: Canning the meat was (this time) a success!  No nasty accidents like last time.   Notice shiny new canner below, particularly note that the lid is sporting a pressure gauge. Also I read the instructions, instead of watching some loser on YouTube do it, which I found to be very helpful, because I learned that I did nearly EVERYTHING wrong!!!

 Below is the finished product:  One quart jar of canned pork.  Bring it on, Zombies! I was almost giggling watching the bubbles still coming to the surface, and listening for the "pop" of the lid.

And, now, an update on the Root Beer Blog:  BIG failure: After continuing to mess with it, we finally got it to ferment, but then it tasted less like a Root Beer and more like something that we scooped up out of a Root Puddle.  FAIL!  I think that maybe in this case I tried too hard, I should find a simpler recipe...  I'll try again.  Maybe I should try the finished product before I post the recipe; I could see myself reading my own blog and thinking, "I'll try that!" and failing all over again.

meat canning disaster

Lest people think that I imagine my life as one endless string of wonderful  successes after another, I have a story to share about my Saturday morning.
You see, in my journey to becoming ready for the Zombie Apocalypse, or whatever catastrophe may befall us, I've decided that I need to resurrect the fine art and science of canning, specifically, canning meat.
I mentioned in my last post going to the Kingsley's place last week to get my little piggies.  Anna gave Herself a couple quarts of venison meat that she had canned.  That really got my juices going, and I decided that this is something that I should be interested in, because with raising 5-6 pigs, I could save a bunch of money if I butchered them myself, and that could be the answer to the problem of not having enough freezer space.  I could butcher a hog, smoke half or a quarter of it, make some premium roasts or steaks, and if I messed any cuts up, being the raw rookie that I am, I could make sausage out it or just can it!
So, buttressed with this flash of brilliance, I proceeded to research obsessively  about pressure cooker, canning meat, etc.  In doing this, I also realized that there is a WHOLE culture of people who also obsess about being prepared in the event of disaster, and they even have labels and names for it all.  Amazing what you can find on YouTube... Maybe some of you have heard of "Preppers"?  I guess it's a TV show; I had no idea, I've still not seen it.  And something else about shtf.  Whatever that is, some sub-culture thing I guess; anyway, it's not like I want to join a club earning merit badges or anything, I'm just interested in taking care of my own.
So, in a rare moment of forethought, I did decide to give it a trial run before I killed a pig and went "whole hog".

And this is what it looks like:













Cube the meat and stuff it in the jar; it's not Rocket Science or so I thought, anyway.  I won't go into a detailed explanation of how to do all this stuff since if you read it to the end, you will realize I'm no one to take canning advise from.
I borrowed my mom's pressure cooker and put the thawed roast that I had crammed into the jar into it, turned the heat on, let it get to boiling, plopped the weight on top and walked away.  I came back into the shed where I had it all set up and cooking to check on it several times.


















I could hear the steam releasing, just barely "chuckling" along; it sounded like this: "shhhhhhhhhh, chick, shhhhhhhhhh, chick, shhhhhhhhhh, chick, shhhhhhhhhh, chick..."  I told my self that I remembered my mom using it as a kid and it sounded faster, like there was more steam coming out, like this: "chick, chick, chick, chick..." So, I turned it up.  About 5 minutes later I'm standing there with my neighbor admiring my handiwork, when that old pressure cooker started talking: "BAMMMMMM!" because that pop off valve blew and steam blasted out of the little hole! It just kept coming and coming.  From the floor to the top of my shed is 22 feet, I'm sure that geyser would have blasted twice that height if it was outside. That's a good way to humidify a place in a hurry!  I hurried over and shut off the heat, but Wow! what an experience, I bet you never catch me bending over that crazy thing while its cooking...
Oh, well, back to the drawing board, I guess.
Oh, and as of right now, it seems that my Root Beer was a dismal failure as well, it seems (not done yet) that slight fermentation process (kind of a yogurty sort of fermentation) isn't going to happen, so it will be completely flat instead of naturally carbonated.  :(

Strike 2... 

Pigs, snow, garden, etc

We survived, and yes, even thrived through the record-breaking snow storm of  '13.  We lost power for a while, just long enough to feel like we wanted to hook up the generator that I had brought home in advance, just in case, but this made me realize that I need to figure out how to do that more efficiently.

Just for the record and for my own memory, we received 14" with one storm, over about 2 days, then another front moved through a day later and dumped another 6" on top of that, with little melting in between.  This was certainly more snow on the ground at once than I have ever seen.  Luckily, I had brought the Gehl tele-handler home from work and was able to strap on a reinforced piece or two of plywood and use it fairly well for a snow plow.  It really warmed my heart to see all us rural Americans busting out snowdrifts for ourselves and for our neighbors, with trucks, tractors, four wheelers, and forklifts. Most of us didn't have to get out, it wouldn't make any difference on a day like that, but I love seeing that independent American spirit of "I will get out, even if I don't have to get out."  

Somebody, some local farmer that I don't even know, just drove down the road with his big tractor and busted out the drifts in the driveways, and made a lap or two through everybody's driveway, just to pack it down so that people could at least have a chance at getting out.  He didn't attempt mine, probably because it's nearly a half mile long; he just broke through the entryway of the drive.  That's ok, we did just fine without it...

I also got a bunch more trees cut down out in the pasture; I may have mentioned how encouraged I am about it.  At this rate, I may have pasture before I am 90 years old! We burnt some colossal piles of brush, too.

Here are some pictures of our place that I took:

Above is a picture of a snow drift just outside of our driveway that is as high as my side mirrors of my pickup.  Glad I didn't have to bust through that one!

At that time we had no livestock at all, but now we are getting back into the swing of things.  We now have 30 chicks of a fryer/layer split, and 6 little piglets.

We went and got them from our friends the Kingsley's, who run the perfect little farm with nearly every imaginable farm animal on it. Sooo jealous! Sunday we got accidentally inspired and got the whole garden's old weeds pulled up (left from last years neglect because I built a shop loft instead) and then when I showed Brother in Law Jonathon my Roto-tiller, he was so taken with it, that he tilled the whole garden with it! Wednesday and Thursday, I planted Potatoes, radishes, onions, and beets.  No turnips, though; they couldn't be found anywhere in my town.  I looked at Westlake, Lowes, Walmart, and Home Depot!  I'm pretty sure it's a conspiracy; I'm just not real sure what the point is, though...

So we took advantage of some of the time we were "holed up" and made some German Sausage.  My two middle kids pictured here.  This I was able to pull off without barking at my kids or Wifey.  (See last post)

Finished product:

Root beer

So, I'm making Root Beer.  There's no way to say that and sound clever or cool; you just have to say it.  The only possible way to do it economically would be to go hunting, digging, and gathering for all the ingredients in the forests (which we are a little short of in south central KS) and dig up sassafras root, and 10 other ingredients that we don't have, with the exception of Dandelion Root, which I happen to have plenty of around here.  That would be very expensive in time, instead of very expensive in money buying all the different ingredients.

Lets just say, that if I would have "invested" the same money that I put into Root Beer ingredients into actual Root Beer; I would have never had to buy Root Beer again- EVER! Enough said about that, I'm not here trying to convince anyone of the merits of making it yourself; if anything, I'd try to steer people away from it.  Not to mention, I'm sure if you've grown up drinking commercially manufactured Root Beer, I doubt very much that it tastes anything like something made with real roots.

But the good news is it is really quite easy to make, after I spent literally 3 hours pursuing the internet scavenging the ingredients (Concentrates are cheap too!  But, noooo, not good enough for this dummy) to get everything I needed.  For my own reference, here is the recipe:

homemade root beer recipe

YIELD: 2 quarts 

PREP: 20 mins

COOK: 3 to 4 days (fermentation) 

READY IN: 23 mins 

Seasoned with sassafras, winter green, sarsaparilla and eight other herbs and spices, amassing the ingredients for this classic homemade root beer recipe can prove challenging. I recommend purchasing from Mountain Rose Herbs which stocks even the most obscure wild-crafted and organic herbs and spices. (note from Dan: not so much...)

Ingredients 1/4 cup sassafras root bark 

1/4 cup winter green leaf 

2 tablespoons sarsaparilla root 

1 tablespoon licorice root 

1 tablespoon ginger root 

1 tablespoon dandelion root 

1 tablespoon hops flowers 

1 tablespoon birch bark 

1 tablespoon wild cherry tree bark 

1 teaspoon juniper berries 

1 cinnamon stick 

1 cup unrefined cane sugar 

1/2 cup ginger bug or fresh whey or 1 packet kefir starter culture Instructions 

1.  Bring two and one-half quarts filtered water to a boil and stir in sassafras, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, licorice, ginger, hops, juniper, birch and wild cherry bark. 

2.  Reduce the heat to a slow simmer and simmer the roots, berries, barks, leaves and flowers for twenty minutes. 

3.  After twenty minutes, turn off the heat and strain the infusion through a fine-mesh sieve or a colander lined with cheesecloth into a pitcher. Stir unrefined cane sugar into the hot infusion until it dissolves and allow it to cool until it reaches blood temperature. 

4.  Once the sweetened infusion has cooled to blood temperature, stir in the ginger bug or fresh whey and pour into individual bottles (preferably flip-top bottles which are easy enough to find online) leaving at least one inch head space in each bottle.

 5.  Allow the root beer to ferment for three to four days at room temperature, then transfer to the refrigerator for an additional two days to age. 

6.  When you’re ready to serve the root beer, be careful as it, like any other fermented beverage, is under pressure due to the accumulation of carbon-dioxide, a byproduct of fermentation. Open it over a sink and note that homemade sodas, like this one, have been known to explode under pressure. Serve over ice.

I got this recipe from Nourished Kitchen, LLC.  

There are much less complicated recipes out there, though.  But, I didn't want to pick my recipe just because it was "easy" (a "four-lettered word" in my childhood home) so I picked the hardest, instead.  It really was simple to make; it fills the house with a very heady "Rootish" smell.  If you know what fresh ginger and fresh sassafras smell like, imagine it brewing in your kitchen for most of the evening.  Pretty fun!

The tough thing is that most of the reason (excuse?) I do this sort of thing is that "it is for the kids."  To have something fun to do with my kids.  The problem is; however, that this totally didn't happen last night.  The interest level of making Root Beer doesn't hold a candle to the level of fascination that, say, watching their uncle obsessively play "Temple Run" on the iPad does.  On top of that, if they happen to follow their little noses into the kitchen, they get barked at because I'm already irritated because I'm having to elbow Wifey out of the way because she has the nerve to be attempting to prepare my all time favorite meal for me while I am making Root Beer.  (before, during, and after supper.)

Now that I think about it; Jeez, what a jerk.  Sometimes I really impress myself with what a selfish jerk I am.  Blogging about it this morning makes me rethink my experience, and makes me realize it was probably a super crappy experience for everyone but me.  I guess I might spend a good share of the rest of my life bitter and alone after everyone leaves me, but at least I'll know how to make real Root Beer! In the future, I'll maybe try a little more intentionally to include the kids, and not do it on top of Herself making me supper.  Especially if she's making me Curry!!