Rabbit Butcher

Today was yet another learning experience here on the farm. I learned how to kill, skin and gut a rabbit, then cook the meat AND I'm in the process of tanning the hide with methods used by Native Americans.

 This is me holding the rabbit's head with Matt Hess the educational director here at the farm. Matt held the rabbit up by it's back legs then karate chopped the back of it's neck, killing it instantly. It was seriously cool. Then he guided me through the rest. The skin pulled off like a glove. Then we broke open the skull and collected the brains for the hide. We put the feet and tail on top of the green house to dry out. Anyone want a rabbit's foot key chain?

This is the rabbit brain we took out. The Native American way of tanning a hide is scraping the hide of all the fleshy parts as the first step. Then you boil the brains, put them in a blender with some warm water and blend. You take that solution and scrub it into the skin. Wait an hour and do it again. Then you roll it up and place some where cool but make sure it won't dry out. Then the next day you scrub the brain solution on it again and then smoke it over a fire and ta-da you have a nice animal hide without any use of chemicals.

I made a frame out of some 12 gage wire and slipped the rabbit hide over it. Then I spent a long time scrapping and scrapping. Right now, I've scrubbed the brain solution on twice and it's rolled up in a bag in my room for the night. We will see tomorrow how everything else goes.

I'm really excited I get to learn how to do this. This is what I love about this farm. You just say hey, I want to learn how to do this and some one says, ok, let's do it! They really want you to learn what you want to. It's awesome! I'll keep you all posted on how it turns out!

Picture Time

Things have been so incredibly busy for me. Full time student, this way over full-time job, and with the recent explosion of the presence of Jesus, I'm doing church related things 4 times a week. I love all of it though. Here are a few pics. I lost my little chip to load pics from my phone to my computer so I had to txt message them all to my email and then transfer them to here. So I have so many more photos but loading them all that way would take forever, so until I find my memory card converter thing-a-meh-jig this is what you get.

 Boar goat playing on a board that I nailed to one of the trees in the back pasture. Oneas and I started dreaming of some kind of things we could make for the goat's to climb on.

This is Nathan's aquaponic syster he built in the greenhouse after the farm saw how well my system worked. On the left is a shallow grow bed with rocks. It is full of plants now. On the right is the tank. On top are plants floating in a thin board on top of the water with their roots directly in the water. The fish are all in there. His system can support 1,000 fish. It's super awesome. I put my 50 big fish in there which I will be harvesting next week!!! We are going to have a big farm fish fry. 

I was Annali's first test subject for her face painting booth for farm day. I think she did a great job, eh? A goat...how appropriate. 

This is Elizabeth. I have no idea what's going on here, but why not put it on the internet, right?

 So the man right next to me is named Virgil. We are on a bridge crossing over I-35. I saw him up there dressed in all black and waving a staff back and forth. I wondered what he was doing so... I pulled over and walked up there, introduced myself and asked what he was doing. He began to tell me he is just praying for everyone driving and for the city of Waco. He had some pretty awesome stories. This is one of those things were people might disagree with what he is doing because he does it in a "weird" way but if you get tangled up in that then you frustrate the grace of God. God can work through anything.

Elizabeth with her new rabbit addition. Cutest thing I've ever seen. The rabbit's name is Helen. 

 This ladies and gents is.... (drum roll please)... Goat Mountain!!! So... Austin and I got done with our work a little early and didn't want to start another task so we embarked on the start of this mountain. We then gained Josh and James in the afternoon and thus completed this masterpiece.

That's right. The center piece is an old bunk bed. There is a ramp going off on 3 sides of it. The ramps are covered in singles in hopes that it will sand the hooves down a little so maybe we have to hoof trim less. 

 I took this awesome panorama photo of the farm tonight. The sky was gorgeous!

My friend Ali works at this store in town. We went into the back of the store where the break room is and there was this cart full of these new things. If you know me, you know I couldn't resist doing this. Haha!

Long Time

Well, a lot has happened. It's been really rough here at the farm. I will just high light some major events. Some of this might be a little gross, ya know... goats. Let's start with something good.

It was my turn to lead devotions for the farm a couple weeks ago. I basically did the same thing I did last time. I wrote down just 2 passages each day and told people to go off by themselves and read and pray. I also decided to do prayer meetings every night that week. We met for an hour each night, Monday through Friday. It was a really awesome time. God really moved during this week. We had a healing happen during these meetings. We had a baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. This person has become completely different after this happened. It has been so encouraging to watch him become instantly mature. I have seen a lot of fruits from these meetings and I'm sure the farm will see them for years to come.

So about 3 weeks ago, I was working up at the dairy, repairing some things. Chris came running in saying that some of the goats were injured and that a couple dogs had just come onto the farm. Two pit-bulls came onto the farm and attacked my dairy goat herd at about 9:30 a.m. The boys tackled the dogs and got them caged up. I grabbed my first aid goat kit and ran down the road. I was not prepared for what I was going to see. I expected a few scratches. What I found was #4 Daisy with the side of her udder hanging off. That is what you see in the picture.

#35 Leah, had a some really bad gashes in her face. This is her after I bandaged her up because the cuts were so insanely deep. #30 also had some damage but it was really minor scratches. I took Daisy into the Vet as soon as I could. He looked her over and said it was going to cost $500-$800 to fix her. It wasn't worth it to us to fix her. I brought her back to the farm and we put her down the next morning. Daisy was our top milk producer and was a really great milker. It was a really depressing day. I don't think we are suing the owners but the owner has offered to come work off the damage.

Nathan (on the right) just finished up his pastured pork project. He had 5 pigs which he raised on pastures with a very small, a mean... seriously tiny amount of grain. They ate slop and grass and of course all the goat's milk and whey they wanted! We butchered one pig at the farm. The guys who did it kept commenting on the lack of fat on the animal. I think the project was a success over all.


 

One day when I got out of the shower I kept hearing this sound like something clinking against glass. I finally looked up at the glass bowl over my light fixture in my bathroom to notice the shadow of something you just never want to see. I got up there and pulled down the bowl and looky looky what I found in side. Yep... a scorpion in the bowl of my light fixture in the CEILING! What the heck?! I kindly let it go outside and then "accidentally" stepped on it. 

Ok, so this week has been the worst week for me so far at the farm. I had one doe come down with gangreness mastitis. Her udder turned black and she got extremely sick. I had to shoot her. It was not what I expected it to be like. I thought it would actually be easier to shoot her then cutting the throat like we do for butchering. This was a million times harder to do. It was a lot to take in and I was able to hold it together. Later that day I went to let in the dry goats from the back pasture and what did I find, our buck laying on the ground...dead. We have no idea why he died. We decided to fore go the autopsy to pay for a new buck. The picture is of our buck Merlin. He was a good dude. We will miss him. After his death is when I heard the saying, "goat's are just animals looking for a place to die." After my time here I truly understand this saying and it's 100% true. 

After all that, I called Eric from Caprine Royale (http://www.caprinoroyale.com) to hook me up with a new buck. He put me throw to Caroline at TLC farms in Franklin, TX. She breeds show Nubians. (www.tlc-farms.com) So we picked up this good lookin' stud to the right named Fresno. He is 6 months old and a little short but he should get the job done. Haha. He mom placed 9th at nationals and his great-grandmother placed at nationals as well. He comes from a great milk line and a blood line of champions.




Other things happening at the farm. I have scheduled a few field trips to other dairies to learn about their operation and also get pointers to better care for our goats. I have learned SO MUCH! The biggest thing I have taken away from the trips so far is that we are like dinosaurs on the feed scene. We need to really adjust what we are feeding our goats and start some more preventative measures for our goat health. I will post more about this when I actually make some changes and explain all that in detail. We visited Caprine Royale which I talked about above. You are welcome to visit their site. Yesterday we visited a dairy connected to Homestead. Dairy Meadow Farms run by a sweet couple, was the most I've learned in such a short time about goats. They are a soap producer looking to starting selling grade A raw goat's milk. (http://dairymeadowsoaps.com/) Feel free to order some soap if you would like. I went home with a shampoo bar that I'm really excited to start using. I'm excited to get to work on changing some things to better the health of our goats while increasing milk production and enhancing the flavor of our milk!

I will try harder to update this blog. Some times the stories I have to share are just not fun to talk about so I put it off and this goes on and on. Well, until next time.

Laundry Soap Making

Alright, I have something awesome to share with you! As all of you know I'm in love with this organization in Kansas City called Urban Farmin' Guys. They recently posted a video on their site about making your own homemade laundry soap, 10 gallons for $2.00! Well, of course this intrigued me greatly and I sent the video to my mom. Now that I'm home we decided to make it.

Things you will need:

Washing Soda

Borox

Fels-Naptha Bar Soap 

2 5gallon buckets (with lids if you will store your soap in them)

Step 1: Grate the bar of soap into a stainless steel pot. The video says to just add one cup of water but I ended up using 3 cups of water. 

Step2 : Melt down the soap. This will take any where from 10-20 minutes. I couldn't get it melted ALL the way. I still had a few gooey pieces when I was done melting it.

Step 3: Fill up one of the buckets half way with hot water. You can just use tap water, no special water needed. Pour your melted soap into the bucket. Add 1/2 cup of washing soda and 1 cup Borox. Stir til it is all dissolved. Fill the rest of the bucket up with hot water. Cover and let sit for 24 hours. 

Step 4: 24 hours later, your mixture will be gelled up. You will need to stir it up and break apart the globs as much as you can. Separate the mixture evenly between to 5 gallon buckets. Fill both buckets with hot water and stir. 

Step 5: Storing your soap. You can recycle any type of bottles. Old laundry soap bottles, milk jugs, water jugs, tea containers, soda liters, etc or just keep it in the buckets if you have lids on them. 

10 gallons should be about 160 loads. Use 1 cup per load. We added a little extra washing soda to our soap, if you want to do that, feel free. You can use this soap as a pretreater as well. As far as the smell... it smells amazing!

This is the video from the urban farmin' guys website that they posted.

Now go make soap and save money!!! 

http://theurbanfarmingguys.com/

Pictures

 A couple of weeks ago we had some surprise kids born! Jess and I were hoof trimming our dry herd that lives in our back pasture. We have one doe out there that we never saw go into heat. So we just left her out there thinking she would probably never get pregnant. When we let the goats back out in the pasture after hoof trimming the little day old twins were huddled together under a tree. They are super cute and super tiny!

This is the little girl.

This is the little boy. 

Ali and her mom with the new babies. 

The babies in their box they love to cuddle and hide in. 

 Nathan and I went to the Texas Cheese House south of Waco. The owner bought 172 half gallons of frozen goats milk from us and we went to pick up the whey for Nathan's pigs. Whey is a great for pigs and it's a natural dewormer. This is a picture of where Scott makes the cheese. You can see the curds in there.

Eddie sleeping on the pantry floor. I couldn't resist snapping a pic of his pose. Haha. 

We have run out of pasture for the pigs so we made a mixture of sorghum, soy beans, corn, and cow peas and planted it. Before I left it was already up so I'm excited to see what it looks like when I get back from visiting home. 

The garden as of 2 weeks ago. 

This is one of the pastures I lost to drought. This field used to be super green and beautiful, now it looks like this. 

Another picture of the field. Those piles of green are what the field should have looked like and we cut those plants down around the edge and took them to the goats and the pigs. 

 Texas sunset.

 Thanks to my awesome Aunt Sara who visited she put cereal on my shelf and milk in the fridge... organic milk! Love it!

 Karin was cleaning her room and decided to cover herself in all the scarfs she has. Hilarious moment. Nothing boring ever happens around this girl.

Some okra I harvested of the hydrobed. It's doing so well! 

One of the okra plants with the roots coming out.

Austin Field Trip

So a few weeks ago Nathan and Amy Fair and their kids and I went on a trip to Austin to visit Aquaponics Austin, a company run by a man named Arturo. He sets up backyard aquaponics systems for people and does educational workshops for the public. I actually got in touch with him through another man I had contacted asking for places I could visit to learn more about the world of aquaponics and Arturo contacted me a few weeks later after this man gave him my email! It was awesome how it worked out. So we took of on a Saturday morning and met up with some friends of the Fairs to do this workshop. I would say I learned some great things and that I have had questions about, but after telling Arturo about the system I have set up, he asked me why I was there because I was already doing it. Haha. What a compliment! I did feel a little discouraged from the workshop, in that he didn't seem very convinced himself that he was going to help anyone. I don't know what that was about.

Inside Arturo's greenhouse. The tank there holds his tilapia with a grow bed to the left. On the other side of that grow bed is another tank holding catfish. The hydroponic bed there  is an ebb and flow system. Ebb and flow is where water is not constantly flowing through the bed, rather the water is on a timer and fills up the bed ever few hours and it drains out, leaving just a shallow amount of water in the bed.

Tilapia in the large black tank. These are supposedly the same breed as mine, but mine are not white like this. Mine only turn white when they are extremely stressed out like when we capture them and put them in a small bucket.

Another picture of the grow bed in the greenhouse. He uses rocks for a plant structure. I use a float system with cups, which he also does but in other systems outside his greenhouse. 

This is a set up more similar to what I have. A float system. 

This was my favorite system he had actually. This is the perfect little backyard set up for a family. The plant bed is on the left side and the fish are in that box connected to it on the right. The water is just continuously pumped through the system. He just has goldfish in it right now but you could easily grow a small stock of tilapia for your family or if you're not interested in eating the fish, you could just have the goldfish and reap the benefits of the veggies!


After we left the aquaponics place we hung out with some people from Austin and went on an awesome boat on the river. Went tubing and swimming. At one point I got on the tube with Ben, Nathan's oldest boy. He is about 9 or so. There are all this hand signals to say if you want to speed up, slow down, get off, etc. I was seriously on this tube for like an hour wondering if I was ever going to get off. We got all the way back to the dock and they pulled me on the boat and said they were constantly signaling to me if I wanted to get off.... Then I said to them, I didn't have my glasses on! The whole boat in unison said, Ohhhhhhhh. Hahaha. Hilarious moment.

Then we had a cook out where while we were on the porch eating, Nathan's little girl decided to be in the dog cage.

On the way home, I had an absolutely awesome time just talking with Nathan and Amey. Really blessed to know them!

Just a thought

So I have something I have really been thinking about lately as people move off the farm and new people move on. I'm kinda really disappointed with the new people coming into the farm. I loved the people that were here. I really want to move into this lifestyle of using herbs for everything and learning to create with my hands and basically be what we think of as a "hippie", but more of a modern hippie. A hippie by my definition is not someone who does drugs but someone who does sustainable ag, makes a lot of things, very laid back and not into name brands but just really moves to their own personal style, who don't do their hair and make up every time they go into town, who arn't obsessed with figures and weights but just health. I feel like I'm not going to learn much from the new people here besides how cool it was to live in another country or that maybe you can wear Nike when you're trying to live on less or acting like you know more then you do is charming. So all that to say, I'm frustrated and annoyed.

Now, if any of you know me, you know I have a sweat tooth for Nike. I've told stories about be in Uganda like I'm awesome. I've acted like I know more then I do to scrap by some times or to be interesting. So basically these new people frustrate me because they hold a mirror up to my face and it's me. All of it is me and I'm annoyed and upset about what I see. I don't want to be that brand of human. I hope that I walk out of this place and I have knowledge about herbs, that I live my style not the world's, that all I care about is eating what I can grow or take care of. I don't know what I'm trying to say or if that makes since but that's just kind of my thought throw up.

In other news..... 

 This is the t-shirt I got for cleaning out the compost toilet. Fancy, eh? Kinda really funny.

This is the fence tightener that hooks up to a tractor or truck and you drive forward pulling a fence wire really tight. Kirk used it today to pull hay off a wagon and he bent it! I was shocked. That thing is iron and it's strong. We hooked it up with a chain and attached it and when he drove forward, it bent like a piece of wire! Then he attached it to another part on the bar and it bent again! I was laughing so hard because I was in shock.



My Aunt Sara will be here a week from Friday, at least that's the plan. You never know what can happen. I hurt my back about 3 weeks ago and I got into a massage therapist that uses a different style focusing just on stretches and the muscles. I don't know how to explain it yet. One of my milk customers is a regular with this lady and suggested I call her. I did and she finally called me back after a week. She is going to see me for FREE!!! She usually charges $60 an hour. What a great lady to do that for me. She even got me in for tomorrow! I'm really excited to see someone and get help and maybe I can finally find comfort. I'm constantly uncomfortable working, sitting, sleeping. The other night it was just hurting and I couldn't sleep. Some times I just can't find any position to not feel some kind of pain. It's makes me a grumpy bumpy a lot of the time. So I will let you know how my appointment goes. I need to write another blog soon about an awesome testimony story I have for all of you, but I might wait a few weeks til I tell it at devotions during story time because I don't want Kelly hearing it before the community!!! Haha! Take that Kelly!

I'd like to give a prayer shout out for Erik and Sally and their new addition to their family. What a journey adopting a little girl from India and now they have her in their arms back home. Beautiful. Prayer for the work ahead of her new life in a new land with a new language. Patience, compassion, love, understanding and all that for her new parents. Restful nights and playful days for both. Only through the name of Christ, who is the only one through which things can be done.

I leave you with a quote:

"Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'" -John 6:29

Another Picture Update Entry!!!

 It's time again for more pictures! We were raising 75 cornish hens from day old chicks here on the farm and experimenting with have a meat bird enterprise here on the farm. This picture was taken during butcher day. This was the gutting crew. Left to right: Dolores, Annali, Nathan, and Keith.

Annali making the chicken feet do a dance. The video is even funnier. Haha. You have to do something to keep a smile on your face. It can be a really long and unbearable day without laughter. 

 Bucket of chicken heads out by the killing cones. The chicken is turned upside down and slides down a cone so just their head and neck are exposed, making it easier to cut the throat. It's contained this way and we can drain it easier. The blood bucket was the nastiest thing I've ever seen. It was like blood jello by the end of the day. BLEH!

I took a load of goats into the butcher for the first time since I've been here. I took 3 wethers and 1 doe. I just went and picked up all the meat last week and boy, is it delicious! Mild smoked sausage links are my favorite. It was sad though when they would look out of the trailer like this. 

 This is the snake that scared the poop out of me. Zac and I were cleaning out some broken feed bags in the kid barn. The bags sit on pallets and when I reached into the pallet to grab some loose feed, this thing was curled up under it right where my hand was. I freaked out and ran out of the barn and did my I'm scared of snakes dance while yelling at Zac that there was a snake. He got it out of there after he realized it was dead. Haha. Freaked me out! Just a rat snake by the way, not poisonous.

Me and the boys butchered the doe with the exploded udder. Keith is in the red, Nathan has the farmer hat on, Steven is in the pink/red shirt and Kirk is back there cutting away. We just ate some of the goat last night at a going away party for Elise. It was so tender and delicious! 

Nathan looks real happy here. 

Kirk holding onto the goat so the other guys can cut it. 

We just got new baby bunnies on the farm!!!! They are so cute!!! We took a donation of california reds from a family who was doing a 4H project gone a rye. 

Wes, Annali and Steven with the new bunny. We always take time on the farm to enjoy cute babies. 

This little guy stayed put on my shoulder for a long walk. Didn't budge. 

 Picture from my soap making class at Homestead Heritage. It was so much fun. This was a large batch they had prepared so we could practice cutting soap different ways.

I house sat for Matt and Sarah Hess a couple weeks ago and this is their dog Lizzie. She doesn't look like it in the pic, but she was passed out sleeping here and was snoring. She slept like that every day. 

The soap I made. That's also my new soap mold! The soap on the left is goat milk soap and lavender scented and the stuff on the right is made from beef fat and spearmint scented. My room smells amazing even as I sit here and blog it's so strong!

This is my favorite farm cat, Barry. He is awesome. This is his pose every day right outside the front door of the dorm. 

We had another cute baby on the farm but not one you would want to hold. A baby skunk! Sad to tell you, but someone ended up killing it. Just try to remember what it would grow up to be! We have a skunk that wonders the farm and I'm always scared I'm going to get sprayed if I walk around after dark.

Jonathon and I took Milo our new goat dog into get fixed. He came out with a cone. I was cracking up. Poor guy.

Zac and Annali had a co-birthday party with the theme being face painting. I'm not sure what Karin is but I just pointed at a picture in a book and said that one. Karin painted my face. It's like some kind of interpretive batman face painting. Haha. It was the hardest thing to wash off. That was no fun. 

 Face painting, better shot.

Nigerian dwarf buck at a farm I visited 3 hours away. He had bangs. 

This is our new herd of Boer goats! In the business plan David Cole and I suggested getting rid of our dry herd of saanan male wethers and getting a breed of goats that are made more for higher yields of meat. A lady emailed me and wanted to donate her herd, out of the blue. Pretty crazy how it all worked out! They are beautiful goats. 

Another pic of the goats. Not very good, sorry.

I had to load up some kids to sell and I put then inside the truck or else they just all jump out. If you look past the reflection you can count 4 goats in there. 

The beautiful Gruyere cheese the farm received as a gift. A whole wheel of it! It was so so so good! 

Annali doing cornrows for the very first time and I have to say she did a great job. I think Dolores was a little nervous. Back in Africa it was really cheap for Dolores to have her hair done. Here it was going to cost 50-100$ to go in to get stuff done. So Annali volunteered her services. 

Cornrows!