Joyful Hearts Farm Needs Help

Joyful Hearts Farm is in need of help. Many times we country folk have seen that when city folk move to the country they want to turn the country into the city with all of its rules, regulations and ordinances. Despite popular belief living in the country doesn't always mean peace and quiet. Sometimes, chickens are squawking, roosters are crowing, pigs are squealing and livestock guard dogs are barking. Joyful Hearts Farm has two wonderful livestock guard dogs that protect their dairy goat herd. Joyful Hearts Farm makes a living from those dairy goats and they depend on their LGD's to help keep them safe from predators. One of the many ways that LGD's guard is to bark. They send out warning barks to let any creature in the area know that they are on duty and alert. They bark even louder when they feel there is an immediate threat. I understand how aggravating it can be to hear them bark. When we first got Dakota she started barking at 11 pm and kept it up all night. I didn't think I would survive. As she matured she realized that she didn't need to bark all night and now she is much more tolerable. I can also understand the changes in her bark and I know when it is time to head outside with the gun or roll over and go back to sleep. I cannot tell you what a valuable asset she is to our farm. I am sure Joyful Hearts feels the same way. However, they now have city neighbors that don't understand the country/farm way of life and don't want a dog barking near them. Animal control is siding with the neighbors even though California law sides with JHF. JHF is under attack, our way of life is under attack and they need help to defend their right to farm. If you are interested in reading the whole story and contributing you can go here. We small farmers must stick together and help when we can and where we can. If we don't then they will take us out one by one until there are none of us left. We will be helping JHF and sending many prayers their way. Blessings, Kat

Weather Still Not Cooperating

Well here we are and December 31st is approaching and the weather is still too warm. Today will be in the 70s. Definitely not hog butchering weather. Oh well, the hogs must go. They are eating and eating and well....eating. So instead of butchering all of the hogs in one day and getting the deed done and over it will have to drag out over the course of the next week and a half until they are all in the freezer. We will start with one tomorrow and the refrigerators will have to act as a meat locker for the hog to "hang" overnight. I have been emptying out the big refrigerator of everything that can be emptied out. I must say I have never seen it so bare before. Last night we finished off two partially empty jars of pickles and we have two large containers of soup that will be finished off today. When the milk is done for today I won't take anymore out of the freezer until the first hog is wrapped and moved to the freezer on Friday. Needless to say this will be interesting and I will be sure to document the process. We were planning on skinning the hogs, but now we have plans to scald. I started thinking about how much money and time we have poured into these beasts and realized what a waste of resources to skin. The skin can be rendered for ever ounce of fat left on it and while it is rendering makes awesome cracklins for cracklin bread. While we won't need that many cracklins the rest can be fed to the chickens, dogs and cats as a high calorie supplement to their food. I really think that the only waste will be the hair by the time we are done. Bones can be saved for the dogs. Organs that we don't eat will be eaten by the chickens, cats and dogs. We rarely have much to dispose of when we butcher, but I think we will have less with the hogs. We will slaughter one tomorrow, one next Thursday and one on the 31st. I am really torn in my emotions over this. I am going to miss the girl's coming over to the fence to talk to me and ask for their daily ear scratches. But I won't miss the mess they make with everything. Having 3 hogs this size and age is like having 3 300lb. toddlers. Yep, imagine the havoc they create! I have never gotten this attached to any of our animals that have been raised around here for food, but these critters have gotten to me. Oh, well...I can't keep feeding them forever and maybe next years pigs will be easier. I at least have the knowledge that their lives have been good with lots of space to root and play. Loads of good things to eat. And many pets and scratches for those itches they couldn't get to. I will try to get an economic breakdown of raising these pigs once I have a breakdown of the different cuts of meat and whatever else we have. I have the feed costs by month and of course the cost of the pigs themselves so now all I need is what all we get. I will try to get that posted this weekend. Blessings, Kat

Horse Slaughter on It's Way Back

On it's way back to the US that is. Currently there is legislation to reopen the slaughter facilities for horses in the United States that were closed about 10 or so years ago. There has been a lot of talk on the web on this subject and it is a highly heated and controversial subject. So I thought I would discuss my thoughts and views here. First let's go back in time to when this issue was first rearing its ugly head. There were several schools of thought years ago when this issue of closing the plants came up. The first school of thought was that horses should not be slaughtered...period. The second school of thought was that the conditions that horses were subjected too were horrendous and if they were to be slaughtered then regulations needed to be in place to ensure that they were treated humanely. The third school of thought didn't care. First let me make this clear, horses are not slaughtered for pet food. The meat is extraordinarily valuable. In the 80s, horse meat was bringing close to 18.00 a pound sold mostly to the European market. Those that argued that horse slaughter should be terminated in this country were typically hobby horse owners. They considered their horses as pets and family members. This is noble, but one thing they didn't see was that being able to send horses to slaughter that were unfit for anything else kept the market at an even keel and prevented many badly bred, ill fit horses out of the market. I particularly remember one horse that my trainer sent on down the road with the kill buyer. This was a beautiful animal...purebred Arabian with impeccable bloodlines. This horse was also dangerous. Upon arrival we decided to see what the horse could do so he was saddled and I put my foot in the stirrup to mount. At that moment the horse threw himself (with my foot in the stirrup)over backwards. He did this several times and I still have shoulder problems from where I was slammed into a nearby tree trying to escape the 1000 lbs. crashing over onto me. Each time my foot hit the stirrup the horse flung himself over onto his back. We put him up and the next day tried again with a different rider. He did the same to her. He was loaded onto the kill buyers trailer that afternoon. Had there been no kill buyer, he would have been shipped down the road and eventually would have killed some unsuspecting soul. Now, those types of horses have flooded the market because there is no where to send them. The horse market has all but died out. Free and super cheap horses abound in the classified ads. People wake up with horses in there pasture that weren't there the night before. Horses are being taken out in the country and the wild areas to be turned loose and starve, or owners are just letting them starve in their pastures because they don't have a way to move them. Shutting down the slaughter plants has done nothing but bring about misery and an uncertain future for a glorious animal. Horses are livestock. They are no more knowing or sentient than a cow or a pig. And in reality all that happened by banning horse slaughter here in the states is that horses now travel further since they are shipped to Canada or Mexico. So their plight was worsened by far. What needs to happen is that the slaughter houses need to be re-opened, but regulations need to be set in place that horses cannot arrive in double decker cattle trucks and that they must be in sound condition. With regulations in place then the animals will be treated humanely and they will no longer be starved or dumped to fend for themselves. Slaughter with a captive bolt gun is a quick death...starvation is a slow painful death. Eating a horse is no different than eating a cattle, but the perceptions in this country are quite screwed up. Horses are livestock, same as any livestock. Horses have been eaten for millenia by humans and they will continue to be eaten. However, the one thing that we can guarantee is that they meet a humane and quick death. With an economy that is making it difficult at best to feed one's family there are many that can no longer afford their horses. Horses are costly to keep. I know my feed bill would drop by over half if I didn't have my horses. There are so many horses on the market because of the down economy that people can't give them away. Believe me, I see free horses advertised all the time. How many of them are going to wind up starving or being eaten by predators in the national parks because their owners had no other recourse than to dump them out to fend for themselves. Horse slaughter is necessary, we've seen the results without it and it isn't a pretty sight. Blessings, Kat

Collapse of the European Union

Many people have been watching the mess with the European Union closely these days. With our "new" global economy what happens there will affect us here in America. America is broke and yet we are sending bailout money to the European banks. What that spells for us is economic disaster. This very well may bring the collapse of the dollar and skyrocketing inflation. I am not an economist, but I fully understand what that means for me and my family....much higher grocery prices. Think Weimar republic where is was more prudent to burn cash for heat than try to buy anything with it. You simply couldn't carry enough to buy a loaf of bread even if you could find a store with a loaf of bread. So here is my warning....If you haven't stocked your pantry before do so now. Look at how you eat, what you eat etc. and cut or rearrange so that you can purchase more with your dollars so that you have more in your pantry. I have posted many times on how to cut grocery costs. Check out those tips if you haven't already done so. I believe it a more prudent idea to place any extra money you can scrape up into tangibles like food, seeds, and tools. Learn skills now that will serve you in saving money later. This winter I plan on doing more cooking on the fire hearth than I have ever done. I have played around with this once or twice, mostly roasting meat. This year I plan to perfect those skills and I will definitely blog about the process and the results so look forward to that. I hate to be such a doom and gloomer, but now is the time to start thinking outside the box and learn and do what you can to ensure your family's well being. Don't depend on the system because the system could care less about you. God provides all that we need to live and survive, but it doesn't necessarily mean that those provisions will come neatly wrapped in plastic packages set inside a cooler for you. If he provides you the meat, most likely it will still be on the hoof or foot or swimming. So, when he does do you know what to do with it or even how to catch or kill it? So think about these things because your skill set is the most valuable gift that He will provide you. What skills do you have that are valuable to your survival should the dollar collapse and chaos take control? Godspeed in all that you do.

Fall Pig Butchering

Well, we were hoping to be putting the pigs (hogs now) in the freezer by now, but the weather certainly has not been cooperating. However, we have set the date with our friends for December 31st. Surely, it will be cold enough by then. I certainly can't wait as they are eating us out of house and home at this point. Right now they are going through approximately 100 lbs. of grain a week in addition to whatever scraps and acorns we can get to them. We have one that is at about 300 lbs and will more than likely be well over by the end of the month. I try to get them about 5-10 lbs of acorns a day, but since I have to process them beforehand somedays they get less than that. Our acorns are mostly red oak variety and so have more tannin than white acorns. The pigs will eat a few of them without being processed but not many. If I process them then they chow down and eat them all up. At 1700 calories per pound they are worth the trouble to process. I just keep thinking about all that yummy meat and lard that we will get. While the pigs have definitely been a good amount of trouble, I will definitely do this again next year. I guess I am a glutton for punishment! I will say that they have done an awesome job tilling and clearing roots from the area they are in. It is now arable plantable land and will make a great expansion to the garden. Now I just have to decide what to put in there when the time comes. When the day comes I will put up a picture tutorial on how to process hogs at home. I have decided that is one things that I need to do is to put up tutorials on all the animals that we process so look forward to those coming soon. Have a blessed day!