Honey Roasted Leg of Goat

This is what we are having tonight. Hope you enjoy as much as we do.

Ingredients:
1 leg of goat/chevon
1/2 cup of honey
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tlbs. brown sugar
salt and pepper

Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place leg of goat on a rack in a shallow baking pan, season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. While this is baking mix the honey, OJ, and brown sugar. Aftter 30 minutes remove the foil from the chevon and baste on both sides with the honey glaze. Place back in the oven, uncovered, for another 60-90 minutes depending on how done you want it. I usually re-glaze/baste about every 20 minutes to keep the meat moist and to get a nice glaze on it. You don't want to cook chevon past medium otherwise it is too dry. This goes really well with couscous and a green salad. Enjoy.

Beer Braised Rabbit

This is one of our favorite rabbit recipes and since this is what we had for supper last night I thought I would share.

Ingredients:
1 rabbit, cut into serving sizes
salt
pepper
1 cup beer
4 sweet potatoes cut crosswise
4 carrots cut in 1 inch pieces
1 onion sliced
1 tsp. minced garlic
1/2 c. rotel
1 tbl. brown sugar

Directions:
Season rabbit with salt and pepper to taste. Then brown rabbit in a large skillet. Add the vegetables to the skillet. Mix the beer, rotel, garlic and brown sugar. Pour over the rabbit and vegetables. Then bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for about 45 minutes until the rabbit is tender. Serve with fresh bread or rolls. Yummy!

The Great Grain Debate

There is a great debate raging now between farmers and homesteaders. It truly is an emotional topic and I have seen threads concerning this topic on forums degenerate into very ugly messes. This debate concerns whether or not goats and cows, ruminants in general, should be fed grain. Much of the debate stems from research concerning human nutrition that suggests that grass fed beef and dairy are much higher in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) found to be higher in the butterfat content of grass fed dairy animals and higher in the muscle of meat animals. CLA, according to human nutrition studies, is a strong enzyme that has the ability to ward off cancer. The debate issues come from the fact that many people misunderstand much of what is being talked about the situations involved in the animals care and management. The research is comparing confinement animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to the traditional homestead or old time farm operation. So first, lets describe the setting of the two situations. In a CAFO setting an animal is primarily grained and supplemented with hay or silage, no pasture/grazing is made available. In a traditional farm/homestead setting an animal is primarily pastured and supplemented with grain as needed. I agree that ruminants should not be fed an exclusively grain diet. It creates too much acid in the rumen and is generally not healthy for the animal because this acidosis lowers the immune system response in the animal. Acidosis is also thought to be responsible for the more frequent occurence of exceptionally virulent strains of E. coli. CAFOs also much artificially supplement vitamins and minerals which are not as well utilized by the animal as natural sources would be. So meat from a CAFO would have less nutrition available for human use than meat from a grass fed animal. Now, there are several problems occuring with all of this. It seems as if some homesteaders are taking this to the extremes and actually potentially putting their animal's health in jeopardy. First is the lack of understanding of good forage and second is the lack of understanding of the nutritional needs of their livestock. Let's address forage first. It has been my experience that many times people think that they have good pastures simply because there is something out there for the animals to eat. This simply is not true. A good pasture must provide a huge amount of nutrition, especially protein. Many pastures are lacking in protein and many soils around the country are depleted of vital minerals that the animals need in order to grow and produce properly. While it may be possible to sustain the animal on these poor pastures they will not be able to produce very well, whether it be milk or meat. A good pasture undergoes regular soil testing, fertilization (preferably organic), maintenance, and revitalization in the form of overseeding and resting. It simply is not enough to seed a pasture once or twice, turn the animals out on it and forget it as long as there is something green out there. They will simply strip it bare, leaving the minerals to leach out of the soil. It is not enough to have one or two types of forage either. Most people plant grasses alone in their pasture, which leads to nitrogen depletion in the soil. Then even the grasses won't grow and the weeds take over.Grasses also are low in protein so growing and milking animals will not have enough protein in their diet to grow steadily or produce milk. Typically a good nutritious pasture will contain grasses, legumes, herbs and other forbs such as turnips,beets, etc. Each grows as a different rate so there is something always growing along with each different plant contributing to the soil health along with the nutrition requirements of the animal. For a grazing operation to be successful there must be pasture rotation for the pasture to recover from the grazing of the stock. Care must also be taken to properly stock a pasture and not over stock it. Stocking rates will depend on the type of pasture, where you are in the country, and what you can grow. Another consideration is what do you do when the pasture is dormant and nothing is growing? Many parts of the country find their pastures under several feet of snow for many months of the year. Others, like us in the southeast don't have to battle snow so much but the pastures do go through a dormant period in which they don't grow. Many say that the answer is hay. While grass hay is good an necessary for these periods of the season they still cannot supply the nutrition that the animal needs. Legume hay is better for adding more protein. Still, however a producing animal that is revving up its metabolism to stay warm many times cannot get enough calories from hay alone to sustain themselves and still produce or grow. This is where the nutritional requirement of the animals comes in. A homesteader/farmer absolutely must get some knowledge of the nutritional requirements of their livestock if they plan to have a successful operation. A lactating cow has different nutritional needs than a dry cow. A growing beef steer has different nutritional needs than a full grown bull. For instance, my bucks get very little grain. Just enough to bring them into the barn at night and so they don't feel too left out. They do very well on just pasture in the spring, summer, and fall then mostly hay with some browse during the winter. They maintain their condition quite well and show no signs of suffering from the cold. My dry does are the same. However, they are pregnant right now and toward the end of their pregnancy will get slightly more grain along with good pasture and forage. Coffee, my doe in milk gets more grain than the others because she is not only working to maintain her body heat but she is working to produce milk also. She gets grain twice a day on the milk stand and only what she can clean up during milking. This gives her the energy that her body needs to maintain her condition and stay healthy. It is all about feeding according to the needs of the individual animal. Too many homesteaders simply think that feeding applies the same to the whole herd and that simply is not true. Each animals feed requirements must be evaluated. Another example of this is my horses. I have an elderly stallion, an 11 year old gelding and a 5 year old mare. My stallion has a much harder time keeping weight on in the winter. Since horses are grazers, they are designed to take in nutrition in small amounts and not large quantities all at once. He needs more calories than the other two otherwise the simple act of staying warm (higher metabolic rate) causes him to lose condition. We added corn to his winter feed and he does much better at keeping condition because it is such a concentrated source of calories. The other two don't get corn simply because they don't need it. By adding a higher concentrate grain to his diet then we don't have to feed him bucket loads of lower concentrate grains, thus keeping his diet more in line with what is natural for the species. Understanding nutrition requirements is absolutely key in designing your feeding system on a homestead. Problems arise when homesteaders don't understand what their animal's nutritional needs are and simply "follow the crowd" or latest trend. Following the crowd is what led to CAFOs to begin with. The bottom line is to evaluate the individual needs of each animal on your farm, design a feed system to meet those needs, and healthy animals will produce the right nutrition for human consumption. I agree with the research that a diet consisting mainly of grain is not healthy for ruminants. I don't agree that all ruminants can survive on grass alone. I think that in some instances supplementing with grain is necessary for the health of the animal which must come first to the homesteader/farmer. Now, I know that there are folks out there who want to know what my credentials are. I have spent 20 years of my life studying animal nutrition. My minor in college was equine management. I have participated and assisted in equine nutrition studies. My grandfather started as a dairyman and then moved into beef production. I went with him to every forage and feed conference that he went to. His beef operation was entirely grassfed.....his pastures were awesome. His dairy cows got grained in lactation even though his pastures were awesome. They simply needed the extra nutrition and calories or they lost condition. None of his stock were confined...ever. His beef cows went straight from his pastures to the processors. His dairy cows only came into the barn to be milked twice a day. I am also willing to learn from those who have been doing what they have been doing for years. When I started thinking about goats I found both meat and dairy goat farms to visit. Not only did I visit I picked the brains of those farmers for every bit of knowledge I could gain about the requirements of the animals. I learned what I needed about goat nutrition from those who knew and had been doing it. I read all the studies I could find on goat nutrition and health. I still do. One thing that I have found is that experience is the best teacher, whether it is my own or another farmer's. Homesteaders very often tend to opt out of the experience arena and jump right into the "latest and greatest" research and forget to take a good hard critical look at their particular situation. Joel Salatin might exclusively grassfeed his cows, but he has 100s of acres to do so with. I have 10 acres. My situation is different. Take a look at your situation and provide the best nutrition you can the best way you can for your animals. God bless.

About our Goats...A Just for Fun post

As of late, my posts have been pretty "heavy". And while life sometimes can be extremely "heavy" there are always little things here and there that can lighten things up a bit. So, I thought I would do a post just talking about our goats. Something just for fun and much lighter in mood than things of late have been. First how many? We currently have 5 breeding stock. We have two two year old Nubian does, a one year old Nubian doe, and two 1 year old nubian/boer cross bucks. I never thought I would like goats very much. I related them to the one goat that my grandfather had when I was a kid and also related them to cows in personality. The goat my grandfather had was mean....very mean. He didn't stay long at the farm. After he chased my cousin and I on top of the car for the second time my grandfather decided his time was up. My grandfather gave him to his farm hand and he ate him. In my opinion it was good riddance because I was tired of climbing on the car. Our goats are different, none of them are mean. The two boys are precious pets with very loving attitudes. Buck, my oldest really thinks that he is a pet. During rut he gets his feelings hurt because I simply don't want to scratch his head.....it is stinky. Billy, my junior buck is just as sweet but not nearly as insistent on his head scratches. Buck is the biggest of the two even though he is only a month older. He truly is already showing signs of being built like a tank and I can only imagine how big he will be in another year or two. His dad was huge. Billy has a little more refinement from his Nubian mother that show through. Lilly, our youngest doe is just as sweet as the boys. She really is just like "one of the boys". She is as rough and tumble as they are and enjoys sparring with them as much as they enjoy sparring with each other. She's my firecracker in the herd. She thinks it is her personal duty to keep the dogs in line whether they are out of line or not. All Lilly has to do is look in the dogs direction and they head for the hills. She is one tough cookie, my little Lilly, all the while keeping her feminine grace about her. She loves to scratch her itches with the tip of her horns and so as a result she has a permanent tuft of fur at the end of her horns. It is quite cute. Tea and Coffee are my two older does. They are as different as night and day. Neither had been handled much by their previous owner. It took awhile before we could even touch them without first cornering them in a stall. Coffee came around a lot quicker and now she thinks that she is the only goat that deserves Mama's scratches and attention. She gets very jealous when I am petting someone else and will nip my arm for attention. For a goat that had not been handled much at all and never milked she is awesome. Each morning she is waiting on her milk stand to be fed and milked. Her favorite place to be scratched is on her rear end right above her tail. A scratch in this spot will render Coffee totally helpless as she enters a trance like state of utter delight. Coffee and Tea can also tell time, very very well. They know when I am supposed to walk out the back door of the house and if I don't do that at the exact moment their clock says to, they start to holler. And they holler loudly thinking that I really do need a very loud alarm clock. This rouses the lazy boys from their sleep in the hay. So when I walk out the door I have 4 eager faces at the gate and one eager face on her milk stand. Tea is the regal princess of the whole bunch. She only allows scratches when she wants them. She is also the loudest and seems to protest most often mostly about nothing (or so it seems to me). While everyone is happily munching their hay, she will stand in the pasture and scream her head off. No one else seems to pay her any attention and so neither do I. She truly is a beautiful doe with a chestnut coat and striking black markings including a black dorsal stripe. She has been the hardest to get to come around to being handled and touched. Like I said, everything has to be on her terms. It will be an adventure training her to the milk stand and being milked. I have a feeling she won't take to it as easily as Coffee has. As of now, it takes two of us to do anything that requires her to stand still. Trimming her feet this past year would have won us awards with America's Funniest Home videos had we had someone video taping it. Maybe I should have our first milking video taped and sent in?! Well, I suppose that is about it for the goats. I must say they are nothing like I thought they would be. I truly love my goats and am very pleased that we chose them for our little farm. They are addictive, kinda like potato chips.....you can't have just one!

Food for Thought

A person dependent on somebody else for everything from potatoes to opinions may declare that he is a free man, and his government may issue a certificate granting him his freedom, but he will not be free. He is that variety of specialist known as a consumer, which means that he is the abject dependent of producers. How can he be free if he can do nothing for himself? What is the First Amendment to him whose mouth is stuck to the tit of the “affluent society”? Men are free precisely to the extent that they are equal to their own needs. The most able are the most free.

–Wendell Berry, “Discipline and Hope” in A Continuous Harmony (1972), pp. 124

I Just Don't Know What to Say

Wow, what a couple of weeks it has been. Our daughter is doing better, we are healing as a family and she is once again feeling secure in her place in the family. A member of our family and her oldest daughter had been playing some serious mind games with her. Unfortunately she has learned that sometimes even those you trust can use you and manipulate you. Then this Saturday morning we got a phone call......this woman was dead. She apparently died in her sleep. It possibly had something to do with the 4 different antidepressants she was taking. She had just turned 39. She left behind two little 7 year old boys and her 18 year old daughter. I can't say that I am surprised, but I feel awful saying that. Almost like I shouldn't say it. I find it interesting that all of the people that she hurt intentionally, all of the people that she used and manipulated are besides themselves with grief. Yet, I shed no tear nor do I feel grief. I really don't feel anything other than duty to support the other members of the family. I expect her parents to be distraught, but distant members of the family is a little different. Or am I different? I have asked myself if I truly forgave her for what she tried to do to my child. I believe that I did. I harbored no feelings of revenge, anger, hate or ill will toward her. I simply and immediately cut all contact between her, her daughter and my child. Now, she has died and I feel nothing. It is something I am praying about, because I simply don't understand. Is it that I have buried so many that have been so close to me that I no longer feel the pain of grief quite so much? I don't know what the answer is. I simply know that it is a large question in my mind and on my heart. Until next time, Kat

Funny Homeschool Video

Jonathan over at Turtle Mountain Hillbilly posted this video which is a cute little video about homeschooling. Jonathan and his brothers are amazing kids. I have followed their blogs and their mom's blog for about a year now. Hmmm....I have a daughter....hmmm.....wonder if you can still arrange marriages? Just kidding folks, so don't write me any nasty comments on how barbaric I am. Honestly though, when my daughters do start courting I pray that there are a few more around like the Bartlett boys. Anyway enjoy the video.