Fox!!

No, not the network. A real live bushy tailed varmint seeking to steal and kill my livestock. War is officially declared! I know I have spoken of our funny little guinea, Martin. Martin was a really asset to the farm. He was a great bug hunter in the garden while being oh so gentle with the plants. Martin, was an awesome guard dog (guinea?) in training. Martin also helped to round up chickens in the evening and do the daily feed chores. My dogs never suffered a tick long as long as Martin was allowed to groom them while they napped. Martin, slept on the side porch and guarded the side door all night. Unfortunately, that is where the fox found him early one morning and the dogs were too late to save him. I know it was a fox because it was back at 5 am this morning. It was back on the porch, looking for another meal. This is one brave fox. But sometimes being so brave can actually be pretty stupid. It will be back and I will be waiting. We really miss Martin, the farm just isn't the same without him.

Two Bills in Senate that Need Your Attention

There are two bills in the senate that definitely need your attention and the attention of your representatives. They are a huge move by big government to strip Americans of what few rights we have left. The first bill is S3081. This bill will give the government the right to arrest and detain an American citizen indefinitely without trial. Did you read that? An American citizen indefinitely detained without trial. According to the Bill of Rights:
VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

This bill is just another example of the slow destruction that our Constitution is undergoing by our government agents. How many Americans will just shrug their shoulders and simply say "It doesn't affect me?".

Now the next bill is equally ridiculous. S3002 authorizes the federal government to regulate vitamins, minerals, and virtually all health and natural food products. Now we see what a great job government regulation already does (peanut butter contamination, ice cream contamination, spinach contamination, tomato, etc. etc. etc.). So now they want to take away our right to choose natural supplements versus, chemical experimentation via big pharma. If they have this authority what makes them stop with that bottle of vitamin C on the shelf? Why not just regulate how many and what kind of oranges we are allowed to buy. Shoot why don't we just force a prescription for those oranges and by doing that we can charge 10 times the price.

Folks these are dangerous bills that John McCain (who by the way said over and over that he was against big government) has proposed. Don't let these bills slip under the radar. Get to writing those letters and making phone calls. These bills need to be stopped simply because the path they lead to is a very dangerous one indeed for anyone who values freedom and choice. Blessings from the farm.

Grocery Store?

I have not been to the grocery store for a couple of months, so imagine my surprise when I went the other day for a few things and most of the shelves were pretty empty. Not just the shelves, but the meat and dairy cases were as well. Lots of empty space! I wanted to get some pork chops because we are out of pork chops and I just had a hankering for some. The only pork left in the meat case was just a few pork loin roasts and Italian sausage. I have never seen this before. I even asked and they said they did not have any in the back either. This is a large grocery chain, not a mom and pop, so I would not expect to have seen this. Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me? The only time I see shelves like this is when there is really bad weather coming and we don't have any coming our way.I guess we will wait until the hog is butchered for those pork chops. Blessings from the farm.

Evenings with Victoria Botkin

I just discovered that Victoria Botkin is having a women's talk online. For those who don't know the Botkin family, they are truly amazing, inspiring, and definitely inspirational. Their daughters have grown into wonderful young Christian women, seeking to please the Lord in their lives. My oldest daughter and I are reading their book, "So Much More", together now. It was written by the Botkin sisters several years ago when they were teens and written for young teen girls. However, I have found that it is something the whole family can get something out of. There is a registration fee for Victoria's sessions, but I feel that the cost is reasonable and the information invaluable. I know as a mother struggling to raise my daughters to serve the Lord in a world that seems to hate our Lord and Savior I need all the help, advise, and encouragement I can get. Victoria Botkin has been there, done that, and succeeded. There are also some very great articles available online at the website. I encourage all mothers of both sons and daughters to take a look here for more information about Victoria Botkin's Session for Women. God bless, Kat

Sheep and Goat Expo Afterthoughts

Well, it was a good day despite the rain....yes I said rain. There were quite a few producers there and quite a few products for display and sale. It was a good day for talking dairy goats and sheep. There were of course meat goats and meat goat people as well. Looks like I might be trading some spring doelings (provided we get some this year) with some katahdin spring lambs. It will be nice to have lamb in the freezer. My daughters wanted to bring home all the babies. Didn't matter whether goats or sheep, they were all adorable and would have easily fit in the station wagon! However, they all went home with their owners. I am not interested in sheep at the moment. My oldest daughter and I were taught how to spin wool. Come to find out the lady selling and demonstrating the spinning is our neighbor. Well, next county over but out here that is considered neighbor. She raises Icelandic and one of the rovings that she had was the most beautiful steel blue color. She doesn't dye her wool so it was all natural. I want a sweater made from that wool! Ok, nothing to it just buy the roving, practice spinning, learn how to knit......I can do that no problem! LOL! I don't know when I would ever find the time. However, she had both a large spinning wheel and a small spindle type thing (see how much I learned). The little spindle type thing looked so relaxing. Just like something that would be nice to do while sitting by the fire on a cold winter day. Or a blustery spring day like we had today! The cheese guy had the most wonderful cheese and that is definitely on my list of things to learn. His wife is teaching a class next weekend and I had made up my mind that I was going. That is until I found out that they are in the extreme north end of our state....about 5 hours away. So that is a little far for a one day cheese class. Now the food! Well apparently no one entered the cook off. You would think that the meat goat people would want to promote their product. Anyway, they did have chevron burgers cooked by someone who obviously had never cooked goat and they were dry and tough. Kinda like chewing on shoe leather. Oh well so much for new and exciting recipes. The photo contest was fun to look at and there were some really cute goat pics. I told my kids that they have to learn to do cute things so that I can take cute photos and enter them in contests! They said they might consider it only after supper. Ok, on to the highlight of the day the speakers! The first speaker was awesome. He was from the sheep and goat department of one of our state universities and up on all the latest data from purchasing your dairy goat, management issues, commercial marketing and home production. He really covered a lot of material in a short amount of time. One of the most interesting things that he brought up was the parasite resistance problem that we are having to pretty much all commercial de-wormers. Currently, there is no research being done anywhere to develop another de-wormer. So it comes down to natural management practices....right up my alley. Apparently, there has been research done on forage use for parasite control and one of the things that has been found is that forage high in tannins seems to have anti-parasitic properties. In other words it acts as a natural parasite control. So my goats will definitely get more oak tree branches and leaves this year and I am looking for lespedeza to incorporate into my pastures. Both are high in tannins. The most awesome thing about that speaker is that at the end of the talk he asked if anyone would like a copy of his dairy goat notebook that he had compiled. I of course volunteered to get a copy thinking that this would be a pamphlet type thing. Well, this was a huge 3 ring binder full of all the latest from agricultural colleges around the country. Everything from kidding, management, forage, feed, commercial production and marketing to home production practices. There are even cheese recipes in this notebook! The best part of this notebook is that there is so much about sustainable production like rotational grazing, forage nutrition, natural parasite control etc. It truly is a dairy goat owners dream to have this notebook and if I had to put a value on what he gave away for free....well I don't know if you could. So then we move onto the next speaker who I was not so impressed with. I am not sure what his credentials were as my toddler was acting up when they introduced him. I know he was from the extension agency. Anyway, his topic was feeds. Basically to make it short and sweet he believed that forage was a supplement to feed, instead of the other way round. He also recommended highly the use of corn in the feed ration. Which as you all know I highly disagree with that. When I asked why he would recommend corn when there have been so many studies showing that high corn diets promote acidosis in the rumen and throw off the natural bacterial flora....he was speechless. Yes, literally there was a very awkward silence as the whole room is looking at him and he didn't know what to say. He bumbled about finally saying that corn is a good high energy feed and fed in moderation is a good addition to any feed program. I also asked him about his rotational grazing recommendations as far as forage types and how long to leave stock before moving them. Apparently, his idea is that the stock should be kept off pasture except for 2 hours a day! Maybe 3, but their primary source of nutrition should come from their grain diet (of course full of corn)! So he was useless and as far as I am concerned gave a lot of folks some very bad information. The next speaker was a meat goat producer who turned to dairy goats and was speaking on the difference in production styles and requirements of the two. She basically was there for folks thinking about getting into goats but not sure whether they wanted to go with dairy or meat. She was a very good speaker and very informative even though she was short. I would have liked to have heard more from her. She has written one textbook (on goats) and one book on meat goat production. So onto speaker number 4. This guy was all about marketing dairy goat products. He talked about the different products, cost analysis breakdown of producing the different products like soap, cheese and milk, how to market, where to market, average prices paid for products that are being marketed and USDA requirements should you want to get into commercial production of milk or cheese. This was definitely a talk that dairy goat producers in this state needed. While meat goats have grown by leaps and bounds, most with dairy goats simply don't know what to do. A few have ventured into the marketing and commercial arena but most of us stick with selling goats which is safe in the legal arena. All in all it was a good day. I learned quite a few things that I didn't know, which is always a good thing, and spoke to a lot of people about what I like best.....livestock. I love going to these kind of things simply because I can talk about what I love. Most of the time folks who don't do what I do don't care to hear me talk about it. So it is one place that I can talk nothing but livestock and that is simply......delightful! God bless and have a great evening.

Sheep and Goat Expo

Today, the kids and I are headed to the sheep and goat expo. It looks to be alot of fun and they have some great speakers today mostly focused on dairy goats. They will also have a spinning demonstration and a goat cheese making demonstration. There of course will be food. I am really excited about this year's expo as the focus seems to be on dairy animals. All three of the speakers are focusing on dairy and then of course, there is the cheese demo. With cattle prices continually heading south and cattlemen looking for alternatives, meat goats have established a strong foothold in our state. However, us dairy goat folks have largely been ignored. Of course, dairy in general is not a real big part of our state's agricultural make-up. It is still a small portion and for there to start being recognition of dairy goats is exciting. One of the speakers will be talking about marketing our dairy goat products. So I am looking forward to that as I hope to someday be able to market some of our products from our goats. Hopefully, the rain will hold off and it will be a nice day. Because of the cookoff I hope to get some great recipes as well. I only have a few for cooking chevron and can always use more. Like venison it does take a little more effort to keep it from becoming very dry due to the lack of fat. These events are great events to keep educated in practices, whether you are a simple homesteader or plan on going big. They are usually free and contain loads of information. It is also a great place to talk to other producers and make contacts. They also usually contain state specific information. One of the other talks today is about good forage practices in our state. It is good to find that kind of information. So many times you find information about things that won't do well in your state. For instance, many people can plant alfalfa in their pasture. Well, here in the deep south alfalfa doesn't do very well. It is too hot. So we have to look for other legume options for our forage. When I get home, I will share how the day went and the neat little tidbits of information that I come home with. Have a blessed day!

CSA and the Garden

Wow, things have been really busy around here and not much time for posting. We are still working on issues with our daughter, but things seem to be looking up for the most part. I have spent a lot of time answering questions about our CSA. This is our first year offering CSA shares and we are only offering a few. However, since we are the only CSA in our area there is a good bit of interest. I was even invited to speak at a ladies group a week ago about local agriculture and safe food. Of course some other topics were thrown in as the ladies got into a discussion about all of this "stuff" they seem to be forced to live with. What was supposed to be a one hour presentation turned into a 4 hour discussion group. It was fun and I think the ladies enjoyed themselves as well as learned some things. I also took them all some of my homemade lip balm, which they all seemed to enjoy. Our garden is bigger this year and since we have had so much rain I can't get the tractor in the garden without just making a huge mess. So, I hired someone with a tiller to come and till the garden. He ripped me off and that made me angry with myself. And really the more I look and work in the garden the angrier I get because he didn't do that great of a job. I had tons of compost that needed to be tilled in really well and I simply think he tilled the compost mostly. I am still working it with a dirt fork. We are getting a bit of a late start because of how wet our spring has been. The ground is soaked and I am simply afraid everything will drown. It wouldn't be that big of an issue if I did not have people counting on food in April. So I just keep transferring the transplants to bigger pots. The potatoes will be later than I expected because I am going to plant them vertically in trashcans and straw to keep them from rotting. They would definitely rot if I put them in our ground. With as much rain as we have had the pond is overflowing and has a leak so that waters the garden along with the rain. I know, I am complaining about the rain and in July I will be begging for it. I will get the transplants in the ground tomorrow as the rows don't feel to soggy and most of the water is being diverted into the space betweeen the rows.That is a good sign that my plants have at least a chance of not drowning. For our first CSA year this is going to be a tough one. Thankfully, we have not taken on many customers. I hope all is well with everyone and that your gardening efforts are getting off to a great start. Blessings.