Dixie Chicks

[Outpost JWB]

AWWWW!!!! Congrats

Little girl & I candled our eggs last night. Reminder that these eggs we are experimenting with. Most are just backyard mutts. All the eggs have been washed. I was super surprised to see how many are forming. The hens are FINALLY laying good, so next weekend, I will get them all separated again and see if we can make some good ones!

 

[vehve]

JWB, I think it was something resembling a crabapple tree growing in my grandmothers yard. The thing had to be at least 50-60 years old, it was about 30-40 feet tall, and the crown was as wide. It produced these tiny, slightly smaller than golfball sized apples that shifted from green to red, and were very sour. They tasted horrible, but when you pressed them and made wine from them, it was delicious. We found around ten bottles of that stuff maybe 8 years after making it, it had been bottled with some oak chips in it and forgotten in a closet. That stuff was really good, it could have stood up to good wines even.

Jem, I got this wonderful book for my birthday about different meats, called the Ginger Pig Meat Book. I haven't gotten to the recipes yet, but the pictures and explanation about what to look for when raising and buying meat are great. It's a British book, and focuses on the traditional British breeds, the writer/farmer is all about quality, and letting animals grow slowly. He doesn't process cattle before 30 months, and the pigs were a lot slower growing than supermarket stuff too. The pictures of all the cool breeds are making me want to get pigs.

 

[Outpost JWB]

More to add to your petting zoo vehve! LOL!

I LOVE bacon, pork chops & ham. I just don't know if I could butcher or send that cute little piglet--- that I raised to get butchered. I'll just have to buy mine pre packaged until I get tougher.

 

[vehve]

I had the same feeling before we butchered our first rooster. Once it was dead, I just saw it as food though. And when the head was off and it was plucked, it really didn't feel like a pet anymore. It helped that he had gotten a bit aggressive too.

The cockerel boys are starting to fight among themselves a bit, I think we'll be processing them on Sunday, weather permitting.

Saturday is going to be crazy, there are almost a hundred people coming to the lecture series Karin and the others are organizing. More people would want to take part in it, but there are only about a 100 chairs.

 

[Alaskan]

the problem with butchering a pig is that it is HOURS upon HOURS of very hard work to get it all properly processed and packaged.

 

[vehve]

Al, yeah, there's quite a lot of meat on one... If we ever do get the pigs we dream of, I think I shall be leaving the butchering to someone else, it isn't that expensive to have them processed.

 

[perchie.girl]

@perchie.girl I love the fence dreaming

you have a couple of very small fenced off areas in the horse/goat places, why so?

price... The horse needs substantial fence. With at least Hot wire on top because shes a leaner and a scratcher. If you look at the total area its probably a quarter of my land Ideally I should fence the whole parimeter with Field fence and Hot wire.... Then subdivide with just hot wire.... But the land is sooo dry standard hot wire doesnt work. I have to use a bi polar setup.... two wires run parallel just an inch apart one pos one neg...

The area I have drawn for pasture is the flattest I have... Stuff I can actually walk my self If I need to. The canyon west of the fence is just that a long narrow chute that leads to the Border patrol road... Mountain lions sometimes hang out there... I have heard them scream... with a bark at the end. but that part would be incredibly hard to fence for a horse but a nightmare for the goats.... Anywhere there is a boulder is an escape point or potential escape point.

The area above the house is loaded with Cholla cactus and herbals... But once the goats and horse clear it It will be about ten times the size of her corral. The long narrow aisles behind the house are a way to exercise a horse.... Those areas are very rugged with passage ways between rocks that a human can barely traverse. HOrses can go any where a person can go without having to put down their hands.

The time she got loose she went around the house and between some rocks that I didnt have a clue she was capable of going through.... Shes a nimble girl.

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

@perchie.girl I love the fence dreaming

you have a couple of very small fenced off areas in the horse/goat places, why so?

Oh I re visited the picture.... those are areas I dont want either horse or goats in... so they are being fenced out. There is a place where West of the house that will make a good observatory with the tall rocks sheltering it on each side from the wind. Not quite an ampetheater but I want to put a small deck there with some patio furniture....

Then there is a small fenced area across the driveway.... its very rugged but thats where my utilities are very close to the surface... I need to keep 2000 pound feet off my water lines....

Water power and telephone cross my land diagonally and feed across a dry creek on a kind of bridge I stopped the bigger pasture just before that.

deb

 

[minihorse927]

Cabinet turners are different from styro type turners... the whole tray tilts back and forth... the bottom one dips into the top of the hatch tray, so anything inside the hatch tray as tall as it will get hit by the lowest edge of the tilted tray...

Right??

correct

 

[minihorse927]

I have 3 stragglers. A paint silkie which had pipped. A Swedish flower and a Orpington. I can hear both peeping. Wish they'd hatch!