Operation Steers-eye And Mountain Memories.

Bullseye enjoying the sweet mix of beet pulp, mineral, molasses, and flax we feed Maggie while we milk. 

It went super well. He loves the sweet mix we make for the cow and walked right in and BAMM the head gate slammed shut when Papa pulled on the rope attached to it. A couple of boards on either side so he couldn't move around too much, a piece of plywood to block his view of the humans. Then Papa tied a rope to his tail and I pulled the rope and kept his tail up, cutting off the feeling in his back legs and keeping him from kicking. Then Papa did his thing and TA DA we have a steer. And we no longer have to worry about if he 'can reach' when Maggie goes into heat! That was about a week ago now and he's doing really well. We wanted to do it before spring because of the flies and that whole 'reachability'  thing. He will be 1 year old in May.

He looks so tiny in there compared to big tall Maggie. The cat was PRETTY SURE we'd forgotten to feed her that day! We had fed her, but they have to try it. It was a warm wet snowy day and we had PUDDLES on the ice! 

I have to remember the last time Papa and I did this to a little bull. We were living on the mountain in WA. state and the calf was a Holstein bull calf we'd gotten as a 3 day old and raised on our goats. He was TALL and we placed two trucks side by side and tied him between the two of them. Then I stood with a pair of gloves and great balance on the truck bed sides.. OVER the calf. So one foot on one truck bed side and one foot on the other truck bed side and held his tail up while Papa 'did his thing' and Gaffer the calf bawled for his goat momma. Looking back we should have tied her to the front of the truck.. he would have been quiet then. Gaffers goat Momma was named Little Girl and she loved him as much as he loved her. She was always looking out for him and would let him nurse any time he wanted.. even though he was twice as big as she was. He was a lot older then this picture shows when we steered him. He's only a couple weeks, if that, old in this picture. He'd follow her anywhere. If he got scared he would hide behind her... well as good as he could anyway! Very funny! 

What do Pigs, A Steer, A Calf, Chickens and A Milk Cow all have in Common this Winter??

None of them want to stay in the pen that was made for them! The calf wants his Momma, or at least her milk. The steer wants FREEDOM plain and simple. The pigs and cow well they both want the same thing and neither of them can find it nearby! Papa commented after a particularly trying week 'Might be a good reason to keep them pregnant, at least THEN they stay in!' I, yes the pessimist, thought darkly, "No that just means there will BE MORE OF THEM OUT!!' So far this winter I have chased, yelled, bribed and shot, yes SHOT, each of our 3 sows, the steer and the calf multiple times!! The now steer is the worst and we've actually considered shooting him now just to get rid of him once and for all. Bullseye, recently re dubbed "Steers-eye" after a hour or so of work, is an escape artist who is too stupid to stop when the electric fence nails him. He's his mothers son and will be the last of Bindy's BAD SEED on the place. It doesn't help that we've had a LOT of snow this year and our fencer is NOT working as well as it once did. I think we will be replacing it VERY soon. I"m a bit leery of getting a bigger one as this one hits pretty good in the summer and quite frankly I seem to attract the 'charge' as much as or MORE then any animal on the place. OUCH! But it's been crazy around here and something has got to give. 

We got a lot of snow one night and the next morning Papa noticed the pig and then the tracks going down the driveway. So he bundled up and went out looking for her. Poor Chip sat in the middle of the driveway and watched as he's not allowed out of the yard. He sat right about where Papa is in this picture and I was able to tell what Papa was doing by watching the dog that loves him. First Papa went left and Chip stared off that way. Then Chip stood up and got super excited. Sure enough, here comes Papa into view. No pig. All of a sudden Chip sat down hard and dropped his head in sorrow. Papa's finger was pointing at him and I'm pretty sure he got the 'stay home!' Then Papa went right. Chip watched the right side eagerly. Time passed. Chip lay down, still watching to the right. Then he sat up. Barked. Sure enough here comes Papa, pig trailing behind him. Chip is SUPER excited and does his 'whole body wiggle' multiple times. Papa hits the drive way and starts down it. Chip launches himself in the air in excitement but doesn't cross the line. The stay home line. Good dog. Papa's knows the pig doesn't really care for the dog so poor Chip has to 'go lay down' and can't greet his love, his master properly. He MUST obey and he does. What a good dog! 

Papa, ( he knew I was taking pictures and does his best to look cranky when I take pictures of him. I think he thinks I'll quit if he always has a scowl on his face..but he's mistaken :) bringing home a pig one Sunday Morning in January. We have 3 sows. 2 with long tails and one dubbed STUB for a reason. Both Stub and this long tail get out every time they go into heat. EVERY TIME!! Neither of them like me at all but they will fallow Papa to the ends of the earth. So I rarely have to put them in. When I do I use the pellet gun and shoot them in the rear. Multiple times. They take the hint and stay off the front yard even if they won't go back in. At least they are staying out of the neighbors and out of trouble. We are contemplating butchering both Stub and this long tail and keeping the other long tail who stays in and the very last female piglet from this springs batch and breeding them to farrow this fall. Neither of those two get out! Bonus. What a lot of sausage that would be :) 

Maggie the cow has only been out a couple of times and only after the steer has ripped the fence down. I sometimes wonder if she enjoys chasing the steer through the fence just so she can go and try and make a pig of herself with the sweet mix we feed her at milking time. Thankfully it can't hurt her and she's not as tricky as Bindy or Steers-eye and we figured out how to keep her out of it rather quickly. 

We finally managed to keep MOST of the chickens in. I'm not really sure what caused them to decide to stay in but I'm grateful for it. I'm also getting about 6 eggs a day! Finally some one is behaving around here! 

Chip in the deep snow. 

The ambulance in the deep snow. Pretty much covered over! 

Bagels! 1st Try!

We, Papa and I that is, made bagels today for the 1st time ever. It won't be the last. We'd been talking about trying them for quite a while and then Auntie R tried them and FB me the recipe so we decided to try them this morning together while Papa was home. The 1st plan was to get up early and have them ready for breakfast when the kids got up. Well we ended up watching a movie which had troubles at the end and  we fussed with that for much too long and ended up going to bed in the early hours of the morning. SO we changed the plan, slept in, and had them for lunch with Papa taking his to work. Here is the recipe.

Susan's Egg Bagels

Jody Prival

2 pkg. active dry yeast (regular--not fast acting)
2 cups warm water
3 tablespoon sugar
3 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
6 cups flour
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoon dry onion flakes (optional)Dissolve yeast in water. Add sugar and salt, dissolve. Lightly beat in the 2 eggs. Stir well. Add 4 cups of flour, stirring to make a smooth thin dough. Then add remainder of flour to make a stiff dough. Knead this dough 15 minutes. Then set aside covered to rise for 40 minutes.Divide the dough into 20 equal parts and knead each separately to form a small ball. Push a floured finger through the center of each and twirl it around your finger to make a bagel with about a 1 to 1 1/2" hole and an outer diameter of about 3". Let rise for 20 minutes.
Bring to boil 3 qts. water with 1 tablespoon sugar in it. Boil 4-5 bagels at a time for 4 minutes each, turning carefully. Dry on a paper towel. Mix the egg yolk with 1 tablespoon water, beat well, and brush the bagels with the mixture. Bake 20-30 minutes at 400oF (until brown). Don't expose to direct fire in the oven.

From the Dinner Co-op

Looking good!! We did the egg yolk on top and I think next time we won't. Made the outsides really chewy. Oh and make sure you bake them long enough or they'll have 'gooey' parts inside the ring. Not that I really know anything about it as this is our 1st try. I used my bread maker for the mixing and it worked great! 

Papa 'twirling' two at the same time. He's a mechanic so his hands are rarely 'food grade' so I make him wear gloves :) He whines but he wears them :) Note J doing school work in the back ground. Because today is Friday and the T's come over every Friday afternoon when we'd normally be doing school. I gave J the choice of doing his school last night, this morning or tonight. He woke up and told me 'I'm starting school right now so I can play later!' and proceeded to do his English and Science at the table. English before breakfast! He did his Socials Studies later on after the T's had gone. I love how he enjoys school and I rarely have to nag him into doing it. (He's so far ahead in his Math that he skipped it all together today.) He'll start grade 2 Math by the end of next week. 

You really should do 20. We ended up with 16 and they were too big. I want to try them as mini's too. Oh and make sure the inside hole is BIG. Very few of ours actually had a hole in the middle. But the water took FOREVER to boil so they rose a bit long too. (And yes I started the water boiling right after we got them into rings but it was a large pot and still took over the 20 minutes to boil.) They really should look like the inside hole is about 3 times bigger then it should be before they rise that last time.

Water Heater FUN!!

Our hot water heater decided to kick the bucket a week or 2 ago which should not have been too much of a surprise as it was ancient and we'd been having problems with it for several months. So we ended up being with out hot water for 5 days and making a quick trip to the 'city' to get a new one as they didn't have what we needed here in town. We had fun getting it in to the T-all as the back window of the T-all has been giving us problems (If it's not one thing lately it's another!) So we had to take all but one of our 5 car seats/boosters seats out and put the back seat down so we could slide the hot water heater over the seats and into the back and then put the car/booster seats back in for the drive home and then do it all over again to get it out! Needless to say it was an adventure and I hope the next time we need a big something like that the back door opens or we bring a trailer. But the important things are that it fit in the T-all, we got it home and it works :) The kids beds block the water heater door so we had to re-arrange a bit to get into the space to get the old one out and the new one in. Here are our 4 oldest watching Papa hook up the new heater. They had a blast with E running a commentary on Papa's every move. She loves to make people laugh! 

R Singing a Cute Little Song.

Recognize this song anyone?? She sings it well, if that helps. The tune is right and most of the words.

Some Clear Day Eagle Pictures.

This is the same bird the day after these bottom ones were taken. He loves this big old spruce on our neighbors place and hangs out there quite a bit. He can see both places that way and keeps an eye out for the flock of ravens that like to make pests of themselves. 

A bit fuzzy but you can see his eye really well. 

Looking behind him. There was a lot of birds there that day and he was 'keeping his eye on them.' 

In this picture you can see the hook on his beak and his talons really well. These pictures are all in the poplars around the lagoon. Some days we have as many as 4 or 5 eagles at once. Some golden and some bald. Lately though it's just been this one lone eagle. 

Fun with Pirates and Bridges :)

The boys built this bridge with fence pieces. The blue blanket under the bridge is the water and the brown fences in the water are 'the broken down ship.' The couch and chair are islands. Some of the people on the island are friends but not all of them. Some of them are Pirates!   L is standing surveying the work or he says 'I can be a mountain.' 

L's Towers :)

The kids take turns putting TP under the sink in the bathroom. They take it from our back bathroom which is mostly storage and bring it to the front bathroom and put it under the sink. Last time was L's turn. He loves to do this. A lot more would fit in the back but he came out and told me. "3 towers Mom. That's all I want to do!" 

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Eagles in the Snow!

A few pictures I took of our winter bald eagle. He or she is never here in the summer but for the last several winters we have had a pair of balds and one that is alone. Often at the same time. In the top picture he is eating something that is under his feet! It was snowing so the pictures aren't the best. 

Eggs!!! And My Ice Cream Recipe!

Papa found 6 lovely chicken eggs in the hen house this morning. With every thing on our plates this fall we didn't have time to figure out how to get a light into our new chicken house, so we ended up having a 'dry spell' of about 2 months without very many eggs at all. (We even BOUGHT eggs from the store for baking!) But about 2 weeks ago Papa got a new extension cord and light bulb and TA DA there was light!! That is the one bad thing about using the green house for the chickens, so far. It's quite a ways from the house and not set up at all for lights and things. The calf, Meatloaf, broke one bulb, and another one just burnt out. We finally got one to stay on and now we are getting eggs!! Worth the hassle for sure. Tomorrow night we are having Mr. & Mrs B over for supper before they drive out of our lives again for another month of traveling and homemade ice cream is on the menu!! BBQ's chicken or a pork roast, baked potatoes, salad, corn and ice cream for dessert! Yummo!! We might even make COOKIES tomorrow and eat the dough raw!! Oh wow. Now I'm drooling!! :)

If you've never had it or made it.. you've got to try it.
Here's what you do!
Ice Cream.

1. Whip 4 fresh farmer eggs till they are a  really light yellow color and foamy. Make sure you scrape the sides and get it all mixed in.
2. Add 1/2 of sugar and 2 tsps of Vanilla, keep whipping till it's all mixed in!!
3. Add about 4 or 5 cups of cream, some people cut it in half with milk, but we like it with just cream!
4. Mix it together until it's all the same color!
5. IF you plan on freezing it after making it you can add about a tablespoon of vodka to keep it from freezing hard as a rock!! If you planning on finishing it off that night don't bother.

Now this is the harder part. We have a ice cream maker that comes with a bowl that you freeze and then you add the mixture to the frozen bowl while the machine turns the bowl and it mixes very nicely into wonderful ice cream.  All I have to do is set the timer and take it out when it's done I've also heard you can put it in the freezer in a shakable container and take it out and shake it at intervals which mixes it and makes ice cream. There is also the old ice and salt hand cranker which I've heard works well but have never seen done (that I recall) or used.

Now if you want to make chocolate ice cream or some other kind, play with it. Last time I made chocolate I just whipped in cocoa powder with the sugar and it was AWESOME!! You need quite a bit of cocoa mixed in. I think I did 1/4 cup and you could have done 1/2 no problem! We've also mixed in ice cream sauces in the last few minutes or candies, cookie dough, chunks of chocolate bars, (be aware. Chocolate chips HURT when you bite into them frozen!!)  mint thin paddies are REALLY good :), strawberry jam works great with some strawberry drink mix (my kids think strawberry ice cream has to be pink) to make a great strawberry. There are lots of combo's to try!! Have fun! Kids love to help you make it, and eat it,  and HEY it's even science :)