Over-The-Fence Chat Thread 6-24 thru 6-30

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Hey,

Well, Steve brought home 2 Jersey bull calves from the auction today and they are beautiful and healthy. They just about knocked me down wanting to eat, poor things were hungry. That makes 4 bottle calves. And I think we still will have milk left over! I have made cheese, buttermilk, yogurt, butter, ice cream, frozen yogurt and drank lots of chocolate milk. Now I need to make buttermilk pies! I really need to start canning the milk.

Ginger has settled in great, she's really a pet, just stands there while Steve milks. The only problem is she is so in love with the babies she doesn't want to go out to the pasture during the day. So, today we made a calf pen that goes out into the field a little ways. Hopefully tomorrow it will work and she'll venture out further. She'll go way out there with her calves, but not without.

General, my head Border Collie, just loves those new little calves. He sat with them all afternoon in the stall, keeping an eye on them. He takes his job so seriously, he's all work!

Garden is growing like a jungle out there, we've had rain on and off all week. No ripe tomatoes yet. I must get out and weed. Everything is so beautiful and green still, like spring. All the flowers are blooming, the pastures are full of daiseys! That's it for now, what's going on at your place?

-- Cindy in KY (solid_rock_ranch@yahoo.com), June 24, 2001

Answers

Good morning, Cindy! Did you try the cottage cheese recipe yet? I know, it sounds too simple to be true. Do you have hummingbirds back there? I know ours have hatched their babies, because I went from filling the feeder every other day to twice a day--it will be three times a day within the week--and then poof! they're gone by the third week in July. We have swallow nests in the equipment shed (4), in the kids' shed(4) in the big girls' shed (only 1) and 3 in the buck shed, 2 in the gutters (dry) of the chicken house. None of us have gotten even one mosguito bite yet, gee, I wonder why? :.) DH and I each had a ripe strawberry out of our strawberry bin this morning, we had given the first 2 to the boys. Very sweet taste of victory, after having giving up u-pick because we couldn't fight the weeds ( I fought the weeds and the weeds won...)I hope everything is going as great for you as it is for us. Kathie

-- Kathie in Western Washington (twinrosefarm@worldnet.att.net), June 24, 2001.

Good morning to all. I'm in my usual canning euphoria. I put up carrots, two kinds of pickled peaches and made plum butter yesterday. I love this time of year with all the yummy stuff sitting around in jars. Our garden wont be ready to pick for a couple of weeks so I'm canning all the stuff I have to buy first. Monday I'll finish the carrots and can 30 lbs of beef for stew. A friend gave us a bunch of green tomatoes so I see piccalilli somewhere in the future. Todays the Lords day so we will rest and reflect on all the good stuff in our lives. Theres a lot of it to be thankful for. Blessings to all Peggy

-- peggy carr (wclpc@cookeville.com), June 24, 2001.

hi folks; boy its dry in se.ks. had to water the garden today. corn is head high and putting on ears tomatoes are great big but not turning yet. got one bell pepper had 6 plants and only one pepper dont understand eny ideas. oh well its about time to fish again right after the 4th got to stock up the freezer. hope everone has a good week. bob se.ks.

-- Bobco (bobco@hit.net), June 24, 2001.

We're getting plenty of rain. It seems to rain just about every night. Got the strawberries weeded and am now getting ready to follow the great instructions from CS friends and build a new bed for the new runners. (Thanks for all the good advice.)

Tomatoes have blossoms, broccoli seems to be doing very well. Corn WAS doing good until the chickens got in there and "grazed". Probably set the corn back by at least a week. Poor corn!

Am still preplexed by what's happening with my neighbor. He's been served with papers from the town to "cease and desist" his activities. He's in violation of many town by-laws by operating a business in a residentially zoned area, has at least nine BIG trucks parked in his yard in various stages of dis-repair, allows several landscapers to dump yard waste and broken asphalt on his property, etc. Right now, DH and I are keeping mum; don't want to be accused of being "bad neighbors". Of course, what he's doing in directly impacting our property values. Neighbor is planning to sue the Town for harrassment. Could get messy.

Sorry for going on about this. It's just so frustrating sometimes.

Thanks for reading.

-- Dianne in Mass (dianne.bone@usa.net), June 25, 2001.


Hi,

Wow..... you all make me tired just reading about how busy you have been, *grin* I too have been really busy this apst week. I helped hubby finish planting the garden, we got it cleaned out. I like the garden spot at the new farm here; its a small raised bed with a picket fence around it close to the back porch and the water valve. I can't wait for the first tomatoes, know we have a few months to go on that as we just planted them. I am hoping to find veggies and fruits to can for the winter, the budget needs the cushion. I need to ge tto town to a farmers market or something. trouble is i love my farm so much i hate going anywhere.

I am waiting to break in my new canner, usually use my Mirro pressure canner. But with the cheese and fudge business i am working on i got a Wrek canner from Linda campbell's site, its hand made stainless and made in germany. It even has a valve at the bottom to drain. A lot of goat folks use it to pasutrize milk in. I like it cause you can plug it in, set timer and temp and leave, it does it all. Well... wish it could chop and peel, etc.

I spent last week cleaning the house, mopped, scrubbed walls, etc and unpacked some more boxes. I was so tired that i told hubby that I got up this mountain here, i'm not going back down. I also have been working on some promo flyers for our goat milk fudge and soon to come goat milk cream cheese cakes. I made afe batches of cheese yesterday and it came out good. i went to this website looking for ideas for cheese marketing and found a site with good clear pics on how to make cheese, homemade rootbeer, etc. Heres the addy. I want to get the pennacillain mold to make blue cheese, its on eof my vices:) http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Blue_Cheese/Blue_Cheese.ht m

I found some ripe blackberries growing along the driveway and picked about a qt, want to make blackberry pie and if I can get enough jam. I went for a walk down the old access road in back and found a trash and treasures heaven, not much good, but a lot of scrap metal and worth maybe trying to sell, not to say clean it up. Sawmill parts all over. Good thing its not close to the house and in sight, hate junk piles.

Well... got to go, great to hear from everyone. I'm so glad ypou love yer gal there Cindy, she sounds like such a sweetie. You sure are getting a little stock of claves. Steve reminds me of Bruce, going to the auction to get calves.

Take care. Weather has been doing good here, not humid like last week.

Bernice

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), June 25, 2001.



Cindy, Are you as happy as me?So good to see the forum running smoothly and so many people asking questions. We have had some really good threads going. I really love this forum,I've only had my computer since Jan and this was my first forum. I love to visit everyday and see whats new. We can all learn from each other. We have had lots of rain since Sunday,some farmers had hay down,so big loss. The corn growers are happy. The corn is growing fast,our saying here is knee high my the 4th of July. You guys will just laugh back there. Always love to visit your site. You keep really busy. I can't do as many things as we use to do, but am so blessed that I get to live in the country. My garden is doing good. Saw some blooms on one tomato plant today. Suppose to get warm again. Wouldn't be great if we could stand in the warm sun and chat over your fence in person. Thanks for all your hard work keeping this thread going.

-- Joanne (travelerjo@hotmail.com), June 28, 2001.

Thanks Joanne,

Yes, I just seem to get happier every day! I keep getting all these new blessings. Cow with 2 calves, used riding mower, 2 more calves, another reg. Alpine baby doe, a red & white Border pup, Bo aka- Booger, a blue & white Border pup girl, 6 wks. old, got her day before yesterday, must choose a name for her! (what is a feminine one syllable word for blue). I've been doing lots of trading this spring.

The calves are doing great. I resorted to bottle feeding 3, and Steve lets the largest forth one have one ninny and clean out the others real good. That way we know Ginger is good and empty. Still waiting on two more goats to kid. (Sparkys first babies)

The corn here is as tall as me! The tobacco is a couple feet high, soybeans are up. We got bucketfulls of rain last night, after a very scarey, pitch black, gusty wind storm front come thru. I was running for puppies! The big dogs were right behind me! We all got in the house.

Bernie, it's great to hear you're doing soooo good there. Thank you for the fudge recipie. I made wonderful potatoe soup last night and used up 3 quarts of goats milk. It was very, very good. Put 2 cans of peans in it. It's a special event around here when I can actually cook up a meal!!

-- Cindy in KY (solidrockranch@msn.com), June 28, 2001.


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