We have HAY!

The hay guy, Lynn, who from this point on will be called Hay Guy came bright and early on Saturday morning with a truckload of hay he drove down from Idaho! I thought he was driving it up from Centerville, but no...2 1/2 hours from Idaho just to bring it here. WOW! He delivered it directly to our barn and unloaded & stacked it for $5/bale. That's a pretty dang good deal. We're gonna get another 100 bales sometime in September when he bales his last hay harvest. The hay we bought is a red clover/alfalfa mix, so it takes a little longer for it to cure and dry from what he told us. Honey and the sheep will be in hay heaven! As it was, we had to shoo all 4 of them away from his trailer - they started eating it while it was still loaded on his truck! He told us he actually had a cow bloat and nearly die from eating too much of this hay, so we have to watch the cow. We have her stall locked from the inside now so she can't get to the hay. It works out pretty well - the inside of the barn is actually clean now! No more poo from nosy cows and chickens and sheep. Now it's house shoe worthy...well, almost.

My 2 year old was very, very interested in what Hay Guy was doing in her barn so she came out to watch. Mommy and her stayed out there to help and watch the guy...well, mostly to open up the gate for him when he needed to drive home!

Of life and Carbon Monoxide

Everyone out there should have a CO (carbon monoxide) detector in their home if they have ANY gas appliances, stoves, fireplace inserts, water heaters or furnaces that run on natural gas. I know that I have heard the gas company and the news alerts on it, but we figured we'd be OK. Afterall, that sort of thing only happens to irresponsible people who run generators in their living rooms (no joke, someone did that last winter during a power outage...who does that? Seriously...can we say Darwin award?). To be 'safe' we bought one CO detector for our daughter's room, since she is closest in proximity to the furnace and other 'risky' areas using natural gas in our house. Or so we thought.

Here's the scenario: I finish cooking on my handy, dandy gas stove (I love gas stoves). I had been cooking up some steaks, chicken, sauces - the whole shebang. I love cooking. I finish my culinary masterpieces and what happens? We eat, I clean up a bit, the hubby left to do his thing and I fed some babies. I felt a little yucky, but attributed it to my recent gluten intolerance issue & the fact that I haven't been as good about avoiding gluten as I should. So, no biggie, right? Wrong. Next thing I know, as I am putting babies down for their afternoon naps I hear a loud *BEEP BEEP BEEP* and then another *BEEP BEEP BEEP*. I'm thinking what the heck is that? None of the smoke detectors were going off. Everything upstairs was turned off. I am busy tending to my kids, so another 30 minutes goes by before I get some free time to investigate what is making that noise.  No alarms were going off upstairs...then I realize it's coming from downstairs. In my 2 year old's bedroom. From the CO detector. Thinking - Nah, it can't be. - I change the batteries. It kept beeping. Finally, it hit me - we have a CO leak in the house, with me and 5 babies in it. And it was a bad one, if the number on the CO meter was accurate - 54 ppm in the basement. Dangerous levels begin at 100 ppm. HOLY %*%@#!!!!! I don't think I've ever EVER run as fast, or looked the most like a headless chicken, as I did just a moment after realizing how much danger we were all in. I couldn't look scared because my 2 year old would notice, so I am hurriedly telling her to get her shoes and toy because we were gonna go for a 'bye bye ride in the car'. AGH! The gas guy gets here and determines the CO meter was being generous. The levels in the house were bad - 40 ppm UPSTAIRS and 54 ppm DOWNSTAIRS. He told me that it wouldn't have taken long to be at life threatening levels and we had to open the windows immediately to get the airflow going. Great. Found the leak was coming from our older, improperly adjusted gas stove that I've been cooking on since we moved into this place earlier this year. Everyone was ok, but it was a huge wakeup call. So the lesson is, folks, if you don't think it's gonna happen to you, it will. And make sure you have CO detectors in your house. It very literally saved my life and the lives of my 5 kids this past Saturday. We now have a CO detector for every room in the house plus the hallways. Overkill? Maybe. But better safe than dead.

Hay! Hay! Hay!

We finally found hay! After looking EVERYWHERE we found some a little ways down the road for $4/bale for a 70 lbs bale. Not too shabby, especially since most of the hay around here has been going for at least $7/bale...AT LEAST. Most of the local, non-out-of-state hay on KSL has been around $8/bale including delivery. I know that's not super high for some areas of the US, but for out here it's high. For us it's high given the number of bales we need to buy for this cow. After googling 'how much hay does a cow eat' I happened across a forum entry from a dairy farmer who used this figure for his cows: 31 lbs hay/cow x _______days. So using that figure we are getting A LOT of hay to not only feed her through the winter/early spring, but also our 3 little sheep. She probably won't be eating it all, and the sheep are very thrifty eaters, but better safe than sorry. The farmer is gonna deliver about 1/4 of our hay order to our barn this Friday and the rest when he bales his next crop, which should be in a couple of weeks. We ended up going with a red clover hay, which (from what I've researched) is just as nutritious as alfalfa hay for cows, but generally just not as popular or as widely available mostly because the stand of clover has to be reseeded every few years. The University of Wisconsin did a study on dairy cattle & red clover and found it was just as good as alfalfa at providing nutrients AND didn't affect the milk production levels at all. Honey is loving our clover patches all over both pastures, so I'm thinking it'll be a hit. Since it's not expensive to buy, I'm thinking we might stick with this hay if we can. It's cheap, will be good for our dairy cow and (hopefully!) this farmer will keep producing it!

Garlicpalooza

Remember how I had garlic coming out of my ears a few days ago? Yeah, I still do. But today I found the time (which is a huge thing for me considering I have 5 young kids!) to pickle, freeze AND make dinner tonight with what was left of our first 3 lbs of garlic. Go me!

Trying to use up such an...odoriferous vegetable as garlic requires getting creative. Not wanting to waste it, I decided to pickle some. I've never pickled a garlic anything in my life. Actually, I haven't pickled ANYTHING in my life. Guess I need to get on that now, huh? I used a basic recipe I found in one of my german cookbooks for pickling:

2 cups garlic cloves
1 1/2 cups water
4 tsp salt
2 tsp dried herbs (I used thyme)

This was all assembled into a quart mason jar and is now fermenting happily on my counter for the next 3-7 days. I'll let ya know how it goes. Maybe pickled garlic is a delicacy that's been lost through the generations? Or maybe there's a reason no one eats it much. Either way, we now have a quart of it and someone's gotta eat it. Here's to hoping it's good!

My second way of preserving our garlicky abundance was to freeze it. I found a few options online while researching 'freezing garlic', and I opted for the oil method. Basically, I took a ratio of 2 parts garlic to 1 part olive oil, added it to my food processor and processed until it looked like minced garlic paste. Stored it in a mason jar and put it in the freezer. From what the food storage website said it should stay semi-firm and I can just pull out enough of the garlic mixture to cook with when I need garlic. Easy peasy! I tried it tonight when making dinner and it was great! Definitely going to do this again (possibly soon...we do have another 3 lbs to use up) when I have another free mason jar!

Cow trots (and I don't mean the walking kind)

You've never experienced anything until you've had a cow with an upset stomach - Think copious, squirty poo. The regular stuff is bad enough! When we bought Honey a couple of weeks ago I noticed she had some 'crud' stuck to her tail. Not thinking much of it, I brushed it off as nothing. Boy, was that a mistake. Being the big greenhorn that I am, I didn't even think to ask the rancher - 'Hey, dude, what's with the poo on the cow?'. As far as I knew, cows all had poo on their derrieres. But, after nearly 1.5 weeks of non-stop poo from this cow, and none of it in the classical 'cow pie' form - even after giving her probiotics, baking soda, ACV-  enough was enough - I called the vet. After her little jaunt with the steers next door her condition got worse and absolutely nothing we did was helping like it was before. Long story short - the vet  tells me she probably has coccidiosis after I tell him her condition, history & level of poopy symptoms and she needs to go on a coccidiostat I can buy at the feed store ASAP. Wonderful. I have no idea what the heck that is or what a coccidiostat is for that matter. Did I mention we're completely green to cattle? Give me a rabbit or even a sheep now, I'm good. I can diagnose, treat and name body parts, cuts and even color patterns to specific breeds (I medaled in breed id in 4-H, not to toot my own horn or anything...but I do have a couple of trophies & plaques). Large, no, gigantic! hoofed bovines baffle me simply because I've never had them before.
*Mental note: buy a dang book on cattle husbandry already.*

So, the cow has been on this coccidiostat for the past 4 days and she's starting to feel good.  Her energy level is noticeably up from what it had been, she's chasing the sheep, running around the chickens, bucking and kicking up her heels. But the poo is still not normal. Not being patient whatsoever, I started getting concerned after a few days and not seeing much improvement. Today I talked to the vet and he assured me this stuff will work, but it takes time - like up to 2 weeks for the coccidiostat to clear the infection, and another 1-2 weeks for her stomach to repair and physical condition to improve. Poor girl. Her poor stomach has basically been ravaged by a protozoan parasite that eats up her intestinal lining, kinda like what happens to someone with cholera or giardia. Not fun. But, she is doing much, much better. And she could have had it much, much worse from what I've read of symptoms and what happens when high parasite levels are present. As uncomfortable and poopy as she is, it could have been a lot worse. Scary thought. But now I am an expert on coccidiosis in cattle. Hopefully I never have to be again.

 Next up for Honey (once her tummy is finally settled) - A BATH!

barn boots. water drips around. cow gazes on

Getting out of the house for me is next to impossible nowadays. Having 5 kids ages 2 and under can do that. Back when I was a young, sportin' chick on the town I would have laughed if someone told me I'd consider a drive to the gas station as a mini-vacation of sorts. But, now I do. Go figure. So, getting to the feed store to buy all the cow supplies was never going to happen if it was left to me. Guess what? My husband surprised me by going after work yesterday! He bought me barn boots and Probios for the cow (she's got a little bit of an upset tummy, poor thing) and bags of grain for the sheep. Yep, we're real sexy here at Saudafell. Grain, barn boots and probiotic gel. Oh baby. But, in all seriousness, I don't know how I lived without barn boots before now. They're big. They're drab green. And basically all awesomeness!! I just want to jump in a big puddle and splash around in them. Maybe I'll write a haiku to the boots. Or not. Let's not get carried away now, Nat. Oh, and on a side note - the cow loved her Probios...and thought the boots were ok too.

I'll be safe from vampires tonight!

One of the things I absolutely don't like doing is peeling garlic. It's something about the paper-thin peels around the cloves that stick to your hands and fly all over the counter and floor that drives me up a wall. I try to avoid peeling them at all costs. Weird? Maybe, but hey. A couple of weeks ago I saw a gigantic bag of peeled garlic at our warehouse grocery store and bought it. Apparently my husband also hates peeling garlic because he bought another bag and brought it home. Now I have two 3 lbs bags of peeled garlic cloves in my refrigerator. The inner foodie in me came out today (and the pragmatist - I have 6 lbs of garlic to use up) and I decided to make something with it. The result was FANTASTIC! And it has the added perk of being not only high in natural antioxidants, but it's also a natural bug and human repellant if you eat enough of it. And you're definitely safe if Dracula decided to pay you a late night visit (pull in the welcome mat and keep the windows shut just in case though, ok?)

40 Clove Garlic Chicken
(found on the Spice World, Inc. website - the company that packages the gigantic bag of garlic)

1 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2-3 lbs. roasting chicken, washed and cut into pieces
Salt and white pepper, to taste
4 Tbsp. fresh rosemary
1 cup flour
40 large peeled garlic cloves

1 cup dry white wine (Maybe I used a teensie weensie bit more than this...it turned out great!)
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups heavy cream

Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy skillet. Season chicken with salt, pepper and rosemary. Dredge chicken in flour. When the pan is hot but not smoking, add chicken, skin down. Sauté until golden brown on both sides. Remove. Add garlic and sauté until light brown. Add white wine and chicken stock. Return chicken to pan. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove chicken and keep warm. Turn heat to high and reduce liquid by half. Remove to blender, add cream and puree sauce. Serve over chicken.

I managed to cook this up this afternoon while juggling a 2 year old running around screaming 'I'm crrrrazzzzyyyy, Momma' and 4 babies pitching hissy fits that their binkies fell out - so it's really easy and quick to make. The sauce was so good that I doubled the recipe to make extra sauce to serve over pasta! Even my picky two year old loved it. And since it's basically oozing garlic, that's something. So, there ya have it - use for 1/2 a bag of garlic. Now what to do with the other half?

Natural Flying Insect Repellent ala Cow

 Anyone who owns a cow quickly finds out that flies REALLY like cows. They sorta go together like peanut butter and jelly, or manure and..uh...flies. We don't really like using non-organic type solutions around our farm. No round-up (straight vinegar works wonders on sidewalk weeds), no commercial pesticides if we can help it and no chemical insecticides on our livestock or pets unless it's a very last resort. SO, once Honey was delivered to our farm I realized we needed a fly repellent badly. She had been kept on a big, dry pasture with a bunch of other cattle since the rancher bought her from a dairy. So, you can imagine how she looked. And how many flies hitched a ride with her up to our place. On Keeping a Family Cow forum I found a thread on Flying Insect Spray for Cows and tried it with what I had on hand. It's really easy to make, and works GREAT. Our poor cow was not used to being handled, but even she held still so I could spray her down with this stuff once she realized the flies had stopped biting!

From the Keeping a Family Cow  Forum
Organic Flying Insect Spray

3/4 Vegetable Oil (I've used Grapeseed oil for mine)
1/4 cup organic Apple Cider Vinegar
Squirt of liquid dish soap
40 drops citronella essential oil
30 drops lemongrass essential oil
20 drops camphor essential oil
20 drops cedarwood essential oil
15 drops clove essential oil
Water
Fills a 32 oz bottle. Apply 2X a day, morning and evening

 My recipe using what I had on hand

3/4 cup Grapeseed Oil
1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar or White Vinegar
40 drops Tea Tree essential oil
40 drops Peppermint essential oil
20 drops Lemon essential oil
Water
Makes 28 oz. Apply 2X per day to resident Bovine.

I have been making this recipe up by the gallon and found the spray lasts a whole 24 hours after you apply it at keeping flies at bay. It works great, can be made up in bulk, is CHEAP, completely non-toxic and keeps the flies off my Honey! How can ya beat that?

Whoever said catching a greased pig was hard never tried catching a cow...

What does a big dumb dog, a busted fence, a sunburn and a cow have in common? I'll tell ya. Today started out with a bang. I woke up to a screaming set of babies. Nothing unusual about that at all. It happens every morning like clockwork at the same time every single day. I walked past the bedroom window, just as I do every morning, on my way to heat up some bottles and I saw something much different than the usual pastoral scene in my front pasture. Nothing. I saw nothing. Nothing is quite unusual. Normally there's birds or grazing sheep or SOMETHING in my pasture. This morning...not a thing except for a panting, very out of breath old, dumb St. Bernard who broke into the pasture overnight. I panicked. He isn't supposed to be back there. I had visions of mauled sheep and injured cow. So there I am, half asleep, half dressed, hair all skiwompy running outside to find out HOW this big, dumb dog managed to get into the pasture. What I found was a soggy mess from the irrigation being left on all night, 2 soaked, panicked dogs, 3 out-of-sorts sheep and...NO COW. I then panicked. Where did she go? I checked the barn - no cow. I checked everywhere in the front pasture - no cow. Then I go into the back pasture...

The fencing for the back pasture was completely mangled. I could see the scene in my head of how the entire situation this morning had panned out, and how our poor cow, Honey, had, in a panic, repeatedly tried to bust through the fence to escape her new canine friend. In 3 places the fence has 'cow' indentations on it, and in one spot the field fencing AND electrical line was completely broken. I guess 500 lbs of panicked bovine being nipped at by a dumb, old dog can do that to a fence. No amount of fencing could have kept her in at that point.

We spent the entire morning and afternoon trying to catch her. My poor husband at one point did get close enough to put a rope around her neck...then she drug him through a patch of brambles and thistles, and followed it up with him getting stuck in a mucky swampy puddle up to his knees. Sounds like fun, huh?  *Mental note - we need to halter train her FAST* By time we realized we needed help all 3 of us (my dad was helping) were fly bitten, sunburned and itching from grass allergies. Fortunately, our neighbor has cows and had the time to help us later in the afternoon. It took all of 20 minutes to catch her with him helping...boy, did we feel like greenhorns. We learned the hard way that you don't chase a cow. You have to act like you're not trying to catch a cow to catch a cow. Who knew? By the time we wrangled her back into our property, the poor thing was dehydrated and sick from her jaunt with the boys next door. She isn't exactly tough stuff. Her reward was being locked in her stall with a big pile of alfalfa, some electrolytes, water and grain. She's a happy camper now, but I think the whole thing today kinda traumatized her a bit. She's not too keen on leaving the barn AT ALL now. She'll come outside for maybe 10 minutes, then book it back to her stall.

This is what I learned today:


1) Cows are hard impossible to catch if they don't want to be caught.

2) Dogs and thunderstorms don't mix. Ever. We had a freak thunderstorm this morning that sent them reeling. 400 lbs of dog and a flimsy gate don't really go together...soooo, we're gonna get them penned up too. It's for their protection. Hoof in face isn't a good look for a dog...

3) Whoever said a greased pig was hard to catch, obviously never tried to catch a 500 lbs heifer on the run.

4) I hate grass.

Troughs, barn boots & hay, oh my!

On my list of things we desperately needed, like, yesterday:

Barn boots - for all of us. Poop on the shoes is never a good look for anyone, man or beast.
A water big mother of a water trough - our Honey gets thirsty!
A cow halter - an animal that's gonna get to be 1500+ lbs needs it and the training that goes with it. Seriously.
A salt lick. Self explanatory.
About 100 lbs of C.O.B. - for the uninitiated that stands for Corn, Oats & Barley mix. It's like sheep/cow crack.
A measured scoop and bin for said 100 lbs of C.O.B. Did I mention it's like sheep/cow crack? They try to get into it like it's crack too.
And 5 tons of hay in my barn, delivered, stacked and fitted in there like neat little tetris pieces.

Yep, that's it. 

I never thought I'd seriously be needing barn boots. Welcome to country life!

Honey & her Boyfriends!

Miss Honey wasn't on the farm for more than a few hours before she attracted the attention of the 6 resident steers next doors. If they're by the fence they moo until she comes over. If she's by the fence, she moos until they come over. It's totally cute. They're such nice boys. And such little beefcakes too! Gotta say, this girl works it!

Meet the SSSS

The S.S.S.S - Special Stealth Soay Sheep. This is the face of C.O.B junkies. They see me and come a'runnin'. It's cute during the day, but at night it can get spooky. I never knew sheep could be so quiet, but they can. They're stealth sheep. Nothing spookier than being crept up on in a pitch black pasture and turning around to find 6 sheepie eyes staring you down for some grain. Special forces has nothing on these guys. They're good. Real good. And cute to boot! Guess we need to name all of them, huh?

The sheep in the front is Prancer. She is a very content, happy yearling lamb that stots (yes, it is a word..it's what sheep do when they're happy) all over the yard nearly daily. Her momma is to the right and her auntie is in the back left of the photo. They both need names. Ideas?

On a rainy day...

...the sheep and chickens play!

Of cows and little sheep

This photo just makes me giggle. Prancer & Honey have this thing going where they annoy eachother. Prancer was left behind by mom & aunt and didn't realize it. Honey came between her and the sheep...she books it. Cow looks at her like 'Dude, what's up?' and begins chasing her a second after this was taken. Life on a farm. It's entertaining.

Now presenting, Miss Honey Cow!

After much heated conversation, Dorothy's name won out over Ethel, Clementine and Alice. Ok, actually, the hubby's name had won first, but no one was calling her Ethel. It just wasn't rolling off the tongue. And Dorothy was calling her Honey cow, so guess what her name is? Yep, she's Honey. Though I think her new name fits her much better than Ethel. She is pretty sweet, just like Honey. :)