The Words of House Turkey: Thanksgiving IS coming

**Be aware that there are some turkey slaughter pictures in this post, please proceed with caution!**

Also, I'm both reading and watching Game of Thrones...can you tell?

The turkeys have come and gone. They started out cute, got really annoying, then thankfully got too big to escape, and finally were delicious!

I'm not sure if raising them is something we will do again. Actually, all summer I've been saying 'Never again!' but now that they are gone, it really wasn't that bad...was it? At least we would know what we were getting into (maybe?). I have to remember that I did not have a corn harvest this year because the turkeys and a couple rouge chickens escaped to eat three rounds of corn sprouts...we would have to me much better prepared next year, so I don't spend a summer yelling 'Off with their heads!'

I would much rather raise a couple pigs-they take about the same amount of time to raise and space, albeit with a lot more food, but in the end you get bacon. Figuring out the space to raise both pigs and turkeys would take some doing, but maybe it'll be something we can figure out....we'll see what I get talked into next year



We originally planned to raise the turkeys in the pasture, as with everything, that was easier said than done. They would escape and eat all my corn sprouts, roost all over the place, it would take forever to get them back in their pen at night, and while they were out exploring, the sheep would eat all their food. Ok, so plan B.

We ended up using about twice as much netting as I thought we would need to keep those wily beasts locked in. Every time I would think I had them on lock, one would escape out of a tiny gap (that is now a giant hole) and greet me on the wrong side of the fence. Using even more netting, they were on permanent lock down and they just kept getting bigger!



Finally turkey dead day was upon us. Seven of the eight turkey chicks we raised made it all the way to the end, but were they big enough?! Yes, the toms, with their feathers all puffed out looked huge. And yes, I usually referred to them as the velociraptors instead of turkeys, but still we haven't done this before and I was weirdly anxious about this! We had all these people ready to help, paying a lot of money for turkeys-did I do part part of the job good enough?



Yes, I did! They weighted between 20-40 pounds. The three hens ranged from 20-25 pounds, while the toms ranged 34-40 pounds-YAY!






In general, we had a great crew all working together on Dead Day. The amount of people willing to help slaughter turkeys on a cold November morning blew me away.

For me this was the best dead day ever, mostly because I didn't really have to do anything but organize, delegate, and help folks find our bathroom-not hard work! With so many people there to help, we decided it was the perfect day to get rid of some ducks too. You may remember my post about all the ducklings-it turned out that most of them were male and they had to go. They were so tiny after dealing with turkeys! It turned into a buy a turkey, get a duck free morning! I'm so happy we won't be feeding those little beasts all winter!



But let's get to the good stuff! Thanksgiving!! We got our 40 pounder in the brine as soon as everyone left, but not before we reenacted last years picture!



Our thanksgiving dinner just kept getting bigger and bigger, it felt a little like the whole county was coming and we just kept saying yes when folks asked if we still had room. With 19 people coming, it was a bring your own chair kinda party. The turkey took a little more time than I hoped, but was still delicious!




Keith is fairly certain that we could have a few more people next year, I guess we'll see! But does that mean we have to raise turkeys again, to make sure we have one big enough?

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

More advances in Milking and Barn management

Sometimes there are just so many things going on here, it's hard to pick just one thing to focus a blog post on. We've got harvesting going on right now and everything that goes with is, breeding sheep and goats very soon, slaughtering lambs even before that, plus the same old everyday chores like milking and keeping all the animals fed and watered.

And, I'm always looking ahead to the next season. As a prisoner of the moment, it's easy to say that fall feels like the busiest season, but really it's spring. Lambing, kidding, preping and and planting the garden and greenhouse, milking potentially more animals than the year before and things I'm probably forgetting because I don't want to think of them right now. I'm always trying to think of a way to make that part of life run a little smoother.

Since we will be breeding 4 ewes-1 more than last year and 2 goats-the same a last year (more on that later), I wanted to reconfigure our barn into more separate pens to accommodate all the moms and lambs/kids. Our barn was set up for 2 horses to each have a big stall, not a bunch of small livestock having a bunch of offspring each year, but now it is!

Before Keith's dad got here, I demolished the wall between the 2 stalls to get the job going, I just didn't see it going as far as it did!

This is the new outside of the barn. We enclosed the space where the white boards are to give me more space, and of course the new fence was also being completed during all of this so there is a sturdy new gate to lock the chickens in (most of the time)!



So, let go in the barn, shall we!

There are now 4 separate stalls in the barn that will be used for any number of things depending on what time of year it is. Right now I'm using 3 of them, one for each goat to have to herself at night, but that will change in April/May when Margo, Cupid and (probably not) Snowy will have kids/lambs and be in milk.




I was just hoping that while Keith's dad was here we could get the new smaller stalls built, but somehow that didn't take as long as I thought it would, so more projects were added!

A new milking room! A new milk stand! At the moment, this is the biggest change for me and I love it everyday!



This used to be the outside of the barn, now it's my double milk stall. The morning after it was built, I popped Frannie and Margo up there and milked them both at the same time! It took a few more mornings to work all the kinks out, but now all three of us are used to it! I can't wait until next year! Cupid will be putting out her usual gallon or 1 1/2 gallon of milk a day, then Margo should give more that this seasons 2 quarts because it will be her second time in milk. But didn't you say you're going to breed Snowy too-what about her? you ask...

oh Snowy. I had a talk to the vet about her. He said that since we exposed her last year and she didn't have kids, there's a good chance she can't have kids. Either they can do some expensive tests to find out or we can just put her back out with Randy again this year. So, we'll try to breed her again, expecting her not to actually reproduce. After that it's figuring out what to do with a milk goat that will never be in milk-I'm thinking of training her to be a pack goat, but we'll see.

And did you notice the kittens in the background? Those are sisters Blue and Brie. Hopefully they will be good mousers, but for now that are good milkers, helping lap up any milk that ends on the milk stall in the morning. Blue is patiently waiting on Margo's side of the stall for a taste!



And while Blue is waiting for milk, Brie is getting all the snuggles from Bear and BJ!




And I mentioned the fence! Our fence it finished! Since it's goat proof, I've got to imagine it's zombie proof too! I love how open it feels now, I can so easily see into the garden or the animal pens.



I love that Keith's buck antlers got remounted to our classy new gate! I'm trying to think of a name for what feels like my new garden...so far all I can think of are prison references-any other suggestions?

Advances in Milking and Cheese making

First, how in the world is it September already!? Can we get about 6 weeks more of mid-August, but without all the fires and smoke this time?

With the beginning of fall harvest upon us, I could talk about all the food stuffs coming out of the garden and all the canning and such I've been doing, but NO! This post is all milk and cheese!

I am a slow hand-milker and Cupid is/was an evil creature, so obviously we needed a milk machine. This season I've been using it to milk Frannie and Margo. It really wasn't much of a surprise after using the machine twice a day for about a year and half on multiple animals, it up and died. I've had another milk machine in mind since I knew this was eventually going to happen, but I had hoped for at least a few more months and was not at all prepared for it's demise.

Turns out that Keith was going to get me my new dream milk machine for my birthday, so I just had to order it a little early!

Say hello to the Segel Milking machine!




Why is this awesome? You mean besides that I don't have to hand milk, like I have been doing very, very slowly every morning for the past week? Well, it doesn't have a motor that can die. Instead, it is a wall mounted, vacuum pump, that is super quiet, fast, and efficient. I freaking loved using it this morning! And it will be so easy to train someone to use it when we're out of town-hopefully!

But what to do with all this milk? This summer I've been making A LOT! of Margochego, but making a double batch has proved kind of hilariously difficult. Trying to press multiple cheese molds with a combination of a cutting board and tupperware containers full of change to weight this down is sadly not very effective! But this is!



Yay for birthday cheese press! The inaugural pressing was none other than a triple batch of beautiful Margochego. It started out looking like this:



And ended up looking like this:



Now they are spending the day in a heavy salt brine. I'll wax them and then try not to eat them for the next 4-6 months.

Not eating them is the hard part. We've cut into a few wheels, and damn they are good! I've got a couple dozen or so wheels of Margochego, pecorino romano, Iberico, and beer infused cheeses that I certainly hope will get us through the winter. Margo (the milk sheep) won't be in milk much longer and soon we'll breed her an wait for her to be in milk again next spring. We will still have Frannie in milk, but with only 2 quarts a day from her, there won't be much cheesemaking after October or so.

But we still have both of them in milk now and I've got to get back to a batch of beer cheese!

Summer Update

I've been meaning to write for a while, but somehow the days always get away from me.

Milking in the morning turns into making cheese, then taking care of garden stuff, then damn it, there's a baby goat/lamb/turkey caught in the fence again, then I milk again, then crap I forgot about dinner and I still have to do evening chores, then it's morning again and we start all over.

But today instead of the unseasonably hot, sunny weather we've been having, it's been thunderstorming for most of the day-I could use a quiet, cool day like this at least once a week!

This crazy hot weather hadn't been kind to the a lot of the garden. Snap peas, most of my greens, even the broccoli seem to just want to be done with growing already, while the green beans are going crazy and I have dozens of sunflowers that haven't bloomed yet but are taller than me!




It's the greenhouse that is exploding, and while we don't have any ripe tomatoes yet, they're not far. We're already getting both hot and sweet peppers, and I wouldn't be surprised it we had ripe tomatillos by next week! <

I can't believe I written since we brought Margo home. It took a while but milking her twice a day is just another part of the routine here. Granted part of that routine is lining Margo up next to the milk stand, then lifting her onto it-twice a day, every single day. One of these days she'll jump up there-or maybe she won't-either way her milk is amazing! I've made a crazy amount of cheese with it, but won't know for 6-12 months, when we finally cut into it, if it's any good! Well that's not competely true, we use her milk in the everyday stuff like yogurt and cottage cheese and those are great, but cutting into an aged wheel of homemade pecorino romanno is a lot more exciting!



Every morning is the same: I hear Margo yelling at me to milk her before my alarm clock goes off. And every day she follows me into the milk stall, knowing full well that she gets milked second. I always milk Frannie first so that I can put her back with her kids as soon as possible in the morning and Margo is usually content to have a little pre-milking snack while I take care of Frannie-but not always!





Oh, and Margo is looking a little different than last time you saw her-she got sheared! I got to help shear her, but thank goodness hired someone who actually knew what she was doing! It is a lot easier to milk her now that she is sheared!



Morning milking is my favorite time of day. There are so many animals in that little stall and they all so loud, and goofy and itching to get outside and start their day.





The duck, oh man the ducks. We had three straight weeks of rain in May and the back of the pasture flooded and it was so deep by the pond that we stopped putting the ducks up at night, I just couldn't get back there. Of course a predator took notice (don't know what) and killed a couple ducks and the surviving ducks seem to disappear into nooks and crannies in the pasture. Then 4 emerged, then another, then another. Then another, but trailing behind her were 6 ducklings! yay! She was cautious of me and I haven't been able to close her up at night to try to keep her and her brood safe, so it's not surprising that only one has survived.

Then today I saw our grey duck that I have seen maybe 3 times in the last month. She was swimming at the edge of the pond when I walked over and I was a bit surprised to see what she had with her!



Hopefully more from this bunch survive!

Time for evening chores!

Milking Margo

The suggested traditional 9 year anniversary gift is willow/wicker or leather. If I got, say, a wicker laundry basket with leather handles, I'd probably smack Keith over the head with such a crappy gift. Instead, I got a combo of the traditional 7th (wool) and 14th (animals) anniversary gifts all wrapped in a sheep named Margo.

An extremely enjoyable wine tasting weekend in Walla Walla was mostly just a ruse to get us mostly to the tiny town of Irrigon. A family there is moving soon and is looking to re-home a number of their farm animals, including a few East Friesian milk sheep. It took awhile to convince Keith that getting a yearling milk sheep was the best idea ever, but finally he came around!

They had 2 yearling sheep (that just means they are in-between 1-2 years old), one was all white and the other (the cuter one) was brown and black. I was leaning towards getting the black one, based solely on looks, but a few things changed my mind. One is that we are kinda giving up on the Snowy having kids this year. Yes, she's fat and acting strange, but we really only have about a week left to be expecting kids and we just don't have the confidence that she is actually pregnant. I was planning on milking 2 animals and producing cheese for what was hopefully a nice amount of milk, but now it seems that we have just Frannie.

Then I got an email from the woman selling the sheep that one of the yearlings was in milk-not giving very much because it's her first freshening-but still! That changed my mind! Having someone else do the work of breeding and milk stand training this animal is priceless. We also didn't have to take her lamb home-thankfully! Her lamb is already 2 1/2 months old and ready to be weaned-but that also means that we don't have much more time to milk her, as milk sheep are only in milk for about 5 months-and that is if we do everything right.

Say hello, Margo!



Nope, she's not the cutest creature, but hey, who's judging! We had to start milking her twice a day as soon as we got her home. She had been milked once a day at her old home, but was also nursing her lamb. Even though Margo is a very tolerant sheep, it is taking both of us to milk her. We have a different milk stand set up and she is just not digging it.

The first time milking her we did get her on the stand, but this is what she did.



So, that didn't work. We ended up working together to hold her on the floor and milk her that way both that night and the next morning. I've been working with her, to get her less skittish and more comfortable around us and the stand and it seems to be working, but it still takes the both of us. Hopefully we figured out a different plan soon!

And I already made some cottage cheese!



I asked the kid on the farm what her name was and she responded that only little kids name animals...I have to disagree! I decided on Margo because Manchego cheese is my favorite sheeps milk cheese and I aspire to make it, but that just didn't fit. I think Margo is a nice, kind of abbreviated version of Manchego. And now I'm hungry for cheese!

Frannie's babies are still the cutest ever. I milked Frannie for the first time this morning and while I only got about a quart and half, I still count it as a success.



If anything changes with Snowy, I'll let you know!

Frannie: First time momma

It has been obvious for a few months now that our little goat Frannie was going to have her kids well before Snowy. While Snowy only looks a little fat, Frannie has been as wide as she is tall for the past month or so.



This past Friday, Frannie was acting a little funny and her udder seemed a LOT bigger than it had been in the past couple weeks, so I'm thinking today could be the day! Of course I have plans I can't cancel. All day I'm quietly freaking out in my head, hoping Frannie will just wait until I get home. And she does.

Saturday she tucked herself in the corner of the barn and spent the whole day there. I would peak in and check on her from every hour or so, hoping this wouldn't last through the night. At 3:30 pm she was just quietly sitting there, by 4:45 she had already had one kid and the other was on it's way out. Both Keith and I had been outside almost that whole time and I swear she didn't make a peep! And thankfully no babies born in the pasture this time!

Frannie had two girls! A clone and a little white and black one. I talked to my friend Kate who I got both Frannie and Snowy from and she said that Frannie comes from a long line of clones, so I guess we can expect more in the future!



Names. Names are so hard. When I first saw these too I immediately thought of the movie Bambi, watching the tiny brown goat kid trying to find her feet, then falling to the ground, just like Bambi-but using that name is just too obvious-so maybe Faline and Flower, that would be cute right? But it just didn't feel completely right.

I was thinking of Kate and when took Frannie and Snowy home and it finally came to me: Ruby. Ruby Peak Farms is the name of Kate's farm! That's perfect!

So meet Ruby!



And her sister Pearl. Little Pearl has wattles. Wattles are just kind of big, hairy skin tags that are common in dairy goats, but that sounds like they're gross. They look more like an extra accessory, maybe even little white pearls.



I've said it before and I'll say it again: Goat kids are superior in cuteness to all other baby animals! Yes, even that pasture full of lambs cannot compete!




I love this shot: Frannie, I'm pretty sure she's yours!



Yesterday was their first day out in the pasture. It started well, but Frannie was not the most attentive mom, to the point where I think she may have forgotten that she even had babies. Thankfully my friend Andie was over and together we put the new little family in back in their own stall, where they spent the rest of the afternoon until this early afternoon. It seems to have done the trick as Frannie has been a calm, but attentive mom all afternoon.

Of course bouncing little goats call for video instead of just pictures! I have been taking way too much video!



As predicted, Snowy will be the last one to have kids. I think we have a few weeks before her kids will be here. There are these great kidding calculators on-line that help you figure out when to expect kids. For Frannie I plugged in the earliest day we put them in with Randy-Thanksgiving. For Snowy, I put in one of the last days of their stretch of time with Randy-Chistmas. I think we should expect kids around May 22-a full 20 days after Frannie had her girls.

The sheep and lambs are doing great. The lambs are growing like weeds and are still super cute!



I feel so lucky that all the births have gone so well this year! I hope I'm not jinxing it with only one left! Now we have a couple weeks to enjoy spring, get to work in the greenhouse and garden before our last round of babies!

Coco, Lulu, Ginger

And just like that, lambing is over. My prediction of Ginger lambing first, then Coco, then Lulu...with maybe Frannie having kids before Lulu had lambs was completely wrong. No surprise there!

It was Coco who had lambs first, this past Sunday. I'm sure she was enjoying the warm, sunny day as much as we were. I'm guessing she was thinking: what the hell, I'll go out to the furthest corner of pasture and go into labor while Keith and Ellen think they're going to have dinner, which is exactly what she did. Thanks Coco!

Pretty much as a soon as it was clear she was in labor-a sheep having contractions is really, really obvious and loud-she was delivering her lambs. First was her female little clone, then an all white boy, and thankfully that was it! After both lambs we cleaned off and had nursed from Coco, we cleaned their umbilical chords and carried the sweet little lambs into the family stall in the barn, with three ewes following us in. This was by far the easiest lambing this year! Coco is such a good mom that we are thinking we're going to keep her little girl to breed next year-I'm thinking of naming her Chanel-but names have a habit of evolving around here, so we'll see!




Ginger was so huge and was acting kinda funny on Monday that I stayed up to keep an eye on her Monday night. She refused to go into the barn and Lulu was steadfastly by her side-again in the far corner of the pasture, I just sat out there and watched them for a while, but nothing was happening, so I finally came inside to get some sleep. I fully expected Keith to wake me up with news that Ginger had lambed in the middle of the night. But nope!

Yesterday, Tuesday, I let Coco and her lambs out of the barn and I just hung around to keep an eye on the two preggos and watch the lambs jump around all over the place. All day yesterday Lulu was scratching at the ground (a sign of labor) but there was no goo....so I just kept watching. Lulu tactfully waited until we were finished with dinner to start lambing, but really I think it would have been better to have a little daylight!!

She also had her clone first-but her clone is male!-and an all white lamb that is a girl. Again, we waited for her to clean them up and for both of them to nurse before cleaning them up and taking them to the barn. It was the taking them to the barn that proved most difficult!

While Coco just followed us while we carried her lambs to the barn-becuase she could see us!-Lulu could not see us in the dark and freaked out! It took multiple back ad forths to finally get her to follow us, with a lot of Lulu screaming and frantically searching for her babies, but at last they we were all finally cuddled up in their stall. Coco and her babies were cuddled up in their stall and Ginger was STILL staked out in the far corner of the pasture-you're killing me Ginger!




This morning, all I wanted to do was sleep in after our late night running around the pasture-but no! Almost immediately after my alarm clock went off, Keith walked into the bedroom to announce that Ginger was lambing...ugh, can't she have waited until the afternoon, or tomorrow!

So, here we go again. Ginger in the far corner of the pasture and is going through the motions of lambing...but she isn't. Every time Ginger lays down and pushes, nothing really happens. We could only see little hooves poking out and but no head-this is not going well! Giant Ginger is, of course, the most skittish of all the ewes, and she's the only one that clearly needs help.

We somehow get her in the barn, so one of us can hold her down and the other can pull the lamb out-did I mention that Keith randomly is off work today, absolutely perfect timing!-I wanted to hold her down and make Keith pull out the lamb, but that didn't work.

So, I reach in and pull out first the two hooves that are peaking out and then it's head. All of this has taken so long, that I expect the lamb to be dead and am really freaked out at this point. But I pull a little more and and it's obvious that he is actually alive-yay!! I pulled and pulled and was so scared of hurting the lamb. We ended up switching places and Keith pulled the rest of the lamb out-all the while Ginger is contracting and screaming...and we haven't even had breakfast yet!



Even though it was clear that Ginger was going to have another lamb, we all needed a break from each other, so Keith and I headed in to eat and Ginger had her other lamb in peace. Instead of having one clone lamb and one all white lamb, Ginger's lambs look like identical twins that are perfect mix of Ginger and Sam.



One constant theme of lambing this year has been the location...the corner of the pasture. And I'm pretty sure I know exactly why they are gravitating there-our neighbors flock of sheep. I'm guessing that our girls think they are part of that bigger flock, even though our lambs are cuter!

Only Coco and her lams are out in the pasture at the moment. Tomorrow we'll probably let Lulu and her lambs out to play...and maybe Ginger's too. No triplets! YAY!! I've been keeping Cupid in milk, just in case we had triplets or lost a ewe...just to be prepared. Finally I get to dry her off completely and get a little break from milking...until Frannie and Snowy have kids!

Up next (but hopefully not for a week, at least!!), goat kids!!