2009 Highlights

I thought I would do a top 10 list of things that we did or events that happened involving us in 2009. Most of these are good but some not so good.

10. Camping and hiking at the Buffalo River with friends (August). Specifically hiking the Goat Trail on Big Bluff.

9. Baby Goats (January). We had 12 baby goats born this year, they were a lot of fun.

8. Watching a Razorback baseball game from a skybox (May). It was very cool and fun times with our community group.

7. Dave Matthews Band and Willie Nelson concert (October). We got to see my favorite band for the first time in concert and they did not disappoint.

6. Second annual 4th on the Farm (July). We had close to 60 people and roasted a whole hog and had great fireworks. Fun was had by all.

5. Tornado in Mena (April). This is one of the bad things on the list but was a big deal to us. It destroyed a lot of my hometown and killed 3 people. It was terrible. They are still trying to rebuild.

4. Farm Aid in St Louis (October). Margo got free tickets and special exhibitor passes. It was a full day of music and I got to see Dave Matthews warm up before the concert.

3. College World Series (June)- The Razorbacks made it in so we went to Omaha and had a great time. Too bad they did not win it all.

2. St. Louis Trip (April)- We took a week long trip to St Louis. I had never really been there before. We really had a great time and it is definitely one of our favorite cities in the U.S. now. From the botanical gardens to the zoo, the restaurants, the arch, antiques, and City Museum; it was lots of fun.

1. Ice storm (January) - I think it is the worst weather related disaster I have ever been in. We did not have power for a week and there were downed trees everywhere. It took a really long time to clean up and get things back to normal. It was really, really bad.

Merry Christmas

We are a couple days behind but we wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. As some of you may know, and the lucky ones may have received, we send out a picture Christmas card every year. We try to make it interesting every year. Instead of just dressing up silly, this year we tried to be more creative. We turned a picture of us into a coloring book picture and I colored it with crayons and then scanned it and put it on our Christmas card. Here is how the picture turned out...



If anyone of you out there did not get one and wants one, send me your address and I will send you one.

A Christmas Song

As is tradition on our blog for Christmas, I wanted to post a link to one of the funniest renditions of a Christmas song I have ever heard. Be sure and listen to it all because it just gets better the longer it goes. I also wanted to wish everyone a Happy Festivus today.

Just click the link below to listen and enjoy.

http://gracehead.com/myrandomfiles/O_Holy_Night.mp3

Christmas Gifts

I posted about this in previous years on the blog so you might remember it. I am getting around to posting this kind of late but I just wanted to give some ideas to all of you for Christmas gifts.

First of all, a great thing would be to donate to a non-profit that helps people in need like LifeSource here in Northwest Arkansas. Or you could donate to a non-profit in your area. Even if you can't donate a lot of money, you can donate your time which would be a great help. You could also give to a missionary to help them continue to be able to spread the good news. If you don't know any missionaries, we know several we can recommend.

If you have to buy gifts, consider purchasing fair trade products. For those of you who are not familiar with Fair Trade here is a quick description....
Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based model of international trade which promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods. The movement focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts and agricultural products. Fair trade's strategic intent is to deliberately work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency.

There are several websites devoted to selling these products. Some of our good friends Dylan and Molly have a company that sells some products from India online. It is called Asha Imports and they have products that are made by poor people in India to enable them get out of the slums and out of the sex trade. Their products are really cool. You should also check out all the fair trade product websites below and consider buying some of their products for your friends and family this Christmas.By purchasing fair trade products, your helping to free more and more people from impoverished circumstances. If you live in Northwest Arkansas, the gift shop up at the Mt Sequoyah Conference Center sells lots of fair trade items.

http://www.ashaimports.com/

http://www.worldofgood.com/

http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/

Another great thing you can do this Christmas is to give to World Vision or Heifer International. You can go on their website and buy practical things for impoverished individuals in other countries. Things like livestock, clothing, medical kits, etc. You can even buy a goat for an impoverished family, in honor of the Farm of Hale. When you buy something you can print out the "gift" certificate from their website instantly so it is perfect for a last minute gift.

For any of you wanting to get Margo or I a gift, these kinds of things would mean more to us than anything else. Why not consider helping those less fortunate this year for Christmas.

Lamb Recipe

It seems that a recurring theme on our blog these days is that we have nothing new to post about. We hate to lose all our readers by hardly ever posting anything so I think I will try to start talking about different things on here than just farm activities. Therefore, I thought I would share a recipe with you. We have had a couple meals so far using our lamb I butchered.

This recipe is for Irish Stew. I used just some random odds and ends pieces of the lamb to make this. You could use beef instead, or goat, or deer. I found this recipe online and adapted to fit the ingredients I had on hand. This is my altered recipe.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 1/4 pounds meat, cut into 1-inch pieces
  
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 cups beef stock or canned beef broth
• I cup of Guinness beer
• 1 cup of red wine
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
• 3 pounds potatoes, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (about 7 cups)
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled carrots
• Salt and Pepper

Method

1 Heat olive oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Lightly salt the meat pieces. Working in batches if necessary, add the meat (do not crowd the pan, or the meat will steam and not brown) and cook, without stirring, until nicely browned on one side, then use tongs to turn the pieces over. Continue to cook in this manner until all sides are browned, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and sauté 1 minute. Add beef stock, Guinness, red wine, tomato paste, sugar, thyme, Worcestershire sauce. Stir to combine. Bring mixture to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, then cover and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

2 While the meat and stock is simmering, melt butter in another large pot over medium heat. Add potatoes, onion and carrots. Sauté vegetables until golden, about 20 minutes. Set aside until the stew in step one has simmered for one hour.

3 Add vegetables to stew. Simmer uncovered until vegetables and meat are very tender, about 40 minutes. Tilt pan and spoon off fat. Transfer stew to serving bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste. (Can be prepared up to 2 days ahead. Cool slightly. Refrigerate uncovered until cold, then cover and refrigerate. Bring to simmer before serving.)

4 Serve with a cold glass of Guinness

Serves 4 to 6.

It turned out really good. I am definitely going to make this again.

The other lamb eating I wanted to tell you about as well. It is not really a recipe but it was so good, I had to talk about it. When I butchered the lamb I cut the lamb chops off but instead of separating each one, I left them in rack form. They were not real big since this lamb wasn't very big. Well, last night I decided to cook them. I just sprinkled them with some greek seasoning and grilled them. THEY WERE AMAZING. I think this is the best thing from the meat group I have had since Adam's steaks he made us and some friends like 6 years ago. I don't know why they were so good, but these chops were awesome. I am sad no one else got to share them with me to see how good they were. Here is a picture of them after I grilled them.

Lamb Chops

I did my last butchering of the season yesterday. I butchered our ram lamb that was born in the spring. This was my first ever sheep to butcher. Even though it is a hair sheep, it's "hair" was really thick and wool like. I thought it might be nice to make a sweater out of it. But, I didn't. I decided to completely skin and gut it so I could cut it up into all the different cuts of meat. I found a pretty good descriptive slide show online that showed how to cut it up.

Before


After


Since it was around freezing outside over the weekend, I decided to let it hang outside overnight and "age". Then, today I brought it in the house and cut it up on the kitchen island so I could look at the computer and the description of how to cut it up.


Here is some of the meat after being cut up and vacuum sealed

Learn to Farm/Butcher Day

Tomorrow morning I am planning on butchering a sheep. This will be my first sheep to butcher, but it should be pretty much like butchering goats. The only problem is that this sheep is kind of wild and I can't get close to it so I don't know how I am going to catch it and if I can't catch it, how I am going to kill it. I usually shoot them point blank but I may have to shoot this one at a distance. I am also going to try to cut this one up into individual cuts of meat which I have not done before. So, if any of you are looking for something to do tomorrow morning when it is below freezing, come on out and help. It should be fun as usual. Just let me know if you want to come.

Turkey Day

Margo and I had a good Thanksgiving. We spent some time at a few different places around the state. Our first stop was was on Thursday for lunch at my granny's (on my mom's side) house in Jacksonville. There was 32 people there, almost everyone on that side of the family attended. It was fun to see some cousins and family that I don't get to see very often. Thursday afternoon we headed to my parents new house near Waldron. All of my immediate family was there and some of my cousins were there visiting my aunt who lives there as well. We spent a couple nights with them. It was nice to see family and fun to play with our nieces and nephews. On Saturday we went to Mena to spend the day and hang out with some friends. Our good friends Walt and Annie are in town from Germany, Sarah and the new Audrey (she is very cute) were there, and my old buddy from high school Travis and his family were there. It was fun to hang out and catch up with all those guys.

Here is a pic of all the family at my granny's house


Here is my immediate family


This is me, my brother and sister, and a couple of my cousins, Tim and Cindy

New Chicken Feeder

One of the things that makes us not be able to leave the farm for several days is feeding the chickens. The cow, goats, and sheep can either eat grass in the summer or I can put out a big bale of hay in winter that will last them for a couple weeks. The dogs have a big feeder that feeds them for several weeks if filled. But the feeder I have had in the chicken coop has had to be filled every two days or so. It looks like this....



Since it did not hold very much, I also had to have a big trashcan in the coop to hold the feed and then get it out of there to refill the feeder. So, I decided I wanted to get a bigger feeder so we did not have to fill it so often (and I could make more room by getting rid of the trash can). I started looking online and found one that a guy had built for his chicken coop. You can click here to see it. I decided I liked his design and thought it would work for me. So, I built one modeled after his that would work in my coop.

It is about 4 feet tall, 28 inches wide, and 10 inches deep. It has a slanted board inside on the bottom that helps get the feed into the outside food tray and it has a removable top to put the feed in. The best part is that it holds a lot of feed. I am guessing somewhere between 150-200 lbs. That will feed the chickens for a really long time without having to refill it.

Happy Birthday Josh!

Happy 29th Birthday!

Big Breasts

The butchering season continues on the farm. I am just now getting around to posting about what I butchered last weekend. I decided it was time for the turkey to go in the freezer. Most of it's food like bugs and grass is gone now that it is getting to be fall and colder outside. I didn't want to have to continue to spend money to buy feed for it so I decided it was time to butcher it. I don't think we are going to be around here for Thanksgiving so I figured I would go ahead and do it now. I have never butchered a turkey before but I have done chickens. I prefer to skin them so I don't have to dip them in boiling water and pluck the feathers off. Since I was not planning on roasting this turkey whole I decided that I did not need to try and keep the skin on it either. I did some research online and found a way of butchering it that I liked. It is kind of similar to how I butchered the goat a few weeks ago in that I didn't gut it but just cut out the parts of the meat that I wanted. The main parts of the turkey that are worth eating (in my opinion) are the breasts and the legs.
Here is what I did... First I killed it by shooting it in the head. Then I cut the skin down the breast bone and pulled the skin back off the breast and cut the breasts off of the bone. Next, I skinned the legs and cut the legs off. And I was done. It was super easy and no gutting required. Now if I wanted to roast or fry the whole bird I would have to gut it and leave the skin on. The skin helps keep the moisture in while cooking. But this way worked best for us since we are not going to cook it whole. It was a super easy and not messy at all.
I was really surprised at how big the breast were on this turkey. I did feed him some feed while I had him but mostly he ate bugs and grass. He was really fun to have around. He would hang out with the sheep all day and follow us around when we were out there. I wasn't expecting to like him but we did. Since we enjoyed having him so much, he was pretty easy to take care of, and provided quite a bit of meat, I think we might get a couple turkeys again next year.

Here are those big breasts

1,000 Year Flood

Not really a 1,000 year flood but it is really, really wet around here. The normal rainfall for October here is 3.75 inches. So far in this October, we have had around 11 inches. That is a lot more than normal. The ponds are super full and the ground squishes when we walk around outside. The ground is saturated to the max. Today we got close to two inches in less than an hour and all of it went as runoff. Needless to say, we had a little flash flooding going on. I have never seen it flood on the farm like it did today. I took a few pictures.

This is the main pond by the chicken coup. The water is going in from off the hill and out the spillway



This is below the other pond by the barn. That pond was overflowing like crazy and water was coming off the hill. It looks like a river



This is down by the road by the corner by the barn.


The culvert going under the road could not handle all the water and the water was going over the road. This is a whirlpool that was created where the water was going into the culvert. The whirlpool hole was about a foot wide.

The Leaves are on Fire

The leaves have been changing the past couple weeks here in Northwest Arkansas. This year was one of the best I have seen. In my humble opinion, I think last Wednesday through Sunday was the peak. We drove down to Mena last Friday and the part between here and Ft Smith was awesome. Most of that drive is all mountains and trees, no development or billboards. It was kind of overcast that day which I think makes the colors look even better. I read an article by the online Forbes magazine that rated the Ozarks in Arkansas as one of the top 15 fall foliage drives in North America. I hope you all got out and enjoyed it.
Now that the leaves are changing they will all be falling off soon (wah, wah). You know what that means...time to rake and bag leaves. And guess who wants your leaves after you bag them. That's right, we do. I use them for mulch in the garden. So please, if you have any bagged leaves just contact me and I will come and get them. It would be a great help to me.

Mmm, goat

We butchered a goat on Friday. We had saved one to butcher from the ones that were born this year. I am not sure how big he was, maybe half grown. We had several people out to watch the game on Saturday so we decided to butcher him and cook him for dinner after the game. We ate him as fajitas. It was really good, even the people who had never had goat thought it was pretty good (or at least that is what they told me).
The main thing I wanted to share on here was how I butchered it. Margo didn't want to take gory pictures to put on here so I will just have to describe it. Usually I shoot it to kill it, then I skin it, gut it, and then cut it's head off and cut it up into pieces to cook. This time I decided to not gut it. Last year when I was deer hunting, a guy from another deer camp was talking about how they butcher deer and how they don't gut it and it totally made sense to me. You see, with deer or in this case goat, you don't eat the ribs (at least I don't). There is not enough meat on them to worry about. So, the main parts of the goat that you use for meat are the front shoulders, the two hind quarters. You don't have to gut them in order to get these parts. Sometimes you can get the backstraps and tenderloins if they are big enough but with small ones like this one there is not enough meat there to worry about. So, all I did with this one was kill it and skin it (and cut off it's legs while skinning). Then I cut off the front shoulders, cut off the back hindquarters. This is all the meat I would get off of it anyway and I did not have to gut it. It was really easy and a lot less messy this way. I definitely recommend giving it a try.

The Return of Learn to Farm Day

Tomorrow evening (Friday) after work and before dark we will be having a learn to farm event. I will be butchering a goat. This will involve killing it, skinning it, gutting it, and cutting it up. Anyone who is interested in helping or seeing the process, just let me know and we can work out an exact time for you to come out.

Farm Aid 2009

A few months ago, Margo found out that she might be able to go to Farm Aid. It moves around to a different place each year and this year it was in St Louis which is not too far away. Well, in fact she found out she was going to go as a work trip. She would have a booth for her work at the event. And she got two passes to the event. Guess who volunteered to go along. Since this was a work trip for Margo our gas, hotel, and food allowances were paid and we got the passes for free. Pretty sweet. So, on Saturday morning we drove to St Louis. That evening we had to check in and set up Margo's work's booth. We also got our "Exhibitor" passes for the next day. The concert was being held in the Verizon Amphitheater which holds about 20,000 people, some seats are actual seats and covered but most are on the grassy knoll. The next day we had to be there early to put the finishing touches on the booth so we got there around 10am. The common concert goers were not allowed in until 12:30 and the concert started at 1pm. During this early time while Margo was setting up her booth, Josh decided to wander around. I checked out what other organizations had booths, food options, vendors, etc. I then decided to check out the actual seating area. Our exhibitor passes just allowed us to sit on the grassy knoll not in the expensive seating but I was ok with that since as I mentioned before it was FREE. While I was walking around they were doing sound checks on stage which I really was not paying attention to. Then someone started singing and I recognized this voice as the voice from my favorite band. That's right Dave Matthews. He and Tim Reynolds were warming up. I went down to the main seating area and there was an event staff guy there. I asked if I could go down front and listen in to them warming up and he said YES. So, I went down to the front row and got to listen to Dave and Tim warm up for like 20-30 minutes. I was so close I could almost touch them with a ten foot pole. I was so very excited and happy. I don't know why it was such a thrill for me but it really was. He sang a few songs and they worked on the mics and sound. One thing I discovered it that he is really funny. In between singing he would be talking to the sound guys and stuff and cracking jokes. It was great. I took some pictures and a few videos with my picture taking camera. Here are a few of them. They are not great quality because these were taken with our cheap camera that fits in my pocket.



Here I am with a cheesy look on my face


Here is a short clip I took of them playing during their sound check and warm up


Here is another clip of Dave saying something funny. While they were doing the sound check Dave noticed that every time his forehead got close to the mic it would feedback. So he kept doing it over and over, it was really funny, you can see him doing it in the video. During this clip he says that, sometimes I hit my head against the microphone and it scares the sh*t out me, then I try to cover up and do a little dance. It was cracking us up, you can even hear us cracking up.


The main concert was really good as well. It was cool to get to hear a bunch of bands at one place. The concert lasted about 10 hours total. That is a long time of drinking for some of the concert goers who got really drunk on $9 each beer. It was a long day but well worth it. The bands I enjoyed the most were Wilco, Lukas Nelson, Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds, Phosphorescent, and Neal Young.

Here is a list of the complete lineup with a few of my thoughts about each.
The Blackwood Quartet - they are southern gospel which is not my fave but they sing really well together
Phosphorescent - I really like their new folk kind of sound
Will Dailey - not very impressed, unoriginal popular tv music type stuff
Ernie Isley & the Jam Band - one of the Isley Brothers, it was a fun set and cool to hear some of the old songs
Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real - Willie Nelson's son, was actually unexpectedly pretty good and he has a really cool voice, enjoyed him a lot
Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses - he was pretty good as well, kind of a folk rock
Jamey Johnson - country singer, kind of an older style, not to bad for country
Gretchen Wilson - I don't really like new country music especially the kind she sings
Wilco - I really like them as a band, their show was pretty good
Jason Mraz - he is ok, a little to excited and wanting everybody to dance for me
Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - really, really good, it was just the two of them playing acoustic guitars, Tim is amazing
John Mellencamp - I appreciate his contribution to music and some of his songs are pretty good but he was a dork. Trying to be way too cool instead of just playing his music
Neil Young - I really enjoyed hearing him. He was really funny as well. I need to get some more of his music and I would like to go to a concert of just him.
Willie Nelson - a legend and still really good as old as he is. His music is not something I get really excited about but he is a legend.

I definitely recommend checking out Farm Aid if you ever get the chance. I hope I get to go again.

This is a crowd shot during the concert


And here is a pic of the stage during the concert


Here is one more video for you during the concert when Dave was playing. I did a little crowd pan as well that may make you a little nauseous.

Musical Weekend

This weekend was very exciting for us. Back in the spring we bought tickets to see Dave Matthews Band with Willie Nelson opening. The concert was on Friday night in Tulsa. Dave Matthews Band has been my favorite band for as long as I have thought about who my favorite band is. The only thing is that I had never seen them in concert. I have never been a big concert goer overall. Then, a couple months ago we found out we were going to get to go to Farm Aid. Margo was going to go to represent her work and we were going to get free tickets. The crazy thing was that it was this same weekend but on Sunday and in St louis. So after the concert on Friday in Tulsa, we drove Saturday to St Louis for Farm Aid. This particular post is going to be about the Friday night concert, I will cover Farm Aid in my next post.

We went to the concert Friday with our friends Evan and Emily and Steve and Kathy. It was a lot of fun to go with good friends. It was really cool to see Willie Nelson since he is such a legend. I like some of his music but it is not something that I listen to often. His part of the concert was pretty good but was not super exciting for me.

However, I was super pumped to see Dave and he did not disappoint. They are so dang good. It is pretty funny how excited people get to see him play, they go crazy. He put on a great show and did some great songs. To make things better Tim Reynolds was playing with him. I had forgotten how awesome of a guitar player he is. Dave also has a couple new horn players playing with him and the trumpet player (Rashawn Ross) is unbelievable, I was in total awe. There were three main highlights for me at this concert. 1. Dave scatting- I love to hear him scat. He does it at his concerts, I have seen it on his concert dvds. He is really good at it and it is really cool. 2. Willie Nelson came out and played and sang a song with Dave. They did Grave Digger together. It was great. 3. All Along the Watchtower- they ended the show with this song (with a little stairway to heaven mixed in). I realize that this is not Dave's song, he is just covering it. However, I do think that this could be as close to musical perfection as you can get. If you have never heard them do it, get the version that is on the Live at Red Rocks cd and listen to it.

I wanted to also tell you about a funny observation we made regarding the difference in Dave Matthews drummer and Willie Nelson's drummer. These are pictures I found on the internet so I could show you what I mean.

Willie Nelson's drummer


Dave Matthew's drummer


All in all it was a really great concert. We also got to meet and hang out with our friend Emily's family on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning which was a lot of fun also.

Be sure and stay tuned for the next blog post about Farm Aid because it was great and had a great unexpected thing happen, I might even be so bold to say...a highlight of my life.

Want to help people?

This message is mostly for those of you who live in Northwest Arkansas. Last night we volunteered at LifeSource. It is a really great non-profit in south Fayetteville. They do lots of different kinds of stuff to help those in need. They can always use volunteers and donations but we came across one easy way that all of you who live around here can help with. They get eggs given to them by a local company to give out to people through their food pantry that helps those in need of food. The only thing is that these eggs come in bulk and not in individual egg cartons. LifeSource has to buy egg cartons to put these eggs in to give to people. This takes away money that they could be using for better things. I was hoping that I could get all of you to save your egg cartons instead of throwing them away and take them and drop them off at LifeSource for them to use. This is a really easy way to help LifeSource help those in our community that are in need. I hope you all who live around here will consider it and tell all your friends, churches, small groups, co-workers, gun clubs, book clubs, families, and any one else you can think of to help. You can even give them to us when you see us and we will deliver them for you. Please help in this simple way and consider doing even more to help those in your community that are in need.

Are you ready for some wood?

Well, it's fall again and that means it is almost time to start having fires in the fireplaces. And guess who has wood to burn in those fireplaces? That's right, the Farm of Hale. I have several ricks of wood for sell at $40 each. I don't deliver so you have to come pick it up. It is mostly oak but there is also a little bit of hickory and elm in there as well. Let me know if you want some.

Long Time No Post

It is not that nothing has been going around here, it is just that I am not sure what is blog worthy. So I will just hit on a few things in this post that have been going on.

One of the turkeys died (mostly because I killed it). It got sick and was not getting better, I am not sure what was making it sick. I decided to go ahead and put it out of it's misery. So, we are down to one turkey. I have discovered that I really like having turkeys, they are very interesting. They make funny noises and are easy to take care of. The one that is left hangs out with the goats all day.

Last weekend we went down to Mena with some friends. It was a really fun trip. One of the highlights was having to push the train while we were riding it on the mountain because the tracks were wet and it would not go up the hills. If this does not make sense to you (probably only Mena people will understand) then ask me about it sometime and I will explain it.

We bought some new chickens. A raccoon had killed a couple of ours so I decided to buy a few new ones. One of them is a Wyandotte which I have never had before. They have really cool markings on their feathers.

Holiday Birds

A son of one of my friends at work showed turkeys in the Washington County Fair this year. After the fair they were looking to get rid of the turkeys so I decided to take them off their hands. I have never raised turkeys before but I figured it can't be that hard. There are two of them and they are pretty big already. I feel kind of bad for them. These turkeys are just used for meat and when they are young they have their talons clipped and their beaks trimmed. Their only purpose is to get big quick by eating a lot of feed and be eaten, which is fine I guess but I still feel bad for them. I wish at the least they didn't have to be messed with. Anyway, I figured I would experiment with finishing raising them and butcher them this fall. I am always up for trying out new things. Here they are...

Finally Done

As I talked about in a previous post, I bought a stock trailer a few weeks ago. It was a used trailer that needed some work. So, the past few weeks I have been fixing it up and getting it in good working order. I removed the rust, put on a rust preventing primer coat, and then repainted it. I fixed the floor boards, rewired the lights, and replaced the side boards and bolts. It looks a lot better now and is in good shape to be used. Hopefully it will last for many years to come. Here are some before, during, and after pics

Before


During


During


After






I also wanted to let you know that I updated our "favorites" slideshow on the sidebar in case you want to check it out. I had not updated it in like a year so there are several new pics on there. Actually, how about if I just put a bigger version of the slideshow below. Just click play.

Camping

This weekend we went camping with some friends out near the Buffalo River. There was seven of us total and we camped Friday night and came back home Saturday evening. It was a really fun time to hang out with friends and enjoy the Buffalo River area. On the way there we got to see some big bull elk and the new Trumpeter swans they relocated to Arkansas this year. We camped at Lost Valley which is a really nice place to camp. On Saturday we did a bunch of hiking. The first trail we did Saturday morning was the Goat Trail. I had read about it (click here for article) a few months ago and had been wanting to do it. It is a 7 mile round trip hike and the first part which is when you are getting to the actual Goat Trail is pretty unimpressive. But the Goat Trail itself is amazing. Basically you are walking along halfway on the bluff about 300 feet above the river. The bluff itself is like 500 feet above the river. I am not sure who found this trail but it is awesome. It is not for the person that is scared of heights though because at some points the trail is only like 4 feet wide, on one side is the bluff going straight up and the other side is a 300 foot drop. The views are amazing and this is one of the coolest hikes I have ever done. I highly recommend it. After lunch we did the Lost Valley trail which is a pretty easy 2 mile round trip hike with beautiful views of a creek bed, bluff, big boulders, water falls, and a cave at the end. The cave at the end is really fun. It is not a long cave but you have to get down on your hands and knees towards the end and crawl but after a little bit it opens up into this big room with a waterfall. It is really cool.
Here are a few pics I wanted to share specifically and I will embed a slide show on here so you can see more.

Here is our group


And Margo and I


this gives you an idea of how the trail was, notice the lean in


Another pic of the trail, notice the dropoff


Margo went ahead and took a picture of me looking back


Here is another picture looking back at the trail we had already been on, the trail is in the middle


here is the slide show, just click the play button or double click to view full size

Huge Melons

We finally got some melons today. I planted cantaloupe and watermelon this year. It seems they have been a little slow in producing, maybe because of the dry conditions we have had here on the farm. Although it looks like the cantaloupe is going to produce much more than last year's did. Margo counted 20 good sized cantaloupe that aren't quite ripe yet. This is our fist year to do watermelons. I had a big problem with squash bugs this year and they got to one of the areas of watermelon and killed the vines. The other area where I planted them seems to be doing ok though. They take up a lot of space. We picked our first one today, they are sometimes hard to tell when they are ripe but I think we hit this one right on the nose. We forgot to take pictures until after we had cut into the melons.
This picture is a little out of focus (some people call it artistic) but here is the watermelon. Please notice my awesome hair and shirt.


Here is the cantaloupe

A Goat Happening

This could turn out to be a long story....I will try to keep it as short as possible
Last Thursday we did some goat separating. As I talked about in a previous post, we have two billy goats. For background on this click here to read the blog entry about that. I had been keeping the billies separate from the females until I was ready for them to breed. So, Thursday we decided it was time to put the females with their respective males. I only had two females (sisters) with one of the males. These two did not like being separated from the rest of the goats they were used to being around. So, as all goats do when put in this situation, they tried to find a way out so they could join the others. Well, these goats found that way out. We were at work when all this went down but I pieced together what happened. We did not figure it out until later but what they did was get on a tall stump that was near the yard fence and jumped over the fence. I had always thought that a goat might jump over at that spot but none ever had so I stopped worrying about it. So, after jumping over they were in the yard and needed to find a way over the other fence that would get them back into the section with their buddies. They walked all around trying to find a place to get over and this took them to the far side of the property. This is where they found another stump. This was a stump from a tree that I had cut while putting up the perimeter fence 3 years ago. This stump was not as close to the fence as the other stump but I guess the goats figured they could still make this jump. The first one made the jump because when we got home we found her on the side of the property that she was not supposed to be in with the other goats. We did not see her sister anywhere who had been with her so we went looking for her. She was not on the side she was supposed to be on so we knew she had gotten out but just may have not made it in to the other side. We finally found her at this spot where they decided to jump back in, this is how we figured all this out. While her sister had made the jump back in, she did not. Evidently she almost made it but her back leg got caught on the top strand of barbwire and got tangled in her flight over the fence. When we found her she was dangling upside down hanging by her back leg for who knows how long. We thought she was dead because she was not moving. But she was still barely alive. She had struggled some because she had gotten her head and other legs tangled in the fence and was pretty contorted. It took us a few minutes but we got her untangled. She tried walk but could not and would just fall down every time she tried. Both legs on one side were injured. We gave her water and food and just let her lay down for a while. The next day her front leg was stronger and she could walk around on it but she was still dragging her back leg that she had been dangling from. I did not see or feel any breaks or dislocations so we just cleaned up her wounds, put a bandage on the leg where it got cut up pretty bad by the barbwire, and gave her some antibiotics. I am not sure if the leg is going to fully recover or not but it is showing improvement after two days. This was one of the craziest things I had seen happen with a goat. To make things worse it is my new goat that I really like because she has cool markings. Here is a pic of her from today, you can see the bandage on her leg where the barbwire was wrapped around.

Corny

The garden is starting to wind down a little. One thing that is almost gone is our corn. We have been putting up corn for the past couple weeks. So far we have put up approximately 120 ears of corn, some on the cob and some off the cob. We probably have about 30-50 more ears to pick. I plant a specific kind of sweet corn every year. It is called Silver Queen and it is the one we like the best of all the varieties we have tried. I plant enough to last us until corn time next year and the way we keep it that long is to freeze it. Preserving by freezing seems to work best for corn. The ears that look nice and uniform we freeze on the cob and the uglier ears we cut the corn off of the cob and freeze it that way. The worst part about the whole corn process is cleaning the "hairs" off the corn. It is a very tedious job having to pick the little hairs off each one. I always hated doing this growing up. But I guess it is worth it to have delicious homegrown corn throughout the year. Here are some pics.

This is Margo getting the hair off the ears of corn


Stack o' corn


We have a vacuum sealer that we use for the corn on the cob. It works awesomely.


Here are the tubs of corn off the cob

Goats for Sale

Before I get to the goats I wanted to share a really funny and awesome video with you. I am sure a lot of you have already seen it but for those of you who have not you should check it out. It is of a wedding entrance and if I did our wedding over I would love to do what they did on this video. It is great.




Now for the goats. We have two goats for sale in case you know anyone looking for goats. They were both born this year.

This one is a male and was our last baby born this year (the one I had to help). He is a really good looking goat.


And this is a female. She is cute and really nice as well.

Rain dancers needed

We are having a drought here on the Farm of Hale. But before I discuss that I want to tell you about a couple new animals that we acquired a few weeks ago that I have not posted on here yet. First of all, as I mentioned a while back we took our cow from the past year, Gob, to the butcher. He is now in the freezer and he tastes good. So a few weeks ago we got a new calf to raise this year to be butchered next year. His name is Tobias and he is really nice. He was a bottle calf so he is really nice and you can walk right up to him and pet him. He was a big hit at the 4th of July party with the kids. Here he is



Another new addition to the farm is another new sheep. We decided to get another ewe so that we would have 3 ewes total. She was born earlier this year and is a Barbados mix. She is really cute. She is really light colored so the previous owners called her Snowball which we decided to keep. Here she is



Now about the drought. Even though lots of people have been getting rain in the counties and the state around us, we here in Washington county, especially this part of the county, have not had hardly any rain. There was a big storm front that came through last week in which we had 70% chance to get rain. All the counties around us got lots of rain but we got zero. By my estimations and measurements from our rain gauge, we have had around .75-1 inch of rain in the past 5 weeks. To make matters worse we have had an abnormally hot summer so far. It has been in the high 90's for most of the past month. This is the driest our farm has ever been and I think it is one of the driest times I have seen in my life. Our grass is all dead except for a few small spots that are normally wet all the time. We have even had to feed hay for the past couple weeks for our animals to have something to eat. I have never really had to water our garden much in the previous years but I have had to water several times the past few weeks. Even with me watering it is still not doing as good as it should be. I am basically just limping it along because it is so big and it would take too much water to really water it good. There is a chance of rain this week but I will believe it when I see it. Please pray for us to get rain and a lot of it. Here are some pics to show you the effects of the drought.

Here are some big cracks in the ground, normally this would all be green grass


Usually a nice grassy area


This is another grassy area that I planted the grass two years ago and usually has good grass. All these spots should be green and have grass that is 6 inches deep or so