It's That Time Of Year Again

It is officially fall and the weather is starting to get a little cooler. That means it is almost time to start having fires in the wood stoves and fireplaces all across this great land of ours. And you know what you need in order to do that......wood. And guess who has wood? That's right, yours truly. I thought I would give all of you, my loyal readers, the first chance at buying some. I will probably put it on craigslist tomorrow. Anyway, I have 12 ricks of wood for sell at $40 each and I don't deliver. Some of it is seasoned and some is green. It is mostly oak but there is also a little bit of hickory in there as well. Last year it sold in about a week after I advertised it in the paper so if you want some you better come get it. First come, first served.

From Farm of Hale

B to the third power.

In case any of you don't know this week (Wednesday-Saturday) is Bikes, Blues, and BBQ in Fayetteville. BBB is estimated to now be the third biggest bike rally in the U.S. and it is the fastest growing bike rally in the U.S. They don't have official numbers but somewhere around 300,000-400,000 people come to it and over 100,000 motorcycles. It is considered the most family friendly of all the bike rallies. They have Dickson Street closed off and all the bikers park their bikes along the street and it is wall to wall people. There are tons of vendors south of town at the university track center and they have the state barbecue cook off. There are also several stages set up with music going. There is a big concert every year inside the indoor track building, this year it is the Allman Brothers. It is lots of fun to go down and see everything and be around tons of bikers and other people and eat some good food. I wanted to make sure you all know about it and hope that you will all go check it out if you live around the area, it is a really good experience. We love going down there every year. If any of you want to go but would rather go with someone, Margo and I will be going down there on Friday for sure and maybe another night as well.

How do you like them apples?

I made an awesome apple pie tonight. We were given some fresh picked apples last week. A friend of mine from work brought them to me. They are the kind of smaller, tart apples that are perfect for pies. I decided to make it tonight because we were having some friends over and the wife of this couple does not like chocolate. Yes, you read correctly, it is not a typo. She does not like chocolate. It literally blows my mind. Anyway, I thought it would be the perfect time to make my pie. I have made apple pies before but I tend not to always use the same recipe when I cook. And a lot of times I even make up recipes which Margo does not always like so much. One thing I always forget to do is write down the recipe that I use or make up and then I end up forgetting it even if it was really good. This pie turned out really good so I thought I would share the recipe with all of you and at the same time it would be a way of saving the recipe so I can use it again and not forget it. I did not make up this recipe completely. I took things from several different recipes and put them together to make my own recipe. It turned out really good, one of the better apple pies I have had and I am not being partial just because I made it. So here is the recipe...

Crust:
I decided to use store bought crust this time. The kind that comes with two in a box that you roll out. I have made crusts before but these already ready crusts are good and easy. If you do make your own crust I would recommend using one that calls for using Crisco, it makes it much better.

Filling:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup bourbon
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans
8 apples - peeled, cored and sliced (you may need more or less apples depending on size of apple)

Directions:
1. Melt butter in a sauce pan. Stir in flour to form a paste. Add white sugar, brown sugar and bourbon; bring to a boil. Reduce temperature, and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add cinnamon
2. Meanwhile, place the bottom crust in your pan. Mix pecans with apples and fill crust with apples, mounded slightly. Pour the sugar and butter liquid over the apples. Cover with top crust or a lattice work of crust. Cut a few small slits for steam release.
3. Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees F. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F, and continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes. (to check for doneness stick a tooth pick in and if it goes in easy it is done, if you meet resistance then the apples aren't done and it needs to cook for a few more minutes)
*If you want a pretty brown crust on top you can brush lightly with egg before cooking.

Melon

I planted some cantaloupe this year in my berry bed. I figured it would make kind of a ground cover and use some space in between the berry plants that was not being used. I planted it kind of late, so we got our first cantaloupe just a couple days ago. What makes this cantaloupe awesome is the variety it is, Hale's Best. We cut it up and took it to our old friend, Adam's, birthday party. It tasted really good. This was the first cantaloupe I have raised myself so it is kind of special. Here are some pics.

Here it is


Here are some slices and pieces. Do you have your tickets to the wrist show?

You Decide '08

Well, we made it back from our Ohio vacation and had to start back to work today. It was a nice vacation overall. It was good to see my sister and family and to see our friends Travis and Kate and their awesome girls. You can see some more pics from our time with Trav and Kate that they took and put on their picasa site, just click here. We had quite an eventful weekend after we got back. We found that our cows had picked up pink eye while we were gone. So, I had to get them all in our corral and give them antibiotic shots and I decided to try putting patches on their affected eyes. You can buy patches for this at farm supply places. It just glues on around their eye and helps keep dust, bugs, and light out of the affected eye to keep it from getting more irritated and help it heal. It was quite a event trying to get these patches on our non-tame cows. I eventually got them all on though and now we have a gang of cow pirates. I need to take a picture so I can put it on here for you all to see.
Now to the point of my title. I mentioned on one of my blog posts from our trip that I was not going to shave while we were on vacation to see what happened. I have lots of people ask how it turned out so I thought I would answer that question. We knew from past smaller experiments like this that it was not going to be very impressive. It seems I only made it halfway through puberty because I can't grow much of a beard and have a total of like 10 chest hairs. I wish I could grow a beard because I would if I could. Anyway, last night we took a picture of my poor mangy beard before I shaved. I then shaved a portion of it to see if I could pull off a hip goatee mustache thing and took a picture of that and then shaved it all off and took a picture. I thought I would post the pictures and see what you my readers have to say (of course you may not care and think this is all a childish waste of your time). So, vote for which you like the best and whichever wins might become my new look.

Here is the growth after 10 days, it is really kind of sad that this is all I could grow


Here is my "cool" goatee mustache thing, Margo says I look like a pedophile


Here is post shaving

The Columbus

Yesterday we arrived in Columbus to visit our friends Travis and Kate and their 2 kids Annika and Olivia. Travis teaches at The Ohio State University (apparently you are not supposed to just call it Ohio State, you have to say "The" Ohio State). Today we drove through campus to check it out. It was alright, not as good as the UofA campus of course. It was huge though. They have 60,000 students there compared to 17,000 at the UofA. We have eaten at some really good places while we have been here. Last night we went to the cool area of town that reminded me of Dickson Street and had a nice little park area by a creek with ducks, a farmers market, and fountains. There were lots of shops and restaurants and cool places there. We ate at a good place called Old Bag of Nails. After that we went to a ice cream place that we have heard multiple Ohians (is that what they are called?) rave about called Graeter's. It was really good ice cream. It is kind of crazy how they make it: only 2 gallons at a time and it has to be hand packed into the containers because it is so thick machines can't do it. It is rated by a lot of connoisseurs as the best ice cream in the world. If you buy a half gallon it is $15. Crazy but good. Yesterday afternoon after we arrived I helped Trav bottle some beer. He brews his own beer and had a batch ready to be bottled so I served as his lovely assistant. Here are some pics.

Here is us siphoning the beer out of the big brewing container into a big plastic bucket.


Here I am siphoning the beer into bottles


Here I am putting caps on the bottles


Tomorrow we are returning to the land of milk and honey (Fayetteville).

Cleveland

Today Margo and I actually went into Cleveland. My sister lives in a suburb and everything we have done so far has not been in Cleveland. I don't think that there are really that many exciting things in Cleveland but we found a couple things to do. First we went and ate lunch at this place I found online that is supposed to be a true Cleveland type place. It is called Great Lakes Brewing Company. It is a microbrewery and restaurant. It is supposed to be one of the top 25 microbreweries in the United States. We both had burgers that were really good. I found that I really like blue cheese on a hamburger. I also had their signature beer, the Dortmunder Gold Lager. It has one the gold medal 9 times and was the world champion 4 times at the World Beer Championship. It was very good. After our meal, we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

It was pretty interesting. They had lots of paraphernalia and interesting stuff. They also had lots of cool short videos about the history of rock and roll and interviews with famous musicians. It was definitely worth going to but it was not as good as I had hoped, it could definitely be a lot better. We think the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum was better and we don't even like country music as much. The most interesting thing I learned is that John Lennon was really funny. They had some interviews of him that they showed. He was cracking me up. The museum is right on Lake Erie, so after we left the museum we walked around down by the lake a little. It is crazy that it is so big, it feels like you are at the ocean. Tomorrow, we leave my sister's house and go to our next stop on the trip.

Here is us with the big part of the city in the background


Us with Lake Erie in the background


Margo by a seagull

German Day

It's day 3 of our little trip. Yesterday we did not do much. We went to church with my sister and her family and just hung out the rest of the day. Our original plans for our trip up here was to go to Niagara Falls for a couple days. But our friends we are going to see later in the week in Columbus had a death in the family so we had to re-arrange our plans. With the plan change we are not going to Niagara Falls but we did get to go to Cedar Point unlike we originally planned. Not going to Niagara will just give us an excuse to come back sometime to go up there. Back to today. Today we hung out with the family more since it was a holiday and the kids did not have school. We also got to go to an Oktoberfest in a local town. It is kind of weird that the Oktoberfest is in September but we read about it online and it looked like fun. So, we all packed up and went this afternoon. It was a pretty good time. They had lots of German food, arts and crafts, dancing, beer, and lederhosen. At this festival they also have the national championship wiener dog races. It was a fun local event. It made us think of Walt and Annie living in Germany, maybe Walt will start wearing lederhosen. Here are a few pics.

Here is my plate of food: 2 bratwurst (they were awesome), sauerkraut (I don't like sauerkraut, I tried it again just to make sure), and german potato salad


Here is me enjoying a brat, also if you notice I have some random facial hair, I decided not to shave this week and see how nasty of a beard I can grow.


Here is a wiener dog race

Roller Coaster Heaven

On our first official day in Ohio we went with my sister and her kids to Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. In case any you have not heard of it, it is the roller coaster capital of the world. They have 17 roller coasters, and 3 of the top ten steel roller coasters in the world. It was amazing. I don't know if I am getting to old or what but after about 5, I got a really bad headache and could not ride anymore coasters. It also could have been because we road this huge wooden roller coaster and for those of you who have not ridden a wooden one before, they are very rickety and bang you around. Here is the wooden one we road:


One kind of coaster I had never done before was one where you stand up in the cars. It was kind of crazy.
But our favorite was definitely Millennium Force.


It is their best and biggest and was rated the #2 roller coaster in the world in 2006. When it opened in like 2000 it broke 10 world records for a coaster including highest and fastest. It goes 310 feet in the air and 93mph. It was crazy amazing, I should have brought some 'Oops I crapped my pants' adult diapers. Here is a video of it that I found on youtube so you can experience it for yourself.

Trip

Margo and I took off this next week so we could take a little trip. We actually left Thursday night. We drove up and spent the night with Margo's aunt in Springfield, MO on Thursday night and today we drove 12 hours through lots of corn fields to my sisters house in Cleveland, OH. She moved here this past year and this is our first chance to come visit. We are going to stay here for several days and then go see our friends Trav and Kate in Columbus, OH. We have some pretty exciting things planned so stay tuned daily for updates on our trip.

Goats

I guess you all have figured out we are fans of goats. And if any of you don't know, they are a part of Margo's work. She works for ATTRA which is a sustainable agriculture information service and she is a livestock specialist for them. And more specifically she deals with goats, sheep and dairy cows. Anyway, a few weeks ago an editor from Time magazine called her and interviewed her and asked her a bunch of questions about goats for a piece he was doing on goats. He finally did the article. We had hoped she would get quoted in Time because that would be pretty cool but the guy said it ended up being a shorter piece so he did not quote anybody. It is still kind of cool that she was a source for this article. He also did a video as a part of the article for online. Anyway I thought I would put a link to it in case any of you wanted to read it. Click here. And if you want to watch the video click here.

Come Dine With Us

Margo and I have been looking for a patio set all summer long. We mostly have been looking for a set at a yard sale or in the classifieds but have had no luck. Yesterday we went to Lowe's (we go to Lowe's a lot) and they had all their patio furniture 50% off because it is the end of the season. They only had like 3 sets left that we liked so we bought a set. Then we realized we were in the CRV not the truck so we had quite an experience getting it to fit in the CRV. Anyway, we got it home and put it together. It looks nice and is much better than the white folding table with lawn chairs around it when we have people over and eat outside. Now we get to see who comes over to eat with us and gets to use it first. Here is a picture of it.



If you do come over, if you are lucky Hello might grill you something.

Sad Day

A very sad thing happened yesterday. Dave Mathews Band saxophonist Leroi Moore died. Dave Mathews Band is my favorite band. Leroi was one of the founding members of the band. He was in an ATV accident in June and died yesterday of complications from his injuries. He started out as a jazz musician before joining the band. He played bass, baritone, tenor, alto, and soprano saxophones, as well as the flute, base clarinet, and wooden penny whistle. When watching him play I always liked to see all the horns around him and how he would just go from one to the other with no problems. Anyway, we were very sad to hear the news. Here is a youtube video tribute someone did for him. It is just pictures of him with the band playing one of my favorite songs (even though it is a cover) for background music. There is a cool solo by Leroi about halfway through.

Fair Weather

In case any of you (who live in NWA) don't know, the Washington County Fair is this week. I hope you all can go (especially you with kids) and check it out and have a good time. I always loved going to the fair when I was little and looked forward to going every fall. Our favorite thing at the fair is going to look at the animals. There are also all the usual fair rides, games, and food. And lots of cool local stuff like the exhibits, a tractor pull, and dutch oven cooking contest. I think it is the biggest county fair in Arkansas. I hope you all can go, it is a good chance to get to be around all types of people from the community.

Catfish Like Meatballs

Our friends Adam and Sarah came out last night to hang out and watch some Olympics. As a side note, I love the Olympics, I could watch it all day long. I love being able to watch tons of different sports and see the U.S. kick some foreign ass. Anyway, we decided to do some fishing in our pond and try to catch us some dinner. Adam and Sarah brought some old frozen meatballs they had to use to try to catch some catfish. The catfish loved them. We were able to catch more than enough for dinner. We fried them up using my special recipe and also made some hushpuppies. It was a really good meal. Here are some pics of the fishing.

Here is Sarah's first catch of the day. How many men does it take to get a hook out of a fish?


Sarah with her catch


Here is the one I caught. Have you got your tickets to the gun show?


Here is Adam with our supper

Goat Research

I said in my last post I was going to explain a little more in depth about why we are going to try to stay away from the popular meat goat that everyone has these days...Boer. I know most of you may not care about this but there may be some people out there who read this who raise goats, are interested in raising goats, or knows someone who raises goats. I think this is important info for people who raise goats and may not realize what the research shows. I like Boer goats fine but there are some things people should know about them if they are planning on raising them because that is what everyone is raising these days. So, here is the research that explains my point.
Researchers at Tennessee State University tested three types of meat goat does against each other in the same conditions: Boer goats, Kiko goats, and Spanish goats. They tested purebred does that were exposed to bucks of their own breed. The does were managed together under semi-intensive conditions and kids were weaned at three months. Only 82% of the Boer does delivered at least one live kid, while 96% of the Kikos and 92% of the Spanish does produced at least one living kid. Only 72% of the Boer does weaned at least one kid, while 93% of the Kikos and 88% of the Spanish does weaned a least one kid. Here is a big one....More than 20% of the Boer does died or were culled for infertility of chronic health problems; Kikos had a survival rate of 99.1% and 93.9% of the Spanish survived. All of the does were dewormed twice a year but based on fecal testing, 54% of the Boer does required additional deworming compared to 10% of the Kikos and 17% of the Spanish. Almost all of the Boer does were treated for hoof problems twice, compared to 58% percent of the Kiko and 79% percent of the Spanish treated once.
I think the research speaks for itself.

New Billy Goat

We bought a new billy goat last weekend at the Centerton Livestock Auction. I love going to the auction and wish we lived closer so I could go more often. If I did I think I could turn it into my own version of farm gambling. Buy goats when they're cheap and try to resell them to make more money. It would be fun. Back to the billy goat. Some of you may know that we bought a little billy goat back in May, a really cute spotted nubian. When I bought him I told the lady I was wanting to get something to breed with my nannies this fall and she said that the nubians are slow growing for the first year and he would probably not be big enough for this year. I didn't believe her but she was right. The little billy has not grown very much so far and we don't think he will be ready for breeding this fall so we decided to get a grown billy and we happened to stumble across one at the sale that we liked. As I have talked about in previous post, we are trying to stay away from boer goats (which are the popular goats these days). I am going to explain the reasons for this a little more in a new post coming soon. This new billy probably has boer in him as most meat goats around here do these days. Because he does not look like the traditional boer billy, he went for pretty cheap. He is about 2 years old we think, he is a pretty big, and looks good. And, not kidding, he is the horniest billy goat I have ever seen (I am not talking about horns on the head). I have never seen anything like it. He is always chasing after one of the females trying to do the deed. Even at the livestock auction, he was trying to hump everything that moved. A random fact for you non-farm people about billy goats. The reason they stink is that during mating season they pee on their face because they think it attracts the female. Nice. Here is a pic of him. I am trying to think of a good name for him that relates to his increased sexual desire.

New Technology

Margo and I have entered a new era of TV watching in our house. Since being married, we have not paid for satellite or cable. We have just used bunny ears on our TV and watched whatever channels we pick up. We don't watch that much TV, but we would probably watch more if we had cable or satellite. Anyway, it seems that congress has mandated that all television communications be switched to digital by February 17, 2009. You would think congress would have more important things to worry about besides fancy TV, like a war, a bad economy, bad energy policy, and stuff like that. But I guess not. Maybe if they worried about those things more than TV their approval rating wouldn't be the lowest in history (even lower than W.). Ok, enough political talk. At this point we don't want to get cable, satellite or a new fancy TV in order to watch TV, so we sent off for the coupons for one of those converter boxes that are always on the commercials. Basically, they hook up to the old school TVs and bunny ears and make it possible to receive and watch the digital TV channels by down converting the signal. So, we got our coupons, bought a couple converter boxes, and hooked up our two TVs. Now for the exciting news. Before the converter box we got CBS, ABC, and PBS (AETN). With the new fancy converter box we now get CBS, ABC, CW, 4 channels of AETN, NBC, and FOX. We were very excited because some of our favorite shows come on these new channels. Who knows, maybe one of these days we will get a fancy TV and satellite or cable but probably not for a while.

2 years + hard work =

We have now been on our farm for 2 years. It has been a fun and eventful 2 years. We went from subdivision life to farm life, it was quite a change. A lot of things have happened the past 2 years and a lot of changes have taken place on our little piece of land. The reason this 2 year anniversary is a big deal is that my goal when we moved in was to have the farm completely set up how I wanted it within 2 years. I know I will always have upkeep and things I want to do or change on the farm for as long as we live here but my hope was to have all the main set up done. By main set up I am talking about all the fences and shelters for the animals done, land cleared, house fixed up, etc. I had a master plan when we moved in of what I wanted to do but it kind of evolved over the past 2 years and things got changed and added to the 2 year goal. I would like to say that I got it all done but I didn't. I am probably within 2-3 weeks of being done, I have a little more clearing out to do and some other minor things. I could meet that goal a lot sooner but it is really hot outside and I don't like to work outside for long periods in this kind of heat. Anyway, I thought I would go ahead and give you all a 2 year before and after overview of the farm and how it has changed. When we moved in it was a raw piece of land, mostly wooded with very little open area, a pond, the house and shop. There was a little bit of really crappy fencing, an old barn/shack thing, and an old chicken coop. It is now a working farm with new barn and chicken coop. I have cleared out quite a bit of land and fenced it completely as well as put in a garden. I have also made many improvements to the house including re staining the outside, repainting the inside and putting in fixtures, and reworking all the landscaping. Here are some pics of the changes that have taken place and I have put links throughout this post to old posts about the improvements I have mentioned.

Here is the chicken coop that was here when we moved in

Here is the new chicken coop I built


Here is the old barn/shack

Here is the new barn we built (with a little help from our friends)


This is the view up the driveway when we moved in

This was taken today, notice the fence, cleared out land, and new gravel.


This is a pic of the west side of the land when I was starting to put of fence

Same place today standing next to the fence


This is the front of the property on the road looking towards the house before clearing

After


Same spot looking down the road before

After


And here is looking at the house before

After, taken today

The vermin are taking over

The past couple Saturdays have been pretty exciting around here. Last week was the fox killing and this week I caught another varmint. Here is the story... Margo was out stacking wood Saturday morning, and Macy got to sniffing around the woodpile at something. Well, that something stuck its head up out of the wood and snarled at Macy. Margo thought it might be a weasel (which kills chickens) and this was only about 75 feet from the chicken coop. I was cutting wood on the other side of the property and Margo came and got me. I went and got the gun and we went back to the woodpile. I started moving wood around trying to flush out this mystery varmint but we weren't seeing anything. Then all of the sudden, Margo yells, there it is on top of the woodpile. And what vicious animal did we see, this one....



A baby raccoon. He was really cute. We think that this is the baby of the raccoon our neighbors killed last week that was trying to get into their chicken coop. So, what did I do with this varmint you ask. Well, I put on some gloves and caught it. It snarled and hissed and tried to bite at me quite a bit but I just picked it up by the nape of the neck so it couldn't.





I put it in a dog carrier and gave it some water and cat food. Margo and I were not sure what we wanted to do with it. It was really young so the thought of taming it and calling it Rascal crossed my mind, but I decided against this idea. I called and told my neighbor about it to see if he had any thoughts about what I should do. He wasn't sure either but said probably shoot it instead of letting it go. I know all of you soft hearted people are screaming at the computer "How can you kill a sweet little baby raccoon". Well you see, baby raccoons grow up to be big raccoons and big raccoons kill chickens. Margo and I thought about it a little longer and finally decided that we would go ahead and kill it, but right at that time our neighbor called back and said he had a friend who raises abandoned wild animals and would like to have it. This saved us from having to kill it. Unfortunately, later that night the poor little thing died on its own. We are guessing it was just too young to make it on its own without a mother and we found it when it was on its last leg. Probably for the best. It made for an exciting day though. I can't wait to see what happens next Saturday.

Blah, Blah, Garden Update, Blah, Blah

It seems like all we have to talk about these days is the garden. I am sure some of you may be bored with garden updates but that is all I have to talk about, so too bad. This is actually going to be a pretty interesting update I think. First of all the boring update, we did 30 more ears of corn tonight and that is almost all of it thank goodness.
I am not sure if I have mentioned this before but something I planted this year just for fun was luffa gourds. This is where luffa sponges come from. We thought we would try to grow them and if it worked out give them out as presents to people (I know you are all excited about getting one). They grow as a vine so I made a hoop out of a cattle panel and put one end on one bed and the other end on another bed so it hooped over the isle between the two beds. Just let me tell you that the vines grow really fast and get really long. They are doing really well and so far we have at least 30 gourds. It's crazy. Here are some pics.

Here is the side view


Here is the view looking through the hoop, they are basically taking over


Here is a view of the inside and some of the gourds


Here is Margo holding one of the gourds so you can see how big it is (insert joke here)


We also did something really exciting today. I have been looking into ways to water the garden when it gets hot and dry like it is right now. Fayetteville got rain yesterday but we did not get a drop. Some of our plants like the cucumbers and tomatoes are starting to wilt a little with no water and 90 degrees everyday. I don't want to use water that I have to pay for because that could get expensive. Since the garden is next to the pond I thought that I might be able to pump water out of it to water the garden. I looked into buying a water pump but they are kind of expensive and require electricity or gas to run them. Well I found an article on siphoning out of a pond with a water hose so I thought I would try it out. I know what you are all thinking, how are you able to get it started siphoning, it would be impossible to suck the water all the way through the garden hose. What you do is put all the hose down under the water and get all the air out. Then cap off the end that is going to be out of the water, then take it out of the water and to the lower area where you want the water to go. Then uncap it and let the water flow. I was a little worried that it would be tough to get it going but it wasn't. I am now able to water the garden out of the pond. When I get done watering I just cap off the end until I am ready to water again. I can garden like crazy now. It is really exciting.

Not so sly

Saturday morning around 7am I was laying in bed half awake, and I heard the chickens cackling like something had startled them. This is nothing new, they do this often with lots of things: the dogs getting too close to them, a goat getting too close to them, and sometimes they just do it for no reason at all. But this time it was different than usual because they kept doing it, usually they stop after a few seconds but this was going on for a few minutes. I decided to go have a look so I went downstairs and peered out the window towards the chicken house. I saw that the goats were over in that area as well and they were huddled up with ears perked all looking in the same direction. This means there is something out there that is freaking the goats out. It also means that it is something that should not be there because the goats are used to all the other animals on the farm and they aren't freaked out by Jake and Macy (our dogs) either. So I looked in the direction that they were all looking and I spotted it......a red fox. It was coming towards the chicken coop and chickens (who weren't in the coop at this time). So, I yelled for Margo to wake up and I ran upstairs and had her grab the 12 gauge shotgun and I grabbed the 30-30 because I was not sure how close I would get to the fox and therefor what gun I would need. We snuck outside real quiet like to try and not scare off the fox. I walked over to the coop and checked there first, I hoped he would be inside so I could shoot him easily with the shotgun. He wasn't in there so I grabbed the 30-30 and walked around to the far side of the coop and saw him up in the woods. When he saw me he ran a little farther away from me and stopped and looked back at me. I pulled up the gun and put the scope on him and pulled the trigger and nothing happened, the safety was on. The fox took off running again, I re cocked the gun, he ran almost to the fence line and stopped and turned again. I put the scope on him again and fired. I then saw a brown thing running really fast away and I was really mad because I thought I had missed him, but then I realized that this thing had spots. It was a fawn that was really close to where the fox was that had jumped up and ran off when I fired. I ran up closer so I could see if I had killed the fox and there it was, dead. When I got closer I saw that I had hit it in the head. There is a lot of bone in the head so I guess when that 30-30 bullet hit all that bone it basically fragmented and blew the top part of that poor little fox's head right off. Seriously, the top of the head, gone. It was kind of awesome in a killing a fox kind of way. The sad news is that the fox had already killed three of our new little chickens before I got to it. In case any of you wanted to see a picture of the dead fox, minus the top of the head, I took some pictures. I won't post them on here in case any of you have a weak stomach or have a soft place in your heart for foxes (that kill chickens). So, click here if you want to see the picture. It was quite an event.

Corn

We harvested some of our corn yesterday. We planted a lot more this year than we have before, mainly because we wanted to make our own ethanol. Just kidding. We planted more because we want to try to have enough to last us for the whole year. So, yesterday we picked our first batch that was ready. I planted the variety Silver Queen, it is one we really like the taste of and it produces really well for us overall. I was kind of worried that our corn was not going to do so well this year because I planted it a little too close together and then waited too long and forgot to thin it out. When corn is too close together it won't make ears. But, it actually turned out pretty good after all. We spent a few hours last night shucking the corn, cleaning the ears, and then blanching the ears and freezing them. Cleaning corn was one of my top least favorite things to do as a kid (the top thing on that list was hauling hay). I still hate cleaning corn but it has to be done unless you want hairy corn. One thing I was excited about was our vacuum sealer. We bought it last year and have been using it pretty often. One of the main things we bought it for was for freezing corn because it makes it much easier to get the air out of the bags which helps it to freeze better. We harvested and cleaned a total of 90 ears of corn last night. The ugly ears we cut off the cob and froze that way, the rest we froze on the cob. We will probably have at least half that much again to do at the end of this week. And, because I was worried this corn was not going to do so well, I planted some fall corn a couple weeks ago. It will be ready in a couple months. I have never done fall corn before so we will see how it does.

Here is a pic of some ears of corn in a 5 gallon bucket, we got 3 of these buckets full yesterday.


And, here is a pic of the corn after it has be shucked and cut.