Accessories

As I talked about in my last post, because we got the ATV so cheap, I have been able to buy some useful accessories for it.

First of all, I bought a small trailer to pull behind it. I needed something to haul wood, rocks, dirt, hay, and other things in. I put an ad on craigslist under the wanted section and a guy called me about one he had. I ended up buying it from him. It is a homemade trailer but is well built and sturdy. It is about 4 feet long by 3 feet wide. It sits pretty high off the ground so it will go over stumps and rocks and stuff. The best thing was it only cost me $30 which is really cheap compared to the ones for sale at the stores.

Here it is inaction hauling wood


I also got a 3 way ball hitch. It has a ball on it to hook a normal trailer to like my bigger trailer, a hole for a pin to go through like what the new trailer uses, and a loop to hook other stuff to.


I also wanted a basket of some sort on the front to carry stuff in like tools or what have you. The ones they sell at stores are metal pipe or mesh and run anywhere from $50-$150. I decided to build my own out of wood (2x6's) because I figured it would work just as good. It turned out good and is really solid, and it only cost me $5 to build. You will also notice some Y shaped bracket type things mounted on top of the rack. They are gun and/or tool holders that I bought. You just set your gun or shovel or whatever in there and there are little straps that hold it in there. They are handy little things.

New Farm Toy

A few posts ago when talking about our good farm week I alluded to another good thing that happened that week that I would save for another post. Well, this is that post. I wanted to wait to talk about until I found out just how good of a thing it was. Since moving out on the farm, Margo and I have talked about how nice it would be to have a 4 wheeler (I will from here on out refer to it as an ATV). We could use it to go around and check on stuff, haul wood or rocks or hay, take it deer hunting, and many other tasks. The past 2 years we have been using the truck to haul wood out which is hard on my truck and I want it to last for a long time and not tear it up. We use the wheelbarrow to haul rocks, dirt, or hay. When we were putting up fence, I had to carry the big wood posts and metal posts up the hill behind our house by hand to the back of the property because I had no other way to get them there. So you can see how nice it would be to have an atv to do a lot of that stuff with. The main reason we had not got one yet is they are expensive (even used) and we did not have the money to spend on one. Over the past 2 years we have been saving any money we make on the farm whether it is by selling wood or selling goats. We have been putting that money in a "farm" savings account to use on some large item we needed to buy for the farm at some point. We decided a while back we wanted to use this money to buy a used atv. We looked for a couple months and realized that even a decent used atv was expensive and cost more than the amount of money we wanted to spend on one, but we kept looking hoping that God might smile on us and we would find a good one we could afford. Well, one came along a couple weeks ago. It was really cheap, but it did need some work. It is always scary buying something used especially when you know it has some problems but don't know what they are or how much it will cost to get them fixed. We decided to go out on a limb and go ahead and get it. It was kind of funny because we were the first ones to look at it and there were 2 guys there staring at us that wanted to buy it if we didn't. So we got it, and then we took it to a dealer to have them check it over and fix any problems it had. We finally got it back this week. They had to put a new starter, solenoid, belt, and adjust the clutch and now it works great. After buying it and paying to have it fixed we came in under what we had planned on spending on one (which means we can buy some accessories like a small trailer to pull behind it) and it is better than anything we thought we would be able to afford. In fact based on the money we have in it, we got it for less than half the price of what kelley blue book says it is worth. We are very excited. This post is getting long so I will cut to the chase and tell you what it is exactly and show you pics.

The Specs:
2003 Polaris Sportsman 500HO 4x4
liquid cooled engine
push button 4 wheel drive
independent rear suspension
Towing capacity 1200lbs, almost as much as Margo's CRV
ground clearance 11.25 inches, that's just crazy
up to 60mph which is way to fast on an atv for me, I had it up to 40 today on the county road and it was just cruising along but I think that will be my max speed.
engine braking system- this means the engine will slow itself down if you let off the accelerator even when going down a hill. I tried it out on our really steep hill on the county road. I was going down at about 20mph and let off the accelerator and it immediately started slowing it down to about 3 mph and kept it there all the way down the hill.

Magical Fruit

Question. What fruit can you both eat and predict the winter weather with? Answer. The Persimmon. Let me explain about the winter weather part for all you yankees out there. What you do in order to know how bad the winter is going to be is take a persimmon seed in cut it in half long ways. Inside the persimmon seed there will be an outline of either a fork, a spoon, or a knife. If it is a fork that means it is going to be a mild winter and not much snow and ice. A spoon means that you are going to be shoveling lots of snow. A knife means it is going to be terribly cold and icy and the wind will cut through you like a knife. So yesterday, I picked some persimmons from the few persimmon trees that I have and I cut a seed open. It showed a spoon which means lots of snow. I love snow, so it is perfect. As I mentioned, you can also eat persimmons. Just wait for them to ripen and get soft in the fall, you don't want to try one when they are green. That is a favorite prank of my dad's, tricking people to eat green persimmons when they don't know any better. It is actually pretty funny. They taste pretty good when ripe but there is not a lot to them. This year, I decided I wanted to try out a recipe that uses persimmons so I made some persimmon cookies. They turned out very good but I can barely taste the persimmon so I think next time I will put more persimmons in them. And the cookies are all mine to eat because Margo won't eat them because they have cinnamon in them.

Here are the persimmons


Here is the seed cut in half so you can see the spoon


Here are the yummy cookies

Help me, Help my garden

I think fall has officially sprung. I think fall might be my favorite season. The weather has turned kind of cold. If fact tonight we made our first fire in the wood stove. Having a fire inside means we can have smores whenever we want. Very Nice. Another great thing about fall is the leaves changing which brings me to my main point. Have you ever asked yourself....How can I help the Farm of Hale? The answer is simple: donate. Donate leaves. I use lots of leaves for mulch in my garden. I have a chipper/shredder that I run them through and put them in a big pile until I am ready to use them. I have lots of leaves out here on the farm to use but that requires me raking them which I don't mind doing if I have to. But I know that a lot of people rake their leaves to make their yards look nice and then they bag them and have them hauled off. If any of you who read this do rake and bag your leaves and live close to Fayetteville, I would like to have them. I will come get them. Or you are welcome to bring them out here to us and in exchange I will give you a free personal tour of the farm and maybe a free meal (if it is meal time).

The bad and the ugly

On our blog I tend to mostly share the good things that are going on, or the projects that we completed successfully. I thought for once I would post something that we tried that did not work out, so that you all would know that not everything works out perfect here on the Farm of Hale... I know that may be shocking to some of you. We decided to try making soap, goatmilk lye soap to be exact. We thought it would be cool to try out and see how it worked. The recipe we had called for lye, goat milk, lard, honey, and oatmeal. It was actually pretty easy to go through all the steps to making it. The hardest thing was trying to find someone that sells lye.

Here is Margo stirring ingredients, it's looking good so far.



Here it is after we had mixed it all up and poured it in the soap molds, still looks pretty good at this point. It has to sit for 2 days to harden up before you take it out of the molds. Then it has to cure for 4-6 weeks


After 2 days this is what it looks like and it is even worse looking in person. We think we may have had too much lard or somehow the ingredients did not bind together or whatever. If you are an old person who reads this blog and has made soap before or any other person who has made soap before maybe you will help us out and tell us what we did wrong.


So, this little project did not turn out so well. We are going to try it one more time and see what happens. If it does not work the next time we may abandon our great soap making plans.

A Good Farm Week

Last week was one of our better weeks for the farm. A few really good things happened. I will tell you about two of them in this post and save another one for a later post. The first good thing that happened is we sold all of our wood. We had sold 4 of the 12 ricks of wood so far and had not had many calls the past week or two which is weird because last year we sold out in a few days. We had advertised on craigslist and in the local newspaper classifieds. Then on Thursday I had a guy call me and want to come look at the wood. He liked it and decided to buy the 8 ricks that I had left. So, we sold all our wood which is good for us. Then, I guess since it is starting to get a lot colder, I had like 6 calls on Saturday of people wanting to buy wood. I wish I had more to sell them but I am pretty much done cutting wood to sell. The next big thing that happened is we sold 3 of our calves at the Fayetteville livestock auction last week. If you remember we bought 4 calves in the spring to raise and get bigger in order to sell in the fall. We put them on our neighbors' land because they did not have any livestock over there and it would help them not have to mow and it would help us make some money... hopefully. One of the calves we are going to keep until next year to butcher. The other 3 we sold and our plan was to hopefully make enough off of the 3 we sold to cover the cost of the one we were keeping so we would not be out any money for a cow to butcher this year. But, we ended up having a problem with the calves during the summer. They contracted pinkeye around the time we went on vacation to Ohio and we did not discover it until we got back home and by that point it had become really bad. We had to give them antibiotics to treat it and I put eyepatches on their affected eye to protect it from dust and sunlight so it would heal quicker. We had pirate cows. The pinkeye went away put they still had white spots on their eyes which is pretty common after a cow has pinkeye. At livestock sales, if a cow has these white spots than they don't bring as much money. Bad for us. We were really worried that we were going to have a hard time even making our money back on those three because of this. Anyway, we sold them last week and they did sell for less- about 80 cents a pound instead of $1-$1.15 a pound. But they ended up being a lot heavier than we thought they would be. When we got them they were around 250 pounds and when we sold them they averaged 455 pounds. This equaled out to them gaining over 1.25 pounds per day, just eating grass. That is pretty good. So it ended up that even though we made less per pound than what we wanted, their weight helped us to make more money and we ended up making enough off the three we sold to cover the cost of what we paid for the one we are keeping, and we had money left over. We were really excited. Now we just have one calf that we will keep until next year sometime. I think his name will be GOB (pronounced like Job from the bible).

Rockin' Video

As I have mention on here before, one of my good buddies has a band called Heypenny. They are really good. Their live show is excellent, so if they are ever playing in your area you should definitely check them out. They are working on a new album currently, but in the meantime they have made a music video of one of their current songs that I thought I would share on here, it is funny. It just got released the other day. They also released the song as an official single on itunes and I think it is being promoted on the radio. The only thing is, you have to live in the UK to get it. That is kind of where they are trying to get promoted real big so for now you can only buy the song on itunes in the UK. But you can listen to it and other songs on their myspace by clicking here. And here is the video for all of you to check out.

1492

Being federal employees, we did not have to work today for the holiday. We decided to take a little weekend trip. Friday night we drove down to Mena (my (Josh) hometown) and stayed with some good friends, Steve and Kathy. We had a really good time hanging out with them Friday night and Saturday. Friday night we tried out a amazing new beer called Samichlaus (thanks for recommending it Justin) that I highly recommend to all you beer drinkers out there (it is a little difficult to find). We also had some really good wine that Steve and Kathy had discovered on their recent trip to California wine country. On Saturday we drove around Mena a little, not much has changed since I moved away almost 10 years ago. Wow, it is crazy that is has been almost 10 years. We also got to see some of their latest works of art. Steve fixes up awesome old cars and Kathy makes pottery in their shop. They are both really good at their respective arts. Although I was unable to acquire an antique car from Steve, Kathy was more generous with her pottery and gave us a couple pieces. The pots are really awesome.

kitchen utensil holder


Garlic pot


That's right Sarah, Annie, and Molly, I moving in on the pottery, that's what you get for moving far, far away.

After parting ways with Steve and Kathy, we drove up to Queen Wilhelmina State Park, which is on Rich Mountain, which is the second tallest mountain in Arkansas. It is only a few minutes drive from Mena and has awesome views. Unfortunately it was a little hazy on Saturday so I couldn't get many good pictures, but it was still a great drive. I highly recommend taking a trip there if you have not been, especially now that the leaf colors are starting to change. Here is one pic I did get, You can see the road winding along the top of the mountain.


Our next stop on our little trip was Waldron which is just north of Mena. My cousin and aunt have recently moved there so we went to see them and spent Saturday night with my aunt and uncle and went to church with my cousin on Sunday. I have a lot of kin folks on my dad's side that live near Waldron in a little community named Haletown. That's right there is a little town in Arkansas named after my family. We had a nice relaxing visit with all of them, it was nice to see family we have not seen in a while.

That concludes the tour of our weekend. The whole weekend was really great. Thanks Chris.

Exfoliating

I am sure I have mentioned it previously this summer, but I grew luffa this year. It was my fun think to grow in the garden this year to see if I could and see how it turned out. Luffa are the sponge like things people use to scrub with in the shower and other places. A lot of people don't know that luffa is a gourd, it is in the cucumber family. They grow in vine form and the vine gets really big. I grew them on a hooped cattle panel and they took up all the space on it and then started spreading over the garden. The vine was really pretty and made nice yellow flowers, that attracted not so nice bees. Here is a little photo tour of the progression of the luffa throughout the summer.

This is the vine growing on the cattle panel


This is the luffa gourd growing on the vine


After they mature, they turn brown and dry out on the vine and that is when you harvest them. We have been harvesting 2-3 every few days for the past few weeks. It took me a few times picking to figure out when the best time to harvest was. Here is what they look like when you harvest them.


To get to the sponge, you peel the skin off kind of like a banana (b-a-n-a-n-a-s). Then you wash it with a water hose with a strong stream to get all the sap like stuff out. And here is what you get.



You can put them in some bleach water for a few minutes after peeling them and then rinse them if you want them to look nice and like they do in the store or you can leave them natural which is a little more brown color and has some spots and stuff. To cure them you leave them in the sunlight for a few days until they harden up. Most individual gourd make two sponges, we probably have 14 or so sponges so far and will have at least that many more. Here is some of the finished products.



Here is Margo demonstrating the use of the luffa.


Some of you might be getting one of these as a gift. I guess you could interpret getting one two ways. Either we think you are a friend or we think you need to take a bath.

Keep the vampires at bay

As some of you may remember I planted way to much garlic this year. We used some of it in our salsa and spaghetti sauce canning. I also used some to plant for next year. But we still have lots and lots left, more than we will ever use before we harvest next summer. So, I thought I would offer it to you my loyal readers if you want any. The best time to plant it in my opinion is in the fall and probably sometime in the next couple weeks. You can also plant it in the early spring but I don't think it gets as big. If any of you want some to plant for next year in your garden or flower beds let me know. You can come and get it or I can bring it to you.

Goodbye to Another Great One

As I am sure all of you have heard, Paul Newman died last Friday. It is very sad. He was a great actor and did some really great stuff. Besides making good movies he also donated all the money he made from his line of food products (Newman's Own) to charity (over $220 million), and he served in WWII. I have not seen all his movies but two of my favorites are Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I can watch these movies over and over.

Here is one of my favorite scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This scene seems a little out of place for a outlaw type movie but maybe that is why I like it, it is just such a feel-good scene.

Hay is for horses, but not on this farm.

Winter is approaching, and I completed one more task in preparation. Yesterday, we hauled the last bit of hay that we need to feed the animals through the winter. Hauling hay is not one of my favorite farm duties, as I have talked about in previous posts, but it is necessary. I actually don't mind it so much if it is not super hot outside and I am not hauling several hundred bales. Yesterday was one of the times it was not so bad. We did it in the morning so the temperature outside was like 60 degrees, we were getting it out of a barn so I didn't have to haul it out of the field, and I only needed around 40 bales to complete what I needed for winter. Altogether this summer we got about 130 square bales for the winter. I will probably get a couple round bales to put out as well when we are going to be gone and can't be here to feed hay everyday. I wish I could do all round bales but I don't have a tractor and I am not quite strong enough to lift a round bale.....yet. If any of you have a tractor sitting around that you are not using, I would gladly take it off your hands. It will still be a while before I have to start feeding hay but I am glad to have what I need for the year. It won't be long though, there are already some leaves starting to change and fall. I love this time of year.

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.