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

The Big 27

Happy Birthday to Margo. She turns 27 today. I posted the pictures on the blog a couple years ago for her birthday but I thought I would put them on here again this year because I think they are funny.

Superwoman


Pillow Head


Lady Liberty

New Farm Toy

We bought a new toy yesterday for the farm. It is actually not really a toy but something we need. Whenever we have to haul a cow somewhere or a bunch of goats we have to find someone who has a stock trailer who will haul them for us. We have even had to pay someone to haul cows for us before. We have been thinking for a while that it would be nice to get our own small stock trailer. But they are usually really expensive and more than we are willing to pay. Well, one came for sale on craigslist that fit our cheap budget so we got it. It is actually a two horse trailer but we are going to use it as a stock trailer. It is in pretty good shape overall. It needs a little work like replacing a couple boards on the inside, fixing the light wiring, and fixing some slow leaks in a couple of the tires. It could also use a new paint job at some point. We are very happy to have it, it will be very helpful. If anyone needs to borrow it just let us know.

Fishing

Something that I have never really got in to before is fishing. I don't know why but it is just something I have never really done much. Last Friday morning I had a day off and I was looking for something to do so I decided to go fishing with one of my friends, Luke. He really likes to fish and does it pretty often. We went out to Lake Elmdale in Springdale which is just a fishing lake. Neither of us have a boat but Luke has a canoe so we took it and just paddled around the shore. I have to say that I had a really good time. It was nice being out on the lake and we both caught several bass. I think I may try to go more often and make a hobby out of it. We will see how it goes. Here is a pic (with a cell phone camera) of the biggest bass I caught. In fact, I think it is the biggest bass I have ever caught.

Garden Update - The Drought

I don't know if we are officially in a drought or not but it feels like it to me. We have had very little rain with high 90 degree temperatures for the past month. Several things in the garden are really struggling. I have even had to start watering the garden which I have never had to do here before. It is even getting to the point that the grass is dieing and I am going to have to start feeding hay this week to the animals. It also seems like the bugs are a lot worse this year than before. I am not sure if that is caused by the dryness or not. I have been overrun with squash bugs and they have killed most of my squash. Even with all these problems the garden is still doing pretty good. We canned approximately 50 jars of green beans and 15 jars of pickles. We canned our first batch of spaghetti sauce yesterday and it made 7 jars. We hope to can some salsa tomorrow. We also ate our first corn today which was really good. We will have a lot more in the next couple weeks so we will be freezing it. We have been getting a few blackberries as well, not enough to really do much with, but enough for Margo to eat a handful of them every couple of days. We have small watermelons getting bigger by the day. Another week or two and we will have lots of them. I also planted some fall crops last week, hopefully it will rain soon and get those going good. I planted some winter squash (butternut and spaghetti) and some indian corn. I am hoping to plant some fall tomatoes, sugar snap peas, and potatoes as well. Sorry, but I don't have a lot of pictures of everything. But here is one that I thought was cool. This is our picking bucket (aka old 5 gallon paint bucket) after we went out and picked the garden yesterday. I thought it was cool because of all the different things in there. Maybe we could have a competition on here to see who can name all the things you can see in the bucket.

4th on the Farm

Last Saturday was our second annual 4th on the Farm celebration. We really like the Fourth of July and have decided to have an annual celebration. We invite friends, family, and coworkers to come celebrate with us. This year we had 58 people which is basically double from last year. I decided to try and smoke a whole hog this year. I have never done it before but I thought I would give it a shot. I built an above ground smoker out of concrete blocks and smoked it for about 8 hours. It was a lot of work but it turned out really good. We had potluck side items and homemade ice cream for dessert. We had lawn games, fishing, and let people pet the animals. At the end of the night we had a fireworks show which turned out pretty good as well. It was a really fun event, I think everyone had a good time. I was so busy while it was all going on that I did not take many pictures. But here are a few.

This is the pig while it is smoking. I had it butterflied so it would lay flat and cook easier.


Here it is after it is done smoking


This is us getting all the meat off the pig. Everyone came and watched us cut it up, it was quite a show. It was a 50lb pig which I was worried about being big enough, but it was more than enough to feed everyone.


We had like 15 young kids at the party, this is some of them feeding the goats. I think the kids really enjoyed seeing and petting the animals.


I am hoping to get some pictures of the fireworks from a guy who took some. As soon as I get them I will post them on here.
We are already starting to plan our celebration for next year.

Completion

About a week ago, we bought two more nanny goats. We needed a couple more to complete our herd. These two that we bought are Nubian cross. Nubian goats are dual purpose breeds but tend to be used more for their milk than meat. Since they are not full blood nubian it is hard to know if they will be useful as milk goats or not. We think it would be nice to have a dairy goat at some point in order to have some goat milk. Who knows, maybe one of these will turn out to be a good milker. They seem to be really nice goats so far. One cool thing about these two is their coloration. Here are some pics.

My favorite is the black one with brown markings, her coloring is really cool.


Here is a close up of the black one.

More Veggies and Heat

The garden has just started to get really cranking. We have canned 40 cans of green beans so far. We have also been getting squash, zucchini, peppers, and cucumbers. Hopefully we will can some pickles this weekend. The tomatoes, corn, watermelon, and cantaloupe are doing really well also. There is only one problem. We are having one heck of a hot and dry spell. The weather right now is more like late July or early August. It is like 10 degrees hotter than normal. We have been in the upper 90's for over a week now and it is supposed to continue to be that hot as far as the meteorologist can foresee. This would be ok if we were getting rain but we are not and once again the meteorologist does not predict rain any time soon. The garden and plants are really starting to dry out. Usually I don't have to water for another month. Even our grass is starting to die. If we go a couple more weeks without rain I will have to start feeding hay in the summer.

One more day

The Razorbacks did not play today. There next game is tomorrow evening. So, we decided to do some other things in Omaha. This morning we went to the Zoo because we heard it is really good. It is right next door to the stadium where the college world series is going on. It was a pretty good zoo. I don't think it was the best we have been to but it was in the top few. We did get to see a one day old sea lion which was pretty cool. After the zoo we went over to the stadium and went to the North Carolina vs. Arizona State game. We did not stay for all of it since we don't have any connection to either of the teams and did not really care who won. The razorbacks have already beat Arizona State twice this year. After we left the game we went to a local ice cream place. It is called Ecreamery. They are doing an ice cream world series where they make up a special ice cream treat for each of the teams in the CWS and the one that gets bought the most wins the ice cream world series. We saw about it on an Omaha local news station yesterday. We got the Arkansas Razorback one of course which was vanilla ice cream with butterfinger and toffee pieces with peanut butter chips and red sprinkles. It was pretty good. After that we came back to the not so Super 8 and took a nap. For dinner we went to a local seafood restaurant that was really good. Tomorrow the plan is to go to the Razorback game at 6pm and then drive home after the game. Which means we will get home between 3am-4am. We need to go to work on Tuesday so that is going to be a rough turn around. There is a good chance of rain tomorrow so if the game gets postponed even a little while we will probably have to go ahead and come on home and miss the game. So, hopefully it won't rain and we won't fall asleep at the wheel.

Awesome Game

Today was the first day of the College World Series and the first game was the Razorbacks vs. Cal State Fullerton. We had general admission tickets, which are all in the outfield. At the CWS they oversell the general admission tickets and the tickets are good for any game. Therefore, it is first come first serve on seats. They stop letting people in when the seats are full. We were unsure how early we would have to get in line to make sure and get seats so we decided to go really early. We got in line about 3.5 hours before game time, which is 1.5 hours before they even let you in the stadium. We were semi close to the front of the line and got pretty good seats. We were in right field on the second row for half the game and then the first row for the rest of the game after some people left. It was a great game for the razorbacks. We were the underdogs but we played really well and ended up winning 10-6. Now we play our second game on Monday at 6pm. We have decided to stay for that game and come home after it is over. That will put us getting home between 3am and 4am. And we need to go to work on Tuesday so that is going to be a rough day. But, it is one of those once in a blue moon things so we are up for it. After the game we went back to the hotel to wash off the layers of sunscreen and then went to Omaha's downtown area for dinner. It was a pretty nice area, it looked like they are working on revitalizing it. We ate at a pretty good brewery and then went and got some coffee at a coffee shop. Now for some pics from the game.

Proof that we really are here (I think Russ thought we were just putting him on)


This is during the game


Here is the final scoreboard showing our win

Take me out to the ballgame

Guess where we are? Margo and I came up with the crazy idea this week to go to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. The Razorbacks are in it this year which is awesome. We checked into tickets and motels and we were able to find a motel in Omaha even though we just decided a couple days ago to come. We left after work today and just arrived a little bit ago. It took us right at 6 hours. The Razorbacks play Cal State Fullerton tomorrow at 1pm and then win or loose they will play again on Monday. So, we are going to stay for the game on Monday and then drive home. We are going to try to hit some other games as well. We got a booklet of 10 tickets that we can use for any games. There are 8 teams in the tournament. The motel we are staying at is a Super 8. Super 8 is not so super but it will do for this trip.

This is one of the scary treasures in our room. I am trying to dare Margo into sitting in it.


Stay tuned for more updates.

Crazy Sky

We had a pretty big storm come through last night around 7:30 or so. We got some much needed rain which was good. After the storm passed, it was still cloudy but the setting sun was pushing some light through the clouds. It made the sky a crazy red/pink/purple/orange color. It was amazing, I have never seen the sky that color before. I took some pictures which turned out ok but they do not do it justice. I hope some of you in NWA got to see it last night, it was awesome. Here are a couple pics. Have I mentioned that it was amazing.

Garden Update

The garden is doing pretty good. For some reason, I have had a problem with my corn this year. I hope it turns out okay in the end but it has been struggling. Everything else seems to be doing pretty good. We have small green tomatoes on the vine and we should have squash and zucchini towards the end of this week. I am happy it is the time of year again for fresh veggies. Here are things that we got this week.

We harvested our garlic a couple days ago. It turned out pretty good. I planted less this year because I had way to much last year. Our favorite way to store it is to take the skins off the cloves and then put the cloves through a food processor to chop it up. Then we put it in zip lock bags, flatten it out and freeze it. Whenever we need some for cooking we just break off a piece of frozen chopped up garlic and use it. It works really well this way and is a lot easier to store and use.


Yesterday we picked our first green beans of the season, and this evening we canned them.

A tale of two billies

It seems that the Farm of Hale as acquired two billies. We don't need two billies for any reason, one does the job just fine. But "need" and "want" are two different things. Here is the story. We needed a new billy goat for this year. We are keeping some of our girl babies from this past year so we can not keep the billy we had because he would be breeding his daughters. And nobody wants that. So, we needed a new billy. We came across one in the paper for sale that I really wanted. He is a 50% Kiko billy. Kiko is a breed of goat that I really like and would like to get in to. I went and looked at him and he was for sale for a pretty decent price so I bought him. Here he is...

I think he is going to be a really big goat. He is only about 4 months old and he is triple the size of our four month old goats. I am excited to see how big he gets. We decided to name him Albi. His name is actually longer than that but Margo won't let me put it on here so if you want to know you will have to email me or ask me in person. You can probably figure it out and understand where the name comes from if you click here.

Now for the story of billy number two. I was talking to one of our neighbors about buying some of their sheep. They also have a couple dairy goats and they had a male kid born this year that was a really good looking goat. I commented on how good he looked and they asked if I wanted him. I told them I had a billy already. They said they would make me a really good deal. They would like to keep him but they wanted to wait a year before they start using him for breeding. So, if I would house him for a year for them I could use him to breed to my goats this year for free. You may ask, why do I want this billy when I just bought a billy. Well, here is my thinking. I can breed this dairy breed billy to my goats this year and the babies will be half dairy goat and half meat goat which I think would be good to have. So, I would keep any girl babies that he has with my current nanny goats. They would be good mothers and if I wanted I might be able to milk them as well. Then I could breed those half dairy half meat goats to my half kiko and they should produce the ultimate baby goat. At least that is what I hope. I know all of this sounds crazy to you, but to me it sounds fun.

Here is billy number two that we will breed to our goats this year. His name was Valentine because he was born on Valentine's Day. We thought he needed a more manly name so we changed it to Valentino. He is really nice.

New Fence and Learn to Farm Day

We put up a new cross fence last week. We had been using an electric fence as a cross fence but it did not work out as well as we wanted. It did not work for the things we really needed it for like weaning the baby goats and keeping the billy goat away from the nanny goats when we did not want them breeding. They would go right through in those instances when they really wanted to. So, we finally decided to build a real cross fence. We put it up pretty fast, it took us about four evenings after work. I am really happy to have a good cross fence, it really helps a lot and it looks a lot better than the electric fence. Here is a pic.



I also wanted to announce another Learn to Farm day this Saturday. We will be fixing fence. We have one more section of fence that we need to fix that was damaged in the ice storm. This will require taking down the section that is messed up and putting up a new section and stretching it. At the same time I need to cut down a tree that is behind the chicken coop that is dieing. The only direction that I can make the tree fall is in the direction of this fence that needs to be fixed. So, I am going to cut it in the middle of taking down the old fence and putting up the new. If any of you are interested in learning how to put of fence or want to help cut a tree in a very precise direction you should come on out to the farm. We are planning on doing this on Saturday morning so if you want to help let us know.

Fresh From the Garden

Sugar Snap Peas!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Yum

Time again for my least favorite farm job

That's right, hauling hay. I have always severely disliked hauling hay. Although it is not as bad now as when I was a kid. Growing up we hauled lots of hay and I was not the strongest kid in the world so it was really hard for me. I really hated it growing up. These days on the Farm of Hale we only get around 150 bales each year which is not too bad, and I have pythons for arms now so it is not as hard. The worst thing is that it is so hot out on the hay field. Anyway, Saturday we went and hauled 100 bales. It was really good hay and we got a really good price on it so that was good. What really made hauling hay not so bad this time around was I had someone else to help me besides Margo. Usually, Margo drives the truck and I load the hay. This takes a long time because I have to load and stack it all and usually I can not stack it as high because I need someone up on top of the hay on the trailer stacking it as I throw it up. Well, this time one of my friends volunteered to help me. He had never hauled hay before so I was not sure how it would work out but he did awesome. It was such a big help and it went twice as fast. I was able to do two loads in the amount of time it would usually take me to do one. And I was not nearly as tired afterwards because I was not having to lift every single bale. So, a big shout out goes to my friend Adriel for helping me. Here are a couple pics from the hauling.

This is Adriel up on the top of the hay on the trailer.


Here we are after we loaded the second load

New Sheeps

We got some new sheep over the weekend. One of our ewes we already had did not have any babies this year. I am not sure why she didn't but we are not going to keep her if she does not have babies. So, we are going to sell her, so let us know if anyone you know wants a ewe. We bought a new ewe to replace her and this new ewe has a baby ram. It's a ram lamb. We castrated the little ram and we plan on eating him when he gets bigger, but for now he is really cute. Here are some pics of the new ones.

Here is the new ewe and the ram lamb together.


Here is a close up of the ram lamb

Billy Goat for Sale

Tell your friends. We are getting a new billy goat so we need to sell our current billy goat. He is a good sized goat and nice. He likes to breed. $50 buys him.

Goodbye Gob

Well, Monday marked the final day of our cow Gob's (pronounced Job like in the Bible) life. It was time for him to go to the butcher to be turned in to delicious cuts of beef. He will soon be in our freezer and then to our tummies and the tummies of those lucky people who get invited over. Beef, it's what's for dinner. Anyway, he was a pretty good cow overall. Didn't get into to much trouble, although he was a little standoffish.

Here he is when we first bought him.


And this is a pic of him on butcher day eve.

Baseball Fun

I know this is not farm related but I have been meaning to post about the Razorback baseball game we went to last Tuesday but I am just now getting around to it. What makes this baseball game more blog worthy then any of the other baseball games we go to throughout the year is where we got to sit. We were able to "acquire" a luxury box for the game. These are usually owned by businesses or rich people. I have never been in one for a game before. We got 20 tickets with the box so we decided to make a community group (our church small group) outing. It was really awesome. There was an inside part with chairs, tables, and tv's. There was also an outside part with seats and the doors between the inside and outside parts would totally open up to make the whole thing open air. All the food was included in the package deal as well. We had hotdogs, bratwurst, cokes, candy, nachos, beer, ice cream. It was really awesome and so much fun. I wish I had the money to get one of those boxes for all the games. Here are some pics from our time at the game.

Inside


Outside


Our view


The hog mascot even came to our box to see us

I'm Not Dead Yet

I know it has been a while since I have posted. Not a whole lot has been going on around here because it has been raining for it seems like forever. I was getting so tired of the rain. Finally though, the sun came out today and it is supposed to be sunny for the rest of the week. I thought I would give you all a mini garden update. The garden has not been doing so well. It has just been so wet for so long. It has rained about everyday for the past 3 weeks. Some of the plants seem to do ok with all the rain but most of them were not growing as well as they should be. And some of the plants even rotted and I had to replant. I hope this week of sun will get the garden back on track. Here are a few pics.

Here is a tomato plant, I think I put in 26 plants


Green Beans


Sugar Snap Peas


Our strawberries have also been getting ripe the past couple weeks, although a good portion of them are rotting before they get ripe because of so much rain


And I will leave you with a flower. I planted these in the fall so this is our first year to have them bloom. I really like them. It is an iris