Two more...

Well Black Head had her babies on Tuesday night. She had two little boys. We would have really liked for her to have a girl that we could have kept. She is a really good mom and the babies are doing well. Here they are:

The brown one with white speckles on his ears weighed 7.56 lbs.


The white one with a brown head weighed 7.78 lbs.

More Babies!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday when I got home from work we had a new baby goat. Our goat we call Fat Neck had a baby girl that weighed 7.05 lbs. I was hoping she would have twins like she did last year but no such luck. She is a really good mama though. She is one that I never have to worry about. After getting her all situated I went to the Razorback game last night (which we lost and was very disappointing). When I got home I went down to check on the babies and another goat had a baby while I was gone. This time it was our Black Nubian. This our first year to have her. She apparently had no problems either. The baby was all dried off and nursing. She is a very good mother as well. I will definitely keep her around. Her baby was also a little girl and weighed 6.23 lbs. Although I would prefer two babies each on these goats I am glad they both had girls and that they are good mothers. There is one kind of crazy thing about these babies though. There mama's are not related and not even the same kind of goat and their dad's are different and not the same kind of goat. So, none of the parents of these two babies are related or the same kind at all, yet they look almost alike. Isn't that crazy?

Now for your favorite part....the pictures.

This is Fat Neck's baby, we will call her Black Lip for now.






And this is Black Nubian's baby, we will call her black nose for now.

Goat Pool

This post is for my co-workers.

It is that time of year again. Gambling on the farm. My co-workers do a goat pool every year where everyone tries to pick the exact day that one of my goats is going to have her babies. This year we are going to guess for the goat that we call "Black Head". You can see her big belly below, it looks a lot bigger in person. I feel sorry for her. She should have at least twins, and hopefully three. We have yet to have a goat have three but I think this could be our year. Margo decided she wanted to measure her belly to see how big it is. The official belly measurement is 53 inches, that is even bigger than our friend Sarah was with Audrey.

New Kid

We unexpectedly had a baby goat yesterday. All of our goats are pregnant and due soon, some of them any day. The one that had one yesterday was not one that we thought would have babies any day. The mama that had one was one of our nubian cross (the gray one) that we bought this past year. She only had one which is a little disappointing but this is her first baby so that is pretty normal. She had it without any issues. In fact, when we got home from church yesterday, there was no baby. We ate lunch and took a nap and when we got up we went outside and there the baby was, walking around like it was no big deal. It is a boy and weighed 8.45 pounds which is pretty average. The baby's dad is Albi and he looks just like him.

A New Direction

Are you sitting down? THE FARM OF HALE IS MOVING (at least we are going to try to). Margo and I have been presented with a great opportunity that we can't pass up. I will give you the short story. A friend of a friend has offered to let us rent a place in Fayetteville for a really good price. The house is really nice and bigger than what we are in now. It is on a few acres of land and we will be able to still have some of our animals. It will definitely be less of a farm but we won't have to give it up completely. You may ask, why in the world would we give up our when we love to farm so much and give up the farm that we have worked hard on. There are a few reasons, like living in Fayetteville where we work and play, but the main reason is money. We will be able to save a lot of money by moving. We pay a pretty big mortgage payment each month and very little of it goes to principle. Most of it we loose in interest and taxes and that won't change for several years. By moving to this new place for a pretty cheap rent we will be able to save a lot of money. Hopefully after a few years we will be able to save up a big chunk of money. And then we will be able to get another farm that is more where and what we want and be able to pay for a lot of it with the money we have saved. We have always known that we did not want to stay in our current location long term so when this opportunity arose we thought we would jump on it. If it works out it will help us get way ahead on paying for a house.
So, that is the short version. If you want to know more details, let me know and I will further explain it to you. The only catch is that we have to sell our house before we can get into this other place. We aren't obligated to this other place so if we don't sell our place then we will just stay here but we would really like to sell it. So, if you know of anyone who might be interested in our little farm, send them our way. I created a blog website about our house for sale with a full description. You can check it out by clicking here, and then send it to everyone you know who might be interested.

2009 Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Christmas

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



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

A Christmas Song

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

Just click the link below to listen and enjoy.

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

Christmas Gifts

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

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

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

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

http://www.ashaimports.com/

http://www.worldofgood.com/

http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/

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

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

Lamb Recipe

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

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

Ingredients

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

Method

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

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

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

4 Serve with a cold glass of Guinness

Serves 4 to 6.

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

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

Lamb Chops

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

Before


After


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


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

Learn to Farm/Butcher Day

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

Turkey Day

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

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


Here is my immediate family


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

New Chicken Feeder

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



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

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

Happy Birthday Josh!

Happy 29th Birthday!

Big Breasts

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

Here are those big breasts

1,000 Year Flood

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

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



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



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


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

The Leaves are on Fire

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

Mmm, goat

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

The Return of Learn to Farm Day

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