Meet our New Meat Kids!

This photo was included with the craigslist ad for bottle babies.

This week we picked up two new bottle babies in Robertson County. Their dam inexplicably died within a few days of their birth. They were just shy of two weeks old when we picked them up.

The second craigslist ad photo. Who could resist?

These two new doelings, Shea and Taylor, are Savannah x Boer crosses and slated to be our new meat goat does. Although a few days ago I had never heard of the Savannah breed of goat, a little research online made me a fan. Like Boers, the Savannah goat is a South African breed of meat goat. Unlike Boers they are bred for resilience and disease resistance. The farmer from whom I bought these gals mentioned how his Savannah goats require little hoof care, while a clerk at the Co-op has warned me against full-blooded Boers because they are notorious for hoof problems. These cross-bred gals make a fine addition to our meat-dairy herd.

The new kids corralled at home with our LGD Biscuit for their sitter.

Our on-site bucks are Boer x Nubian crosses. Once these new doelings mature enough to breed, we are hoping to get some fine meat kids from breedings to our bucks. For now, though, they are penned safely apart from the full-grown goats. We will continue bottle feeding until we can get them switched over to the dams we currently have in milk. Ideally I would like to see Nubian doe Leslie take them on, but I do not know if she will produce enough milk for them; these gals are larger than the Nubian bucklings have been.

Welcome Misses Shea and Taylor!

Visiting Lannom Farms

A scarecrow marks the entrance to the Lannom Farms venue.

Late this morning several members of the Wilson County Sustainable Agriculture Coalition gathered at Lannom Farms in the Gladeville area of Lebanon, Tennessee for a tour. The Sustainable Ag. Coalition is the brainchild of Wilson County Agricultural Extension agents Shelly Barnes and Justin Stefanski. Our Family and Consumer Education (FCE) and Horticulture specialists, respectively, this pair teamed up to apply for a grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, better known as SARE, that is funding our local coalition. The Lannom Farms field trip could not have occurred on a nicer day.

A view on Lannom Farms fronted by the play area.

What fun we had together! From the general store out front, past the nature trail, around the edges of the 5-acre sorghum maze, to the entertaining hayride and farm animals on view, we had a marvelous visit that concluded with lunch catered by Mt. Juliet's Country Haven Cafe--complete with delicious pumpkin pie made from Lannon Farms pumpkins. The farm even offers a soybean and millet maze for families with very young children; the plants grow just a few feet tall and the adventure takes closer to five minutes that the requisite 45 - 60 minutes needed for the taller maze.

For pumpkin lovers, this is the place to be. Lannom Farms grows a number of varieties of pumpkins, all of which are planted by hand. The field trip pumpkins grow to a perfect size for little hands to carry home, after each child has ventured into the field to select his or her pumpkin. The pie pumpkins--mmm, mmm, mmm--are excellent for cooking. Among the other varieties grown there, the fairy tale or Cinderella pumpkins grow to a perfect shape for turning into pumpkin coaches drawn by bright white horses. Interestingly, this latter variety of pumpkin grows upside down, such that the stem is located against the ground.

The pre-K field trip was leaving just as we sat down to lunch.

The farm spreads over rolling land big enough to entertain multiple families and field trips without ever feeling crowded. Indeed, on this trip we were not alone, as a handful of Wilson County Schools' pre-K classes simultaneously were enjoying the venue. While they picnicked beneath shady trees, we enjoyed the entertaining hayride. After they packed up, we settled around a longer table to enjoy our tasty home-style meal. To learn more about the farm, check out their website or read any of the local articles that have appeared recently. Here's a link to one that appeared in The Wilson Post.

The Wilson County SAC has been meeting monthly since its inception this past spring, and is presently exploring producer and consumer possibilities of local agritourism/edutainment venues. The Lannom Farms such field trip is the first I have been able to attend. From now on I will try to work more of these excursions into my calendar. For those interested in attending the meetings, contact Wilson County Extension. As with all UT/TSU Agricultural Extension offerings, the Wilson County name refers only to the location of the gathering; we open our doors to residents from all counties and proudly count Davidson County residents among our burgeoning number. Middle Tennesseans, come on out and join the fun!

Ginger Beer

Today's cookbook.

We're trying our hand at making ginger beer today. Thanks to Sandor Ellix Katz's book Wild Fermentation, we are expanding from our initial ventures into cheese making and see sauerkraut on our horizon. Since reading The Untold Story of Milk, I have learned about the Weston A. Price Foundation and become a fan of its director, Sally Fallon Morrell. She keeps appearing in places where I am conducting research; she wrote the foreword to Katz's book, she presented a the 2010 International Raw Milk Institute and a recent conference of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and she wrote Nourishing Traditions--just one of many books on my wish list. So, when I read the conclusion to her foreword in Katz's book: "Wild Fermentation represents ... a road map to a better world, a world of healthy people and equitable economies, ..." I knew I had found a winner. Settling down with a tall glass of fresh milk, I nestled onto the couch and did not stir except to grab a handful of paperclips with which to mark pages of recipes to try.

Ginger beer in process. (Clockwise from top: once filtered base, dregs of ginger bug, ginger filtered out of today's beer.)

I am starting with the ginger beer recipe. It began with a "ginger bug" started some days ago--a mixture of water, sugar, and ginger--then left to ferment in a warm place. Situating it beside the crock pot worked remarkably well. (I tried to start with making raw milk yogurt, but could not locate the packet of starter that I had so carefully tucked away. I found it this morning: marking the recipe page in Wild Fermentation.) After obtaining jugs from a master gardener friend earlier this week, I was ready to try the recipe.

This morning I boiled a mixture of water, sugar, and ginger. Cooled and strained it. Added the strained ginger bug and lemon juice, and then strained that lot into jugs to be set aside to ferment. Not having been a science major can be a handicap in the kitchen. As the photograph illustrates, I had the second straining set up to wick nicely onto the stove top instead of into the jugs. Although I recognized the potential, I was unsure of how to address the problem. The funnel system in the rear is made from a Real Lemon juice bottle. (Yes, I cheated. I purchased enough lemons for the recipe as written, then chose to double it this morning. Luckily we had lemon juice in the fridge.) When I scooped the once-filtered ginger mixture into it, air bubbled up and the liquid poured into the jug quite nicely. The front funnel is made from the top of a two liter soda bottle and fits more snugly into the mouth of the jug. No air bubbles resulted in a slower-moving transfer of liquid.

Ginger beer in process. The second filtering.

My eyes are not as keen as they were once. By the time figured out that--yes--the clear liquid was being wicked from the tightly-fitted funnel setup, the stove top was swimming in about a pint of wasted ginger beer base. Once I loosened the funnels from the bottle necks, allowing for a ready transfer of displaced air, why--the process was completed in a jiffy! After mopping up the stove, I was ready to top off the jugs with water, then nest the jugs on either side of the crock pot where they will sit for a couple of weeks.

Crock pot maintaining bone stock with fresh vegetables.

This week we have been enjoying a hearty bone stock with fresh vegetables added periodically. That the crock pot serves this double duty in the kitchen pleases me to no end. That the nutritional wisdom I have gleaned over the past couple of months allows me to enjoy animal fats without guilt, makes devouring the bits of fat and gristle what originally clung to the bones all the more pleasurable.

Praise be for the bounty of this marvelous earth. (Here's hoping for a successful outcome to our first adventure making ginger beer.)

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Growing Poultry

The new arrivals.

In mid-September we sold Miss Lissamy Lucy, our APHA mare that moved here in late 2008; part of the exchange included new poultry. After Lucy left, we had six new hens and two more roosters. I had not wanted the roosters because we have so many, but was glad to have them when I realized they are breed specific. (Some days I just do not think very far ahead.)

The one of the roos and two of the hens are Domeneckers, black-and-white birds that produce brown eggs. The other rooster and his four hens are all white and produce white eggs; the farmer with whom I traded could not specify the breed. I wondered if they might be leghorns (like the big white rooster from the cartoons of my youth), but he did not know. All of the bird were a tad scrawny upon arrival. They appeared healthy enough, but I could see why the farmer wanted to be rid of them (nearly as badly as we wanted to be rid of a horse).

The day they arrived, we ousted the roos that had too-long awaited the pot. (We would eat them faster if we did not have to deal with the killing and cleaning to do so.) That made life among the free-rangers pretty lively for a few days, as the multitude of roosters established a pecking order. Their challenges to one another are beautiful to watch, especially since they don't take their fights to the level of game hen fights. Game hens fight to the death.

The "new guys" have settled in nicely.

This evening I took a look at the newcomers. They have plumped up nicely. Soon I will have to move them from the dog kennel, but first I need to figure where to place them. We recently inherited some nice nesting boxes from a neighbor down the road. (Their hens have moved into what they refer to as the Chicken Hilton, a very fancy new hen house they built.) I need to scrub them out and set them up for use here.

Each morning and evening I enjoy interacting with our avian residents. LaLa Goose comes when called, pretty well, because she knows a call is generally followed by fresh vegetables or fruit. A friend was passing along his overabundance of over-ripe cucumbers for a time, and the birds loved those. I developed a method of throwing the fresh feed down onto the driveway, effectively splitting open the fruit or vegetable, and the birds flock to enjoy the spoils. Currently they're enjoying pears gleaned from our new friend Opal, who has enough pears that she is ready to throw them over a fence to rot. We enjoy the bags and bags she sends, and we share the green pears with the horses and the overripe pears with the birds.

LaLa eats her spoils from the heart to the rind.

Everybody is happy. We are blessed with abundance this season.

Observable Impacts of Nutrition

Marcie on the milking stand.

With the Fodder-Pro Feed System still in the offing, hay and grain continue to dominate the dietary supplement we have to offer. Unlike the rigid 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. and p.m. milking schedules of larger dairies, at P&CW Organic Farm we enjoy a far more relaxed schedule of once-daily milking. Although we aim to milk at around the same time each day, circumstances--such as the occasional cold, hard rain or an off-farm obligation--are known to interfere.

When milking is postponed by half a day or more, milk production drops off slightly. The longer the hiatus, the greater the drop. To encourage increased milk production, I use the recommendation of the woman from whom I bought Marcie--Melissa of C&M Vally Farm--and add a handful or so of alfalfa shreds into the grain offered to the does on the milking stand. Interestingly enough, that small change yields observable results by the following day. Udders are fuller and teats are distended when I return with milk buckets in hand.

Already I am anticipating the milk we will miss when our does reserve their nutrition for the developing kids they now carry. As in the Biblical lands where goodness can be measured by the ample presence of milk and honey, so too is our existence enriched by the gifts of the farm. True, we supplement our nutrition with Emerald Express products, and they do help us to feel spry enough to greet each day, but most of our blessings come from the real milk we drink--whole, unprocessed milk from our free ranging goats; from the farm fresh eggs our hens provide for us; and from the myriad of herbs, fruits and vegetables we enjoy from various local farm sources.

Five years ago in another life, we ate fairly well. While I knew that cookies and cakes should be enjoyed in moderation, I often had difficulty moderating my intake. What we did not know was that butter, fresh eggs, raw dairy, grass-fed meat, and organic produce would make such a positive difference in our energy levels and overall health. Where did our society go wrong? How is it that so much of what we feed ourselves and our children is bad for us? When did we make the shift to thinking that cost, convenience, and availability should be the hallmarks by which we choose the food to nourish ourselves?

I am thankful for the changes that have brought me to this point in my life and eager to continue learning about how I can continue to improve and can help to improve the lives of those around me.