Farm Production July/August

Production Numbers for Month #2

As expected, fruit/vegetable production from July15 - August 14 was dismal!  It's just too hot to grow very much, but I did manage to harvest a total of 14.25 pounds of fruits and vegetables this past month.  Totals by ounce are as follows:

                                          Okra                                                  90

                                          Seminole pumpkins                          64

                                          Figs                                                   30

                                          Mulberries                                         19

                                          Jalapeno Peppers                             17

                                          Oregano                                             5

                                          Tomatoes                                         _3

                                                                                                 228 Ounces or 14.25 pounds

Milk production was still strong with a total of 85 quarts, or 21.25 gallons.  Way to go, Ladies.  This number will decline going forward, as I have cut back to milking once a day AND Little Miss Hope is slowing back on her milk volume.  She's been in milk since January and the last time she kidded, she dried herself off at about 7 months.  It's been a challenge to keep up with utilizing all of this milk, so I am not upset about the milk decline.  Cheese making during the summer has kept me occupied, while I watch it rain most days.

Finally, eggs harvested this month totaled 257.  I lost a couple of hens this month due to a combination of age and heat.  My southernmost chicken yard will need some fresh hens this fall and I will wait until our local feed store gets some in.  Last year, they had a good selection of chicks in September, so I won't have long to wait.

Two months of farm production records total:

                                          Milk                     36.55 gallons

                                          Eggs                       518

                                          Produce                52.25 pounds

I'm ahead on my estimated milk and egg production, but WAY behind on the Produce.  I will begin planting my fall garden in October, and then two months later I should begin to play catch-up on those numbers.  Between now and then, my only other crops are sweet potatoes and more bananas.

My first Barbados Cherry!

Blossoms on the Bush/Tree

One last thing...I found a quaint little nursery in a town north of me and purchased something new for me this morning:  Barbados Cherry Bush.  Vitamin C content in a single ripe cherry far exceeds that of several pieces of citrus fruit.  After a bit of reading, I planted it on the south side of the Tool Shed so it will have a bit of wind protection in the winter, plus sun for 2/3 of the day.  It's a small plant, measuring about 3 feet tall, but it already has several cherries and blooms on it.     

I also brought home a small fig tree that was on sale for $10.  The poor little thing needed to be rescued, so it will join my other fig tree in the garden tomorrow morning.  

Ministering and Mentoring...

Sharing the Goat Love

Opportunities to share my farming experiences and love of goats keep popping up!  Last week, we had a Farm Day Visit to a local Retirement Center.  I loaded up two of my young goats, Mocha and Josephus.  Using a wire dog cage and a Radio Flyer Wagon, I wheeled them into a large living room of the retirement home, and the residents were positioned in their wheelchairs in a big circle for a Goat Gala!  What a fun time we all had.  The residents surprised me with their interest, excitement, and participation.  They all got to sample some fresh goat's milk and the each got to pick out a bar of soap to keep and use.  I'm not sure how much my goats enjoyed the outing, but the rest of us had a great time.

This morning, a 14-year old girl came to my farm to see my goat set up and to experience dairy goat farming.  She is interested in obtaining a couple of milk goats and also having a few for meat.  This young lady already has farming flowing through her veins...she owns horses, cows, rabbits, and chickens!  She's tried her hand (unsuccessfully) at growing some stuff, but she's not giving up on that yet either.  Self Sufficiency is high on her list of long term farming goals, and she's doing lots of reading and research toward that goal.  Two hours with her just FLEW by!  We thoroughly enjoyed the morning together and I have a feeling there will be many more days with this young farmer.  Gosh, I love meeting someone like her and secretly wish I had discovered the joy of farming at a much younger age myself.

And the Rain Continues...

Rained In

The whole month of July seemed like one big thunderstorm.  Yesterday, we even had a small Tropical Storm (Emily) pass through.  The goats, dogs, and chickens have been inside their shelters more than they've been outside for weeks now.  We usually have one month each year that is predominantly rain, so July wins the prize for that this year.

The only thing I've got producing in the garden at the moment is okra.  The gumbo recipe I tried last week, sharing it with the whole family of 16, went over well.  That means I will be making it again and canning it. 

For lack of anything new and exciting, here are a couple of photos of my girls, whiling away the hours inside the barn.

Laura Grace is my lazy chow-hound doe.  She's giving about a quart of milk each morning.

Little Miss Hope has been lactating six months now and is providing about 24 ounces each morning.  She's got the richest milk of anyone in the barn, so I keep on milking her for cheese and such.

Speaking of cheese, I'll be making a batch of fresh cheese today to serve as part of dinner this evening....we are having our pastor and his family over for the first time.  Sure hope it's a nice evening for everyone.....

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Raining...AGAIN

Daily afternoon thunderstorms have blessed the farm with over 4 inches of rain this week.  The chicken yards are like a manure slip n' slide---only you pray you DON'T slip in that stinky mess.  Yesterday's strong winds proved too much for the young oak in my south pasture.  It is over on its side, begging to be stood back up.  

The okra, however, is going gangbusters in this hot, rainy weather.  I'll be looking for a good gumbo recipe in the next few days to try out.  Lots of folks don't like okra because they say it's too slimy.  I don't mind it much, especially when mixed with stewed tomatoes and Italian seasonings.  Southerners like it fried, but then again, Southerners like LOTS of things fried!  

Another way I've used okra is to slice it into 1/4" pieces, sprinkle it with garlic salt, and dehydrate it.

You can't go wrong with something that is crunchy and tastes like salty garlic.  

Speaking of dehydrating, my Excalibur nine-tray dehydrator arrived this week.  Hubby's credit card points sure have made me smile this month!  The oregano in the garden needed to be cut back, so I used that to try out the Excalibur.  It works better than my old Nesco machine did, drying out the herb in about 8 hours.  My little Nesco has served me well for several years, but seemed to take a very long time.  I'll keep it just for drying out chicken livers for the dogs---that's a messy affair, but the dogs love them.  

Homesteading gadgets are a weakness of mine.  They are in my cabinets, on shelves, in closets, and on top of the freezer.  Now I'm dreaming of an antique china cabinet to store/display all of my farmer girl kitchen stuff.  (Shh....don't tell Hubby!)  LOL

One Month of Keeping Track...

Update on Keeping Track

July 14th marks one month of recording everything produced here on my little farm.  My estimates going into this project for a year were:  100 gallons of milk, 3,000 eggs, and 1,000 pounds of produce.  Actual first month numbers were: 15.3 gallons of milk (7 gallons over my estimate for a month!); 261 eggs (+ 11 eggs over my estimate), and 38 pounds of produce (45 pounds under my estimate).

I knew going in that my produce numbers would be low at the start of this one-year project because summertime in Florida is not our main growing season.  Granted, you can grow food year round here, but options are limited in the heat of summer.  The bulk of my first month's produce consisted of two stalks of bananas, a small grape harvest, and 50 or so figs.  I did cut and dehydrate some basic herbs during the month---basil, thyme, oregano, and sage.  But they don't weigh much!  My tomato plants were past their prime before my project began, so there was only a pound or two of tomatoes to add to the spreadsheet.  Jalapeño peppers were winding down also.

Month #2 (July 15-August 14) won't be big in the produce department either!  My gardening consists of pulling weeds out of the raised beds and taking them to the chicken yards for the girls to munch on.  Then I bury the raised beds in spent hay from the barn that has been gracious laced with goat berries, thanks to my little herd.  

Pretty Boy Floyd and Glory Be on a "Date"

Speaking of the herd, I've sold/re-homed a total of 6 goats over the past few months.  It's now down to a manageable size--2 bucks, 4 breed-able does, 2 retired does, and 1 wether.  That's a plenty of hooves to trim and mouths to feed.  The last two girls to leave, Glory Be and Serena, are just 2 miles away so I'll get to peek in on them occasionally.  Glory Be was bred to my buck, Pretty Boy Floyd, before she left....there should be babies on the ground before Christmas!

Two more photos...brown turkey figs on the tree, and 5 new chicks hatched out by one of my bantam hens.  I love the connection to the earth and to nature that comes from farming.  Makes my heart smile!

Time for evening rounds!  Goat milking, egg collecting, animal loving time...

Swimming in Milk

Swimming in Milk

Seems every time I open up the refrigerator, I see the bottom shelf crowded with quart canning jars of fresh goat's milk.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  It's just that it's been years since I was getting 3 quarts of milk a day from my ladies.  Mercy Me is getting milked twice a day, and Little Miss Hope and Laura Grace are on a once-a-day schedule.  At this rate, I will be filling up my cheese cave rather quickly.

But today, I opted to try a Quick Mozzarella cheese recipe.  Mozzarella is a fresh cheese, not an aged one.  It takes about 3 hours or so to make, and will last in the refrigerator for  a couple of weeks.  I've never made this cheese before and wonder about the step where you "quickly use two large wooden spoons to work and stretch the curds until you can shape them into a ball."  What exactly  IS working your cheese?  Will it vacuum the rugs or sweep the floor?  Probably not.  I'll just play with the stuff and see what it does.

Even after using a gallon of milk on this recipe and sharing 2 quarts with a friend, I still have 4 quarts staring back at me from the bottom shelf...

See what I mean?

By lunchtime tomorrow, there will be 3 more jars and I'll be pulling out the cheese recipe book again to make some Colby, Lord willing!

Feeling Cheesy

Feeling Cheesy

This past week I finally started getting enough milk from my goats to make cheese again.  It takes at least a gallon of milk to make a brick of hard, pressed cheese.  Any less than that isn't worth the time and effort required.  For several years, I only made fresh "farm cheese" that only required a double boiler, at least 1/2 gallon of milk, and either vinegar or lemon juice to set the curd.  I played around with that, using various herbs and spices.  Hard pressed cheeses intimidated me and the initial cost of a cheese press kept me from jumping in for a long time.  Special recipes and cheese cultures, cheese salt, and a large double boiler were also required.

So last year, I finally did enough research to feel ready for the hard cheese world.  It's a learning curve for certain.  But I do enjoy the challenge and will continue experimenting until I get it down pat.  The cheddar cheese I made last Saturday took 6 1/2 hours from start to finish, with several long breathers in between where I could leave the kitchen for 45 minutes to 2 hours at a time.  Warming the milk, add the culture and wait.  Check the temperature a million times, add rennet, stir, and wait.  Cut the curd and wait. Strain the curd and wait. Add the salt, stir the curd, and wait.  Fill the cheese press, crank it to 10 pounds of pressure, and wait...I think you get the idea.

After several rounds of turning the cheese over and increasing the pressure, a lovely block of naked cheddar was created and left to dry on the counter for a day or two before waxing.  Here's a few photos of the process...

 I ordered that large double boiler through a local restaurant supply store.

It is important to calculate just how many hours it is going to take to get through the cheese recipe or you could find yourself pulling an all-nighter!  I make notes in my recipe book of how long it takes and what is the latest time of day to start a particular cheese so I don't go past my farmer 9 p.m. bedtime.

Curds and Whey.

I catch the whey in a large bowl so I can at least feed

it to my chickens.

Bare, naked cheddar fresh out of the press.

Two days later, a gallon of milk is now 1 pound 2.4 ounces

of waxed cheddar.

Oh yeah, one more thing:  now I have to let it age in my Cheese Cave for 

two to six months before getting to see if it's good or not!

Gone Bananas...

Gone Bananas...

Last week I harvested a stalk of bananas from one of my plants because I saw bite marks in a few of the fruit....the stalk was growing over a fence line, so I'm guessing that the squirrels discovered the stalk and decided to try them out.  The bananas had been developing for several months and were getting close to harvestable, so I thought I would rescue them from the squirrels.  After cutting the stalk, I left it out on one of my screened porches for a few days to allow time for any bugs to vacate the fruit.  (All kinds of little buggers crawl around on bananas!)  This afternoon, I brought the stalk inside for cleaning, cutting, and counting.

The four bananas with squirrel bites in them will be cut up and fed to the chickens this evening when I go out to gather the day's eggs.  The other 68 bananas are now cut into "hands", each containing anywhere from 6 to 12 bananas.  I washed them twice in cool water to make sure they are clean and bug-free, then I weighed each hand and totaled them---ten pounds and 4.8 ounces of bananas!  Realize these are small bananas, averaging only about 5 inches in length.  None of my banana plants give me huge fruit and this stalk actually has larger fruit than I normally get so I'm not complaining.  There's another stalk growing out back with really, really small bananas on it....they look almost silly.  Not sure why they're so small, given that they're growing on a very tall plant.  Oh well, they'll eat.

Things I've learned about bananas....they grow on PLANTS, not trees.  The plant dies after you harvest the fruit.  I did have one banana plant once that grew TWO stalks of fruit simultaneously.  We had to brace the plant up with 2x4s so that the fruit didn't cause the plant to fall over.  

Bananas reproduce by growing "pups".  These are small plants that grow out of the same root as the parent plant.  The root of a banana plant is called a corm and it is a large white bulbous shaped thing. Pups need to be separated from the parent plant and moved about 10' from the nearest banana plant to allow for maximum growth and productivity.  When splitting off a pup, you need to take part of the corm of the parent, too, by using a pointed shovel and stomping it straight down into the ground between the two plants.  It takes a good stomping, which requires wearing boots, NOT flip flops!

Warning:  I started off with about 5 banana plants several years ago and I now have over 50 of them out back.  Keeping up with splitting off the pups is impossible after a while.  I've given away lots of banana plants and will continue to do so until all of my friends are surrounded by bananas or they've disowned me.

Here's a picture of today's bananas:

Pretty, aren't they?

Of course, it's nearly impossible to consume 68 bananas that are ripening at the same time.  That's where canning comes in.  I love to water bath can pureed bananas (with a splash of lemon juice) and then use the bananas in yogurt and smoothies.  My hope is to have enough canned bananas to keep me from having to buy any while waiting for the next stalk to ripen.  That's a challenge, given my daily smoothie habit and the very slow development of bananas.  This stalk I just harvested had been on the plant for at least 4 months, maybe 5!  Patience and persistence.  That's my motto...

Keeping Track

Keeping Track

I saw on a blog somewhere a while back where the homesteader kept records of how much food he produced and thought it would be a good thing to do.  It sometimes seems like all the work around the farm isn't yielding much, but if written down, I might find out otherwise.  My start date is June 15, 2017 because any date will do and I'm ready to set this thing up.  Mid-year is one of my least productive times because of living in the Deep South.  Heat and rain limit what I can grow right now, so harvesting won't be so overwhelming that I can't keep up with production records.  It should give me time to develop the habit so it won't seem like such a big deal come January when things start really kicking out in the garden.

To make it a bit more interesting, I am making production estimates at the beginning to compare with the actual numbers.  My estimates are:  100 gallons of goat's milk, 3,000 chicken eggs, and 1,000 pounds of produce from the garden (this includes all fruits, vegetables, and herbs).  The data will be organized on a spreadsheet to make it easy to analyze.  I'm curious to see how many pounds of fruit I produce, which vegetables provide higher yields than others, etc.  There's always things to learn as a hobby farmer, and this might be a great learning tool.

Basil harvested 6/17/17

This basil will be dehydrated, then hand-rubbed into a powder for use in cooking.  Sage and rosemary were also snipped a bit this morning.

Peter Piper Day

Peter Piper Day...

The eight jalapeño pepper plants in my garden have been kicking out about a dozen peppers a day for a couple of weeks now.  As I bring them inside, I fill quart sized Ziploc bags and toss them in the crisper draw of the refrigerator.  This morning, that drawer said "DO SOMETHING WITH ALL THESE PEPPERS, WOMAN!"  So I did...

When my grandson went down for his lovely three-hour nap, I pulled the water bath canner down from the top of my upright freezer in the utility room (Boy, I need to clean that room up and add some shelves!).  Nine pint jars were filled with water and submerged in the water bath canner to get sterilized for canning. Lids were put in a small saucepan to simmer and get the wax seals soft to create a good seal.  Minced garlic, vinegar, and water were put in another pot to simmer while I proceeded to slice up all those peppers.  There were nearly 100 of those rascals.  Jars were filled with peppers and vinegar solution, lids tightened, and then boiled in the canner for ten minutes.  Easy peezy and done in less than an hour.  The yield was 6 pints of pickled peppers...all six lids popped perfectly after removing them from the canner.  That pop!  Music to my ears...

A Blog is Born

It's been a long time on my mind that I needed a place to record the sometimes amazing, often entertaining, moments of my hobby farm life.   For nearly ten years I have been working at developing a small, two-acre farm that includes an organic garden, a flock of laying hens, and a small herd of dairy goats.  Other animals have come and gone over the years.  Waterfowl and turkeys were attempted, but I lost the war with predators and gave away any of the survivors.  Pigs were raised for the freezer a couple of times, but a lousy processing experience the last time led my husband to tear down the pig pen.  We weren't in agreement on that one, but I'll live without pork before I trouble myself with such things.

So why do I want to document this little life of mine?  First, I find this hobby farming experience fascinating, energizing, and educational.  My enthusiasm for the whole affair needs more of an outlet than just chatting with my goats.  Second, I want to put in writing what I am doing for my family....in case I die while the back yard is still a functioning farm and they need it for food.  No one else in the clan is currently involved in the farm, though my son and daughter-in-law have helped with the evening rounds on occasion and she knows how to milk my goats.  And third, there just might be a person or two who could be encouraged by reading about these experiences.

Daily posts "ain't gonna happen".  Not enough hours in a day for that.  But as things happen that I want to document, remember, or share, I will write.  Time will reveal how often that will be.