Little Drummer Boy (and other stuff)

Randy said our blog has too much death in it right now. So I decided to accompany this story with a couple cute pictures. Aaron is drumming away and Gloria is helping Randy thresh sunflower seeds.

Now for the story. A couple squirrels chewed a hole through our screen to get into our porch and eat our chicken feed. I'd been chasing them off several times a day all last week. On Saturday, Randy hit one a couple times with the bb gun and was able to kill it after cornering it. I thought that would be the end of it, but yesterday his friend came back with avengence. The little hole is now huge. This morning I had had enough. I killed it in 2 shots (and 5 misses) with both kids watching through the sliding glass door, cheering me on. No, I won't be roasting him for dinner.

Remembering Sundae

This weekend held a mixture of emotions- Friday night, Randy surprised me with my Christmas present early. He placed a piece of barbed wire in a jewelry box and wrapped it up. Upon opening, I knew it had something to do with the unfinished pasture fence, but supplies were not the issue, it was the time and labor. He quickly explained that he and a very good friend would be finishing it together. I cried. I couldn't have asked for a better gift.

So Saturday morning, Steven came over and they began working. Gloria LOVED having "Uncle Steewie" around. She would have hung on his leg all day if we would have let her. But the day went as planned- I had a meeting and random chores to do, the guys slaved away and made far better time than Randy and I ever did. Shortly after putting the kids down for a nap, Randy had fetched Sundae, our wild, little escape artist, to test the fence. She has had to be tethered inside the enclosure because of her escaping abilities and her insane speed which made catching her after each FREQUENT escape next to impossible. My hope for her was that after kidding and being milked, she would simmer down to a nice sweetie as our other goats are. At any rate, she slipped through all the barbed wire with minimal difficulty. After that, I was scratching her head and back, loving on her as I occasionally did to again aid in the "simmer down" process. That's when I noticed what I had never noticed in any other scratching session- her collar had rubbed the back of her neck raw and had started growing into the flesh. We immediately went through all our options. To remove it would be excruciating, not to mention the pain she has already endured. Should we have removed it, we would still have had the containment issue and stone fruit trees which are deadly poisonous to goats. So, regretfully, we ended her life. It was painless and quick, and oddly enough, right beside the all-purpose pen that sheltered her when she was first born. It was hard on both of us. I feel horribly guilty for never noticing the wound before. She was a shaggy, longer haired goat which hid it well. Randy kept thinking back to when she was little, scamping and playing. Playful jumps and twists, lightening fast from just a couple days old. She was merely 10 and a half months old.

I know everyone is wondering what happened from there. We see things very different from most people- all meat has a face whether you see it or not. We chose to process her as we would venison or beef. I pulled her from the oven just a little while ago. Her fur, thick and soft, I've saved to be tanned and I'll make it into kids slippers or booties. If you disagree with our actions, please don't post negative comments. You never knew our goat. We are saddened by her loss enough already and don't need PETA activists ignorantly telling us we're heartless. Those comments will not be posted anyway.

We're both very glad Steven was there for all of this. I was a bit too emotional to help. Randy was steeling himself for all of it as well... including his first time ever firing a gun. I also left before the processing was complete to take in the New Smyrna Christmas parade (which the kids loved!), a cherished tradition especially for my grandfather. Its amazing how much help moral support is!

Thank you for remembering our little spunky goat. If there were a goat heaven, I'm sure she would have run circles around it multiple times by now. Thank you, Sundae, for spending your life with us and for us.

Garden update

And a final post for today- our garden. We are learning so much each season and this is no exception. My garlic is already up and strong. I still have another bulb to plant too! I heard not to expect much from garlic in the south, but it really is looking good. My 4 good tomato plants are HUGE, but not bearing much fruit. The fruit that's on it hasn't ripened. My peas are getting too little sun and so are quite small despite being in the ground for over 2 months now. I'm considering moving them to the other garden where the southern sun isn't shaded by the house. Our cucumbers were looking superb, but anthracnose has again hit with a vengeance. Spraying has held it off, but it still looks like we'll be loosing it before an abundant harvest. Our cucumbers contributed to our Thanksgiving salad and were mighty tasty though! I gave up on my long beans. They were constantly being swarmed with aphids and not getting enough water in the drip irrigation to grow well. They are drying up and I'm letting them. Beats and onions are kinda weak- only a few plants remain of each and are still only seedling size though its been over a month in the ground. Good sun, good moisture. I don't understand. My lettuce is finally starting to grow. Carrots are barely hanging in there. Mustard greens are doing well (though I only had 1 plant worth planting!) Broccoli is strong, but not big yet. Spinach, 2 plantings worth, have a precious few remaining- I'm not sure why. But my sunflowers are opening now and that is a welcomed sight!

The End of the First

We spent a portion of "Black Saturday" not in the stores, but again in slaughter mode. Our very first batch of chickens, ones we got shortly after we bought our house, before Gloria was even born, are now all gone. We started with 25, only intending on keeping 20, slaughtered 5 to see if we could handle the slaughter process, 5 became convicted egg-eaters and were free-ranged until they started laying eggs deep in the woods, a few were racoon victims, several died in a furiously hot summer (despite the fan that I kept on them and hosing them down every few hours), and 2 were lost to botulism. 5 remained. Their egg laying had drastically reduced to maybe one a day out of the 5. It was a little sad to see them go, but they lived full, happy lives and they shall make fine soup. After taking about 6 hours to do 2 turkeys, it was rather surprising to find that we whipped through the process in less than 2 hours... that's clean up included. Gloria wanted no part in any of it- the slaughter of the first turkey really scared her. Of course if you were 2 and saw your mother suddenly thrown and frantically trying to regain control of a bleeding turkey, you would probably not be too interested in it either. Once the slaughter was done, we played musical pens, rehabbing a couple that were showing signs of wear. The young plymoth rocks and the young cornish rocks are now separated and both are happier for it. The cornish are about 3 times the size of the plymoths now and hog the grain. The plymoths climb into the feeder to eat which made the cornish mad. Now all can be as quirky as they want. And more good news, the one that was attacked by the racoon has made successful re-entry to the cornish pen. She's slightly smaller than the others, but she's eating well and almost entirely healed.

Turkey slaughter

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Randy took the afternoon off and we prepared to slaughter both turkeys, the big tom for Thanksgiving and the smaller hen for Christmas. Not being able to lift them out of the top-opening pen, we simply flipped the pen over and got them from underneath. It was rather prvidential that we did this as the hen was easy to reach, and the tom was not, so she was the first to go. I somewhat sat on her, holding her wings, Randy stretched out her neck and held her there with his foot and swung the axe. We greatly respect our animals lives and wish them no suffering, or as little as possible so we were trying to do this quickly. The axe only wounded her, she literally threw me off as she made a last attempt for her life. A few seconds later she was dead, but it was not clean and not pretty. I was quite surprised by the strength in her and quickly decided that would NOT be the way we would try to process the enormous tom. The hen dressed out at 23 pounds.

When the toms turn came, we had decided to do it the kosher way, hang him by the feet from a tree, slit the jugulars which cuts off blood to the brain, rendering them unconcious until they are dead. It took both of us to carry him, one holding each foot. We got him hanging rather easily then went hunting for the jugulars- they're not as easy to find as one might think. Randy did the best he could, everything was going as expected, giant wings flapped and twitched, then stopped. We assumed he was dead. Then his head picked up and looked around, fully alive and yes, fully conscious slowly bleeding to death. We again did a messy job of finishing the task, working as quickly as possible to end his suffering. It was even more difficult on account of his powerful wings which were flapping and hitting us. When that part was over, the real work was just beginning. He was so big he didn't fit in the automatic plucker and had to be mostly hand plucked. Once he was evicerated (gutted), I tried to do the final cleaning in the kitchen sink as is our practice. Again, he wouldn't fit. I had to haul it into the bathtub to clean him. It wouldn't fit in the fridge so we put it in ice water in a cooler on the porch. It scarcely fit into the roasting pan (the lid wouldn't go on though). Yet this 37 pound turkey cooked much sooner than we expected so ended up a bit overdone. (We started the cooking process at 5am!) At any rate, the festivities are over and I'm feeling a bit like Bubba Gump- turkey soup, turkey pot pie, turkey salad, turkey gumbo, turkey kabobs, etc!