There's Not Enough Milk for the Babies!

Ghost gets lunch!

We're milking goats twice a day, but are having a hard time feeding the baby goats!  Our poor Goldie became ill shortly after giving birth and during treatment her milk dried up....completely.  She's much better, thank you, but will not produce milk again until she has more babies.  That won't be until same time next year so we've got to make some adjustments.  Goldie not producing milk is a big set back for both our fledgling soap business and our current crop of baby goats.  Goldie was our biggest milk producer: her daily contribution almost doubled the individual output of our other two mommas, Chocolate and Mabel!

So, Goldie's two kids, Ghost and Giggles, are essentially without a supply of nourishment.  Mabel is not producing quite enough to feed her triplets Monkey, Muffin and Mink.  Chocolate is taking good care of her kid, Coco, who was growing fat and happy on her 'free-choice' milk bar.  So, Coco now is taken away from Mommy during the day and we milk most of Choco's supply each night, leaving some for dinner for the kid.  The kids are all approaching six weeks of age so they are starting to nibble hay and a wee portion of grain.  But still, it's not enough milk!

Fortunately, we had a lot of raw milk frozen.  It's purpose was to make soap - I had planned a good stash for getting ready for Spring shows/sales and the opening of Global Market.  We've slowly but surely been dipping into the 'stash' to feed the babies!  We could have gone to formula but....to us that's yucky, chemical stuff.  We could purchase bottled goat milk- but the cost is silly and we view pasteurized milk as almost dead, much of the nutrition destroyed.  So, the stash it is.

We're finding that, when it thaws, fresh, raw goats milk separates and has some 'curds' suspended in what looks like a mix of whey and thin milk.  We've quickly come to the process of thawing the milk in an ice cream pail and then taking the stick blender to it to reconstitute it.  We add in and blend anything newly milked, once it has cooled.  It's working well and all the kids are thriving!  However, I'm not making any soap right now or eating any of our lovely, fresh goats milk, saving all the good stuff for the kids.  Looking forward to the day when the kids are weaned and the excess becomes mine to do with as I wish!

The Search for Fabulous Citrus Goat Milk Soap

In most of my Cold Process (CP) books, the authors mention the difficulty of citrus fragrance using natural essential oils (EO).  There is something about citrus essential oils that doesn't stand up to the heat produced during the CP process.  And I really, really want a nice, perky citrus soap!

When I'm making soap, I use a very cool method because I don't want to 'damage' or scald all the good things in goats milk during the process.  I want all the skin-friendly proteins and fats to be totally available.  I freeze our fresh, raw milk in ice cube trays and add the lye to the cubes.  I melt all our solid butters then allow them to cool with the fluid oils before adding the milk/lye mixture.  I freeze the soap mixture as soon as I put it in the molds.  Doing these things, I've manage to produce lovely ivory-coloured soaps, without the beige/brown tinge brought on by high heat.

Thinking my cool method may negate the citrus scent problem, I made a small batch a while ago, using just sweet orange EO, which is what I had on hand.  I used almost double the EO that I use for my lavender and peppermint soaps.  I ended up with absolute no citrus fragrance at all!  Huge disappointment!  Because I'm stubborn and really don't want to use the fake fragrance oils, I started some research.

During the Christmas season (which is also kind of the beginning of citrus season), I was seeing a lot of stuff, on the crafty blogs I read and on the Facebook pages I follow, about using up citrus peels.  Posts included drying for potpourri, dehydrating zest and....infusing oils.  Well, I thought, why couldn't I infused the olive oil in my soap recipe, to get a little head start on fragrance.  So I took some of the many mandarin orange peels we were producing, air dried them and then soaked them in olive oil.   That blog post is here.  When finished, the oil had a nice, although light, citrus scent.  I kept the peels and air dried them again, letting them dry really well to use as an exfoliant in the soap.



Then....somebody commented anonymously with one word.....bergamot!  Whoever you are - thank you, thank you, thank you!  I went in search of bergamot EO and love it!  And found five-fold lemon EO while I was at it, which means extra concentrated.  So, a new batch of citrus soap has been made, with sweet orange, five fold lemon and bergamot added just before I pour the mixture into the molds!  After 24 hours, during the cutting, it smelled strongly of fresh soap (somewhat chemical) and very little like anything citrus.  Now two weeks later that 'new soap' scent is gone and a nice but light citrus fragrance remains!  So excited!  The soap has a lovely pale peachy/yellow colour with some darker orange pieces from the ground peel.  The soap needs at least another two weeks to cure, but I have high hopes!

Love The New Henry Milker!

I was the lucky recipient yesterday of the new Henry Milker.  I continue to be blown away by the service, the teaching and the connection with customers from these people!  I had emailed them looking to replace my pump, which has had some challenges lately.  Admittedly, we'd dropped it a couple of times, Farmer Man was doing clean-up and waterlogged it, and the usual stuff of day-to-day milking.  They sell replacement parts (and many other great goat things) on the Henry Milker website so I'd emailed about shipping to Canada.  The response I got was that Mr. Henry's been enjoying my blog and appreciates the mentions so he was sending me a whole new kit - for free!

The new version of the Henry Milker is awesome!  If you have a small herd of goats you should consider this tool.  We've liked it from the start because the whole connection from teat to milk receptacle is closed, so cleaner milk.  It uses large canning jars, easy to deal with, easy to clean and perfect for refrigerating milk for our use.  It's extremely lightweight and portable - a fact I have so appreciated when Mabel has rejected kids and I'm crawling around in the birthing pen trying to get that all important colostrum!  It's fast and no aching hands!

Well, the new version is a big step up.  You can milk both teats at the same time!  Yes, Mr. Henry has figured an awesome little system so that you can cap both teats and milk into the same jar.  I admire people who are so inventive!  There's a wee bit of a learning curve to juggle both teat caps, and Mabel was a bit surprised last night but milking her was over in a couple of minutes!  I'll so appreciate that tomorrow morning when I feel the pressure of having to get to work on time!

There's some other great new features, too.  The new lids are one piece plastic, the previous version used the usual canning jars lids.  I think these one piece lids will be more sanitary - less places for debris to be trapped and bacteria to grow!  The teat cups have an insert, easy to put in or pull out, so you can adjust to the size of the goats' teat.  Both sizes of tubing (one for joining to the teat cups and one for connecting the two cups to one pump) both come with their own little cleaning brushes!  Everything you need, except the goat!  The whole instruction manual has been expanded and improved upon, too!

So, if you've got goats I really think you should check out this wee machine here.  If you've got goats I think you should just go to the website anyway: lots of great stuff and info for goat people!  From cheese making supplies, to accessories like scratch posts and coats for cold climates to plans for milking stands and hay feeders to help with marketing!  The Henry Milker site is becoming a great resource for goat lovers!

It's Been A Whirlwind!

Muffin gets lunch!

Happy Easter to everyone!  I'm finding it really hard to believe that April is almost upon us!  Perhaps that has something to do with the freezing temperatures and three feet of snow outside!  This time last year the snow was completely gone and buds were swelling!  It's been such a loooooooong winter this year; it seems hard to get excited about Spring because it still seems so far away!

March is a bit of a blur for me.  So much happened, so fast and I feel rather like I stumbled through the whole thing.  We've both been sick, we've both gotten some work off the farm, we've been dealing with a predator in the chicken coop and we've had a passel of baby goats!  I have vague memories of cold nights in the barn with the goats, finding murdered chickens in the coop, studying for a new job, sneaking around the house while Farmer Man sleeps after working a night shift, trying to find the energy to get groceries and coughing and sniffling during every event!

The end result is that we have six beautiful baby goats: five girls and a boy!  Mabel had triplets first, on March 9.  She produced a boy, Monkey and two little girls, Mink and Muffin.  If you follow this blog, you remember last year she rejected them completely and her kids were bottle babies.  This year she was more accepting and cleaned them up, but could not seem to feed them.  It was also very cold the night they were born (-25 C) so eventually they came into the house and became bottle babies.  Once again, I was so thankful for my Henry Milker, so light and portable, with clean milk ready to use.  Farmer Man was at work, so it proved to be a long, stressful and tiring night for me!  And, admittedly, we weren't as organized as we could have been because we thought we were at least a week away from having babies.

So imagine my surprise when I go to the barn to refresh waters the very next day and hear the wee cry of a baby goat!  Sixteen hours after Mabel, Choco produced the cutest little dark brown baby girl, Coco Chanel!  Everything was going well with these two; Farmer Man set up a heat lamp, we helped clean up and put a little coat on the baby and mother and kid were bonding and feeding very nicely in a short time.  We didn't think Choco was even near her due date: she didn't look very pregnant, she'd been very placid and hadn't exhibited any signs of nesting.  Last year, she was the last to have babies, fully a month after the first birth, so we assumed she had resisted Randi's advances again.  It being a weekend, I was around and continued to do hourly checks.  It was still very cold outside, so we wanted to make sure the new mommy and baby were taking advantage of the heat lamp, mommy was getting lots of water (the water was freezing quickly, and needed replacement often).

Early evening, as I went to check on things I found Goldie in the throes of birth.  One baby was already out on the straw and she was obviously working on a second.  Fortunately Farmer Man was home and he worked on getting a second heat lamp installed in an 'adlib' birthing suite for Goldie and her babies.  We helped clean up and dry off the babies and got everyone in the warmth of the new birthing suite.  Goldie had two girls: a lovely, almost ivory coloured kid we've named Ghost and a little chocolate brown girl named Giggles.

Whew, all our babies within twenty four hours and freezing cold temperatures.  It was worrisome.  The babies in the house were doing fine, Mabel was getting back in the groove of being milked but she wasn't producing enough for triplets and we didn't feel we could take away from the other new mommas right at this time.  Thank heaven for frozen milk!  We had frozen a LOT of milk while continuing to milk into the fall, long after last years' babies were weaned.  It was intended for soap, first and foremost, but also for our use through the winter.  We really hadn't thought about a stash for this years' babies!  The thing about frozen milk is that it separates and clumps, so feeding time became a little long as we had to warm the milk enough to 'melt' the clumps in it; some of it I've also had to put in the blender to re-liquefy so that it would go through the bottles smoothly and not clog the nipple.

By Monday morning, Farmer Man, on an hourly check, realized something was wrong with Goldie.  She didn't want to get up and was very lethargic; the babies weren't getting fed.  By an early afternoon check, Ghost was lethargic and shivering.  Into the house she came!  Farmer Man was worried enough to call me at work and I raced home as soon as I could.  The little girl was very still and weak: Farmer Man had prepared a bottle and would get it in her mouth and squirt a bit, trying to get her to swallow.  He went off to work and I continued this into the evening.  On a check, Giggles seemed to be fading, so into the house she came, too!  Now five to bottle feed - thank heavens for the frozen milk.  Thank heavens, too, for pals Nancy and Deb, who came to help feed (and to play with baby goats!).  The twins rebounded, a huge improvement in just twenty four hours of consistent feeding!  We tried milking Goldie, but she was producing hardly anything.  She continued to be lethargic the next day so we called our vet, Dr. Sherry of Wheat City Vet Clinic.

Dr. Sherry's visit was not good news, but at least we knew what to do.  Goldie had a high fever and an infection of some sort and possibly mastitis.  There was no benefit to waiting to diagnose mastitis - she had to be treated promptly!  So, we added to the routine two shots and a teat drench.  Mabel, too, had a bit of fever and lethargy so she was included in the treatment plan.  I was squeamish about giving needles so Farmer Man stepped up to the plate on that one!  I did the teat drench - which is kind of like putting a blunt needle into the teat and pumping in medicine.  Goldie's milk production dropped to nothing, and will likely not return - a huge loss for us not only in terms of feeding babies, but also for soap production this coming year.  But, what counts is that everyone seems much improved and all the babies are doing well!  Here's to hoping that April calms down!

Box of Baby Goats....

Farmer Man and I have been very sick.  February was the month of a respiratory viral infection, and we're still not right.  Neither of us have been this sick in years!  Of course, on a farm, there are still chores to be done: someone had to drag themselves out of bed to feed and water chickens and goats.  Doggies still needed to go outside occasionally.  So, somehow, I missed the signs.  We knew our three Mamma goats were going to have babies soon; by our calculations mid-March would be the earliest.  Imagine my surprise when I was hauling water up yesterday afternoon and heard the thin, light cry of a baby goat.

A goat's gestation period is five months.  By our calculations, based on when we put Randi in with the girls, March 16th should have been the earliest possible due date.  There's, you know, a courting period, the females have to actually go into heat which is often brought on by being with a male in rut.  Well, Mabel must have gone into heat in a flash because yesterday afternoon she presented us with triplets!  All girls, we think, but we've been wrong before so we're giving it a day or two.

I knew Mabel and Goldie were getting close.  The babies had dropped, giving the females an indentation high on their hips.  I'd been checking for the mucous plug that indicates the start of birth but had missed that sign.  Everything seemed fine late morning when I checked on them on my way to collect eggs.  Mabel didn't appear to be 'nesting' or pawing the straw or any other signs.  Admittedly, I wasn't there very long.

So, I arrived yesterday afternoon to find one wee baby goat.  I dashed up to the house, called for Farmer Man and grabbed a few things.  I wasn't as organized yet as I could be, thinking I had another week to prepare.  A second baby was coming as I got back to the barn.  The lovely thing was Mabel was accepting them this time and was working to clean up the first one.  Last year she had triplets and then retreated to a corner of the pen and would have nothing to do with them.  When she became distracted by the arrival of the second baby, I continue to clean up and dry off the first.  We are having babies earlier this year, when it's colder, and we're very conscious of that.  The first thing Farmer Man did when he arrived on the scene was to close the barn doors, so that drafts were at a minimum.  Then he got the heat lamp out and installed.

The third baby arrived quite promptly and Mabel and I worked to clean and dry them all.  Then I started showing them where to feed, hoping Mother Nature would kick in.  The babies just didn't seem to get it; only one showed a natural inclination but couldn't quite figure out which end.  The other two seemed to have no idea of why I was standing them up and placing them at their mother's udder.  Mabel didn't seem to get it either and kept walking away, returning to clean and muzzle them.  Time went by and I felt that these little ones really needed to eat.  Out came the Henry Milker and I milked Mabel - not ideal, clean conditions but I felt it needed to be done.  Trying to bottle feed the wee things right there in the pen was it's own challenge, but I got a little bit of colostrum (the initial momma's milk, full of antibodies and good things) into each one.  I kept trying to show them where to feed, and Mabel kept walking away or putting up her leg like she was going to kick.

Even with the heat lamp, the babies were shivering so I went and got some little doggie sweaters my dogs had outgrown.  I kept trying to show them where to feed but nobody was getting it!  After about three hours, one of the babies seemed to be getting weak and was shivering consistently so up to the house into a big cardboard box.  I milked Mabel a bit more and went up to the house to feed the little kid.  I was hoping I'd return to find the other two feeding but slowly, over the next hour, all three ended up in the house getting bottle fed.  We'd really hoped not to have the responsibility of bottle feeding triplets this year but you can't always get what you want, right?

More Soap Experiments

A nice citrus aroma is hard to get, naturally, in soap.  Apparently, the essential oils for orange, lemon, grapefruit and lime do not stand up well to the heat produced during the cold process soap making.  I'd made one small batch in the fall with Sweet Orange essential oil and got almost no hint of fragrance in the finished soap.  Essential oils are expensive, and I'd really like a citrus soap (without resorting to the faux fragrance oils), so I thought I'd try infusing some of the olive oil that I use to make my soap.

Around Christmas, we had a lot of Mandarin oranges around, so it seemed like the perfect time to try an infusion.  I have infused vinegar with the flavor of fresh herbs, a great result and really quite easy.  I was reading about infusing vinegar with orange peels for homemade cleanser and thought I could do the same with oil.  So, I started saving the peels of oranges and air-drying them on the counter.  More moisture in the peels means more possibility of mold/bacteria in the infusion, so I let them all get very dry and crispy.  Shortly after New Years, I packed a jar with the peels and covered them with olive oil.  I had a bag of dried rose buds and tried one with those, as well, because rose essential oil is outrageously expensive!

Six weeks later, they are suppose to be finished.  I can note a colour change in the oils and, sure enough, once I strained out the peels, the orange/olive oil has a light citrus scent.  Now, in our goats milk soap process, we keep everything as cool as possible - to avoid scorching the milk and keeping all the 'good stuff' that milk offers to the skin.  I think that I will keep the infused oil to add at the very end of the process: if the recipe calls for 900 grams of olive oil I will make the soap with 3/4 of that in regular oil and then add 1/4 of the infused oil at the very end of the process, when I add the essential oil.  I think I'll grind up the peels, once they dry, and add them for fragrance and exfoliation.  I have purchased a '5 Fold' lemon essential oil, which is suppose to be much stronger, so I'll make a citrus soap with not just an orange essential oil but the lemon, as well.  Maybe I should acquire some grapefruit essential oil before I do this.

I'm just about to strain the olive oil/rosebud concoction.  It has a nice rose fragrance, but the rose buds seem very soft - I may not be able to grind them to use in the soap, but I can use more of the plain, dried buds.  Should make for some interesting experiments in the kitchen!  What's your favorite fragrance for a soap?  

Fresh Snow is Revealing....

Fresh trail, just after chasing the weasel out of the barn!

We've had a nice, fresh layer of snow over night, probably about 5 - 6 cm or a couple of inches.  Everything looks so clean and pristine!  It's covered the bit of a mess we made cleaning the chicken coop, covered all the little places the doggies have lifted a leg.  The fresh snow has also revealed a few new things: tracks around the chicken coop and off over to the barn!

The tracks are not my dogs, not barn cats and not the neighbors' big dogs.  It's more of a little tunnel through the top layer of the snow - with a deeper impression every two feet or so.  Like some little critter was jumping from place to place but not getting high enough to actually clear the snow.  Seeing these odd tracks, I did not open the chickens' hatch, even though the temperature has risen to quite an acceptable -12 C (about 8 F) over night.  Finished with morning chores in the chicken coop, I headed into the barn to give the goats their morning grain ration, re-fill waters and feed the barn cats.  I heard an odd squeaky 'meow' from beside the big sliding door, behind some equipment.  I went over, thinking perhaps a barn kitty was hurt or stuck.  I moved a feed bag, which was on top of the grinder and out from behind the welder popped a little brown head with bright, brown eyes.  It looked very much like a ferret a friend owns.

I'm not much of a screamer, thankfully.  I actually calmly said 'hello' to the little weasel.  Then I reached over and opened the sliding door a ways with my right hand, reached for a nearby broom with my left hand and started whacked the welder.  The little critter leaped out the door and streaked along the side of the barn, disappearing around the north corner of the barn.  The tracks went under the shed that sits on the north side of the barn.  So, Farmer Man definitely called it: a weasel is our predator!  A very strong, musky odor remains behind the welder - I didn't realize weasels had such a forceful fragrance!  So, a trap is absolutely in our future; in the meantime I probably won't be able to help myself and I'll be trekking through the snow to the barn every half hour or so today doing guard duty!  I've got to think twice about letting the dogs come with me when I go because, in my reading, weasels can be vicious fighters especially when cornered!  I certainly don't want one tangling with Blaze or Grizzly Bear - my usual companions!

Winter Chores!

Farmer Man shovelling the....

What a difference a couple of days makes!  Sunday: temperature close to the freezing mark - quite balmy for February in Manitoba.  Two days later we wake up to -30 Celsius with a windchill of -38 C! Good thing we got some chores done!

Number one priority for us was cleaning the chicken coop.  Not a wash down/scrub down kind of clean; it's still way too cold to be using water that would freeze too quickly.  It was time for hauling out the existing bedding and refreshing it with new.  We'd been waiting for a warm enough day when we were both around - not an easy thing to co-ordinate with Farmer Man working off the farm!  We'd tried a 'deep litter' method whereas you don't haul out the bedding, you top it up.  Theory is that the mix of bedding and manure composts in place, providing some warmth.  We've decided it's not our favorite method; the depth built up quickly and it was kind of slippery.  Plus, the chickens' feet seemed dirtier all the time so the eggs were dirtier!

Watching the weather forecast we knew Sunday would be the day!  High forecast to be around the freezing mark and both of us free.  The endeavor starts with kicking the chickens out of the coop - one of the reasons we want a nice day.  With their hatch open and a number of them already outside, we lured the rest out by throwing scratch grains out in the pasture.  The flurry of activity from the outside chickens always draws the others out - if there is even a rumour of tasty treats, chickens hustle over to see what's going on!  Once they chickens were largely all out, the open door to the coop covers the hatch so no one can get back inside.  A few hens didn't make it out and Rocky the Rooster chose to stay with them, so we had to work around a few bodies!

The litter was, particularly under the roosts, about a foot deep.  We use mostly wood chips for litter, with some straw/hay mixed in because that's largely what we use in the nests and it gets kicked around. With the deep litter method, when the chips are quite soiled with manure, you put another layer of wood chips on top.  The result was something in weird, dense, plastic layers.  It was heavy and didn't break up easily: once you got a shovel under it, when you lifted, it bent rather than breaking.  It was hard work and it took three tractor buckets to clean it out!  It didn't smell all that bad, fortunately.  A quick sweep and we put down another couple of bales of wood chips and everything smells better and looks better!

A few more things got done as well.  Snow has been pushed off the roof of the house, the path up to the barn and the chicken coop has been cleared, the barn got a good sweep.  It's not exactly Spring cleaning, but it's a start! 

Murder in the Chicken Coop

Duct tape and rag ripped away!

Last week I entered the chicken coop on my usual morning routine: big bucket of food and little scoop of scratch in hand.  Entering, I was shocked to almost trip over a dead hen, a young Isa Brown from the group we bought as day-olds in June.  I turned to set down my bucket, only to discover two more in the corner, behind the door.  What an awful way to start my day!  These were beautiful young hens, just starting their journey as egg layers for Aagaard Farms.  None exhibited much damage, certainly they looked pecked around the head and neck.  We assumed that the damage had come from within the flock, because we considered the coop quite secure.  Perhaps the three young roosters born here in August were getting rough?

A few days later, another dead hen, an older Isa Brown.  Again, she looked pecked but largely intact.  I put the roosters for sale on eBrandon, our local online community.  Yesterday morning, another, but this time the head and neck were missing.  Chickens wouldn't do that: they wouldn't or couldn't eat a skull....We've got more of a problem then we thought!  We carefully checked the coop - the only way a predator could get in would be through the chicken's door, which has a little gap or through the front door.  We'd removed the lock of the door, to allow a bit more air flow, and were using a tie-down as a little extra security.  When it's well below freezing here and the chickens are confined to the coop, they release a lot of moisture and heat.  It can get very humid and stuffy in the coop, so we'd removed the lock to allow the hot air to escape a bit better, even though we'd built in air exchange.  On examining the door, there was blood around this little hole, which I don't think I transferred there in my comings-and-goings.  Was it possible that a critter was getting onto the door handle or tie-down and through that hole?  Farmer Man figured a weasel was perhaps at work.

So yesterday, we fixed everything as best we could.  We stuffed the hole in the door with a rag, well held in place by duct tape on both sides (the farmer's fix-all!).  This morning: the outside duct tape ripped off, the rag pulled out and the duct tape inside pushed aside!  And another dead chicken, one of the young roosters born here in August.  Unbelievable to me that a little critter, like a weasel, could get up on the door handle and in-and-out through that small hole! And drag a chicken head with it! So today, something is getting bolted over that hole.  I'm just sorry I didn't realize how much of a problem we had sooner, but it will be fixed today!  We're just worried the critter will get hungry and attack them during the day, when they are out in the pasture, so we'll also be looking for some kind of trap today.  Hopefully, our little flock will be safe again!

January Doldrums, February Blahs...

I haven't posted in almost a month, which isn't like me.  Just haven't had anything to say.  Things go on at Aagaard Farms: chores of feeding and watering chickens, goats, cats and dogs, soap is still getting made, we're still cooking with foods we stored or preserved.  It just didn't seem different or interesting enough to actually blog about any of it.  Our Facebook page will get a cute picture of one of our animals and a one-liner but it's not enough to fill a blog post.

I always find January and February a little difficult.  I do not enjoy really cold weather; I worry about all the critters outside in it, I don't relish winter sports, I don't like driving on slippery, snowy roads.  I'm suppose to be working in the office getting taxes and such organized - also not something I relish.  But, the big thing about this time of year is we're suppose to be making decisions - important decisions that will affect our entire year.  What kinds of seeds to buy?  How much to grow?  Where and how to sell our stuff.

As our business slowly grows, tough decisions are on the agenda this year.  Farmer Man's Mom had started to offer the land as garden rentals.  She wanted to do less but still wanted some income.  When we arrived to take over the farm, we found we rather enjoyed the little community of gardeners.  We continued to offer the plots and, as interest in local and fresh food has grown, so has the number of gardeners.  Problem is, as our vegetable business expands, we're finding the renters are on some of our best land, with the easiest access to water and most convenient area for harvesting and transporting.  And they're using up our precious, limited water resources so that we have almost no water by September, even earlier some years.  We can see that we could easily double or triple the income per plot if we were using it for our own sales.

You'd think it would be an easy business decision....just quit offering the rentals or raise the price substantially.  But we like our renters, we like having them here,  and we don't know where else they'd go.  Community gardens in town are limited and there is always a waiting list.  And we have spare land.....

So Farmer Man got an appointment to see someone in the provincial government, to look into a little financial help in moving the renters by upgrading a sand point well, improving the drive in access to the spot we have in mind for new gardens.  At some point, Farmer Man made the joke that we'd probably be better off if we both just worked straight jobs and the bureaucrat wanted to know why we didn't just do that.... Well, there is someone who just doesn't get what we're doing!  Growing good food for our friends and neighbors is something we're passionate about!  It's like telling the up-and-coming dancer, actor or singer to just go to work in an office and quit the struggle!  And no consideration at all for all the people who want to garden and grow their own, chemical-free, healthy food!  It was kind of depressing, rather sad and kind of deflating.  We'll keep looking for help, but we still have to make that decision about the garden rentals - and soon.  A lottery win would be good right about now!

We Are Sooo Doing Oven-Roasted Tomatoes Again!

Last night I used our oven-roasted tomatoes for the first time.  This year was the first time we've roasted tomatoes, then preserved by freezing (with juice) in freezer bags.  Hauled a bag out a couple of days ago, largely 'cause it was firmly stuck to a jar of goats milk!  I guess I hadn't wiped off the bag well enough, or it was still a little warm; it was very well adhered to the glass jar and wasn't letting go. So I defrosted the two together, in an ice cream pail just in case there was any leakage.

Holy Smokes - was that the closest I've come to the taste of fresh, summer tomatoes in the dead of winter!  We are absolutely doing this again this coming year!  Highly recommend it!  We have homemade tomato sauce, and it's pretty good, even if I do say so myself.  But the flavor of the frozen oven-roasted tomatoes was fabulous!  Our tomatoes were a mix of Romas, Margeritas and the heirloom Brandywine.  I made a simple sauce by sauteing some onions and garlic, then added the tomatoes and seasoning.  I am fortunate to have a lovely stash of tarragon shared by our CSA members Tammy and Mike, which added a nice flavor with a touch of sweetness.  Toward the end, I added a bit of homemade chicken stock, because it was getting a little thick.  I did cut up a few piece of tomato skin, which were a little large and stringy.  Total time was the amount of time needed to boil the water and cook the pasta!

This coming season, I think we'll follow the directions for roasting the tomatoes from here at Smitten Kitchen.  She's slow-roasting them at a low temperature, which is not what we did and it was a little warm in the house the day we processed our tomatoes.  Just some olive oil and salt and pepper, then you're free to spice your sauce any way you want.  These tomatoes will be nice for a style of bruschetta, maybe in a quiche, blended for a dip...so many things.  Storage in freezer bags does not take up a ton of freezer space as they stack very nicely.  Just learn from my lesson and make sure the bags are well dried off, or stack them after they freeze!

Sunshine and Fresh Air For Everybody!

Getting the Goats out and about!

 We believe in sunshine, fresh air and exercise for everybody!  Vitamin D is a good thing from the sun, for cats, dogs, chickens and goats, as well as us humans.  When the weather is extremely cold here in Manitoba, say -25 C (about -18 F) or colder we won't even open the doors to the chicken coop or barn.  Chickens might freeze a comb or even a foot, goats are susceptible to drafts and since our girls are pregnant....it's just not a chance we're willing to take.  I've got to tell you, though: we feel bad for our critters when we can't get them out for some fresh air!  We can't imagine a life where the animals never get outside, never get to prance and run.....never get to waddle and cluck and peck.

So, we woke up this morning and it was 0 C - that's right: a warm and balmy right-at-freezing zero at 7:30 AM!  That's about twelve degrees warmer than our usual daytime high this time of year!  Farmer Man had no appointments until the evening so we took the opportunity to get some chores down.  First on our list, and our minds, is that Randi needs his own pen.  As our Mamas get closer to delivering (expected March/Aprilish) Randi the Buck could inadvertently hurt them or the babies.  Last year we had the spare pen, but this year the boys Marty and Mervyn are occupying it.  Randi does not take kindly to the young bucks, so a new pen had to be constructed.  The biggest part of that chore, as always, is cleaning out debris!  The barn becomes a bit of a dumping ground in the fall, as we close down the vegetable operation.  We needed to re-organize the shelves behind the pens, clear out some space and put together a new pen.

Mabel and Goldie compete for pumpkin. That kept
them busy for a while!

Since the weather was so lovely, and we wanted to work around the pens, we decided to let the Mamas and Randi out.  Farmer Man led the little herd over to the trees beside the chicken coop, where the snow isn't very deep between the rows of trees.  The Goats could snack on the evergreens, forage for some dried leaves and just generally roam and relax.  Problem is: goats just want to hang with their people!  They all returned pretty promptly to the barn and preceded to get in the way.  When Randi tried some head-butting with Farmer Man, the buck ended up back in the pen!  To distract the Mamas, I  ran back to the house to grab the last pumpkin - their favorite.  We proceeded to tidy up, finding new places for tillers and grass catchers and saw horses and all the accumulated stuff!

Randi's new pen!

The goat Mamas and our little girl Marble probably tried to eat everything we moved.  Well, not eat but they will mouth everything to see if it is good to eat.  Choco wanted to chase Marble, Mabel just wanted to get at the stacked hay and Goldie really, really wanted to know what we were doing.  It was a bit of a gong show.  But, eventually, we got it done and got Randi ensconced in his new pen.  Whewwwww.......