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Jim and I had to run to G’ville to drop off something at Tech and as we were driving by the Walgreens at Augusta I noticed the temperature flash up on the sign… 111 degrees. While I had definitely thought it was hot, I thought 111 was a bit excessive and figured that sign was fritzy. So I hit the ext.temp button in the car (I think that button sat there unused for the first year that I drove Landy before I realized what it was) and 109 popped up on the screen. Hmmmm. Guess the sign wasn’t really all that much off after all.
So yeah, it’s been hot here and fairly humid… as in denim has been banned from farm wear because of discomfort and inability to get them off once you’re back inside! The sheep refuse to graze during the day as they’d rather doze under the shady trees and the cows have stayed either in the barn or under the trees as well. The horses are willing to brave the rays to graze, but even they have to hang out in the shade during the hottest part of the day. Unfortunately we lost the smallest of the pigs. I feel fairly certain that heat played a part as the bigger pigs were very nearly overheated that day as well… we’ve had to add a much bigger waterer and make more frequent trips out to re-wet their mud pit every day. The day that the pig died was the day we were gone much of the day picking up the headgate and no one was here doing our regular observations and checks… yet another reason why I prefer to just stay home.
Speaking of the headgate… I’m still in shock that I found such a good deal on it! A brand new headgate similar to the one we just bought sales for nearly $800 at the farm store. I found an unused one on craigslist for $150!! Apparently the guy who was selling it had bought it 10 years ago when he was first getting into cows. Then the cattle market tanked so he got rid of the cows and never even set up the head gate… so it sat in his barn unused and most likely forgotten. Now he is moving and decided to clean out the barn so posted it on craigslist just to “get rid of it” and as luck would have it I was the first (of MANY!) callers. I think he regretted that he didn’t ask more for it… but he was happy to honor our verbal agreement even when he got offers for 2x what he listed. Now I just need to figure out how to set it up!
And that needs to be soon because I firmly believe that Mary had a fling with the neighbor’s bull… either that or she’s packing on the pounds and had an udder augmentation.
M’s palpated cows before but Mary’s a bit… lively… and M’s not confident that Mary would stand still for the procedure.
Anyway.
I’ve been making cheese again… just mozzarella this time. We’re all out and I really should be making it every day… but I can’t get my cheese making mojo going…
Sophie gets her casts off on Tuesday! Hooray!! The poor girl has been so depressed 
and on top of that she’s got a sore throat, a horrible cough AND ear infections. Unfortunately the cough and sore throat must’ve been catchy because now Xander is coming down with a horrible cough and has complained of his throat all morning.
Sigh.
Summer colds are totally wrong.
Luckily Beckett has remained healthy!! However I’m betting he’ll get sick just as the other two get better…. prolongs the fun agony.
Anyway… continuing on the farm front. We’ve started processing some of the chickens. We placed an order with Cornerstone Farm in NY for supplies (knives, tools, a plucker and a scalder) and are still waiting on the plucker and scalder. We’ve had a lot of hiccups with this order, but we’ve all been pleased with the items we’ve received so far. We’re all anxious about the plucker and scalder though. So far we’ve done 6 of the roosters. That leaves about 74 more to be done. Yeah… 74. So we would reallylike to have that scalder and plucker really soon. Like today would be nice. Seriously. And I still need to clean out the freezer… which would probably be a good thing to do today (note to self).
Anyway. So there’s lots going on here at the farm. My apologies to my friends that have called or emailed only to get no response. August is a tough month with very little reprieve in sight as the garden is starting to come in and there will hopefully be a lot of canning and “putting up” going on soon, as well as doing all the chickens and getting them in the freezer and making chicken stock (with feet!!) to put away as well. Not to mention getting things winterized.
So that’s it for now… Look for a chicken post soon!
-Maisie is doing excellently. She’s giving very close to 6 gallons of milk every day. Jim and I have taken to milking together to speed up the milking process. He milks one side and I milk the other. We had our first teat-tiff this morning because he kept squirting milk on my fingers. I only retaliated once and then Maisie voiced displeasure and we resumed normal sane behavior. I started milking with Jim after he said I should be more involved in the whole milk process… as if carrying 30+ lbs of milk all the way down from the cow barn twice a day, pouring it up, making butter (cheese, sour cream, buttermilk etc) wasn’t enough… apparantly I need to be more “hands on”. Hmph. Actually I don’t mind.
-Sophie had her first experience milking and did really well! See photos to the left in the Flickr thing. She was actually mad at me for not allowing her to do more… maybe next time!
-M’s birthday is Monday… everyone say HAPPY BIRTHDAY M!!!
-I made mozzarella cheese with fair success… better than the paneer that I scorched (eww…).
-I made a sour cream pound cake out of our own butter and sour cream (and eggs too). It is delicious!
-Zenzi is doing well although still has issues with sucking a bottle. She won’t take the bottle until you force the nipple in her mouth and then she sucks just fine.
-Desmond is growing by leaps and bounds! He’s still in his “awww he’s so cute” stage. I need to take more pics of him. He thinks I’m his mama… everytime he sees me he runs up to the fence and starts licking his lips!
-No new lambs yet. I was fairly certain that we would see some lambs this past week, but nothing. This week is looking good though!
-Zeke will be going in with the ladies in another week or so. He (and they) are very eager to get acquainted!
-We’ve put in an order for Poulet Rouge type poultry. Our chicks will be arriving sometime in/after May. We’re excited to experience these high quality birds. 20 will be replacement layers and the rest are for eating.
-We also have duck and turkey eggs in the hatchers right now. These will also be for eating.
-M, with the “help” of Dandy and possibly Jim, planted onions and I think strawberries in the garden. M has just started transplanting her seedlings… look for Flickr pics soon.
-Xander and Beckett are doing well. Xander still tries to reason his way out of mischief (I tease that he’s going to be a lawyer) but Beckett inevitably rats on him!
-Xander’s Southern accent has deepened considerably… Beckett still speaks in “3-year-old-ese” but is starting to drawl out a few words. It’s a bit alarming.
-Sophie has so much going on with her “issues” that I don’t even know where to begin. We now have an “advocate” at the peds office who is helping to point us in the right directions concerning therapy and the best courses of action. It is overwhelming to say the least.
-For those who knew that Sophie had genetics testing done- the results came back confirming that the only thing genetically wrong with Sophie is that Jim and I passed on our eccentric genes. Seriously. That’s what the geneticist said. Seriously. I’m not kidding. He said “you are eccentric, eccentric people tend to marry eccentric people and then have eccentric kids….” I really like the geneticist. He’s kinda out there too.
-The shearer is supposed to be coming sometime… but when? Who know!
-And that’s about it. I’m waiting on the cow guy to call me back but I need to be out working on the sheep barn. At least two of the children are at large on the property and Beckett is clingy… looks like it’s going to be a fun day 
Dessie’s First Steps
So obviously I didn’t post right away as I had planned. Turns out Dessie is what the cattle people call a “dummy” or “silly” calf, meaning he didn’t have a suck-reflex. We tried leaving him with Maisie but after we were sure that he was not eating we decided to step in to help him and to keep Maisie from developing any udder complications.
We moved him from the cow paddock to the back porch (hey, at least it wasn’t inside… we have a history) so that we could keep a close eye on him. I’ll tell you, moving 60lbs of unwilling calf isn’t easy. When I attempted to pick him up he went all limp and boneless so that it was impossible to keep a hold of him so we ended up piling him into the back of the Polaris and trucking him down to the house. Getting him onto the porch wasn’t so hard, but luckily Jim was here to do that.
Maisie, being used to a dairy setting, wasn’t particularly upset that we took wee Desmond, she looked for him briefly and then went back to munching her hay.
Anyway, it took several days of back-breaking work but by golly that calf will suck a bottle now. He’s quite the imp, cavorting all around his little calf pen, sucking on people’s pants when they turn their back unexpectedly. He still has his great big giant ears, but he’s the cutest thing. No horns too! Must come from his 1/4 Holstein… I’m thankful for that!
We named him for Sophie’s b&d doc…. partly because he’s Irish and we picked Maisie up on St. Patrick’s Day and partly because of … well, let’s just leave it at the Irish thing
Here’s a pic taken on Saturday by Julie:
Kaedence and Desmond
About a week ago I found an ad in the GA Market Bulletin* for Jersey cows. We called, only to find out that all the cows were gone, BUT the guy who ran the ad was an amateur cow dealer (not in the bad sense) and had lots of connections in the dairy industry and felt certain that he could find us a “Springer” Jersey (Springer is dairy lingo for about to calve). A couple days later he called back to say that he’d found a prime A quality Jersey that was due any day and were we interested. Of course we were and we made plans to immediately go pick her up.
Only turns out our cow man has a conscious. He wouldn’t let us come pick up the cow until he had observed her for a few days to make sure she was indeed the prime quality that he’d told us.
So Tuesday afternoon we loaded the Rover, hooked up the trailer and headed down to Elberton to meet our new cow. She was indeed the quality we had anticipated and seemed to have a winning personality as well. We were quite pleased with her and after a brief scuffle loading her up, we were bound for home. We had thought about several different Irish names (it being St. Pats and all) but in the end we settled on Maisie.
Here she is all loaded up and ready to go.
So we got her home and unloaded into her new paddock and settled in for the night, but not before noticing that she was licking her sides and showing some signs of early labor. Interesting…
Next post: Meet Dessie.
*Market Bulletins are a great way to find local livestock or plants. The GA bulletin is free to view, but the SC one requires you to buy a subscription (whopping $10/year) to view the most recent bulletin… past bulletins are free to view. I try to regularly read the bulletins as you never know what’ll pop up!
