Dixie the Donkey

Since our guard dogs, Tim and Shy, have decided they don't want to guard the sheep, Dan was determined to find another solution.  After doing some research, he decided on a donkey.  Yup, you heard me... a donkey.  Apparently, from what research told him, donkeys are natural protectors of other animals.  Not just any donkey though... it has to be a 'standard' donkey, female and ideally young.  Thus our quest to find a donkey began.

If a few months ago you would have told me you could find donkeys on Craigslist, I would have bet you a large sum of money that you were wrong.  Turns out I would have lost that bet.  Dan actually found several listed.  One of them was A) close to us, B) a 'standard' donkey, C) female, D) young - 1 year old and E) cheap to boot!  Dan called the seller and made arrangements to go look at her.  Prior to the meeting he read up about donkey care so he could determine if she was healthy or not.  After his inspection, it appeared she was in good health and pretty well cared for, but the seller admitted his wife wanted nothing to do with the donkey, so her grooming was not maintained.  We know the seller didn't abuse her because she would go right up to him.  However, she was mistreated in that her hair was a matted mess.  Here's a picture of Dixie right after we got her home...




























To be entirely fair, donkeys hair doesn't shed well during their first summer.  Subsequent years, she'll shed her hair more naturally and won't require as much brushing.  However, it appears the previous owners hadn't made any attempt to groom her.

We've had Dixie for almost 2 months now and learned that she is a great guard donkey.  I was totally amazed to see that her instinct to guard the sheep was immediate and natural.  She somehow just knew what to do.  If the sheep start wandering farther than she'd like she'll either follow them, or corral them to keep them where they are.  We've also learned that Dixie is a big 'ole sweety!  When we enter the pasture she'll come right up and start nuzzling her nose into you.  If you start scratching her, she'll be your friend for life.  Sometimes when I'm done scratching her and try to leave, she walks in front of me blocking the path to exit the pasture.  The harder I try to get around her, the more determined she is to keep me there.

After we got her home, Dan immediately started brushing her hair and working out the matted clumps.  She doesn't loved to be brushed, but she'll tolerate it, except on her belly. Here's how Dixie looks now after her grooming sessions...



I'm told donkeys can live upwards of 40 years.  I think we're going to have lots of fun having Dixie around.  Maybe one of these days, when Samuel and his little sister are bigger, we can teach them how to ride on Dixie.  In case I didn't mention it, she's a BIG 'OLE SWEETY, so I'm sure she won't mind.

New website

Due to customer response, we've recently created a website for our farm.  You'll be able to find information about us, our farm and what's important to us.  We'll be updating it regularly to improve it, so feel free to share any feedback you have regarding the website... the layout, information you'd like to see, etc. 

Hope you enjoy!   

www.mesabifarm.com

Birthday boy

Samuel turned one on September 10th.  Hard to believe it's been a year already!  Since he really has no idea what's going on, we didn't have a big party for him.  We put up a few decorations, made a cake and wrapped a few presents, mostly for the sake of taking pictures.

Samuel seemed to be a little confused by the festivities, but enjoyed his cake- a gooey butter cake - especially since it was his first piece of cake and has had few other sweets.  Although, he didn't seem to like it anymore than his daily veggies, so we'll stick to our rare-sweets policy.




Since he obviously didn't know what to do, Mama helped him blow his candle out...

 

After cake it was time for presents.  First were blocks to learn shapes...

Then he got a onesie to match our John Deere Gator.  His first farm apparel...




And his final present was a barn activity play set.  It has a sheep, cow and horse to play with in the barn.  It also has various doors that open to make animal noises and plays Old MacDonalds Farm. 

All in all, he seemed to enjoy his day as he began life as a toddler! 

Cattle drive

In a previous post I mentioned a neighbor's bull kept coming over to our property.  He wasn't really hurting anything, but it was just a matter of time until that changed and he started plowing through things he shouldn't.  So every day or so, Dan would have to go out and try to get the bull back over.  In the old'n'days a farmer would drive cattle on horse back.  Now'a'days, we use mechanical means...

Our neighbor decided he didn't need a troublesome bull, so he opted to take him to market.  He and Dan loaded the bull up on a Sunday afternoon and off to auction he went.  So, no more wrangling bulls with 4x4's for us.  At least until the next cow or bull decides the grass is greener on the other side.

Samuel's 1st birthday

Samuel turned one on September 10th.  Hard to believe it's been a year already!  Since he really has no idea what's going on, we didn't have a big party for him.  We put up a few decorations, made a cake and wrapped a few presents, mostly for the sake of taking pictures.

Samuel seemed to be a little confused by the festivities, but enjoyed his cake- a gooey butter cake - especially since it was his first piece of cake and has had few other sweets.  Although, he didn't seem to like it anymore than his daily veggies, so we'll stick to our rare-sweets policy.

Homemade Coffee Creamer

During summer, I like nothing more than a nice, cold iced coffee.  I make a huge batch of coffee concentrate and keep it in the fridge to keep me in good supply.

However, I love fall.  And with the weather turning cool, it's time to switch back to hot coffee.  I love drinking it, smelling it and curling up on the couch with a mug to keep my hands warm.  But I'm not a true coffee connoisseur, I suppose, because I like flavored coffee.  Vanilla, almond, cinnamon... they're all good in my book.  On the supermarket shelves, you can find liquid coffee creamer in just about every imaginable flavor, but they're expensive and if you look at the ingredients, it's kind of scary.  It contains mostly things I can't pronounce and if I can't pronounce it, I probably shouldn't be ingesting it. Dan calls it "chemical creamer", which is probably more fitting.  So, what's a girl to do?  Make it from scratch, of course!

Here is a super easy recipe to make thick, creamy coffee creamer from scratch in whatever flavor tickles your fancy.

Base Recipe for Liquid Coffee Creamer

14 oz. Sweetened Condensed Milk (fat free works too!)

14 oz. Milk (whatever you have on hand)

Stir well to combine

After you make the base, add your flavorings and stir again.  Below are a few different options...

Vanilla

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

 

Almond

2 teaspoons almond extract

 Chocolate Almond

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1 teaspoon almond extract

 Cappuccino

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Strudel

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

Chocolate Raspberry

2 teaspoons cocoa powder

2 tablespoons raspberry syrup

Just wander through the extracts and flavored syrups in the baking aisle and you'll be able to come up with your own combinations!

ENJOY!

Farm Tour

At the end of August our county has an event called the Homegrown Farm Tour. Within about 20 minutes of us, there are several farms. Some small like us, others are large 2500 acre spreads. The Homegrown Farm tour puts an emphasis on eating locally and natural, healthy foods. The event is held over the weekend and is a self-guided tour of nine farms. You're given a map and just roam from farm to farm. Here's some of the things we saw on our tour...

Llama's...

Goats...

And Bison...

Dan and Samuel looked at a restored log cabin at one of the farms....

At the bison farm, we browsed through the gift shop.  We found a cute bison horn hat that stayed on Samuel's head only long enough for this picture...

After the farm tours ended, the committee hosting the event held a Field Dinner.  To follow the 'homegrown' theme, dinner highlighted seasonal veggies, meats from local farms and wines from the vineyard where the dinner was held.  In addition to bison and lamb from local farms, Dan and I had the privilege of donating ham for the dinner.  Each of the farms that donated meat were asked to say a few words about their farm, how the animals are raised, etc.  After eating more food than should be allowed, we had quite a few people come up to us letting us know it was either their favorite dish of the night or it was the best pork they've ever had!  We left the dinner having made some new friends, a small business arrangement with the vineyard and an invitation to be on the Homegrown Tour next year.  All in all, it was a good day for our little farm!

Random cuteness

Play time with Daddy...

Morning play time - sporting some snazzy slippers....

Pups

We have two Great Pyrenees guard dogs, still just pups though, to protect the sheep and our property.  They tend to sleep during the day, or so we expect, but come up to the house at night to stand guard.  Since we got them, we've yet to hear or see coyotes or stray dogs, so they seem to earn their keep.

 

Our neighbor has about 100 head of cattle and the dogs, Shy and Tim, seem to really like hanging out with the cows.  We'd prefer it if they would hang out with our sheep, seeing as that's why we got them, but at least they're protecting something.  Every once in a while one of the neighbors bull sneaks onto our property and the pups are always right there with him.  I think they're actually friends.  We try not to make too good of friends with them.  Guard dogs will pick a "focus" to protect and you don't want them to pick you - otherwise they won't protect the property and other animals.  They'll come up to us to get treats and their food, but are constantly aware and somewhat aloof around us.  It's a shame too, because when they're laying around, I just want to go up to them and start scratching their bellies and ears.





Not that they'd let me though.  Oh, I've gotten a couple of scratches in on Shy (pic above), but Tim is a different story.  He's beyond cautious.  Maybe they'll make good guard dogs after all.

Crazy hair do's

About a month ago, Samuel started this weird habit of crawling into the corner of his crib when he sleeps.  Almost like he's shielding his eyes from light or trying to use the bumper as a pillow.  When he wakes up from his naps now, he often has some crazy hair! 

This particular day, he must have really had his head smashed into the corner because he also had a diamond patterned imprint from the bumper on his forehead!

The silly grin is 'typical Samuel'. He is the happiest kid I've ever seen when he wakes up from his naps - almost slap happy.  The only time this isn't the case is if we have to wake him up, which fortunately, isn't very often.

Another baby chick

Blackie, our mother-hen, hatched another baby after having sat on a batch of eggs for about two weeks.  Here are mama and baby soaking up some sun.

Mama and her babies

Dan's been taking more and more of the outside pictures and he happened to get a few of me.  Dan was on his way back up to the house from taking some pictures and he caught Samuel and I watching him from the family room window...



 

And although you can't "see" the baby in this picture, she's there.  Here, I'm 22 weeks pregnant with Samuel's little sister...

Happy sheep

The sheep have full run of the property now.  Dan used to enclose them in a large area via electric fencing to protect them.  He was especially afraid of stray dogs and coyotes while the lambs were small.  The electric fencing provided a jolt if any creatures tried to get in to bother the sheep. 

The lamb are almost as big as their mama's now though, so Dan thought it was time to let them roam more freely in one of the enclosed pastures, which is about 10 acres, at the far back of the property.  The only downfall to the new location is that we couldn't see them from the house.  They were there for a week or so, then one day we saw them up at the fence line behind the house.  Oh no!  I'm not exactly sure how, but they escaped.  The fence isn't down anywhere, so we can only guess that they got under it somehow.  Sheep aren't particularly smart, but they are apparently wily.  Just look at the picture below... doesn't this lamb look like he's devising some clever trick to deceive us?

Dan was going to line the perimeter of the enclosed pasture with electric fencing as a safeguard, but the ground is so hard he can't get the stakes in.  So, we've letting them roam free.  It's been about a month now and no harm yet.  They seem to be very happy running free.  They love running up to us when we enter the pasture.  They even like to play peek-a-boo behind trees...

And the ewe's like to show off their pretty eyelashes...

 But most of all, just like us, they like to hang out and be together...

Cruising

Samuel's officially a "cruiser".  He jets around the house holding onto furniture, walls and anything to help himself get around.  Unfortunately, he doesn't understand that some items move or are too light to help him - like empty boxes and rolling office chairs.  He's had two face plants so far, one resulting in a bloody mouth.  He seems to get over his woes pretty quickly though and gets back to cruising.

I place toys in the middle of the floor to entice him.  I figure one of these days, he'll want the toy badly enough that he'll let go to get to it.  So far this hasn't worked, but it shouldn't be too long!

Summer Vacation - Day 5 - Final Day

The whole reason we vacationed to Virginia was to attend Polyface Farm's Farm Field Day.  It's a day long event they do once every 3 years. The day consists of guided tours, topical discussions, and vendors to see hands-on how a pasture-based, organic farm operates.  Their mission is to leave the land in better condition year after year and feed people clean, healthy food in the process.

Although the day's activities didn't officially start until 8am, we arrived at 6am to watch morning chores and have free time to roam around before the set schedule started.  Since we're most interested in poultry, we headed out to the fields to get a close look at their chicken tractors, feed and water setup.

The chicken tractors and watering system are nearly identical to ours, but each morning Dan drags and I push our tractors.  Polyface has this cool, custom-made dolly that goes under one end so one person can pull from the other side.  We need to get out hands on plans to make a few of these!

Next we moved onto the butchering area.  They have a really nice covered area to work and a good equipment layout.  Dan and Samuel are checking it out...

At 8am, a whole-farm tour started.  Our first stop was at the FeatherNet - a portable hen house on skids that can be moved from paddock to paddock.

Then we saw their combined broiler and turkey tractors...




Not pictured on the whole-farm tour were also cows and pigs.  They had several discussion topics throughout the morning that we attended:

Interns, Apprentices, and Young Farmer Germination
Hay Shed, Deep Bedding and Pigaerator Composting... (and boy, do they have a lot of hay!)




Then they had quite the spread for lunch.  Grilled Polyface meats - chicken, pork and beef, tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches and chocolate cake.

After lunch we had more discussions:
Metropolitan Buying Clubs and Online Software
Chick Brooding...

We had about an hour before our final discussion. We wandered around the main hub of the farm trying to see everything we hadn't gotten to yet.  Some of the vendors that we purchase supplies from were there, so it was nice to meet and chat with them in person.

Our last topic was a Q & A session with farm owner, Joel Salatin.  It was an open forum where you could ask anything you wanted.  A lot of great questions were asked and Joel always has an interesting answer.  Usually a very long answer, but a good one.



Samuel started wearing down a little after 5pm, so he and I headed back to the car so Dan could finish the Q & A session.  At 6pm, we departed Polyface and started heading Missouri-bound.  We stopped around 10:30 for a good night sleep.  We woke up bright and early and continued our drive home, finally arriving around 5pm.  Fortunately, we had the good sense to take the following day off work too, so we could lounge around the house and recuperate!


THE END!

Bread

After about 13 years of service, our trusty bread machine died on us. One day it made perfect loaves, the next they started exploding and then imploding. It wasn't pretty...

This might not be as dire of a situation for some as it is in our house. Except for some herb focaccia buns I buy at Costco, we don't buy bread. We make all of the bread we eat, so this was not good! My inclination was to hop on Amazon, find a new machine and have it overnighted. But, since my mother-in-law was diagnosed with Celiac's disease years ago, the only thing she's been able to do with her bread machine is make yeast door stops. So, she graciously gave it to us. Unfortunately, they weren't due to visit us for a month and a half. I could have made bread the old fashioned way, but instead I chose to support the cute little old lady that brings baked goods to our Farmers Market.

We had a good visit with the family, and the day after they left we fired up the new bread machine. Dan made the first loaf - whole wheat bread. It turned out beautiful...it neither exploded nor imploded. We let it cool for a bit then tried to slide it out of pan. It wasn't budging. We tried pulling. Nothing. We tried loosening the crust from the sides. Nothing. I stepped away and then Dan announced he got the bread out.



I'm not sure if you call this male or Yankee ingenuity, or both. It wasn't pretty and we weren't eating any sandwiches on it, but it sure was tasty!

Next was my turn. I had some very ripe bananas so I decided to try banana bread. One cool thing about this machine is that it has a 2 inch extension that can attach to the pan to make extra large loaves. I figure if I'm going to take the time to bake bread, I might as well throw a little more in and get a bigger loaf. I dumped everything in and 4 hours later I heard the wonderful beep indicating my bread was done. I opened the top slowly, still having residual fears of exploded bread, and not only was it beautiful, it was large. When the recipe stated 'extra large' they weren't kidding!



Here is my "It's bigger than my head" pose. And best of all, it slid right out! I can't help but crack up every time I look at this bread. It reminds me of those tall chef hats. Who knew bread machines could be comical too?

Summer Vacation - Day 4

We spent most of day four of our vacation at Thomas Jefferson's home - Monticello in Charleston, VA.  Its set back down a two lane road on top of a large hill.  We learned that he spent years leveling the top of the hill for his home and spent decades building the house, revising plans three times until he got it just right. 

We arrived around lunch time, so we stopped just before Monticello on that same two lane road at Miche's Tavern.




It was a country style buffet.  You went through the buffet line to get whatever you wanted, then grabbed a seat.  Then you had a waitress to get seconds, refills, dessert, etc.  The inside of the restaurant was nearly all original and had a really neat atmosphere.

 After lunch we continued on another 5 minutes to Monticello.  When you pull in, you're greeted by a large building that consists of a theater, museum, gift shop and cafe.  We made our way to the ticket counter and got our tickets for the house tour.  We had about an hour and a half to kill prior to our tour, so we watched the 'Jefferson's Monticello' movie, perused the gift shop and museum.  We hopped on the shuttle that took us down a winding road to the house.

But, we still had time to kill, so we looked around the grounds first.  There were outbuildings, a gift shop, Jefferson's grave, gardens, etc.  We started at the gardens.




You can tell why Jefferson picked this spot - it's absolutely gorgeous!  And since he excavated and flattened the top of the hill, it has views like this all the way around the house.  Originally, there were small sleeping quarters and shops along the garden, but they were built out of wood and have completely deteriorated.  Only plaques remain to tell us what was there.

 I love this picture of Samuel.  I have no idea what he was doing or thinking, but he wasn't nearly as bored as he looks in this picture.  He had a good time the whole day.  It was really hot this day, about 95, so we all took a break at the gift shop to get a drink.

 Time for the house tour!  Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures inside the house, so you'll have to venture there one day to see it.  Jefferson definitely had a creative mind.  He had unique features and ideas throughout the whole house - some were very grand and others were very modest.  He was very conscious of space and made sure the house was as efficient as it could be.

 It might be hard to see, but see the white railing and small brick buildings on either side of the lawn?  They attach to the house.  Above ground, it's a large deck that leads to those buildings.  But what's unique is under.  It's a basement area with many small rooms all the way around the house - much bigger than the footprint of the house itself.  Jefferson put anything that generated heat (kitchen and smoke house) in the basement to keep the heat out of the house, anything that needed to stay cool (wine) or just otherwise wasn't fitting to have in the main house (privy's for slaves and staff).  He also had a dumbwaiter that went from the basement to the dining room to get food, wine, etc to the house.



 Monticello was unique because it had 6 privy's - 3 of which were indoors.  One in the house and two in the basement area.  This was unheard of in Jefferson's time because indoor facilities were not considered a necessity.  If you look at the bottom left of the sign above, you can see the house in the middle and the basement 'tunnels' that extend out from the house.

This concluded our tour of Monticello.  Our hotel was about an hour away, so we headed back and found a local restaurant for dinner.  We had to get a good night sleep for our long day at the farm that followed!

Swimming Pool - Final step

 The firetruck is here, the firetruck is here!




We already had about 800 gallons in the pool to test it for leaks, make sure it was level, smooth the lining, etc.  This is a 2000 gallon tanker truck.  We'll need 3 tanker loads to fill the pool!

They hooked up the fire hose and blasted it into the pool.  It took less than 10 minutes to empty the truck.




 As you can see in the background, we didn't even have the equipment boxes out of the way before Dan and Brian were in the pool.  It was pretty darn chilly, but they did have a purpose for getting in. 



We opted for a salt water filtration system.  Using this method makes pool maintenance much easier because there are no chemicals to mess with.  The salt naturally keeps the water clean and clear - just like the ocean and our tears.  It's at a super low level, so unless you take a big gulp, you'll never know it's there.  They dumped 150 pounds of salt into the pool and got in to mix the salt into the water.  Now we just need to tidy up around the pool area and we'll call this project finished!