Happily Independent...

I mean have a happy independence day! So yesterday I was reminded once again of the ONE thing on this farm I CAN NOT do alone. That's right only one thing. And that one thing has to be done every year. Which means all my self proclaimed independence flies out the window and I have to round up help. So far my help has been whoever I was dating at the time. he he. Break em in to the farming biz the right way. Maybe that's why they never come back. Hmmm... Anyways. Shearing the alpacas. That is the one task on this farm that I can't get done without help. Or atleast I just haven't figured out how yet. I'm sure one of these days I'll be doing something as far removed as shearing as possible and it'll hit me how to do it alone. Probably after they're already sheared so I'll forget before next year comes along.

I volunteered a friend and a guy I've been seeing to both come help out. Three bodies make quicker work of shearing than just two. I tend to do the brunt of the work considering I'm the only experienced person in the barn but with two extra helpers I don't end up hurting so much. Unfortunately the guy I was seeing stood me up (unfortunate for him I really hate flakyness [if you're going to back out of something, at the very least have the courtesy of calling and manning up to it] looks like I'm back at square one) so I only had one helper. Boy do I hurt this morning. Which does nothing more than remind me how much I hate flakyness. Yes I'm frustrated. :) Does it show?

To top off the frustration the local grocer was out of my favorite beer last night. Which means I better make a run to walmart before I get to working again today. Best thing about working hard is sitting down with a cold beer after I'm done. Well that's just my opinion. :)

We're going to tackle another alpaca today. Since I only had one helper and I'm reminded what a wuss I am cause after one I was too beat to do another, so we're going to try to get another done. The rest will have to wait for next weekend.

I'd post you some pictures but blogger is having fits today and isn't letting me. Maybe later it'll let me.

Almost there...

Well seems as if a full day of sleep and another day of doing nothing might have done me a lot of good. Now if only the sun would come out to encourage me to get outside and re-energize in the garden. A new coat of sun tan wouldn't be such a bad thing after all this rain. Wouldn't it be nice for summer to be here? It's only a few weeks away. Though ofcourse it'd be just my luck for the weather to heat up to 75 and all my lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and other cool plants would bolt. I know... optimism. The sun has been teasing me all morning through a thin grey layer of cloud. I don't see any dark clouds on the horizon so maybe, just maybe I'll get my sunshine. I already put my garden customers off for another week with the promise of a half dozen eggs and some fresh goat cheese.

Mr. eHarmony wrote. He seems to feel bad about shooting me down. Awww isn't that nice. Not. I said I wouldn't talk about that anymore. I think what is the most disappointing is that it is so nice to have someone to go out with on the occasional weekend. Ya know? I really don't have time to go looking for someone new. I really have no desire to either. It would be nice to just get familiar with one person. For once. Not have to relearn facts and figures, likes and dislikes, and everything else. I know I wasn't going to bring it up again. It's so hard to find good company. I mean sure the kids are great, the goats listen to every word I say and the dog is more than happy to put his paw on my knee and let me fill his ear as I scratch behind them. But it's not the same. Boy does that sound sappy or what? Yea, see I told you I was sick. It shows.

I really need to clean out the brooders and the barn and the chicken house and do the laundry and the dishes and mop the floor and I really really need to try not to work too hard. I need to go make sure my two peaches are still growing and my two cherries haven't been eaten and the kiwis still need to find a home in the ground somewhere. Oh and the garden needs weeded and... Yea you get the drift. Maybe I'll turn on that John Wayne I found yesterday. My head is starting spin at the thought of all my chores backed up.

You know how I know I'm still sick? The coffee. It doesn't taste good yet. My tastebuds are out of whack. It's not fair. Can you imagine a morning without coffee? I can't. Though I have now for three mornings. I'm surprised I'm not going through withdrawals. ha ha.

Ok enough rambling. One chore and then a nap. I'll ease my way back into responsibility.

Wish me luck!

shrek, mayonnaise and 30lbs of chicken...

That sums up my day. I'm a little depressed and on a pity me wagon so empathy or stop reading now. :) I'll try to hold back.

So my disastrous date Saturday was about as bad as I thought. Another one of those "I have a ton of respect for you but there's no spark." Boy have I heard that line before. Over and over and over again. Truth is I need a Shrek, someone so damn fugly that they forgive my fugliness. That's me holding back. I promise you won't hear anymore about it.

Today I made mayonnaise! Seriously. And it was really really good. I'm shocked at how easy it is to make and boy who knew that real mayonnaise was yellow? Well as yellow as the yolks you put in it. I think I might try it with the whites too next time. I read that it makes it lighter colored and thicker. I'm also going to find some different oil to experiment with. Turns out cheap olive oil needs more spices to cover up the cheap olive oil taste. And here I thought I was being classy by buying olive oil in the first place. That'll learn me!

Tomorrow I'm going to make a loaf of russian rye bread and some chicken salad with that mayonnaise.

Chicken. So I got back 30lbs of chicken today. Only $38 to process. Not too bad, though that's not counting all the feed they've eaten because I kept putting off butchering them. Not my fault. I'm a mom and a home maker and a healer of boo boo's, not an animal slaughterer. So there. :) Anyways. So tonight I stuck one of those big guys in the crock pot, well I tried, he didn't fit. So I found the biggest pot I had and stuffed him in it. He barely fit. The lid wouldn't shut till he was cook so thoroughly that his legs fell off. I know how's that for a mental image if you didn't know what I was talking about? Anyways. So in went the bird 3.85lbs of bird, a bottle of porter, a bottle of wheat and enough water to cover most of him. Along with some bay leaves, sage and other yummy chicken spices. Oh and a big ole stick of butter (no not goat butter, I haven't made that yet). He's been cooking slowly since about 3pm. We picked off what we could eat for dinner and the rest of him will cook down till I can separate the bones from the meat. The juices will be cooked down, the meat and herbs put into their proper homes and I'll have stock, chicken noodle soup and chicken salad. I really need a pressure canner. That's the next thing on my list. And more canning jars (the goats are using almost all of mine).

So overall today wasn't so bad. Mr. eHarmony was a flop but hey. What can you do? I can't afford a face lift so I guess I'm stuck looking for Shrek. I wonder if Shrek has a good career and goes to church. Hmm... I guess anything is possible. I did go from a housewife to a milkmaid/farmer. If that's possible anything is!

Oops. Sorry I wasn't spose to mention that again. I'm going to cross it out for you so you don't have to read it. I told you I was feeling sorry for myself. It doesn't happen too often but sometimes. It hurts. Rejection. I know, screw him, what does he know? Not much obviously. But still it's hard to get there without getting all jaded and thick skinned. I don't want to think everyone is a dillhole. I really don't. It's not his fault I'm buttugly. It's the pain. He was nice. Well maybe not so much. I'm way too easy to get too. Time to toughen up! Roar!

Anyways.

I think I'm going to have to put my garden customers off another week and I really don't like to have to do that. But it poured down rain almost all day. Just came down by the bucket full. Seriously. It's so freakin' depressing. All this rain and I'm going to need some of that chicken noodle soup because I'm going to be sick.

Anyways.

I sincerely hope the rest of you are having better luck at love and gardening than I am. Kiss your significant other, they're such a wonderful part of being human.

Good night!

All this rain is SOOOO depressing...

How do you get out of a slump when it's caused by the weather? The last two mornings I slept through my alarm. That's how down all this rain has got me. I started milking the goats twice a day this week which means with missing mornings it's once a day in the evening instead of twice a day. But what do you do? The volume on my alarm is at it's highest. I'm sure it's just all this weather that has me down (couldn't have been the disaster of a date I had Saturday night). I'm completely unmotivated. Even my Monday morning cleaning routine got skipped. Tuesday saw me doing laundry and dishes which I didn't do Monday. Sometimes I hate being the only adult in this house. That's depressing too. Do you see the theme here?

Farm chores do continue though. There was a gathering of hands in the barn last night for milking, which I am really thankful for.

My oldest saves me sometimes. She's such a blessing to have around. She's only 8 but she begs to help with milking every single day. I've let her try a few squirts in the past but today I handed over the goat to her. She made it about half way through before she handed her back. We only take half a gallon of milk up to the house every day so we milk that into quart jars and then milk the baby goats milk into the pail. The goat on the stand is Georgia, this is her first year milking and she gave us a single doe kid. She's very patient.

Another blurry shot. My aunt Nina came over. She's also someone who saves me. When I was growing up she was the only real parent I had and although she didn't really know what to do as a parent she made me go to church 3x's a week. I'm thankful for that. Anyways. So she came over to watch Elizabeth while Michelle and I caught the roosters. She came while we were milking and so I encouraged her to get in touch with her childhood. Her family had cows which when the electricity went out she got to help milk. Two old pros on the stand. The goat on the stand is Icy, she gave me the triplets and a gallon of milk every time I milk her. She's been very forgiving of my newness. She also has teats on her that cramp my hands every time I milk.

My garden is slowly growing. Slowly. No I don't have any pictures of it because I'd be too embarrassed to show them anyways. My chinese cabbage has bolted (I mentioned that before) and now has beautiful yellow flowers on it. It's a rather attractive plant and taste great too. I keep meaning to get out and plant corn and more lettuce but it's so wet and muddy I think the seeds would just get moldy. I'm half debating putting off my garden customers one more week because I can't imagine the weather being any different by Monday. I guess  it could be worse. It could be snowing or hailing or a tornado could take away my entire garden. Now that would be a good excuse to put off my garden customers. :)

Oh and the roosters. All but three are gone. 9 birds and I'm sure they were atleast 50lbs of poultry. I only picked up one crate from the butcher because the note said it'd hold about 10. Well they fit but it was a tight squeeze. When I took the crate back I took a look at some of the other crates full of birds and I am now pretty sure I should have grabbed two crates because all the other chickens were half the size of the roosters I took in. I guess that's what I get for keeping them for a year. I might try to fire up the bbq and grill chicken tonight. Or I could cook one whole in the oven, I don't think it'd fit in the crock pot. I'll have fresh chicken stock for cooking. Oh chicken salad. Now I'm hungry. I'm going to make a loaf of dill rye bread so I have something to put chicken salad on tomorrow for lunch. I should talk about food more often it just raised my spirits. :) Think I'll be sick of chicken by the end of summer? Maybe by the end of June. Ah June. May really didn't leave much room for anything. I hope June isn't the same.

Anyways. I need to find some vita B or something. Maybe a nap. I need some sunshine.

Anyways. Have a great week!

Even fate is a little disapointing...

Deep soul searching is in high need.

6:59am

Well that's still beginning of civil twilight. Ya know when the sky goes from black to grey. That mere shade of something other then night. When day first winks at you. It'll also be when my alarm goes off, but again I'll hit my snooze button atleast 3 times. Sunrise is at 7:30, so my goal is to have my jeans and boots on and first cup of coffee in my hand by then.

Wish me luck! ;)

7:02am

Yesterday I had a hard time sitting down and putting words together. As I stated earlier my youngest had an appointment with a back specialist to find out when she'd need to have surgery. It wasn't a question of if but when. It's a very sobering thing knowing that your 23 month old would have to have such an invasive surgery and spend the majority of the next 16yrs in and out of the hospital and in pain and not even old enough to understand why.

When they told us they wanted to give it 8 more months to see if it would get worse or stay the same I don't really know if it was relief or fear that I felt. Who wants to wait for something to get worse? While yes I'm happy that she doesn't have to have surgery yet, now I'm watching her like a hawk for changes or complications caused by her back issue. I need to get busy. Once the season starts 8 months will pass just like that.

I'm still setting my alarm clock for civil twilight. Now that sunrise is early enough to get the kid off to school I've debated on switching to it but I think I like the luxury of hitting the snooze button. So tomorrow it will go off at 7:02 but I'll hit the snooze button at least three times.

My kitchen. With yesterdays demand on my time and emotions I didn't even touch it other than to make dinner. The simplest meal a person could ever make and is still so good the kids go back for 2nd, 3rd and 4th if there is any left. It has two ingredients: pasta (any kind of noodle) and a can of sweetened condensed milk. Don't do anything to the condensed milk just pour it in a bowl and add the cooked noodles on top of it and fold both together. This is my 8yr olds' favorite dish. Occasionally if I'm feeling really hungry I'll add a cut up braut or two to the dish but it's marvelous without it. Next time your kids ask for Mac n Cheese, make this instead. You won't regret it. I promise.

So last night I was craving an adult conversation so I went into yahoo chat. I was rewarded greatly. I spent about 5hrs chatting in pm (private message) with someone. I'm still giving up on dating but it's sure nice to have someone to talk to. Especially since my good friend dumped me cause of my age. (I'm still broken hearted over that one)

One more cup of coffee then I need to clean my kitchen, do a load of laundry and put together some numbers for my CPA. Yep, my tax adventure turned into a confusing mess so I went in search of an old friend who is a CPA by profession. He's going to do all the ugly work for me so I can relax a bit and worry about more important things. And he's not going to charge me an arm n leg to do so. Nice guy. Now I need to learn how to keep records better to make his job easier. Ha!

Have a great day!

Kitchen...

As I've said before my kitchen is spotless (for 30 minutes twice a week). Yesterday I got it so shinny I damn near needed sun glasses to go in there. Damn near. Right away the bread maker started calling my name. Ya see I cheat with my bread, I let the bread maker mix my dough and raise it before I take it out and form it into whatever it's going to be before baking it. Ok so I only half cheat. Anyways.

So the bread maker is calling my name and the elk steak my (use to be and I'll miss him greatly because he was awesome [that's another story I'll tell you when I'm not so broken hearted]) good friend gave me that's been in the freezer waiting for something special to happen to take them out was calling my name too. I love elk, I think it's my favorite even more so then beef. True I have to take a little more care with cooking it so it doesn't dry out but it has such a "connected to the earth" flavor to it that cow just can't duplicate, not even that grass fed cow. Sorry Mr. Bovine but you're my 2nd favorite meat (er um maybe 3rd, I really love my home grown chicken). Anyways.

So my bread maker and elk steaks are calling my name. I remind myself that I just cleaned my kitchen and if I don't hold off there will never be proof of it clean until next time (unless I take a picture, hmm... I should have thought about that while it was clean. Damn.) Then I remind myself it's pizza night (Monday night has become pizza night because I like someone else doing the cooking at least once a week and since I'm single [sigh] there is no one else here so I let Digiorno to do the cooking Monday night.) So my spirits are lifted, maybe my kitchen will stay clean until Tuesday morning (a whole 20hrs or so). How exciting would that be?

Yet the bread maker and elk steaks are calling my name and now that I remember it's pizza night I know my oldest is going to be expecting pizza so I'm feeling slightly obligated to let Digiorno do my cooking tonight. At the same time I can't seem to explain that to the bread maker, its saying 'but I'm so much more fun than ripping open a box and shoving a frozen pizza in the oven'. I can't hardly argue with that, but my 8yr old is still going to be expecting pizza, then the light bulb comes on (the one over the kitchen sink because it gets too hot and goes out then when it cools off again it comes back on). I could make pizza, Digiorno will be a little disappointed that I'm not inviting him over tonight but maybe he'd understand. Heck he's the longest relationship I've had since my divorce (I'll make it up to him next week).

So it's settled, I add all the necessary ingredients to the bread maker and set it for dough. Happy with my ability to compromise I go to find my elk steaks then ponder if pizza is really a worthy cause for elk steaks. A couple of brauts catch my attention and I compromise again. I toss the brauts on the counter to thaw out and I smile at my spotless kitchen promising I won't wait till Wednesday to clean it up.

The pizza turned out great! The kitchen is a wreck once more and this morning I'm suffering from regret, kind of like what happens when you drink just a little more then you intended to the night before and your head hurts and you keep the lights off cause they scream at you every time you turn them on. Yet you have no one to blame but yourself and you know it, but, but... you had a good excuse for drinking so much cause you were broken hearted because that sob broke your heart. Of course that doesn't cure your hang over, but you feel a little bit better and remind yourself never to do it again.

[Sigh] I should clean my kitchen... maybe tomorrow.

Gardening...

We've all heard of square foot gardening. I'm taking gardening to a new level (pun intended) well actually three levels.

My little farm is hardly mentionable as a farm because I only have 2.18 acres. Usually when someone thinks of a farm they're thinking a little more footage than 2 acres. So I've been a little restricted on what I could do with my little farm. I've also been poring over the books on small acreage farming, alternative farming, etc. This is the primary reason why alpacas work so well here, they require such a small amount of space. This also why I'm limiting the number of Garden Share customers to such a small number.

With a little intensive, succession and companion gardening I can squeeze about 40 customers out of one acre. That's not a bad number considering I'm just one person and do the majority of the work myself; an acre of garden will keep me pretty busy 9 months of the year.

Now to explain 3 layer gardening. Picture this: a 4x10 bed of lettuce, radishes, beets, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, onions and broccoli. Above this is a low sided raised bed on wheels, the bottom of the raised bed would be about 18" off the ground leaving room for the bottom crops to grow as well as providing shade and cool below it (the wagon is about 4x5 and the wheels allows for it to be rolled off the growing bed below to gain access). Inside this wagon will be planted tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, artichokes, zucchini, and any other slightly tall bushy plant.

Above each garden bed would be a wooden frame about 9ft off the ground, from this would be a hanging basket type planters or even a window box type container. In these boxes would be planted trailing crops such as cucumbers, peas, pole beans, melons, lufas, peanuts, etc., anything that grows on a vine that could trail over the side of the container.

So here you have a 4x10 garden bed with low growing crops, a 4x5 wheeled middle layer with bushy crops providing shade for the bottom crops, and a 2x10 box along the length of the bed up on a frame cascading with trailing crops. Can you picture that?

That 40sqft of garden just turned into 80sqft of garden all within easy reach for picking.

So yea, you can see I'm a little eccentric because this is what I lay awake thinking about at night and takes up most of my brain space during the day. Is that sad a 30yr old single mom trying to optimize my little 2 acre piece of earth? Too bad I couldn't grow livestock in layers. Hmm... maybe I could rabbits, chickens, piglets, oh my!

Back to house chores. My kitchen is begging for attention. My kitchen is spotless for about 30 minutes twice a week. I haven't figured out how to keep it spotless for longer than that. Twice a week I clean it top to bottom but then when it's clean I start making bread, marinating meat for dinner, and all the other fun stuff a kitchen is made for. Ya know what I mean? I guess maybe I should just clean it more often. Hmm... what a concept!

I'll see what I can do about pictures of what my brain has been pondering about. I feel a book coming on. Woo hoo the newest craze in gardening.

7:06am...

This week ended with a dud. I'm still sick though I've changed a few of my habits and it does seem to be helping. I deleted my dating profile. I really don't have the energy for that kind of thing. It seems to drain everything good in me out. Who'd thunk it?

I set my alarm for in the morning. Civil twilight begins at 7:06 tomorrow though sunrise isn't until 7:38 so you can bet I'll probably hit the snooze button atleast twice. Like usual.

Another day. Another week. This week is going to be stressful. The baby's physical therapist will be here tomorrow afternoon, then Wednesday she gets to go see her new doc (back surgery detail). Oh the fun!

I think I'm going to get a pool table. I like the idea of becoming a social hermit. I know just the other day I was saying how important being social was to a person's character. Well ya know what? I'll just be social right here. Ha! So yea, I'm going to get a pool table. 9 times out of 10 when I go out that's what I wind up doing anyways. Playing pool and drinking a porter. Doing that at home will save me loads of mola.

Wish me luck! (on the kid and the pool table) I'm going to need it!