Ten Mile Farm

Our livestock guardian dog Samson is a Great Pyrenees, and our foster dogs are also Great Pyrenees, so we’re learning more about sensitive skin and allergies than we ever wanted to know.  Sometimes, the problem can be treated successfully with antibiotics (such as cephalexin for bacterial skin infections).  Other times, the problem might be contact allergies, and still other times, the problem might be dietary allergies.  Pyrs seem to have a tendency to be allergic to wheat and other grains, so we usually buy grain-free feed to help lower the chance any of our babies will be too itchy.  But we’ve dealt with all of these different skin sensitivities in the past year.

Each time one of our Pyrs presents symptoms, I start googling for images. It’s really helpful to see photos of different ailments to help me narrow down the likely cause of the problem before rushing to the vet. Recently, I found a slide show on WebMD that includes a LOT of photos of common problems and a short description of each. This was really useful for me, so I thought it was worth sharing.

Click here to visit WebMD and view the whole slide show.

Yesterday I gave you my recipe for liquid laundry detergent.  If you missed that post, you can find it here.

This recipe uses only four ingredients:

Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
20 Mule Team Borax Laundry Booster
Sun Oxygen Cleaner
Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap

When I first started looking for the ingredients, my local Walmart carried only the Borax.  I found Fels-Naptha laundry soap at Ace Hardware, and I found Sun Oxygen Cleaner at Big Lots.  I couldn’t find Washing Soda locally, so I ordered it through the Ace Hardware website. Then wouldn’t you know it – by the time my order arrived at my local Ace Hardware store, it ALSO turned up on the shelf of my local Walmart, for a lower price.

Computer geek that I am, I put together a spreadsheet to calculate the comparative cost of doing laundry with MY detergent vs. Tide, which was my brand of choice for many years. Here’s the breakdown:

Cost to Purchase Ingredients:

Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda – $3.24 for a 55 oz box
20 Mule Team Borax Laundry Booster – $3.38 for a 76 oz box
Sun Oxygen Cleaner – $1.96 for a 30 oz tub
Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap – $0.97 for a single bar

Total Cost: $9.55

Since all of these ingredients are NOW available at my local Walmart, I used their prices, recorded on January 16, 2012.

BUT, keep in mind, $9.55 is the cost to purchase the ingredients. You don’t use ALL of any ingredient other than the Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap, which is a bar soap.  You could make two more batches of my laundry detergent and the only thing you would need to buy is another bar of Fels-Naptha for each batch. And even THEN you would still have LOTS of Washing Soda and Borax left over, plus a little Sun Oxygen Cleaner. Any of these products can be used as a laundry booster OR can be saved for other DIY products. In a future post, I’ll share my recipe for a powdered dishwasher detergent that also uses Borax and Washing Soda.

Back to the math. First let me just say, that even if you count the full purchase price of all ingredients as the price for making my laundry detergent, you would STILL be saving a lot of money in comparison to Tide or other big name brands.  Using the full $9.55 cost to buy those ingredients as the basis for my calculation, my detergent costs $0.03 per load if you use a top-load washer, half that if you use a front-load/HE washer.

But I’m a purist, so of course my spreadsheet breaks down the cost per ounce times the number of ounces used, to arrive at an actual cost of $2.32 worth of ingredients to make 10 gallons of laundry detergent. That works out to $0.0075 per load – that’s less than one penny to do a load of laundry.

Compare that to Tide. Depending on which size you buy and how much it costs at your local store, you’ll spend anywhere from $0.19 per load to $0.24 per load. I based that comparison on the cost of Tide at my local Walmart on January 16, 2012 ($7.54 for a 50 oz bottle labeled for 32 loads and $11.97 for a 100 oz bottle labeled for 64 loads).

Since I tend to be very detail-oriented, I took my calculations a step further. I filled an empty Tide bottle with my detergent, and the cost for that bottle, which will wash 32 loads of laundry, was less than a quarter – $0.23 for the whole bottle full. So think about that – for the price of one load of laundry washed in Tide, you can wash 32 loads with my detergent. A bottle of Tide with a label saying it will wash 32 loads was $7.54 at my local Walmart on the day I checked the price of all ingredients. $7.54 for Tide vs. $0.23 for my detergent to do the same amount of laundry. If you’re like me and would rather spend the $7.31 price difference on something else, then you’ll want to print my recipe and give it a try.

If you try my recipe, please come back and comment, or visit our Facebook page and let us know what you think.

You can probably buy all the ingredients at your local Walmart. Just look in the aisle with laundry detergent. At my store, these ingredients are not mixed in with the detergents, but are low on the shelf, near the laundry additives like OxiClean.  You can also find some or all of these ingredients at Ace Hardware and Big Lots.  Just in case you live in the middle of nowhere and don’t have easy access to any of these stores, I’ll place ads below so you can order from Amazon.  But you’ll pay a lot more that way (and I’ll make a few pennies in commission from Amazon).

In the interest of being thorough, I created another spreadsheet to compare the cost of making my detergent with ingredients purchased from Amazon.  If you buy the ingredients from Amazon (not from one of their re-sellers), you’ll pay $35.54 for all four items, and shipping will be free (based on prices recorded February 6, 2012).  I didn’t find Sun Oxygen Cleaner on Amazon.com, so I substituted Oxi-Clean for comparison purposes.

The cost through Amazon is almost $26 more than the cost of the ingredients at my local Walmart. But if this is your only option, you’ll still save money.  My new spreadsheet shows that the cost to make 10 gallons of my liquid laundry detergent with ingredients purchased on Amazon.com works out to less than three cents per load of laundry.   Maybe you can buy Tide at your local store; if so, I’m betting that you’ll pay at least as much as the price at my local Walmart, and as I calculated, that means a cost of $0.19 to $0.24 per load. But if you really are in the middle of nowhere and have to buy Tide through Amazon.com, the savings with my recipe are even better.  On February 6, I found a batch of four 100 oz bottles of Tide for a price of $67.92 with free shipping; that works out to $0.33 per load of laundry. On the same date, a single 50 oz bottle of Tide was listed at $9.40 plus $4.99 shipping; that works out to $0.45 per load.

Chances are extremely good that no matter where you purchase the ingredients to make your own laundry detergent, you’re going to save money over the cost of buying a name brand. Chances are also extremely good that you’re going to be completely satisfied with the results you see in your laundry.

Now, how are you going to spend all the money you’re about to save?  

Last year one of my friends posted a link on her Facebook page to a recipe for laundry detergent. It sounded like a good way to save some money and also use a product that would be less toxic to the environment. I figured where there’s ONE recipe, there are probably MORE, so I did some googling and found a LOT of mommy blogs with laundry detergent recipes. On further review, it turned out that there were really only a few different recipes – some for powdered soap and others for liquid soap – but the same recipes were repeated over and again. Most of them had at least three ingredients in common, with some slight variation in the amount used of each item.  I created my own variation on this theme, using four environmentally-friendly ingredients:

Borax – Washing Soda – Oxygen Cleaner – and a Bar of Laundry Soap

Of these items, Borax, Washing Soda, and Oxygen Cleaner are all natural products.  Borax is sodium borate, orginally found in dry lake beds. Washing Soda is sodium carbonate, which is commonly known as soda ash and can be extracted from the ashes of many plants.  Oxygen Cleaner consists of sodium carbonate (washing soda) and sodium percarbonate, which is basically a powdered form of hydrogen peroxide (a combination of water and hydrogen).  The remaining item – a bar of laundry soap – contains the kind of natural ingredients typically found in a bar of soap, plus a few items to enhance its fragrance, hardness, and sudsing, but those items are in such small quantities, that I personally don’t mind them.  Keep in mind, we’re on a septic system, so everything that goes down the drain here ultimately ends up back in the ground – OUR ground.  So I really like the idea of no longer needing to use chlorine bleach or  harsh detergent to get my laundry clean and fresh.

I found all the ingredients at my local Walmart store and made my first batch of liquid laundry detergent last summer.  My husband and I have been using this detergent for MONTHS now, and we are VERY content with the performance. We rarely use any other additives or pre-treatment now (such as Spray ‘N Wash), and STILL this detergent gets our clothes clean.  It also makes the sheets and towels smell fresh and feel soft.  I have given bottles of my detergent to many members of my family, friends, and neighbors.  My mother and her sister are both in their 70s and so have a LOT of experience doing laundry with a wide array of products over more than 60 years, and they think my detergent is just about the greatest stuff EVER!  They appreciate the great value, and are very happy to no longer need Spray ‘N Wash or other similar products.  One of my neighbors told me that my detergent got her sweat-stained gardening clothes so clean she could wear them in public again.

Not surprisingly, several folks have asked me to share my recipe so they can make their own detergent.  I’m happy to do so.  If you try my recipe, please come back and comment, or visit our Facebook page and let us know what you think.

Ten Mile Farm’s Eco-Clean Liquid Laundry Detergent

4 Cups Hot Tap Water
1 Bar Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap
1 Cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
1 Cup Borax Laundry Booster
1 Cup Sun Oxygen Cleaner

Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with 4 cups of hot tap water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is completely melted. (I bought a flat cheese grater for $1 to use just for this, so I don’t have to worry that my cheese will taste like soap if I don’t get every little bit washed off.)  This sounds like a lot of trouble, but it really only takes a few minutes to grate a bar of soap, and I did mine while watching TV.  It takes a few minutes to heat it into a liquid and then a few more to mix everything together.  But considering the huge savings in cost of this detergent over Tide or other “store-bought” detergent, we think it’s worth the effort.

Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda, Borax, and oxygen cleaner. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket near the top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.  A thick gel will form on top when the detergent sits, so stir it thoroughly before putting it into containers for daily use.

We have saved our detergent bottles and simply rinse them out before re-using.  I just check the label to see how many ounces it holds and then divide by two – that gives me the amount of detergent mix I need to put in the bottle.  Then put the same amount of water in the bottle and shake well.

We typically only fill a few bottles with detergent to keep on the shelf, and we put the lid on the 5 gallon bucket and store the remainder under the utility room sink until we need it.

The detergent tends to separate – forming a gel on top – when it sits, so be sure to shake the bottle before each use.

Yield: 10 gallons of low-sudsing, septic system safe, and environmentally friendly liquid detergent.

• Top Load Machine – Use 1/2 Cup per load; most detergent bottles have caps that hold 1/2 Cup, so usually, one cap of detergent is enough. Just to be safe, I always measure the capacity of the cap when I use a newly recycled bottle. I just fill the cap with water, then pour the water into a measuring cup to find the capacity of the cap.
• Front Load/High Efficiency Machine – Use 1/4 Cup per load

Download a printer-friendly copy of my recipe here.

Computer geek that I am, I created a spreadsheet to calculate the exact cost of making this detergent, and compared it to the cost of using Tide, which was my favorite brand for many years.  Tomorrow, I’ll post information from my calculations.  I think you’ll be surprised at just how much savings you’ll enjoy if you start using detergent that you make yourself.

Saturday mornings at our place are family time, same as in homes all over America. It’s just that since most of our family members have four legs, our family time is best when it’s outdoors. Tim likes to grind some exotic beans and make a special pot of coffee that he can take time to savor, rather than just drinking a cup while he works. Since our trip to Hawaii last November, he’s been saving his favorite Kona coffee for the week-ends. He brought home a couple of pounds from Buddha’s Cup, a beautiful coffee plantation on the side of the mountain. Touring Buddha’s place with the owners and their dogs was one of our favorite things about the whole trip.

While Tim enjoys his coffee, the dogs enjoy their weekly treat – a rawhide chew for each dog. Some dogs really savor the chew, while others eat the chew so fast you would think it was just a little Milkbone treat. What comes next is a lot of playing and tail-wagging. Tim captured some of it with his iPhone, presented here for your enjoyment. I’m betting it will make you smile, just as it does us every week-end.

The two central players in our little show are Great Pyrenees – Samson is a permanent resident here, brought in as a puppy to help keep our dairy goats and chickens safe from would-be predators, and Buster Brown is a wonderful young dog we’re fostering through SPIN Rescue (Saving Pyrs In Need). Buster was timid and fearful of people when he first came to us, but with help from the rest of our canine pack and plenty of attention from us, he has learned that people are not all as awful as whoever may have mistreated him in the past, and he seems to think life is pretty good these days. You can see more photos of our foster dogs on THEIR page.

Tim spent a few days following our chickens around with his iPhone 4, taking video as they were going about their normal activities.  He put it together in a short little video and added some great Irish music.  Take a look and you’ll see why we enjoy our chickens so much!

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a California law that required the humane euthanization of so-called “downer” livestock to prevent them from coming into the food supply. A downer is an animal that can’t stand on its own due to sickness or injury.

(Anonymous/AP) - In this April 22, 2010 image provided by the Humane Society of the United States, a downer dairy cow too sick or injured to walk lies on the ground at the Hallmark Meat Packing Company in Chino, Calif. In 2009, California barred the purchase, sale and butchering of animals that can't walk and required slaughterhouses to immediately kill non-ambulatory animals.

News like this makes me ashamed to be a human, and even moreso to be a human living in a country whose Supreme Court could be so ignorant. Let me explain.

The citizens of California passed their law a few years ago after being outraged by a report that uncovered the habitual cruel and abusive treatment in slaughterhouses of downer animals, who were often poked repeatedly with electrified cattle prods, pushed around with forklifts, and sometimes even chained then dragged to their death.

The Humane Society’s 2008 video showed workers at the Westlands/Hallmark slaughterhouse in Southern California using a forklift to prod downed cattle to get up to walk to slaughter.

Some workers used a high-pressure hose to shoot water up cows’ nostrils to force them to get up, or kicked and prodded the animals. The supervisor at the plant was sentenced to 270 days in jail for animal abuse and the plant had to shut down.

(emphasis mine)  [The Seattle Times - 1/26/2012]

The California law required meat processors to removed downed animals and euthanize them immediately. Sounds like a reasonable law, right? Protect the food supply while also showing a little human compassion for animals.

But not surpringly, the National Meat Association challenged the law in court. Big agri-business (more business than agriculture) didn’t like the idea that the State of California might cut into their profits by reducing the number of animals they could slaughter and sell to the unsuspecting public as meat. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court and the White House took the side of big business and struck down the California law. This should bother us for MANY reasons. I’ll give you just a few:

(1) The reason that many animals are non-ambulatory in the first place is that they are sick. Surely we can all agree we don’t want sick animals to make it to our dinner table. If they’re not already sick – if, for example, they’re down due to a broken leg and not due to illness – the fact is, once they’re downed, they’re at higher risk of becoming sick. Statistics prove this fact.

“The downer animals roll around in feces and that can encourage or bring about e. coli,” said Lisa Shames, director of Natural Resources and the Environment at the GAO.

[The Nation - March 5, 2010]

So as downer animals are crammed into trailers for transport to slaughterhouses, they’re likely to become even sicker. There’s simply no reason – other than fatter bottom lines for big business – for such animals to be forced into our food supply. They should be euthanized. Small farmers routinely do that, because unlike the big agri-business companies who never meet their customers, small farmers often know exactly who is eating the meat from their animals. They wouldn’t dream of putting their pocketbooks ahead of the health and safety of their customers, who are often their friends and neighbors. And besides, most small family farms know that it’s really NOT good for business to sell meat that makes their customers sick.  When customers know exactly where the tainted meat came from, they stop buying from that farmer.

But it’s a lot easier for a giant corporation to put tainted meat into the food supply because they never have to see the person who gets sick from eating their products, and in most cases, customers have no idea who produced the meat that bears a big corporation’s label. Big corporations make a calculation of public health risk vs. profit, and inevitably, the bottom line wins. This is especially true when it comes to meat processors with government contracts – those who supply meat for the federal school lunch program and similar programs that help the most vulnerable among our citizens. Because they bid as low as they can to get these lucrative contracts, these meat processors often abuse downer animals to force them to slaughter. One of these government contractors was even caught on film abusing downer animals, and that video was included in the report that led to the California law.

Right about now you might be thinking that I’m overstating the case just a little. Ever hear of mad cow disease? When cows in the European market were infected with mad cow disease, it created a global health crisis with far-reaching impact.

“Data from Europe where people have died as a consequence of mad cow disease shows that nonambulatory cattle are 48 percent more likely to have Mad Cow Disease Than Ambulatory cattle,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.

[The Nation - March 5, 2010]

As a direct result of the mad cow disease crisis, U.S. federal regulations were modified so that a non-ambulatory cow can no longer be slaughtered for food. In addition, people who have spent time in places where mad cow disease was prevalent are not allowed to donate blood in the U.S. because the disease can be transmitted that way. Clearly, the federal government recognizes that downer cattle pose a threat to health and safety. So why not regulate the disposition of other downer animals? That’s the difference between the California law and existing federal law – instead of ONLY downer cattle, the California law applied to ALL animals slaughtered for meat, including pigs, sheep, goats, and veal calves. But the Supreme Court struck that law down. Apparently, it will take another health crisis to convince the federal government to act to expand federal law to cover all downer animals. I wonder if there’s a mad pig disease.

(2) If you’re not worried about the safety of our food supply, then maybe my next point will make sense to you. If you believe in states’ rights, then doesn’t it bother you to think that a branch of the federal government could overrule the law passed by a majority vote of the citizens of a state?

Anyone who knows me very well probably knows that I am NOT a fan of Texas Governor (and failed Presidential candidate) Rick Perry. But I DO believe that to some degree, he’s right about the need to restore the balance of power between the federal government and state governments. The U.S. Constitution reserves certain powers for the federal government, while other powers are reserved for the states. Among the powers delegated to state goverments is the power to provide for public health and safety. But as it turns out, the federal government manages to take a lot of this power away from the states because of interstate trade. You see, the federal goverment has the power to regulate commerce between states. And since a meat processor in California is likely to transport meat all across the U.S., the federal government says only THEY can regulate the industry. I disagree.

I think a strict constructionist might agree with me that in the California case, since their law was intended to provide for the public health and safety of their citizens – a power reserved in the Constitution for states -  they were entirely within their rights to pass such a law. This is even MORE true since the California law didn’t seek to overturn any federal regulations, but rather was an effort to place an additional safety regulation on slaughterhouses in California. Keep in mind, the California law applied to slaughterhouses located in their jurisdiction – namely, California. States rights advocates should be very unhappy with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn California law in this matter.

Former Assembly Member Paul Krekorian, who wrote the California legislation, said he was disappointed by the decision.

“The Supreme Court’s decision will deprive states of the ability to protect their citizens from sick and disabled animals being made a part of the food supply,” he said.

But supporters of the California law hope that federal legislation introduced this month by Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-NY, and Rep. Peter King, R-NY, will close a loophole in federal laws that allow the slaughter of some types of non-ambulatory animals.

“If the federal government had strong rules and laws on the books, there would be no reason for California or any other state to adopt a reinforcing statute,” Humane Society of the United States executive director Wayne Pacelle said. “But it’s precisely because the Congress and the USDA are in the grip of the meat industry that we have anemic federal laws on the subject.”

(emphasis mine)  [The Seattle Times - 1/26/2012]

Of course, it was big agribusiness, represented by the National Meat Association, who brought the lawsuit to challenge California’s law. It’s infuriating but not at all surprising that the law wasn’t challenged by concerned citizens. No, it was big business trying to protect big profits.

(3) Finally, if you’re not worried about the safety of our food supply, and if you believe that the federal government should have absolute authority to regulate the meat processing industry, then maybe my last point will appeal to you. That is, as human beings, shouldn’t we all be concerned about unnecessary abuse and cruelty to animals? Some people think that the simple fact that these animals are being slaughtered for food is enough to protest. I can understand how they feel, but since I DO eat meat (not as much as Tim, but I do enjoy a good hamburger), I think it’s my duty to speak out on behalf of the animals that may end up on my dinner table. There’s simply no real justification for abusing an animal just because it’s headed to slaughter, and surely we can agree that certain practices are cruel. It’s abusive to poke an animal repeatedly with an electric cattle prod, in an attempt to make the animal stand when it simply no longer has the strength to do so because it is sick or injured. It is cruel to pick an animal up with a forklift built for moving pallets and boxes, just to move the sick or injured animal onto the slaughterhouse floor. It is inhumane to put chains around an animal’s head or legs and connect the chains to a piece of mechanical equipment to drag the animal to the slaughterhouse floor. The right thing to do for ALL meat animals is to follow the federal law for beef cattle – If an animal is too sick or injured to stand and walk to the slaughterhouse floor, the animal should be immediately and humanely euthanized. No exceptions.

My parents used to raise beef cattle, and I admit, it was a little hard for me at first to get used to the idea that the tasty burger on my plate used to be that handsome young steer named George. My mother named all their cattle regardless of whether the ultimate destination was the meat locker. And for as long as they lived, those cattle had a great life. They were well fed and were treated with love, respect, and kindness. My mother’s family is Native American, so some of her respect for life is surely a result of her heritage. Before she sent an animal for slaughter, my mother always said a prayer of thanks for the food this animal would provide for her family. So when George or any other one of her boys came back in little packages wrapped in white butcher paper, we could eat with a clear conscience because as long as the animal was alive, he had a good life. This is in stark contrast to animals raised in factory farms.

It’s not pleasant to think about the slaughter of any animals. I sometimes think about becoming a full-on vegetarian because I know a little about the methods used in slaughterhouses, and the images of the frightened cattle I saw many years ago at Swift Meat Packing plant in Fort Worth are seared in my memory. Thanks to animal activists like Temple Grandin, skaughterhouses have become more humane, but of course the end result is the death of the animal. So my feelings on this are mixed, but I don’t have any desire to convince anyone else to become a vegetarian. I DO, however, have a strong desire to convince everyone I can that we should treat ALL animals more humanely even when they’re headed to the slaughterhouse.

These are my reasons for being really disappointed in our Supreme Court for striking down California’s law. I would love to hear your thoughts. Comment below, or visit us on Facebook and leave your comments there.

Links for further reading:

Read the Supreme Court Decision – PDF on the Supreme Court Website

Humane Handling of Downer Animals – Dr. Temple Grandin

Dr. Temple Grandin’s website offers a wealth of information, including many scholarly and statistical studies, links to resources, and articles that explain how humane practices of animal slaughter actually improve the quality of the meat.

Humane Society of the U.S. – Downer Cow Investigation (Video)

Humane Society of the U.S. – Farm Animal Protection (website)

The Supreme Court and the slaughterhouse – LA Times

Livestock industry wins Supreme Court appeal – CNN

(The person who wrote that headline inadvertently made one point that I have stressed many times – For big corporations, livestock is an “industry”. These are not family farms. These are factories that just happen to produce livestock rather than widgets.)

Court Overturns Calif. Slaughterhouse Law - NPR

Supreme Court Kills California’s Downed Animal Protection Law – Mercy for Animals

Sometimes I wish I had a digital camera built in to my (eye)glasses so I would always be ready to capture a Kodak moment when it catches me by surprise. I didn’t have my camera or even my phone (which has a pretty decent camera built in) handy for something that happened yesterday, so I’ll just have to try to paint a word picture.

Our chickens are free-range, so they wander all around the yard, across the deck, and even onto the porch. They sometimes come right up to the back door and look inside Tim’s office, as though checking to see if we might let them inside. (We don’t!)

I don’t mind hosing everything down to wash off their poop, because thanks to their grazing habits, we have had very few annoying bugs this year. I’ve probably seen less than a dozen mosquitoes this whole year, and I can’t remember seeing a single cricket. Our chickens provide great natural, organic pest control, and it costs less to feed them than it was costing to pay for the not-so-natural, probably toxic chemical pest control that we had for a few years before we added chickens to our menagerie.

Yesterday, our hens upped their game, taking their pest control efforts to a whole new level. I happened to walk out onto the back porch at the exact moment one of our Plymouth Barred Rocks picked up a wiggling little snake! I really don’t like snakes at all, and the idea of a snake hatching her eggs that close to the house is a bit unnerving for me. I didn’t get close enough to identify this snake definitively, but based on past experience, my guess is it was a baby Texas rat snake. It was about as big around as one of my fingers, and was probably about 8 inches long – small as snakes go, but it was going to be a REALLY big meal for Bertha!

She found the cold-blooded little reptile in a flower bed next to the garage, where all the hens like to scratch for bugs and tender roots and shoots.  As soon as Bertha picked the snake up, several other hens tried to take him away from her – they wanted their share of that tasty meal, but Bertha was in no mood to share.  I watched for a couple of minutes as she ran around, trying to find a place where she could enjoy her prize meal alone, but the other girls were not going to give up too easily.  Eventually, Bertha ran out of my line of sight, so I didn’t see the final disposition of that little snake.  But I’m certain he made at least ONE hen happy.

Our chickens free-range across our property, scratching for bugs and worms and other tasty treats.  This photo was taken in the barnyard on a day when I DID have my camera handy.

In the past, there have been a couple of times when I was moving a stack of bricks and uncovered a nest of baby rat snakes. On those occasions, I used a stick to pick up each little snake and toss him to the chickens.  But this is the first time that I’ve been aware of the chickens finding a nest on their own.   It may not be the first time it has happened, but it’s the first time I was a witness.  Given my intense dislike of snakes, this episode gave me great satisfaction, even if I didn’t have my camera to capture this Kodak moment.

Now if you’re like my sister and you’re thinking that I should appreciate the Texas rat snake and the role he plays in keeping down the rodent population, let me just say this – in my world, the only good snake is a dead snake.  Within the first few weeks of raising our first batch of baby chicks, I found a Texas rat snake in the hen house, his belly engorged with what was clearly one of my chicks.  I killed that vile critter with my .38 revolver and felt not the least bit of remorse.

Once our hens reached laying age, one or more rat snakes stole eggs from the nesting boxes, in which I had put ceramic eggs as a snake deterrent.  Several of those ceramic eggs disappeared, and I could only hope that meant we were reducing the population of snakes one by one. But we had no evidence until recently.

Our new next door neighbor called us one day and invited us over to retrieve something they thought we would want to see.  It was a dead, dessicated snake they had found near our common fence line, still almost completely intact, with one of our ceramic eggs bursting through its belly.

You can imagine my delight! Our ceramic eggs were working and here was proof. Again, my sister was the voice of dissent, saying how the snake must have suffered a terrible, painful, slow death, either starving to death or perhaps suffocating if the ceramic egg interfered with its breathing.  Maybe it says something not so great about my character that I was not bothered by this in any way.  I was a lot more bothered to think about how it must have been an equally terrible death for my little chick who was swallowed whole by a rat snake back in 2009.  Paybacks are hell sometimes.

For now, if we were keeping score, I think our chickens would be ahead of the snakes, and I hope it stays that way.  I was thrilled to see Bertha catch a baby rat snake, and hope the other hens follow her example.  Every chance they get.

Tim and I are looking forward to a new adventure on Saturday – we’re going to an introductory class at the Round Rock Honey Beekeeping Academy.  We see bees all over our place and have been wondering whether we could sustain a hive or two.  Bees love our meadow every spring – first the bluebonnets and then the other wildflowers that bloom a little later.  Bees also buzz around our Texas sage when it blooms, the trumpet vine that blooms in summer and spreads for probably 50′ along one of our fence lines, the boneset (eupatorium perfoliatum) that springs up in so many places whether we want it there or not, and other flowers and flowering herbs in our garden.

We don’t know what kind of bees are around here, but we do know that they do a fine job of pollinating things for us.  We don’t want to disrupt the beneficial activity that’s already established here, but we would surely like to add a hive or two to see if we could get some honey.  So with luck, we’ll learn enough on Saturday to decide whether it’s worth the investment in equipment to put out a hive.  It would be great if we could attract honey bees that are already in our neighborhood, but if not, perhaps we can purchase some bees that are suited to this area.  I’ll try to remember to post an update after we’ve been to class.

Earlier this year, Tim found a recipe online for Crème Brûlée, a decadent dessert that we enjoy from time to time when we’re lucky enough to find it on the menu.  He prepared it once or twice exactly according to the recipe, and it was delicious!  Then one evening when Tim was enjoying a pint of Guinness at Trinity Hall  (his favorite Irish pub in DALLAS; he has favorite pubs in MANY places), he asked the bartender (also a chef) about substituting goat milk for heavy cream.  The answer – yes, you can do it, just add more eggs.  So Tim experimented to get the measurements just right – I was very happy to be the guinea pig for those experiments, tasting and comparing each concoction.

Here’s a photo of one evening’s dessert.  Believe me when I tell you that the photo simply doesn’t do justice to the amazing flavor of the contents of those two little ramekins!

So here’s the recipe that Tim now uses:

Ten Mile Farm’s “Crème Brûlée au Lait de Chèvre”

Ingredients

12 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
3 cups goat milk
3 tsp. vanilla bean paste, or vanilla extract

Preparation

Mix egg yolks and sugar with wire whisk.
Add milk, slowly and gently so as not to froth.
Add vanilla and gently mix.
Pour into ramekins.
Place ramekins into large baking dish and fill dish with hot water until it reaches halfway up the ramekins. This helps the custard to bake evenly.
Bake at 325 for 45 minutes to an hour. Custard is done when knife inserted comes out almost clean.
Cool.
When ready to eat, sprinkle top with a little sugar and place under broiler until the sugar carmelizes.
Pig out.

Tim has made this dessert when we’ve had guests, and they all agree that it’s divine! My mother had never tasted Crème Brûlée and since she’s not really a big fan of any kind of pudding or custard, and since she rarely drinks milk, I wasn’t sure whether she would like it.  She didn’t.  She LOVED it!  I think you will too.  If you try this recipe, please let us know what you think.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already reached the time of year when we dry off our does and pair them up with bucks for breeding.  A lot of goat breeders continue to milk their does for the first few months of pregnancy, but we prefer to dry ours off before breeding, mainly because with a buck in the pen, it can be a little more difficult to get does in and out one at a time for milking.  So once we run out of the fresh goat milk currently sitting in our fridge, we’ll be buying our milk from Braum’s until the does freshen against next spring. I don’t mind the switch, but Tim really misses having fresh goat milk every day.

Tim will miss getting fresh milk every day from Cookie and our other does!

Earlier this week, I moved goats around to achieve the breeding pairs that I want for this go-round.  Our French Alpine doe Izzy and one of our Nigerian Dwarf does Peaches are now in the pen with Nigerian Dwarf buck Billy Bob.  He’s a ruggedly handsome creature who has sired 9 kids (5 doelings and 4 bucklings) in the past few years. The last time he was paired with Peaches, they produced Cookie, who grew into (and remains) one of our favorite does.  Izzy will present more of a challenge to Billy Bob, and I’m hoping that he’s able to overcome the size difference.  Before I moved her into his pen, Izzy was showing signs of being in estrus – wagging her tail and making little love calls to Billy Bob through the fence.  So if she’s really interested in breeding, she will most likely figure out a way to accommodate Billy Bob’s short stature.  (Well, short only in comparison to her.)

With those magnificent horns, ZZ Top-worthy beard, and beautiful coloring, Billy Bob is a sight to behold!

Champ should have an easier time of it, as he is paired with Elsie and Cookie, both of whom are just a little smaller than the average Nigerian Dwarf senior doe.  I’m hoping this is the year that Champ improves his record, as so far, he has sired twice as many bucklings as doelings.  As those of you who raise goats know, doelings are almost always easier to sell, and they bring a higher price.  Fortunately, Champ’s kids almost always inherit his cornflower blue eyes, so even the little boys can melt your heart and convince you to take them home with you.  Still, all things considered, I’m hoping for more doelings this year.

The last time Cookie was paired with Champ, they produced this beautiful little doeling, Cookie Monster.

Last on the list will be Faith.  She’s just 9 months old, so I’ll wait until January to put Harley in the pen with her.  This is the little pair we bought this past spring specifically to start raising a line of Nigerians that are registerable.  Strictly speaking, they’re old enough to breed now, but I prefer to wait until the doe is at least a year old to be sure she’s mature enough to make a good mom.

So with no milking to do for the next few months, it’s a mostly a matter of feeding all the goats and keeping them sheltered once winter gets here.  There are a few other preparations to make, but since I don’t have to spend time milking every day, I can use that time to get ready for winter and for next year’s kidding.  It seems distant now, but cold weather will set in eventually.  Before then, I need to give the barn a fresh coat of paint and whitewash the inside of all the stalls.  I found a recipe for an old-fashioned whitewash made with hydrated lime, salt, and milk, so that’s what I’ll be trying.  When I get to that project, I’ll be sure to post the recipe along with some photos.  For now, it’s time to sign off and go feed before it gets dark.