Friday, March 9, 2012

Shoppin Day








This is the month we do our quarterly shopping. Replenishing should not be as expensive as it usually is, however. We won’t be buying ANY dairy, now that I make all of our butter, sour cream, cream cheese and the like. 
Most of our money will be going to livestock feed. We will be needing salt and grain for EmmaLouMoo’s last 3 months of lactation and the calves plus I need enough Chicken food for the eggers and to enough to raise the 30 meatie chickens who arrive in April. I am hoping to spend a minimum on dogfood as I hope to switch the dogs to a raw diet. I am wary of all the recalls on commercial foods, in which so many ingredients come from China. It is a country which seems to care little about the safety of its own people, they certainly care nothing for my animals. I am not willing that my dogs be the next victims. I’m just not sure how I will buy and store enough meat to feed over 300 lb of dogs for 3 months at a time. The change will have to come slowly, until I figure it all out.
We will be buying onions and potatoes, as well as carrots. I have plenty of celery and mushrooms dehydrated so we won’t need any of those, this trip. Brown rice, soda crackers and of course, corn tortillas, because I am too lazy to make them all the time, Kosher salt, sugar, nuts, lettuce and Randyman’s treats and we are pretty much good to go. Tortillas are one of the things on my bucket list to master and freeze.
My 'new' antique treadle is in town at my cousin’s, so we will get to see her when we pick it up and I am very excited about both as I have not seen her in 30 years. I also scored a great deal on some reusable canning lids and am picking those up. In addition, we pick up a young goat buckling, because Peebody isn’t up to the job. We are buying it from a members on the KeepingAFamilyCow forum, so it will be nice to meet them!
My grain mill should be here soon, as well as the wheatberries I ordered. I am hoping to find some soft white wheat in town to grind for pastry flour. This month will be a learning curve for baking with whole grain flours. I am really looking forward to it and once again, it cuts way down on the grocery bills. According to my research, the wheatberries, properly stored, keep almost indefinitely, whereby flour, does not. Plus all the healthy stuff has been taken out of commercial flour, so we should benefit that much more from grinding our own because it will still contain the bran and the kernal and all.
I had gotten a great deal on a butterchurn on ebay. I was really looking forward to it getting here as I can churn 7 quarts of heavy cream at a time, instead of only 2 quarts. It was a beautiful antique electric churn with an old embossed glass jar. The seller didn’t package it quite well enough and neglected to mark the large heavy box as ‘Fragile’ or 'Breakable' and it arrived with the jar in pieces. I was devastated. I have found a different kind of jar I am hoping Randyman can adapt to work with the motor. I won’t have the beautiful antique I had paid for, but at least I might have a working churn. I am still waiting on ewe #3 to lamb. She is being quite obstinate about it. I spend night after night watching sheep TV, but she has been so uninterested in doing her part I haven’t even bothered to stay up. I just watch her until its time to go to bed. I hope she gets it done before we leave for town, because she is a high risk ewe, and I hate to leave her with my friend "D" to have to take care of. She has already offered to milk EmmaLouMoo and feed all the other critters. No small feat.
The windstorms have EmmaLou upset enough that if there is any wind or snow, she will not use her tent shelter now, so she has taken over the lambing shed. She’s a bit of a princess, as she now has a ‘guest’ quarters. This meant we needed another place to jug up the ewes for lambing. Randyman to the rescue. In driving snow, he climbed up on the rock wall to put sheeting in the open gable of the milkroom to keep snow from falling inside. After spending several hours of remodeling, and moving feed, tack and straw bales we had a spot.


The pups have done an excellent job lately of guarding the sheep. I had previously always let them choose where they wanted to go and they have been effective as we have had no losses, but last January, with the arrival of all the bird hunters, they become so worried about what was going on in front of the house, they weren’t paying enough attention to what was going on out back. I decided I want them to follow the sheep by day, and then they can patrol where they choose to, by night. It took a few days of my hanging out with them in the pasture, but they are so amazingly intelligent, they figured it out. Now, each morning, Randyman lets them in the house to visit with me while I have my cup of coffee, then they follow me out when I go to milk. They go to the pasture with the sheep and I take care of the cow, calves, goats and chickens. Bruno tends to stay up closer to the corral where the chickens are while Cletus follows the sheep around. That has been a surprise, as Cletus has always been the chicken lover. I have a feeling that when the meatie chicks come, they will switch roles again. Cletus is the 'mother-hen' of the pair, while Bruno is more businesslike. For Cletus it’s a passion while for Bruno it's a job. Both are excellent at what they do though, they just have very different personalities. 



Cletus, is a big doofus and weighs about 120 lb. (Randyman thinks he weighs more than that) Bruno, is a bit smaller and much quicker. He is also the instigator. Cider, our red-headed stepchild, loves to terrorize Cletus, just because he can. He runs around him, growling and making all kinds of macho noises. Cletus won’t hurt him intentionally, but tries to engage him in play. He will lift his giant feet up to swat at Cider, but before he has a chance, Bruno sweeps in and jerks Cletus’ back legs out from under him. Cider has no idea that Bruno is actually protecting him. I don’t think Cletus knows it either. We have observed this pattern night after night. It blows my mind how intelligent Bruno really is. 


*****


We made it back home from our shopping trip. We left at 6 a.m. and got home at 1 a.m. the following morning. Glad we only do this 4x a year! Our next scheduled trip will be in June. It was GREAT to see my cousin, whom I haven't seen for 25 years. She's newly married to a really nice guy, who has carried a picture of them in his wallet of a Junior Prom (we will just say a LONG time, as its not nice to give away ages!) all this time. How awesome is that??? Definitely the stuff movies are made of.


We blabbered on happily through lunch, while our guys looked on with raised eyebrows and often blank looks while eating their hamburgers. We loaded the treadle in the horse trailer, agreed that maybe next trip we will come the afternoon before and stay overnight and headed to our next destination. WE had already picked up a ton of livestock feeds, some spring wheat to plant in the chicken corral, fencing for EmmaLou's small pasture and a few odds and ends. We drove another hour to the NW and picked up the goat buckling. He's a cutie. We had a great time meeting my internet friend from the cow boards, meeting all her cows, pigs and goats. We put the little guy in a dog crate in the big stock trailer and spent the next several hours finishing up by buying our 3 months worth of people groceries, doing errands at the Lowe's home store (as we refuse to patronize HomeDepot) and stopped at a fast food joint to get a large cup of boiling water to heat little feller's bottle in. As we were standing the dark parking lot, a big SUV pulled up and a lady asked if her little girl could see the 'sheep' that were in the trailer. She was surprised to find out that not only was it NOT a sheep, but there was only ONE of him. He had been pretty vocal about his discontent. I let the little girl feed him his bottle and we went down the road for dinner. After our last stops we headed out of town and stopped at the last gas station for another cup of hot water as it had been 3 hours since little feller's last bottle. I brought him in the cab of the truck where it was warm, as the trailer gets too cold and windy on the road, and he was already pretty stressed out from being de-horned, pulled from his mama and siblings, and switched from goat to cow's milk, all in his first few days of life. He gratefully cuddled up on my lap and slept the 4 hours to the ranch, only waking once or twice to bleat a little "are we home yet?" at us. The pups met us in front of the house, Cider introduced them to the little feller, who Randyman thought should spend the night in the house, inside in the dog crate and we headed for bed. Not bad for a day's work!





20 comments:

  1. Sounds like an eventful and productive day for you. Your new little guy is adorable. Isn't it exciting how this time of year is kind of the gearing up for the next couple of seasons? (well technically it is now "mud season" here in Maine) Thanks for sharing your life with us all! Stubborn Hill Farm

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    1. Thanx for stopping by! I am so looking forward to spring!

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  2. Great adventures ! hey....where can i buy sugarnuts??? and what are randys fave
    "treats" seems...all the boys in our family ..aka "coho" and "harly" enjoy thier treats..lol Glenn=cookies and cashew nuts.. harly- chicken and duck jerky and anything he can con from us ! lol

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    1. Sugarnuts...is that an endearment, like Honeybuns? Randy likes anything he can stick in his mouth except for peas. Peanuts and Oreos are at the top of the list!

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  3. More like shopping day(s), isn't it? Your life is such an adventure. I was sorry to hear about your butter churn - I hope it was insured, and I do hope you get some recompense from the seller. Any fool knows to pack a fragile glass object extra well for shipping. I have a hand-cranked one, but never churn that much cream! Awful cute addition to the ranch!

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    1. I am so beyond upset about the churn. The seller doesn't feel she should be responsible, even though the box was marked ...get this "Medium Heavy Duty". Now..would you suspect anything fragile to be contained within? Apparently neither did the post office. I think I am gonna have to eat this one because ebay said if I ship it all back with tracking, I get my money back (less my $26 in shipping)...then I will have a jar without a motor instead of a motor without a jar, as the new jar which cost me $50 is on its way! arrrgh!

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  4. Oh my what a cute new member to the ranch menagerie! It was sweet of you to let the little girl give him his bottle, I am sure it made her day! :)
    I sure hope you left a negative feedback for the ebay seller. You really want to warn any future buyers to be wary of dealing with them. :(
    Hugs...

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  5. I am still trying to figure out how to handle it. If they would just send a replacement for the jar I would be happy...one like the one that was damaged

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    1. Oh your new baby reminds me of my Brownie when he was a little one. Really sweet.
      I sure would have to make LISTS if I only went shopping four times a years. I would also probably save a lot of money. You have this down to a fine art. Why do you refuse to shop at Home Depot. Did I miss something?

      Can't wait to see posts on churning butter. It's too bad that there isn't more control on packaging and sending from Ebay people. This should just not have happen.
      Lovely photos of the snow and the dogs.

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  6. Cute new addition to your family. I am amazed by your dogs every time I read a story about them. Are they from the same litter? I think I may have asked you this before but do they have to be trained for the work that they do or is it inherent in them? Love the view you get to see everyday. We keep talking about moving out west (we are in MI). The mountains have always called to me. My husband is from Lake Tahoe so he grew up in the mountains. We have talked about CO, CA, OR or WA. While I yearn to live away from city life, our professions both force us to work in town (optometrist for the husband and pharmacist for me). I have often thought about taking some courses to be a veterinary pharmacist...

    Until next time...

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    1. well, now its months later and I see your post! LOL The Maraemmas are littermates, both neutered. They are very instinctive and only need a bit of supervising as they grow so they don't develope bad habits like wrestling and playing with their charges. Puppy stuff. They aren't mature until they are 2 so its a long period of supervising but these guys are amazing.

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  7. We won't shop at HomeDepot because they refuse to remain "neutral" in the "culture war". Personal choice is one thing, but promotion and indoctrination to my children and grandchildren is quite another. I cannot, in good conscience, let them use our money to promote something I don't think is in their best interests. We won't make a difference with our paltry income, but we have a clear conscience.

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    1. Petey, I have a DH that refuses to shop at Lowe's because they built it with non-union out of state labor! (Even some from out of the country!!!) He might have forgiven them if they had used local labor. (even if it was non-union) We almost never shop Home-Depot either, usually end up at Menards.

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  8. Love the new family addition. This is such an adorable age - and then he'll be a big billy goat, slightly less adorable in my humble opinion. Not that we didn't love our billy....

    Shopping once a week requires one kind of organized, but four times a year - I have no desire to be that pioneer anymore :-) I admire your commitment. I find I'm going the other way; did the live off the land thing and now moving towards wanting access to a few more modern conveniences as I age. Sometimes I get the itch to go back to a farm but then the power goes off for a half hour and I'm reminded just how much work that was...and I'm once again satisfied, lol. Baby goats and wonderful dogs are awfully tempting though!

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    1. I know without a doubt that "cute" will not be the way we describe him! LOL
      I've been bottle-feeding him thru the fence because I don't want him to get too friendly. I'm afraid he will touch me when he's stinky and I can't outrun him!! :)

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  9. Oh…Ms. Petey, you haven’t written for quite long time and I was literally worried, if something bad happened to you. I was thinking to my self; how to contact this lady, besides replying to blog. Glad that all is OK.
    Billy is cute! Your Maremmas are 2 years old, if I remember correctly?
    I noticed with my LGD’s that once they hit One year of age, more wisdom and intelligence is setting in. Be well and looking forward to next story!

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    1. Our internet has not been very dependable. Thanks Maria. If anyone wants to contact me outside of the blog, you are welcome to email me at yetep@me.com
      Aren't they just the greatest dogs?

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  10. Glad you are well. I, too, was a little concerned. I think that the perils of the last couple of posts did it! Blessings, Jo

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  11. Petey, as always I loved every word of your blog! And I always crave to see more stories and pictures of those wonderful dogs! I used to raise milk goats and had a major love for them! They were Nubians and so beautiful and friendly! I have missed them dearly since having to sell them. Love your life and am living vicariously through you when I read your blog!!

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  12. Thanks ginny. Good to see you!

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