Turkeys are relatively easy to raise on a family farm. However, being that they are ultra friendly and like to hang out around the humans – they quickly earned the name nuisance and ended up in their new home built out of hog panels located in our garden area. It works out great. We aren’t tripping over them congregated on our back steps. And they now add fertilizer to our garden area and scratch through the compost.
“American Empire - so long, we hardly knew you. But good riddance! We liked the old Republic much better.”
That is a quote from Bill Bonner over at the DailyReckoning. Bill also posted a link to the latest version of the corporate bailout plan. This could also be known as the “taking money from me and my children by threat of imprisonment if I don’t pay my “fair share” of taxes and then using that money to cover problems caused by corporate greed and prop up a godless economy” bill. But I digress…
Bill points out some great benefits of the bill like raising the limit on our national debt to $11,315,000,000,000, found in Section 122: Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31 of the US Code. Yes that number starts with a T.
There are numerous other goodies for corporations and states around the nation. Check them out if you have the time. Of course, like most laws, the very size of the document defends it from ever being read completely, but that is another discussion for another day.
As an aside, the Daily Reckoning was also involved in the production of I.O.U.S.A. the movie which is produced by the same folks who put out Supersize Me. It addresses the trouble in the American economy and is probably a great view, although I’ve not yet made the time to watch it. I’ll post the trailer below.
The trail that lead me to The Daily Reckoning article started with a few resources I wanted to share.
First, there is Everbank. They have some interesting foreign currency money market accounts that are designed to help hedge against the falling dollar. They also have what seems to be a nice precious metals account. But the specific piece of information that I thought worthy of posting was found in The Daily Pfennig report from Chuck Butler, the Senior Vice President of EverBank World Markets.
With all the uncertainty around the huge corporate welfare program on the table again, I could not figure out why the dollar was fairing so well in recent days. Apparently there is some US Dollar and Euro swapping going on due to a requirement for European Banks to hold cash reserves in US dollar for US issued mortgage bonds. You can get the whole scope along with the rest of Chuck’s currency report here. I have subscribed for a few weeks now and have found it a great read.
Of course for all those who are concerned about the economy, let me offer this reassurance. It will fail, the empire of these United States will fall. It will not happen overnight, but it is in fact happening right now, and has been happening in earnest for at least a decade. The question on the table it not if America will fall, but how America will fall. That is the challenge before us as fathers, and as business men who must learn to provide for our family and future generations in this period of history. I hope to speak to some of the questions this raises in a future post or two. Until then remember God is in control and this will not be the first time in history that a great empire has fallen.
We place a high priority on learning the art and skill of the pen. Writing is an absolute must do in this family. While we do have structured how to lessons on writing here and there, the majority of our writing consists of letters they write to friends and family all over the country as well as “reports” they write for mom and dad on different topics…such as a summery about a book they just read. They also enjoy writing plays and stories about knights, princesses and castles. Another way we get writing practice is taking notes during church and if you are too little to write…you draw pictures of something pertaining to the message.
Our hope and prayer is that we would raise ready writers who are swift and skilled with the pen. Writers who will write prolifically, from a Biblical perspective, about the very topics in our culture that need to be addressed.
The other day, we took a trip to our favorite Amish market to pick up some bulk food supplies. We haven’t been since the baby was born. We drove through a portion of a small town that we haven’t seen in over 3 months. As we were driving, we counted a handful of small local stores that have closed up shop. We drove past one of the little grocery markets we frequented– lights out and abandoned —and next door…. a busy Walmart Supercenter. I wasn’t shocked. When the Walmart supercenter came to that small rural town, I knew it was only a matter of months before this little grocery store closed. My children on the other hand were horrified that it actually happened. After listening to their ranting and raving over how they felt about small local businesses closing due to being swallowed up by the big corporate giant, they began to propose solutions to the problem. My answer was “No, we aren’t turning around and picketing today” and “No, we aren’t taping up posters all over town about what we think about Walmart!”
Our oldest whipped out his pen and notebook and said he was “going to write about this”. He spent rest of the trip writing. He started off like this,
Hello, We’re here to tell you about how bad Walmart is. First, let’s talk about food. Let’s start with eggs. Most hens that lay eggs lay in a battery cage. A battery cage is a cage that is about 4 square feet and has about 5 hens and is electric and there is about one dead hen every cage. Speaking of small spaces, let’s talk about chicken mutilation…..”
How he got from Walmart to chicken mutilation in 5 sentences and where he is heading on from there I don’t know yet! Obviously, we still have much writing instruction we need to cover here at home still. However, it makes me rejoice when I hear my children pick up the weapon of the pen and seek to use it for good.
Autum is in the air. We are beginning to see hints of color changes in the trees and grasses. We are enjoying the cool evenings and the beautiful days.
One day this week the boys took care of a rooster problem we were having. When roosters interfere with the humans getting sleep around here…they are out of here fast. Last time it was Craig’s List… this time the freezer.
The great thing about this chicken processing day was 1.) I didn’t have to help. 2.) Having boys big enough to process chickens.
I just wanted everyone to know how great it is to have real farm hands around here! Way to go boys!
I was especially thankful to have a daughter who detailed the birds the boys brought to her…and readied them for the freezer bag, labeled them and packed them away. Great job!
I have about 50+ peppers sitting on my kitchen counter the boys found out in our weed garden. Evidently we have quite a few veggies growing out there amidst the jungle. Next spring we hope to do better on the garden! We have some exciting news in regards to helping that front…some new additions to the farm that we will be announcing soon!
One of the questions we were asked recently was about our pigs…. So here is a brief overview of what we have learned with pig 1 and pig 2…
We recently took pig 2 to the butcher shop and we are absolutely thrilled with the difference in taste and quality of meat between pig 1 and pig 2.
With pig 1, we didn’t know what we were doing…like all new farmers–trial and error are sometimes the greatest learning experiences. We built him a square pen out of hog panels and fed him all the scraps we had. We also gave him cracked corn. When we had extra milk or sour milk, the boys would soak the corn or a some hog finisher in the milk before feeding it to him. While the meat was far superior to what you find in the store, we did learn a few things to improve the meat quality.
With pig 2, the guys ringed her nose (she eventually lost her rings though) and released her into the pasture. She wallowed around in the mud in the pond and ran around with the cows, sheep and goats. She ate nuts she dug up, ate grass, a bit of stolen sweet feed from the milk cow, occasionally some corn (she didn’t like much) and soured milk and also a plenteous supply of fresh scraps from our kitchen. Pig 2 was leaner. The meat off of pig 2 is much better and in the future we will be pasturing our pigs as opposed to a pen. The boys hope to set up an area for raising pigs in a wooded area on our property where there are lots of nuts to root up.
If you are thinking about raising a pig or two, from our experience, we can tell you that pigs are fun and relatively easy to raise. They grow quick and you can have delicious farm raised pork in your freezer in about 6 months.
We haven’t posted any pictures lately of our growing leghorns. They are getting so big! We were just talking the other day about the differences in the different breeds of chickens we have and different characteristics they exhibit. We found a chart a while back that details these differences — temperament, size, egg laying abilities, personality etc. The chart said that the leghorn breed was flighty—We have found that to be true!
This would be my nice mixing bowl in the yard……
One of the girls stops to pose for a picture. I am not sure how many leghorns we have…somewhere around 90 birds as we have lost a few. AND…we ended up with a rooster…two roosters actually out of the bunch. These hens will have the job of supplying eggs to a couple of local restaurants in town. They will be laying big white eggs…which, we have found, is what restaurants ask for.
Our 12 year old loves taking pictures of the farm. He captured this picture one full moon night of a bunch of his leghorns camping out on the hog panel fence.
The next big project will be building some sort of egg mobile for these hens. Right now they are in smaller chicken tractors and running around the compost/garden area.
We have an appointment this week to go look at a few hoop houses and green houses from a nursery that is closing down. They boys can’t wait for that field trip as they are thinking they might be able to make a grand chicken home out of these.
It’s been a full, busy, tough week. While we have had many victories we can rejoice in, this past Saturday we experienced a big loss here on our farm. We lost our milk cow, Bonnie.
A combination of her curiosity and determination, a left open barn door and a feed bag, ultimately caused her death. While, in retrospect, we could kick ourselves for not having the feed more tightly secured and the barn door shut tight, we did learn a lot on Saturday. Paul and the boys spent a large part of the day trying to save her from bloat. They even resorted to sticking a water hose down her throat into the rumen to release the air. I was so proud of my two boys for their hard work that day…even though it was hard. All and all, the vet said that what happened was bloat leads to toxicity. She died before we could treat her with antibiotic shots.
Loosing your milk cow isn’t quite like having a chicken die. We have chickens come and go on a regular basis and although they are part of our farm like Bonnie was…there are so many of them running around here and they just all blend in the chicken flock the same.
Bonnie was our first family milk cow. She, in a lot of ways, threw our family immediately into living real farm life! We learned soo much from her. Bonnie gave us lots of fresh raw milk, cream and butter and for that we were so thankful. She was a great big Guernsey with lots of personality and attitude to boot! People have been asking us the question…”Well, are you going to get another milk cow?” And, Yes…we will…eventually… and we want a big brown Guernsey….like Bonnie Blue was.
Today we were quite busy. We took a trip to the butcher shop to pick up our meat. We took all the coolers and freezer bags we had and still needed more…so the children ended up packing some of the meat in plastic bags and putting it inside boxes. We froze on the way home with the air conditioner on high!
Here the boys are unloading the roller rack and packing our hamburger patties. We are very glad we opted to have 1/3 of our beef put into patties. They came out very nice…and are sure to be a convenience for me cooking.
They loaded the coolers on to a roller cart to take out to the trailer.
Almost ready to go…It took quite a while to pack over 600 lbs of meat.
A very proud 11 year old stands by the lamb meat he raised.
A very busy 2 year old pushing carts.
After a big day, we finally get the last of the meat into the freezer. We still have a lot of rearranging to do, but at least we have our own beef, pork and lamb stocked at home in our freezers! And Wow..that is an amazing feeling to raise your own food! Anyone wanna buy some meat?!!
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