Vaughnshire Farm

$700,000,000,000.00 is child’s play for those serious about destroying our nation.

We use to call folks who betrayed our nation traitors and saw them hangin on the end of a rope.

Now we joke about their betrayal and we see them dangling in the funny papers.

No one believed Rome could fall,
but now her fall is a proverb among the nations.
What will America’s epitaph be?

We have been swamped this week. 

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. 

These are the famous super buffs.  For those who haven’t heard the story…this little boy nursed these two back to health with an eye dropper of water and lots of patience. 

Our 12 year old receives a magazine subscription to Backyard Poultry.  In it, he discovered a photo contest.  Soon after reading about the contest to his brothers and figuring out they could all enter it….they were off trying to catch their favorite chickens.  

They are optimistic evidently.  The 7 year old has asked me just about every day if we have received an email yet telling him he is the winner. 

Super Buff is quite a heavy bird. 

…. loosing balance!

Well now…. we regained control and have balance.  How long can you balance a chicken on your head?

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?!!

It happened again.  Another snake caught stealing our eggs…

…..only upon further examination, the boys figured out that the snake didn’t eat a chicken egg….but had in fact swallowed the golf ball that was in the chicken laying box.  Chicken eggs crack when squeezed….and golf balls don’t!

Since I married a man who likes non-poisonous snakes and in return has sympathetic boys, we couldn’t just let the snake die.  That was my idea.  They decided to squeeze the golf ball back out of the snake so it wouldn’t die.  One of the most disgusting, I-can’t-believe-I-was-suckered-into-taking-these-pictures moments of my life. 

It was dark outside, so the boys are holding flashlights while dad squeezes the golf ball up the snake. 

The boys said it was one of the coolest things they have ever seen.  The topic of conversation over supper was…yes…all the snake encounters they have had since moving to the farm. 

At this point, I am saying…”It is going to bite you…I know it is….”  I was assured that it wouldn’t bite—it had a large golf ball stuck in its throat. 

A close up shot. 

Finally, getting it out of its mouth.

A close up shot of the ball coming out of the snakes mouth.  So gross.

Loud accolades of “WOW…that was so Cool!” and examination of the slimy, stinky, swallowed golf ball. 

Wow…That was amazing.  Amazing for the guys that is…  And no, they didn’t kill the snake.  They took it across the road so it could find its way to the creek.  I was reminded that these are “good snakes” that eat the bad snakes.  Somehow knowing that is supposed to make me happy. 

I can always tell when there is something up in the barn yard when the boys come in the house with this certain “look” and rocket speed scrambling to find dad.  They don’t tell me because usually that type of news upsets me….and they know that from experience.  They just head for dad. 

One morning recently, our 7 year old runs in the house in a frantic bee line to get to daddy.  He had something important to tell him.  He and his big brother had been in the barn collecting eggs when they noticed that their prized hen named “Fluffy Feet” was not sitting on her nest and making a stink about something.  She is the broody hen that hatched out several chicks a while back.  Well, she is sitting on more eggs.  The boys picked her up to put her back on her nest and there to meet them was a very large black snake curled up in the chicken nesting box.  Yikes…This is why I don’t collect eggs or stay in the barn very long.

So after the 7 year old gets out all the exciting news to daddy, he and daddy go running off to the barn.  Daddy comes back to the house to show the rest of us the big snake he caught.  We could tell the snake had eaten 3 eggs, not only because the boys knew how many eggs were missing, but also because you could see them bulging out of the snake’s belly. 

…and no, he didn’t kill it! 

Update:  Fluffy Feet hatched out 6 new baby chicks this morning!  I guess we didn’t down size for long…

Update 2:  Fluffy Feet has 2 more baby chicks….  grand total is now 8 new chicks.

Since moving to the farm, we have had a crash course with the concept of food going from the field to table…family style.  I will be the first to admit that at first it was at first very strange concept.  We, like the majority of Americans, were completely disconnected from knowing where our food came from.  However, lately we have had plenty of opportunities to get use to the age old idea of family food production. 

Yesterday, we took our steer to the butcher.  He weighed in at 1,080 lbs!  I was surprised he weighed so much!  We also loaded up a pig weighing in at 205 and two lambs that each weighed 50 lbs.  Had we of known the lambs were only 50 lbs, we probably would have waited a little while before processing them.  

We were concerned about loading up the animals on the trailer.  Our last experience with loading up an animal to take to the butcher was traumatic.  Traumatic only because the pig would not hop up in the trailer like we were expecting him to. Only after lots of dragging, pushing and ear deafening pig squealing, was the 300 lb pig finally in the trailer. That day we found out that they don’t just hop up in the trailer when you want them too. 

However, we learned a few things from last time.  First, don’t feed them before you load them up.  You will want them hungry so they come to the feed you lure them in with.  Second, park the trailer in the field the night before and put a feeding trough in it.  They will want to check it out. 

The guys put a feeding trough and feed in the trailer the day before.  They left the trailer open and in the field over night.  The next morning our 12 year old went out to the trailer and put some more feed in the trough.  He then ran up the hill to go find the cows and bring them down.  When he arrived back at the trailer, to our great astonishment, the pig was waiting for him.  He was lounging in the feed trough inside the trailer.  WOW, that was easy!  Our steer wasn’t as easy, but compared to what we were expecting… 

Now we were ready to head off to the butcher.  We had about an hour and a half truck ride with 8 children and a trailer full of animals.  We arrived at the Yoder’s butcher shop and went inside to fill out our order.  They hand you a sheet of paper for each animal you bring in and ask you how you would like him.  Roasts or Steaks, thick or thin, tenderized or not, medium or hot sausage etc. etc. etc.  After we filled out our orders, it was time to drive around back and unload.

The boys help unload. 

Here they try to coax the cow off the trailer and into the weighing station. 

Little ones look on with great interest. 

Still trying to coax the cow…only this time out of the weighing station.  I became a bit concerned when the executioner began to yell at the cow, “HOOO, YHAWW, I don’t have all day cow!” 

Maybe I should get the children back in the truck??

The Yoder’s butcher shop is quite large.  The children look on at the work taking place.  Our 3 year old asked, “Is this the place where they take the cows apart?” 

It was a great field trip…that is…for those who enjoy loading and unloading messy animals and watching people cut up meat.   We will return in about 3 weeks to pick up our meat.