Project Preparation Day

Our plans for today were to prepare for tomorrow and take it easy. It didn't end up that way. After breakfast we checked the incisions from my hand surgery and discovered one of them was weeping. A call to the doctor's office ended in a visit there, 60 miles away. That took a lot of our day that we had earmarked for other things, like taking it easy.

The next few days will be very busy. We are renting an excavator to dig water and electric lines. The electric line will go from the new pole the electric company set in the pasture for us a while back, to the barn. That will be the most simple installation we have planned.

The next line will go from the existing rural water line around the chicken pen, attach a no-freeze faucet at the chicken pen, then up to the barn where another no-freeze faucet will be installed.

 
The third line will start at the rain catchment tanks and run 400 feet down to the house. The two water lines will run in the same trench for the most part, so we will need to mark them to prevent confusion.

This is another long-term project that we have looked forward to for a very long time. I will probably give you an update tomorrow or Monday. We will get as much completed as we can over the weekend, while we have the excavator since it will be returned early Monday morning. These projects will meet several goals we have. We have wanted to have electricity in the barn since we had it built seven years ago. It will be very nice to have lights in the barn in the winter, especially since we have baby goats coming in a few weeks. These pictures will look very different tomorrow. I wanted to post these today before all of the digging starts. It should be interesting.

Running the rural water line to the barn will be very convenient. We've debated whether to do this or not considering the condition the world is in, but we will enjoy the convenience for as long as we can. Setting up the rain catchment system will provide us with a more sustainable water supply, than what is 'bought' from the rural water company. Not only will we be able to provide water for the goats, pigs and dog at the barn, it will provide water down at the house in the outdoor kitchen and garden.

Keep working on your preparations, whatever you need to have ready for your family. Time passes quickly, and there are never enough hours in each day. Make the most of it.

Until next time - Fern

Homestead News, Volume 18

I've been thinking I need to update you on the animals around our place. They are a big part of our daily lives, so sometimes the changes appear subtle to us, but others notice the changes more readily. The young ones are growing, and some of the older ones will be increasing our numbers soon.

 









I'll start out with the goats. We still have three older wethers waiting to fill some of the freezer. I'll have to wait until the surgeon gives me the okay before I tackle this project. Believe it or not, the meat from the previous goat we butchered and ground is gone. Since these are dairy animals, we don't get a lot of meat from one carcass. Last year we kept three young wethers, this year I think we'll keep them all. More meat on the hoof that way.

We will be having baby goats soon, January 5th is the first due date with one or two others to follow by mid January. One Stripe, our old lady goat of seven years, will be first. She has developed her characteristic waddle and her udder is developing nicely. I need both hands back in action to begin milking her the day of delivery. I will milk her everyday and give the colostrum to the pigs, dog and cats. After five days, I will begin keeping it for us to drink, which we really look forward to.

Next in line is up for grabs. Back in the summer I turned Cricket in with the buck for breeding, wrote down the date and thought all was well. Later on, she spent the day by the gate with the buck indicating she was back in

heat, so I didn't think she 'took'. At that point we had decided to sell the buck and borrow one from Faith, which is what we are doing now. Well, Victor the borrowed buck,

Victor the borrowed buck

has now been here for 22 days and Cricket has yet to come in heat. So, is she pregnant and due in January? She is the only one what knows. She is also the only one I am milking once a day now. We only get about a pint, so it's barely enough to keep the kefir going, another reason we look forward to new baby goats and an increasing milk supply once again. I didn't keep Cricket's summer breeding date so I can only guess a due date. If memory serves me correctly, which it often doesn't, that's why I write things down, she is due somewhere between One Stripe and Copper. We'll see.

Next in line is Copper, one of One Stripe's daughters. Copper is an old hand now at having babies and she looks very good. Her due date is January 11th. With two does back in full production we will soon have plenty of milk which is very good. We also need to replenish our reserve supply of frozen milk.

Besides having plenty of milk for us, another reason it will be very good is the expectation of having piglets sometime in the next month. That's a guess anyway. We are estimating Liberty may be due around January 10th if we have an accurate breed date. That estimate could be anything but accurate, so we will just have to wait and let her tell us when the time comes. I figure after a few weeks the piglets will be more than happy to drink some goat milk, so it turns out to be very good timing. Right now the pigs are getting some of our old powdered milk in their daily ration. They will be happy to have goat milk instead.
 

 






Two of the pigs have turned up with greasy pig disease again. From all of my reading, this is caused by a staph infection that sets up in scrapes or scratches. It can be very contagious and it can spread all over their body, but it can also run it's course and heal without medical intervention. According to the vet, staph bacteria is everywhere, in the soil, on the surface of most animals skin, etc., it just needs an avenue

to grow. With all of the briers and thorny plants in our pastures, the pigs are going to get scrapes and such as they graze and root around, so this looks like it may be a recurring event here. The first time they got it the vet came out and gave each of them a penicillin shot. We don't want to repeat that performance on a regular basis so I did some research to see what we can do naturally. For now I have added dried minced garlic and yeast to their daily ration. The sulfur in the garlic is great for it's anti-fungal and antibiotic properties. The yeast contains zinc which is good for the pigs immune system. I have found a book that I will be ordering about natural pig treatments to see what else I can learn.

We did some more bartering with Emmet and he took home all of our older hens and two young roosters that were causing too much commotion in the chicken house. We kept our older Buff Orpington rooster. He is calm, not aggressive toward us, calls the hens to eat and overall, has been a great rooster. This leaves us with 20 young hens, many of which are laying. There are two different ages of hens in this flock from the first two sets of eggs we incubated in the spring, so some of them are almost a month younger than the rest. We are getting 10 to 12 eggs a day for now and a few of them are getting to be good size along with the smaller pullet eggs.

There are about 40 more young chickens that will be ready to butcher in about two to three weeks if the surgeon releases me to do so. This chore will have to be completed around the healing of my right hand and the timing of the surgery on my left hand. It will be the same thing, trigger finger and ganglion cyst, so I will have another splint for a while at some point.

Life on the farm is good. Very good. It fills our days and our bellies. It seems with each passing day we talk to more and more people that see very hard times coming our way. There are pieces of the coming storm that some focus on, the economy, the terrorist activities, the racial hatred, the government, but most don't consider the immensity of it all. It's a huge complicated mess and there is no telling which way the avalanche will fall when it all lets go. I have talked to some older folks that know something is coming and they are afraid. Some of them hope to be gone before it gets really bad. Fear is a powerful thing. It can paralyze you or motivate you. Remember, even though it is the holiday season, it appears to become more important everyday to avoid crowds. And if that bus or truck every pulls up out front, don't get on it. You never know what may await you at the end of that ride, but it will no longer be a life of your choosing.

There is still much to be done here. We can only pray we have it completed before the time comes. You might want to do the same.

Until next time - Fern

Trigger Finger & Ganglion Cysts

Weird title, huh? Well yesterday I had surgery on my right hand. Yes, I am right handed. Remember back when I tried out the milking machine because I was having problems with the arthritis in my right hand? I haven't been able to straighten the middle finger on my hand for a while and it had gotten pretty painful and swollen. First we tried a steroid shot in the palm where the trigger finger originated. It took the pain out of the finger joint, but not the palm joint and it didn't allow me to straighten out my finger either.

Why did I choose to have surgery? When I found out that I could have full range of motion in my finger again without the pain in my palm and the popping of my knuckle, I was ready. I will still have challenges with arthritis, that's not going away. The work of survival will only increase, not decrease with time, and I want to be able to do it as best I can for as long as I can.

Here is some information on trigger finger, if you are not familiar with it. This site has some great visual examples.

After the steroid shot, and before the surgery, the ganglion cyst in my right wrist start growing fairly quickly and had become sore, affecting the bottom joint in my thumb as well. Yesterday when we talked to the doctor before surgery we asked him what he thought about it. His suggestion was to remove it now so I would only have one recovery time. So we did.

This oven mitt works great for doing chores.

Because we chose to remove the cyst along with fixing the trigger finger, I am in a splint for a couple of weeks. The doctor did this to support the wrist muscles while the cyst site heals, otherwise I would just have a soft bandage across the palm of my hand and have free use of the hand. I'm limited to carrying one to two pounds in my right hand, but it's amazing how quickly you adjust to doing things differently.

I can type, well sorta. My right hand makes more mistakes, especially my pinky. The articles may be a little shorter for a while, so I thought I would let you know why.

Folks, if there is anything you need to take care of, medically, financially, stocking up or buying items for future projects, I would recommend you do it now if you are able. One look at the news tells you that there is more than Christmas coming over the horizon. Unfortunately, it has already come to California, Paris and many other parts of the world. We can't emphasize enough, avoid crowds, even if it is the holiday season and you have things to do, find another way to get them done. Be extremely vigilant, and unfortunately, trust only a very select few. The time of fear and chaos is fast approaching, don't let it find you off guard.

Until next time - Fern