So when my Honey leaves me...

I got home after spending the afternoon dropping Franz off at the airport. Then swimming and eating pizza with friends. After swimming I showered and dressed each boy in his pj's.

On the way home we prayed the rosary. I also received a call from Franz informing me that he was still sitting at the Raleigh airport because of a major delay and that I needed to add minutes to his cell plan because he was just about out. So when I got home I had all the boys sit in the living room while I unpacked the van. Then while they entertained themselves I called Franz and he got me into his account so I could add minutes before he completely ran out.

Next I headed out do milking. Before leaving mid afternoon Franz and I did all the chores except for milking the goats. As I am walking out Snowy races to the back pasture by the gate. Suddenly I hear screaming. I call Snowy off and go investigate. The screaming came from a rabbit that had caught itself in the netting on the bottom of the back pasture gate. A rabbit screaming is not a pleasant sound. So I am standing there looking at the poor thing and wondering if I should help it or kill it. Now my first pet ever was a rabbit, and I always said I would never eat one. So in accord with my earlier feelings I decided to help. My goodness, the rabbit really managed to get stuck. I managed to after five or so minutes get the hind legs unstuck. The rabbit was screaming for most of it. But I talked soothingly and it stopped, as soon as it realized it was free it shot off into the woods.

Finally, I quickly milked the goats. I came in the boys were all going crazy. I made them brush there teeth and sent them packing to their beds complaining. I had to remind myself that they were really tired and so was I. I blessed each then took Chrysogonus in the back pack with me to go catch a few stray chickens who were roosting in the goats pen. We have decided to start locking the coop again at night. We for a couple months have been just leaving the outside door open. The other morning Franz discovered a pile of feathers on and around the roost. I searched out all the chickens to see if I was missing one. I finally was able to count all the hens, but noticed a buff was looking pretty bare.

Our guess is that Dino our tom kitty decided to attack one of the chickens and got carried away. We have seen him chase and hassle the chickens when they wander in the barn. Naughty kitty! He also has taken to nursing on Snowy, yes, that is right he nurses on the dog. Too the complete rascal hangs on the screens of the screen porch trying to catch the parakeets. Oh he is a like a wild little tiger sometimes, yet very affectionate with us.

Oh yeah back to my night. Once Chrysogonus and I made the final check on all the animals we came in. I finished the fresh cheese that we had hanging in cloth. I took it out of the cloth added some sea salt, Italian seasoning, and minced garlic. Then I pressed it into a container. Next I did the last few dishes. Then I took Chrysogonus out of the backpack and got him ready for bed. Here I sit typing when I should probably get some sleep before going to Mass in the morning by myself with the Klein army. 

The newest batch of chicks has arrived; and a related announcement

This morning the newest batch of chicks arrived at the Wendell post office, all the way from Hoover's Hatchery in Iowa. Sometimes they take two days to arrive, a lengthy duration that pushes their endurance to the limit. But this time they made the trip overnight, and thankfully they were all alive, healthy, and active.

Now they're tucked in for the night on the screen porch as our cats, Siena and Dino, look on ravenously (and futilely):

We ordered a few Rhode Island Reds and Americaunas to continue to build up our laying flock. But the main part of the order was the next batch of meat chickens. We ordered ten of our regular broilers, the Cornish Rocks, but they actually sent us eleven, probably because a few of our pullets died in transit last spring. We are also experimenting this time, having ordered ten Red Rangers as well. The Rangers will not grow as quickly as the Cornish Rocks, but the slower rate of growth could also yield meat that has a little more character to it. Raising the two meat breeds side-by-side, we'll be able to discern how much more slowly the Red Rangers grow and how food they consume in comparison to the Cornish Rocks, the standard fast-growing commercial broiler chicken.

The announcement is that we've decided to go with conventional feed this time. By way of explanation, we had some difficulty selling all the chickens that we had available, and we think that price has something to do with it. For some time, Rosemary and I have discussed the $4.25/lb. that we charge for whole chickens. Although we're aware that it's a steep price, we're certainly not gouging our customers. Rather, we've taken the price of broiler chicks and Reedy Fork organic broiler grower and carefully calculated how much it costs to bring them to market weight. Of course, if we scaled up production, the price could come down a little, but we don't have any plans to make our operation bigger at this point. We could also approach well heeled customers in the Raleigh and Chapel Hill farmers' markets, but again, we're not planning to become a big operation at present.

So, Rosemary and I have a feeling that more people we actually know--people in our parish and in our local community--would be interested in our chicken if we could bring the price down. Sure, we'd love to do organic if it were possible. But the fact of the matter is that we're not the die-hard, organic-or-bust type. There's plenty of literature, in fact, about the commercial standards that drive what qualifies as organic in terms of pesticides and herbicides. It would be more accurate to say that we're concerned with using few chemicals as possible, and with keeping our food free from contamination and disease. We want to know where our food comes from and the people who raised it, and we think there are a lot of people out there who want something similar.

In short, the only thing that will be different this time is that the feed will be locally sourced--produced nearby in Statesville--rather than certified organic. Our chickens will still be happy, free-range birds who get a great deal of additional nutrition from table scraps and their own foraging.

Oh, and of course the price will also be different--probably more than a dollar cheaper per pound!

Soil Sampling, 4-H, and God's many blessings

We've recently discovered the Franklin County "Extension Office." Like most states nationwide, North Carolina has an "agriculture and mechanic arts" land grant university, and here it's N.C. State University. Sure, they're the "Wolfpack," and they have a basketball program that some people are vaguely aware of. But more importantly for most people's purposes out here, they offer important advice and services to farmers--even, we've happily discovered, small-scale farmers like us.

The first thing is soil samples. Earlier today, Rosemary and I packed off soil samples from throughout Kleinshire for free analysis.

We took samples from the front garden, from the front and back of the back pasture, and from the front pasture. We're particularly interested in our soil composition because as we work to improve the forage for our horse Tarcy and for the fast-growing goat herd. It's also important because a sheep farmer down the road--Mr. Cheves, after whose grandfather our road is named--recently stopped by and told us the reason our tomatoes are doing so poorly is because the previous owner of our property made heavy use of an herbicide that is poisonous to nightshade variety crops (most importantly in this region tobacco, but certainly tomatoes as well).

So, we're eager to find out what our soil is like. And we were happily surprised to find that N.C. State will provide a soil analysis free of charge via the Extension Office in Louisburg, the seat of Franklin County.

The other discovery via the Franklin County Extension Office is 4-H. I was involved in 4-H throughout my childhood, showing chickens at the local Rosholt Fair back in Wisconsin. I'm excited that my own children will have a similar opportunity here in North Carolina. Cyprian is currently old enough for Cloverbud projects, and a few days ago he traveled to Wake Forest with other kids from the area to a paint studio. He's proud of his first project:

There is a local club in Bunn--the "Dirt Club," sponsored by Ray Family Farms. Cyprian won't be able to join until they open enrollment at the beginning of the next year. Nonetheless, he will be able to show goats at a 4-H fair in Henderson this coming September as an "at large" 4-H-er. We're excited about that--and he is too.

The last thing to reflect on at present is the neighborliness of our neighbors here. Besides Mr. Cheves stopping by with his gardening advice, just the other day I stopped by the hardware store in Bunn to find a socket with which to wind an old clock that I had purchased in Louisburg. It's a really cool clock, most likely from the woodwork dating to the mid or late nineteenth century:

Unfortunately, the winding mechanism fell right between two socket sizes. BUT, the gentleman at the hardware store said that he thought that he had an old clock key at home, and that he could bring it in tomorrow. To my surprise, though, he stopped by this evening to drop off the key. Now, Wisconsin is not the Northeast, but even back home I can't imagine a local hardware employee stopping by my house back home to drop something off. That's a positive reflection upon Southern hospitality, and upon the rural culture here in North Carolina in general. We're a long way from home, to be sure. But sometimes it's nice to be where we are.

"Say cheese!"

We've been milking our Nigerian goats for more than a year now. Though we've always known there are lots of things to do with the milk besides simply drinking it, they've always been a little intimidating for the learning curve they usually involve. But today, after watching YouTube videos and reading several accounts, I finally tried my hand at cheese-making.

I have fond memories of loading my plate with a few mozzarella balls every Friday during my two years studying in Italy, and, really, I haven't had anything that tastes like what I remember since that time. So, though it might not be the easiest of fresh (non-aged) cheeses, I had to start with mozzarella. The first step, of course, involved obtaining a gallon of fresh milk. It was harder than one might think since the boys consume the half-gallon we're currently getting each day practically as soon as it's out of the goats. Thankfully we have a nice store of frozen milk from the Rosemary's and the boys' time in Wisconsin in May. They got to drink thawed-out milk for two days until I had a full gallon to work with.

A gallon of the freshest Kleinshire goat milk

The next step involved adding some citric acid and carefully heating the milk to 90 degrees. Then I added rennet, the product that causes the milk to form into curds. It's a delicate process, and I must say that I was especially nervous when Rosemary came home an hour into the process and casually informed me that the thermometer was probably off by about ten degrees.

Nonetheless, a solid curd did form in the pot of milk after about an hour. I was able to cut the curd, heat it to 105 degrees, and then ladle the pieces into the colander.

The curd separated from the whey.

According to numerous Internet recipes, the next step involves evaporating most of the remaining whey by heating the curd in a microwave. But since I think this would zap many of the enzymes that make making cheese worth it in the first place (and since we don't have a microwave anyway), I opted for the time-consuming old fashioned method. This involved dipping balls of the curd in water heated to 170 degrees and squeezing and massaging the remaining whey out of them.

Dipping the mozzarella balls in hot water to get rid of every last bit of whey.

When the balls were finally stretchy, like mozzarella should be, then the process was finished.

Stretchy mozzarella, just as it should be.

In the end, I had five tiny balls of mozzarella cheese. Frankly, it was a lot of work, and I was surprised by how little cheese a gallon of milk yielded.

This is all the mozzarella that a gallon of milk yields. I think I'll experiment with a finer straining device to ensure that I'm getting all the curds separated from the whey.

BUT... Rosemary's discerning palate pronounced the cheese phenomenally good. A little more salt next time, though.

Rosemary's discerning palate pronounced the cheese good.

AND... the byproduct is not worthless. For starters, the whey can be heated a second time, to 200 degrees this time, and then strained.

The whey draining from the ricotta cheese.

This produces five or six ounces of ricotta cheese, to which I added some more salt, per Rosemary's instructions, and some Italian seasoning. It will taste delicious spread on some sort of bread tomorrow.

Ricotta cheese, the finished product.

AND... even the remaining byproduct is not worthless. The doubly strained whey can be used for any cooking endeavor, perhaps tomorrow's bread.

Cletus isn't so sure about the whey.

A lot of work, to be sure. But very tasty too!