Back to Normal - after a busy week

I would have blogged more this past few days except the camera was a few hundred miles away.
Well, we've had an interesting series of events that happened recently. I will try to fill you in on all that happened.

First of all, we were asked to play a few songs for the regional Marketplace for Kids event down in Bottineau last Tuesday. We chose a few gospel and a few instrumental songs songs to play there and practiced up for that. We were also asked to sing the Star Spangled Banner as the flags were presented in the morning.

It was a blessing for us to be able to pass the gospel message to more than 250 school children by singing songs like Dust on the Bible and I'll Put on a Crown and a few others. You could tell by the faces of some of the teachers there that they weren't too impressed by the topic.

We stayed there for a little while and then Dad, Mom, Andrew and David hopped into the previously packed car and headed off to Fargo for the homeschool convention. Jonathan and I took the truck home from there with the instruments and sound system.

I'll have to say, being home for a while without the rest of the family is not as much fun as it sounded like at first. Jonathan and I would have liked to go to the convention too, but there is so much to keep up on here that there was no way that we could find someone else to do it all.

I don't know a whole lot of what went on in Fargo as I wasn't there, but from what I heard from them when they got back (last night), it was a good convention. Kevin Swanson was the keynote speaker and along with other workshop speakers Buddy Davis was there. Yesterday morning they and our friends the Kenneys had a brunch with Buddy Davis and his wife. Dad had fun talking to him. He has done some exiting things such as participating in exploration trips in search of Noah's ark, digging up dinosaur bones, creating life-size model dinosaurs, working for Answers in Genesis, and lots more. He did some workshops on how he puts together a realistic dinosaur model that Andrew and David went to.

Andrew and David are busy reading some books they bought at the convention. I think they are all tired from the week. Dad and Mom visited with Mr. Swanson for a while also and heard some good things from him. We listen to his radio program quite frequently.

Another interesting thing that happened, was Dad flew to Washington D.C. for a Homeschool Legal Defence Association meeting that he attended. HSLDA payed for the flight and other expenses to get people from all over the country to learn from speakers there about the bills introduced in congress affecting homeschooling. All of the bills are, in some way or another, taking away the right for people to teach their children at home.

While there, Dad went to the capitol and sat in on some discussion in the House chamber about the "health care" bill and got to meet with some of the congressman's staff members about homeschooling. He also talked to Senator Dorgan (Senator from ND) briefly somewhere in the capitol. Dad took a few pictures but they haven't been developed yet. One was of the Supreme Court building as they drove by. He also saw the White House from a distance.

While Dad was out of town, Mom and the boys visited someone that used to be our neighbor

when we lived in Fargo. She is 103 years old! She even remembered David and Andrew's names after not seeing them for three years.

They also showed her our website and the pictures and she was really interested in all that was on there. Imagine what it was like 103 years ago! I think a lot has changed in her life time.

______________________________________________


That was all the interesting things that didn't happen here. Jonathan and I didn't get much time to do a lot of fun things (like playing music) while we were home. We had to keep up with all the little kids in the barn that needed tending to and just chores alone took all morning it seemed like. I spent a lot of time figuring out the mozzarella cheese and now I think I've got it down pretty well. We had been using milk that didn't have much cream on it for the cheese but now I know that it needs cream to be more moist. I wrote out the recipe that works for me for a reference. I quit using the microwave (thanks to Heather's note!) and got it to work just fine.


Mom made a whole bunch of food and muffins for us before she left so we were well fed. We did make pizza and bread sticks one evening and put more cheese than crust on the pizza. Delicious!


If you didn't read Jonathan's blog post about the coyote you had better check it out! If you're not tired of reading already.


There's another thing I'll be posting about soon - when I get around to taking a picture of it.

That's all for now.


Peter

All done kidding

This afternoon the last goat had two kids. We now have a herd of 22 goats, including the little guys. We had eight does that kidded within the last week and a half or so. None of them had triplets but a few of them only had one kid. We are a little disappointed in the male/female ratio. Nine bucks and three does. I guess there's some more chevon for the freezer!

We have not had any birthing problems (at least with does that are more than a year old) so we usually don't get up to check for kids in the night. At least not when it is this warm out! I think our mineral lick has also been helpful in preventing problems with birthing or worms. We use a recipe containing: Thorvin kelp, Redmond salt, diatomaceous earth, and copper sulfate, besides offering a sulfur lick on the side and adding Shaklee basic H in the water monthly just in case.

We finally took John (the buck) out of the main pen and stuck him all by his self on the other side of the fence. He was "blocking" the door into the barn so the cow couldn't get in to be milked.

I guess it's time to eat supper and then go milk. When that's over with I've got to finish making butter.

Peter

P.S. I made mozzarella again today with four gallons of milk and this time added lipase. It definitely made the cheese softer.

How many goats do you have? Ummm ahhhh hmmmmmm. . . I'll have to go check!

Yesterday a few of the goats kidded. The mothers were twins that were two years old. One of them had twins and the other had a single kid. One of the kids is not doing real well but is still alive so we have it in the house.

This morning when I went down to milk, I found the mother of the two previous mothers licking off her two kids that were born a few hours before. Those two are up and doing really well now. Just before lunch Jonathan went down to check on the goats and found another set of twins had been born by a different goat. I guess they all went into heat about the same time last fall. There is still four more goats that are expected to kid soon.

I haven't blogged for a while since I've been working on a handout for our cow-shares. If you want to see it, here is a link to the pdf: http://bartlettfarm.us/documents/whataboutcowsharesfinal.pdf

Let me know what you think of it, please!

Peter

I'm a Cheesemaker!

Hi everyone,

A few days ago Mom showed me how she makes mozzarella cheese. Yesterday she and I used up six gallons of milk in an afternoon making it. We started doing two gallons at a time (instead of one like the recipe calls for) in a bigger pot to save time and it seems to work just as well that way, not saying that it works well every time though. Now I'm looking forward to making other types of cheeses!


We do most of the heat treating in the microwave because it is faster and less messy but I did one double batch with the method of dipping it in the whey. The cheese turned out just as well for me that way as with the microwave but it took more time.


After I had done a few batches, Mom did one that turned out perfect! Really tasty. We've been keeping a record of how each batch turns out and what we did different so we can look back. There is still so many variables that it is hard to say what made the difference for sure, but Mom used less citric acid and one drop less rennet.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


A neighbor stopped by this afternoon and talked with us for a while. He likes to talk, but he did have something interesting to show us.


He works out in the oil fields in western ND and had brought back a little bottle of oil straight from the ground. It was runny, not thick at all or lumpy, and he said it stays runny even at negative 30 degrees.


He said it takes a month and three million dollars to drill an oil well but after that the money just rolls in. Somebody he met was making $1200 dollars a day from just letting an oil company put three rigs on their land and pumping. He also said that there is so much pressure in the ground they don't really do any pumping it just sprays out of the pipe system into their tanks.

The sample he had brought, he said would run in some tractors straight without any treatment needed. That would be nice! North Dakota doesn't really refine much oil so we don't get any lower gas prices by all the pumping.


Time to go get ready to milk,



Peter

You drink RAW MILK!

Peter

Fun Projects for a Saturday

Hello again,

I just came over here from starting the wood stove so I am still keeping an eye on it as I write.  The air pressure is low so there is not a very good draft. 

Today it was really nice out.  A good day to get a bunch done outside and upstairs.  Dad and David taped some sheetrock on the upstairs kitchen wall this morning and in the afternoon Dad installed a second window in the kitchen.  I did a bit more sanding on another cabinet and stained the base of one of the wall cabinets.  Jonathan was in the shop for part of the day re-wiring an old chick brooder hood.

Of course David had to get us all to have a snowball fight.  The snow was just right for snowballs, and along with the warmth, the driveway got a little slick.  Paulette and another friend came over this afternoon but had to try three times to get up the muddy hill at the base of our driveway.  Hopefully we will be able to get the road shaped and graded this spring, soon!  We are going to have it run up on the crest of the hill instead of where it is now so that it is a little bit more level. 

I guess it will be time to start some seeds pretty soon.  I think we know pretty much how much of everything we are going to need so it won't be too hard to plant it all.  Some of it will need to be started later on so it doesn't get too big before the hoop house is warmed up.

Peter

Busy Evening

I guess it is time for another post.

Yesterday evening got to be a little busy over here. I had one cow-share customer scheduled to pick up some milk and cream later in the day so I went over to vacuum at Metigoshe Ministries after lunch. When I got back, I went upstairs and varnished the first coat of lacquer on a cabinet and got the milk and cream ready for the person coming. It ended up being about 6:00 before she arrived but I gave her the milk and she left.

A little later, Jonathan came out to the building where I was working and told me that we had gotten a call from someone from Minot saying he was going to come later on and pick up his milk and eggs. The man said he said he would try to get here about eight p.m. We got a few gallons ready for him to pick up and put them in the refrigerator upstairs.

Then, we got a call from someone that was on the road a few miles away saying that he was coming to pick up 4 quarts of cream for a friend of his. Thankfully we had all the cream ready and he picked it up and left. It was just about time to milk, so I had Jonathan get the milking stuff ready to go for me while I was out giving the man his cream.

Later on the other guy came and picked up milk and eggs and then left.

I sure am glad that we had enough milk and cream on hand to supply everybody!

Peter

How to keep a cat from thinking out-of-the-box

Hello, 

A few nights ago I woke up to the sound of little kittens crying for their mamma.  Our house cat, "Funny Face" had a litter of five kittens a few days before but we had kept her and her kittens in a cardboard box in the bathroom.  She had quietly carried them one at a time under my bed a few days before.  They hadn't made any noise for the first few nights so we left them where they were.  When they started making noise, we decided we should take them back to their box in the bathroom. 

The cat didn't like the idea very well and every time we would put them in the box she would drag them back under the bed.  We tried stacking different things in the path where she would have to go to get to her spot but she found other ways in--squeeze in between the potato sacks and boxes.

Andrew finally came up with the cure.  He set a battery powered radio tuned to static near where her nest was.  She decided it wasn't very pleasant any more and has stayed in the box ever since.

Peter

Oh wring

Hello,

Yesterday we finally got a few O rings in the mail for the cream separator. We tried looking in Minot for someone that had the right size but each place we looked at said to try a different store and we didn't find any the right size. Dad found one online at: http://www.superiorseals.com/. We had to have an order of more than five dollars so we ordered a few of each in different materials.

This morning I tried fitting them where they would go on the cream separator and one of the sizes fits perfectly. We had gotten two of that type so now we have a spare.  If you have a old DeLaval cream separator that needs a new seal for the cone shaped spinner, get this one: Buna-N 427 Size O-ring, product no: ob-70-427 from that website. It may not be a food-grade rubber material, but we will use it until we find a better one.

We got two different sizes and three different materials.  The set on the right was the size that fit best.

I poured water through to test if it leaked.  Thankfully it didn't!  When we have a few more gallons of milk to skim we'll try running it through and see how it works for real.

Peter

Fixing up cabinets

Hello!

This afternoon I went upstairs to glue in one of the side panels of a cabinet that I've been fixing up. We were given a set of oak-faced cabinets from some friends that live down near Bismarck a few years ago but until now they hadn't been fixed up or arranged to fit where we would like them. The carpenter that built them built them in place and glued them to the wall so there was a little bit of damage that happened when they were pried off the walls. We just need to replace a few broken boards and add a few sides to some of the cabinets and they turn out really nice!

We found a way to position the counters and cabinets so that we don't have to do much cutting of the sections and it works out pretty nice. There is also a nice sink that will go under the window in the kitchen, and a dish washer spot is already there so we can install the dishwasher that came with everything. I think that will be nice. It has been so long since we lived in town and had a dishwasher that I don't think I remember how to use one!

Jonathan has worked on a separate counter/cabinet and had to add two sides so he has practice with staining and varnishing. I'll have to ask him for help to show me how to finish the end wall on the cabinet I'm working on. The one I was working on is the side that is being clamped in the picture below. While we were working on the cabinets, Dad was working on sheet rocking the kitchen wall. We haven't tried our hand at mudding and taping sheet rock yet, but we are just about ready to start.

This afternoon a homeschool family stopped by to look at what goats we have for sale.  They just wanted to see what we have before they decide if they want to buy any from us.

Goodnight,

Peter

Quick post

This will be pretty short. I'm supposed to go get into bed right now...

On Saturday we played a 45 minute music program in Westhope at the nursing home there. It is a little less than a hour drive to get there from here. We are going to try to record a few of the songs from our program before we get out of practice again. It takes quite a while of practice before you can feel like you are reasonably good at a certain song. We still are a long way from sounding anything like the bands that we enjoy listening to!

I have been figuring out what we will need to do to fence some pasture for the animals in the spring. We will probably start with a 10 acre electric fence beside the driveway.  We are going to fence a few large paddocks that are partly in the woods for pasturing the pigs next year too.

Eventually I would like to expand our cattle herd and implement the rotational grazing ideas that Joel Salatin talks about that would make our land so much more productive!

Continued another time.

Peter

Guess what came in the mail today...

...our business cards! I think they turned out really nice. We came up with a few different versions of cards (Dad made one, Andrew made one and I made one) and then I combined a little of all three and came up with this one. We edited it and it looks real nice. We also ordered two small stainless steel carriers to keep them in so they don't get bent in your pocket. A bent business card is not very impressive.

Now I feel like giving one to everyone we see!

Peter

To Lansford!

We just got back a little bit ago from the annual Republican dinner held in Lansford ND.  We played a few songs for entertainment during the meal at noon.  We had to all pack into the car and fit all the instruments and the sound system into the trunk and cargo carrier.  We can fit the two speakers and two microphone stands on the the top of the car but we have to cram the 3/4 size bass and the other instruments in the trunk and the sound board with all the wires. 

Andrew and I played chess on the way over but had to start over a few times when we hit a bump and the pieces fell off the board!

Lansford is a pretty small town with not too many stores on main street.

We were going to play for a certain amount of time but the panel discussion lasted longer than expected so we played during the meal.  Nobody seemed to pay much attention but we played anyway. 

We had the usual meal: meat, potatoes, corn and gravy.  Whenever there is a meal offered somewhere, it is usually that same combination!

Governor Hoeven came for part of the meeting today and stayed for a while.



Just as we were ready to hop into the car to leave, I slammed the trunk door and felt my thumb pop.  I guess I sprained it again!  This is the fourth time this year.  Jonathan put a comfrey/slippery elm poultice on it and I have that on my hand right now.  Dad read out of one book we have that if you press on the most painful spot until you can't stand it any longer and hold onto it for a minute, then let off, you will feel less pain.  I tried it, but you only feel less pain afterward because you quit pressing on it!

Butter...

I just thought I'd say I made butter this morning and timed the churn to see how long it took. We got two and a quarter pounds of butter in 4 minutes and 45 seconds out of a gallon of cream. I think that is pretty fast but I'm not sure.

I don't think we are getting the water/buttermilk out of the butter very thoroughly. Does anyone have any hints? We have a butter paddle and a book that talks about pressing and folding but I'd like to have someone else show me how to do it right.

The kid is doing pretty good now. It is getting a little more playful and independent.

Peter

Adventures in the Turtle Mountains

It all started a couple days ago when we heard that we were going to get a change in weather. I needed to go vacuum on Monday (today) and there were some people coming to have a tour of our place in the afternoon Monday, so I decided that it would be better to get it over with as soon as possible. I don't usually go to vacuum on Sunday, but I think that God arranged everything to work out really well!


Yesterday morning I was not feeling like going over to work, but after thinking about it I figured that I'd just get it done so I wouldn't have to worry about getting snowed in. I am not licensed to drive alone yet so Jonathan rode with me in the truck. We thought we'd take the truck so we would be sure not to get stuck but I have only driven the truck on the road once before, even though I have had plenty of practice and can manage the gears pretty well. The truck tends to take a long time to warm up (choke needs adjusting) and so when we got to the mailbox it stalled and wouldn't start up again. Jonathan got out and propped the choke open with his Gerber and I started the truck again. We drove for a little ways further and then the truck died again. Jonathan got out and held the choke open again and we continued on. It didn't quit again until we got to the church. I told Jonathan I could call home and tell Mom he was on his way back and to check on him if he wasn't back soon. I have a routine that I follow each time and is doesn't include any phone calls until I'm all done, so by the time I walked inside and punched in my time card I forgot about calling!

Well, that was all I knew until I had finished vacuuming and washed the kitchen floor and called home for someone to come pick me up. Mom answered the phone and said, "They had to go pull him out again." "Who?" I asked. "Oh, you didn't hear about it I suppose. Dad and Andrew and David had to go help Jonathan pull a guy out of the ditch. Can you just hang on for a bit?" I said I could wait and then finished cleaning up. It took a while and then Dad came driving up in the car to pick me up. He said that I missed out on the adventure!

I wasn't there to see how it all happened but from what I gathered, Jonathan was on his way home (the truck didn't stall at all) and came upon an older looking man in a pickup truck with a plow on the front, stuck on the side of the road about 3/4 of a mile from our driveway. Earlier in the day, Andrew had stuck an extra grain scoop shovel in the back of the truck along with the other one that was already in there and so there was two good shovels for digging along with a logging chain and my cover-alls (that I brought in case we needed to dig ourselves out if we got stuck). Jonathan offered to help pull the guy's truck out of the ditch with our truck and so they hooked up. They dug out a lot of the snow that was around it using the two shovels and pulled on the truck. It was on a pretty steep ditch and the wheels of the truck that were off the road didn't want to come back up onto the road. By this time the brothers and Mom at home began to wonder about Jonathan so Dad took the car and Andrew and David and they drove down the road and found Jonathan shoveling. If I would have remembered to call, Jonathan would have had help sooner! With some more digging and pulling they got the truck out of the ditch.

Now the truck is out and Dad turns the car around and heads home with Andrew, leaving David with Jonathan. Jonathan pulls our truck over to the side of the road so the truck they pulled out (red colored truck) could get around him on the road. The red truck pulled out around our truck (the blue truck) and pulled too far to the side and slid into the ditch again on the other side of the road!

Now Dad is back at home and Jonathan is there shoveling again until it looks like he could pull the red truck out for the second time. The other guy (turns out to be maintenance man for the restaurant near by) offered to help but was already tired from shoveling so he needed to rest. So Jonathan began shoveling and cleaned a lot of the snow away from the red truck and hooked our logging chain to it. The tow belt that the other man had had broken because it was old and frayed so he used our chain. Then, to add to the excitement, Jonathan hooked the chain too short, so our truck was not on the middle of the road. With a jerk, (I am just guessing at this part) our truck strained backward and slid off into the ditch.

Now there are two trucks in the ditch and nobody to pull them out! Jonathan and David started digging and had to dig a path in the snow about 30 yards long in order to get our truck out. Now that our truck is out Jonathan headed home to get some help and loaded a bunch of big eighty-pound logs into the back of the truck for extra weight and went back out to the red truck. Dad took the car in case it would be needed but it wasn't. Now they dug out the snow and it was a simple matter to get the truck out of the ditch. The guy (I don't know his name) offered to buy the whole family a tenderloin dinner at the restaurant he works at with meat "THIS THICK!" he said holding out his fingers about an inch apart.

I wrote this story based on what Jonathan told me, so some parts might have happened a little differently than I wrote it.

Now there was a lot that could have made this not happen like it did. One would be if I had decided not to go vacuum on Sunday (which would have been easy to do), two would be if I had gone a bit earlier or later, three would be if I had called everything might have gotten done faster but I think God had had it all planned out just right!
Peter

She's doing fine now...

The goat kid is doing pretty well now... Her mother is only giving at most a pint of milk at a time but the kid is able to walk around and nurse off of it's mother. Yesterday afternoon I'd noticed that some of the goats looked like they were ready to kid but when I was heading down to the barn to milk last night I heard a kid crying. It had just been born and was wet and cold but it had already stood up. We brought it in the house to warm up and it was able to walk around. It's not much bigger than a cat right now!

Henry was happy to help clean the milk off of the kid's face after we had fed it.

Dad and David went to pick up the azure standard order this afternoon and I got the gallon jars for milk finally. You don't always know if what you order is going to come until you go to pick it up and we had tried to get those jars in last month's order but they were out of stock for some reason. Peter

A Pleasant Surprise

Hello!

I just came in from outside helping my brother Andrew pull an old moto-ski snowmobile out of the snowdrift by the semi trailer. He wants to get it going now using parts from the other two we have.

I guess you might be wondering what our pleasant surprise was? Thursday evening we got a call from the Bornneman family saying they were going to be in the area the next day to look at a grain cleaning rig near Landa. We generally don't get to see many of our friends very often so we were exited to get some company! They said they were coming in the afternoon and that Andrew Bornneman would like to stay at our house until Sunday. Of course we said that would be fine with us and Mr. Bornneman and Cora, Jacob and Andrew all came for a short visit the next afternoon. They stayed to visit for a little bit and then had to leave to get home before chore time so we didn't really get to visit a whole lot.

We all had a fun time with Andrew and he helped us figure out what we need to do to get the old cream separator going again as well as fixed a few things on the snowmobile to make it run better. He sure knows what he's doing when working on engines! We played some games in the evenings and music too. Thanks for coming and staying with us Andrew!
This afternoon Dad and Jonathan were going to town so I rode along with them to go vacuum at Metigoshe Ministries. I usually get dropped off there to work but when we drove in we could tell there were a lot of cars in the parking lot so I ran in and checked to see if I should vacuum. Nope. I will have to come back on Wednesday. There was a bunch of people quilting and something going on in the church area so I ended up riding along to town with Dad and Jonathan. I can't remember the last time I went to town, but I think it must have been almost two months ago or so. I'd rather be home working on something here.

Peter

I just came in from milking... One of the goats had a kid this evening and it seems to be doing just fine. It was a goat that was born this spring so both the mother and the kid are small.

Petzl, TIKKA XP Head lamp

Here's a few pictures of the head light.

It tilts ratchets down if you want to aim towards the ground more.

With the diffuser...

...without the diffuser. When it is not in use it slides to the side.

Here's the booster light (brightest) without the diffuser.

This is the same light only more spread out. It is hard to see much difference when it is so light out already.

It's a great tool to have when it dark out!

Peter

Thank you Everybody!

I guess I should start by saying that yesterday we celebrated my 16th birthday! I opened a few gifts in the morning and I had a good day overall. I thought Jonathan came up with a neat way for me to have to search for one of the presents from him and my other two brothers. He gave me a box with a little piece of paper in it that said:

"Thou must do what thou art told.
Even if thou must be in the cold.
Search a brother's boot!"

And then when I found a slip of paper in one of the boots in the entry way the note said:

"Smart though thou must be,
even now thou dost not see.
What dost now give thee light?"

There was a piece of paper on the light fixture above me that read:

"Oh man, how thou wilt proceed?
You can only go where'er I lead.
Advance to a lonely quad of wheels."

There was another note in the cab of the truck:

"I give thee heat, but I am cold.
I eat what'er you feed me.
To guess my nature may be bold,
But it is I who holds the key!
Delve into the midst of my belly.

I found the note in the barrel stove in the shop:

"Ha! Ha! Though now you art at my side,
I still will not disclose.
But search the dust to find a guide,
it is there where you will learn to follow your nose.

There was a note in the sawdust under the table saw that read:

"Follow your nose, follow your nose.
I really do mean what I say!
Are you impatient? Do you be weary?
Well don't wet this last bit put you down.

I am part of a circle.
I make things better that take me.
Into one end, out the other.
It's really quite simple, you see.
1/4 of this. 3/4s of that,
maybe a 1/2 cup of some ______
When it's all together, a taste good (to some).
Look in my plastic white soft container!
(dig below the surface now...)"

On each of the notes there was a letter and when they were all put together it read, "GRAIN."
So I ended up finding my present buried under a layer of grain in one of the grain totes in the farm building! Thank you Jonathan, Andrew and David!

We had extra special meal of pizza for supper last night too. There is a lot of work that went into it but here's a few of the points that made it special. It was made with mostly organic (at least as far as we can tell) ingredients, whole wheat, homegrown tomato sauce, cheese (lots of it!) made from our milk, delicious pork sausage from our pig and even a few of the spices were grown right out in our garden! When you wash it down with a glass of milk you wonder how we were able to like eating store bought pizza! Thank you to the Grandparents too for their gifts to me as well!

Now I guess I'll write what came in the mail today... My Uncle sent me a present and said on the note I'd better update my blog! So I tell you about what I got. It's something I've wanted/needed for making chores easier. When I go out to milk, at least right now, it is dark out so I need light. I've been using a very inexpensive 5-bulb LED headlight, that only one of the bulbs works, when I go down to the barn to milk. Well now I have upgraded! My uncle gave me a very nice super bright LED head light that has all sorts of different settings on it for brightness.

I tried it out tonight and it worked really well. It has a sliding light diffuser on it, that spreads out the beam of the light to illuminate a wider area, besides having 4 different light options. Normal brightness, medium brightness, and a low setting. It also has a flashing setting plus a booster light button that is brighter than the normal one! I really like it. Thank you Uncle Mark! It also tells you how much battery is left by a small blinking light that changes to orange and eventually red when it's getting low. It is supposed to last 120 hours on the lowest light setting (perfect for milking) and it runs on three AAA batteries.

I will probably put a few pictures of it on here later...

Peter

Bartlett Farm on the Web!

This will be a short post because I've been staring at a screen so much lately I can't stand to be on the computer much longer!

You'll have to check out the new website, bartlettfarm.us to see all the products we have available. Dad and I have been working on it mostly. There are some things that will be made easier to understand later, but the basic idea is there. To order, people will have to print out the order form and send it to us through the mail because we won't have a online shopping cart for a while yet.

I thought I should write now so you wouldn't think I quit!

Peter

More milk, less time

We have been getting a little over 5 gallons of milk each day now and I'm getting pretty quick at it too! I strip her out in a little more than 20 minutes.

We made two churns of butter this morning. We got a old electric butter churn from someone and it is made not to use paddles. The butter is churned by a little metal tube with four holes at the top that spins at the speed of the motor, it is not geared down at all. We put three quarts of cream in and had a little over two pounds of butter in 8-10 minutes. It sure beats shaking it in jars!

We are starting to see the beginning of a storm that is supposed to hit us tomorrow. It is pretty windy and foggy out right now.

This is me playing a guitar tune called "Song for Emily". I learned it from a instructional dvd by a guitar player Kenny Smith. There are a bunch more complicated songs I have yet to learn because they are a lot harder. I would like to learn them all before spring comes.

I took these pictures of Samson today...

I thought the second one was cute! He is trying to get me to throw his deflated basket ball!

Peter

Tuesday afternoon

This afternoon I went down the hill to spread some fresh straw in the barn for the cow and goats to bed down in. It is supposed to get cold with a big snow storm so the animals will be inside more.

Our barn we built with a few new ideas we had to make cleaning it out easier. We made some of the walls removable so we can customize the layout of the barn. We had the back corner divided off for the cow to be in but it was only 10x10 feet and she didn't have enough room to do much moving around. This afternoon we just un-nailed a few boards and moved the divider wall so now she has a 10x20 foot area where we will keep her when it gets colder out.

Peter

Snowball weather

Today was sunny and warm like yesterday.

The snow by the house was good for snowballs so me and David practiced our snowballing skills this afternoon. I started out pretty bad and couldn't hit a five gallon bucket at 10 yards (David said I hit ten times out of a hundred) but I increased my accuracy and hit it a little better later on.

Dad and Mom went to town for a home school gathering with some other people and were gone most of the afternoon.

I have to go get ready to milk now.

Peter

Sunny days

Hello,

I guess it has already been a few days since I wrote last! The weather has been really nice so we've been outside.

A few days ago I went down to the barn and found John (the goat) with his horns all wound up in the carpet hanging on the door of the barn. I had to use my gerber to cut part of the carpet that was wedged between his horns in order to get him untangled. He was wound up pretty tight.

Sandy is doing well. When it got really cold her teats got a little scabbed on the tips because it they got cold (-60 with the wind chill) but now they have healed up and are fine. Last night and a few nights before I only took about 30 minutes to milk. That included walking to the barn and back and washing and dipping the teats before and after milking and drying everything off after that. I was noticing how shiny and healthy her coat looks and that is due to the mineral mix and copper that we've been giving her. I'll post more about our experiences with copper sulfate in another blog post sometime.

Samson likes to ride in the truck with us and watch out the windows. He doesn't like the car as much because he can't sit up and look around but he loves going for a ride in the truck. In the picture we were going down the road a ways to dump the leftover goat skins and heads on the back road for the coyotes.

In case you're wondering why my blog got messed up it was because I tried to upload a different template and lost the old one and now I can't get the header to come back. Sometimes blogger is frustrating....

Peter

Goat butchering

Hello again,

We went out after lunch and cut up a few of the goat kids that were born this spring. It went pretty quick and we were done with five of them in a little over an hour. I gutted two of them and Jonathan did the other three. We carried them up from the barnyard and hung them on the gambrel beside the house to skin them. Our friend Steve came over yesterday and sharpened a bunch of our knives for us on his electric sharpener and then came over here to help us with the goats today also.

Four of the goats were young bucks that we had wanted to get rid of for a while but we were waiting for a nice day to do it. I don't think we could have asked for a nicer day! It was around 35 degrees this afternoon so our hands and feet didn't feel too cold. The other goat was a little doe that we kept for us in the freezer. The bucks weren't castrated so we didn't want to keep the meat.

We "dispatched" the goats with the .22 in the back of the head and then slit the throat to let them bleed out. After the animal is dead it doesn't seem to me that it is any different than a pile of meat with the hair on. We have a handy little saw we use for cutting the bone between the rear legs and sawing through the rib cage that makes gutting really easy. It has a plastic end on the tip so that there is very little chance of puncturing the intestines.

Speaking of gutting, this summer while we were butchering chickens Jonathan and I timed ourselves to see how fast we could gut a chicken and do a fairly good job. I think my fastest was a minute and a half and Jonathan got one done in a minute and 20 seconds. We had quite a few to practice on!

Peter

A bit about our Goats

Well, today turned out to be a pretty nice day. We don't have a thermometer outside that works so I'm not sure how warm it got but it felt nice! We spent this morning singing some songs and did a Bible study focused on 1Peter chapter two. We have been working together on 1Peter chapter one to memorize it but I think I've only gotten 12 verses down.

I was thinking of what to write about and decided I'd say a few things about our goats.

Everybody seems to think that all billy goats butt. None of the bucks we've ever had have even tried to butt any of us! We have had quite a few different ones and they are all either really friendly, or they keep away from us (I prefer they stay away!).

Also, everyone seems to think that all goats are hard to keep in. This is only true for unhappy goats! (in our experience). We have had goats that will stay in a pen that the bedding has built up so high that there is only a 18 inch fence keeping them in and they don't jump over. I guess that when they have got plenty of water and food they don't feel like going anywhere.

Through all of this summer, we had the dairy goats held in by one strand of electric wire (that was not electrified!) and only had a few times where one (the same one every time) would lead the rest back to the barn when it started raining. Goats don't like rain.

I guess we did have one little billy goat that wouldn't respect the electric fence (even with 7000 volts) and would get out pretty frequently but he will be butchered soon.

We have pretty friendly goats. They have all got their personalities too. It is funny so see how they all react differently to things. Some get mad, some get curious, and some run away!

The goats have their pecking order just like any other animal. The bosses get the first of everything and the rest have to wait. It seems that the low end goats aren't allowed to fight back when they are banged around and just have to get out of the way.

John (the big buck) is the highest ranking goat and gets his way with everything. He has got a set of horns on him that are probably about 30 or so inches across and he rubs them on anything he can get his hooves on! OSB sheathing doesn't last long when they are constantly scraped on with sharp horns.

Peter

Warmer weather hopefully

I just came in from outside to warm up my feet. It was warmer today but still not really warm so Andrew and I were out in the shop. Yesterday we were out there too and started the wood stove that Andrew and Jonathan put in. That warmed up the shop pretty well. It is made of a 30 gallon oil drum with legs and a door that my Grandpa welded together. I think is supposed to get warmer for the next few days. I hope so!

A few days ago I came in from milking in the morning and I couldn't feel the ends of my fingers! It wasn't seriously frozen but just cold so I let them warm up by the wood stove.

We've been doing a little more practicing music together lately, getting ready for a few places we will be playing at in February.

Mom has been making cheese today to use up some of the leftover milk that is in the refrigerator. After making one type of cheese (we call it pizza cheese because it melts) she uses the whey and boils it down and makes another type of cheese called mysost. It is a brown cheese that can be made with cows milk or goats milk. There are a lot of Norwegian people around here that like it because it was originated in Norway and the only place to buy it is mail order from Norway! I guess they charge a dollar an ounce for it if you buy it. I like it on toast for breakfast with a little raspberry jam on top of it and it goes down real well with a bowl of fresh yogurt!

Peter

What is it?

The light from above bounces off a shiny object. It is sitting quietly on the floor to my left, a dark shadow covering the side close to the box of potatoes next to it. It is comprised of mostly a cylinder, fitted with various attachments clinging to the outside in a useful arrangement. On the straight sides of the cylinder, close to the floor, there is a depression in it's surface that continues all the way around and smoothly slopes back to the surface of the object. Approximately eighteen inches off the floor the sides of this curious object make a sudden bend inward, forming a sloping cone for a distance of about three inches, and then continues upward.

From the floor to its top, this metallic object measures about twenty inches, including a dome shaped piece made of the same material that can be fitted into the wide opening on the top of this object. Attached to this inverted dome is a pipe, bent to form an arc reaching from one side to the other which makes the placement of the dome onto the main compartment quick and easy.

There are two solid bars attached firmly to the edge of the main compartment, lined up directly across from each other and two hinged latches located near the rim of the opening.

The interior of this object is similar to the outside except that the finish is not as reflective. There is no seam in the construction of the main compartment and it is very clean.

What is it?

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think it is.

Peter

Risk: game of global domination

Hello,

I guess it's been a while since I wrote last so I will sit down and write now.

I'm in the middle of a desperate game of Risk right now. I guess I'm not doing too bad though, I have conquered all of north and south America and am moving east through northern Africa. I have fortified my continents pretty well too and now I just captured all of Africa! Now everyone else (Jonathan, Andrew and David) are starting to conspire against me to wipe my army off the board. Next time it is David's turn he will be trading in his set of three cards for 45 additional armies and will attempt to re-take the land I conquered. We don't play Risk too often but when we do it can take a few days to finish it. We have been working on this game for five days now!

The weather is supposed to get a lot colder now starting tonight so we will keep most of the animals inside the barn for now. We don't want frozen teats. We started using a homemade teat dip for sanitizing the cow's udder and teats before and after milking. We found the recipe at http://www.fiascofarm.com/. There is a lot of helpful information on there and it is more focused on goats but the information is similar for cows.

We had some trouble with the wood stove pipe rusting (because it was cheap galvanized tin stuff) but this afternoon dad set up some triple wall pipe and got the wood stove running again which is nice because the floor heat was costing us quite a bit to run. With floor heat there isn't any place for you to warm up when you come in from outside because all the heat is the same through the whole house.


Just now as the sun is going down I can see "sun dogs" on each side of the sun so it must be getting colder out.

Peter

End of 2009

Well, today is the last day in the history of the world that I can blog and say it is 2009! For our family there is not really anything special about today.



Dad just got done frying a double batch of donuts so we ate some and we will freeze the rest. They are great as a snack or for breakfast. I was over at Metigoshe Ministries for a while this afternoon to take down tables and chairs from a funeral this morning, vacuum, then set up 120 chairs for the church.


Andrew has been creating some pretty neat 3D drawings on a new program we got called "Blender."

You start out with a mesh frame and construct the basic shapes and then you can add fill colors and lighting and textures and look at it in 3D. I guess you can animate your drawings as well and make a movie of them. It is a pretty complicated program to use but once you figure out how to run everything it goes pretty fast.

This is the screen you edit and shape the drawings with. You can create landscapes and all sorts of different drawings with it.

Peter

P.S. I think I'll wait to blog until next year :0) !

Back to work...

Hello again,

We had a fun few days with my Uncle and Aunt who drove out here from Minnesota on Monday. They live a few miles down the road from where my grandparents live where Mom grew up in Carlton MN. We played games with them and visited mostly. They hadn't been here since the upstairs of the house was just being shelled in so there was a lot to show them around the farm.

Today I had to go to Metigoshe ministries to vacuum again after going yesterday and I will need to go tomorrow also. They had an event called "Nights of Christmas" held there and there was a lot of stuff for me to vacuum up and sweep off the kitchen floor. There is quite a few spruce trees set up in the church sanctuary that are always dropping needles on the floor so today I used the shop-vac to clean up all of them.

We had the snowplow come up and plow us out (finally) but he didn't get it plowed all the way up to the house so we had to blow the snow for a driveway to get the car down to the front door.

Milking the cow has been getting easier now that my hands are getting used to it. Sandy has been giving us about 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 gallons each time. I'm still slow at milking her (not fast enough for it to foam) and it's been taking me about an hour to strip her out. We are getting about a quart of cream off of each one gallon jar that has been sitting for 12 hours. We haven't made ice cream yet but we've been using our own butter. This afternoon Mom made a batch of simple soft cheese that we tried melting on pizza for supper. Taste was perfect! I got the first pieces because I had to go milk.

You can't beat the taste of pizza made with pizza sauce made with homegrown tomatoes, crisp crust made with (mostly) freshly ground whole wheat, locally grown organic beef and fresh homemade cheese!

I guess it's time to go to bed now so I will be done with this blog post...

Peter

Truck stuck

This afternoon I was supposed to go vacuum at the church but we're stuck here until the grader makes it through. We shoveled the truck out and loaded the back with a stack of heavy firewood and tried to make it but even a four wheel drive pickup won't go through an 20" snowdrift very well. We shoveled some but that didn't work for the whole driveway. If the plow makes it in tomorrow I will go then.

Andrew started up the snow blower and cut through the snowbanks by the house for a walkway. The temperature is not too far below zero but the wind makes it seem worse.

Dad went down the driveway to check the road to see if the county plowed that but they hadn't so far.

The animals in the barn are doing well. I've been milking Sandy at 7:00 and we've been getting a little over two gallons each time. There has been a little blood in the milk but it is clearing up now. We are looking forward to making cheese, butter, ice cream and more, all things that don't taste the same if you use goat's milk.

Yesterday we sent in a few orders for some stainless steel milking equipment to keep the milking process clean and sanitized. If you're planning on getting anything stainless steel be prepared to pay an arm and a leg for it! As soon as we feel sure about the milking procedure and system for cooling we will start to advertise locally for selling cow shares. We have most everything figured out for how to handle the contract and bottling and pickup of the milk.

Calliope stays outside even through the snowstorms so this morning she came up to me and asked me to help her scrape the ice off her coat. :-) She is the boss of the barnyard. Second in command is the billy goat John. The the cow and the other 15 goats pretty much stay out of their way.

This is a logo I drew on the computer to go on the post cards we plan on sending out for advertising. We may even have nice labels on the milk bottles later on. We will start with regular one gallon jars to trade back and forth each week when people come here to pick up their cow's milk.

That's all for right now- Peter

How much can you learn in 24 hours?

Hello,

If you've checked any of my family member's blogs you have probably heard our heifer had her calf. Well, she had it. This afternoon it started showing signs of pneumonia and not long after that it ended up dieing. Even when it was first delivered it did not make any effort to raise itself and we probably should have warmed it up quicker than we did. We decided to leave it in the barn for an hour at least and see if its mother would get up and dry it off. Sandy the mother didn't want to get up at all and we read that early signs of milk fever can start to show soon after birth and so we suspected she might be down for that reason.

We took the little bull calf up to the house to warm it up and we thought it might recover. It was shivering a little so we covered it in blankets and it warmed up some. We milked out a little colostrum from the cow and used some powdered stuff and tried to get some down the calf but it wasn't able to suck on its own from a bottle. We tried using a save-a-kid syringe and that worked and we got about 2 quarts of colostrum down it in a few hours.

We have had some experience with milk fever in goats before and knew what to do and had the IV supplies on hand so it went quick and easy for the cow. Even if it wasn't milk fever for sure we thought we'd try it anyway to be safe. I have read that jersey cows can have more problems with milk fever because of the high milk to body weight ratio and it isn't rare to see it it soon after birth. After the (subcutaneous) injection was done the cow seemed to perk up a lot and was back to normal again.

We didn't feel we could leave the calf alone until we had fed it enough so Jonathan, Dad and I worked with it and ended up going to bed at 4:15 this morning. I had been up since 6:45 yesterday morning to get ready to go help with the sheep so I was up for about 21 hours. Probably a record for me. I chose not to look at the clock to see how late it was and nobody told me what time it was so I didn't feel too tired until about 1:30 and then was glad to get some rest when we were done. Jonathan and Dad were up every hour after that to check on the calf but I didn't wake up until it was time to go out and milk out the cow again.

This afternoon Dad and David decided to run to town (not literally) and pick up some things from Nodak and see what the vet carried for supplies. A little while after he left we saw the calf start to get a lot worse and called the store and asked them if they had seen Dad there. The owner and most of the employees know who we are and got Dad on the end of the line for us to talk to. We had looked up pneumonia and saw a we needed to have vitamin C injections to give the calf and asked him to pick that up and come back home soon. The calf died fifteen minutes before he got here so it was too late.

I guess the conclusion of the birth was:

not to calve for the first time in December, to feed a more rounded mineral supplement going up to calving and have a higher percent calcium content, warm up the calf immediately even if it is pretty warm outside, keep vitamin C injections an hand as well as everything else needed and keep learning everything you can about cows and calving.

We'll do better next time,

Peter