Goodbye Mary Jane

Today we lost a very dear member of Mediocre Acres. Mary Jane died after a very short illness. Our best guess was she died of polio as a complication of bloat. I miss her so much.

She was my very first goat and I had her from the time she was 12 weeks old. She was less than 2 when she died. I love how she used to baaa every time I opened the door. It was so regular that we used to joke that that was the sound the door made. Opening the door to silence will take some getting used to. 

She was also a frequent visitor to the kitchen. If the door was not firmly closed she would wander in like she was one of the dogs! 

She spent the last hours before she died snuggling with her daughters. I believe they all knew her time was near. Daphne and Velma nuzzled her and would not leave her side. 

The girls are quite obviously missing their mom. Their appetite has been bad and they spend most of the day just snuggling each other. 

I am grateful for Mary Jane and what a ambassador for her species she has been. I will always have goats, most likely Nubians. Thank you Mary Jane. You have made me the crazy goat lady. You will be missed. 

Juno

On the 10th of October I found a little shepherd mix in my front yard. I thought she had a sticker in her back foot because she was limping. I went to pull the sticker out and noticed that her hip was dislocated. I brought her inside and put her all over Facebook. Very shortly I was contacted by Sierra Vista Animal Control and told that there was an open case from three months ago concerning the dog. She had had her leg broken in 3 places and her hip dislocated. The owners not only failed to get her the proper medical care, they then disappeared with the dog. This little dog had had a broken leg for over 3 months! I contacted a local dog rescue called Little League Rescue. I offered to foster her if they could pay for her medical bills. She settled into our house immediately. The kids named her Juno, after the Roman goddess. 

She had her back leg amputated on the 30th and is recovering amazingly. Two days after she had her surgery, she was able to chase down and pin one of our ducks (the duck was fine). One of the ladies at the feed store said that dogs are born with three legs and a spare. Juno just didn't need her spare anymore! 

We thought she looked like she was dressed up like the leg lamp from Christmas Story. 

The goats were pretty interested in her cone. 

She is the sweetest dog ever. She gets along wonderfully with dogs, cats and she adores our kids. If you know anyone looking to adopt please let me know. Also, the rescue is looking for donations to help offset her medical bills. If you can help, please visit their Facebook donation page or call Cochise Animal Hospital (the hospital that did the surgery) at 520-432-3296. 

Water Debacle

We bought an old house. It was built in the late '60's. But we liked it that way. We are not fans of the open floor plan that is popular in all new houses these days. Maybe that is because it is easier to contain mess and noise and chaos if there are walls dividing the rooms. I don't know, but great rooms stress me out!  

We love our slightly haphazardly assembled home. We like that it was built by a man (who's son we have met) and not by a developer. We like that, by coincidence, we have met every previous owner of this house (all 4 of them!). We DO NOT like that the components of our house are original (read: old) or of crappy "flip house" quality. We are trying to slowly (and without accruing more debt) replace the cheap with quality. 

We were hurried along in that respect when the water company contacted me and told me that my bill was over $200 this month and that, in addition, I have used over 44,000 gallons of water in a week. Obviously I had a leak. We have been experiencing torrential rain these past few weeks so this "lake" of water I should be seeing from the leaky pipe was being hidden by the lakes of water the rain has left. I had no idea where this leak was.

I contacted a plumber and when a 17 year old kid stepped out of the truck I was a little apprehensive. Zack was wonderfully professional, helpful, and was great about the fact the kids wanted to watch every move he made. He was able to locate the leak, unfortunately it was one of many...down the length of a pipe about 1/2 an acre long. 

This was the first place he found it. I didn't have my camera when he showed it to me and water was shooting out in all directions. This was after we turned the water off to the house. 

Ya. So my pipe was a little rusted and corroded and all around nasty. Ya, all our water...to include the water we drink, was flowing through this pipe. They don't use this kind of pipe any more...

 They came and dug a huge trench and upgraded my house's main line. 

2 days and $3000 later, Elliot thinks it was totally worth is because he got to see a backhoe up close. 

I'm just glad this month's water bill will not be $200. 

Farm Update!

I love farm updates because I feel I can see some changes (and successes) that I often miss doing the day to day maintenance. As always, we have some really nice sunflowers. If you look close, you can see some of our bees hard at work on this flower. 

A bright yellow sunflower against the bright blue Arizona sky makes such a pretty picture!

Last year's corn crop was terrible! This year we actually grew some really nice ears. Leigh was so proud of it. We barbecued it with some home-grown ribs and chops. It made a perfect dinner! 

Our duck population has been doing very well. We have made them their own pen. We also decided they needed their own pond. 

Pez is one happy duck. All the other ducks use the pond too. 

Ducks that fly are not fun. They kept flying out of the pen and when we would come out in the morning they would fly madly around. Clipping wings is painless for them and keeps them confined and safe in their enclosure. Catching them was an adventure I do not look froward to repeating, but we got them all! 

This is Orchid. She has gotten a reprieve from the slaughterhouse by being the most personable pig we have ever had. She busted out of the pigpen and has been happily cruising around our backyard for over a week. We have decided to stop raising pigs for meat for the foreseeable future (they are expensive and smelly) but we need a living garbage disposal. We also plan on using her to till the garden in between crops and deter the crap-head teenagers that jump our fence and open our pens, She is almost 250 lbs now and can get to be up to 1200 lbs. I'm hoping to keep her smaller than that! 

Right after I took this picture (in which she was snoring like a chainsaw) I walked up to her and started scratching her belly. She rolled over on her back just like a dog and I swear she smiled! She's a good piggy!

The rabbit colony is my masterpiece! The little rabbit military houseing I built did not hold up well though monsoons. (I also did nothing to seal or protect the wood.) I prefer raising my rabbits in a colony setting anyway, but we were having a hard time finding a way that was truly escape proof. We finally figured it out!

1/2 inch hardware cloth, heavy duty garden stakes, and hog ring clips make an incredibly secure enclosure! 

All but 4 of these females will be harvested this week and then we will introduce our male, a New Zealand named Arnold. We will be making nests out of buckets with lids and 6 inch PVC pipe. Of course I will add pictures when I do that. I like that the rabbits can live socially and exercise freely. I also like the ease of chucking a bale of Timothy in and knowing they are fed for a week. The maintenance of colony living is sooooo much less. I highly recommend it. So much easier than cages. 

Boone-Doggy

I have always thought the German Short-hair Pointers are beautiful dogs. I have never been able to justify the cost of a purebred dog either. They are supposed to be amazing running companions because they can run for days!! Leigh has been wanting one for hunting purposes for a while too, but having 3 dogs and no money to burn, a GSP was not really in our future.

That was until my friend Stephanie had to re-home hers because of an idiot neighbor who complained that her dog barked (or whined or whimpered) too much (during the day mind you). He worked nights and the existence of noise in his neighborhood in the middle of the day was annoying enough to call the cops. 

She offered Boone to me for free...I just had to drive to Oakley and get him. So I did!! Liam and I decided to go on a road trip together. 

We drove up in one day and back the next. It was a crappy two days but we did it! And we got a great dog out of it! 

Boone likes Leigh the best! Which is okay with me because he is kind of an "in-your-face" kind of guy. 

When he gets hungry he sits at the table like one of the kids. 

He has also claimed Liam's bed as his own. 

The only real issue we have with him is that when we try and give any of the kids a bath we have to crate him or put him outside because otherwise he hops right in. 

He is also a pretty persistent little guy. He drops his ball politely and will wait, but if you take too long he will remind you it is there.

Boone gets a long great with the other dogs and does very will with the livestock. He has actually not killed anything and our chickens, turkeys and ducks are all free in the backyard. When we tell him to, the can flush all the chickens back into the coop. It is actually really handy! 

I was really impressed the other day because he was by the woodpile and would not come when called. He continued to bark and point so I went over to the pile. I dug through the pile and at the very bottom was 7 abandoned quail eggs. He has a great nose. 

He will start training in a few months. We have been trying to put weight on him. He is now eating twice the recommended amount of "extreme athlete" food and slowly gaining weight. I have NEVER seen a dog who has this kind of sustained energy. He fits in great at Mediocre Acres! 

Honey Harvest

It has been so long since I have posted. Lots has been going on. Today we harvested our hives. It is a several day process because we don't have an extractor...they cost several hundred dollars. We decided to use good ol' free gravity. 

In preparation you get a paint strainer and clip it over a 5 gallon bucket. 

Once you have pulled the frames you are harvesting you crush the wax and comb and all that good stuff unto a mixture that looks unmistakably like puke...

It's nice and chunky so sometimes you have to use your hands to get it out. For those of you who hate sticky hands (Mom) this would be unpleasant.

We ordered the little spigot thingy off the internet and drilled it into a $1 bucket from Home Depot. 

Then beautiful gravity does its job.

 Because the honey mixture is so viscous it takes several days to strain out everything. but for the time being we have 4 pounds of beautiful raw honey. 

It has a wonderful citrus bite to it. I cannot get over how yummy it is. I am excited that as they get more established they will make more honey! 

Strawberry Jam

Fry's had strawberries on sale for $0.97 per carton. I had been meaning to pick them up for several days but it never made it to the top of my to-do list. Finally yesterday I realized they would be going off sale today so I went out and picked up 24 cartons. 

Elliot was overjoyed at the prospect of jam!!

He likes to help in the kitchen and gooshing strawberries has to be one of the best tasks ever!! 

Noah didn't like the idea of squishing them with his hands so he used a potato masher.

There are several good things about making jam at home. One is a reduced cost. I also like that I have control over the amount of sugar that goes into the jam. I have tried sugar substitutes like homey and coconut sugar, but nothing is as good as nasty, white, refined sugar...so I just use less than I would find in commercial jam. 

Waste is also eliminated when I make it from home. After hulling the berries the hulls become chicken treats!

 Quinnie had a great time feeding them. Who needs clothes on the farm?!?!

When all was said and done, I spent $23.28 on strawberries, $9.88 on pectin, $5.97 on sugar, $4.76 on lids and made 27.5 jars of jam. That works out to a total of about $1.60 per jar. 

Woo hoo!! Now I have a year's worth of jam!