Terrabyte Farm

Having spent a significant portion of my graduate career performing statistical calculations, I can say with certainty that there is a strong negative correlation between the niceness of the weather and the frequency of my blog posts.  Since this is my life, I can even go so far as to state with absolute certainty that the lovely weather actually CAUSES me to post fewer blogs as we are outside so much enjoying the sunshine.

The last two weeks have been busy, our other cow had her calf, this time it went much more smoothly, he slid right out (movie).  I have started trying to milk her (we call her the sweet one) and acclimate the other one (the bossy one) to my proximity.  Both calves are bulls and both are doing extremely well.  We feel very happy to be on the other side of our heifers giving birth and have two healthy cows that are nursing their healthy calves well.

Our rabbits also gave birth, the same day as the cow two weeks ago.  One rabbit had nine babies, the other one had eight.  These babies are destined for the freezer, and I will try my hand at tanning their pelts.  Rabbits are an excellent source of lean protein and very economical to raise.  The breed we have is called Silver Fox and they are and endangered form of livestock.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but having more people eat them actually would increase their numbers as it increases demand.  We will see how it all goes, if we don’t like rabbit, we will go back to having three pet rabbits who eat our garden waste and we cuddle every day.

Our turkeys have started laying eggs again, I have pulled one dozen eggs and plan to put them under one of our broody hens.  We will let the turkeys set on the rest and hope to get poults this time.

The sheep and goats are doing well, getting nice thick fleece on the lush grass.  The pigs are getting big and we have been thoroughly enjoying our hams and bacons and the rest of our meat.  

The bees are busy collecting nectar from all the wildflowers in the pasture.  Jamie’s been practicing her hive arts (movie).

We also butchered five ducks this past week.  They were a little smaller than I would have liked, so I will let the rest go a bit longer.  We made pan-seared ducks breasts, duck stock, and white-wine braised whole ducks.  I skinned them as plucking the feathers was an arduous task.  We took the meat from the braised ducks and made a duck salad with homemade mayo and a little of our bacon.  It was outstanding.  The rest of the meat will get frozen and probably tossed with pasta or made into duck soup.  Their meat tastes amazing, almost like beef.

We finished planting the garden, fenced it, and put in a proper gate.  Hopefully this will keep the animals out, the cows snuck in last week and ate almost  all of our strawberry plants.

We have been very busy with everything around here.  It feels nice to slowly begin the transition from the big, one-time only tasks like fencing and acquiring the livestock to the daily maintenance of our property and animals.  Jackson and Charlotte are amazing helpers and we feel so happy to be able to provide this life for them.