I'm Moving

Following the advice of my wife, I've decided to move my blog to another provider, homesteadblogger.com. I've been happy with Blogger, but the theme of my blog seems to fit in more there, and maybe I'll have more strangers, who are interested in homesteading, visit it and comment.

All of my old posts will be saved on this blog for however long Blogger wishes to keep it active.

You can see all my new posts at http://www.homesteadblogger.com/promisedland/

See you there!

Farm Tour - Garden

A friend of ours recently showcased her garden on her blog, and inspired me to do the same. I thought I'd start a short series picture tour of our farm, so I'll post other aspects of it later. (By the way Nola, if you're reading this, I would love to get a photo tour of your farm as well as I'm sure I'll never see all of it.

The place we put our garden was an old emu pen that was erected by some previous owner. According to my neighbors, they used to have upwards of 100 emus on this property. The entire fenced area is 40' X 148'. It was completely overgrown with weeds and small mesquite trees when we moved in, and it was a lot of hard work to get it prepared. Needless to say, we have a major weed problem in our beds. It will be years before the perennial weeds are under control. For now we just try to stay ahead of them.

The large pen was seperated into two smaller pens by a fence down the middle. We cut down sections of it to plant climbing veggies like peas and beans. It has worked out perfectly. This picture is of the the right side and you can see the middle fence on the left. The shed at the end was the emu's shelter, but makes a perfect garden shed too. We have tilled 9 seperate beds in this half.


This is the left side of the garden with the middle fence on the right. In the foreground is a sand box we put up for the kids. We spend enough time in the garden that they needed a place to play while we worked. As they get older, they'll transition from playing to helping with the work. We also have 9 tilled beds in this section. We let some of the bigger mesquite trees continue growing in this section to provide a bit of shade for us and the kids.


This is our strawberry bed. They are perennial strawberries that should come back every year. We added straw around them to keep down weeds and keep them from sitting in water after a rain.

This is a picture of some of our first potato plants coming up. The other green stuff in there is the weeds that grow in the paths. We have to constantly keep it mowed or they'll bloom and produce seeds.

Here are some of our peas growing up the middle fence. Some rabbits got into our garden and knocked some back before we could plug the holes they were getting in through, but they're doing fine now.

This is one of two raised beds we have. We eventually want them all to be raised beds because it really helps keep down weeds and helps standing moisture drain away.

Here's some of our lettuce.

Our garlic.
Onions

This is the other raised bed. It is Regina's herb bed and she is in the process of weeding and filling it with cooking and medicinal herbs.

This is some of her comfrey, which is an excellent healing herb. It grows pervasively, which is good because the cows love it.

Lastly, this is our mountain of manure/compost. We collected so much over the winter that it has quite obviously spilled out of the compost bins I built. We get about a wheelbarrow full of manure everyday, just from cleaning out the barn. If anyone wants any, just let us know.

That's the garden.

Mouse Hunt

This is a picture of what I can only assume is an insane woman. She moved probably 1000 lbs of sheet metal in search of one mouse and her four babies. Is the mouse a nuisance or causing trouble of any kind? Nope! She is minding her own business.



After removing sheet metal last weekend to put a wall up on our barn's overhang, I casually mentioned to my wife that my FIL and I had spotted a mouse with babies underneath the pile of metal. I should have known better. My wife LOVES baby animals, and raised mice in college just for fun. I still remember the time one of the mice got out of its cage in her car. A month later I was rifling through some papers on her floor board and out zooms a mouse. Yikes! I don't know what became of that mouse. It might still reside in that car at the junk yard.



Anyway, after spending 30 minutes scavenging through all that metal, she found 3 mouse babies but could not catch the mother. After refusing to help with the first try, I got sucked in to helping resume the search for the mother. I must really love that woman because I have no desire to have pet mice. We were unsuccessful, so she's trying to nurse the babies and keep them alive. We'll see. She's excited about having the babies because if they know us from a young age, they can be tamed.



As insane as I thought she was being, it sure is cute to see her get so excited about mice.

Flying Feathers

And Fabio is no more. I'm happy to say I'm not sorry. He was asking for it. He made a pretty big bird, and weighed in the same as our meat chickens, who are supposed to be bred for good meat qualities. He came in a 4.5 lbs. I know his skin doesn't look as pretty as the store bought kind, but that's because I scalded him too long. There is a way to scald them so they look prettier, but it's too much trouble for me. As long as the feathers come off easily, I don't care what the carcass looks like.

My church friends were disappointed we didn't bring him for lunch today, but we're not so sure he'd make a good roaster. He might be too tough. I told DW to cook him in the crock pot and then we'll be sure to have tender chicken.

All together we butchered 6 chickens, including Fabio. We have six more to do next weekend that we wanted to let grow a little longer. The chicken plucker worked WONDERFULLY! It stripped the feathers right off the bird so easily. My plucking time went from 40 minutes to 4 minutes. Quite an improvement if you ask me. I think anyone who gets a mechanical plucker should have to hand pluck at least one chicken so they really know how much better it is.

My father-in-law and I also added a metal side to the overhang we store our round bales under. It will help block the rain during storms and hopefully keep the hay a little drier. Less moisture means less waste.

I'm taking off three days from work next week so DW and I can plant the last of the garden. I'll take pictures of how it's looking sometime next week.

Execution Day Set - April 29, 2008

This character, Fabio, is our head rooster, and has been found guilty of multiple crimes. They include: assault of an infant (said infant was safe in her play pen and unharmed), multiple counts of assault against children, countless assaults of a woman, stalking, and noise violations caused by incessant crowing.

The sentence of death is to be carried out at 9 a.m., Saturday, April 29th.

Seriously though, he's been asking for it. Now that we have 4 roosters, his "services" are no longer required, and he didn't make it too hard to choose who was going to get the ax.

Turkeys!

I went to the feed store yesterday to get some chick grower and chicken feed and low and behold, they had their turkeys in. This is a picture of the type of chick we purchased. I believe it is a Broad-Breasted Bronze. It takes about 14-20 weeks to grow them to weight. The toms finish off at about 20 lbs and the hens at 16 lbs. Sure, they turn out ugly, but oh so tasty!

Breeding Meat Chickens

+ =

Dark Cornish + Barred Rock = SUPER CHICKEN!

DW and I are always looking for ways to save money on our farm. We started buying meat chickens from a mail order hatchery, but we don't save any money on them vs. buying from the store. We do it anyway because we like being self-sufficient and our chickens are "free range" and "organic" which fetch a higher price than store-bought chicken.

After doing a little research, I may have found a way to save us even more on our meat birds...breed our own. The meat chicks we buy from the hatchery are basically a cross between two breeds of chicken: a White Cornish rooster and a White Rock hen. The result is called a Cornish X. The Cornish have broad breasts, but lack thickness. The Rocks have thick breasts that lack width. Put them together, and you've got the ideal meat bird.

The problem is that no hatcheries sell White Cornish and White Rocks. Why would they? If everyone started their own meat flock, they wouldn't have a market for their own crosses. (By the way, if you're wondering why you can't just breed a couple of Cornish X's, it doesn't work. Cornish X's grow so quickly they likely wouldn't live to egg laying age, and if they did, they don't lay consistently.) So, what do we do?

Well, the hatcheries do sell two very similar chickens: a Dark Cornish and Barred Rock. They don't mind selling these, because many people don't like the dark plummage. It doesn't make for as pretty a dressed bird because some of the dark pin feathers are still visible. These two breeds are almost exactly like their white brethren, so why not breed them here and have our own meat flock? We don't mind the dark plummage because we're not selling them to picky customers.

The next time we order a batch of Cornish X, we'll have them throw in two or three Dark Cornish roosters. We already have the Barred Rocks. Talking to a chicken breeder on-line, he said we'd be "pleasantly surprised" with the results.

I love farming for fun.

This Weekend

This weekend was again busy. There is so much to do outside, but the weather is great this time of year.

Saturday I mowed the rest of the pasture I hadn't gotten to at the end of the summer. It was only about 1 acre, but my lawnmower had gotten flats in both tires. I had them filled with foam so they'll never go flat again. It was a little expensive, but it beats repairing 4-5 flats per year.

I also put a screen door on our back porch. The chickens love to hang out back there and it has been COVERED in chicken poop constantly. Now we can actually keep it clean.

DW and I did a little work in the garden. I've noticed the weeds are beginning their first offensive of the year, and I fully intend on staying ahead of them. Last year they took over the whole garden (mostly because we didn't have a tiller) and it took A LOT of work to get them under control. I don't intend on letting them get a head start on me this year. I'm not going to try to have a weed free garden, I just don't want to let them take over again.

By the way, our chicks hatched on Saturday. We originally set 17, found out 3 were not fertilized and removed them, and hatched 11. I think 11 out of 14 is pretty good. That's a 79% hatch rate. Most cheap incubators can only boast about a 50-60% hatch rate, so we're extremely happy. DW reconfigured the incubator by raising the thermostat a little higher and moving the light bulb higher and to a more central location. The goal was to be able to set more eggs, and have a more even temp throughout the incubator. Hopefully it will improve our hatch rate. She was so excited and hovered over the incubator like a mother hen all day. She couldn't wait, and immediately set 26 more eggs. Her goal is to set three batches and then stop. If you want to see pics of the hatching, check out DW's blog at http://reginaorganizedchoas.blogspot.com/2008/03/chicks-hatching.html

Preggers?

We have had quite the conundrum with finding out whether our cow Chloe is pregnant or not. We have tried to draw blood three times. Only once did we get enough to test her. That test came back as a "Open (meaning not pregnant) with recommendation to retest". That means her hormone levels weren't high enough to indicate pregnancy, but higher than a normal cow's.

This past Friday the AI technician came by to AI Pumpkin, our second Jersey. He agreed to palpate Chloe since it had been about three or four months since she'd been AI'd. We hadn't noticed any heats, but we hadn't noticed any when we thought she was preganant before, so she could have very hard to detect heats. To add to the confusion, the AI guy couldn't tell if she was bred or not when he palpated her. Her uterus is too far decended into her body and he couldn't pull it up to feel it. Luckily, he agreed to come by today with his ultrasound machine on his way back to town from another client.

And the verdict is?.........

NOT BRED!

We're not having good luck with this cow and pregnancies. What makes it worse is that she will not even be remotely marketable until she's close to calving, so this adds another 3 months to the time we're feeding a cow that is giving us nothing. Don't get me wrong. I love Chloe. I wish we could keep her, but we got a cow as an investment and so far she's only given us 4 months of milk in the year we've had her. I've contemplated turning her into hamburger, but just considering her original purchase price of $1800, she'd come out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.50 /lb. Not to mention the just plain stupidity of slaughtering a perfectly good milk cow. Oh well. There's nothing for it but to try again. The vet gave her a shot that should bring her into heat on Wednesday, at which time he'll come out and AI her again.

On the bright side, when the vet was using the ultrasound machine he said everything looked healthy in there. At least we know she can be bred.

11. "Thou shall not pollute."

I found this news article this morning that was very interesting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/10/eavatican110.xml

I'm not anti-Catholic, although there are many things about Catholicism that make me scratch my head. I just found this kind of funny. The Vatican has apparently created the "modern 7 deadly sins." The original deadly sins (sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride) are "the sins of yesteryear". The goal is to get people to realize how their sins effect other people. According to the Catholic church (not the Bible, mind you), the "mortal sins" are much more serious than other sins and will land you in Hell if unrepented of before death. Here are the 7 new deadly sins:

1. Genetic modification

2. Carrying out experiments on humans

3. Polluting the environment (Well, driving my car is out so I guess I'm walking home this afternoon)

4. Causing social injustice (that one's a little vague, don't you think?)

5. Causing poverty (Even more vague...how are we defining "poverty"? There are probably quite a few people in India who would LOVE to live just below the poverty line in America)

6. Becoming obscenely wealthy (What is "obscene"? Is there a number involved here? Is $50 million per year obscene or just immodest? Would $200,000 per year be unwholesome? I need more to go off of here.)

7. Taking drugs (I hope they don't mean over the counter drugs, because I took some Motrin when I had the flu)

Seriously though, I'm just poking fun. I know the Catholics mean well, it's just another one of those puzzling things they do. In my mind, it's just man making up more rules. Being rich is never described as a sin in the Bible. Neither is gambling, but both make you vulnerable to greed and materialism, which ARE ACTUAL SINS. Anyway, I couldn't help it. I had to have a little fun with this.

My Favorite President

My mother-in-law sent me some quotes from Ronald Reagan that I had to share. He had his faults like any other president, but so far he has been my favorite. His wit is unmatched.

'The most terrifying word s in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'

'The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.'

'Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.'

'I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.'

'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.'

'Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.'

'The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.'

'I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.'

'It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.'

'Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.'

'Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.'

'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'

The first words spoken to his wife after being shot by an assassin: 'Honey, I forgot to duck.'

'We're not going to go to war with Iran. They're not that stupid.'

'If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation goneunder.'

Incubation - Day 11

DW candled our eggs last night. Candling means you turn out all the lights and hold a strong light right up to the egg. You're looking for dark spots inside to indicate the embryo inside is growing like it should. If the egg is completely clear then you know it's a dud.

We saw dark areas in all but 1 egg. We even saw the embryo moving inside the egg. Regina was very excited but it creeped me out a little. Ever seen the movie Aliens? Yeah, it looked like that (to me anyway). So hopefully in 10 days we'll have 16 little chicks added to our brooder.

We also found out we can't get a pig for 7 more weeks. I called the local pig salesman, and he said he didn't have any piglets to sell. His sows usually farrow in January, but he didn't have any this year. He did have some that just farrowed, so their piglets will be weaned and ready to sell in 6-7 weeks.

DW and I also decided to buy a generator. We were thinking the other day that we have probably close to $1000 in food in our refrigerator and freezer. We're coming up on the stormier and warmer months here in out part of Texas when the power goes out the most. A generator is really an insurance policy to protect our investment in food. We'll pick one up next week.

Lesson Learned

We moved our meat birds out to the chicken tractor the other day because they were getting too big for the brooder. We were a little timid about the cold nights, but said if got too cold at night we'd either put them back in the brooder or hang the heat lamp inside the tractor.

Yesterday was very windy but warm. We new there was a chance of rain, but didn't bother to check how cold it would get. I guess we were lulled into a false sense of security. Last night it stormed pretty good and the wind blew like crazy.

I went out this morning to a very chilly wind. I dreaded the worst and went to check on the meat birds. Sure enough, eight had died of exposure during the night. I was hopeful they had all been able to huddle together for warmth behind the plywood wind break a put up, but these were laying out away from it. I'm guessing the combination of being wet and the near freezing wind chill was just too much for them.

So, rather than sulk about only having 13 meat birds left, let's review what I've learned from this:

- If we're going to get meat birds this time of year I need to be a diligent weather checker
- Maybe we should wait until the last average frost to get meat birds. They can't stay in the brooder more than three weeks, and the weather extremes might be too much.
- If it's going to get below 40 degrees at night (or any time), we need to hang the heat lamp out there, at a minimum.

Oh well. Lesson learned.

21 Days and Counting

DW got all the eggs she needed yesterday so we fired up the incubator and set 17 eggs. We noticed that with the eggs in there, the incubator dips in temperature faster and takes longer to recover than it did when it was empty. We changed the light bulb from 25 to 40 watt so the temp would normalize more quickly. So far the temperature has been, on average, less than we would like, but within an acceptable range. At the very least it might take a day or more for them to hatch. The big thing to watch out for is letting the temp get too high and stay there. Anything over 102 degrees for more than a few minutes would probably kill the embryos. All we can do is wait and see.



We also lost one of our meat chicks to illness (I think) last night. We're down to 22 meat chicks and one (unidentified) rare chick. The meat chicks are starting to soil their brooder pretty quickly, so they'll probably be moved to the chicken tractor fairly soon. They're still very lively and healthy. We'll have to wait and see, but last batch seemed much more lazy and apathetic. That could have something to do with the heat.

Next month is turkey and pig month. The feed store gets their turkeys in March or April, so we plan to pick up three. That way if we lose one we'll still have one for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'll also be calling the pig man in a few weeks. He sells show pigs year round and should have a few piglets that he's willing to sell as feeders (i.e. - not show quality). I built a new pig feeder that is cemented into the ground and has a lid they can open. We will also be setting up an automatic waterer. Both of these things will make feeding them everyday much faster and cleaner. We used to have to search the entire pen for the food pan, the entire time getting slimed by a very muddy and hungry pig. If it works, we should very rarely have to set foot inside the pen.

Homemade Egg Incubator

DW has been itching to hatch some new chicks from our flock, but none of our hens have gone broody long enough to hatch any. We decided to try and make a homemade incubator out of an old styrofoam cooler we have laying around. It has no lid and a big chunk taken out of one side, but we figured we'd give it a shot. We can always get a new cooler cheap if we need to. After reviewing some websites on homemade incuabators, this is what I came up with. (99% of this is taken from other people, so don't be impressed with my ingenuity)

I cut some hardware cloth and shaped it to create a raised floor to put the eggs on. A pan of water is put underneath it to maintain proper humidity.

Next I wired a lamp socket to a thermostat and mounted them to the side of the cooler. The thermostat will cycle the light on and off, keeping it as close to 99.5 degrees F as possible.

Next, I wired a small fan for a computer CPU to a transformer and mounted it. The fan circulates the air throughout the incubator for more even heating. This turns the incubator into a "forced air" type instead of a "still air" type. Forced air incubators have better hatch rates.

Lastly I added a digital thermometer and bag of water. The digital thermometer is a cheap one from Walmart that measures inside and outside temperature and humidity. The probe for the outside temp will be placed in between the folded over water bag. The temperature of the water bag best simulates the temperature inside of the eggs, which is the one we care about the most.

Since we don't have a top for this cooler, I cut a top from plywood. I also cut a small viewing window and covered that with plexiglass.

I have no idea if this will work, but it's worth a try. We tested it and found the setting that holds the water bag within one degree of 99.5 degrees. The thermostat cycles on and off just like it should. When we have enough we'll add eggs and wait 21 days. We tested its capacity and it will hold 17-18 eggs.

I'll post again when we've set our eggs.

Homestead Nerds

I was talking to DW the other day, and realized what nerds we are, homesteading nerds to be exact. We get so excited about things other people would laugh at. It mostly has to do with self-sufficiency. We got so excited when our cow freshened because we didn't have to go to the store for milk or butter anymore, and we (I mean she) could start making cheese again. Then, DW got that cute little excited look in her eye and tone in her voice because she had just discovered another self-sufficiency item we could add to our list. She made ranch dressing! She had tried another recipe earlier this year, but was unsatisfied because she still had to use store bought ranch mix.

Well, through the power of the internet, she found out how to make her own ranch mix. As a double bonus, she also discovered how to make her own mayonnaise, which the ranch dressing recipe calls for. It was excellent. I asked her to add a little more homemade ranch mix to it to make it "ranchier", and that was even better. She was so happy. So now we will have homemade mayo and ranch dressing in our home.

She talked about it on her blog earlier, but she also made her own ketchup. We had TONS of tomatos left over that we had picked before our first freeze. They were turning red quick and would soon go bad if she didn't do something with them. It was a day-long project, but when she was done she had turned 10 pounds of tomatos into 3 quarts of ketchup. It tastes great! The kids rejected it because it tasted different than store bought, but after a while of having nothing else, they'll get used to it.

We're such nerds.

You may ask how she has time for all of this while homeschooling and taking care of 4 little kids. Well, she doesn't. A lot of projects she would love to tackle or finish get postponed. It's a little easier because with all littles, homeschooling doesn't take up a whole lot of time right now. As the kids get bigger there will be more homeschooling to do, but also more hands to help with our homestead projects. It all balances out, sort of.

Lazy Days of Winter

Well, the winter days of not having (relatively) much to do around the homestead are coming to an end. After five weeks of being gone on temporary assignment for the Air Force, I came back to the first inklings of spring. No, it wasn't a change in the weather although it has been unusually warm this week. It was the early work that is light, but nevertheless, a harbinger of spring.

I spent all day Tuesday tilling the garden beds with our "new to us" tiller. I paid for that the next morning with very sore forearms and back. DW planted the first of our plants. I don't know everything that went into the ground but it included strawberries, blackberries, and peas. She has also started a myriad of seedlings indoors.

We also received our shipment of 25 meat chickens (Jumbo Cornish X Rocks, to be specific), plus one rare chick we haven't identified yet. We set them up in the brooder in my shop. This time we ordered from Murray McMurray Hatchery because we lost almost 25% of our last batch to leg problems. I can already tell these are much more lively than the chicks we got from the other unnamed hatchery. I think Murray McMurray is popular because they just have better breeding stock.

I was also excited to take home my first chicken plucker, the "Fabio 2000". (No, Sean didn't paint that. That's my artistic ability in a nutshell) It was built by my father-in-law, and named after our head rooster Fabio. Apparently he developed quite a bad reputation with my father-in-law while I was gone by attacking him at every opportunity. I'm the only person around here he doesn't attack. My FIL returned to his shop with new fevor after that weekend, and finished the chicken plucker. He has expressed a desire to be there to watch it strip the feathers off that devil bird. It looks funny, but should work. It's got a motor that turns the PVC cap, and the rubber fingers strip the feathers right off a scalded chicken.

I'm also slowly working on a tub-style chicken plucker that you just dump the birds in and it plucks up to four chickens in 15 seconds! That beats the 45 minutes per bird it takes me to hand pluck. It will also make plucking turkeys much easier.

Grizzly Man

I watched a very interesting documentary last night on a man named Timothy Treadwell, who was a grizzly bear enthusiast, and lived among them every summer for 13 years in Katmai National Park, Alaska. The documentary addressed the controversy surrounding this man's activities and his death at the hands of the bears he loved in 2003.

Treadwell was an athiestic, self-proclaimed "eco-warrior" whose mission was, in his mind, to protect the grizzlies in Katmai from poachers. He was about as "crazy environmentalist" as they get and practically loathed human civilization for threatening the grizzly's existence. His approach to studying the bears was the most controversial part of his story. Treadwell literally lived right next to the bears and considered them his friends. He would swim with them, play with their cubs, and get amazingly close to the adults, sometimes even touching them.

Watching footage from his extensive video recordings, it became very clear to me that the connection Treadwell perceived between himself and the bears was complete fantasy. He loved these bears with a passion, giving them all names, and their lack of aggression towards him was perceived to be friendship and acceptance. He went so far as to take on mannerisms of bears and expressed many times to wanting to be a bear and live among them. He did inject some reality into his fantasy. He was very aware how dangerous these grizzly bears were, and knew there was a chance one could turn on him one day. Despite this danger, he refused to carry bear mace or put up electric fences around his camp, which the Park Service suggested for his protection. He tried to be careful around them, but his fascination caused him to get much to comfortable with them.

The remains of him and his girlfriend were found by the bush plane pilot hired to pick him up in the fall of 2003. They were clearly attacked and eaten by bears, and not much was left to recover. The reason I found this story so interesting is because this seems to be a recurring theme throughout history. Man thinks he can tame or befriend wild animals, and eventually is killed by the animals he loved. What Treadwell perceived as friendship was nothing more than bored indifference on the part of the bears. He was not considered a threat, and was literally ignored by them. Only their curiosity would cause them to investigate him at times. His death occured because of natural bear tendencies. The year he and his girlfriend were killed, he stayed later in the season than he normally did. When the salmon were plentiful, the bears had plenty of food and had no reason to take notice of him. But late in the season, when the salmon are scarce and bears are trying to store fat before winter hibernation, he suddenly changed into a potential food source to them. I think these "save the world" liberal environmentalists sometimes live in a fantasy world where nature loves them because they are the heroes of the environment. The stark reality is that these animals are wild, and have two driving forces that never change: their need for survival and the urge to procreate. Beyond this, emotional attachment is an illusion.

Many environmentalists respect Native Americans because they lived "in harmony" with nature, but an Native American interviewed in the documentary said it best. He said there has always been an unspoken boundary between bears and humans. It's a level of respect. The indians leave the bears alone, and vis-a-versa. To cross that boundary into their world is disrespectful and foolish. The numbers tell it all. Treadwell and his girlfriend were the first humans to be killed by a bear in Katmai National Park. He didn't respect the bears enough to leave them alone and he died because of it.

Cow Happenings

Lately a few things have been happening with the cows that bears mentioning, and since this is a homestead blog, here goes!

DW came up with a great idea to feed our cows. We bought 5 big round bales and have been hauling in arm fulls of hay from the overhang connected to our barn, into the barn and dumping it in the hay feeder. This has caused more than a little to be wasted as it falls to the ground while we're walking, not to mention our clothes get covered in hay. The whole point of feeding the cows this way was to keep them from wasting the hay, so that problem wasn't solved. I thought about buying a round bale feeder (at least $100), but I'd have to find a way to haul the round bales into their pen so they can eat it. Then DW had a "apostrophe" (you have to have seen the movie Hook to understand). The pasture fence borders one end of the overhang where we store our hay. Why not replace the fence in that section with an old gate we have laying in the junk pile, cut holes in it for them to stick their heads through, and let them just eat right off of the round bales? Ingenius! Not only is the hay protected from the rain, but it doesn't require us to move the bales to the pen. When they finish a bale we just slide a new one in place, like a coke machine.

Secondly, we tried drawing blood on Chloe again to send in for a preg test. We must have stuck that poor cow 10 times and couldn't get enough to send in. We'll try again this weekend and if it doesn't work, I'll have to have the vet palpate her.

Thirdly, Pumpkin and I seem to be doing this weird dance every morning now. For some reason, about halfway through milking, she gets it in her head that she doesn't want to be in the stanchion any more. She starts trying to pull her head out and poops, pees and dances all over the place. I don't get it. She has plenty of grain left, and it's not like I'm taking forever. I just have to stand back and let her calm down. The rest of the milking consists of me trying to milk the rest of the way and stopping to let her dance some more. So far she has not kicked, which I'm extermely thankful for. She has stepped in the bucket once, but that wasn't her fault. I don't know what gets into her, but it makes milking twice as long as it has to be. The other thing I can't figure out is why she doesn't do it with Regina. Not even once. Go figure. From experience I know it could be much worse, which helps me keep perspective. Oh well. I'll just smile each morning now as I know I'm going out to the barn to dance with my cow.