Homemade Granola

4 tbs coconut oil (vegetable oil or canola would work too)
1 1/4 cup peanut butter
1 cup brown sugar (or 1 TBS molasses and 1 cup white sugar)
6 cups of rolled oats
1/4- 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, almonds, sunflower seeds, etc. (optional)
1 cup flax seeds or flax bran (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a shallow skillet on low/med, heat oil and peanut butter until combined and runny.  Remove from heat, add sugar and mix well. While peanut butter and oil are warming, in a deep dish combine oats, seeds and flax. Once liquids are mixed, add to oat mixture, stir to combine well. Spread out onto a cookie sheet, place in oven for 18-20 minutes removing to stir several times.

 Cool and store in a zip lock bag. Serve over ice cream, yogurt, with milk or eat plain.

Weekend

Last Friday Jeremiah had the day off work. Thursday was teacher conferences and he always works late that night. We dropped the kids off at school and then headed to Home Depot for counter-tops for the rental. By the time we showed up at 10:15 the tiler was already there. He showed us what all he'd be doing and talked for a long time about this, that and the other. We headed out about 11:45 to meet the kids for lunch but not before nearly missing a local cloth diaper customer for a pick up. She lives in town, it was easier for her to meet us there than for her to come all the way out.

After lunch we stayed for a while for recess. After a game of soccer I was ready for a nap! Jeremiah and I decided since there wasn't much we could do at the house as the tiler had a lot of stuff everywhere, we may as well get some work done at home. We had a huge brush pile from the weekend before in front that needed to be moved. The chainsaw chain is stretched out and the bar's bent so we can't do much cutting but we did get that huge brush pile onto the trailer and moved it all out to the brush pile in the pasture. I moved 3 lawn tractor trailer loads of wood to the pile and stacked some at the house for the cold weekend, the rest went to the "wood pile".

Friday night we attended a new 4-H group. It's farther away than the one e normally go to but I think the kids will enjoy it a lot more. Two years ago we met two girls a bit older than Rachel showing their dairy goats at the county fair. Rachel did not show this year at the county fair but we've seen the girls at different 4-H events so they sort of remembered each other. We felt a lot more welcomed in one night than we ever did in 2 years at the last one. Plus too, we have some other friends with kids just Rachel and Drew's age (who did not end up going this past Friday) but that makes it even more worth while going knowing there are lots of kids our kids already know! I think the day and time will work out better too. It's the first Friday of the month at 7 PM and while it may conflict with Salthawk football in Sept. and Oct., if we miss a meeting, it's not a big deal.

Saturday we attempted to go to an auction but it was 39 degrees at peak and raining while we were there. We had gone for a 3 point (adapts to a tractor) log splitter but it ended up not being what we wanted and since it was so cold, we decided to grab some lunch, some movies and head home. Saturday we hung out much of the day.

Sunday we were up early. The kids went to church with the neighbor and Jeremiah had a former student come over to help us butcher. We didn't get started until about noon on this goat but all in all it only took us about 3 hours start to finish. Nice to know there's plenty of meat in the freezer! The weather was actually perfect, cool but not freezing which meant few flies and no worries about having the meat out while we cut. The dogs were thrilled with the bones.

I think we've decided that the female pig will go into the freezer first. She's getting big and still has that limp, especially on cold days and I cannot see her being able to get around well when she's 200+ lbs. Plus too, I don't think we need two breeding sows. Pig breeder is not something I have time for! One to two litters from one sow is plenty enough a year to raise up for ourselves and to try to get one to two out of the deal to butcher. All the others will be sold. We may see how well the hampshire sow does. If she can get us one litter before she gets bad off, we'll keep a hampshire sow out of her and then send her off. So, it's all a wait and see. I prefer the spotted pigs so far based on body though they are a lot more demanding. People say the spotted pigs are easier on pastures. I don't know if that's true or not as the whole pen is pretty much rooted around in. Eventually we'd like to get them out on pasture.

Mia playing with an old plastic bucket.

I put a whole bale of straw out for them on Saturday in their shelter and temps dropped below freeing that night. They are cleaner than the goats who tend to poop everywhere making their bedding soiled pretty quickly. The pigs potty outside thus keeping their shelter cleaner so that bale should last a long time. They like to throw the straw up on their backs to cover themselves with it. None of them were shivering or had goosebumps on Sunday morning after the temps dipped below freezing. Some of the mornings last week I could see they were cold. I really think the straw was helpful in keeping them warmer, though I know a lot of people don't give them anything but enough to keep the rain off and that seems to be enough. I felt better about giving them straw.

Soaps- (left) citrus mist (fragrance) with black walnut hull for coloring. (right) Cederwood (fragrance/essential oil) with alfalfa (for color) and meadow-sweet. The little rounds are samples I made a while time ago that I forgot in the mold and just cut Sat. They are Strawberry.

After butchering the goat on Sunday, I had enough time to make 2 batches of soap. I pulled them out of the molds this morning, very pretty! Jeremiah TIG welded 4 aluminum loaf soap molds for me Sat. and I even got a little TIG welding in time too. Speaking of welding, we spent a little time cleaning the shop the weekend before last and it's finally organized enough to start welding classes. A gal we met 2 years ago when we moved in has a son who has been anxiously waiting for us to be ready so Jeremiah can give him private welding lessons. Several other people they know whose sons want to weld have also been asking Jeremiah about private lessons and it never fails, when people ask what Jeremiah does, they say something to the affect of, "I sure wish I knew how to weld." Well, now the chance is here! He figures he'll give group lectures and one on one individual lab time, mainly because we have just the one MIG welder. Eventually we'd like to get a machine that does all processes -MIG, TIG, & ARC.

Our little archer

 

You can make the screen bigger by clicking in the lower right hand corner of the video.

As you can see, Rachel is doing rather well. We were working on the cluster more than we were the bulls eye during the video. But as you can see, she can hit the bulls eye too! 

Drew's quilt

I made the top over a year ago and finally got around to quilting it. Winter's coming, my thoughts shift into keeping warm =).


 
 

Beautiful. Every little piece.

 

What happens when you give them an inch...

This may seem like a totally normal scene. Something is amiss however...

...Someone forgot to latch the gate back after the truck was driven out of the pen on Sunday....

...a gust of wind came along, opened it up and all of the goats got into the main back yard! - I thought it would be a very nice treat to allow them into the orchard (which is the penned area between the barnyard and the back yard (which is not fenced)-...

 

...You give them an inch and they take quite a bit more...

...and only 3 of them were greedy enough to come back for grain...

 

...the others I had to catch individually by hand! Awful creatures!

State Fair Goat Show & Such...

2012's show season is a wrap. I had considered going to the buck show in Mo. in Oct. but if you've seen - or better yet, SMELLED - my bucks here recently, I seriously doubt you'd blame me for not taking them.

Rachel talking to the judge. She answered all her anatomy questions correctly with special mention from the judge on how good of a job she did. Blue ribbon for participation! Yippee!

We brought home lots of ribbons from state fair, no blues. The main theme was that I have slow maturers. That may sound like a bad thing, it's not. It's what I am aiming for. The comments from the judge were all good. Validating, in fact! Slow maturers last longer. I just need to set them on a shelf, feed them well and wait...I can be patient...I see their potential. Aside from that, they are still productive now and will be productive for a long time to come. That's exactly what we want!

We've cut down the herd drastically. Rachel said goodbye to one of her bottle raised dry yearlings. I  didn't think that would be an easy thing and it didn't start out as one but let me tell you, this girl has matured so much in the past 6 months in regard to "farm life". We didn't hear a single thing about eating a rooster she named "Pigeon" other than to say he tasted good, and he did! And what made him taste better was the fact her was a jerk! The pigs, well, they are just something else to put on the plate too and the goats are producers, in some way shape or form and it doesn't seem to bother her one bit any more.

The amount of help I got from her at the show was tremendous! She was asking me all the time if there was something she could do, which is a far cry from other shows where I had to hunt her down to let her know her next class was coming up. She helped other people load and unload and clip and clean and primp. She filled buckets and feeders and exercised goats and more importantly she invested a lot of time before hand leash training the babies so on the big day they were all walking well...except for little miss Sugar. She decided she wanted to be a ballerina that day and walked on 2 feet instead of 4 almost the entire class she was in! In her defense though, she is just 3.5 months old!

I can't recall if I mentioned or not but my egg bread was 2nd place and Drew's cookie were 2nd place.

Every year I plan to have things made out ahead of time, part of the reason I did not have any sewing entries, I always plan to have things done well in advance if they can be, every year I kinda fail. Oh well =).

There's always next year =)...