Entertainment

One of the things we did for entertainment during the storm was play "99".
Madeline did a lot of Sudoku puzzles, when she wasn't "busy" taking care of her 3-month-old cousin, Paige. (As if anyone could get Paige out of Madeline's arms!) Rafe & his 2-year-old cousin, Connor, did a lot of racing and stair sliding. I did some scrapbooking.

Someday my kids and my brother's kids will be reminiscing about the Storm of '07 and their big sleepover party at Grandma and Grandpa's. Even though I'm sure we all drive each other crazy once in a while, memories like these make me glad we live in within a few miles of each other.

Now we'll see if we get to do it all over again. An almost identical storm has begun here today. You could hear people today making plans for the weekend with the proviso, "If we have power." Unfortunately there are still those that haven't regained power since the first storm.

Powered

After a night of freezing rain and 40 to 50 mph winds, the power finally gave up the ghost Saturday morning around 9:00 a.m. About noon I packed up the kids and headed for Mom & Dad's house, as did my brother and his family. Mom & Dad have a large pto-driven generator which can provide electricity to the house, well, and outbuildings - a necessity to power the fans in the farrowing house which was full of my brother's sows and newborn piglets.

Back here, Matt found a small 5hp gas-powered generator to borrow. Our main concern was the freezers. We have 4 large freezers - 3 filled with meat - plus the refrigerator/freezer. The generator was enough to power the boiler...or 3 of the freezers...or the other freezer & refrigerator/freezer. One at a time. So he spent the three powerless days here babysitting the generator, switching it around every couple of hours or so. Our health inspector called this afternoon to see how we had handled the outage, and I was happy to tell her that all was well thanks to that borrowed generator.

But it was not enough of a generator to power the well, so when Matt wasn't tending the generator he spent a good deal of time hauling water for the livestock. We opened the gate to the pasture so the cows & bull could go out and drink from the creek. It was warm enough that the ducks were out there as well. But the feeder calves, pigs, & chickens had to have water hand delivered. And when he wasn't hauling water, he was moving snow.

Of course I took my camera along, so I'll share some pictures this week from my parents' farm where I grew up.

There are still areas here without power, as well as those further south (and I'm assuming here, too).

1 1/2 inches of ice...

followed by 12+" of snow...

gives you 60 hours without power.

Not as bad as the ice storm of '91, though. (Ha, I sound like such an old fogey.) Not here anyway. It's worse south of us.

But they're telling us to prepare for Round 2 Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.

Too tired to give the full report tonight. More later.

Sale barn

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that we were debating about expanding our beef business or not. Well, we decided to go the route of expansion. One good thing about being in the food business is that if you fail, at least you can eat your products. So last Saturday we were off to the sale barn.

We've built our cow herd at the sale barn, buying at special bred cow sales. Many (if not most) cattle producers will tell you you've got to invest in good genetics and advise against buying at the sale barn. But for us it's been an inexpensive way to get going, and also to buy just 2 or 3 cows at a time.

Overall we've had excellent results with our cows. But you have to know what to look for and what to look out for. It's definitely a "buyer beware" proposition with no guarantees. We've been burned a couple of times. One bred cow we bought turned out to have Johnes disease and we lost both her and her calf. A bottle calf we bought had something wrong with its digestive tract. You could feed him, but nothing would come out the other end and he died soon after bringing him home.

But buying purebreds is not necessarily going to be without troubles, either. As my brother likes to remind me, "If you've got livestock, you're going to have deadstock." He's wise, that one.

Our favorite sale barn is in Dyersville. There are sale barns closer to us, but we think Dyersville is worth the trip because they usually have a good selection of what we're looking for. Better to drive 2 1/2 hours and come home with a full trailer than to drive an hour but pull back an empty trailer. Anyway, the sale barn is our idea of a fun date :)



If you're new to livestock sale barns, visit the ones around you a couple of times before you buy anything. You'll get a feel for what they usually offer and how they run things. You'll notice who the regulars are - the auctioneers will call on them by name. Strike up a conversation with one of them and ask some questions.

When buying bred cows there's 2 pieces of information the auctioneer will give you - the cow's age and what trimester she's in (cow's have a 9-month gestation just like humans.) Age will be in years, or "SS" or "BM". "SS" stands for "short solid mouth", which means her teeth are wore down but still intact. She's probably somewhere around 7 to 9 years old. "BM" stands for "broken mouth" which means she's started to lose some teeth and is an older cow. We came home with a 6 year old, an 8 year old, and a "SS".

The auctioneer should also say what trimester (or "period") the cow is in - 1st, 2nd or 3rd. At Dyersville they also put color-coded eartags in to designate the period. But the auctioneer might also say such things as "she'll calve on grass for you" meaning she'll calve in May or June.

Beyond that you want to look for a cow that looks generally active and alert, but not too wild. A skinny cow isn't necessarily a sign of bad health. Most likely she's just been underfed. We bought some of the plumpest looking cows at the salebarn, but when we got them home next to our own cows they looked like skinny minnies! They've been at the hay feeder constantly since they got here and they're starting to look better. Also a mangy looking cow isn't necessarily a sign of bad health. Some pour-on when you get her home and she'll probably be fine. But if you're not using pour-on in your operation you'll want to avoid those cows.

You'll want to get to the auction with plenty of time before it starts to walk around the pens and yards and see what's there to buy. Bring a pad of paper and a pen so you can write down the numbers on the ones you're interested in, so you'll recognize them once they're in the ring. Things can sometimes move pretty fast.

Watch out - sale barns can be addicting :) It's probably a good thing Dyersville is so far away!


The advertising wall at Dyersville sale barn.

Corn Recipe #2 : Smokey Corn Chowder

Y'all are going to get sicker of me blogging about corn than my family is going to be of eating it.

But.

It's my blog, and I'll blog about corn if I want to.

Tonight's corn recipe was deemed a keeper by all. Pretty amazing when you have a very picky almost-5-year-old, an almost-as-picky-9-year-old, and a husband who's not that big on chowder. And it was a very quick meal to throw together. I served it with Cheese & Onion Bread.

And if you'd like to duplicate it, we do still have whole hog smoked links for sale here at the farm or at Kountry Kupboard in Osage.

Smokey Corn Chowder
adapted from a recipe at Cooks.com

1 onion, chopped
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t. salt (optional, but I used it)
8 c. milk
1 12-oz pkg smoked sausage links, sliced
4 cups corn (either whole kernel or cream style)
1 15-oz can white kidney beans or bean of your choice

Note: I actually slit the links into quarters lengthwise and then sliced. This made them easier to eat for the little guy, and they got distributed nicely in the soup. Lots of sausage bits in each bowlful.

In stockpot cook onion in butter until tender but not brown. Blend in flour, salt and pepper. Add milk all at once. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Stir in sausage, corn and beans. Simmer 10 minutes.

...take one down, pass it around, 78 bags of corn on the wall in the freezer.

Polishing off his stash

One drawback to working from home is that you're left in the house.

Alone.

With the kids' Valentine candy.

Eating from the freezer

Green & red peppers saute as stovetop chicken looks on

Friday afternoon I reorganized one of our chest freezers. A while back we switched our upright freezer over to a farm business freezer, so all of our personal items from that got thrown in this chest freezer. And then when we got new flooring in the kitchen a few weeks ago, all of the items in the refrigerator freezer got thrown in as well.

People, I need corn recipes.

We have 45 quart bags of corn from 2005! And 35 from 2006.

So here's the first corn recipe. 1 down, 79 to go.

**
Fresh Corn Saute from "Simply in Season"

3 T. butter
1 c. green peppers (chopped)
1/2 cup onion (chopped)

Note: I didn't have any onion, so I just used 1-1/2 c. peppers. The peppers were some from the garden that I chopped and froze last summer - great thing to have in the freezer, quick and easy to use!

Melt butter in frypan. Saute green pepper and onion 2 minutes.

4 c. corn
1/4 c. water
1 T. honey
1 t. salt
pepper to taste
2 T. red sweet pepper (diced; optional)

Add and stir well. Cover and cook over medium heat 10-12 minutes.

1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

Sprinkle over corn and serve.

Note: Here's another shortcut - whenever I have a recipe that calls for a few slices of bacon I cook a whole package, then crumble and freeze the leftovers.

**

We also had grilled round steaks (our own beef from the freezer, of course). Another simple, easy recipe. Pour a can of beer over a 1 to 2 pound tenderized round steak. Marinate for at least an hour in the refrigerator. Drain off the beer. Mix together 4 t. brown sugar, 1 t. msg-free seasoned salt, and some pepper. Rub onto the steak and marinate at least another half hour in the refrigerator. Then grill or broil.

**

Even dessert came from the freezer. Last summer when eggs were plentiful I'd baked and frozen angel food cakes. One of those, along with a quart of frozen strawberries from our garden, went into this recipe:

No-Bake Strawberry Dessert
from the "Therese Halbach Education Memorial" cookbook

(1) 10.5 oz angel food cake, torn into 1" pieces
(1) 2.3 oz pkg strawberry gelatin
2 c. boiling water
(1) 20 oz pkg. frozen unsweetened whole strawberries, thawed
2 c. cold milk
(1) pkg instant vanilla pudding mix
(1) 8 oz carton frozen whipped topping, thawed

Arrange cake pieces in a single layer in a 9x13x2-inch cakepan. In a bowl, dissolve gelatin in boiling water; stir in strawberries. Pour over cake and gently press cake down. Refrigerate until set, about 1 hour. In a bowl, whisk milk and pudding mix for 2 minutes, or until slightly thickened. Spoon over gelatin layer. Spread with whipped topping. Refrigerate before serving.

See It's All About THEM for more information on the good things that are done with proceeds from the sale of this wonderful cookbook.

**

Meals like this are what make all that work last summer worth it!

It's time to play

one of these things just doesn't belong here again!



Previous installments are
here
here
here

A couple of sweeties

for your Valentines Day!

More pictures of that totally anonymous baby...





...and her big brother.





As you can see, I was having some focus issues this time around. But it sure is fun practicing on these two (for me, anyway)!

Frosting

The new snow on the trees reminded me of frosting. Maybe because the birthday cake has been polished off.

We are slogging our way through profit and loss statements (more like lost-it and loss), trying to get a handle on our true costs, trying to set prices for next year, shaking our heads over the price of corn. We've had a lot of new interest in our beef since the first of the year. So maybe we should expand. But will we still have that interest if we raise our prices significantly?

This is the part of the business that gives me a stomachache.

Cat box

We put a wooden crate filled with straw up on the porch for the cats to sleep in. The older tomcats, Pickles and Butterscotch, usually hang out in the chicken coop. But today they were sleeping in the crate with Fatman, Robin and Casper.

Happy Birthday

Matt turned 39 today. Happy Birthday, babe!

Miscellany

Madeline's serves are getting better - those pig chores are paying off! She's getting a little muscle on that stickgirl frame.

***

At lunch today the weatherman reported that we had climbed above zero for the first time in 84 hours. Everyone is holding up remarkably well.

***

Olivia had another follow-up appointment with her otolaryngologist in Iowa City yesterday. The $19k eardrum looks good :) She doesn't have to go back now for a whole year!

***

I called my mom last night and asked, "What does pain in your shoulder that moves around mean? Blood clot? Heart attack? Stroke?" I'm sure she loves those kinds of calls. Went to the doctor this morning, and the diagnosis was pleurisy. I kind of suspected that, but I didn't realize your lungs go as far up into your shoulder as they do. I don't know what makes me so susceptible to it - this the third or fourth time I've had it.

***

This weekend I attended the INCA (Iowa Network for Community Agriculture) conference. I was also one of three presenters for the "Makin' Bacon" workshop. I was so glad to see Mark's comment in the post below about it, because I was so nervous! Not about speaking in front of people, that doesn't bother me. But life has just been so much lately that I didn't feel adequately prepared. I didn't have a nice Powerpoint, just a bunch of pictures of the farm in a PDF file. I wrote notes - on cards even! - and then just held them and didn't even look at them. Just rattled on and clicked through the pictures. And of course I tossed and turned that night afterwards, over-analyzing it, thinking I probably talked too much about the non-pork parts of our farm business and not enough about regulations pertaining to retail marketing.

But all-in-all I really enjoyed the experience. It's fun to get to share your experiences with others, i.e. help them not to make the same stupid mistakes you've made. I hope to have the opportunity to do it again sometime, somewhere.

***

I spent the night before the conference with my fellow farmchick. If she ever invites you to spend the night, take her up on it! It's more of a luxurious getaway than a sleepover. She and her DH are the hostess/host with the mostest/most. Dinner, local wine, homemade dessert, sweet gifts, a warm comfy bed, and a farmhouse breakfast. Plus she hung around "on call" to pick up my daughter from her volleyball tournament if needed, easing some of my neurotic worries (though nothing short of medication can ease them all.) Thank you, B & L, I am so grateful for your wonderful hospitality!

**

Sewing

This year Madeline wanted to learn to sew for 4-H. Which is cool. I learned how to sew for 4-H, from my mom and grandma. It's a handy skill to have in life.

"What do you want to sew?" I asked.

"A skirt, because I always have to safety pin my skirts to get them to stay on, and I want a skirt that actually fits me without having to safety pin it."

Sounded reasonable to me. She is rather a stickgirl.

So we picked out a pattern, and some material, and have been working at it here and there. She wants to have it done by Saturday, which is her band solo contest. I don't know if we'll make that goal. She has a big science project due this week, too. But we'll give it a try.

I haven't sewn anything in a really long time, and now she's got me itching to make something. Maybe after taxes are done, and before seed-starting begins.

I'm worrying about the animals tonight. The temperatures are supposed to drop to 25 below, with wind chills up to 40 below. I wish I could bring them all into my garage.

Barn door

"I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind
all these words
I hear in my mind
All this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart
Breaks my
Heart
Breaks my heart"

Regina Spektor