Saturday, July 26, 2008

Farm...Saturday

I'm sorry for the lack of Farm Friday posts for the past few weeks. I'll try to catch up now.

Our trip to Kentucky was wonderful. We really enjoyed seeing the Creation Museum- especially the zonkey. I can now say that I've petted a zonkey AND a zorse. The Bud Williams Marketing School was mind-blowing, very educational, and practical (i.e., I can actually use the method.)

Last Thursday I was going to load up two of my heifers and take them to the stockyard, but the Lord did not so dispose. I had them on the trailer twice but still managed to mess things up. Now I've learned from my mistakes and we're building some nice handling facilities so that, Lord willing, I can sell the heifers next week. Being a short-sighted creature with limited understanding and no knowledge of the future, I was disappointed that I couldn't get the cattle to the sale. (It was also embarrasing to take back the trailer we had borrowed without using it- we've done that twice now.) But God in his kind Providence worked out the situation to my good. The price for heifers the size of mine was down last week and bounced back up this week.

(This is a very disappointing picture. How could I get the cattle on the trailer and still mess up? I've been wondering that myself.)

Last Friday and Saturday we processed 28 chickens, using a borrowed Whizbang Chicken Plucker, invented by Herrick Kimball. Weak stomachs may not appreciate all of our photos, but I can show the fun part*. A chicken goes into the plucker and chicken comes out. Years of experience from skinning animals came in handy for processing chickens.

(No, I didn't think the chicken was gross. I just didn't want to get the hot scald water on me.)

The Lord has blessed us with lots of rain this year, so I've only used our drip irrigation setup two or three times. As a result, the garden has done very well, weeds and all. Oh, and if any of you from church want squash just leave your vehicle unlocked tomorrow.

Sherlock

4 comments:

Mrs. Wolfe said...

I can't wait to see the pictures! Even the gross ones :P

~Poppy

P.S. Kodak Easyshare is definitely a horrendous monster, to say the least. What you guys need is a card reader.

all in the family said...

Hmm! Very interesting. Homeschoolers will appreciate that project, lol. So you scald them in hot water first to kill them, then put them in the plucker? Vivian McAllister at WWBC has chickens and processes her own too, organically. Hope you are all well. Tell your mom I have a recipe up on my blog using zuchinni. We have had quite a few too.

Lady Why said...

EEEeeewwwww! OK, so maybe we won't process chickens on our farm. That makes the city girl in my a bit queasy!

I think we'll have a few chickens as pets, name them and dress them in little red checkered neck scarves. We'll collect eggs in a wicker baskets and skip through the meadow. That's my 'rose colored glasses' dissertation on farm life for today. :-)

Sherlock said...

We kill them before they go into the scalder. The hot water just loosens the feathers for the plucker.