Our third ham went into the smoker today. The first two look about ready to come out but I will leave them till Brian gets here to give them a once over. The fourth very large ham still resides in the cooler, quietly salt curing. It shouldn’t be too much longer till its ready to turn golden in the smoker.
More snow pics
The kids first foray into the snow. Yes I am inside where its warm. I have no shame. I had already milked the cow, built a fire in the smoke house, built a fire in the boiler, and was busy making breakfast. I did make it out for sledding not long after.
The smoke house, under its load of snow. We don’t see snow very often so this is a cool picture to me.
There is a stream of smoke coming out but its hard to see against the white background.
How to pick a hat
For those who know me personally, you know that I am usually one of two things:
1. Wearing a hat.
2. In arms reach of a hat.
And I don’t mean a ball cap. I may wear one of those for an hour every other year. I mean a proper hat which for me is either a fedora or a cowboy hat. It wasn’t always this way. I have a collection of ball caps that would overload Goodwill if I ever took a truck load to them (someday I will). In my twenties I wore a ball cap pretty much all the time. It wasn’t till I was in my thirties that I switched over to a better hat and I was very self conscious when I did wear one. I didn’t wear a fedora (my main hat) unless I was going out in the rain and needed a hat, or if I was dressing up to go out with SWMBO and adding the hat was the finishing touch to an outfit. Otherwise I’d leave the hat at home so I didn’t seem over the top. But a funny thing happened those few times I did wear a hat. I felt a little older, more like a grown up. I had a chance to tip my hat to ladies, to remove my hat when eating or indoors. In other words, I had a chance to use my manners and therefor elevate my actions beyond others. Not to be better than anyone else, but to take a little more effort than others. Again, it made me feel a little more grown up
I get a lot of comments on my hats. At first I thought people were mocking me. “Nice hat” generally made me second guess my choice. “You look like Indiana Jones.” made me question what I was trying to accomplish. But fortunately I found that when the sun was beating down, or the rain came up, or it was windy, or cold, or darn near any weather condition, I was glad I had my hat. I found that with a hat, I don’t need an umbrella if it’s not a driving rain. If it is a driving rain, I found that a hat is how you keep water from running down the back of your neck and under your rain coat. I found that many things that would have been in my eyes were easily avoided with a simple tilt of my head to cover my eyes with the brim. I found that with a beating sun on a hot day, you have your own personal shade tree. With all the good I discovered with wearing a hat, I learned to ignore the comments I was getting and that lead to my discovering that the comments weren’t mocking, they were positive. People really did mean it when they said nice hat and it was only my doubt that was holding me back. I’ve had people tell me over the years that they wish they had the confidence to wear a hat like I do because it looks so good. They say that they just can’t find a hat that looks good on them. When that has come up, I’ve pointed them here.
If you are a man reading this, go to the link, find your face shape, and pick a hat. When you put it on, you’ll feel dorky. Just go with it. You’ll find that the pros outweigh the cons. I personally wear felt, crushable, water proof fedoras that I buy 5 at a time from Agri-Supply in Garner. I later found them at the mall when SWMBO drug me there. They were triple the price for the exact same hat! Having a good hat that doesn’t break the bank lets me look good while not having to be fussy with my headgear. I wear them in all conditions and when they get trashed, I toss that one and put on another. I go through about 1-2 hats per year.
If you are a woman reading this who’s man would look good in a hat, we gents will generally do what we can to make you think we’re good looking. Compliments work, but it takes more than one. Suggesting to come to bed but leave the hat on will have him shopping in no time.
What dads are for
We are walking back from the barn and it begins to rain. Spork and The Princess seem unaffected but Bok Bok turns and asks for me to get her out of the rain. I smile and reach up and pull my hat off of my head and pop it onto hers. She gives me a big smile as the rain pelts off of her new hat,a smile that melts my heart. She continues forward to the house, now happy and oblivious to the rain. She was so cute I grabbed the phone and snapped a quick picture.
You only get a few years to be the hero to your kids. Thank God I get this time and was able to capitalize. And for you boys out there, you never know when your hat is going to make a lady’s day. You do have a hat, right?
Pork prices to rise
Monday we made a deal to sell all of our Ossabaw feeder pigs to Rare Earth Farms so you can buy them at the farmers market soon. I felt like I got a fair price and started a good relationship with a partner farmer.
Today I read this.
Buy high and sell low, it’s not the key to success.
Snow!
I figured everyone is putting up pictures of beautiful snowy scenes, with the world washed in white and made anew. So for our farm, how about a snow covered milk cow, glad to be in the barn scarfing up some food.
Soil erosion
So we did a lot of work a year ago to fix a bunch of highly eroded areas in our pastures. It was a pretty good sized job and we were glad to get it done. Unfortunately this winter during the heavy rains some areas have started to wash again. This isn’t acceptable and needs to be fixed.
I was looking at the problem areas and determined that the issue is that the red clay that we used for backfill is too poor to grow decent grass and has stayed soft and easy to erode. I really don’t want to haul more dirt in, it’s just treating the symptom, not the problem. The problem is that the soil is poor. So what’s the solution? Dig out the bad soil, haul it off, and being back better fill? Sure, if I want to spend money and time. Instead I am going to use the tools I already have.
We began this week a change in how we are feeding our cows. We have stopped rolling out our bales of hay and are now spot feeding the cows, placing the bales of hay on the worst spot of pasture. The result is that the cows trample the bad soil and break it up. This reworks the new gullys and reflattens the soil. The cows also spill about as much as they eat. That means that they are punching organic material into the red clay which by spring will turn this clay into black soil. Fertile black soil will grow grass like nobody’s business. This is exactly what this type if farming is about. Using your animals and your experience to work the soil for you rather than burning diesel fuel.
I will update with pictures what our processes have done come spring. I can tell you that where we fed into a round ring, the soil turned into 1 foot deep black topsoil so I have high hopes for these problem areas.
Public information
Like many small producers we live on our farm. That means where you come to pick up your pork or beef, you have to watch out for my kids. It’s a struggle sometimes to balance the need to be open to the public with the need to have privacy for our family. Besides being a farmer, I’m also a pilot and a concealed carry permit holder.
So what do those three things have in common? We know they’ve all been compromised and private information has been released publicly with the latest being farmers information. You can read about the latest version here.
Folks, when the government says trust me, we’re looking out for you, trust is the last thing you need to feel.
First run of the smoke house for 2014.
This weekend the inmates and I finally were able to make smoke. Two of the hams were ready to wash and put into the smoke house, one was washed and put back in the cooler. Inmate Brian is leading this process and has done all the reading and math to make sure we are doing everything correctly. Here you see three hams being soaked down and getting ready to go.
John also helped out with the hams. That’s when he wasn’t busy learning how to weld. We stopped him from welding to pose with a ham. Can you tell what he would rather be doing?
Here he is happy behind the mask. John is working on our new scalding tank. We’ll use this next month during our hog killing class. We had a few small leaks in the bottom that needed to be skinned over. We also made legs so the tank can sit above a fire and be heated by logs.
Brian with one of the hams getting it ready. There is a lot of work getting the hams to this point. We started off with 50 pound feeder pigs and ended up here, ready to go in the smoker. Its a proud moment.
Here is Brian hanging up his last ham of the day. We followed up with a bunch of other stuff so the hams wouldn’t get lonely. You can see all the items we put into the smoker in the following short video.
Cooking 101
The Princess wanted an easy bake over for Christmas. Since this is a girl who butchers hogs and processes bushels of veggies in the summer, we knew an easy bake over wasn’t up to her standards, even if she didn’t. Santa brought her a real toaster oven with broil, a timer, and basically the ability to do anything that a regular oven will do.
Now that she has a real oven, she is part of the breakfast routine making bacon or muffins or whatever else she comes up with. This is part of the education we have when we homeschool. If she was going off to school it would be an egg McMuffin in the rush to get to school. Instead its home ec 101.
In case you are wondering, her cooking is yummy, just like her mother.
