Market Steer and canning beef

Hubby took off Hannah's 4h market steer, (she decided not to show him this year), to the butcher on Saturday.   We sold half of him and we will take the other half.   We had just butchered a steer back in the winter, our freezers are full, so I'm trying to can up some of the beef we have in the freezers to make room for the beef we will have coming.   We also have half a hog at the butcher and we should be able to pick it up this week or next.   Nothing like fresh pork.

If you don't have a way to raise your own  beef or pork, check with a local farmer, sometimes they will sell on the half or quarters.   It costs more that way at the time, but  half a beef would stock up your freezer and  you would know where your meat came from.  Plus you would be helping out a local farmer.

Hannah's 4h market steer hubby took to the butcher the other day.   He was a pretty nice steer.  I think, if she would have shown him, she would have had a good chance with him, but  he was a handful for her to handle and she just lost interest. 

Some of the meat I pulled out of the freezer to can. 

  7 qts of beef, canned.  I mixed up water, salt and kitchen bouquet and poured into each jar.  I also cut up some sweet peppers and add them.  After they came out of the canner, the house smelled so good.   You could smell the peppers.     Hubby said it made him hungry. lol   I have more to finish beef and some pork to  cube up and can today. 

It's been fair week

It has been the week of our county fair and our daughter Hannah's last year to be in the fair for 4h.   Cowboy, her horse and her did a great job for her last county 4h horse show.  She took 1st place in senior showmanship, 1st place in the flag race, barrels and  cowboy extreme.  Pretty good way to end her last 4h show.   All her hard work and time has paid off for her.

                                                                                                                   

Not too much going on.

I have posted anything for a few days.   Not much has been going on.  Been busy trying to get an early start on my fall cleaning and organizing.  So far I'm almost done with the panty/ laundry room. I should be able to finish it up tomorrow, I hope.  I have a doctors appt. and some errands to run while I am in town.  Working on cleaning out my sewing room and getting it ready.  I plan on doing a lot of sewing this winter.  I need to piece some quilt tops and get them quilted.

I am getting ready to get back into my weekly food preps and start on the 21 day fix challenge.  I need to lose a couple of pounds, well a lot of couple of pounds.  Like a said not much going on, I have just been trying to take it easy and rest up after my surgery.   I have been trying to come up with some things to blog about and share on farming.  I have a few ideas, as soon as I can get them wrote up, and worked out, I will post some of them. Hope it will be soon.

They're here finally and the day around the farm.

We finally got our two little gilt piglets.  They are so cute.  I was suppose to have picked them up last week but ended up at the ER the night before and admitted to the hospital for appendix surgery.  So, I was a week later getting them.   Thursday evening got a little crazy, I had to have my daughter run me into town to meet up with the farmer I had purchased them from  and hubby stayed home to lasso  a little heifer calf for a guy who was buying her from us.   Yeah, as soon as farmer hubby, lassoed  the little heifer calf, she took off and dragged him down the hill.   So, he did a little grass skiing.  Wish I could have been there to seen that.  He is pretty good and sore from it.  At least, he was prepared and expecting her to do that.  They got her loaded up and away she went.  She was a cute little heifer.  I had thought about keeping her and making a milk cow out of her but  she was a Guernsey/Dexter cross and I say, she will make some one a good milk cow, but we have a big ole angus bull, and didn't want to take a chance of him breeding her.   She looked like she was going to make a small cow.  But now, I can start milking old Blossom, the little heifers mom.

Back to the little piggies, they are so cute and tiny.   They are around 7 weeks old.   We have them up in our barn, until they get a little bigger and a better lot fixed for them.   The little gals had some lice on them when I picked them up, I have really never had to deal with lice on animals, but they do get them.  So, I will be giving them a good dusting of Diatomaceous earth and see if that helps, then move them to a different stall and use the diatomaceous earth in the stall they are in.   If that doesn't work,  I will have to come up with something else.  Catching them is going to be the fun part.  I really haven't a chance to mess with them a lot since I got them.  Farmer hubby, my dad and son are going to the drag races today, so I should have a little time to go down to the barn and start letting them get use to me today.

Farmer Hubby ran to town to check out one of our local farmers markets to see if any of our farmer friends has corn for sale today.   Our corn didn't do anything, so hopefully he can round up about 10 dz ears from someone so I can can corn today while they are gone.       Not much of a canning season from our garden this year, but maybe next year will be better.

The little girls. 

The little heifer calf we sold. 

Getting organized.

I figured since I was going to have to take it easy that  it would be a good time for me to start working up a plan to get more organized.  I'm so unorganized, I can't keep to a schedule at all.  When my kids were younger, I was better about keeping them on a regular schedule but since they are almost grown, not so much.   It is about time for us to get back into the swing of homeschooling, and I need to working on lesson plans too.   I figure baby steps is the way to go at first.  Nothing to overwhelming.   I sat down tonight and came up with a weeks worth of meals planned out.   Not to hard, and came up with a plan for organizing and cleaning each room in the house.   The only room I don't have to worry about is our 17 year old daughters room.   She keeps her room picked up and organized way better than me.   My oldest daughter is the same way about her house.  She pretty well keeps it spotless, they must have taken after their dad.

Here is the weeks meal plan.

Tuesday

Baked ham, mashed potatoes, fried apples and homemade biscuits.  

Wednesday

Spaghetti with homemade rolls

Thursday

Beef with homemade noodles, mashed potatoes, and homemade rolls

Friday

Pork chops, green beans, corn and cornbread

Saturday

Chicken n dumplings, green beans, mashed potatoes

Sunday

Beef Stir fry with rice.


It is Saturday or Sunday we are suppose to go to a family cook out.   I will have to find out from hubby which day it is.   I also plan on baking some pies and a cake this week, if I feel like it.  Depends on how I am feeling from my surgery.


My plan for organizing, cleaning and decluttering

Week 1
Our Bedroom.  We have already started on it, hubby has been redoing the closet to add more storage.  I have a bunch of clothes, papers and homeschooling stuff I need to sit and go though.  So I figured, since I am not able to do a lot right now is the perfect time to go though it and pitch it.

Week 2
My sewing room.   Well I guess it is my sewing room and everything else room.   I want to finish organizing it and give it a good cleaning.   I need to finish painting it but that will have to wait a few weeks.

I will stop at  two weeks, to see how far I can get.  Might not work out as I hope it will but I am going to try really hard.  

I also need to work on a place for the piglets, since I ended up in the hospital, I didn't get their place ready or them.  I will go sometime toward the end of the week, and pick them up.  I can not drive right now, so I have to have some one take me.

 I will keep you all updated and hopefully post some pics of what I get done.

What's been going on.

It has been a while since I have posted anything.   It has been kinda crazy around here the last couple of weeks.   I had been trying to get some canning done, not that I have had much to can.   I had several dogs to groom, 4h spaghetti dinner we had to get ready for and prepare and then, on Wednesday, I started getting this really bad pain on my right side.  I kept working through the day, grooming a dog, cleaning, and when hubby got home we worked on building a  large cage in one of the chicken coops, so we could turn out some of our chickens that had gotten to big from the small cages they were in.  By 11 pm that night, I was really in pain, and called my mom to take me to the ER.   They did a CT scan, and come to find out it was my appendix.   So, they admitted me to the hospital and Thursday evening, I went into surgery to have my appendix removed.   Doctor said, it was a mess.  I finally got to come home Saturday morning.  That is two surgeries in less than a year for me.  
I am still having some pain, and my tummy is messed up from all the meds..  So glad, they found it out before it ruptured.  

Before I went in to have surgery.  We had gathered a bunch of green tomatoes and some ripe ones.  I wasn't able to get them canned, so yesterday, I made some homemade tomato soup.  It turned out pretty good.   I will probably be eating on it some the next couple of days, since I can't eat much.  

 Some more green tomatoes I canned.  I ended up with 7 pints. 

Some tomato juice I was able to can up.  Sure wish I was able to have gotten more canned.   

 I thought it turned out pretty good. 

Cleaning Chicken coop #2 and 4h market steer.

Went out today and decided to clean chicken coop # out, it was a mess.  Chickens can be messy, but I enjoy having them. My Grandma Akers loved her chickens.  She would always get her chicken books in the mail and look though it for hours.   She always had them while I was going up.  She had this one mean ole rooster.   He would chase me every time  I would go over to visit her.  I may have only been around 4 years old but I still remember that ole rooster.  For the longest time, I was afraid of chickens, but finally I got over that fear and so glad I did.   We have had chickens off and on, for about the last ten or eleven years now. I guess, I get my love of chickens from my grandmothers.  Both of them raised chickens.

Cleaning out the chicken coops isn't one of my favorite chores to do on the farm.   Today was a hot day to pick to decide to clean out the #2 coop.   It was a hurried job.  I usually give the coops two really good cleaning a year, once in the spring and once in the fall and get them ready for winter.  Then, the rest of the time, I just clean at them.  I have a broody hen and she was not happy with me cleaning out the nesting boxes.

Our coops aren't anything fancy. Most of the time, the chickens, free range and we put them up at night.  They still make a mess when they go on the roost for the night.

I use this putty knife to scrape poo off of the roosts and off of the nesting boxes.  It does a really good job. 

I scrape it all off with the putty knife and I wear gloves when I clean out the chicken coop too. 

Then I will rake it out.  It is dirt floor.  I like for them to have a dirt floor so they can scratch around in it during the winter months and it is a lot easier to clean out, well at least it is for me. 

After raking, I sprinkle some diatomaceous earth around the outside and inside of the coops.  They say it helps with keeping mites  and bugs.   

Lastly, I spread some wood shavings down.   We buy our wood shavings from a local sawmill by the truck load.   It is way cheaper than  buying them from a feed store by the bag.   I think, Sam gets it for $20.00 a dump tailor load.   Which is a lot.  We use it also in the barn stalls for the horses and other livestock. 

This is our daughter's 4h market steer for this year.   Our fair isn't till the end of August.   She needs to get him finished out with in the next few weeks before the fair starts, so he will be ready to go.  This will be her last year showing a steer in 4h.   He looks a mess in the pic,  she hadn't bathed him or curried him out.  She keeps him in a special stall, with fans and an air condition unit to keep him cool so he will keep his long and thick enough for the fair.