Our Milk Cow Belle

Belle came to live with us on April 11, so it's been almost a week, and the only thing I regret is not getting a milk cow 10 years ago.  I'm hoping I feel the same way when it's snowing and blowing outside!

Belle

Dallas and I drove over to Grinrod last Friday and picked her up and brought her home.  It took her a few days to settle in but she quickly adjusted.  She was raised in a dairy barn with Holsteins and the owner was getting rid of all of her Jersey cows to make room for more Holsteins, it was a pretty big operation and I'm sure Belle is missing some of her other buddies.

Jevan and Belle enjoying green grass and sunshine!

We're starting to get into a routine and on some days she gives me almost 6 gallons of milk.  Hubby and a friend modified my battery operated goat milker to work for a bit longer and it's been a blessing, no sore hands for me! 

Milk in the fridge

I ordered a cream separator and once that is in I can make lots of butter and ice cream, it's too tedious skimming cream with everything else going on.  Twice a day milking is keeping me busy but the kids are great about helping, now I just have to teach them how to milk! :)

Milking the goats

Everyday the dogs and I set out to milk our goats Penny and Cupcake.  Right now we are only doing once a day milking and I try to get out there at around noon each day.

Here’s Penny in the stand with Bella patiently waiting for milk.  I use a small vacuum pump on Penny so milking her is quite fast.  She’s such a baby and she likes to hang around and get petted before going back into the run.

After washing her udder I squirt a few drops of milk into a container and give it to the dogs.  Mini, Popi, Chicky, and Bella have all learned to share, and believe me THAT was not easy for any of them!

After finishing up with Penny in comes Cupcake.  She’s quite a character.  I can’t use my little machine on her and have to handmilk her.  It seems no one knows how to handmilk but me even tho’ I’ve tried to show everyone in this house how to do it!

Between Cupcake and Penny I’m getting about 1.5 quarts per day from them both.  I use a coffee filter to strain out any impurities. 

After finishing up the milking and collecting the eggs from the chicken coop I made Gummy Treats for Jevan.  I really hope he likes them because they are sugar free!  I made them with xylitol.  Here’s a picture of them in the dehydrator.

Goat’s Milk Ice Cream

I’ve been getting enough milk from our goat Cupcake to make ice cream today!  I got the recipe from “Goats Produce Too! The udder Real Thing Volume II” by Mary Jane Toth.  The book sure has some great “tested by her” recipes.  She lists everything from desserts to cheese to sausage and my next experiment might be French Style Chevre, a type of soft cheese similar to Philadelphia Cream cheese.  I need five quarts of whole goat’s milk to make the Chevre so I’ve been thinking about buying a second milk goat, lol.

Strawberry Ice Cream

2 c goat milk

2 c goat cream (I subbed raw cow’s cream because I didn’t have enough goat cream)

1 c sugar (I subbed Xylitol I ground in the blender to make it finer)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 c strawberries (fresh or frozen)  I used fresh that I put in the blender for a minute

**I didn’t follow the directions because my ice cream maker is a bit different.  I’ll post what I did then follow with the directions from the book.

Place crushed strawberries in an 8 cup measuring cup, add milk and cream.  Add fine ground Xylitol.  Add tsp. of vanilla extract.  Give the whole thing a stir and pour into ice cream maker (I have a Cuisinart) for 20 minutes or until done.

Book directions:

Place crushed strawberries in the ice cream canister.  Stir in remaining ingredients, stirring to mix well.  Freeze as directed.

Goats on the Ranch!

It’s been awhile since I posted but in all fairness I have been busy and, before that, very sick with an abscess tooth!  Tooth pain is not fun, not fun at all!  Twenty-nine years ago I ended up in the hospital for five days with a very swollen face due to an abscess tooth… this past week has brought back a flood of memories but luckily I didn’t get the swollen face again, although the endless throbbing pain pretty much stops at that point.  Luckily my dentist was in his office on Canada Day and he was able to do half a root canal, tomorrow I get the other half done.  The antibiotics didn’t really kick in until Thursday, six days after the first hint of pain began, but all is well now and I do believe I will be able to chew on my left side again.

Other news (as you probably guessed in my title) is we have two goats on the Ranch!  We picked them up on Saturday and they are Nubian Boer cross.  Meet:

Cupcake

And her kid Muffin:

Cupcake has been quite a handful although she was great last night but today she was crying something terrible whenever we left and she couldn’t see us.  She jumped the fence a number of times and has now just settled down for the night.  As long as there is someone out near her pen she is fine but, boy oh boy, leave her and she’s crying like a baby!  We have a ghetto blaster hanging out our window and an extra string of baler twine on the top of the fence and that seemed to help.  Tomorrow we will increase the fence a bit more and hopefully that will help.

My son-in-law Duane has built the pen and shelter and today he worked on the milking station.  It turned out really great and tomorrow he will finish it.  I had Cupcake up on it and did manage to get a teeny bit of milk out of her and I think she’s doing great for never using a milk station before!  Here her and Muffin are jumping and checking it out.

Well it’s late and I’m off to bed, super tired tonight!  Have a great night everyone and I’ll post more pics soon.

Girlfriends!

Stewart, Russel, and Sam have girlfriends!  We started with four peahens and Pops had them in Grandma's chicken coop for about a week.  The boys were pacing and showing off all up and down the fence, it was ridiculous, but we all know boys when they are showing off for girls.



Pops let them out and they quickly migrated over to my house.  They spent time perusing my garden a few times a day.  After a few days there was only three and a body was discovered over in the Gully Field, sadly one had been killed but we don't know by what.  If it were coyotes they probably wouldn't have left a body, and feathers would have been all over the place.  I didn't see the girls for a few days, most likely they were hiding from fear, and now only two have come back, we haven't found another body.  The remaining two are now sticking very close to my back deck and my newly planted garden (grrrrh) but I think they know this is a safe place.

Mini Surgery on the Ranch

My poor Doolittle!  He had what we think was a epulis in his mouth, and I'm talking a HUGE one!  How we never noticed it in the last couple of weeks is beyond me?  I spoke with Pops about it last night and we decided to cut it off this morning.  Well as busy as Pops is he gave the emasculator pliers to Tom and we got at it.  Hubby and I held Doolittle and Tom was to wrap the epulis in the pliers and sort of hold it for a bit before snipping it off in case of excessive bleeding.  Well thankfully there was no excessive bleeding because it was just a quick snip and that epulis was lying on the table!  It was very hard and quite lumpy taking up quite a bit of room on Doolittle's gum but not much was attached.  It's been a few hours and he seems quite happy, even eating a cookie.

 

A few shots from the last couple of weekends:

A newborn calf soaking up the sun.


One of the peacocks with his head tucked in tight.


A view across from Kirby's Flats high up the power line road.

Hay Halloween, not a typo.

Instead of heading into town to trick or treat we lit a fire and ate hotdogs, roasted marshmallows, and drank hot chocolate here on the Ranch.  My Mom and Robert were here and I think Mom had more fun sitting around the campfire than anyone!  Here she is with a load of marshmallows over the fire, good stuff.

Jevan as the Toy Story Alien.  Why does it always look like Jevan struggles to smile??

Sydney as Ms. Dracula.  Ooooo Sydney you look scary!

Dallas was in Vancouver for the weekend and didn’t get my message about stopping and picking up fireworks but we did manage to find one in the back seat of Hubby’s truck.

Last week Grandma and Pops were at the auction for the calves and Hubby and I fed the cows.  I sat in the centre of the round feeder and took a few pictures of the girls eating.

Hubby loading up the hay.

The girls certainly aren’t shy when it comes to food, it didn’t bother them one bit that I was there.

I’ve created a Facebook Photography page on Facebook and if you’d like to join please click the icon on the right side of my blog, Facebook will open and then click “Like” while there.  I find I’m putting pictures up at Facebook and Flickr before I get to my blog so if you’d like to see them earlier please join me at Facebook. :)

For lots more pictures of the above post visit my flickr site:

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Catch up

Playing catch up again on my blog… I need more days in the week. :)

We have a new dog!  Mini Pearl is her name and she’s the cutest bundle of joy. :)  She’s a Chi Apso, a mix of Chihuahua and Lhasa Apso. 

The day we got her.

A few days later.

We’ve pulled the net out of the river this past week except for the weekend.  We’ll probably put it back in again this coming weekend depending on how often Sydney and I drive back and forth to Lytton.  The Lytton Riverfest Pow Wow is this weekend and we’d like to attend a few of the festivities.

There’s been several bears we’ve seen down at the river.  This guy/gal was walking on the road and when he/she spotted us headed for a tree.

This was one of two but they didn’t get close enough together to snap a pic.

Lots of eagles have been hanging around too.

I’ve been practicing birds in flight and find it tough to lock in on them… with some advice from my fav teacher Davimack I will keep trying. :)

Pulling the net one morning we found a small sturgeon.  Talk about prehistoric looking things!

One of the last days we were at the river the Fish Monitoring Boat crew came up and spoke to Hubby.  They keep track of how many sockeye are caught on the Fraser River.  All are quite friendly and a pleasure to speak with. :)

I’m still entering photos for the weekly assignments at DPS.  This one took 1st runner up for Bugs and Insects last week.  We found the nest in our travel trailer.

The latest assignment is Books and I’ve entered a pic of Sydney with “Books on the Brain.”  It’s “Cars” after this one and I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do.  Jevan’s hot wheels springs to mind but I’ll have to think on it. :)

Another batch of chicks….sighhhhhh, do Banties ever quit bringing home bundles??

Whew that’s it!  Hopefully it won’t be as long before my next post, sorry to all my dial-up friends but I have reduced the size of the pics so hopefully they won’t take too long to load. :)

I’ve created a Facebook Photography page on Facebook and if you’d like to join please click the icon on the right side of my blog, Facebook will open and then click “Like” while there.  I find I’m putting pictures up at Facebook and Flickr before I get to my blog so if you’d like to see them earlier please join me at Facebook. :)

For a more pictures of the above post visit my flickr site:

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Random Stuff

I finally caught some pics of the big buck!  We were heading to the river for fishing and he was on the road we take.  Around here you don’t often see one with such large antlers and he would be considered a “4 point” in BC.

More wildlife… a toad under our willow.  The kids loved finding him!

After quite some time we are finally smoke free, although I don’t know for how long.  There’s a huge fire out Yalakom and more fires around which has been causing a lot of smoke in our area, sometimes it’s so smokey you can hardly see across to the mountains on the other side of us.  This pic is the sun setting when the smoke was pretty bad but not as bad as during the day.

Sydney and I were standing in the garden listening to the thunder when a huge bolt of lightning came down and started a small forest fire just up from our driveway.  I immediately called Forestry and they had a chopper on it within about 20 minutes.

The chopper landed near our pond and dropped off a few crew members.

The fire burned itself out and the rainstorm after the thunder and lightning sure helped I’m sure.

More excitement during the week was a motorcycle accident on Hwy 12 towards Lytton, about 10 miles from our house.  The owner of the bike hit the guardrail and was ejected over it while his bike stayed on the road.  RCMP, Ambulance, and Rescue attend the scene.  A monument dedicated to another rider killed in the same spot a few years ago stands near the ambulance.

RCMP take belongings off the bike while rider's friend looks on. The rider was taken to St Bartholomew's Hospital in Lytton.  The Officer walked me up to the scene explaining what happened and allowed me to take pictures, all the while asking me about my camera and chatting up a storm, super nice guy! :)

Another rush of excitement (boy I seem to be saying that a lot!) was another fire at Bridge River in Lillooet.  My understanding is a power line came down and sparked a fire.  The Lillooet Fire Dept. responded until Forestry took over, who quickly extinguished it with two choppers bucketing and a small crew on the ground.  There were road closures and immediate evacuations of a few homes as well as everyone fishing at the mouth of the Bridge River.

Sydney and I drove in and parked across the river to see some of the action.  Normally I wouldn’t have driven in that far at suppertime but I had just got my new camera and wanted to try it out. :)

Well that’s it for now because this blog post is becoming much to long.  We’ve started fishing again at the river and bought a new net so I’ll be posting a few pics of that soon.  To see more pics of the buck, toad, accident, and fire stop over at my flickr site and have a great Sunday! :)

I’ve created a Facebook Photography page on Facebook and if you’d like to join please click the icon on the right side of my blog, Facebook will open and then click “Like” while there.  I find I’m putting pictures up at Facebook and Flickr before I get to my blog so if you’d like to see them earlier please join me at Facebook. :)

For a more pictures visit my flickr site:

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