~~2nd ANNUAL PIG HARVEST PARTY~~

 We raised 7 pigs this year! 2 for us and the rest for friends.

The pigs had about an acre of land to graze on grass. The pigs were purchased by friends and taken to our house at 8 weeks old. We raised them until they were 6 months old.

 We got an early start on harvest day, and it was cold. Dusty and the kids built a fire outside to keep warm while last minute preparations were made and while we waited for the sun to rise. Our goal was to harvest 4 pigs by the end of the day. That means everything is done right down to the cuts, individually wrapped and put in the freezer. A pretty ambitious goal.

 We feed the pigs some grain and got the guns ready.

 Yep, it's dead.

 Where are the kids you ask?

The ones that wanted to be a part of it watched while I explained to them what was going on and how great it was that we had pigs that lived a good life, free from hormones, vaccinations and concrete slaps. We also talked about knowing where your food comes from.

 We killed 2 pigs at a time.

The next step is to hoist them up on the tractor and take them to the butchering area.

 All hoisted up and ready for transportation.

 Austin was the driver.

 Here's the butchering location.

Next is to hose them off and start butchering.

Ready, set, go!

We had to work fast in order to get 4 pigs done in a day. We need to get these pigs quartered and on ice before we start with the next 2 pigs.

We kept the fire going since it was still pretty cold.

Here's Dusty skinning.

Quartering.

Then on ice while the guys go get the next two pigs.

After the pigs are chilled we start making the cuts, package and freezing.

We had stations.

2 butchering stations, sausage making station, packaging station and labeling station.

Followed by runners placing the meats in the freezer.

Josiah makes sausage!

Austin does some labeling and running to the freezer.

One of the families figured out the approx price per pound to raise these pigs ourselves.

They figured that it came to about $1.70 per pound, that includes every cut, so hams, bacon, sausage, roasts, pork chops, steaks etc. 

In the recent past we've purchased roasts from Costco for $1.99 per pound and it wasn't organic or anything special, just plain ole Kirkland pork roasts.

So, in our opinion it's cost effective to raise our own.

(I believe we shared with you in an older post that we didn't think raising our own chickens was cost effective for our family, but pork is!)

The End.

This time of year is always sooo busy. Keepin' it short and giving you some pictures. :)

Wood for winter. Dusty, Austin, Noah & Josiah have been busy chopping & stacking.

 Dusty had to "add on" to the wood structure this year. This is holding about 6 cords of wood. The addition was done with supplies we had around the property, it didn't cost us a penny.

He loves his wood pile. :)

 We've been canning...big shocker. :)

We've got about 30 gallons of grape juice, 4 gallons of dehydrated cinnamon apple rings, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, apple sauce, peaches, tomatoes and plum jam. We are still working on canning more but here is a picture so far.

 Davis Baby #6...first photo.

Taken 3 days ago.

We wanted to see if the baby was a boy or girl but the very active, breech baby decided it didn't want to share that information with us. Could these feet be any closer together?? LOL.

~~Growing Firewood~~

Beechwood fires are bright and clear

If the logs are kept a year,

Chestnut's only good they say,

If for logs 'tis laid away.

Make a fire of Elder tree,

Death within your house will be;

But ash new or ash old,

Is fit for a queen with crown of gold

Birch and fir logs burn too fast

Blaze up bright and do not last,

it is by the Irish said

Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,

E'en the very flames are cold

But ash green or ash brown

Is fit for a queen with golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke,

Apple wood will scent your room

Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom

Oaken logs, if dry and old

keep away the winter's cold

But ash wet or ash dry

a king shall warm his slippers by.

The firewood poem was written by Celia Congreve, is believed to be first published in THE TIMES newspaper on March 2nd 1930.

 

We scored some Ash trees for $10 each. We are now growing our own firewood!! (just a little excited about that, I get excited easily) We picked the ash tree based on the poem, no not really. :)  We picked the ash tree for our woodlot because we've read that they grow pretty fast and that they are excellent to burn. The poem just confirmed what we had read.

 Dusty and Austin are out in the rain planting them right now. We picked up 10 trees to start but hope to get a few more in the future.

 The trees are 7-10 feet tall. We will be staking each tree for added security. To keep costs down we picked out some wood scraps from our scrap pile and will use them as stakes.

 We picked an area of the property that isn't currently being utilized. Dusty installed irrigation piping in that area last year so watering shouldn't be to hard.  We hope that each tree will grow big enough that we will be able to harvest at least a cord of wood per tree.

Cost breakdown: 
$10 per tree
Irrigation water $1-$2 per tree per year (approx)
Electricity to pump the water. (I really don't know, probably a few bucks a year as we only water in the summer)
Total cost per tree for the first year:  $15
Total cost per tree each year after: $5 or less
If we grew each tree for 5 years and then harvested, assume we got a cord of wood from each tree that would make the total cost per cord $40 or so, plus we wouldn't have to spend the gas money driving to Timbuktu for firewood. We would be able to harvest in our own backyard.

We have some unused space between some fencing and the lawn, while I was out running errands today the boys planted some snow peas. Great use of space!!  

Before and after...

 $7 Craigslist find.

The before shot.

 The after shot...

This was fun, I loved the boldness and the fabric design.

$10 rocker on Craigslist.

I made a little pad for it with the left over material from the chair.

I also added a little tie back from a shirt I re-purposed.

I plan on flipping both pieces of furniture, flipping as in reselling. :)

I'm also working on a rocking chair at the moment and I'll flip that when I'm done as well.   

~~CREATIVE MAMA!~~

We needed more floor space in the girls room so I came up with this bright idea to turn the toddler beds into toddler bunk beds! It worked!!! Check it out. :)

 Dusty used wood from the scrap pile, paint from the garage and screws from his stash.

TADA!!

The girls LOVE it. 

 I got this bedding from my mom, it was on an old guest bed. I was able to turn a queen comforter into 2 toddler comforters.

 Did I mention the girls reallllly love it??

 We have Alanah's old toddler bed for sale if anyone is interested. Mattress not included.

 Light oak color, good condition.

Smoke free, pet free home.

$35 or barter for something I really want. :) wink, wink.

~~Preserving The Harvest~~Part 2

~~~Sarah D, this is for you!~~~~
I should have mentioned how to use the dehydrated bell peppers and onions. :) Once the items are dehydrated you can store them and use them anytime you want. They can be tossed in soups, casseroles, or whatever dish you are preparing. You would use them the same as if they were fresh from the garden.

I store mine in mason jars since I have a ton of them and I like storing my items in glass. Since I've dehydrated the bell peppers, about a week ago, I've used them in dishes twice so far and they add wonderful flavor. I just grab a hand full and toss 'em into a dish.

 You can rehydrate the peppers or onions at any point by simply tossing them in a small amount of water. They rehydrate perfectly.

If you wanted you could throw the dehydrated onions in the vita-mix and make your own onion powder. You can do the same with the bell peppers. I just sliced the onions raw and then directly put them in the dehydrator.
You can blanch the onions after slicing and then dehydrate them if you want. If you choose to blanch them then add the sliced onions to boiling water. Boil for 1 minute and then remove, rinse in cold water to stop the cooking process. Then put them in the dehydrator. One reason people blanch onions is because sometimes the onions turn pink, that is due to the sugar content of the onions being to high. HAPPY PRESERVING!

~~Preserving the Harvest~~

We've been busy preserving the harvest. We've got sage taking up an entire wall in our kitchen, due to lack of dehydrator space.  I could think of worse problems to have. :)

Clothes pins on a piece of fabric is my high tech drying system with a box below to catch anything that might fall in the drying process. So cutting edge...wink, wink

After we dry the sage, we just throw it in the Vita-mix for a little spin. Comes out looking, smelling and tasting just like store bought sage only better.

This is the reason I have no room in my dehydrator. Bell peppers, bell peppers and more bell peppers. 15 lbs to be exact. We took the advise of a a friend and tried dehydrating them this year. We are getting creative with preserving the harvest because of lack of freezer space. Between the turkeys, Bacon the pig and with Tri-tip the cow on deck for the next addition to the freezer we can't put much more in there.

After the bell peppers were done the onions were next in line for the dehydrator. I only got 2 trays loaded before I quit due to massive tears shed in the onion chopping process.

Our cost effective storage system, 2nd year running. The tops of our kitchen cabinets! Yes, yes I know this is not where you are "suppose" to store canned goods. I know you "should" store them in a cool, dark place. BUT, this works just fine, I know what you're thinking, I'm such a rebel. LOL

Random photo taken from Kaianah's birthday, round 2.

~~HONEY HARVEST 2010~~

Well this marks the second year of being beekeepers! We are still learning about beekeeping ALL the time, it's much harder than we thought it would be but we absolutely enjoy fresh raw honey that we harvested.

 Here's a picture of Dusty uncapping the frames to prepare them to go into the honey extractor. Beekeeping supplies are very expensive so here you'll see the poor mans version. Most beekeepers own an electric uncapping knife (usually around $100 a pop) here you'll see us using a knife that we've dipped in boiling water. We alternated between 2-3 hot knifes.

 The caps contain honey so here's a picture of the caps falling into a strainer. The caps stay in the strainer and the honey falls into the bucket. Commercial beekeepers own a machine that does all this for them, (costing around $3,000) but not us, again, the poor mans version.

 This is funny. Yes, that is a PetZoom. I picked that up on clearance at Fred Meyer for $4.90 that is the poor mans version of a capping scratcher. That scratcher opens up the capped honey that the knife couldn't get. You can find those capping scratcher for pretty cheap, about $10 or so. This PetZoom was just a cheaper version plus I didn't have to pay shipping.

 We are in the process of converting our old clothes washer into a honey extractor. In the meantime we borrowed this from a local farm. Usually farms don't loan out this type of equipment, that machine is a 20 frame extractor, probably valued at $1500-$3000 or more. The farm loaned it to us for free. Thank you Lord!

 This is a picture looking from the top of the extractor down into the machine. We've loaded 1 frame so far. 1 down 19 to go. :)

 Here's Dusty loading more frames.

 All loaded...now ready for a 10 min spin.

 Spinning...

 I had been watching the honey fly off the frames. I'm also trying to stabilize the machine a bit.

After the honey is extracted it still has to be strained. Lots of wax would be in the honey otherwise.

For the health benefits we've choose to preserve our honey in the raw form. The wood burning stove was still a little warm from the night before so we are using it as a straining station.

 We didn't have filters or cheesecloth so we are using our jelly bags to strain the honey. It worked well!

TA-DA!! It's done.

(2 days later and LOTS of messes to clean up) We got approx 3 gallons of honey.

We expect more next year. We bottled up the honey in jars of all sizes. We learned last year that it's better to have a few small jars around for bartering purposes and gifts.