Sugar Creek Farm

Spring is chiseling mud off the bottom of school shoes on Monday morning before school. When mud calls, little boys go running…missing play shoes be damned. Time to bring the rubber boots out of winter storage.

4 years ago:

Seed starting

It’s a good thing we have nice cats.

Before we moved our new pullets from the garage to the newly cleaned coop on Sunday we’d been giving them a little bit of freedom to range right outside the garage.

Sandy found them quite interesting, but fortunately not too interesting.

4 years ago:

Anarchy

a spring-cleaned chicken coop, courtesy of Olivia

Sorry for the long pause there. I feel a little like I’ve been undergoing an internal spring cleaning this past week or two.

It’s typical for me to battle those wintertime blues, lack of sunlight and all that. But this year I thought I was busy enough, keeping up with the kids and their various activities, getting in some exercise. Apparently I was too busy to notice that I wasn’t actually on top of things like I thought.

But now, with the increasing hours of daylight, the changing tone of the sunlight, the slowly warming temperatures, I feel like I’ve been set free. Too bad I didn’t know I was a captive, until now.

5 years ago:

Joy

Rafe Henry with his birthday supper request – waffles!

Seven. Seriously? How did that happen?

At seven you love Clone Wars, and Mario Cart for Wii. You enjoyed wrestling again this year, and are looking forward to another season of soccer and your first year of t-ball. And lately you’ve started singing a lot, around the house and in the car. Following in your sisters’ footsteps, hopefully.

You are one loved little kid. It’s pretty nice to go to parent/teacher conferences and have your teacher start out by telling me how much she loves you. You got a birthday card (and a $2 bill!) in the mail today from the guy that lets you help run the elevator at church. Your teacher’s father, who comes to your class to read, loves you. And of course we think you’re pretty special.

You’re having a fantastic year at school. Your reading skills have exploded. Your teacher says you get right to it and get your work done. And it’s probably too early to tell, but fingers crossed you might be the only one of my kids that shares my love of math.

You’ve grown and matured and changed so much in the past year. I can’t imagine the changes we’ll see by the time you’re 8. I’m excited to see what kind of person you grow to be in the future, what kinds of things will catch your passion.

But let’s not rush it, okay?

Love,
Yo mama

You might remember that last fall we culled our bull and 3 of our cows. Yesterday it was time for another trip to the sale barn at Dyersville to try and pick up some bred cows.

We’d tried to make to their February bred cow sale. But that day we only got as far as Floyd (about 20 miles from home) when the truck started acting up and we had to turn and go back home.

Because of the nasty weather forecast, we’d decided to leave around 6:30 a.m. So my alarm went off at 6, and I laid there thinking about who knows what, but some thought in there jolted me out of bed with an, “Oh crap, I forgot to set the clocks ahead last night!” But it worked out, the weather didn’t start until we were on our way home.

So we’re on the road for home, with a trailer full of cows, and the rain turns to freezing rain and sleet. We’re going 40 mph, gawking at a number of cars in the ditch. We decide to exit at Independence for gas…at this point we’re still a couple of hours from home. Another truck pulls into the gas pump next to us. A guy gets out and says, “You know you lost a tire on your trailer, don’t you?”

Uh, no.

He tells us he saw it come off, right before we exited. So now we’re off on a scavenger hunt around Independence, on a Sunday, for lug nuts – hoping the other tire on that side holds until we can get the spare on. We strike out at Walmart, but find a farm & fleet store open with what we need. Matt gets the spare on, and we head back to the highway to look for our lost tire. There it is, out in the median. Matt jumps out and grabs it, and we’re off again.

Fortunately that was the end of the adventure and we made it home with our load – five 4 & 5-year-old cows from a herd dispersal. They should start calving in 2 to 3 weeks. Here’s a few of them…

There’s two more solid black ones, as well. They’re smaller framed than the ones we have, which I like. And it seems we bought at a good time – prices were reasonable yesterday.

We have a new bull picked out from a local guy. Just waiting on weather & schedules and planets to align to have him delivered.

4 years ago:

Small Farm Business : Enterprise Budgeting

Pigs like to cuddle. And to spoon. They’re very affectionate.

But this doesn’t look very comfortable…

Neither does this…

Chickens, apparently, like their personal space.

3 years ago:

Installment #7

It’s that time again, time to pick out Madeline’s 4-H pigs. My brother breeds several litters of “show pigs” just for her and lets her buy her pick. She got 8 again this year. She’ll take 4 or 5 to fair, and sell the rest to our customers.

Olivia got some, too, this year. But hers are just a money-maker project, she’s not going to take them to fair. She brought 3 home, and will bring 3 more home a little later. My brother had a late litter that didn’t fit size-wise with the rest of his pigs, so he gave her a deal on them. They need to get just a bit bigger before we get them.

(Let us know if you want on the list for half or whole hog for August – we’re already getting orders! The girls get to keep all the profits on these for their college funds.)

Last year we used a hog panel as a makeshift brooder pen. It wasn’t the best solution, because the little stinkers could pick it up with their noses and squeeze out the bottom.

Matt had been looking at buying some new hog gates (heavier than panels) and making a pen out of those. But hog gates aren’t so easy to find these days and cost a pretty penny (because most hogs are raised indoors nowadays, no need for hog gates.)

But first he asked his friend Rod if he had any old hog gates on hand. Rod’s a “junker” (there’s probably a more proper name like “reclamation professional”), and he’s been able to hook us up with various gates, old-fashioned feeders & waters, campfire rings, etc. in the past. Sure enough, he had some old gates that pin together and they work perfectly for a temporary pig brooder in our garage. And all for the grand price of $20!

Unfortunately we had a repeat of last year’s tragedy the very first night. We put a lid on the water bucket, but during the night they managed to get the lid off and once again we had one drown in the bucket. No more bucket waters for us!

I’ll leave you with this bit of cuteness, with more to follow…

4 years ago:

How to Cook : Ham Steak

The layer pullet chicks are still the most interesting thing going around here. Everyone else, be they 2-legged or 4-legged, is just sort of hanging around waiting for spring to show up.

It won’t be here tomorrow…ice and snow are on deck, so we sit and wonder whether the kids will get to school or not.

5 years ago:

How to Cook : Ribs

Best. Wheat bread. Evah.

One of the cookbooks I got for Christmas was King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. I don’t do a ton of baking, but I also hate resorting to store-bought cookies and whatnot for snacks for the kids. So I thought this might be the ticket to some reduced-guilt goodies.

The first recipe I tried was the chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t share them here because I wasn’t blown away or anything. But actually the rest of the family liked them just fine. I thought the wheat flour I had on hand at the time was maybe a little off, so I need to make them again with fresh flour. And then I made biscuits, but I rolled the dough too thin so I need to try them again, too.

Last Sunday I decided to try their 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread recipe. It wasn’t a difficult recipe, and there were no strange ingredients – I had everything on hand. orange juice, water, butter, whole wheat flour, sugar, dried potato flakes, dry milk, salt and yeast. So the only thing I found myself whining about was how much waiting-around time there was in the recipe. What can I say, I’m a Gen-X’er. I want my MTV, and I want it now.

What?

But this. This was one of those things that was totally worth the wait. It was the softest, lightest, tastiest whole wheat bread I’ve ever eaten. So good, I forgot to take a picture of it. And the family devoured the entire loaf alongside a pot of vegetable beef soup.

So I made it again Monday. You know, for the blog. So I’d have a picture to share with you. Because I’m giving like that.

The entire book includes weights as well as measurements. I love that – I weigh everything because it’s more accurate and, more importantly, dirties fewer dishes.

There’s several recipes using sprouted wheat berries that will be fun to try – I ordered seed sprouting trays with my garden seed last week. And the honey-oatmeal sandwich bread sounds yummy. When I get some whole wheat pastry flour I’ll try a cake. Stay tuned…

4 years ago:

Prepped