five acres in florida

we're getting just shy of a gallon a day from ms. milkteats, and she's very cooperative about the whole thing. it's nice.

her milk is so thick with cream, though, that i have to skim about half of it off or it's nearly undrinkable! tasty, but fatty. every three days or so i find myself with about a quart of cream that i am happily making into fresh cultured butter, which then yields fresh cultured buttermilk, which i put into my sourdough pancakes and biscuits. Y U M. seriously. it's amazing, with a cow and a few chickens, how much less i have to buy at the grocery store: milk, butter, eggs, cream, yogurt, ice cream (and eventually cream cheese and sour cream and regular cheese)... all i need is some bees for honey to replace sugar and a wheat field for flour and we'll be set :).

last night after milking--we do use the machine, and it turns out to be great, but i finish by hand to fully drain her--matt and i were watching a movie and i kept getting this itchy spot on my belly, so i finally lifted my dress to inspect and i found one of these on it:


AHHHHHHHH it was horrifying. and huge. like the size of my pinky nail. so matt freaked and told me i better go to the doctor today and blah blah (he's very paranoid about lyme disease having known a few people who had it--one is on crutches just a few weeks post-infection)... but this sort of tick doesn't carry lyme disease so i'm not going to lose my sh*t just yet. i did slather the tiny bite mark with neem oil, however, just in case. i think i got him about 5 minutes after he started biting me, because i was definitely aware of the itch as soon as it started. needless to say, i kept the nasty bug on a piece of tape just in case i DO get sick and need to prove what bit me. being pregnant (and thus somewhat immuno-compromised), i'm a little more worried than i would normally be, but it's just a freaking bug bite after all.

i had to have gotten it sitting in the field underneath the cow while i milked her. there's no other way a bug like that would've made its way onto my large and protruding belly, of all random places. *shudder* it definitely gave us both the heebie jeebies though. first tick bite ever, for me.

it just occurred to me that one might freeze yogurt for later eating. duh!

we have so much milk piling up that i need ways to use it--i make yogurt with it, and from that yogurt cheese (which is SO SO UNBELIEVABLY GOOD), but one can only eat so much yogurt before it goes bad. plus i need to be able to blend in fruits and honey for rowan or she's not into it... so, frugal idea:

- reuse those blasted plastic baby food containers i saved from all the WIC baby food by filling them with small batches of blended fruity homemade raw milk yogurt
- freeze them! apparently the cultures go dormant in the freezer but are reinvigorated upon thawing/eating when heated to decent temperatures.

voila, no more buying $$ yobaby whole milk yogurt cups. and no wasted packaging.

i have had a series of alarming dreams over the last several months, which on the surface seem unrelated but my feeling is that they are definitely connected.

dream #1 (multiple variations of this one occurred)
i'm either watching floodwaters rise in our yard or preparing a trailer for a massive tidal wave. in the first type i'm standing in the yard holding a baby and the water just slowly seeps up, rising steadily up the fence and i'm not suprised but i'm sort of annoyed/confused that it's happening now, and i know we can't get away. in the other type i'm trying to find a good spot to put a small trailer and anchor it down so the water that is coming won't wash it away, but my sense is that it's hopeless.

dream #2
i'm laying in a field at night, watching fireworks in the sky, but they are like acid-trip neon fractals instead of normal fireworks--someone is with me--and a few seconds after everything stops there is this intense non-sound, like a BOOM but you can't hear it, and directly above me, out of nowhere, manifests a massive alien spacecraft. the sense of total earth-shattering shock and bewilderment is overwhelming, though i am not necessarily afraid. it just totally changes everything in a split second and i feel like my brain is overloaded. i woke up immediately.

dream #3
i had this dream just a few days or a week ago, but the details have faded other than the key point. i'm looking up into a dusk-like sky at a huge moon, and next to it is another equally huge astronomical body, like a second moon. one is reddish pink and the other is tinged yellow. it's literally like looking at two moons in one sky, only they are much bigger than they should be. my feeling is of shock and wild alarm because i know what it means--we're around the corner from massive earth changes, maybe within a few weeks if not less (in the dream).

i'm wondering what the next one will be like... there have been others, only vaguely remembered or questionably related, mostly involving me consulting with or being on ships of alien-types. really weird stuff...

our dear, sweet, playful dogs have officially bought their ticket out of our lives. i'm sad about this, but we really have no choice.

aside from the 5 hens they've massacred, they attacked butters... 5 minutes into being out in the pasture with her. they bit her legs--trying to hamstring her--and caused her to gash her belly with a kicking hoof. matt managed to stop it before they really hurt her, but it was bad enough. so they have been locked in their cages (outside of the pasture, as butters was charging them) for the past several days, and we both feel bad about it but they just can't be trusted.

the problems are:
- they escape any/all fence with impunity
- they kill chickens (though matt raised the walls on the chicken coop and only the rooster can now escape)
- they are bold enough to try to take down a COW
- we can't get goats or sheep with them
- they could hurt the children and i'm not convinced they wouldn't, accidentally or not

it sucks. fencing them in another part of the yard is not an option because 1) we have no money for fencing and 2) they escape anyway. kids and animals will always be at risk while they are around. we're lucky they haven't caught neki, our outside cat yet.

blah. i am going to miss them, and i really don't want to be without a dog... both for the kids as a pet and for myself as i am home alone most of the time. we just can't take the kind of chance it has come down to with them. we cannot afford to have injured animals and if anything happened to the little ones...

...came home yesterday! she's a little jersey, so not too intimidating, and she's clever enough, for a cow. getting her into the pasture was a little bit of a fiasco, thanks to my dad, but in the end it was all fine.

matt and i even managed to milk her without a holding pen, just by tying her head to the fence and bribing her with munchies. yes, i milked a cow last night! by hand! i am very proud of myself about it. she didn't seem to mind at all, and i think she even likes me already (she mooed pleasantly at me this morning when i walked outside!), though she was kind of nervous about matt. i didn't empty her by any stretch of the imagination, i just wanted to ease her obvious engorgement and get her used to me doing it right away... so we ended up with about a 1/2 gallon, half of which she knocked over into the grass. but it was a successful venture overall.

it's really not hard to do, though i definitely learned something about what supplies i need to have on hand before i sit down next to her. namely:
- the bucket of water/soap/bleach with nipple rinser
- another bucket of wash water with a sponge or rag
- a small towel for drying hands and udders
- udder balm
- paper towels
- two gallon-size jars, pre-sterilized

since last night was a trial run, i will be more prepared this time. plus i expect matt to finish the milking stand today so we won't have to worry about her spinning around or knocking the jar over. my brother in law gave us a homemade milking machine which he always used, but honestly the thing seems not to be worth the trouble and fiddling it requires. i know it would drain her more efficiently, but it certainly won't save any time (considering setup and breakdown) and then i'll have a big machine to clean, sterilize, and haul into the house when i'm done every night. eh. and that's assuming i can even carry it...

we haven't yet let the dogs interact with her, though, and i am going to wait for matt to get home this morning before i try. they are going to be shitheads, i know it. i just don't want them to bite her udders or something like that and really hurt her. my hope is that she will charge at them right away to stop any nonsense before it starts--they aren't stupid--but if she runs they'll never leave her alone.

i'll post some pics of her later today.

there go two more hens. within the span of ONE WEEK.

i caught them chasing the rooster like mad through the yard yesterday and managed to intervene before he was either caught or exhausted to death, but just barely. we are now down to two hens, one of whom cannot escape the coop (so is probably safe), and the rooster. i guess i'll be buying some more chicks here shortly, unless my uncle has any spare hens.

oh and i got stung by a 4in scorpion on my kitchen floor last night--that shit hurt for like 10 minutes, but then the pain was gone. felt like a sustained cigarette burn with a little tingly numbness thrown in. very unpleasant! i'm not sure how he got in the house but i'm going to have to be more paranoid now that rowan is running around.

my sourdough starter molded, to my great sadness, and i am not sure why or how... but i've started a new one so i should be ok in a few days or so. the warm temp (81deg) in our house seems to speed the fermentation a bit. i'm itching to try sourdough pretzels...

and finally, our previous abode is to be auctioned on sept 2. the foreclosure is final. it's a weird feeling, we'll actually need to say goodbye soon. our first home, where rowan first lived... but we are a lot happier here. i don't miss the neverending interior construction, the musty old-house smell, or the non-functioning a/c! but i do miss the prairie and our nice neighbors with their little toddler rowan's age. and, on some days, the proximity to gainesville. bittersweet.

i think we may be "inheriting" butters the cow from my sister. apparently they are overwhelmed with their now 9-month old preemie, both working, renovating a home, and milking the cow twice a day... of course my response was YES we want her!! we'll see if matt agrees with me tonight.

i just added a new link on the right to "the chatelaine's keys" blog, where i found this helpful little post. while my brother-in-law will be giving us his homemade milking machine, i'm pretty interested in learning to do it by hand (less paraphernalia to sterilize and practice for when the lights go out).

i hope i can convince matt it's a good idea...!

update:
he said yes!! i didn't even have to fight for it :)

now i just need to find out if i will have to chase her to catch her for milking... might need to get the tractor out in that field, if so (the weeds are 4ft high).