Friday Follow-Up

This week I suffered from a migraine for several days. I am thankful that I don't have those as often as I used to, but they sure make it hard to accomplish anything.

-- I re-wormed the goats, and moved them around to new pens. All the doelings are now in the large pasture with the does, who are hopefully all bred now. I watched Dove try to nurse when she found her momma, but Wish discouraged her. The others didn't even try, but a couple are reglued to their momma's side. The junior buck is in his winter pen with another doe, and the senior doe is in my most secure pen with two does that are visiting to be bred.

-- We are having a cold snap - it is November, after all - so I've been closing up the chicken coop and goat shed doors at night. At least the fleas/ticks/mosquitoes are gone now for the winter. We haven't had a frost yet, but the counties surrounding us have, so I'm sure we will soon.

-- Cleaned up the flowerbeds. I still need to prune my one and only rosebush, but it has two beautiful flowers on it and I'm waiting so I can enjoy them for awhile longer.

Let's Say Thanks to Our Troops

By going to this site you can choose a thank you card to be printed and sent to a soldier overseas. Support our troops, in prayer and in deed. Sponsored by Xerox, this service is completely free. Send more than one!

Thankful Thursday

This week I am thankful to the Lord, my God, for:

- watching my daughter have a great time at a Switchfoot concert
- our vet
- the long stretch of warm weather we had before this cold snap
- apple pie
- peppermint/chocolate chip milkshake

Feeding Frenzy

The other night, while R was getting hay for the sheep, they began running around in circles. I'd never before seen them put out so much physical activity! They ran from one end of their pen to the other, around their shed, and back again, over and over. I had the camera with me and began snapping photos...







They were just sooooo funny!

A Slice of My Life

Vacuum-Sealing Jars

My kitchen is filled with jars... canning jars as well as recycled jars from spaghetti sauce and mayonnaise and more.


I use gallon-size jars as canisters for different flours, sugar and so on. The smaller jars ~ half-gallon size and smaller ~ hold pasta and rice and other dry goods. Others hold dehydrated foods such as chopped onions, peppers, and sliced mushrooms.


All but the gallon-sized jars are vacuum-sealed to ensure freshness and prolong storage life. I use my Food Saver to seal the jars.


Canning jars are sealed using the canning jar attachment. To use it, just place the top on the jar ~ you don't need the ring to hold the top on ~ then set the vacuum seal attachment on top, and press the "Start" button on the vacuum sealer appliance. I put the jar ring on after it's sealed, but I don't tighten it because it could break the seal. It just looks nicer that way to me, like a canning jar is "supposed to look". There are two different canning jar sealers, one for regular mouth jars and one for the wide mouth jars.


The recycled jars are sealed using a different method. As long as the jar lid has a "rubber" ring inside, it can be vacuum-sealed. In the photo above, you can see this white ring inside the jar lid.


To seal this kind of jar, tighten the lid on the jar and place inside one of the vacuum canisters. They come in a set of three; I choose the canister closest in size to the jar. Attach the hose attachment, and push the "Start" button. The vacuum sealer evacuates the air from inside the jar and from inside the canister too. When it's finished, press the button on the canister and open it. The jar inside is now sealed.

The last step is to label all my jars; I don't depend on my memory! Hot peppers can look identical to sweet peppers; chopped red peppers look amazingly like chopped carrots.


Store your jars in a cool, dark place for maximum storage life.

My vacuum sealer gets used a lot, so it has a place of honor on my counter. The canisters and the canning jar attachment are stored in the cupboard directly above it, with the hose inside one of the canisters. Everything is handy and easy to find, so it's simple and quick to seal a jar or a vacuum bag.

Quote

"Happiness is a choice."
Randy Disher, Monk

Friday Follow-Up

This week:

-- Trimmed the milkers' hooves. I usually make sure they are done before or shortly after breeding. A couple of the does are due in January so it was essential to get their feet trimmed; I don't like to do it in late pregnancy. They stand very well for hoof trimming, so we did not have to struggle at all, but it's still best to do it early.


-- I had help this week from a young 4-H member who is interested in goats. She's come over twice to help out. We weight-taped this year's kids, wormed all the goats, and cleaned stalls. I'm really pleased at the growth rate of our doelings this year.

It was really nice to have another pair of hands to help hold the syringes and wormers, hang onto the goats, squirt wormer into their mouths, and keep records. Dove spit the wormer back out, right onto my face, but at least it missed my mouth and my eyes. ~smile~


-- Made apple jelly from the juice I made recently - six and a half half-pints of jelly canned. I used the pink juice and the jelly is so pretty. I also canned the other two quarts (4 pints) of apple juice to make into jelly or something later.


And now the non-productive things I've done...

-- K's horse was inside the goat pen two mornings this week! The first morning, when I let him out, the goats also got out. I caught them and put them back one at a time; I had to catch Wish three times because she kept getting back out again.

-- Fixed the fence so the horse can't get back in the goat pen again, I hope. (Well, ok, that was productive.)

-- Two of the goats got their heads stuck in one hole of the hay feeder. I finally gave up and asked Dh to use the bolt cutter to get them loose again. We need a new bolt cutter; I'm simply not strong enough to use the one we have, and it's also beginning to rust from the humidity.

-- One of our outside dogs keeps going through the fence and chasing cars on the road. On Wednesday I had to chase him down twice to get him back home. I'm at my wit's end with this dog. I think Great Pyrenees are hard-wired to chase cars; we lost their mother and father both on our road last year and I really don't want to have it happen again. Any ideas, anyone?