Thursday



 

Good Morning! It is a lovely Thursday morning here in Central Texas. It rained a bit the other night, but the wind dried it up pretty quickly. I did hear rumors about snow this week, but I remain in steadfast denial. The temps have been rather warm for this time of year and I am happy about that, because, like the true Texan I am, I am thoroughly fed up with winter when February comes around.  I am able to do laundry and work outside when it is warm, too, so that helps. It is a bit windy today, but it looks as if the sun will peek out sometime later on in the afternoon. I sure hope so.

 

 

This week, we took the bacon down from where it had been hanging in the smokehouse, and we got that cut up. This will be our third batch of home bacon done in just two months, and I think we have it down pretty good, because the bacon is amazingly delicious. We also moved forward in our curing of the hams we have been salting, so those should get hung in the smoker this week, Lord willing.  

  Our cow, Greta, is fresh, so we have been milking her for about 3 months now. We named her heifer calf “Daisy”. Being in dairy is such a blessing, having milk and cream and butter and sour cream and kefir and cheese.  Jennifer and I have been taking turns milking, I in the morning and she in the evening, and we get about 5 and a half to 6 gallons a day, which is a good amount. If I am not making cheese, most of that goes to our pigs or to the chickens once we have taken the cream off.


  Piggy, my sister’s pig that she raised from a bottle, gets more than his fair share of unused milk, to be sure. Him and his main squeeze, Matriona, have become fat and sassy and spoiled.
Our chickens have been in full egg production, as well. We are getting about twenty eggs a day. Jennifer and Robert keep busy in the mornings culling out the flock. We had an amazing, noisy amount of roosters about two weeks ago, but the children keep steadily at it, and most of those noisy roosters are canned and in the root cellar now. And, come five o’ clock in the morning the farm is much quieter, I must add.

 

 

While Rob and Jen and I worked on the bacon cutting, my Mom worked at restoring an old treadle machine we have owned for awhile. It will be a blessing to have two of them, as our current foot pedal machine is kept very, very busy between my sister, Mom and I. Anyways, I snuck a picture of her.....

Y’all have a good weekend. J

Tracy