Wind Farms kill Goats

I am all for sustainable energy.... efficient sustainable energy and the more I learn the more I'm convinced that wind farms are not for Western MD, but rather for places like the coastal shelf where they can be most efficient. That being said, I just came across an article about goats and their demise due to wind farm noise.

The BBC published an interesting article about 400 goats dying due to sleep deprivation caused by the noise of nearby wind turbines. To read more on this... check out this link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8060969.stm

The Original Slim Jim Recipe

I found this "original" Slim Jim recipe posted at the New York Times. I don't know if it is the real thing yet, but I'm going to pass it along to the butcher. I LOVE SLIM JIMS! I hope I LOVE GOAT SLIM JIMS! I'm thinking of culling one of the Boer does and her baby from last year just so I can make slim jims. Goat meat is really low in cholesterol and healthier than beef. After growing up on a beef farm, it is hard not to like beef.

http://events.nytimes.com/recipes/1884/2001/12/30/The-Original-Slim-Jim/recipe.html

The Original Slim Jim

Adapted from Bruce Aidells

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Ingredients

• 1 lamb intestine casing (4 feet long)
• 2 1/2 pounds top round chuck, cubed
• 1 pound beef fat, cubed
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon No. 1 curing salt
• 4 tablespoons kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed
• 1/3 cup lactic-acid starter culture

Preparation

1.

Rinse salt off the sausage casing. Soak in ice water for at least 1 hour.

2.

Combine meat and fat. Run the mixture through a meat grinder into a large bowl, using the finest setting. Add all ingredients, along with one cup of ice water. Knead vigorously until mixture is the consistency of bread dough (about 8 minutes).

3.

Rinse casing one last time. Choose the narrowest gauge tube of your sausage press. Splash the tube with ice water, then pull the casing over it. Transfer the mixture, about two fistfuls at a time, to the sausage press and then pump the meat into the casing, splashing more water on the tubing as needed to stop the casing from tearing.

4.

Preheat an electric smoker to 100 degrees. Hang sausage in the smoker for 22 hours. Temperature should never dip below 90 degrees or go above 110 degrees. After 22 hours, raise the temperature to 150 degrees and cook until the internal temperature reaches 150 to 155 degrees (about 30 minutes).

5.

Remove from smoker and let cool at about 50 degrees in a dry place for 4 hours. Cut sausage into 4-inch lengths.

YIELD

16 servings

• Originally published with FOOD: ADOLPH LEVIS, B. 1911; A Tricky Stick
• By Manny Howard, December 30, 2001

BUSY AS A BEE

Not gathering honey, but crazy busy today

Posted via email from rocking-m's posterous

BUSY AS A BEE

Crazy busy today!

)  (

.  .

  I         May you always have love to share, health to spare, and friends that care

 U

  (

Thank you,

Missy Russell Martz

Rocking M

Raising Sons, Reg. Haflinger Horses 

& Reg. Nigerian Dwarf & Boer Goats

13509 Old Legislative Road SW

Frostburg, MD 21532

voice: 301/268-8388 before 8am or after 8 pm

email: melissamartz@gmail.com

There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.

— Winston Churchill

No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.  — Winston Churchill

Heaven is high and earth wide.  If you ride three feet higher above the ground than other men, you will know what that means.  — Rudolf C. Binding

Posted via email from rocking-m's posterous

Random Notes to Self

Copper Sulfate will treat foot rot. Mix copper sulfate with sawdust. Put in throw away cement mixing pans from Lowe's in a place where the goats have to walk through... Info courtesy of Fernie Register.

Robotic Cow Milkers

Well, today I traveled to Annapolis with the fine folks from Western Maryland Rural Leadership. And along the way, we stopped at Mason Dixon Farm where Richard Waybright showed us around his super-efficient farm complete with robotic milkers.

The Waybrights employ 43 people and milk 2,400 head of holsteins daily through the use of robotic milkers. The cows self milk. As they want to be milked, they enter the a milking station, where a robotic DeLaval arm automatically does an udder wash, a milk test and in begins to milk. A computer automatically records each cows milk yield. Waybright's blue-ribbon cow milked 20# of milk per day.

This wasn't the only super-cool thing though. The Waybrights created a tractor that can mow down a 30' swath of silage, utilize a methane digester, and a irrigation thing on wheels to spread manure across their fields at a press of a button. Well, worth the tour!

Gardening Workshop

Plant peas and beans twice...
Swiss chard manages heat better than lettuce...
Make cucumbers grow to make them climb..
Heritage Tomatoes - cross between Heirloom (taste) and Hybrid (yield)
Plant seed twice as deep as it is wide
Tamp down soil but not compact
Okra takes a long time to grow... more of a Southern plant
transplants: tomato, pepper, eggplant, cabbage, broccoli, herbs

carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium,
nitrogen - leaf growth, too much not much fruit production, manure, blood meal, cottonseed meal
phosophorus - rock phosphate, bone meal, cottonseed
potassium- wood ashes, manure, green sand, compost
synthetic fertlizers are more readily available because they are water-soluable
new garden - Nitrogen - Phosphorous - Potassium 10-10-10
2 cups = 1 lb. synthetic fertilizer
don't fertilize until you get the first set of true leaves
water after planting seeds or transplants, water especially when flowering and fruit
65 gallons
dig a hole 3 or 4 inches deep don't water it is until it is dry...
best time to water - late afternoon before sundown or early in the morning don't water in the heat of the day...
soaker hose cuts down on evaporation..
Add organic matter to soil to conserve water...
2-4 inches deep but don't let it touch the plants - encourages slugs


Weeds
skinny trowels, hand pull, mulch
plant in a row, weed every 10 days...
check label to seed how soon you can spray after using insecticides
slugs - pans of beer, half of cantelope upside down...

www.growit.umd.edu

Aphids - most common - most easy to deal with when they are young....
Whiteflies - in hoop houses mostly
Stink bugs white specks on tomatoes indicates
squash bug - red, adult brown, usually comes after you are sick of squash
Japanese beetle - hand pick - defense mechanism is to fall off so have cup underneath
Cucumber Beetle - yellow and black stripes - tough to control organic

Beneficial Insects
Ladybeetle fit on a pencil eraser
Syrphid Fly - maggot
Ground Beetle
Lacewing - hang under a leaf
Parasitic wasps - eats its hosts - mummy -
Tachinid Fly

Wordless Wednesday

SALE: Coffee & Cream Kitchen Soap

Who wouldn't like a little coffee & cream in the morning?
A treat for the senses, the coffee smells so de-li-cious while the cream (made with real goats milk from here on the farm) nourishes your skin. This soap is also great for removing all those icky kitchen smells like onions and seafood from your hands...

$4.50
Approximate 4 oz. bar

Everlasting Fence Posts

Take boiled linseed oil and stir in it pulverized charcoal to the consistency of paint. Put a coat of this over the timber, and there is not a man that will live to see it rotten." (From "Lee's Priceless Recipes" 1895)

Check!

I received one of the books on my want to read list. Goat Medicine by Mary C. Smith and David Sherman. I am such the geek! At least my family thinks I am... I would rather read than do almost anything else besides be in the barn. They can't understand why I like the barn so much either...

PSA

Martha Stewart's Soil Recipe

The weather here is wonderful today. So, my planting urges are on full alert. Between checking the goats for new babies and lugging peat moss out of my truck, I'm cruising the net looking at organic soil mix recipes. I found Martha Stewart's recipe here.

Organic Soil Mix

2 bags Organic compost
1 bag peat moss
1/2 bag perlite
1/2 bag vermiculite
1 bag pumice dust
6 cups bat guano
6 cups worm castings
4 cups bone meal
2 cups lime

Organic Tea Recipe

5 gallons purified water
1/2 cup Fish emulsion
1 cup Bat guano
1 cup liquid seaweed
6 table spoons Molasses

Treatment for Lice on Goats

This website suggests the following for treating lice on goats

In our area, cattle susceptible to lice will get them about July, especially if they aren't eating enough of the mineral lick. We haven't had lice in goats on Irrabina although we have had lice in sheep. We've had them in the cattle at times and rather than use a pour on as we have done in the past, we use a very simple and easy cure. Mostly it takes 4-5 days but can take longer depending on how bad the infestation is. We use SULPHUR. You can buy it in bulk from your produce supplier.

For goats,
use 1 TEASPOON per animal mixed with warm water. Administer orally using a drench gun or syringe at the rate of say 20ml per animal. That is, mix up enough sulphur at 1 teaspoon per animal in 20ml water times the number of goats.

For cattle,
use about 1 TABLESPOON per head per day, which works out to be about 30 grams per head per day. For 35 head (don't worry about size and weight, just number head), that's about 1kg. For 35 head, buy 5kgs of powdered sulphur (not the grains) which will last 5 days. We see a reaction (ie no licking of the body, no rubbing against trees, the coats are dry with more sheen) after 2 days but complete the 5 day treatment. Mix up and feed out as per giving treatments.

After 5 days, even if you see only one animal still licking itself or rubbing, continue the treatment for all for another 5 days. It's simple and relatively cheap.

Farm bank thrives amid crisis

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/harford/bal-ha.farm21dec21,0,6327261.story

Ted Shelby's article for the Baltimore Sun, (12/21/08) opens with the following sentence.

Our nation would not be in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Depression if we had more grain farmers, dairymen and poultry growers running our lending institutions.

and goes on to say

Farm Credit's balance sheet is the envy of the banking industry. Net income for the six months ended June 30 is up nearly 20 percent to $1.55 billion from the same period last year.

and

Conventional lenders reported nearly 8,000 foreclosures in Maryland during the three-month period ended Sept. 30, and that is with state programs aimed at keeping people in their homes.

By comparison, MidAtlantic Farm Credit, which serves most of Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Delaware, has reported fewer than a dozen foreclosures over the past year.

While other banks have been cutting or completely eliminating dividend payments of shareholders, MidAtlantic paid out $28 million in patronage payments last year. This is a form of profit sharing with its borrowers who are also owners of the bank.

"Having farmers on our board of directors helps keep us focused on our mission," said Frazee. "They are fiscal conservatives and prone not to repeat mistakes of the past."

Sixteen of MidAtlantic's 18 directors are farmers.

Country folks can survive!

I think the key here is farmers don't typically repeat mistakes of the past. There are a few alive who lived through the Great Depression. My father just missed it, but my grandparents didn't and the stories were told and passed on to the next generation about how hard it was.

Brandied Apples with Goat Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:
1 baguette
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon butter
1 green apple, sliced
2 tablespoons brandy or apple vodka (this may be omitted)
1 cup softened goat cheese

Preheat oven on low broil setting.

Slice baguette into 35 small rounds. Coat each round with olive oil and lightly salt and pepper them. Place them on a cookie sheet. In a small saucepan, melt butter and add apple slices. When apples are coated, add brandy and toss gently for about 3 minutes, until apples become slightly soft. Remove from heat.

To construct, place 1 apple slice on a toast round and spoon about 1 tablespoon of goat cheese on top. When all of them are constructed, place entire cookie sheet under broiler and remove as soon as the top of the goat cheese is slightly browned. Be sure you don't forget them, because they will brown quickly.

Goat Cheese Dumplings with Sambal Chili Oil Recipe

Girly goats! Hurry up and freshen 'cause the recipe sounds de-lish!

Ingredients:
24 won ton wrappers
5 ounces goat cheese
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons sesame oil
4 tablespoons sambal chili paste
parsley to garnish

Lay out won ton wrappers. Place a thumbnail size piece of goat cheese in center of each wrapper. Moisten edges of wrapper and fold wrappers into a triangle. Seal edges making sure to eliminate any air pockets. Blend oils and Sambal paste in blender until smooth. Bring large pot of water (and salt) to a boil. Drop half of the dumplings into water and let boil for 2 minutes,

Remove and boil remaining dumplings. Arrange 4 dumplings on each plate and drizzle with the chili oil mixture and sprinkle with parsley.

This recipe from CDKitchen for Goat Cheese Dumplings with Sambal Chili Oil serves/makes 6

Bamboo as a goat forage?

From http://www.wildthymefarm.com/agrobamboo.html

An excerpt from Wild Thyme Farm about Bamboo as an animal forage

On our farm where we run dairy cattle and goats on an open pasture we are faced with food shortages during the winter months when grasses are dormant or no longer meeting the nutritional needs of the animals. Consequently we have had to invest in either purchased feed or the energy and labor of cutting and storing grass hay. Recently we have begun exploring a number of perennial crops that hold the potential for extending the forage capacity of the bottomland pastures. Bamboo has become a prime candidate as a perennial forage species as it holds its foliage year round making dormant season harvest possible. Having a high protein content (12%-19%) it is comparable to alfalfa in nutritional value yet does not require the intensive cutting, drying, and storage process of an annual crop.

Bamboo thrives in the rich, moist alluvial soils of the farm's bottomlands. We are therefore researching the feasibility of growing bamboo in proximity to grazing animals. Feeding can be managed by either cutting bamboo and "throwing it over the fence" or allowing animals to g raze in bamboo paddocks on short rotations. WSU is also experimenting with producing silage, a product of fermented foliage or biomass, from bamboo leaves. Silage is typically produced from grass hay and is a common strategy for providing a food source to grazing animals during seasons when pastures are dormant.