NEW BLOG

I have moved my blog to acomodate our NEW Farmstay and Bed and Breakfast. Same exciting blog, new location. Texasfarmstay.blogspot.com check it out!!

out of town

I'm away from the farm, so sorry for the lack of blog posts! But in my travels I have passed many coal powered electric plants. I understand that those plants provide many jobs for the people in the Midwest, that have suffered the most from the economy job loss. But I can't help to be sickened at the sight of the nasty smoke pouring out of the multiple smoke stacks and who knows what kind of toxins are ending up in the river that these plants sit on. The employees surly suffer from the effects from working with coal and high levels of carbon dioxide in the air. Makes me so sad that us Americans won't stand up against it, there are far too many clean ways to produce electricity now.... Why are we as a people poisoning ourselves???? Makes absolutely no sense. Please if your electricity comes from coal.... Conserve, conserve, conserve.

heartbroken

after 4 days of nursing my poor sick calf "the situation" he died yesterday of unknown causes. He has been eating well the whole time, and his manure looked normal. Had antibiotics. Was kept warm through the chilly nights. The ranchers next door had looked at him just the day before and said that he looked good, no signs of pneumonia. I just wonder what went wrong :( makes me so sad, I tried everything to make him better! Rip "the situation".

sick cow

so there was a bump on "the situation" about the size of a marble on his side. For a bit I thought it was an infected spot where he got caught up in the barbed wire. But through research I discovered it was a cattle grub! The feed store guy had advised me to squirt hydrogen peroxide in the hole, and the bubbles would pop it out. Well that did not work. But the grub did come up for air when I did that, which allowed me to see that there was really one in there. Ewwww totally gross!! So I tried to squeeze it out. That did not work either. So I ended up reaching in the hole with tweezers and was able to grab it to pull it out. That thing was huge and one of the nastiest things I have done to date!!!! I'm not sure if the grub has caused "the situation" to be sick, or if there is something else wrong with him. But he is very weak and can't stand right now. So I gave him a bottle last night, and expected to have a dead cow on my hands this morning. As of now he is still in the same spot, but is hanging on so far. I have a farmer coming over this morning to help me give both calves vaccines, hopefully that will kick whatever is ailing him and make "guido" even stronger. We'll see how it turns out, I really hope he pulls through!!!

wormer time

I've been a little concerned lately about the animals having "worms". Which is very common in free ranging and grass fed animals because they are haphazardly eating whatever is on the ground with their grass. So I have found a homemade natural recipe for worming animals. This will be my first time using this method, i have real high hopes this will work!!!

So for like a goat to calf sized animal

1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon molasses
1 to 2 tablespoons of warm water (just enough to dissolve everything together)


i used a kitchen injector syringe to squirt it in their mouths (just the plastic part). I seriously didn't think the calves would take it, but they actually LOVED it. I bet the would drink a whole bottle of that stuff!!

fall leaves

we have many large oak trees on the property, and I had imagined huge piles of leaves everywhere. I'm not sure if the goats are eating the fallen ones, or the trees have many more leaves to shed.

wrapping up my second season garden

well it's almost the end of my second season garden. My okra is going strong. Actually I have so much picked that I need to figure out what I'm going to do with it, either freeze or pickle. My peppers finally have little babies and should be coming on heavy in about a week. I'm still getting a few squash, but that's about all my garden left. I have to get my winter stuff in before it gets too late, I need to make it my project for the week, we'll see how that goes.