Food Storage Interrupted

Continued from here

www.homestead-store.com

The way I'd like my canning shelves to look someday!

Things went along swimmingly well, the stock growing and shrinking, until we sold the farm in 2008 and did not have another farm to move into.  A farm needs to be bought in the spring so that the farmer can get a crop in for the summer in order to make mortgage payments.  Any later and he'll be making payments on the mortgage but not getting any income from the land.  The selling owner will try to rent the land out to a neighbor, just in case his farm doesn't sell that spring, as the farmer would like to recoup a bit of money for that year's mortgage payment.  Farm prices had risen drastically and try as we might, we couldn't find a farm that we could afford.

In the end, we knew that we were going to have to buy or rent a house in town (not an idea that we cared for!) until a farm came along.  Because we didn't want to sign a long term lease for renting, renting was no longer an option and we ended up having to buy a small house in town that was not fixed up.  It was built in the 50's and had a lot of character and although it was on the smaller side, by the time we had finished fixing it up (character left intact), the whole family was in agreement that if we could have just picked it up and taken it with us, we would have.

1.5 years later, we found a farm (this one) and were able, after some time, to sell the house in town.  The buyer, a young woman in her early 20's, wanted us out in 3 weeks!  Thank goodness saner heads prevailed (her parents and the real estate agent) and convinced her that this was impossible for anyone with children and she gave us a full 2 months.  But, of course, the farm would not be available for another 2 months after that so we needed to rent a place for that time.  This time, we were able to rent from DH's relatives who were moving into their house but not for a few more months.  This is the only time that the timing was perfect!

Confusing?  I know.  I knew ahead that it was going to be confusing and I tried to downsize as much as possible, throwing away, selling, giving away, donating but moving from a 190 acre farm to a .5 acre lot in town (that's being generous!) meant that there was a lot of stuff that had nowhere to go.  The problem was that we knew that we would need all of the kids' stuff still and all of the farm equipment, gardening supplies, etc. so there was a lot that we were stuck with but couldn't use at the time.

The one thing that I did not want to needlessly cart around with us, house after house, was box after box of canned, boxed and bagged food (such as rice).  I stopped buying food months before we moved and we ate up everything in the fridge and freezers except for DH's canned pineapple.  He had and still has, a fixation with them and if canned pineapples are on sale even now, we hide the grocery flyer from him!  We carted those pineapples around with us from house to house! 

We also had some leftover containers of hand lotion.  I thought I liked it then realized I didn't, no one did, and we were stuck with 7 or 8 of these large containers.  One of the downsides of food storage, I guess, is trying something new, buying multiples of it while it's on sale because if it's an unfamiliar item, you don't know when it'll be on sale again and then finding out that you don't like it, no one likes it and what do you do with it?

All of this moving meant the eventual death of my food storage.  I felt like I'd lost a friend (OK, a slight exageration) but I did lose something that I had worked hard on and I really had no idea, looking ahead down the road, when I would get the chance to do it again.  It wasn't as though someday I'd get to just carry on.  I had to start over completely - unless you consider unwanted hand lotion and oh-so-sick-of-it pineapple to be food storage!

Sad and Lonely Calves

On our second farm, we had 'field cows' (my uneducated name for them), mama cows that lived in the fields all summer and had their calves there.  In the fall, we would bring all of them into the barn for the winter.  Not a bad life...outside all summer and in the warmer barn with fresh straw all winter.  Except for one, little thing...we separated the calves from their mamas.   After all, they're not babies anymore and they get fed differently.  They're also too small to be in a pen with pushing, shoving adults more than twice their size who will actually trample them to death and not even notice.  As with all mothers, nursing must to come to an end someday!  Those poor mothers need the winter to recuperate!  (That's just my feminine take on it!)  There is, after all, another baby on the way that mama needs to get physically ready for. 

Well, calves separated from their mamas bawl and bawl and bawl and...on and on.  It's actually an awful ruckus that sounds like they're being slowly tortured (I guess they kind of are!) and murdered.  It can go on for up to 2 weeks and uneducated neighbors would likely call the animal welfare.  Thank goodness we had farmer neighbors and not city folk on acreages.  Because we did this in the fall, they were long over it before the calves were sold in the spring so the new owners did not have to put up with it. 

Which brings me to the here and now.  Yesterday we bought 8 medium-sized calves and 18 smaller ones.  A reliable buyer bought them for us and delivered them as our little horse trailer would never do the job and DH works full time and can't get to the stock yards to buy his own calves.

 This is more like the truck and trailer that we need. 

New calves unloading. 

 Ol' Blue Eyes!

Some of the calves that we bought yesterday are just fine, as were the 12 that we bought last week.  Some, however, were not weaned and it sure is noticeable which ones are which.  It may not show up at the stockyards as all the calves are upset anyway and don't mind letting anyone who's passing by know.  Our calves are usually very quiet, not even a cough or a moo.  They have everything that they need, fresh straw, water, feed and moo moo companionship. 

The noisy calves all come from the same owner, Farmer R.  DH reminded me that last year, we bought 44 calves from Farmer R. and it was the same bull.  Calves bawling for 2 weeks just because Farmer R. is too lazy to do the weaning himself.  I feel that it's pretty cruel to wean the little ones, load them onto - and unload them from - a trailer ('cuz they like that so much - NOT), put them in holding pens at the stockyards, parade them around the selling pen then off to a totally strange barn where they have to figure out the feed and water situation for themselves...all in 1 day.  The selling farmer could have helped alleviate some of the stress by doing the weaning process ahead of time and getting it out of the way.

This isn't just an emotional thing either.  Unweaned calves do not do as well because of the emotional and physical stress and lose a fair bit of weight.  Say a calf weighs 500 lbs.  The buying farmer pays for every one of those pounds then the unweaned calf loses, say, 50 lbs.  The buying farmer paid for 50 lbs. that he's no longer getting and now has to pay for feed for that calf for quite a while (starting after the calf finally calms down) to put that weight back on and then the calf will finally start to gain real weight.  (Just picking random numbers here.)

The selling farmer hurts himself in the long run as this is a business that is very much dependent upon word of mouth and your reputation as a seller is everything.  DH informed our buyer to never deal with Farmer R. again.  Famers will always return to reputable sellers and likewise avoid the disrespectful selling farmers forever.

You know it's cold in the barn when you can see his breath.

 Some of the happy campers.

A few of the lost and lonely little souls protesting.

1940 Applalachian Pioneer's Mountain Life And Their Children

I've watched this video quite a number of times and do not get tired of it.  I can't believe that we are lucky enough to have real footage like this to view, review, get ideas from, etc.

I believe I recognize that floor at 1:43.  It looks exactly like the old floor in the back kitchen of our first farmhouse and I used to sweep the dirt down through the floorboards, just like at 1:51.

I've never seen a steel barrel used inside the house for heat, only outside for burning garbage.  The insurance companies would have a fit nowadays if they saw a steel barrel used for heat.  They don't even want them used outside.  Farmers have used them for decades to burn their garbage.  After watching quite a few episodes of the show "Trashopolis", I've come to the conclusion that governments all over the world have no single, simple idea on how to dispose of garbage properly and cleanly and therefore, the farmers have likely been doing a better job.  At any rate, the price of a new wood stove would have been out of the reach of the average 1940 family if they also had to buy a wood kitchen cookstove.  I've seen lots of ideas on Youtube for outdoor cooking from small metal coffee cans to larger barrels.  As my mom used to say, everything old is new again!