April Things

Lights out!

So you have the benefit of a freezer full of wonderful pasture raised meat you bought from a local farmer.  The comfortable feeling of knowing your freezer is full of good food for the year and maybe even a few special cuts for the holidays.  Nice feeling eh?

Right up until the power goes out of course. Then it's freak out show and you know it's all going to end it tears.

If you have a generator you are allowed to look smug at this point as long as you remember to not start it up inside your house.  Hook it up to the freezer and see if your neighbour needs to run a couple hundred feet of extension cord to it as well.  Well done - you can go read something interesting instead.

If not, don't Panic. 

You've got a minimum of 24 hours no matter what so you have plenty of time to read this entire blog post and get some snacks, just don't open the freezer ok?

You might be able to borrow or rent a generator.  Depending on how often this happens and how much meat you keep on hand, it might be worth it to buy a generator.

I once went three days without power with a chest freezer full of beef and pork and zero dry ice.  At the three day mark I moved all the food into another freezer at my parents house.  We lost some frozen peppers to bad freezer burn, but all the meat was fine.

Call the power company so they know your address is included in the power outage.

How long before you have to worry?
Chest Freezer: 24 - 48 hours is likely, 72 is possible.
Upright: 24 hours for sure, 48 depending on other factors.  Ours thawed totally by 24 hours which is why we got rid of it. 
Refrigerator: 24 hours but you may still end up throwing stuff out.  It depends - the rules will be different for a lot of stuff.  Produce is remarkably resilient though - if it looks and smells ok it is.

For either freezer type you will want to leave it alone - don't open it.  Especially the upright.  You've got time.  Really - your food isn't lonely or scared.  Let it be.

Get a meat thermometer like the one pictured that reads low temps as well as high ones.  USDA guidelines say to throw out (or cook) foods that have been at higher than 40 degrees for more than two hours (I think that's overkill, but it's a guideline) - as long as it's not to 40 you can safely refreeze anything. You don't want to guess though - you'll waste a lot of food unnecessarily.

At the 24 hour mark get your thermometer and open the freezer.  Know exactly what you are going to do before hand - keep it short.  This is a quick gauge of the situation, not a detailed one.  Hot air rises - check the food on the top first.  It should still be frozen, or at least mostly frozen.  If it's thawed take the temp so you can get a feel for how much time you have, but you already know you're going to need dry ice soon.  If the stuff at the top is frozen solid so is the stuff at the bottom.  If you don't have much bunch the food together.  If it's easy to get at, remove any ice cream boxes that might leak - ice cream is probably doomed at this point, and it'll save you a mess.  Any meat that is leaking you should remove and cook.  If you have an upright with an ice maker get the ice out now - it's going to turn into water and that will make things worse.

So we're at the 24 hour mark.  If you have an upright you probably need dry ice now.  If you have a chest freezer you can probably wait a day maybe two depending on how your inspection went.   The problem here is that everyone else is at the same point you are, so dry ice may be harder to find.   Call the local grocery store for dry ice. If they don't have it start calling the grocery stores in small towns nearby - rural folks use this more often than city folks.  Get some - it's about 1$ per pound.

Dry ice is going to dissipate at a rate of 5 -10 pounds every 24 hours.  In the meantime, it's going to keep your food cold enough to save.

This link has good data on dry ice -http://www.dryiceinfo.com/broken.html

From that link -

For each 24-hour period:

(1) Freezer on bottom: use 15 to 25 pounds.
(2) Freezer on top: use 20 to 30 pounds.
(3) Side by side Freezer: use 30 to 40 pounds. Place each slab, starting with the top shelf, on top of the food to be kept frozen. Bottom shelves will be kept frozen by the Dry Ice above it.
(4) Chest Freezer: use 40 to 50 pounds. When taking out the frozen food, carefully lift the dry ice slab up with gloves, potholder, towel, etc., without touching the dry ice directly.

I think that's overkill, but best to start with that and see how it's going 24 hours later and gauge how much to buy again then.

At the 48 hour mark repeat what you did at the 24 hour mark.  More carefully this time.  Feel around the packages - what is thawing?  If it still has a frozen core that's fine - if it's totally thawed you probably need to start adding dry ice if you haven't already, or step up the amount.

If it's approaching 40 degrees you need to buy charcoal : ).  That's not entirely facetious - once cooked if you can keep it at refrigerator temps you can re-freeze it within 3-4 days (again, that's a USDA guideline).  It's easier to keep food at that temp and it buys you a lot of time, but you'll need a lot of dry ice (or regular ice in coolers) to cool the food down.

Lastly, read this - http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Factsheets/Focus_On_Freezing/

That's the USDA freezer safety guidelines - they are sensible.  There is a section on freezer emergencies.

Worst case, your insurance company (home owners policy) may cover losses of food due to power outage - call them and check if you get to that point.

This isn't helpful now, but in the future unless you have a disability that makes getting into a chest freezer impossible or impractical, buy a chest freezer, not an upright.

We always recommend a chest freezer.  If you have one you now know why.  An upright will lose all the cold air every time it's opened - the chest freezer won't.  A chest freezer is also less likely to break since they don't automatically defrost.  On an upright there are a few components that can go bad on the defrost cycle that will cause the freezer to stop working - not cool (heh...get it?).  A chest freezer door that's left open isn't a big deal at all - shut the upright wrong and you just lost all your food overnight.  To top off the list of benefits, a chest freezer is a lot cheaper.  Yes - it's harder to keep organized - if you have a significant investment that trade off is worth it.

A chest freezer will keep your meat good for 24 hours minimum, but 48 hours is likely and 72 hours is possible - it all depends on the freezer, the temperature of the air around it, and how full the freezer is.  It's best to keep the freezer mostly full - all that frozen stuff acts as it's own cooling mechanism if the power goes out.  This is true for an upright as well, but an upright just won't hold the cold as well - if you don't open it you can go 24 hours, maybe 48, but not in my experience. That's the ultimate reason we got rid of ours.

Good luck!





 

First Aid on a Ewe and Basic kit

One of the lifestyle changes that we quickly learned living on a farm and having animals is performing our own veterinary care on our livestock. We simply cannot call the vet for every little thing or have them come to the farm to do wound care daily. We do call the vet, but only when it is necessary and often we call to make that determination. 

That means we have to learn to give shots. This means we manage a pharmaceutical selection in a fridge. This means we have to not be squeamish. 

Knowing this level of animal first aid, having supplies on hand, and maintaining a good relationship with our vet has saved the lives of several animals on our farm.

Last week after shearing the sheep, somehow one of the ewes sliced a tendon on a fence. I went to take naked sheep pictures and found her bleeding and limping.  

So yesterday a friend was curious and asked what this was like so I thought I would post a walk through of the wound care:

First, when any injury happens it is important to clean the injured area, with sheep that means shearing bald around the area. Then they need an antibiotic (penicillin) to ward off infection and a tetanus shot. These guys sleep outside on the ground or in hay and the common tetanus bacteria is found in dirt (not rusty metal, like most believe). 

This is wrap and bandage that has to be daily changed for a while. The cut is just above the joint.

Her niece is in with her. They are 2 weeks apart and are best friends. Sheep are social animals and need a companion or the depression that sets in can hinder healing.

First we remove the old bandage. This stuff is what we call vet wrap, but it is exactly the same thing used on people- a self sticking bandage.  This part seems to cause her more discomfort than any other part of the process.

Notice I have a towel under where I am working. That is to keep hay from getting in the wound while it is exposed.

Chad is in charge of holding her while I do the work on the wound. Keeping her calm and not freaked out keeps us all safe from injury.

This is Ichthammol: hoof treatment, and skin antiseptic goo (Ichthy-goo for short). This gets applied to the wound. Gloves keep things cleaner, but also touching the wound with my bare hands to spread the goo does not appeal to me. You know? I am double gloved so I can slip the goo'd glove off and then still have on a glove to do the next part. 

Then the clean bandage goes on. In this picture you can see the old Ichthy-goo, not blood.  The actual cut, while serious, is actually pretty small.

The new wrap goes on. To get the tension right and not too tight, pull the length out to wrap and then wrap it around. I  took this one twice around the wound, once below the joint and once at the joint. 

And then she's good. It does look like it is healing and she is starting to put weight on it. I might have the vet come out and look at it next week to assess the next step in wound care- leaving it open to air and wrapping at night maybe? Or going more days between changing. Not sure how long we have to use Ichthy-goo either. We are learning that is for sure.

This wound is different than the predator injuries we have dealt with before. It was a clean cut and small. That doesn't mean it isn't serious though. The vet's first assessment was that if we don't get through this she might need amputation or to be put down. We are making this huge effort so we at least save her lamb. Even so, the vet is happy with her progress this week: clean wound and putting pressure on the leg to walk with it.

What we didn't have when we had our first animal related emergency injury was any supplies at all. I called a neighbor at midnight because when Chad hauled 4 injured lambs last year into my kitchen, all bleeding and torn up by a fresh coyote attack I had not a clue what to do or what to use. If I could go back and give the old me a list of basics this would be it:

Vet wrap. Lots of it. AT least 3 rolls.
Vet spray- a gel type spray on wound cleaner and protecting cover
Gauze pads, lots of them
Honey (to get the animals out of shock and hydrated, we mixed honey in warm water)
Penicillin and disposable hypodermic needles
Tetnus and disposable hypodermic needles
rubber gloves, both surgical ad dish gloves
a shearing razor, electric
mints, strong ones for people to suck on while working so the awful smells don't cause additional problems (like people puking)
tweezers
peroxide
fly spray made for wounds- we lost a ewe last year to screw fly larvae and almost lost our Hobbit dog too.

and bottled clean water.

Most of this can be kept in a fishing tackle box for easy to go access. Often we use a 5 gallon bucket with a cover though.

It isn't much, but that's a better start than the nothing we had on hand.

What would you have?

Buying a farm, updated

When I was little I wanted to be the first to volunteer to colonize other planets. Yes, I am dissappointed that now I am older, the chance has passed me by. Even if they were to open up a space station on a moon tomorrow, I am a proven risky breeder and too old. Bah.

But the daily chores on our farm made me realize that we are still colonizing THIS planet. Yesterday, I decided that sheep chores in February in Iowa is like sheep chores on Hoth. I need better gear or I am going to end up frozen and stranded with no Han Solo to rescue me.

Then my friend Jenny asked me for advice about buying a farm.

So I pointed her to this post.

But you know what? There's more. More that I know now.

#1 advice: Go slow.

If you build all your fences first, without knowing what you will need, you'll regret it. Same thing applies to buildings and business. As you grow, you'll see with experience what you will actually need. If you buy all your stuff up front, you'll have a lot of waste.

If something is hard, go slower. Running faster will only wear you out and ruin your common sense. Work smarter.

That said, other issues that I learned along the way:

11 acres or more=ag tax. HUGE difference over residential property tax. HUGE.

5 miles or less from fire department= insurance cost is significantly cheaper than if you are 5+ miles away. Not only that, 5 miles is a long way when your house is on fire or your kid is stuck in a hole.

Water. If your well is contaminated it is annoying. When you use that water to water livestock? Yeah. Rural water is expensive to pipe in, but still reasonable for people water. EXPENSIVE to water your livestock with. Just saying, because that's what we do. Don't even ask me about the bill when someone left the hose on overnight. Sigh.

Septic. Composting toilets are nice and all, but most people want a regular flushing toilet and sewer pipes that don't freeze.

Meth labs. Just trust me and walk the woods and pastures thoroughly before you buy. Our place is meth lab free, but I saw a few farms that were not.

Old abandoned wells. Know where they are.

Sensitive crop registery. Iowa has one. If you plan on not having all your bees killed and your livestock covered in soybean bug spray chemical hell, then register your farm.

Be prepared for your neighbors to hate you. Especially if you are doing things organically or naturally. More so if you register as a sensitive crop. Double that if you end up shooting their dog that is killing your livestock (didn't happen to me, but my aunt said to add that bit.....).  

More to come.....