Wish List Since We're at It.....

Old fashioned cider press. Seriously. Yellow Daisy Mama sent me a link to their family tradition and I have been drooling over cider presses online since.

An ice cream machine. I had one and gave it away. I want the ice cream bowl from Kitchen Aid but a bigger, even hand operated one would be awesome. I figured out that I can make ice cream from scratch in a few years, really from scratch- all from our farm. Honey, milk, eggs, berries.....all I will need is ice and salt! So very cool. I am thinking about making a goat milk/cream and honey recipe too. Which means I'd need a milking goat and honey bees. If you give a mouse a cookie........

An apiary box/kit. I actually need this by Spring when we move the bees in the porch column to somewhere not in the porch column. I had one for the last seven years but I gave it away last summer. I felt like the farm dream was too far off and it was wasting its useful life in my basement. I suppose that's like getting pregnant after selling all the baby stuff at a garage sale. You know, like last year.

Telescope with SLR attachment. My heart is aflutter at the thought of seeing the meteor showers in August without having to make camping plans.

Speaking of SLR. I want a macro lens and a super hard core zoom lens. I always have but now I'll have wildlife to take pictures of. :) And more bugs. And more flora. And more babies? Just kidding, (sort of....). I really enjoy my camera. Since I found the 5$ frames at Walmart (I know, not very PC) I have planned on actually framing and displaying my work. My passion for it never really went away and now it is so much fun!

A camera for Lil'Bug. She has the photo bug too. She's great with my camera, but I don't like the anxiety sharing my SLR gives me. Plus we usually want to use it at the same time.

Whiz-Bang Chicken Plucker Plans. I think the name describes it? Seriously, if we're going to raise chickens for eating this would be a handy machine to have on hand.

See what I mean? We will see what the next year brings. Hopefully we will sell the haunted mansion soon and there will be a tiny bit of profit that can go to these whimsical (yet practical) things on our list.

Oh, and while we are at it, 30 or more cats. That's right, cats. I want to guarantee that we don't have any problems with crazy neighbors like we do now. Since the way the world works is you either have crazy neighbors or you ARE the crazy neighbor, I thought I would just take care of this problem (that we seem to have where ever we go.....) and cement my place in the dynamic- 30 or more cats should do it, no? :)

*edited to add* Perhaps we should just tell people we have 30 cats, name them all, insist on telling crazy cat stories to anyone who bugs us. That's what one of our current neighbors does. It's like crazy without the commitment of cat food or litter boxes. Suddenly, I think I understand her a bit better now. LOL.

The Spinning of Possibilty

This is a picture of what Lil'Bug calls the "frog pond"; it is a mud hole that has been there before the creek was dammed up. Possibly spring fed, possibly just a low spot that water drains to. It's neat. She asked me today if it would be good for ice skating. I think it might, I don't know. It is a lot closer to the house, pretty shallow and has a nice slope to the bank, so maybe. We will see.

Our 40 acres will open up to us a slew of possibility to us and to her. What should we choose? What kind of peaches? What variety of apples? Which livestock? Ice skating, sledding, duck hunting, wild crafting.......the list just seems to get bigger every day.

But today I am thinking about the farm business itself. Our farm approach will be simple, but not easy. We will start small, provide for ourselves and family, then grow a little, do a market stand with what we produce that is excess of our own needs, and then go from there. Perhaps the next step will be to offer a share box at the market stand that will include what would be in a share that week, if one subscribed to the CSA. BUT A SHARE OF WHAT?

The full CSA model is really appealing, but the add ons could be where we will make our mark, I think. Add ons like meat, dairy, honey, fruit, herbs, and specialty vegetables. At our weekly homeschool meet up we talked about how great it would be if one CSA or co-op of farms could put everything a family would need for the week in a box with recipes. Grain would be the only thing needed then, as I am not considering growing wheat and grinding flour. (Ok, I am considering it for myself, but not for farm production....).

We currently spend 60-85$ a week on groceries, for technically a family of four (Lil'Bug and I each eat 1 serving, and Dearest eats double. We'd have to match that cost or less I think to be appealing to a wide customer base, no?

The problem is that I don't see us being able to sustain all of those things on our 25 workable acres. That's why farms specialize, right? But it is a really neat idea.

So then I started thinking about livestock........
One of the things I am constantly amazed about is the price of meat. And organic raised meat? Get out. Seriously. We cannot afford to eat the way we do buying from grocery stores. Also, it may be organic at the store, but where is it from? California? Florida? Canada? Mexico? So much is lost in transport, that it is hardly worth it to buy "organic". (Also it is silly to me to buy product that's shipped in when we raise that same stuff in Iowa and ship it out....) BUT when we buy directly from the local farmer and pick it up in bulk from the local processor, we pay less than consumers are paying per pound for regular meat. We paid last year 100$ a month for meat and we ate meat with almost every meal, including most breakfasts. We ate out less, we lost some in the power outage and we ran out early BUT this year we are buying a bit more, cutting it up differently, and eating out even less. Another bonus is that we now know more recipes in which to use the meat we get. Seriously, some of these cuts are like 8$ a pound. Yike. We paid around $1.60 per pound for everything, just about. (Tell me if I'm wrong Dearest, but that's what I had in my notes.) More for the 26 lbs of lamb meat though. This is prime stuff, grass fed, pasture raised, and local. Beef is Black Angus. We're eating like kings and paying less than people who cut coupons for grocery store meat. Why doesn't every family do this?

Ok, back to my mindful thought wandering......
Last year I wrote a post about things we considered when we started looking for a property and making the decision to move to this lifestyle: here. Now, a year later we are worrying about many of the same things, but not others. The new place is only 6 minutes from town, hospital, fire department, gas stations, etc. The roads get re-graded once a week, plowed within 24 hours usually. It is near the county seat, but far enough from the sources of employment in Iowa that housing developments are not an immediate threat. Maybe 20 years from now Des Moines will explode horizontally again, though I hope not.

So these are the things I am thinking about today while hand feeding Wonder Pup (Hobbit actually ate a whole can of food, though only out of my hand a bite at a time with coaxing and he's still peeing (still odorless) inside....he ate food, yay!). Also, the cat is completely mended and back to her antics.

Update on the Pup

At the vet, urine sample was analyzed. High sugar. While the vet tech analyzed a blood sample to verify Diabetes, the vet explained the medication process for diabetes, dosage, method, ect.

The blood sample came back with normal blood sugar. ????

So, while the urine didn't indicate infection, we're treating him for bladder infection and doing everything possible to convince him to eat. So far I've fed him out of my hand, some roast beef and some spoonfuls of easy digest mush canned food.

The vet thinks he might have had a pancreatitis episode. This could have been random or from eating a food that upset him. Likely people food on Saturday. We had a party here so he must have eaten a scrap of something in the yard or house. I used to have a relative who didn't believe us when he was a puppy that he was super sensitive to people food and she would sneak him scraps and he would get sick. Since then we have been really super careful, though he would get bits of cheese for meds or a bit of turkey at Thanksgiving. Never hot dogs or chips or plate lickings. I am feeling super guilty for not checking the yard for scraps after feeding 12 under 9. I mean, I should have.

We will recheck his blood and urine in one week. In the meantime we will hand feed him whatever he will eat. Advice and prayers, again, are welcome.

Our Dog Hobbit

Hobbit has been a part of our family for almost 8 years. He's the grand pup of my Aunt's dog, my childhood buddy on her farm/ranch. He's an Australian Shepard. He's my baby even if he's really been annoying the last year, with pregnancy and new baby anxiety.

He's sick. Really sick. The vet can't figure out what is wrong with him. 8 weeks ago all his blood tests came back completely normal except for thyroid and he had gained 30 lbs in one year, so we started him on a thyroid medication. Now his thyroid level is perfect and he's lost 20 lbs (in 8 weeks?). And now he's not eating anything. Not even bacon (I thought I'd give it a shot). He's drinking water frantically and peeing bucket loads every hour (no doubt from all the water). He urine is odorless. At first we thought Lil'Bug was spilling water (yes, in the house). It takes a whole bath towel to clean it up. We have him confined to his kennel or the kitchen so we can more easily clean it up. If we let him outside for too long he searches out water accumulation and drinks and drinks and drinks like there s no tomorrow.

I'm worried there might not be. Nothing I found online is promising. Kidney/renal failure, diabetes, food poisoning, ect. He'll starve to death if he refuses to eat. He won't even eat BACON!

We're going back to the vet today. They expect me to get a urine sample. Advice on how to do that is welcome. It's not like I can put a potty seat on a bucket. Gah.

In the meantime, I am praying for answers and for his comfort.