26 July, 2012

Giving up on videos…FOR NOW!

All right, these videos are clearly not going to upload until I go get reliable internet from Panera or somewhere.

THEREFORE you will have to suffer, gentle readers, with having the winners announced by text.

Second was the helpful goat who selected both winners, I should note. The chickens refused to select a winner at all.

The two lucky readers are Liz Black Dog and Arwen Lune! I’m about to e-mail y’all and put you in touch with Kate so you can pick soap and she can bill me.

Should we do this again next month? If I dye a few silk and cotton scarves, would people be interested in winning one?

VIDEO OF THE DRAWINGS, which is, I assure you, cute as hell, will appear as soon as I can make it happen!

Goat-powered Drawing!

The videos of the drawing are uploading! It may take a while given my satellite intertubes, so look for videos/transcripts and the final announcement of winners this evening! Yes, winners plural — I was having so much fun making the goats pick a name that I had them pick two people. I tried to make the chickens pick a winner, but they refused. Chickens feel that if there is any giveaway going on, it should be food, to chickens.

Watch this space!

25 July, 2012

Last Day to Enter!

Reminder — this is your last day to enter to win Soap From Kate. Tomorrow morning I will write all the names on slips of paper, and then I will take them in a bucket to the goat pen and see if I can convince a goat to select one.

Also today at 1300 we pick up our TRUCK. Further updates as events warrant. Suffice to say we found an 89 Ford F350 7.3L diesel in our price range with low miles. It will not win any truck beauty contests, but on the other hand it will let us haul hay and feed and take chickens to sales.

24 July, 2012

Eat Like The Nobility: Memories of J

So Miss May gives us about 3 quarts of milk a day. This maybe doesn’t sound like a lot if your house features several kids who like milk, but for two adults it’s more than plenty. This leads to me getting creative with the milk, because with such a surplus there’s no harm in experimenting, and it won’t go to waste — if nothing else, we can compost it and use it to grow nommy vegetables.

My latest Dairy Experiment had people looking at me funny when I brought it up, but when they actually tasted it they were forced to agree that it was pretty divine. It reminds me of my friend J, not only because she took me out for ice cream when I visited her, but because she has this perfect voice when she wants to: low, smooth, and soothing. I am pretty sure that J could convince me that it’s perfectly fine for rabid weasels to gnaw my leg off, because that’s what kind of voice it is. She can turn this amazing vocal apparatus on and off at the drop of a hat, going from “don’t mind those rabid weasels” to expressively joking about how the rabid weasels are coming for you. Actually generally she’s just a pretty amazing person. But her Don’t Mind The Weasels voice reminds me of chocolate. Also, she knows where to find the best ice cream ever.

You’ll need an ice cream maker and:

3c fresh experimental goat cheese, made from two gallons of fresh goat milk and 1 packet fromage blanc starter & 1 packet chevre starter. If you can’t get this, you can substitute cream cheese.
2c or so fresh goat milk. If you don’t have your own goat, you may substitute half and half from the store. Or heavy cream. Ice cream is NOT the time to worry about your cholesterol levels, ok?
3/4c white cane sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1c cocoa

Mix the 3c of cheese with milk until you get a smooth, kinda but not really liquidy texture. I tried doing this in my blender. My blender now hates me. Unless you have a heavy-duty blender, you should do this in a bowl with a spatula, instead. Once you have a nice smooth kinda but not really liquidy texture from your dairy products, go ahead and fold in the sugar, vanilla, and cocoa. Mix well. Adjust the texture one last time with any last-minute additions of liquid milk.

Then stuff as much of the mixture as will fit into your ice cream maker, and leave it there until it becomes a delicious smooth creamy chocolatey amazing frozen treat. While you’re waiting, eat the leftovers that didn’t fit in the ice cream maker with a spoon, or possibly use them to ice some cupcakes if you happen to have any naked cupcakes sitting around.

Wait for the heat index to climb into triple digits, break out your amazing treat, and enjoy. I suggest having it for dinner, because that’s the kind of carefree life I lead, what with not having children to raise.

PS — TomorrowThursday the goats will make the call on the Soap Giveaway. Did you tell me which soap of Kate’s you’d like to try, yet? You have 2036 hours to get your entry in! (Edited because I realize I’d said the goats would pick on the 26th, leaving entries open through the 25th)

22 July, 2012

Answering Googled Questions

I love googled questions that lead people to my site. I swear, I did not make this one up.

“may I take your hat and goat”

No. You may not. I love all my hats. And there will be no goatnapping, but I do have two for sale right now, so please feel free to buy a goat.

20 July, 2012

In which I bleed for my goats.

A few days ago, Daniel and I moved the goat fence. This is not as weird as it sounds, with seven goats and a relatively small area for them to graze we’re more or less using a managed intensive grazing method by default. So what we use is ElectroStop netting from Premier1 Supplies, plus an energizer for it that puts out about 5,000 volts or more than enough zap to deter goaties from going through the fence. Although Siri did figure out how to get under at one point, but we’ve got that licked.

Anyway, the fence posts have spikes at the bottom to stick into the dirt, which means the timing of moving the fence is complicated by things like “has there been recent rain, so that the ground is not comparable in hardness to concrete and therefore impossible to drive a spike into?”. Which means that although the fence has needed to be moved for a while, we haven’t been able to move it as the ground hasn’t had a good soaking. Luckily we got a couple, and went merrily out to move the fence.

It all went very well until I found a tick crawling on me during a shade-and-water break, at which point I kind of a did a bizarre flailing thing that brought the side of my right arm into contact with an edge on the milk crate I was sitting on (I know, I didn’t realize plastic milk crates had sharp edges, either) at just the right (or possibly wrong) angle and suddenly I’m bleeding like a stuck pig and possibly requiring stitches.

Since we don’t have medical insurance anymore and doctors are expensive and I’m up to date on my tetanus boosters anyway, I didn’t get stitches. I did however come inside, clean the thing with multiple antiseptic agents, and then get Daniel to tape it shut with Bandaids before we wrapped it with a big gauze pad (all right, fine, it was actually an enormous “overnight” maxi pad from a pack I bought last time Tink needed bandaging) and an ace bandage for pressure to stop the bleeding.

The bleeding at least did stop once there was pressure on it, although after I showered it thought about starting up again. I’m liable to have a funky scar there, but oh well, my husband digs chicks with scars. And then my husband refused to let me go help him finish moving the goat fence on the grounds that I’d start bleeding again and possibly bleed to death right there on the back acre, and he was not going to deal with that on top of the heat and the humidity, because a dead wife is a pain in the ass. He has a point, I guess.

But let this be a lesson to you, gentle readers: ticks and milk crates do not mix. Also, stay up to date on your tetanus shots.

18 July, 2012

I’m a lazy blogger, but I want to give you presents!

So here is the thing. I’m actually kind of a selfish person, and I haven’t seen my friend Kate properly since Daniel and I got married. Kate is an amazing person, and her goal is to buy herself an RV so she can become nomadic. She has promised to visit me properly when she becomes nomadic. Therefore, I feel it is my bounden duty to assist Kate in her goal to get an RV, because I would like to be visited!

The deal, therefore, is this! Y’all head on over to Om Shanti Naturals, which is Kate’s online shop, and poke around at her soaps. Then come back here and leave a comment telling me which one you’d like to try. I will write the names of commenters on little slips of paper, put them in a hat, and take them to the goats. The first name that a goat pulls out of the hat will receive the Everything But The Sink gift set from Kate, featuring the soap that they mentioned in the comments!

I am going to try my best to get video of the goat (whichever one volunteers) drawing the name, because I think it’s likely to be kind of hilarious.

Obviously this one set is not going to push Kate over the edge into RV-ownership, but it’s just possible that some of you who do not win will choose to buy soap from her, or possibly massage oil or lip balm, and my nefarious plan to get Kate to Virginia will thus be served. But either way, someone will get some free soap! Who doesn’t love free soap?

ETA it occurs to me I should probably put a closing date on this. Let’s end it on the 25th of July, shall we? On the 26th, the goats shall make their choice!

1 July, 2012

Eat Like The Nobility

Well, the minor nobility here at the Manor of Mixed Blessings, anyway. I made dinner the other night and I am excessively proud of it because I am one of those people who Does Not Cook. For a lot of reasons, including that sometimes cooking is scary. But here is my recipe for amazing veggie frittata! If I do it again when we’ve had more rain, I’ll rummage some wild onion tops out of the yard, because they’d give it a nice garlicky flavor. You may wish to add a small (or large) clove of garlic to the sucker.

1 zucchini
1 small buttercup squash
1 onion
1 handful of peapods
1 blorp of olive oil
8 large eggs, or their equivalent in the various sized eggs you have sitting around your refrigerator because your hens over produce for what you actually eat, and most of your hens are bantams anyway.

Cut all the veggies up into small chunks that will cook reasonably quickly while being sauteed. Break your eggs into a bowl and beat them into submission. Heat a cast-iron skillet over the high end of medium heat. When it’s hot, pour in a blorp of olive oil — this is a technical term for “the amount of olive oil you are about to need to sautee a bunch of vegetables.” Add the onions, cook until tender. Add the other vegetables. Cook them until they’re tender, too. Pour in the eggs and stir everything up until there is egg everywhere in the skillet, then stop touching it. Let cook until the sides have set, then stick the skillet under the broiler on Low for about four minutes, or until a knife stuck into the middle comes out clean.

Make your husband remove the heavy skillet from the oven. Cut into slices. Enjoy.

I am most proud because everything but the olive oil and the onion came from our own efforts, or the efforts of our hens in the case of the eggs! Om nom nom, sweet tasty victory. Next year maybe we’ll figure out how to grow onions, and any day now I’ll figure out my cream separator and make our own butter, and then the WHOLE FREAKIN MEAL can be home-grown.