Shed Revamping

Our chickens and ducks need a better home for winter than the trampoline. We want Misty, our dog, to be in with the goats, so our shed needed a revamping. 

First step, fence off an area for the poultry that lets them travel to the front yard for grazing. 

That was harder than it looks, making the fence chicken tight. They kept finding ways across (sometimes by flying over the fence, hence the wing clipping). We got it eventually though! 

Inside, we set up an old office desk topper (formerly headed for the burning pile) as nesting boxes. Plenty of options for the laying hens. 

We cut a hole in the side of the shed so the birds can go in and out easily. Interestingly, the hole is much bigger than it needed to be. We were surprised to turn around and spy Svetlana in the new poultry area. She had walked through the hole! 

Eventually, the chickens and ducks meandered to the front yard. 

G filled up a mini duck pond for them. It's a little cozy for four, but they made it work. 

The chickens were mesmerized by the compost pile. They laid down and cozied up next to the fresh dirt. 

Here's the finalized shed interior: 

Double gates to make it hard for goats/dogs to cross over, but easy for people to get in. We cleaned out all the old straw, put down hydrated lime as a disinfectant and smell remover (leftover from an egg preservation experiment a few years ago), and shook out some new straw. 

Everyone is loving it!
 

Animal Update

Our main project this week was to revamp the goat shed to separate our poultry from the goats. We plan to put our goats and dog together, so we need the poultry in a well-contained separate area. 

We clipped the chickens' wings hoping to keep them from flying over the fence. I didn't clip them close enough the first time, so we had to redo it.

Since we caught the birds, I checked to see how close they are to laying. 

Use your fingers to check the space between their pubic bones. I could barely fit one finger between, so they have a way to go. The space needs to be big enough to fit an egg through, which is usually about 3ish fingers wide. 

The goats have been loving the remains of the fire pit. They sit and chew their cud there:

Give themselves backscratches:

And dig for snacks? Svetlana actually used her horn for digging, but switched to her hooves before I could take a picture. 

The kittens are hunting now. They still enjoy eating their cat food. Normally, they don't get this much food, but G didn't want them to run out when we were gone over the weekend, so he went a little overboard.

Cottage Cheese 2.0

I finally got the cottage cheese strained. Unfortunately, by the time I got to it, there was a layer of reddish/orange mold starting in patches on the surface. Bummer. 

G wasn't ready to pitch it, so I carefully scraped the mold off for the cats and we strained the rest. Everything underneath looked completely fine and smelled normal. Still, I won't eat any of it. That's G's experiment. 😜

Here it is partially strained:

Here's the cheese in the strainer:

The recipe said to strain in a cheese cloth, but our cheese cloth smelled a little musty, so I went with this apple sauce strainer. 

We caught the whey in a bowl below. 

I'll have to look up uses for whey. The only thing I can think of right now is to flush it down the toilet and it's good for your septic system (all that good bacteria). We had so much whey, I did flush some. One quart is hanging out in the fridge. 

Next step in the cottage cheese process is to let it hang for 12h, then add some salt and hang again. We just crumbled it into a container and stuck it in the fridge. G is waiting for the opportune moment to sample it.

In God's Hands

Galen and I have been married for a little over a year and a half. And in that year and a half, we've had many ups and downs, especially in the case of childbearing. Through all those highs and lows, God has been with us and we have confidence he will continue to do so. 

Monday: Galen and I went in for our 20 week ultrasound to do the regularly scheduled anatomy scan of Baby H (actually 21 weeks along). Everything in my pregnancy has been going normally, so we didn't anticipate anything unusual. However, only a few minutes into the ultrasound, our ultrasound tech paused and said, "Your cervix looks short and I'm seeing some funneling. Let's not do the full scan today; we'll get baby's heart and growth and then it's probably best you see your doctor to talk about that shortened cervix." She did a transvaginal ultrasound to confirm and then called our midwife. 

That afternoon we met with an OB/GYN in Mankato who told us that my cervix was shortening to concerning levels and is starting to open at the top (the side where baby is). If it continues to shorten, it will open, which can cause preterm labor. Baby H could be born any day if we do nothing. The good news: there's a procedure called a cerclage that can be done to close the cervix and keep baby inside until term. Doctors put in a stitch and when I hit 36 weeks, the stitch comes out and baby makes an appearance whenever he/she is ready. This Mankato doctor wanted to refer us to the U of M medical team up in the Cities because they do 2-3 cerclages a day. 

Our appointment time ended up being 8:30 on Tuesday, with the hope we could do our consult and have the procedure the same day. Instructions until then: take it easy, no eating for eight hours before the procedure, no drinking two hours before. Since we didn't know what time the procedure would be, they said I should not eat breakfast and I should stop drinking by 9:30am. That was not fun.  

Tuesday: Bright and early, the U of M team redid Monday's ultrasound to confirm a shortened cervix. Since we were there, they did the full anatomy scan too. Good news: Baby H is completely healthy and is growing in the 80th percentile! His/her heart is 'beautiful' according to the ultrasound tech. Bad news: my cervix is definitely shortened and measuring at about 1.2cm. Ideal measurement this point in pregnancy is around 2.5cm. So, the doctor agreed we should go to their main campus for a cerclage procedure to close up my cervix. The schedule was pretty full, but they thought I'd be able to get in in the afternoon. 

Once we arrived at that hospital, they checked me in, prepped me for the procedure, and strapped a contraction monitor to my belly. After waiting a few hours, we finally saw the doctor. By this time it was early afternoon and I hadn't eaten or drunk anything since the night before. The doctor had bad news for us: I was having contractions and because of that, they didn't want to do the procedure. The contractions could indicate I was going into labor, and if so, the stitch could get ripped out and cause major complications for future pregnancies. We had two options at that point: go home and take progesterone (recent studies have shown progesterone can reduce contractions) and hope labor doesn't start (no cerclage), or stay the night, get rehydrated, and take medicince that might stop the contractions and see how things are in the morning (and hopefully do the cerclage then). 

We decided to stay and try the med option. Interestingly, the contractions never hurt. They felt like a ball was being rolled under my skin across my belly. Honestly, I had thought that was the baby moving around. Good news: I got to eat some food and the contractions slowed down/went away. They took the contraction monitor off for the night.

Wednesday: They got me up bright and early to put the contraction monitor back on and start an IV bag to keep me hydrated. It took a few hours for the doctors to make their rounds to me. When they did, it was not great news. They said my contractions had slowed, but were still happening. Also, they had noticed some sediment in the funneling area of my cervix on yesterday's ultrasound. That could indicate an infection in utero. If there is an infection, the only way to treat it is to give birth and expel those liquids (This is what we presume happened with Bekhor, our first child.). They were afraid that if I got a cerclage, that would trap the potential infection inside and it might prevent my body from getting rid of it in time. So, they were not recommending the procedure for me anymore. Our best option was to go home with progesterone and pray for the best. 

So, that's what we're doing. I'm taking progesterone daily with the hope that it will keep my cervix closed long enough for Baby H to be viable outside the womb. We are 22 weeks on Friday. There's a 30% chance of survival at that age, and if survival happens the baby is likely to have physical and mental disabilities. If we can make it to 24 weeks, survival rate is about 50%. 26 weeks= 60%. This is the point where there are fewer complications and health risks. 28 weeks= 80%. Full term for us is Feb. 1st. 

That seems so far away. 

I need to remind myself to take one day at a time. And if that's too hard, half a day. 

God is in control. He can keep my cervix closed, keep me free of infection, and keep me from going into labor. We trust his plan for us and trust that his will is done, whatever the outcome may be. So, please pray for peace and patience for us, and that Baby H stays inside for a long time.

Cottage Cheese

The last of the goat milk is being made into cheese. I poured a bit out to use in a recipe and found chunks. I think that's the cream clumping together. 

My cheese making source said that raw milk naturally begins to ferment and will turn into a type of cheese over time; it doesn't go bad. You can tell it's past its fresh point when it starts smelling tangy and vinegary. The only time it really goes 'bad' is if you smell the milk and think, "there's no amount of money on earth that could get me to put anything that smells like that in my mouth." 

My milk smells like the former: not like regular milk, but not bad, just different. I poured the milk into a glass pickle jar (the same size I use to brew kombucha) with a nice, wide lid for easy pouring. Slap a dishtowel and rubber band on the top and let it sit at room temp until the curds and whey separate. The website said that could take a few days, but mine must've been old enough that it separated in one. 

Now I think it's time to strain the curds and begin to dry them...

Garden Update

It's been too long since I've checked my garden... I was a bit afraid to see what's out there! Surprisingly, it was better than expected.

Two tiny cantaloupe:

One smallish pumpkin (pictured below) and a bunch of green squash. The leaves of all the plants on the trellis arch have mold/mildew. 

G says that's from too much moisture. Not much we can do about it now. Hopefully my plants survive long enough to get those tiny squash mature enough to eat.

I forgot about the turnips... Now they are humongous. I'll have to cut into them to see if they're good. Otherwise, the goats and poultry will enjoy them. 

I dug up about six feet of our potato row and harvested this many: 

Most have rodent damage but are otherwise fine. 

Here's a crate with other garden goodies:

Want to play I Spy? You can see cabbage, tomatoes okra, zucchini, green and purple beans, cucumbers, turnips, and carrots. Not pictured are the kohlrabi, which might be too woody for us to eat. 

With all the veggies, I made one of my favorite recipes, Seven Layer Dinner, with almost all homegrown ingredients. 

Our pepper plant had one dinky green bell pepper, so I had to supplement with store bought. Ground beef came from my parents' farm. Tomatoes were some of the not sealed canned tomatoes (which came from a church friend's garden). Otherwise, everything besides the spices came from our garden! So delicious! 

Canning Season

It's been a week jammed with canning and no time for blogging, but the majority of my canning is finished, so hopefully I can catch up on other things this week! 

Pressure canned green beans: 

I learned that if it's boiling too rapidly, siphoning can happen and you loose the internal liquid from the jars. If over half of the liquid is left, it's fine. If less, use right away. My pressure canner only holds four pints at a time. The first batch, I read the processing instructions incorrectly and left them in for half the required time. 😣

I hated to do it, but I popped the lids off and recanned that batch. You can definitely see a difference in color of the beans/liquid. 

A boatload of apples was next to process. This is maybe half of them: 

Our favorite snack is dried apples, so I made about seven dehydrator loads of them (translates to 3.5 ice cream pails). I think they'll last the year. 😉

Still more apples left, so I made applesauce cooked in a roaster: 

Still more apples... So, juice! Official instructions said to let the juice rest in the fridge for 24-48 hours before canning so the sediment will settle. Here's batch number one resting. Lots of pulpy foam on top.

Day two of apple juice, still lots of foam. I scooped as much out as I could, then filtered the rest through a double layer of cheese cloth. 

Heat to boiling and can. All the jars sealed!

Last was tomatoes. Boy, those gave me trouble this year. I had purchased some 24oz jars with lids and bands from Amazon months ago, planning to use them for something I changed my mind about. We debated sending them back, but thought they'd be handy for canning, so we kept them. I wish we had sent them back. 

The bands wouldn't hold the lids on tight! I'd screw them on and try to tighten them, and off the band would pop. Unfortunately, I had already mixed the new bands with my old ones. 🤦‍♀️ I had to test each band in the container. 

Even more unfortunately, some of the bands I thought were on tight didn't stay that way in the canner. One lid came off completely! Thankfully I noticed right away and pulled it out. The rest of the jars seemed okay. Key word, seemed. After they were cooling on the counter, I found the bands on five jars had gone cockeyed. Because of that, the lids weren't held on tightly and didn't seal. 😐 Only two out of that whole batch sealed successfully. 

I think I found all of the faulty bands now; those are getting recycled. My working theory is that the 24oz jar screw tracks are slightly different from traditional regular mouth pints/quarts. I'm not taking any more chances with my canned goods. The rest of the jars are going to be used for dry storage or I'll get rid of them.