Then we picked up a ram that that was a wool variety to bring in new genetics. He was an East Friesian milking breed and a big gentle goof. Unfortunately the ram is a big woolly sheep who doesn’t shed. He had been recently sheared, so it was almost a year later before he needed his first haircut at our place.

So we started calling around for someone to shear him and since this used to be fairly big sheep territory we didn’t think it would be hard to find someone. Boy, were we wrong. No one shears any more, or if they did, upon hearing we only had one ram the phone was almost slammed down. So I picked up an excellent DVD on the process, purchased a decent pair of shears and set off to give the ram the worse haircut to which a sheep has ever been subjected. Don’t get me wrong, the instructor on the DVD was a master of her art and if I had a few thousand practice sheep behind me (and the flexibility of an Olympic gymnast) I could have done  a pretty slick job. After that first attempt, it was pretty apparent that shearing one ram twice a year would never be enough practice to make this an easy chore.

Well, as providence would have it, as we approached the warm weather this year we came across a business card on a local bulletin board advertising shearing services. We quickly called them up and arranged a Saturday morning. The shearer turned out to be a young women leveraging her 4-H training into a business. Thank the Lord for entrepreneurs.

Even with her experience Remus had more hair than she had seen on any other ram. Heavy wool breeds just aren’t common in south Texas but she got right down to the job. She was quick and confident and maneuvered the clippers like a pro.

It didn’t take but a few minutes for her to have Remus slicked up and ready for summer. The removed wool weighed over 35 pounds and you could see how much more comfortable he was once he got back out in the field. If you would like to see a video showing some of the shearing, it is available on our YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/RuralDreaming#p/u/4/0kPK3S21cxA

Getting the ram sheared this year was a good experience. We got to meet a motivated young woman who seems like she’ll definitely make her mark on the world and the ram and I both got to avoid the stress of me playing with razor sharp shears near his sensitive areas.

- Tom of the Broken B

I became a fan of using animals to help with farm chores years ago after reading in one of Joel Salatin’s books about how he used pigs to turn his compost. Have the animals do your chores, while reducing feed costs and doing so in a environmentally friendly way? You bet I’m in on that idea.

Now most of our animals contribute to the farm in several ways, with the most common being the contribution of fertilizer. During the three warmer seasons the sheep fertilize the fields and in the colder months it concentrates in the barn where we gather it for the garden. The rabbits also provide top dressing for the garden as well. But I want to use the animals in a way where I’m not just picking up manure and moving it around. I want to use them so I do less actual work.

One way we do this is to let the sheep graze the yards around the house from time to time. It keeps the grass down and spreads around the nutrients around. And the small pellets they leave behind are not a big mess and breakdown after just a few rains.

We’ve also penned them into the garden after the end of the season with pretty good success. They cleaned up the grass and weeds that had gotten a bit out of hand, cleaned up the raised beds and saved me a bit of trimming. There was a bit of a downside as they scattered the raised beds without hard sides on them. But a few minutes with a rake and everything was tidy again. And believe me re-shaping the beds was a heck of a lot less work than all the cleanup the sheep did.

This year we went a step further. Samantha had several hens that were broody so we located one with her eggs into the garden. Chickens will pull up any small seedlings so we waited until the garden had some good growth on it and set her loose with the chicks. They nested in a small cat carrier at night, but as you can see below during the day they quickly moved in under the plants. (They are there, right in the middle of the squash.) 

The plants provided shade for the chickens and they did what chickens do best. They scratched up the soil keeping it aerated, pulled up any small weeds, and ate every bug they could find. As a matter of fact we didn’t lose a single squash plant to pests this year in the entire 4 foot by 32 foot bed. That alone ensures this has just become an integral part of our gardening going forward.

- Tom at the Broken B

So I try to take whatever opportunity I can to spend some time with the family and this weekend it was pickles to the rescue! I had planted a nice size batch of pickling cucumbers on my trellis in the garden and they had come on in full force the last week giving me 20+ pounds of cucumbers.

While I searched through my recipes, Samantha pulled out the canning jars and got them into the dish washer. I explained to Miranda the intricacies of washing pickling cucumbers (knock all the little black things off the bumps, get the blossom end well), armed her with a vegetable scrubbing bush and sent her to work.

Meanwhile, Tommy and I set up the “tools”, consisting of the sausage grinder, various pots, pans and cutting boards. We got the pots of water on the stove and the peppers and onions cut. We identified the larger cukes as candidates for relish and I put the boy to work running the grinder. And once he was on it I couldn’t pull him off. He would just keep switching arms as he got tired and refuse to let me help with anything other than feeding the cucumbers through.

The relish had to sit overnight so we turned our attention to the rest of the pickles and we spent the afternoon slicing cucumbers, packing hot jars into boiling water baths and watching timers. The next afternoon it was a couple more canners of relish and finally we had our work on display.

So we worked all weekend, but we worked as a Family and built those ties and connections just a little bit more. The kids were able to become a bit more familiar with a skill we are quickly losing and hopefully understand a bit more about from where food actually originates. I’ll take spending time with the family to develop that knowledge over an expensive day trip to Sea World anytime.

Dill pickles = 5 quarts
Bread and butter pickles = 7 pints
Sliced sandwich stackers = 2 pints
Relish = 26 half-pints
Time spent with the family = Priceless

- Tom at the Broken B

I don’t know what it is about enjoying the fruit of your own labors, but there always seems to be a deep sense of satisfaction that makes it better. Take the corn in the dish. It wasn’t one of the “Super-Sweet” varieties, and it didn’t do particularly well this year. I planted late because we are surrounded with fields of GMO corn and I didn’t want cross pollination with ours. High winds knocked over a good portion of our small patch and of course trying to do this without chemicals means we shared most of our small ears with the bugs. But seeing the corn in my bowl, knowing that we had prepared the soil, planted the seed, cared for the plants and then harvested it ourselves, that made all the difference.

There is a lesson there I hope to instill in my children. In our automated pre-packaged and pre-prepared world there is still a desire, and truly, even a need to be able to do things for ourselves. It integrates us, makes us a part of the process and helps us root ourselves into our lives. It is what builds family traditions and experiences and becomes the stories told to the next generation. It isn’t always easy or convienient, but it is fullfilling.

The kids get to sleep in the front house in Papa’s spare bedroom and we get the window unit installed in the master bedroom to start cooling it down in just a few minutes. Sunday afternoon during the worse of the heat we head into town and have a late lunch at one of our favorite burger places and grab a movie as a family. Monday morning the A/C guys are calling and Samantha gets one over to fixed the A/C around lunch. Of course the warranty expired on the part just a few weeks ago, so we get to buy a new one. Man can those manufacturers time it or what?

But with all this going on, I’m actually feeling pretty good about the whole thing. It all kind of demonstrates why we are living the way we do. We were prepared for this type of inconvenience to occur because we’ve been through it before. The last time this happened a couple years ago we weren’t nearly prepared and the A/C was out for days. We had to run out and find a window unit and try to locate an A/C guy in the local area and in all we were pretty uncomfortable. But this time we didn’t panic, we just worked our plan. We had the extra A/C window unit on hand and I had even left the small wooden brace in place in the window just in case. The unit slid right in with no fuss and we had cool air in minutes.

Because we’ve eliminated debt and managed our money, taking the family out and even buying the new parts for the A/C wasn’t an issue. It just makes me feel good to know we can handle the small stuff like this without it even being a road bump. It means if something bigger happens we be just fine. Every day we make a little more progress towards a bit more secure life. And that has me feeling pretty good.

-Tom of the Broken B