January, an overview on squab, magic and bannanas

Well Christmas was good. We has surprisingly cool weather due to a bank of rain coming over, not unwelcome, even requiring us to return the blankets to the bed and wear a pullover in the mornings. As always we ate too much, drank too much and generally had a lot of fun! The young feller scored the usual haul of presents, he also took great joy in giving presents to others. Something I am delighted to see in a five year old.
January came and the weather quickly returned to normal. Away went the woollies and out came the fans. Now we have entered the pre-monsoon countdown and the weather turns hot and sticky. Thunderheads roll about the tablelands making a lot of noise but generally not giving much rain. Not to us anyway, the wind is coming out of the west right now so the rain is exhausted before it gets to us. I don't mind, those folks out west need it right now. Soon the monsoon band will form near Indonesia and Papua and will descend to the eastern coast and the cool will come.

I am pleased to report the pigeons have been a success! They are breeding rapidly and we have been enjoying regular meals of squab, which is posh speak for young pigeon. They are delightfully easy to pluck and draw, taking less than five minutes per bird and one squab is a good serve per person, two if you really want a big feed. Apart from the actual slaughter it is quite nice to go and harvest a half dozen squabs and then sit in the shade of a tree with the wife and prepare them.

The adult pigeon flock are a rowdy bunch and have adapted to farm life well. Each morning we are greeted from the shed roof where they can eyeball us as we have our morning coffee.

If we take too long the general level of noise increases until we give up and go throw a handful of grain out for them. The guinea fowl have also learned we are throwing grain out in the morning and will come to do battle with the pigeons. In the end everyone appears to be well fed so I don't really care that much. The Guinea fowl hens are bringing in their annual mobs of keets. As the weather has been dry thus far I think there is a reasonable chance of a good number of them surviving this year. That reminds me, I am intending to harvest a few guinea fowl the next time I have the cold room running for a week. This is so I can hang them to age- I am told they should be treated as a game bird to get the best results. Recently I had a chance to handle a cock bird and found him to be very well fleshed all over. He looked tasty indeed!

The Bannanas have also done well in the heat. They are larger than usual this year and there is more than enough for both the parrots and the humans to share.
In other news I taught my son how to hypnotize a chicken the other day. It has been many years since I had done it myself and I was a little unsure if I could pull it off, but with a little patience I soon had a young cockerel lying upside down on the table with a rather glazed expression. Much awe from the wife and child. After a minute or so I gently clicked my fingers beside its head and it woke before strutting off wondering what the hell had just happened.

On new calves. part 2

So a couple of weeks in to the whole forced milking and things have settled down a bit. Bonnies teats are now of a (barely) milk-able size by hand and we have taken over the milking duties twice a day. This milk is then fed to the two new calves- the Brown Swiss "Jessie the second" and the Fresian "Lilly". For this we use a calf feeder which is essentially a pair of joined buckets with rubber teats. It has been christened the "Robo-Cow" by the youngest cloud farmer. We are doing this as it is important we continue training Bonnie to be milked. The calves love it and engage in considerable pushing and shoving as they drink. To prevent one calf pushing the other off the teat we have someone position themselves between the two. We call this doing "bum duty". This job usually falls to the youngest cloud farmer as the adults have their hands full.

It is quite a wrestling match most days.
Now things take a turn for the weird. Anna, who had forcibly adopted Bonnies calf Arthur, handed him back to his mother who has accepted him and is allowing him to drink without too many kicks to the head. He also goes back to Anna for a drink as well.

So we lost a calf and have gained three. Arthur is a Brown Swiss-Dexter and will be a superb meat steer in a few years time. The two heifers will be sold as weaners and should fetch a good price. I am spraying each calf with pyrethrum daily to prevent a repeat of the original tragedy and it appears we are having a bad year for ticks- there are an awful lot about this year.
So that was our Christmas this year. Pretty standard on the Cloud farm. Cheers.

On new calves. Part 1

As you will see from the last post, it is not always sunshine and roses on any farm. Anna was considerably upset at the loss. For several days she wandered the fields calling and looking for her calf. I have been told by a fool in the past that animals do not experience emotions as humans do. I just wish that idiot was here to see this mother in her grief!
In any case nearly two weeks later, and ten days overdue, Bonnie gave birth to a fine strapping bobby calf. He was for reasons best known only to the youngest cloud farmer promptly name "Arthur".
Here is where the trouble started for I had unwittingly left the cows together to provide some small comfort to Anna. Unfortunately Bonnie was a new mother and was reluctant to begin immediately feeding as often happens. The usual remedy for this is time, just leave mother and calf alone and they will get on with it. However having a bereaved mother present and a calf calling for a feed is a bad mix and Anna promptly claimed Arthur as her own! To make matters worse Bonnie appeared reasonably unworried by this. This left us with several problems for Bonnie has a very big udder and as is usual with new cows, small teats. So small in fact that we physically could not milk them with more than a single finger and thumb and this quickly becomes an impossible task, especially when you have a new cow who has no desire to be involved in the whole process. This is usually solved naturally by having an enthusiastic calf suckling and the teats will quickly lengthen. Only then would you attempt to begin hand milking.
Now I will freely admit this mess is entirely of my own making. I should have well and truly known to separate Anna and Bonnie before the birth but failed to do so. Lesson learned. The obvious solution was to obtain another calf, or two, from one of the local dairies and get Bonnie to take them on.
It is unfortunate in this day and age that the milk from the cow is much more valuable than the calf it feeds and so most excess calves are usually shot and dumped the day they are born. Heifers are kept if the herd needs new cows but bobby calves are considered worthless. We were fortunate to quickly find a local dairy who promised us a pair of calves the next morning for $30 each (odd how a calf that was going to be shot and dumped suddenly is worth money isn't it?) but as we were in need I readily accepted.
The next morning my son and I loaded a crate on the back of my ute and we drove over to the dairy as they were finishing the milking. To my delight the owner supplied me with a beautiful pair of heifers, one pure Fresian and one pure Brown Swiss. Apparently they were excess to needs and shooting heifers went against the grain.
So we carried our new calves home and introduced them to the cows. Bonnie had no interest in them at all of course and this is only to be expected. Here is where the arsenal of tricks comes into play to get a cow to accept a strange calf. Rubbing them down with the mothers dung, or better still the afterbirth so they smell like her, locking them up overnight in the dark, fettling the mother with beer and so on.
With an older cow these methods work well but with a new cow the odds are much smaller and when this fails (as it did with Bonnie) you have to go to forced feeding and tie the mother up so the calves can suckle. This involves driving the cow into the stall and roping a leg back so she cannot kick. The calves are then put on the teat. Care must be taken to make sure the calves are not too rough with the teats and that they swap to new teats as each quarter is emptied. The whole process is quite traumatic for all involved until the cow learns to accept it and I received several kicks and a mashed hand in the process. Cows can indeed kick to the side.

Goodbye little Jessie

I am very sad to report that a week after she was born, little Jessie has died. A few days after her birth I noticed she was walking a little stiffly. I checked her over to find three large paralysis ticks in her fur. They could not have been on her for long as I had checked her and given her a spray down with pyrethrum just a day before. Unfortunately the ticks must still have had enough time to inject sufficient venom to kill a small calf. After trying everything I could I was forced to put her down three days later.

New butterflies

Another thing I love at this time of the year.

I found a few of these butterflies new hatched from the chrysalis this morning. They have been beautiful big caterpillars on the kumquat for a few weeks prior. I reckon a few leaves are a small price to pay for this.

In other news..

I am pleased to announce that Anna, the matron of the Cloud farm, has delivered a fine healthy heifer calf. We are very happy because although bobby calves become good to eat, heifer calves become good to sell. Jersey cross Dexters appear to be quite popular too. The last heifer we could have sold a dozen times over judging by the amount of calls we received.

 We all love having a new calf on the place, they warm your heart and make you remember the joys in life. The youngest Cloud farmer has named her "Jessie".

Bring on the chillies

The warmer weather is setting in and so the chillies have become heavy with fruit. As I have plenty of my usual chilli sauce in stock I instead took the opportunity to try making a Tabasco style sauce. This is something I have been wanting to do for a long time now. I actually did try last year too but did not secure the lid properly and the fruit flies got in to lay maggots. Yuck. Who would have thought they could live in near pure chilli puree?

Anyway, I had previously done a bit of research and found that Tabasco sauce is apparently quite a well known recipe. Essentially you take Tabasco chillis of the correct ripeness, mash or puree, add 2% good salt and age in an oak barrel for three to five years. Then strain and add wine vinegar.

Now I have no Tabasco chillis sure but I have plenty of my own Fiesta chillis and I reckon they will do just fine. So I picked the bushes clean (good for them anyway as too much fruit robs the plants vitality) of all the lovely vibrant red fruit. I then topped them and minced them fine in a blender, adding approximately the required 2% salt. As a side note, do all this outside the house. If you cannot work out why then you should probably not be handling chillis anyway.

 The mixture was then carefully spooned into a large jar where it will be allowed to ferment. I also added a small handful of french oak chips from the lid of an old wine barrel I keep for this sort of thing. This will allow the oak-barrel effect without having to use the whole barrel. At least that is the idea.

I find the colour to be the most glorious shade of red. It is currently residing on my desk where I can keep an eye on it for the initial fermentation- the cap is slightly loose to allow the escaping gas. When it settles it will go to the back of the cool pantry cupboard where I shall forget about it for a year or so.
The chilli bushes will soon put out another heavy crop of fruit. They always do when I clean pick them. So I am intending to make another few batches this summer. This is so I can produce one early batch of sauce each year without having to wait a full three years first. I hope to then continue making a batch each year thereafter.
Obviously I am not using Tabasco chillis so I cannot in all honesty call this a Tabasco sauce. The most obvious alternate name is Fiesta sauce, after the Fiesta chillis. I think it is much better.