Canning Butter

To save on freezer space here are directions for canning butter.
I wonder if it still tastes the same... anyone tried it?
I am trying to get down to just one freezer running, until deer season. I have gone through my entire frozen milk supply. It all went to the orphans. Most of the older milk had separated so it wouldn't have been palatable for us, but the kids don't care about little details like that.
So, with all the milk gone I think I can squeeze what's left in the smaller freezer into the other one. Not that there is much butter in there anyway, but every little bit in the pantry instead of the freezer is a help!

We've got babies in the bird house again!

;o)

"So much pain and suffering in the world could be avoided,
if people would only learn to shoot straight."
-- Gabriel New, 2009

Erinn's favorite goat.

This is Sprite. Also affectionately known as "Sprite-Sue". She is a yearling first freshener who has an incredible amount of milk! Our 6 milkers are currently feeding 22 kids plus providing household milk.

Sometimes....

...things don't go as planned.
Yesterday the plan was to catch up on house work and school work which had been totally neglected on Monday due to the fact that we felt our neighbor really needed some gardening help before he hurt himself trying to do it alone.
So, we started off the day fairly well, and then at 10 am we got a call from our neighbor's brother. He lives 2 miles down the road right beside the Little Devil's River. He had a cow with a huge dead calf whose head was out, but he couldn't get it out any further. It had been stuck like that for a full day already, apparently.
I don't know WHAT he thought I could do.... lol. A cow is not anything like a goat! Apparently, he decided to pull the calf out with his tractor, so by the time we got there, he had just done that. The cow was lying flat out on her side, bloated as could be. It looked grim.
Mooky and I pushed on her until she was in somewhat of a sitting up position and she picked her head up and let out the biggest belch I have ever heard. It was a WHOOSH of air that lasted 20 seconds!
The owner went to buy a bottle of penicillin, and we went home. Then he called me because he couldn't give her the shot. So I went back down there and gave her the shot. He has a disease that makes him have tremors and uncontrollable shaking, so it was understandable that giving a cow a shot was more than he could handle. She was down flat on her side again so we found a huge fallen branch and dragged it over and put it behind her in such a way that she could lay out flat again.
Then we came home again, and he called me asking if I had seen his brother who was supposed to come down with his tractor to use the bucket to move the cow into the barn. (She is a black cow, who was laying in the direct sun.)
To make a long story short, we ended up going down there and setting up our pop-up tent (with no sides) over the cow to protect her from the sun. I nearly stepped on a very long coach whip, during all my tramping about through the fields....
Finally at about 2pm we were home for the day! We accomplished a lot around here, despite the unexpected happenings. Erinn even fed the kids their 11 oclock bucket, and later in the evening she rode Glory while Mooky went down to work in the neighbor's garden again. Kris worked in Kerrville, and picked up feed.
All in all, we all had a great day. :o) It's always good to be flexible.

DumDum and Glory, eating together.

They have a hate-hate relationship.

DumDum REALLY picks on Glory and she gets so mad at him, but she never kicks him like I think he deserves. I really wouldn't blame her if she did nail him good and hard. He pushes on her, chews on her, gets in her way, and does all he can to be really annoying.

Is that two kids with one head? The ears do seem long enough for two kids...