Holiday Rats!
Spending Christmas with the kids - it was my turn this year - was lovely. I spent several days leading up to the day making their stockings (wet felting) as we had lost last years in the move and anyway, in my attempts to remove all fabrics from our lives that are not 100% natural fiber, I probably sent them to a charity shop sometime this year so needed new ones anyway.
The stockings were such fun to make that once done, I went ahead and made myself a pair of slipper shoes using my "shades of green" wool. Soled with scraps of leather and finished off with a band of rabbit fur, they look fantastic and are so warm that I can only wear them on really cold days. Florida has so many of those, doesn't it?
As the kids were sick on the run up to their Christmas school break I didn't get the chance to make their presents when they were at school. If you ever want to make Maple Candy on the sly, don't do it while the intended recipient is at home. The smell of boiling maple syrup filled not only the house but the yard as well. It smelled fantastic but as a surprise, a bit of a washout. Never mind, I convinced them it was for someone else so they had a bit of a surprise opening their boxes and they LOVED it. Its easy enough to make but it's a recipe that goes totally by look and feel rather than temp and technic. Once you have it down its a cinch but gosh, it sure went sticky wrong the first time!
Cooked a small chicken for Amanda, two small hams for Devin and turkey (wing, thigh and one breast) for Simon and me for the holiday feast. With fresh made cranberry sauce and greens from the garden, mashed potatoes and gravy and broccoli it was a feast indeed. Yummmmmm! And because the kids went the next day to spend a week with their father, most of it is now in the freezer for future meals. Ham pasty and turkey pie in the future, mmmm sounds good, wish I had some now.
Had a great spot of good luck on Craigslist just before Christmas and scooped up three Broad Breasted Bronze Turkeys for $75. They were free range, grain fed and at 18 months of age, HUGE! The three turned into 68 POUNDS of packaged up turkey meat in the freezer, not counting the stock made from the giblets and bones plus what bits went to the dogs. All in all, a great deal!
The garden has been coming on a treat and producing mixed greens like a champ. Getting rather tired of mixed greens cooked Southern Style, to be honest, so shall start getting a bit more adventurous with them in the weeks to come. Stir fries and fritters and soups spring to mind and by then, perhaps the Chard and kohlrabi will be ready.
As we have SNOW warnings for the week ahead I built the sows a shelter and stuffed it with hay today. It was part of my big rabbit area revamp. It kind of got thrown together in the beginning and while it worked, it didn't work very well. Really unhandy and hard to maneuver while working so I took it all down, every bit, and reassembled it today.
Remember, if it isn't working well, tear it all down and start over!!! In the long run, it is less work to do that than struggle to make a bad design work.
Que today's excitement when I started moving rabbit cages! Despite not having smelled them, or seen any signs of them, I found RATS!!! nesting between one of the sheet metal panels and the styrofoam that covered one of the cages. The nest had about 7 or 8 youngsters and the mama rat so I put the cover back down and went and turned Chopper loose from the zip line. She is a true rat killer so thought she would enjoy the job. Yeh, like the bitch would do ANYTHING I want! She was up and over the fence and away before I had time to show her the fun job I had for her. Didn't see hide nor hair of her for over 2 hours! So Dude got the job of rat killer.
Well, he was willing anyway but he is sooooo clueless, after I tipped the nest so he could reach it, the rats went in all directions like popcorn! He caught one, stepped on another, I found two others that I had to put his nose on before he noticed them and the chickens killed one. Yes, chickens are really good at killing small rodents but adult rats are a bit beyond them.
As he went happily about looking for the ones that got away I worked at cage moving and chicken pen rebuilding. When Chopper finally showed up again she found not only the missing young rats but also the adult female. It's a shame that rats are so dangerous to livestock (and pets and kids) because they are such interesting animals. When looking through the burrows and runs I found lots of small bones, of all things, some of them very fresh. I know rats will turn hunter and killer but usually only when numbers are very high. Well, perhaps they are right now, the squirrel numbers sure are.
Which brings me neatly to my Christmas prezzie to me. I bought a Haveaheart live trap to replace the one I usually borrow from my friend Gladys. 4H has been hit hard by raccoons so they needed their trap back and I realized that I had been borrowing their trap for over 7 YEARS!!! About time I got my own eh?
I got the next size up - small dog size - to the one they have as I have always found the raccoon size trap is actually too small for raccoons! Well, for adult ones anyway.
It took over 3 weeks to get to me and then, it came BROKEN!!! Aaaargh the door was off and the entire thing was out of true, like someone had dropped the box and then rolled it under pressure but by gods, it had taken ages already to get to me so it was NOT going back!!! Good thing I am a dab hand at cage building and repairs eh? It did take a couple of hours to bring back into proper working order but every day I was trapless was a day I was missing the squirrel bonanza.
Yes, I had actually bought a 15-inch by 15-inch by 48-inch trap to catch squirrels! It is actually easier to catch them in a large trap as it is not the least scary to them, unlike the little traps sold to catch them. They are too light to trigger the trap but not if you put a bit of a plank over the trigger and scatter corn over it. The piece of wood PLUS the weight of the squirrel is plenty to trigger the trap and the addition of a bit of cage wire zip tied to the door solved the problem of the door being slightly offset due to the damage.
Over the last two days, since it has arrived, I have caught 5 squirrels. One did escape through the gap, hence adding the extra cage wire, but it is working a treat! Not only do I now have 2 full quart jars filled in the freezer, I have another one almost filled. One more will top that jar up nicely. And squirrel is a firm favorite! NEVER let anyone tell you that you only eat the back legs, and they will, you eat the entire animal! Because they can run up and down trees, head up or head down, a bit of thinking will show that the front legs MUST have as much muscle as the back legs and it is indeed true. Couple that with their very fine, light bones and you have a meat brick. Despite their size, they are so worth the work. Fantastic!
And not only do we get to eat them but I dry every hide and have been selling them, a few at a time, on Etsy. Win-win indeed.
The trap will eventually be set for larger prey but for now, am really happy with the catch. Knowing that squirrels are worth $10 each, I only need to catch 9 to fully pay for the trap and we are at 4 already.
This trick works anywhere by the way, and I have had many a backyard squirrel dinner. Catch squirrel in trap, move it into a canvas bag, a quick bop with a club and the job is done. Freeze after you clean them in mason jars and, when you have enough for all, enjoy.
A thing I have noticed over the past year or so is that, when I have lots of butcher scraps for the dogs, they look great but as soon as they go back onto dog food, they lose weight and condition rapidly. So I have now taken the expensive step of ordering an incubator online (it should arrive in a day or three) and went shopping on Craigslist for a rooster. The hens are laying 2 eggs a day now that I have added light to their pen and that will hopefully go up, 6 hens should give at least 4 eggs a day. But even 2 a day will give me a test hatch of a dozen eggs once the rooster has been with the girls for a week or so.
What does an incubator have to do with dog food, I hear you ask? I will be hatching eggs and raising the chicks to feed the dogs raw chicken. They love raw anything and chicken is a firm favorite with them. As I am trying to avoid soy for the family, I may as well get the dogs off it as well and dog food has lots of soy in it.
The only rooster for sale local to me that had a seller that actually answered my email asking about it was a Showgirl Silkie. Blue splash is the color and, while I don't like the naked neck of the showgirl line, he is a sweet boy. I had put him in a cage inside the hen house so the girls didn't hurt him (I had hens kill a silkie rooster once) but he let himself out and so far, they seem to like him. His crow is so funny, silkies crow really softly and his is more a crow song than a full-on cockadoodledo.
The two geese I got not long ago - a two-year-old proven breeding pair for $30, score! - have finally started eating properly. They REALLY hated the change in their lives and went on a hunger strike to show it. Fortunately, they were obese so had reserves to live on until they got used to their new lives. As its silly to eat a pair of geese that will produce goslings for the next 20 years, I am trying to trade them for something a bit more useful to me. Had a nibble of interest by a person selling a calf but they haven't gotten back to me so I think they changed their minds. Pity, would like a cow, even short term. I like cows!
The rabbit hide throw blanket project is going well. I have 9 hides added to the done pile and the velvet to back them with has arrived. Was disappointed in it really, it's more velour rather than velvet and not as soft as I wanted but it will work and look pretty. As the first three blankets are for the kids, they won't know the difference as they have never encountered proper velvet, I will use it but keep looking for better for when I make a blanket to sell. Do you know how hard it is to find 100% natural fiber proper velvet? And how much silk velvet costs? Almost $200 a YARD!!!
For my throw blanket, I will start looking for old velvet clothing in charity shops to break down and reuse. I KNOW what velvet is supposed to feel like!
As a total December surprise, I was chosen by Etsy to do a video phone interview and was given a voucher for $150 for doing it! I enjoyed doing it and have been using the voucher to buy things on Etsy that I can use, like needle felting tools and, indeed, the velvet. But the big surprise came later. We got a huge box in the post and I thought it was from either Forrest or Clay for the kids. Imagine our surprise when we opened it to find a printer for ME from Etsy!!! It had come up in the interview that I didn't have one so couldn't save money buying my shipping labels from them so they sent me one! How cool is that?
Will end my rather rambling discourse by giving the December tally from the yard. I won't count the turkeys as they were only here for three days but December was a really good month.
27 eggs
21 squirrels
30 pounds of rabbit
30 pounds of pork
25 pounds of sweet potatoes
7.5 pounds of mixed greens
2 pounds of chicken
The yard is still more meat-heavy than I want but the veg will, I am sure, start giving a more balanced diet soon.
We wish for all of you all the fun and fortune that can be packed into the new year, Gods bless!
The stockings were such fun to make that once done, I went ahead and made myself a pair of slipper shoes using my "shades of green" wool. Soled with scraps of leather and finished off with a band of rabbit fur, they look fantastic and are so warm that I can only wear them on really cold days. Florida has so many of those, doesn't it?
 |
| The finished stocking. Wet felted with needle felted letters and finished off with white rabbit fur. |
As the kids were sick on the run up to their Christmas school break I didn't get the chance to make their presents when they were at school. If you ever want to make Maple Candy on the sly, don't do it while the intended recipient is at home. The smell of boiling maple syrup filled not only the house but the yard as well. It smelled fantastic but as a surprise, a bit of a washout. Never mind, I convinced them it was for someone else so they had a bit of a surprise opening their boxes and they LOVED it. Its easy enough to make but it's a recipe that goes totally by look and feel rather than temp and technic. Once you have it down its a cinch but gosh, it sure went sticky wrong the first time!
 |
| Trying to unmold the second batch of maple candy. I used the vintage Petite Four set I got off of Etsy but while they worked for the first batch, the second was a bit too soft to unmold properly. Never mind, it all tasted good! |
Cooked a small chicken for Amanda, two small hams for Devin and turkey (wing, thigh and one breast) for Simon and me for the holiday feast. With fresh made cranberry sauce and greens from the garden, mashed potatoes and gravy and broccoli it was a feast indeed. Yummmmmm! And because the kids went the next day to spend a week with their father, most of it is now in the freezer for future meals. Ham pasty and turkey pie in the future, mmmm sounds good, wish I had some now.
Had a great spot of good luck on Craigslist just before Christmas and scooped up three Broad Breasted Bronze Turkeys for $75. They were free range, grain fed and at 18 months of age, HUGE! The three turned into 68 POUNDS of packaged up turkey meat in the freezer, not counting the stock made from the giblets and bones plus what bits went to the dogs. All in all, a great deal!
 |
| The hams fresh out of the brine and hanging in front of the fan to dry. Remember, when smoking meat it needs to be DRY before you put it in the smoker. Trust me on this!!! |
The garden has been coming on a treat and producing mixed greens like a champ. Getting rather tired of mixed greens cooked Southern Style, to be honest, so shall start getting a bit more adventurous with them in the weeks to come. Stir fries and fritters and soups spring to mind and by then, perhaps the Chard and kohlrabi will be ready.
 |
| Greens, greens and more greens. And yes, the gorilla cart STILL has a pond in it. |
As we have SNOW warnings for the week ahead I built the sows a shelter and stuffed it with hay today. It was part of my big rabbit area revamp. It kind of got thrown together in the beginning and while it worked, it didn't work very well. Really unhandy and hard to maneuver while working so I took it all down, every bit, and reassembled it today.
Remember, if it isn't working well, tear it all down and start over!!! In the long run, it is less work to do that than struggle to make a bad design work.
Que today's excitement when I started moving rabbit cages! Despite not having smelled them, or seen any signs of them, I found RATS!!! nesting between one of the sheet metal panels and the styrofoam that covered one of the cages. The nest had about 7 or 8 youngsters and the mama rat so I put the cover back down and went and turned Chopper loose from the zip line. She is a true rat killer so thought she would enjoy the job. Yeh, like the bitch would do ANYTHING I want! She was up and over the fence and away before I had time to show her the fun job I had for her. Didn't see hide nor hair of her for over 2 hours! So Dude got the job of rat killer.
Well, he was willing anyway but he is sooooo clueless, after I tipped the nest so he could reach it, the rats went in all directions like popcorn! He caught one, stepped on another, I found two others that I had to put his nose on before he noticed them and the chickens killed one. Yes, chickens are really good at killing small rodents but adult rats are a bit beyond them.
As he went happily about looking for the ones that got away I worked at cage moving and chicken pen rebuilding. When Chopper finally showed up again she found not only the missing young rats but also the adult female. It's a shame that rats are so dangerous to livestock (and pets and kids) because they are such interesting animals. When looking through the burrows and runs I found lots of small bones, of all things, some of them very fresh. I know rats will turn hunter and killer but usually only when numbers are very high. Well, perhaps they are right now, the squirrel numbers sure are.
Which brings me neatly to my Christmas prezzie to me. I bought a Haveaheart live trap to replace the one I usually borrow from my friend Gladys. 4H has been hit hard by raccoons so they needed their trap back and I realized that I had been borrowing their trap for over 7 YEARS!!! About time I got my own eh?
I got the next size up - small dog size - to the one they have as I have always found the raccoon size trap is actually too small for raccoons! Well, for adult ones anyway.
 |
| Butters being guarded by his loyal rabbit. |
It took over 3 weeks to get to me and then, it came BROKEN!!! Aaaargh the door was off and the entire thing was out of true, like someone had dropped the box and then rolled it under pressure but by gods, it had taken ages already to get to me so it was NOT going back!!! Good thing I am a dab hand at cage building and repairs eh? It did take a couple of hours to bring back into proper working order but every day I was trapless was a day I was missing the squirrel bonanza.
Yes, I had actually bought a 15-inch by 15-inch by 48-inch trap to catch squirrels! It is actually easier to catch them in a large trap as it is not the least scary to them, unlike the little traps sold to catch them. They are too light to trigger the trap but not if you put a bit of a plank over the trigger and scatter corn over it. The piece of wood PLUS the weight of the squirrel is plenty to trigger the trap and the addition of a bit of cage wire zip tied to the door solved the problem of the door being slightly offset due to the damage.
Over the last two days, since it has arrived, I have caught 5 squirrels. One did escape through the gap, hence adding the extra cage wire, but it is working a treat! Not only do I now have 2 full quart jars filled in the freezer, I have another one almost filled. One more will top that jar up nicely. And squirrel is a firm favorite! NEVER let anyone tell you that you only eat the back legs, and they will, you eat the entire animal! Because they can run up and down trees, head up or head down, a bit of thinking will show that the front legs MUST have as much muscle as the back legs and it is indeed true. Couple that with their very fine, light bones and you have a meat brick. Despite their size, they are so worth the work. Fantastic!
And not only do we get to eat them but I dry every hide and have been selling them, a few at a time, on Etsy. Win-win indeed.
 |
| Squirrel hides drying in front of a fan. I have used the styrofoam packing from the printer and pins to dry them with. It works a treat and saves the packing hitting the landfill. The box will go against the fence line, like all the others, as a way to keep the weeds down and reuse the cardboard. It looks a bit messy but so far its working fine. |
The trap will eventually be set for larger prey but for now, am really happy with the catch. Knowing that squirrels are worth $10 each, I only need to catch 9 to fully pay for the trap and we are at 4 already.
This trick works anywhere by the way, and I have had many a backyard squirrel dinner. Catch squirrel in trap, move it into a canvas bag, a quick bop with a club and the job is done. Freeze after you clean them in mason jars and, when you have enough for all, enjoy.
A thing I have noticed over the past year or so is that, when I have lots of butcher scraps for the dogs, they look great but as soon as they go back onto dog food, they lose weight and condition rapidly. So I have now taken the expensive step of ordering an incubator online (it should arrive in a day or three) and went shopping on Craigslist for a rooster. The hens are laying 2 eggs a day now that I have added light to their pen and that will hopefully go up, 6 hens should give at least 4 eggs a day. But even 2 a day will give me a test hatch of a dozen eggs once the rooster has been with the girls for a week or so.
What does an incubator have to do with dog food, I hear you ask? I will be hatching eggs and raising the chicks to feed the dogs raw chicken. They love raw anything and chicken is a firm favorite with them. As I am trying to avoid soy for the family, I may as well get the dogs off it as well and dog food has lots of soy in it.
 |
| The majestic Silkie rooster surveys his kingdom. |
The only rooster for sale local to me that had a seller that actually answered my email asking about it was a Showgirl Silkie. Blue splash is the color and, while I don't like the naked neck of the showgirl line, he is a sweet boy. I had put him in a cage inside the hen house so the girls didn't hurt him (I had hens kill a silkie rooster once) but he let himself out and so far, they seem to like him. His crow is so funny, silkies crow really softly and his is more a crow song than a full-on cockadoodledo.
 |
| Rex was really wondering what I was up to. She is the flocks thinking brain chicken. |
The two geese I got not long ago - a two-year-old proven breeding pair for $30, score! - have finally started eating properly. They REALLY hated the change in their lives and went on a hunger strike to show it. Fortunately, they were obese so had reserves to live on until they got used to their new lives. As its silly to eat a pair of geese that will produce goslings for the next 20 years, I am trying to trade them for something a bit more useful to me. Had a nibble of interest by a person selling a calf but they haven't gotten back to me so I think they changed their minds. Pity, would like a cow, even short term. I like cows!
 |
| Pebbles and BamBam. Time to move them onto fresh grass again but with its being winter they are running out of grass to go onto. Sure glad they have decided fermented grain is an ok substitute. |
The rabbit hide throw blanket project is going well. I have 9 hides added to the done pile and the velvet to back them with has arrived. Was disappointed in it really, it's more velour rather than velvet and not as soft as I wanted but it will work and look pretty. As the first three blankets are for the kids, they won't know the difference as they have never encountered proper velvet, I will use it but keep looking for better for when I make a blanket to sell. Do you know how hard it is to find 100% natural fiber proper velvet? And how much silk velvet costs? Almost $200 a YARD!!!
For my throw blanket, I will start looking for old velvet clothing in charity shops to break down and reuse. I KNOW what velvet is supposed to feel like!
As a total December surprise, I was chosen by Etsy to do a video phone interview and was given a voucher for $150 for doing it! I enjoyed doing it and have been using the voucher to buy things on Etsy that I can use, like needle felting tools and, indeed, the velvet. But the big surprise came later. We got a huge box in the post and I thought it was from either Forrest or Clay for the kids. Imagine our surprise when we opened it to find a printer for ME from Etsy!!! It had come up in the interview that I didn't have one so couldn't save money buying my shipping labels from them so they sent me one! How cool is that?
Will end my rather rambling discourse by giving the December tally from the yard. I won't count the turkeys as they were only here for three days but December was a really good month.
27 eggs
21 squirrels
30 pounds of rabbit
30 pounds of pork
25 pounds of sweet potatoes
7.5 pounds of mixed greens
2 pounds of chicken
The yard is still more meat-heavy than I want but the veg will, I am sure, start giving a more balanced diet soon.
 |
| The very Red Neck smoker! It works a treat and I am really pleased with it. A very small fire of oak twigs goes under the brick where the shadow of my head is and the meat goes on the rack at the other end. Over it all goes a cotton sheet to keep the smoke in. By the time it gets to that end it has cooled off enough to give a nice cool smoke. |
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| The holiday lemon tree finished off with a Doctor Who Weeping Angel and glass baubles. |
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| The holiday feast! Baked smoked ham with pineapple, turkey, chicken, gravy, smashed spuds, cranberry sauce, broccoli and mixed greens cooked Southern style with ham. |
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| Amanda and Simon dressed the table, using holiday things found in a closet. It was very pretty and festive and they were both very pleased with the effect. |
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| I love being able to make things I can't afford to buy! My moss colored slipper shoes are just what I wanted, now I just need to hide them from the kids, they all LOVE them and run off with them every chance they get. |
We wish for all of you all the fun and fortune that can be packed into the new year, Gods bless!
Atta girl - food pics! The best kind!
ReplyDelete(But that is one seriously ugly rooster).
Congrats on the printer. What a lovely thing for them to do!!!
Loved the blog. Hope to read lots more of them in 2018.