A Good Ole Fashioned Cochon de Lait!

One of the perks of living out in the country and having lots of land is that you get to share it with family and friends without being crowded.  And, you can get away with doing things like roasting a whole pig in your backyard without your neighbors looking at you like you're weird...especially if you invite them over for dinner =)  So, a couple of weeks ago, we invited over a handful of Philip's cousins and their families, our neighbors, and had a good ole fashioned cochon de lait!

  Just so you know, according to the official Cochon de Lait Festival website (didn't you know there is a festival EVERY weekend some where in the great state of Louisiana?!), a cochon de lait is a  "suckling pig (or sucking pig ) is a young pig that has only fed on its mother's milk. The piglet is killed between the ages of two to six weeks, and traditionally it is roasted. The dish is usually reserved for special occasions."  

 The annual Cochon de Lait Festival is in Mansura, LA, the cochon de lait capital of the world!!  You should come down, chere, and pass a good time!  Everyone brought a dish, and we supplied the pig roasting equipment, an ice chest of beer (and lemonade and tea for the children and pregnant women), and coleslaw.  It was fantastic!  We had homemade macaroni, chips and dip, baked beans, breads, and desserts. 

the roasting apparatus

 Phil's Dad is from a family of twelve, and all of those twelve are married with children, so there are lots of cousins to go around!  It was really cool to see a very small handful of the 3rd generation of the LeBlanc clan playing together.  I'd try and give out numbers of grand-kids and great-grand-kids, but I'm sure I won't get the numbers straight....I do know that one of Phil's brothers is the 44th grand-child, because his Mom just told me yesterday when they came to celebrate an early Christmas, the birth of Luke, and that same brother's graduation from college.  So...that should give you some idea of how many great-grands there are...LOTS, and I'm sure there are many more to come!

gotta have the Cajun injector!  (this makes a pretty fabulous smoked chicken, too =)

getting the pig ready for roasting

around 5 hours later, we had roast pig

the 3 year old crowd =)

the 1 1/2 year old crowd =)

the big kids

oh how I LOVE this picture!

taking it off the fire

all cooked!

movie time!!

....and, done.

"Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!'

About a year ago, my husband convinced me that we needed more property.  We just didn't have enough grass to keep the 4 cows we had at the time!  What we needed was more land!  Well, we now definitely have just that...a whopping 18 acres of it.  So, naturally when we got here with our 4 cows, there was more than enough grass to go around for everyone.  Actually, there was no grass...the previous owners raised horses, who ate the grass down to the dirt.  Plus, it was New Year's Eve when we moved in, so grass was not in season then.  So, we had to supplement with hay.  But, I digress.  

Now that summer has been in full swing for a solid 3+ months, we have more grass than we know what to do with.  I mean, when the kids and I walk out to the barn, or anywhere on our property that is not within the confines of the wooden fence around our house, we walk through belly deep grass.  I think I've lost Andrew and Rachel a few times in the stuff!  So, the other day, my husband tells me what we need to solve said grass overload problem, is more cows!  And, since love is blind, I pretty much let the man do whatever he pleases. 

Some of our cows have calved since we moved here, so we were actually up to 6 cows total:  we have 2 cows each with a female calve, a heifer (who Phil believes to be pregnant!!  I'm hoping for a boy =), and the bull.  But a week or so ago, we added two new cows to our growing herd (one of which I think is also pregnant, but don't quote me on that one), which brings our total up to 8...oh, I forgot one...we have 9, because we are holding a cow for our cousin right now.
  

Actually, I'm really excited about the new cows.  There's something very quaint and soothing about looking out the window, and seeing a pasture full of cows grazing in the yard.  It makes for a very simple, quiet, and country-esque life...which, is great for raising children!  Please note that nowhere did I say EASY...life in the country is hard work, but much like being Catholic, it's really worth it.  I have to admit, it's not exactly my natural tendency to be a farm-type gal.  I'm pretty lazy.  But, it's one of those paradox things that are so hard to explain.  Even though it's not my natural tendency, I really do find so much joy living life in the country, and being a part of a family who raises farm animals and plants gardens.  Now, the sewing, cooking, knitting, and more domestic type stuff....that I love!  The harder, outdoor, rough and rugged work takes more of an act of will on my part.  But, like I said, I just get a lot of joy out of this kind of life, despite my tendency to laziness.  It's strange, I know, but it's the only way I can explain it.  And, the kids really like the cows, too.  Natalie loves to name them, Rachel likes to moo at them from the window, and Andrew....well, Andrew just wants to ride one =)  He told me the other day, "Mom, I really want to ride one of those cows.  Not a horse, though...I just want to ride one of the cows.  Can I?"  Love that kid!  Not to mention the fact that those cows will not only cut back on the amount of money we have to spend on diesel to run the tractor to cut our 18 acres of grass, but they'll also be providing lean, healthy, grass-fed, hormone-free beef for our growing family.  And, there's promise of a milk cow in the future!!!  Now, that is something to be excited about!  I've always wanted to try and milk a cow.  However, we've also been toying around with the idea of getting a milk goat, instead of a milk cow.  We are still doing some research on that to see which one we want, but there will most likely be some kind of fresh milk in the near distant future.  

Here are some pictures of our new farm friends:

 She is my favorite!  Isn't she pretty?:

Philip likes this gal:

The cows we already had are Dexters.  We went with a different breed of cow this go round, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, Dexters have horns, which Phil is not too crazy about...those are some strong animals, so I imagine they can do some pretty serious damage with those pointy weapons of theirs, and while I don't handle them very much, the man I love does, so I really don't want him getting hurt.  Secondly, Dexters are a smaller breed of cattle, so they can't keep up with the grass as well, it takes a lot longer for them to grow to full size, and you don't get as much beef off of one of those cows as you would a full-sized one.  So, we went with a Limousin and a Hereford....I think...I'll have to run that by Phil to make sure I'm correct.  And, please don't ask me which cow is which breed...I have no idea.  The only ones I can correctly identify are the Dexters.  We also went with the red variety this time, because with the intense heat in the summer, we thought it might be more pleasant for the cow to not be such a dark, heat absorbing color, like black.

Also on the home front, Philip finally got the chute for the cows finished.  It looks really great!  He's been working to get the barn turned into a cow friendly place, as opposed to a a horse friendly place, and little by little, it's coming together.  The chute is finished, which means we can run the cows through there if we ever need to tag them, administer medicine, milk them, or do anything that requires them to stand still and not try to hurt us.  He also built some wooden gates to make a holding pen, should we ever need to keep any of them separated from the herd.  

Here are some of them hanging out in the holding pen, waiting to be run through the chute:

One of the new gates, and the kids watching the action:

There they are, lined up in the chute:

One of the Mama cows and her calf:

Phil, letting them out through the head gate (look at me, using all kinds of fancy farm terminology!  just don't ask me what any of it means...I can repeat what Phil tells me, and that's about it ;):

The holding pen area:

Well, I think that is about it for what has been happening around the farm.  Oh, and I use the term 'farm' very loosely....what we have here is hardly considered a farm, but it's easier than saying 'our relatively large piece of land with cows, pigs, and a small overgrown family garden'.
 

On a more serious note, I really want to get some cowbells for our cows!!  How cool would that be?! 

Beef...It's What's for Dinner

In case you were ever curious about how much beef you can get from raising a Dexter beef cow/steer...(I'm sure most people are losing tons of sleep wondering about this exact thing!)  If not, feel free to skip this post all together, and come back and visit again soon.

We actually brought our first ever, farm-raised, grass-fed (and partially grain-fed at the end), home-grown beef cow to the butcher about 2 weeks ago.  The kids and I got lost trying to find drove out to the place on Wednesday to pick up the meat, which came in lots of very nicely wrapped & labeled packages that you just can't find at your local Wal-Mart.  So, here is what we ended up with after raising good, ole T-bone for the last couple of years (we purchased him in May, 2008, when he was just a wee, little calf - it was actually Mother's Day weekend, if I remember correctly):

134 lbs. ground beef (78 pkgs, about 1 3/4 lb. per package)

24 lbs. Ribeye Steaks (24 steaks)

20 lbs. T-bone Steaks (24 steaks)

16 lbs. Sirloin Steaks (12 steaks)

34 lbs. Roast (2 sirloin roasts and 6 rump roasts)

2 lbs. Flank Steak (2 steaks)

8 lbs. Brisket (2 briskets)

So, off of that one steer, we got 238 lbs. of beef!  Not too shabby.  We actually split the meat with another family, with whom we originally purchased the cow.  Is my grammar even correct on that sentence??  I dread the thought that I will be homeschooling my children, and therefore teaching them the English language!  I do hope they turn out alright...can you tell I've been reading Jane Austin?  On a complete tangent, I have a little confession to make.  I have never, ever read any Jane Austin books in my entire life.  Can you believe that?  Oh, the shame!  So, I'm reading Pride & Prejudice right now.  It's really good, but I am very slow, because I'm not used to that writing style.  Ok, tangent over.  The most amazing thing to me about this whole experience was that there was a complete even number of packages for each type of meat!  I was kind of expecting for the men to have some kind of knock-down, drag-out fight over who got an extra pack of ribeyes or brisket, but it worked out perfectly.  Amazing!

Stocking up for the Winter

Philip spent the better part (or, I guess that would be the worst part, as the better part of Sunday was Mass...or something like that...he spent the majority of the day, Sunday...how's that??) loading up our barn with hay for the cows, so they will have food this winter.  The kids were very excited, because they LOVE playing in the hay.  Although, much to their dismay, they were banned from any jumping, climbing, sliding, or contact of any kind with the hay, because it kind of destroys the bales.  Natalie was expressing her concern over this, so I asked her if she would like it if the cows jumped around in her food...I think she understood ;)  Anyway, here are some photos of our fully stocked barn:

Can you see Natalie up there??

I think we ended up with 22 all together...

Side-view: 

Phil's current work-in-progress...a chute for the cows.  I kind of want to engrave something really cool on that board up there...any suggestions??

The last few lingering bales before being moved to the barn:

All that hay makes our barn look so much more, well, barn-like!  It's fun =)  Thanks, Phil, for taking care of that!  I could tell by how disgusting your laundry was that day that it was no easy task...glad it wasn't me.

Summer Harvest and the Homefront

In my last garden post, I didn't have any pictures of our vegetables, and I promised to come back and put some, so here are just a few pics of what we've been getting from the garden:

 

This was my first real, serious garden, and so far I'm very pleased with the results.  Not everything came out perfectly, and that's ok.  Like the corn...I did something really wrong with the corn!  That stuff just didn't produce worth a darn.  Once full grown, the kernels were all different sizes, some of them were bare in spots, and the ones that were uniform were chewy.  Phil said that maybe my seeds were too old.  I'm going to put my money on that, because I'd hate to think that I can't grow corn!  I love fresh corn on the cob and maque choux (that's a very tasty Cajun dish consisting of smothered corn and tomatoes in butter for those who have never heard of it - so good!).  I'm going to be very sad if I have to give up on the corn thing.  I'll try again with some fresh seeds that I bought this spring.  Why didn't I plant those, you ask?  Well, I had some left over from a few years ago, and I didn't want to waste it (I read online that seeds keep for a few years if you keep them in the fridge)...so much for that plan...I wasted way more than just a few kernels of corn.  That stuff takes forever to grow!  Oh well, so it goes.  Live and learn.  The pigs will eat well this week.  All I know is that we have been enjoying the heck out of some fresh cucumber and tomato salads every night, and I'll be sad when they are done producing.  The okra plants have also been producing very well....slow, but steady.  I've almost filled a gallon-sized freezer bag that I'll use in the winter for gumbo and smothered okra.  I usually get about a hand full of okra pods every few days.  Sometimes we just fry them, and that's really good, too!  I'm also really looking forward to the watermelon and cantaloupe we planted, assuming those produce.  I've got a ton of decent sized cantaloupes on the vine, so hopefully they'll ripen nicely.  Phil actually told me today that he found a wild watermelon vine out in the pasture!  And, I'm almost ready for my next round of planting.  I'll probably do another round of cucumbers and tomatoes (because we are addicted!), maybe some more bell peppers, and later in July I'll be able to start stuff for the fall garden, like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.  I may also do another variety of squash and zucchini if I can make it to the seed store...I'm not sure what variety I planted, but they are kind of funky looking.  Some of them came out half orange and half green, and they were kind of tough...what is that??  Maybe those seeds are bad, too, because they weren't new, either.

On the animal side of life, I think we've finally got our fencing set up the way we want it!  So, Phil has the cows on this rotational grazing schedule (please don't ask me to explain it...I just go out there and dump feed in a bucket when Phil asks me to), so we finally have cows grazing around our pasture!  It's pretty cool.  They are close to the house now, so when we go outside, we can actually see them by the fence, and they stand there and moo at us as if we are supposed to feed them or something.  I thought that's what all the grass was for???  All we need now are a handful more cows to keep up with the grass...they can't eat enough right now to keep it down, which is not a bad problem to have, I suppose.  Little by little we are easing into this more self-sufficient kind of life.  It may not be how I imagined my life to be, but I'm finding that it is better than anything I could have imagined.  I'm glad Phil talked me into it =)  On Monday, we will bring our first grass fed steer to the butcher! (And by "we", I mean someone other than myself).  Which means we'll add steaks, ground beef, roasts, and briskets to our current freezer selection =)  All those trips out there to feed ole T'bone is finally going to pay off!  

Here they are, munching on some grass:

you can see how far down they mow the grass from one section to the next, where we have them partitioned off:

On a totally side note, it seems lately we've been hearing so many stories of hardships and sufferings; people's jobs on the line, family illnesses, the problems in the gulf that hit close to home, and here we are, just so blessed to have a beautiful family and a little piece of heaven on earth where we live.  Sometimes it just doesn't seem fair, but I know God knows what He's doing, so for now, I'll do my best to foster gratitude for our blessings, and to pray and sacrifice for those who are struggling.  I'm not sure if that's enough, but that's all I know how to do.

Harvest Time and Lazy Summer Days

Wow...it's been forever since I've posted on my blog, it seems.  I miss it!  But, we've just been so busy lately.  Summer is here, and we've spent a very nice week at the beach - including a week long internet fast - a week at my Mom's, and then we've been getting ready for Vacation Bible School, Natalie's end of the year Little Flower's Party, and a Catholic Girls' Summer Camp that I help coordinate.  And, we participate in our local library's summer reading activities.  So, despite the fact that school is out, life has just been crazy busy!  But, that's ok...that's what life is for.  On the plus side, I've been really lax with our schedule, so we've been able to enjoy some laziness and "sleep in" (anything past 7 a.m. is late here, but I guess it's all relative).  In fact, it's 11:15, and I'm still in my pajamas!  (Don't judge me...you know you're jealous...just kidding ;).  My favorite thing is that every morning, the kids all come climb in bed with me and we just lounge around and talk, or cuddle, or sometimes fight, depending on our moods ;).  We've also been enjoying a fairly decent sized blow up pool that I got at Target.  That pool does wonders to cool you off on these hot summer days!    

On the home front, we've been enjoying lots of summer vegetables from our garden!  I'm so excited about this.  We've been eating snow peas (those finished producing around the end of April), cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, bell peppers, and green beans.  I was actually really surprised at how many strawberries we've been getting.  The plants were brand new, and we've been picking a handful every couple of days.  Rachel has been in hog heaven over here =)  She LOVES those things.  Actually, she'll eat just about anything we pick from the garden, which is awesome!  Her favorites are the strawberries and cucumbers, though.  I wish the older two were that way.  Andrew turns green just looking at them, and Natalie will eat a very limited amount, and then only if there is an ice cream cone waiting at the end of a clean plate.  Oh well...we'll keep trying, and hopefully they'll grow into loving fresh vegetables eventually.  And, soon, we'll be harvesting the corn, squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, and watermelon.  Well, hopefully...I've never actually planted cantaloupe or watermelon before, so I don't know if they'll actually make anything.  But, the plants look really healthy, and they have baby fruits on them!  All my harvest pictures are on my camera...in my diaper bag...in my van...which my husband took to work today, so I'll have to come back later and add them, but I do have some pictures of us making pickles!  I planted some of the pickling cucumbers as well as the slicing ones, so I gave canning a try.  It was pretty fun!  Addicting, you might say.  And, the pickles were so good...I'm ready to make some more.  I used this recipe for Dill Pickles...I'm not much of a bread and butter type gal.  I followed it pretty closely, except I used dried dill, because I couldn't find fresh.  I think I put almost 2 t. of dried dill, which makes for a VERY strong dill flavor, but that's how we like them.  I also added some thin sliced onion, and about 6 small cloves of garlic per jar.  I let Phil take 3 jars and make them spicy, so he did some doctoring up to those (I think he put Chipotle Hot Sauce in one, and sliced jalapenos in the other two).  We really like them, and I recommend the recipe, but I don't think the recipe actually follows proper canning methods, so you may want to be careful there.  I'm probably going to adjust the procedure for the next batch of pickles this week. 

Our first cucumber:

Slicing up the pickles:

Filling the jars:

The equipment:

All ready for the brine solution:

Lids:

My improper canning method (they're *supposed* to be totally submerged...oh well):

All done and cooling!!:

I Also found this beauty:

Farm raised pork chops!  Talk about good!!!  I made pork chops with rice and gravy (we're from south Louisiana....rice and gravy goes with anything!).  We cashed in on the larger of our pigs, and brought him to the butcher.  We ended up with 23 lbs. of smoked sausage (which makes a fantastic rice dressing!), 33 lbs. of breakfast sausage, 27 lbs of pork roast (7 roasts all together), 26 lbs of 1" thick pork chops (there were 36 pork chops in all - I wish we had cut them a tad thinner, and gotten more chops out of it, though), 5 lbs. of spare ribs, and 8.5 lbs. of thick cut bacon).  If you've never had farm raised pork, you are missing out.  I almost can't bring myself to buy it in the store anymore.  And, now, I don't need to!  

Well, that is what we've been up to so far this summer.  I love summer!  It's my favorite =) 

Forget the Purell

Seeing that dirt is a major part of me and my family's life, especially my children, I thought I would share this article:

 

Playing in the Dirt Could Make you Smarter, Researchers Say

May 25, 2010 12:52 PM EDT

Go ahead, let your kids play in the dirt, it could make them smarter.

 After conducting a series of experiments, researchers have found exposure to specific bacteria in the environment could increase learning behavior, ScienceDaily.com reported.

"Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breathe in when they spend time in nature," Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, N.Y., said.

Previous studies on M. vaccae involving mice showed stimulated growth of some neurons in the brain that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety.

"Since serotonin plays a role in learning, we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice," Matthews said.

Matthews and her colleagues discovered they were on the right track.

"We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice," she said. "It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks."

The findings were presented Monday at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

Yay for dirt!

Around the Garden

I thought I might do a post on my our garden progress.  It's looking really nice these days!  So far, I've we've got cucumbers, corn, okra, English peas, tomatoes, bell peppers (green and carnival colors), spinach (which we have eaten 2 salads from!), and carrots (which I'm pretty sure will NOT be producing anything).  I've also got a raised bed purely for strawberries, which I am very excited about!  One of my best friends gave me 8 runners from her strawberry patch (I use all these terms as if I know what I'm talking about...bahahahah...I really have no idea; I'm just doing what other people tell me to do, and then pray that it works ;)  But, we've eaten 2 strawberries from it already, and there are more waiting to ripen, so I guess it's working =)

Here is the first ripened strawberry we picked:

  I have one more raised bed that needs to be tilled and filled with soil, although, I'll be sad to see it filled with plants as it serves as a perfect playpen for Rachel =):

   I plan on putting more corn and okra, as well as cucumbers, squash, and zucchini in that one when it's ready.  I am also going to plant watermelon, which means I'll need another raised bed just for that, and cantaloupe (I'll be putting that on the other half of the strawberry bed for this year, since my strawberry plants are so small and I've got the room).  

Our first bowl of spinach (the leaves are huge, but very tasty!):

My carrots that have lots of green-age, but no orange underneath =(

My middle bed in the early stages w/cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, and green beans:

The end bed in the early stages w/peas, green beans, cucumbers, corn, okra, spinach, and carrots:

The first flower on one of the cucumbers!:

The peas are also flowering nicely:

Here is a more recent picture with everything growing and the kids running through the sprinkler:

On the non-edible front, the flowers around here have been blooming like crazy!  It's so pretty.  I was never really into roses that much; not that I don't like them, but I have never really gotten into planting or growing them.  But, when we moved here, the property had rose bushes all over the place, and I have really been enjoying them!  Natalie has been picking them to put in vases for our Mary statue in the house, which is just too sweet =).  

This one is from a huge bush right outside the kids' bedroom window:

It has tons of blooms on it:

The smaller bush next to it is about ready to start blooming:

These white ones are just gorgeous:

But, I think the yellow ones are my favorite:

I'm not sure what these are going to look like, but they are super tiny!:

Besides roses, we also have these pretty little pink carnations (at least I think that's what they are - please correct me if I'm wrong...I am no expert at flowers):

And these lovely ladies:

Natalie's snapdragon plant:

And, of course, the azalea's and clover are blooming EVERYWHERE down here:

Which means we have been making lots of these in the afternoons:

And, Phil and I found this guy the other day while working on the fence:

Needless to say, we have really been enjoying the beautiful outdoors this spring!  I feel very thankful that my kids have the opportunity to enjoy God's creation so up close and personal.  Hopefully they learn to appreciate it as well.