BBQ Giveaway!

In honor of beef month and all of the beef we've just acquired, I thought I'd have a BBQ-themed giveaway.  Our favorite way to enjoy beef is by barbecuing.  So, here's everything you'll need for a fun BBQ! 

BBQ Giveaway includes:

*8 piece Garden Herbs Kitchen Towel Set

*4 pack of Reusable Food Storage Containers

*Green Platter

*3 piece Stainless Steel Grill Tool Set

*Matching Green Paper Plates

*5 pack of Pink Lemonade

*Magnetic Chip Bag Clip

*Neon Green Frisbee (specially selected by my kids)

Here's how you can win:

1 chance:   Become a follower of my blog and leave me a comment to this post.

1 more chance:   Post a link to my giveaway on your blog. (Please leave another comment letting me know you did this, so I get you entered again.)

2 more chances:   Post your favorite beef recipe in the comments section of this post.

That's up to 4 chances to win!!!

Giveaway ends next Friday (6-4-10) -- Good Luck!

Gully Washer

Yesterday was a beautiful day.  Maci and I had several things we wanted to get done, but Ryan had other plans for us.  So, we played taxi most of the morning.  Moving him to a different farm and running for parts.  We knew when Quentin got home we had to take him to town for practices, so we decided to do our cattle chores early.  Good thing we did!  Of course, the cattle weren't up at the bunks because it was earlier than normal feedin' time.  So, we had to drive back in the pasture and find them--gotta get a proper head count.  As we were driving back out we started seeing raindrops on the windshield.

Whew!  Just in time!  It started out with a few sprinkles, but it turned into a gully washer!  It came down fast.  Within a couple hours it stopped and I had this much water in the feed bucket that was in the back of my pickup...

We measured 4 1/2 inches!!!

We decided to go for a drive to check everything out.  The creek behind our house was running really high and you can see by the grass that it had been even higher.

The water in our neighbor's pond was coming out around the side of the dam.

The next picture is the bottom of the hill in our field (corn, this year).  It looks like half the farm washed down and covered the little corn plants out there.  Sure wish we wouldn't have had that early snow last fall,  so we would have been able to do the terrace work on this part of the farm.  That would have helped, but with this heavy of a rain it also could have blown out a new terrace pretty fast.

The cattle were okay and still in.  The fences will need a little work, but they were okay for the night.

All is well.  Now we just need a few days to dry up. 

BEEF...it's what's for dinner

We recently had one of our cows butchered. 

How much beef do you get from a cow?

That deep freeze is plum full too!  The only things that were there before were in that shallow basket on the left and a few packages of deer sausage & jerky on the bottom.

Even had to put some in the beer pop fridge in the basement!

So, at our house....

BEEF, it's what for dinner!

...and lunch...and breakfast...and midnight snack...

Creep Feeding our Calves

We have now moved most of our cows and their calves to pasture.  The calves need a little 'extra' since they are still nursing.  This is why we creep feed.  According to Iowa State University creep feeding is defined as follows:

Creep feeding is the practice of providing supplemental

feed to nursing calves, usually with the use of a creep
gate large enough for calves to enter the feeding area,
but too small to allow cows to pass.

Creep feed provides a high protein supplement for the growing calves.  There are many mixtures of creep feeds that can be used, depending on the calves, pasture conditions, etc.  We have our creep feed specially mixed at one of our local feed mills.  It is a mixture of distillers and soybean hulls.  For those of you who are not familiar, distillers is a corn by-product of the ethanol process.  It is an excellent, less expensive source of protein, energy, vitamins and minerals.  We have an ethanol plant in our town, so it is also readily available.  We also feed distillers to our cows, bulls and mix it in with our chicken feed. 

Okay, back to the topic at hand.  Creep feeding requires a special feeder called....a creep feeder.  Our creep feeder is old, but it was also free. Hey, can't beat that! This is how we do it:

1.  Load up everything and drive to the pasture in the Ranger (our favorite mode of transportation this time of year).

2.  Feed the mamas at the bunks first.

3.  Open the top of the creep feeder. 

4.  Fill 'er up!

5.  Pet the calves a little.  Notice the gate that the calves, but not the cows, can get in to eat.

 

6.  Supper time!

Have a great day everybody!

Really, PETA?

Did you know that in 2009 PETA found adoptive homes for only 8 of the 2,366 animals it took in?  The other 97.3% were killed!!


The article I got this information from is in this link:

PETA Kills Animals PetaKillsAnimals.com


Please post your opinions after reading, if you'd like.

Rhubarb Butter Crunch

Last weekend our neighbors called to offer us some of their rhubarb, if we wanted it.  I gladly accepted and she told me to stop by anytime and get some.  With different activities, me being sick a couple days and everything else going on we just made it over there last night.  Ryan told me, "Go ahead and get some, but I'm not eatin' it."

I found a recipe online, tweeked it a little and came up with this yummy dish...Rhubarb Butter Crunch.

(Sorry, I tried a couple different things, but the picture still wanted to flip this way.)

The recipe called for the rhubarb to be diced.  I thought I'd use my handy dandy chopper thingy.  Not the answer.  That just mooshed it up and made a mess.  So, I diced it by hand.

 

By the way, Ryan just came in and saw me eating it and going on about how good it was....

This is serving #3 for him!  Guess it's not so bad after all--I swear he's worse than the kids sometimes! ;)

Here's the recipe:

Rhubarb Butter Crunch

4C. Rhubarb, diced

1 C. Sugar (heaping)

3 Tbsp. Flour

1 C. Brown Sugar

3/4 C. Rolled Oats

1 1/2 C. Flour

1 C. Butter

Combine rhubarb, sugar and 3 Tbsp. flour and place in greased 9x13 baking dish.  Combine brown sugar, oats and 1 1/2 C. flour, cut in butter, and sprinkle over rhubarb.  Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes.

Bluebird GPS

Bluebirds are so bright and beautiful!  We have many of them around our farm.  Yesterday, this poor little guy's GPS lead him astray....right into our picture window.  Ouch!! 

This actually happens a lot.  We are always hearing birds crashing into the window.  (Weird!?! I was just thinking the other day how dirty that window is.)  Maci and I were in the house and heard the bluebird hit, so we went to check it out.

It stayed there for quite a while...dazed, but it did eventually fly away.  (This is not always the case.)

Rainbow

"The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work."

-Anonymous

We saw this beautiful rainbow last week, at our house.  It was the first rainbow that Maci (4) has ever seen.  I think rainbows are neat  whether it's the first time you've seen one or twentieth time!

Of course I didn't take just one picture...