Saponification Sunday...One Night in the Deep Dark Woods...

With winter coming I am in the mood for cool crisp mornings, cool crisp woodsy mornings. Cool, crisp, woodsy, sudsy mornings. And they look something like this

Made with the base oils of Coconut, Avocado, Castor, Olive and Shea butter with Tussah Silk to increase the bubble "slide", I have colored it with Spirulina, Charcoal and Titanium Dioxide Powders.

 

And as with Spirulina it starts out a nice bright green but quickly fades. Still I like the muted greys, mixed with the white and charcoal and I really like the way my swirls came through. Made with a chopstick and allowed to "ash" it looks almost pretty.

 

But then again, I am simple in my soaping ways.

 

 

The scent however...a bit too strong. At least for me it is.

Fir needle, Patchouli, Amyris, Grapefruit, and Cedarwood  EO's

it has a deep woods, almost dare I say it? Uni-bomber smell. Well it would if the Uni-bomber ever delved into personal hygiene.

Mrs. Dalloway's Wee Tribe

So here they are, the newest litter of our registered Red Wattle Mrs. Dalloway, the topic of our latest South Pork Ranch Contest...just 3 days old.

 

 

We do things a bit differently here, in that we leave the mom alone at least 24 hours after the babies are born, letting her bond, and nurse and bond some more. Having been given plenty of water and food the day before she is good until that 24 hr period subsides.

 

 

 

 

If any dead ones, and there was one, we leave them and often the mama takes care of it themselves. Usually as a late night snack. Some old timers felt that the deceased must be removed quickly or the mother will get the taste of such and consume all the others.

 

 

 

 

Now that's just silly isn't it?  I myself am quite capable of eating just one cookie without eating the whole bag. Unless of course it's those double stuffed OREOS. Even a professional Twiggy- like model couldn't resist them.

 

I believe it has more to do with pigs being quite tidy and why leave a dead piglet around that not only takes up space but acts as a bit of a downer for the others, right?

 

We do check in on them to make sure none have any injuries that need care or serious birth defects that might need culling, but the rest of this group, all eight are doing very well.

 

 

 

While taking these photos today I  again had to marvel at my husbands skills in building such a warm, solid studio apartment for the Mrs and her kidlets. All of it made from recycled materials. And just look at all the space in there! Now compare it, below,  to what hogs have to cope with in confinement buildings, where over 95% of all the pork in the US comes from.

 

 

 

 

Keep in mind when looking on line for a picture of hogs in a CAFO I chose a very clean example and one where the pigs were not covered with sores. But even with the best of the worst you can see how little room they have and how contact with the mother's body is so limited. I hate those grates they lie on, even though the buildings are temperature controlled they are so very unnatural and HARD!

 

 

 

 

I love how Keith built this house. Some room at the bottom for air flow, tons of sunlight coming through the east door, the little doorway gate preventing the babes from wondering out at such a young age and of course a mama pig whose normal body temp is 103F.

 

 

             

 

And speaking of amazing bodies...look at how much baby fat Mrs. D. has already lost (top) compared to what she looked like (below) 3 days before the babes were born! That is so unfair. Just three days to get back in shape? It took me three months...OK, three years...OK OK...THIRTY YEARS!!! 

 

Yeah, well if I'd been blessed with 8 babies to nurse instead of just one I'd be slim as a pig too.

Yes, I am aware that makes no sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off with their heads...and their feathers...and legs...

Years ago when our boys were in 4-H we raised and then butchered broilers. Well, the guys did the dirty work while I packed the birdies in bags.

I hated the smell of fresh chicken in a tank of hot water and avoided the whole slaughter area as much as I could. (But I have no problem slicing out the little gonads of piglets...go figure)  So when the boys grew up and took with them their free labor we gave up on the broilers and focused on the beef, dairy and pork.

I know, pure laziness.

But we found ourselves yearning for good foul again. And after eating a few of the chickens grown out doors by two other farmers we know, we decided to enter the broiler arena again. We bought these Freedom Rangers s few months ago and experimented with their feed.

In addition to the organic grain we fed and the grass, bugs, worms and dirt they harvested on their own as we moved their cage to fresh ground daily, we also fed them raw milk. Lots of raw milk instead of water.

That is correct. They never got water, only raw milk and man or man stay away from the spam, that chicken meat was the moistest I have even eaten. Served with oven browned potatoes and green beans It was the perfect meal for this cool rainy fall night.

The whole butchering process , done by 3 and observed by one intern , took only 10 minutes per bird. That is ten minutes from the time we took the bird away from its friends, until it was jammed into a Glad Freezer Bag. The process went like this.

Yes, some are graphic, leave the room and come back if you need to.


First, convince the birds you are taking them for a ride in the country. Grab the closet one.

 Next, hand the lucky duck, I mean chicken to Keith

Who will cut the head off for a quick death. Note the high tech blood collection chamber made of Terra Cotta Drainage pipe and old white bucket. Then take the bird into the scalding tank for a quick hot dip to loosen the feathers.

About 45 secs in a 150 degree tank of water. After the feathers are easy to pull off, said bird is taken to the feather beater machine.

 

 

See those black rubber fingers? When they are revolving very quickly they do a most excellent job of removing the majority of loosened feathers. But not ALL of the feathers. Like these tiny little pin feathers.

 

 

 

 

They have to be removed by hand. When those pesky little feathers are gone the bird is passed over to the guy with the knife who gently guts them, working hard to NOT puncture the intestines or other organs. He does this by reaching deep into the birds abdominal cavity, loosening up the attaching ligaments and then pulling them up and out. If done well you'll hear a sucking sound followed by a large BURP of sorts.

 

It was at this point our new intern, a lovely gal who wants so badly to learn homesteading, turned white and began to lose her cookies (or whatever else it was she had had for breakfast) She later explained it was the first time she had ever seen the inside of ANYTHING! Poor thing. I take for granted that others have not seen the things I have seen in my lifetime. Oh well...

 

She hung in there and with each butchered bird she was able to get closer and closer to the carcass without upchucking. She even took one home with her but I doubt she cooked it up that night!

 

 

So there you have it. 3 birds in my hand is worth 10 in the bush, or something like that

23 birds done means one chicken each week for the rest of the winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Have A Winner ! Congratulations Dwayne!

After several days of watching Mrs. Dalloway...do nothing...we are thrilled to report the live birth of 8 tiny wee Red Wattle Piglets. Born at 12:15 am on Oct 30 (today)

The contest entries were amazing. Between my blog and two Facebook pages I had 32 entries. Many of you were familiar blog followers but several were new to me. Stalkers I presume who needed the promise of free soap and chops to come out of the shadows.

Choosing the winner was not easy since I had to wade through entries like this

Date: Probably on the cusp (to make life complicated).
Time; As inconvenient as possible (they always are).
Number: Far too few (We're talking $'s per piglet here).

 

And This

 

3 on the 28th (between 23.40 - 23.59 p.m.)
and
5 on the 29th (before 3.30 a.m.)
But if you're asleep as she popping them out:

8 on the 29th (before 3.30 a.m.)

You people...

Finally though and with much checking and double checking...The winner is Mr. Dwayne Murphy who guessed Oct 30, 6:56 am with 12 babies. So Dwayne if you live near us you can come to our farm store to pick out $25 worth of goodies or I can mail you a care package of non-perishables. Please email me at opies99@gmail.com . CONGRATULATIONS!

I will have baby pictures soon, maybe even a scrapbook.  In the meantime, carry on.

Saponification Sunday...Rebatch Match

Just FYI...I'll be posting about Mrs. Dalloway soon. In the meantime, lets talk soap.


Mostly I make Cold Process soap. Lye water plus oils, mix, mold, let sit, unmold, cut and cure.
Occasionally I make Hot Process Soap. Lye water plus oils, mix, cooked in the crock pot, slammed into a mold, Let sit, unmold, cut and use right away if you choose.

And on days I am feeling the need to recycle soap bits, or fix a batch that is safe recipe wise but just plain ugly, I will rebatch.

I personally love the way my rebatched soap turns out but one reader told me last year, it looked like cat puke. So I crawled in the corner to lick my wounds and decided I would NEVER post about rebatched soap again.

But I have a terrible memory.

So here I am, back again to talk about rebatched soap. And if you think it resembles cat puke than I would recommend you spend less time following your cat around after its' eaten Chinese and more time making the soap the way you chose to do it.

These instructions are for 7 bars of soap weighing approximately 5.5  each

Step 1.
     Gather up the soap you want to rebatch. Approximately 8 bars worth . Each bar weighing about 5 oz each. Or to make more sense, you'll need 40 oz of dry soap. Fresh soap (less than two weeks old) works best. This time I choose some red and white bars that smelled wonderful but looked like someone had spilled a thick layer of concealed blood over the top of white bricks. I also added in a pink bar of soap just for fun. Cut them into chunks of various sizes. Perfection not needed.

Rebatched soap requires a rebatched photo. This is from a batch I did last year

 

Step 2
     Throw all the pieces into an OLD crock pot. Put the crock pot on high if you are going to be in the house. Add 1/2 cup water. Put it on low if you are someone who forgets about the soap and goes to a birthday party in ANOTHER STATE.

Step 3.
     If on high heat, stir every 30 minutes or so. You do not need to mix well . Just get under the soap pieces and turn over two-three times. It may take 3 hours to get the soap well melted (on high) 6 hours on low.


Step 4
     Prepare your mold. I use an old diaper wipe container and line it with freezer paper. The shiny side goes up against the soap. When the soap is very soft and gelatinous, with some hunks not completely melted, I will then stir in the essential oil of my choice. 1-2 oz for this size batch. I chose Geranium Rose. No need to worry about the batch seizing as this EO is known for since the soap is already...soap. Stir in the EO well

The results after approximately an hour of cooking in the crock pot on high.

Step 5.
     Now glop the soap into your mold. After filled slam it hard on the counter to get rid of all air bubbles. You do have your safety glasses on, right? Hot soap in your eyes is dangerous! Set it aside to cool

A good cheese and potato casserole? Not quite

Your rebatched soap should be hard enough by morning to unmold and cut. It is at this point safe to use but may be a bit soft. Will of course be even better to use in one week. The pics above were from last year and the soaps I used were browns and tans with a few black pieces.

This time, my colors were red , made from madder root powder and white made from the addition of titanium dioxide  and the final result was this:

Sorry, took these pics in the kitchen in late evening.
Bad lighting  photo excuse #99

The soap is not stunning but it is in my cat-puke tolerant opinion, attractive enough. Adding the EO at the very end of the cook keeps its scent from burning off. But again make sure you mix it in well. The soap will be much too thick to use any kind of a hand mixer so you will need to use a good solid spoon. I like wood best.

Some other alternative methods...instead of or along with adding water to the chopped up old soap pieces prior to melting, you can also add good quality oil. I have in the past used Castor oil, organic sunflower oil, avocado oil to name a few. I will only use 2 oz of additional oil. Because the lye is already tied up in the old soap bars this oil does not have any lye to bind with thus your soap may not lather as well, may feel a little greasier but frankly I have not experienced either of those problems when I rebatched using additional oil instead of water

So, have fun!

Mrs Dalloway CONTEST!!. CONTEST!! CONTEST!!

If you are a fan of Virginia Woolf, as I am, or you've seen the movie (or read the book)  The Hours , you will recognize the name "Mrs. Dalloway" But if not it is no matter because we're not discussing literature tonight, we're discussing pig belly futures.

Mrs. Dalloway is one of our registered Red Wattle breeding Sows. She is 2 years old, sweet and kind with a lovely copper color. She is also pregnant with her third litter. The baby daddy is Wally.  Her actual due date is tomorrow Oct 26, based on the romantic activity witnessed by the farmer, three months, three weeks and three days ago.

 

That "romantic activity" is always quite disturbing to us. It's not so much the wine (Boones Farm) and Music (Air Supply, which I HATE)  or even the fact that they insist on  performing publically, as those motivators are just irritating, but the burning candles running along all three sides of the wood framed Hogcienda are just plain dangerous!  Apparently Wally is too cheap to invest in a few of those battery operated candles.

 

So, as you can see Mrs. Dalloway is well rounded and ready for motherhood, again. Man is she going to be ticked off when she sees the angle of this picture. Oh well...it's not my fault she's been fairly lazy these last few weeks.

 

See what I mean?

 

So lets have some fun at chubby Mrs. Dalloway's expense shall we? The contest goes as follows:

 

1. Guess the date of the birth

2. Guess the time of the birth

3. Guess the number of LIVE piglets born.

 

Keep in mind, her first litter produced 9 babies and her second one had 11.

 

You may enter only once. Leave your guesses in the comment section. OR on my Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/South-Pork-Ranch-LLC/355405672736?bookmark_t=page

 

Any guesses that come in after the birth won't be considered. Sorry. How do I know you aren't just laying out there next to her maternity house counting babies as they pop out?

 

The winner is the one who is closest in all three areas and will be announced on this blog. The prize will be $25 of merchandise from our farm store (if you live close enough to drive over to Chatsworth, Illinois) or if not I'll email you and offer you a fine selection of items from our store, $25 worth, and I will mail them to you. Think handcrafted soaps, herbal teas, healing salves, GMO-free popcorn, raw honey, organic jams and jellies etc...

 

Yes, if you live out of the US of A you may play. Because I'm all generous like that you know.

Now hurry up and get your guesses in. The clock is ticking!

Meow

Everyone needs a Black Cat at this time of year, one that reads...even spookier.