Puppehs!

Baby schnauzers are so adorable! This little guy was born yesterday, along with three more brothers and two sisters, for a total of six puppies.

Their mom is a great momma, taking care of them to the point that I have to literally pull her out of the kennel to get her to leave them to go outside. First thing this morning I had to carry her all the way outside. She did her business and then ran back to me, jumping up on my leg like "all right, I'm done, now let me back in so I can check on my kids!"

As you can see she's letting me handle them. I've been careful not to upset her about it, but I needed to take pictures for her owner, so that she could start marketing the little darlings right away. Plus, she had deposits for four puppies already, and those people needed pictures so that they could start picking out their own cuteness.

All the pups are in good shape, even the one that was born breech. I'm just glad that it all went smoothly for a breech birth. There was a moment when I thought I was going to have to assist but momma dog got it all taken care of, and all I had to do was pull the sac back from the face so the puppeh could breathe.

They're squeaky little things, especially when mom decides it's time for a bath, but they're all doing well and getting bigger already.

Something from Nothing

Ok. Once again I am going to try to put my thoughts into words. Hang in there with me since I am not very good at it. Unlike so many of my Blogger friends!

Yesterday was Mothers Day and naturally I was thinking of my Mother and Grandmothers, none of whom are still with me.

Both my Mom and FarmDad's Grandmother loved to get a bunch together and cook for them. If they fed you , they liked you. If they fed you a lot they loved you. The amount of food and the type of meal was a gauge of how much they thought of you. They both lived through times that would make those of us today just crawl into a corner and cry. These tough, strong women had to feed families on very little in the way of supplies. They were both farm wives and made do with what they could gather or grow on the farm. In hard times they could take nothing and make something out of it.

Both of these ladies taught me to be thankful for what I have and not to worry about what I don't. They were amazing women and I am lucky to have had them as mentors. So here is a recipe that both of these women made for me that takes that nothing and makes something of it.

Beef and Homemade Egg Noodles

Start with a chunk of meat. It can be a tough sub par piece because you boil it to death! The longer you boil it the more the connective tissues will break down and it will become edible! Throw an onion, some salt and pepper or what have you in with the meat to add a little more flavor.




Mom and Grandma Sugar both did this by hand. Since I am a somewhat modern woman I love my Kitchenaid mixer! Beat eggs and a bit of salt till they are foamy. I always figure for 1 egg per person. I always have leftovers but they heat up really nice!





Next add flour. Then add some more flour... then some more.






When you have a stiff dough turn the dough out on a floured board or just on your counter and knead in some more four! Knead the flour in until it is a VERY stiff dough.





Roll the dough out pretty thin. I like mine to be about as thick as the space between the tines of a fork. If you like really chunky noodles leave it slightly thicker.





When you have the dough rolled out to your prefered thickness, sprinkle it with flour and just rub it over the top. This keeps your noodles from sticking together when you cut them. Then you start at one side and roll the dough up.




Slice the roll into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces. Again it depends on how chunky and thick you want your noodles. Unroll the noodles .






Scatter the noodles out and coat them with a bit of flour to keep them from sticking together and let them dry for about a half hour. Longer doesn't hurt it just takes a little longer to cook.






Bring the broth from the boiled meat to a boil and drop the noodles into it a few at a time while stirring to keep them from sticking together. Add the meat back into the pot. Cook for about 30 minutes. All the extra flour on the noodles will make a nice thick gravy. If it isn't thick enough for you add a little corn starch and water and it will thicken right up.





Mom and Grandma always served them over mashed potatoes. Add a veggie and you have a filling nutritious meal from basically nothing! Eggs, flour, salt and a cheap piece of meat.





And for desert we had Strawberry Shortcake with homemade whipped cream!

Mom and Grandma Sugar would have been proud!
Thank you both! I love and miss you!

Book Review: Babylon Babies

So, I finally got around to reading the book that Babylon AD is based on. This is a movie that I bought in the hopes that Vin Diesel would get nekkid, and wound up enjoying in spite of (or maybe because of) the weird ass plot.

Generally, when there's a question of book vs movie I pick the book. Then again, generally, when there's a movie based on a book, the plot is the same. Oh, things get switched around, cut, reorganized and generally polished for the different format but the plot is still recognizable.

Not in this one. I don't know whether it's the translation of the book from French to English, or the fact that Hollywood said "Ok, we're gonna make this a little less... French..." but there are very few things that the book and the movie have in common.

Here's where I say spoiler alert. If you haven't seen the movie, you may not want to read the rest of this post. If you haven't read the book, well, read on, because I can save you some time and effort.

First common point: Toorop. A mercenary of immense skill, your average love-to-hate-em protagonist. Except, in the movie, he's highly skilled and implacable, doing his job with precision, dedication, and a certain flair (come on, he backflips a snowmobile into a rocket. That's cool.) In the book, he's kinda fuckin nuts. To start with, he recites poetry to the corpses of men he kills in single combat. The virtual peeks inside his head provided by the author are, especially in the beginning, confusing, convoluted, and mostly lacking in anything most folks would call sense.

Second common point: Toorop is engaged by Gorsky (Russian Mafia, same name in both, but different dudes, apparently) to deliver a young woman from the wilds of Russia to North America. Again, here's where the split is. In the movie, Toorop must accomplish this with nothing but Gorsky's cash, and a car thoughtfully stuffed with cash, weapons, and maps, provided by Gorsky. In the book, Toorop has a team of mercenaries, and logistical support from both the Russian Mafia and a branch of the Russian Intelligence Service headed by a corrupt colonel. Toorop makes the plans, but he has access to helicopters and safe houses along the way. Far less cool than taking off with a couple chicks in the back seat and a trunk full of cash and ammo.

Third Common Point: The young woman in question is pregnant with twins, who will eventually be discovered to be a whole new species of human, hyper intelligent and capable of amazing things.

That's pretty much all they have in common. The young woman has a different name in the movie (Aurora) than the book (Marie Zorn). There is no Sister Rebeccah in the book. No submarines breaking through the ice, no run from killer patrol drones.

Oh, and in the book, Marie is special because she's schizophrenic, and has been treated with special drugs and such to help her control her schizo tendencies, which has the amazing side effect of allowing her to interface directly with the Cosmic Serpent, a sort of hive mind of all living things, apparently made up entirely of DNA.

To be honest, I really didn't follow any more of the explanation than that. It just drips new-age ancient mysticism, and my brain just sort of went "um... ok?" and moved on.

As odd and sometimes disjointed as the plot of the movie is, it's still followable to the extent that in the end you're saying "aww" as Aurora sheds a single tear, dying in the moment her babies are born. Yes, Aurora is odd, apparently a bit telepathic, and in possession of knowledge that she has no experience of, but she's still a character you can connect to on some level.

Marie Zorn is... well, she's nuts. I must admit that while I know very little about schizophrenia the writing conveyed the bug nuts bit quite nicely. The problem is, most of the time I couldn't tell if the writer was trying to write from a schizo perspective or not. The entire book is a writhing mass of strange metaphors, long winded internal monologues, and just plain weird ass imagery.

I can let the flow problems slide. It's always difficult to preserve the integrity of a text when it's translated, and I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt that it's far more readable in French, since I can't check.

All in all, I say skip the book and watch the movie. If for no other reason than Vin Diesel and Melanie Thierry provide excellent eye candy no matter what your personal flavor of choice may be.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I prefer a movie to a book.... I'm not entirely sure what to do with myself now....

Puppehs!

So, my good friend and the owner of Fuzzy Pup's mom is going on vacation next month, with her inlaws and four (omg) kids. It just so happens that Fuzzy Pup has a litter of brothers and sisters just waiting to come into the world... And his mommy doesn't do well with being moved after she has the pups, so I'm puppeh sitting.

The poor girl is a bitteh schnauzer... and she usually has five or six pups. No problems with the litter size she's an excellent mom, but she looks like she swallowed a football.

Right now she's flaked out on the recliner looking miserable. Her temp is dropping and her breathing is getting a little shallower, along with her belleh sagging, so any time in the next 24 hours, maybe a little more, we could have pups. Then again, with the stress of switching locations, she may delay as long as she can, hoping she'll get a more secure place. She seems fairly chillaxed today (she arrived yesterday) but there's a lot of stress involved with moving this close to whelping, so it's hard to say how things are going to go until they start to actually go.

Meanwhile, the poor girl looks miserable, and I can feel four pups in there, and my friend says she always has a couple that you can't feel. The little ones aren't as active as they were yesterday, but then, yesterday they were squirming so much you could see little noses and feet yesterday through her sides, like multiple little chest-bursters.

I'll keep ya'll updated.

Sold

Red is now officially someone else's problem. I can't argue with the way he behaved, he was actually an angel. He also worked really well for me in the pens before we went through the ring... I got several compliments. A lot of those came from people who had asked me about him, with the question that I dreaded more than any other... "Is he real gentle?"

If I were just a bit less honest I could have danced around that question better, and gotten more money, but I won't be responsible for someone buying that horse for their kids and the kid getting hurt because he's a jackass. So, I answered it the best I could... He's real gentle on the ground, loves attention, you can do anything with or to him. In the saddle, he learned he could bully someone before I bought him, and he's gonna try it. Don't let him, and you're fine. Which was completely at odds with his relaxed, lazy demeanor, at that point.

In the ring... he wasn't as snappy as I would have liked but he wasn't being utterly neurotic either, so I was happy. The guys in the auctioneer's booth were trying real hard to get him sold for me, and I really appreciated it. I'm fully aware he's an ugly little cuss, but they were saying things like "You folks are looking out the window on this one.. he's got more training than that... well, look at him!"

Anyway, I didn't get anywhere near the top price of the day but I beat the low price by a lot too, and I was one of the last few to sell. That, combined with all the compliments I was getting on him (some in optimism before I went in the ring, some afterwords in commiseration because they really did believe he should have brought more money than he did) made it a good day.

I happen to know that the guy who bought him does a lot of pony cart stuff, renting out carts and ponies and traveling around doing parades. Since I've said before that if I had a cart I'd hitch Red to it, I can't think of a better place for him, and he'll be kept busy enough that he'll stay settled down.

Anyway, he's not my problem anymore... which makes me smile. I'll smile bigger Monday when I cash the check, though.

Moving Cows: More Fun With A Rodeo

I'm still waiting on my new laptop power cord... it should be here tomorrow. Gawd I hope so, I miss my laptop.

But, last Sunday, we moved cows. This time we called in some backup, in the form of my old friend S, his girlfriend, my newer friend K, and her boyfriend.

S, his girlfriend, and K, all had horses. K's boyfriend, J, didn't. I don't know much about the guy but after a (way too late) night Saturday hanging out and Sunday moving cows, I like him.

See, he rode Red. I'd like to say that I wasn't intending to be evil when I said he could ride Red. Yes, I find the imagery of other people on the little pony funny, but he's been behaving really well, and since Monkey was way too wound Sunday morning and I was riding Rebel, I didn't have any other horse that has been ridden recently.

Also, I had no clue that Red was going to go rodeo the instant J's ass hit the saddle. I gotta come up shouting for the kid, he stuck, and he didn't let him break completely in two again.

But I take no responsibility for him coming off when his girth wasn't tight enough and the saddle slipped when Red tried to jump out from underneath him. That one was all J.

Anyway the battle continued all day, and I think J actually enjoyed it. I feel just a bit bad, because I was pre-occupied, and didn't think to tell him to lunge him in a few circles before he got on. I've gotten on Red without that, but I'd also been working him for a few days when I did that, and the weather was nasty last week so he'd had three days off.

Some commentary about The Jackhammer, as S calls Red:

"He's not that bad."

"Ok, you told me he was round withered and the saddle would slip, but I didn't expect that." (Said when I rode up to him to check on him when I realized that Red had come cantering proudly by me, without J.)

"Oh god, that was my nuts..." (After a minor hissy in which Red managed to get J thrown forward into the saddle horn... poor guy)

"I almost wish he'd buck again... that's the smoothest gait he's got."

And somehow, after all that, he managed to remain polite. When he was telling me how "not bad" Red was, I smarted off with "So, you wanna buy him?"

He took a moment, looking at Red, with an expression that could have been taken for mental calculation on whether or not he wanted the horse but I took as an effort to not say something very rude, and answered me "He's too small."

I gotta admit, I busted up at that point.

We got the cows into their new pasture, no thanks to the llama, who decided to come see what was going on when they were coming in the gate... and when the cows ran decided it was fun to chase them... right back out the gate. I could cheerfully have shot her right then. Anyway it was mission accomplished, and plenty of laughs.

Day after tomorrow we go to the sale, and Red will find a new home. Hopefully his good ground manners and the bit of play I'm able to do with him on a lead (which Farmmom says is actually kind of impressive) will outshine any jackassery he pulls while I'm in the saddle. I'll spend most of the day outside working him on a lead and riding him, so that he hopefully won't be too bad in the ring.

Tomorrow, I'll work the hell out of him. We'll work on the ground until he's sweaty, then get on and work him some more. This will keep him from having too much excess energy, and make my job (making him look good... no small task when you're talking about Red, who has conformation, size, and under saddle attitude going against him) that much easier.

Hopefully it'll be enough....

Survival Seeds

So, over the winter I was contacted by a very nice lady from Hometown Seeds, asking if I'd link to their Survival Seeds packages. She offered to send me one of the packages in thanks, and I told her that I didn't endorse anything on the blog that I hadn't tried, but if she was willing to have it be a review rather than just a plug, I'd be happy to do it.

Hey, Farmmom gets a free garden this way.

Well, what with life being busy and waiting for actual spring, we hadn't gotten anything done with them, until now.

The other day, we started the cabbage, peppers, and tomatoes in a little greenhouse thing that we bought at El Marto Del Wal, so this will be the first post of many concerning these non-hybrid seeds.

In general, I have to say I like the idea of a garden that's renewable from itself. You may not get some of the fancier plants, but you also don't have to buy new plants and seeds every year.

For a SHTF planning accessory, I think it's a good idea, if you know enough about what you're doing to manage starting an entire garden from seeds. It's not that hard, but you do have to know that things like peppers and tomatoes are best started indoors in planters or the greenhouse trays you can buy. The kit comes with instructions, though, so most of the guesswork is taken out of it. For instance, I didn't know that we needed to start the cabbage indoors until Farmmom read the instructions.

Plus, the kit comes with a LOT of seeds. For what exactly it contains you can check out the website, now linked on the sidebar under "Other Stuff"... I think it would provide for a small family fairly easily, were you to plant all of the seeds.

Anyway, I'll get regular updates about germination rates and eventually what the veggies taste like (which will probably be a great excuse for mom to do another recipe post) and we'll save seeds from this year's plants to plant next year.

I'll try to get Farmmom, who is after all the gardener in the family and is actually doing the growing, to give some of her observations direct instead of them filtering through me, too.

And, just a note, also under "Other Stuff" you'll see a link to "Custom Cheap Vinyl Banners"... This goes to buildasign.com, who have also offered me free shit. I like free stuff, and upon looking around their website I decided that they seemed reputable, and for some blog swag, I'd do it. Once I get my chosen free shit designed and ordered and get it in, I'll do a review of that as well, and probably hold a couple of contests in order to give away some of the aforementioned free shit. I'm not endorsing their products just yet, mind, that'll wait until they get here and I'll be honest about what I think of them.

If anyone else wants to offer me free stuff- keep in mind that I love free stuff, as anyone does, and I will be completely honest about any free stuff you send me. If it's good, I'll say it's good, if it's crap, I'll say it's crap. I'm bribeable to the extent that you'll get a link such as are already there, but not bribeable enough to give a good review of crap to my readers just cause you gave me something shiny.

That is all.