New Goat Baby Pics and Updates!

Six days old today and looking fine and frisky!

Lilac (standing), Liam (laying down)

Liam has a lovely white patch

"Why does everyone laugh at my ears?"

Mama Lily's bar, always open!

Both have a white blaze, but Lilac has those ears!

Yes, Lilac's ears are the cutest, floppiest ears a baby goat ever had!
Lily was a little slow at getting started on nursing her babies, so we put her on the milk-stand when the babies were 2 days old and milked her out and fed the babies colostrum from bottles.
Lily was a perfect lady on the milk stand! However, we sat outside and fed the babies...who eagerly took the bottles!...and Mama Lily got a trifle upset watching us cuddle and feed her babies. We gave the babies back to her and she bathed them and snuggled them. About three hours later I went out to check on them again and Lilac was trying to nurse...Lily stepped away. Lilac tried again. Lily stepped away again. I finally got in the pen and held Lily still while I petted her. Lilac dove in for another try at nursing and Lily didn't step away (Lily LOVES being petted!). Lilac nursed vigorously and Liam decided to join in. Both kids suckled vigorously and Lily stood still for the first time. I had to do this a couple of more times, but eventually, both the kids and Lily caught on and now she nurses her babies just fine, she just needed a little help in learning what to do!
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I got a vicious flu virus.Fortunately, we had all the sickroom supplies needed to get me, my son and The Girl through the worst of it.
Remember when I posted about supplies for the Homestead Sickroom?
I forgot one thing...one VERY important thing.
When my fever broke, I was drenched in sweat. I felt so icky!
I needed a shower, a good, hot soapy shower!
However, I was so weak and dizzy from being ill that I couldn't stand up for more than a couple of minutes.
My solution was to bring a plastic lawn chair into the shower.
I am definitely adding one of those sturdy but inexpensive shower benches to my sickroom supplies!
They take up so little space and being able to sit down in my shower was wonderful. Thank goodness I had that plastic lawn chair!
When I got over the worst of the "sick" part, I was left with massive bouts of vertigo.
Ugh!
My solution, as I posted last night, was to slice up fresh ginger, simmer it in honey and then can it up.
I get a spoonful of the honey every once in a while or a slice of the ginger to gnaw on. Sometimes I add it to my hot tea.
Also, the ginger honey is an excellent cough syrup and a great soother of sore throats!
So, back on track now! I only had one mild vertigo attack this morning and it passed quickly.
I don't know why ginger works, but it does. I have had friends and relatives use it for vertigo with good results. My mom (now in her 80s!) had severe vertigo and went to the doctor. He prescribed THREE different medications...all of which had side effects, not a good thing for someone that age. After two weeks on the meds...no improvement. She was essentially bed ridden.
I told her to get ginger ale made with real ginger, ginger snaps and to add ginger to her diet when-ever possible.
She went back to her doctor, told him what I had suggested and he told her to try it since the medications were having no effect.
Three days after started on ginger, she could get out of bed for a few hours. Three weeks on ginger and all her vertigo was gone.
Her doctor was surprised, but pleased.
My mom now takes a couple of powdered ginger capsules a day to keep away vertigo and snacks on ginger snaps. No vertigo attacks in a year!
Might not work for everyone, but ginger can work!

My "Can't Live Without" List

There are some things in life no one can live without...water, air, warmth and food.
But there are some things that you just don't want to live without. For some women, it might be shoes, for some guys it might be a shiny new car....Whatever, we all have those things in our lives that make it more enjoyable.
I was thinking about it today and wondering, if the SHTF, what items I currently have in my life that I would want to find a way to reproduce or somehow keep going.
My list and what I can do about it in a post-collapse world:
Ginger (the spice). I use ginger in a lot of cooking, in my spice tea, even put it in my bath in the winter to warm me up. Ginger grows in tropical areas, so my best bet is to get my hands on some ginger seed or fresh root stock and grow my own. Since we plan on moving to the North East US within a year, I guess I better plan on having a small hothouse for tropical type plants and such to feed my addiction to ginger!

I am going through all the spices I use and trying to figure out how I will grow them in the future. Cinnamon is a tough one, I don't think I could manage that. Pepper is another toughie, although I have heard of some folks in the US that have had limited success in hothouse growing small pepper trees/shrubs. Turmeric and other spices that go in curry is another area, also a tough endeavor.
I plan to keep investigating the ginger (and other spices) issue, there's gotta be a way!

Dr. Pepper. The only soda I haven't been able to banish from my life. The only soda I like. I don't suppose they'll give me the recipe, so I guess I will have to consider Dr Pepper as going the way of the dodo come the collapse! Now, I can make soda pop. Ginger beer, root beer, sarsaparilla, etc. have been home made for quite some time. I even have an old recipe for a lemon/barley beverage that bubbles like soda but is naturally fermented. It has a slight alcohol content (under 1%), but that won't be the main reason for making it. When chilled, it will be cold, tasty and refreshing.I suppose I will only make it for special occasions, though.

Citrus fruits...I guess we are back to the hothouse again. (That sucker is getting bigger all the time in my mind!) A couple of small lemon trees, a dwarf lime tree or three and definitely some dwarf orange and grapefruit trees.
I have been looking at charts to see what fruits and veggies will not grow outside in the shorter growing season in New England. Looks like we will need a hothouse AND a greenhouse!

I will miss computers and t.v. We plan to be off-grid and to generate our own electricity, but there won't be a lot to waste on entertainment! I mainly watch documentaries, I love them so! I watch a lot of History channel, to. Now, I can buy dvds of many of the programs I watch and then store them for later enjoyment.
I need to get instructional dvds in skills where we (as a family and as individuals) are lacking. I can go to youtube and find a lot of the instructional videos for free, too. I do have a program on my computer where I can download videos from youtube onto my computer and then burn them onto a dvd, so that's one way to get some instructional videos! (Well, if I can figure out that program!)

Most things that are on my *can't live without* list, I can make myself, I have found. I can sew and do leatherwork. I can bake and cook. I can do basket weaving and some woodwork.
I guess all that puts me ahead of the game in a post-collapse society, so that's a Good Thing!

Now...just gotta get my hands on the recipe for Dr Pepper.....

Recipes! Salad Dressings on the cheap!

Sharp eyed readers might have noticed that when I was posting about containers for food storage yesterday, one of the repurposed containers I mentioned was salad dressing bottles.
I use them to dispense my own salad dressings that I make at home. I usually make my dressings in a quart canning jar and then funnel them into a scalded out salad dressing bottle for ease of use.
What kind of dressings do I make?
ALL of them, lol!
The kids are fond of
Ranch Dressing:

• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• 1 to 2 teaspoons chopped fresh chives (depends on taste)
• 1/4 teaspoon of dry dill (or a teaspoon chopped fresh dill)

 Put buttermilk and mayo in quart jar. Mix buttermilk and mayo together until smooth, add rest of ingredients and tightly cap jar. Shake like crazy to mix well. Funnel into salad dressing bottle, store in fridge.
You can take 1/2 cup of this dressing and add it to 1 cup of sour cream for a nice dip for raw veggies. Mix it with cream cheese--1/4 cup of dressing to one of those little packages of cream cheese for a cracker spread.

Italian Dressing is my absolute favorite, as I can *tweak* it for different flavors.
Italian Dressing:
1 c. extra virgin olive oil
1/4 c. apple cider vinegar  OR white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon finely minced fresh oregano OR 1/2 teaspoon dry oregano
1/2 teaspoon finely minced red bell pepper
1/2 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. finely minced garlic or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tsp. finely minced onion or 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1 tsp. finely minced parsley
1 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese

Put all of the above in a quart jar, cap tightly and shake like the dickens. Funnel into scalded out salad dressing bottle, store in fridge.

Raspberry Dressing:
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons raspberry puree (just take about a dozen raspberries and whirl 'em in your blender or put them through a food mill. Or just smush them up real good with a fork and put them in the quart jar, strain them out after a couple days.Or you can use a bit of frozen raspberries.
1 teaspoon honey
Do the same thing you did for the other dressings, except strain out the raspberry solids after letting the dressing sit in your fridge for a couple days. This is REALLY good on fruit salads!

Sesame Ginger Dressing
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil OR 1/2 cup sunflower seed oil (my preference for this one)
1/4 cup sesame seed oil (I prefer toasted sesame seed oil)
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
4 tablespoons soy sauce ( PLEASE use LOW sodium soy sauce!)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons sesame seeds
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon corn starch

I mix this in a bowl, adding the cornstarch slowly, whisking it in gradually.THEN I funnel it into a salad dressing bottle. Store in fridge.Shake well before using!

I adore salads...could probably live on them, if I had to. Heck, throw in a couple of decent steak salads and chicken salads and a chef salad once in a while and I would probably prefer to live on salads!