Tips and Advice on all things Homestead related

This story happened during a time in my life when I was working as a missionary with Cowboys With a Mission, a branch of Youth with a Mission, YWAM. The mission was based in Wyoming with another base in southern Brazil. I was to lead a team of missionary trainees on their outreach period of two months. I was so very reluctant and terrified to be the team leader actually but everyone felt like I was supposed to be the team leader, which I guess was good for me and caused me to grow and learn as well.  Part of our outreach was in southern Brazil where the mission was based and then we were to go on to Argentina for the rest of the outreach period. I am fluent in Portuguese and was used to translating back and forth but Spanish was a whole other language. I can understand it well enough to get pretty much the whole conversation but not to be able to translate it word for word, like I can in Portuguese. My team got pretty frustrated with me on that aspect since they had been a bit spoi...

 This story happens one year around the beginning of dry season. One hot day in the Amazon, we were enjoying a relaxing get together with some friends at our farm. Meat was on the grill and the hammocks were strung. We had been doing some work on the farm and our reward was a little bbq, good Brazilian style. In the middle of the day, the heat on a full belly of food is like a tranquilizer, making sleep necessary in a softly swinging hammock with a muggy breeze blowing hot air in your face.  As we were all laying in hammocks or nibbling still on the meat chunks, a car pulled up to the farm gate and a man approached the gate carrying two boxes of chicks. We gestured for him to come in the gate and he did, carrying his boxes. He began his sales pitch by saying he had a box of laying hen chicks and a box of meat broilers. With very convincing words he soon talked us into the great deal he had for us and we bought the chicks. It took a little convincing on my part too to talk my d...

I came up with this yummy salad recipe yesterday while making lunch for the family and trying to avoid our standard go to salads. It was fresh and delicious. Cucumber Corn Salad Ingredients: 3-5 medium sized cucumbers (I used 3) sliced thinly Small sweet onion, chopped chunky About 4 sprigs of cilanto 1 Avocado 3-5 cobs of corn (or 1-2 cups ) 1 Lime Salt and Pepper to taste Garlic powder if desired How to put it together: Slice the cucumbers thin and add to salad bowl. Chop the onion thin or chunky ( I did chunky). Remove the skin and seed from the avocado and slice up into the salad bowl. Add chopped cilanto and the juice of the lime. If you're using cobs of corn, cut the corn off the cob, or if you're using a can of corn, drain the water. Using around 2-3 tablespoons of Olive Oil (or other oil) Place the corn in a skillet with the oil and saute it until it looks golden brown and cooked. Stir while sauteing. Add the corn to the cucumber/cilantro/avocado. Mi...

This is a nasty subject but since this is a homesteading tips blog, and I can't find too much on the internet about gangrene mastitis in goats I figured it would be a great idea to share my experiences in hopes that it will help someone with their goat care and husbandry and possibly save a goat's life. My case started out two years before now. One of my favorite does, a heavy milker with a beautiful udder, was acting off one morning. I took her temperature and it was high. I milked her as usual and everything seemed ok. I didn't notice anything off about the milk. I decided the temperature was high enough to warrant a trip to the vet. The vet examined her and decided that she just had a upper respiratory infection. He gave her antibiotics, banamine and b-12 dose. When we got home I kept an eye on her and she just didn't seem to perk up any. By evening I knew something was terribly wrong. I noticed that her udder seemed cool and blueish. Never having seen anything lik...

If you read the previous story about Crazy Bull Part 1, then you might have a little idea of how this one goes...  We raised rodeo bulls at our farm in northern Brazil. I taught horseback riding lessons and my husband rode bulls, did bull fighting and stock contracted and we even put on a couple of rodeos (but that's another story). Some bulls worked out and bucked good but others were crazy and only wanted to kill the one crazy enough to try to ride them. With one string of bucking bulls we had, you really could only go out in the pasture on horseback if you wanted to come back alive. It was a daunting way to earn a living. One particular bull was a very big and mean to the bone Charlois/Brahman cross (kinda like the other one from story Part 1) They maybe even came from the same farm, who knows... They both didn't buck very well and tried to mush you into the ground if you fell off them wrong, or even if you fell off them right too. We decided that this one should also go t...

This adventure happened during the time when I was in my early twenties and living in southern Brazil in a beautiful city called Maringa. I was working as a missionary with the organization called Youth With a Mission (YWAM) I worked with that organization for around 5 years or so in various parts of the world and doing an interesting variety of tasks.  At this point I was doing rodeo ministry, where we would follow several rodeo circuits in southern Brazil and share the gospel, hold Bible studies for them, help in any way behind the chutes, pray with the cowboys before their rides, go with them in the ambulance if they got hurt and many other things. Since I also knew two languages I was called upon to translate for any English speaking cowboys as well. One fine afternoon while resting at the mission base, one of my friends and coworkers, Lene,  came running up to me very excitedly and told me that she just found out that two famous Brazilian country singers (ZeZe de Camarg...