(The following is from a deep conversation between myself and another homesteadblogger concerning spiritual matters.)
——————————
Original message from janaeel:
Hi,
I am a 46 yr old construction business owner from washington. I was introduced to you blog from a a commentor on HSB. I went back and read nearly every post you wrote to date. I was very inspired and at the same time saddened by the way my life has turned out. I have the knowhow to do what you do on your farm and enjoy that part but I seem to be missing something spiritually. I have never been very religious but when I encounter someone as your self my life seems to have an obvious hole. I am afraid that if I were to pursue the need the the people in my life would distance themselves from me. We live a lifestyle not bad but lacking in direction in the faith department. You and your children seem so grounded. I know by your blog that you are a busy man with work farm and your preaching but I was hoping you might have a few words of advice.
Thank you for your time,
Janaeel
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
——————————
Original message from Purewater:
Dear Janaeel,
It sounds like God has been trying to direct you in the direction He knows is best! It does take some major leaps of faith, but He will always help when a man desires to lead his family in the way they should go, toward God.
It is hard to offer specific advice without knowing your situation better, but I have picked up enough from your couple of posts to say a little.
Your number one priority has to be your own spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ. It is important to daily meet with Him during a quiet time, when you can read His word and ask Him questions. Even just 10 minutes a day will be a great help. For most, early in the morning is the best time, before everyone else in the house has gotten to moving around. It sounds like He has already been showing you things in your own life that can be given up or improved upon for His glory. The more time you can spend reading the Bible the better.
Second priority has to be getting your wife on board 100%. My family would be a wreck if my wife and I did not have the same focus. As you move closer to the Lord and begin to change, it is likely that your wife will notice. You should share with her what the Lord is showing you. Hopefully she won't resent your spiritual leadership; most wives long for such leadership, but they don't know how to put it into words.
Do you all have a Bible believing church where you can worship together? This can be important, but be careful that you don't fall into the trap of depending completely on them for your families spiritual nurishment. You are actually the one responsible and you will be better suited to direct your family than any pastor or Sunday school teacher. You wrote that your youngest is 10. How old are your others? It may be hard changing the relationships you have with them, but in time, they will see the change in you and will likely be open to discover what it is all about. Deep down, teens desire love, guidance and boundaries.
These are some of my initial thoughts after praying about it for the past hour or so. I wish you well, and will be praying for you. What is your first name? It would be easier praying specifically instead of for "Janeel". Unless that is your name, in which case I hope I did not just offend you.
Anyway,
God Bless,
Eric
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
——————————
Original message from janaeel:
Hi, Eric
My name is Bill. I have children 27,22, 12, 10. 10 & 22 are boys the others girls, 3 grandsons – 9,3, 6 months. I am hoping that if I make this change the people I will meet will be more genuine than the ones I am currently surrounded by. Most leave me feeling so empty because the just need me for what I can do for them but dont involve me on a personal level. Everyone seems so self obsorbed but it may be just me and the hole in my life i am feeling. It may be clouding my views. Thank you for your prayers and the time you took to respond. I know you are a busy man.
Best Wishes to your family,
Bill
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Bill,
You've mentioned a couple of times about me being a busy man. This is true, but I actually enjoy taking my time and just experiencing the life God has given us. There are always things going on, which can make things seem busy, but really it is just life. Instead of feeling busy, I am usually just in awe of what God is doing every day. It helps when I can take myself out of the picture and see things from His perspective. I am just a small part in His wonderful plan.
I am convinced that God desires peace and simplicity for His children. We will still have trials and tribulations, even as His children, but He wants us to have His peace and perspective through all the bad times.
I really don't know what you are looking for, but I'm sure that God does, and if He can use a few of my words on a blog site or a message, then I will give Him praise! God has kept you on my mind all day at work, and since you messaged back, I'm taking that as a signal to share more "advice" with you. I pray that you will not be offended but that you will listen with an open mind and heart.
You already know that I am a preacher, so maybe you won't be suprised with a long-winded response. I'm not going to shoot out a lot of Bible at you, even though the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword. I sense that you probably just need someone to be "real" with you and tell you the truth, from a Biblical perspective.
You are correct that most folks in our world are overly self-absorbed. God wants us to be Savior-absorbed instead. Some might accuse me of being too absorbed with my family, but my family is what God expects my time and attention to focus on. I am serving God by leading and serving my family, and focusing on their well being is ultimitely accomplishing the cause of Christ.
I may not be the greatest preacher and I may not be the most successful pastor in the eyes of many, but if my family is going in His direction, living for Him, and are able to serve Him in whatever capacity He desires, than I believe He will be pleased with my service.
However, you cannot lead a family to a place where you have never been yourself. You cannot accomplish your purpose in life if you don't really know what your life is meant to be about. You can't know what life is really about if you don't know what Jesus Christ is all about. And you can't truly know that until you know Him!
You said earlier that you have never been a very religious man. This can actually be a good thing for you! "Religious" ideas often get in the way of God's plan. For too many people, their "religion" actually causes them to miss the whole idea of what God really wants.
I am convinced that God does not want a "religion" with us, but instead wants a "relationship" with us. Religion can be misinterpretted by fallen man, when God really wants us to "know" Him and trust Him in a personal way. That is the whole reason that He came in flesh and blood as a human. Jesus Christ came as the only perfect sacrifice for our sin. When He died on the cross and rose again the third day, He made the way for us to be forgiven and have eternal life, but He also made a way for us to know God in an intimate and personal way while we live out our lives here and now!
I was especially fortunate that I discovered this when I was just 19 years old, and have had Him to help me throughout my entire adult life. I've made my share of mistakes going along, but He has always been here to guide me through them, and He is still helping me to decide the next steps to take for my family!
I know that age does not matter to God, and someone who is 46 can find the same peace and blessedness that I did at 19! He can lead you and guide you from this point onward, if you will let Him. I know some of your challenges will be different from mine since you already have a couple of grown children, but even though they may have their own families, you can still have a great impact on them. And your grandchildren need a godly grandfather in their lives! God will help you to know how to relate to your 10 year old son and 12 year old daughter, as well, as you grow closer to Him and begin to understand His will for you!
You do not have to go to a church to get on this narrow road. That may sound strange for a preacher to say, but it is true. I was "saved" out under a giant tree when I actually left the service. Instead of coming up the aisle to the alter, I bolted out the door. I found myself sitting under this tree, crying out to God.
My cry was similar to yours, I think, because I saw His joy reflected in the tears of other people in that service and yet all I felt was an emptiness. My tears were ones of self-pity and despair. The main question I remember saying out loud under that tree was, "What's wrong, God? Why am I so miserable? I'm doing the best I can, but something is missing. What is it, what's wrong, God? I want to be happy like other people. What's wrong with me?" I'd like to say that I used all the proper words about confessing my sin and asking for forgiveness and inviting Him into my heart, but pretty much I was just sobbing that same question repeatedly, "What's wrong, God?"
I don't think that I was even expecting an answer; I was just having one major pity-party. Thankfully, I was not the only one there under that tree in the midst of my pity-party. The one and true Lord, creator of all things, was also there! I had a head knowledge of God, but until that time, I didn't really even believe for sure that He was real! In the quietness of the moment, inbetween my sobs, I heard His still, small voice. His message to me during that moment was, "Eric, you don't really know me at all. I want to be part of your life. I want to be your life."
I can't really say exactly how the unspoken conversation went from that point, but I knew that He was telling me He would help me, and I knew that from that moment on, my life was going to be different. Without really forming any words, I realized that I had caused all of my pain myself through my sin and that it actually hurt God worse than it even hurt me, because He loved me so much. I wish I could say that I actually vocalized a prayer telling Him how sorry I was for going against Him all my life, but I did not. I felt it, however, and as I later came to know Him better, I was able to understand what all was going on in my heart that night. I invited Him to come into my heart and life without really forming the words.
We preachers often speak of the "sinners prayer" and sometimes "religion" gets in the way. Yes, a person must admit they are a sinner, repent of those sins, ask for forgiveness, and ask Christ to save them by coming into their heart. Many people have repeated three lines of a "sinner's prayer" and then been declared "Saved". I'm sure some have actually been saved during such times. I can tell you what happened to me was a very real experience, even though I did not say the "magic words" perfectly. God saved me and I was truly "born again"!
Maybe God wanted me to share all that just so you can better understand what He is trying to do in your life. God is real, salvation is real, and Jesus is waiting for "whosoever will call".
A verse in Revelation has always spoken to me, and it was the final verse that He used to get my oldest son to understand. Jesus is speaking, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." He wants to have a personal relationship with you, just like a friend you have over for supper! He's knocking at the door to your heart, so to speak, and all you have to do is open it up and let Him come in!
After you experience this for yourself, you will understand that your life is meant to be all about serving God in holiness. We serve God by serving other people, first and foremost our families. It is an incredibly liberating truth to understand that God has a purpose for your life and that it is all in His hands. Whatever comes your way, God can use for His glory! It takes all the pressure off, to give your life over to Him. The peace that passes all understanding and His love will fill all the holes and empty places in your life!
He will help you to guide your business for His glory as well. Your life, your family, your business, your dreams; God is actually interested in every part of your life, and He wants in!
If you watch movies, you should find one called "Flywheel". I've seen the DVD for rent at Food City before. It was the first movie from the same guys who did "Facing the Giants" and "Fire Proof" (both of which are also great movies to check out). "Flywheel" is not as famous as those other two, but it has a great message. I'm thinking about it because it is about a guy who owns a business (car lot) and how God intervenes in his life, family, and business. While you are at it, you ought to rent those other two, as well, when you get a chance. I know you want to have less TV, (which is a very important and worthy goal) but a well timed family movie night, with a godly movie, can be an awesome time. It may be a way God will begin to work in your wife and children as well.
Let me know if you have any questions. I'm pretty far away geographically, but technology wise, I'm just next door. I hope I have not overwhelmed you with all this. I believe it has been orchastrated by God, though, so I will try not to apologize for writing so much!
Looking forward to hearing how God moves in your life!
In His Love,
Eric
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Big Sandy River 1901
We are rather fond of the river that flows in front of Pure Water Hollow and touches our property, and I had found another government report the mentions our part of the river. It is in a 982 page report entitled "Annual Reports For the War Department for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1901, – Report of the Chief of Engineers Part 4".
I have only copied here a small part that deals with the Big Sandy river near us, and a couple of other interesting tidbits. Of most interest to me was learning how they manipulated the river bank in front of our house to try to lessen the effect of the shoals on boats.
The following may not be of much interest to anyone but my family, but that is the main focus of this blog, anyway. I have the entire report downloaded, but I thought I would go ahead and record some of it here, as well:
Captain: I have the honor to submit the following report, with accompanying maps and profiles, of the survey of the Big Sandy River, Kentucky and West Virginia, including the Levisa and Tug forks, made under the act of Congress approved March 3, 1899…..
The information obtained will be found in the tables. It does not indicate that pool level can be maintained with daily lockages during the dryest seasons or during the extremely dry portion of the average season, but it is believed that with a dam as tight as that at Louisa it will be possible to maintain pools of sufficient depth for all ordinary navigation purposes throughout the summer and fall and a 6-foot or barge stage the greater part of the time.
Map*.—The total number of maps pertaining to the survey is 100, with 1 index and 3 title sheets, divided as follows: Sheets.
Big Sandy River 18
Levisa Fork 51
Tug Fork 31
Index and title 4
The size of the sheets inside of border is 25 by 38 inches. These maps were all traced from pencil copies. It is the intention to make ink originals later on, if the funds are sufficient for the purpose, for file in this office. These will show contour lines and other information of use in locating the works of improvement.
One complete set of blue prints was made for your office and one for this office; also two sets to accompany your report……
III. DESCRIPTION OF RIVERS.
General features.—The Big Sandy River is formed by the junction of the Levisa and Tug forks, at Louisa, Ky. It flows in a northerly direction to the Ohio, about 27 miles, at Catlettsburg, Ky. It is the division line between the States of West Virginia and Kentucky.
These tributaries have their sources in Virginia. That part of Levisa surveyed below Pikeville, Ky., is 88 miles long, and that part of Tug surveyed below Pond Creek is 58 miles in length, making the total length of survey, including the 27 miles of Big Sandy, 173 miles.
The Levisa Fork flows northwesterly to Prestonsburg, Ky., where its course changea to northeasterly, while the Tug keeps a northwesterly course and forms the boundary between the States of Kentucky and West Virginia.
The average width of the Big Sandy at mean low-water level is about 300 feet, and it is about 500 feet between tops of banks. Levisa and Tug are, of course, considerably smaller, the former being about 350 and the latter about 300 feet in width between tops of banks. The banks are usually sandy and unstable, and the bed is sand, except in the upper portions of the two forks, where some gravel is found……
On Tug Fork the following-named places have been improved with works worthy of mention……
On Levisa Fork the total fall between Pikeville and Louisa is 116 feet, an average of 1.3 feet per mile. There are about fifty shoals and ripples in this part of the river, but most of them are of no importance, particularly in the lower portion of the stream. When the survey of 1875 was made there was considerable fall at nearly all shoals, but the pools between them have filled with sand, and some of the shoals have been gradually cut down in the removal of rocks from the chutes? until now they are little more than ripples, and do not show except in extreme low water….
CharactŠµr of commerce.
—Considering the shortness and uncertainty of the navigable periods these streams carry a remarkable quantity of commerce. This is largely in saw logs, cross-ties, and staves, but there is also considerable live stock, poultry, and produce sent out of the valley by water. It is not upon this commerce, however, that the people must rely for their wealth and support, but upon that to be developed by the advent of slack water, the opening up of the vast coal deposits found in almost all sections along the rivers and their tributaries…..
Navigation.
—As will be noticed in the discharge reports there is not sufficient flow for constant navigation on either of the three streams surveyed. In addition to the lack of water may be mentioned the obstructions which constantly form in the sandy bed. These obstructions are much more numerous because of the sandy character of the banks, which are easily undermined, and thus whole trees are thrown into the channel with their roots and branches intact. An attempt has been made for several years to remove these obstructions during the low-water season, and it has been fairly successful, but the funds have usually been insufficient for complete and perfect maintenance. Another cause of the shortening of the navigation season and probably as effective as any other, if not the chief difficulty, is the tendency of the river bed to pile up in sand bars covering the entire width of the stream. It is not practicable to maintain a low-water channel in such a formation, the water spreading out over the whole bar in a sheet barely covering it. This is particularly troublesome in the Big Sandy itself and in the lower portions of the two forks. The length of the navigation season varies greatly. Some years boats may run every month, while others the time is reduced to three or four months in the winter and spring. In the Big Sandy the season is, of course, much longer than in either fork, and in the forks Levisa usually has navigable water considerably longer than Tug.
The character of boats employed for general traffic is a light-draft, side-wheel, flat-bottom, single-deck affair, about 120 feet long and 18 feet wide, with a carrying capacity of about 50 tons. Their draft is from 12 to 24 inches. There are, however, a few better boats—stern-wheel, 120 to 140 feet in length, from 20 to 25 feet in breadth, and carrying about 100 tons, with a draft of 3 feet. In addition to these, towboats 120 to 130 feet in length make trips with barges of staves, tanbark, spokes, etc., during times of sufficient water, and push-boats operated by men run during low-water periods. The latter are usually about 8 feet wide and 75 feet long, and when loaded usually have a draft of less than 7 inches.
The total number of boats navigating these streams has varied with the amount of commerce and length of time of navigable water. There are usually about a half dozen regular boats with now and then a few months with more. There are generally at least two regulars run in connection with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway between White House and Pikeville. There is a line of three or four plying between Catlettsburg and Paintsville, with occasional trips to Pikeville, and a large boat or two between Catlettsburg and Pikeville. There is also a boat between Louisa and the Ohio and a boat or two running up Tug Fork from the Ohio.
Regulating works.
—In Major Merrill’s report on the survey of 1875 is the following: "It is evident that the only feasible way of procuring a sufficient supply of water for navigation, and especially for a navigation by coal barges, is to canalize the river by means of locks and dams. In doing this we at once have our choice of two methods—the French method, recently invented, of movable dams, and the method in use on the Monongahela, Muskingum, Kentucky, and other rivers, of permanent dams. The first method is decidedly the better of the two where the natural navigation lasts for several months continuously, but its greater cost of establishment and of maintenance naturally causes the selection of the second method for rivers on which the total amount of navigation is not great. * * * Mr. Bell’s report shows that in many places the bed of the river is full of large bowlders that should be removed. It is also full of snags, and the banks are encumbered with inclining trees. A good work can undoubtedly be done by removing these bowlders and snags and cutting down the inclining trees. * * * If Congress should be unwilling to appropriate sufficient money for the construction of a complete system of slack water, or if money were only appropriated for one or two locks, it would still be a very great advantage to navigation to have the bowlders and snags removed."
In accordance with the latter recommendation, a project for the removal of obstructions was adopted in 1878 for Big Sandy, and in 1880 for Levisa and Tug, and on June 18, 1878, $12,000 was appropriated for the purpose. This was supplemented later along by numerous appropriations of small amounts for the work and for maintaining that already done. In addition to this the State of Kentucky had previously constructed some wing dams and other regulating works.
The project was modified in 1880 by authorizing the construction of a lock and dam at Louisa, in the Big Sandy, and this has been completed and was put into operation in 1897. Two other locks and dams have been authorized between Louisa and the Ohio River, and their construction will be entered upon soon.
It will be seen from the foregoing that the improvements so far made are almost wholly those of obstruction removal and regulation by the construction and maintenance of walls, dikes, and wing’dams. These are all of inferior character, and are usually made by piling up in ridges the bowlders removed from the shoals. They are very helpful" to navigation and extend its season materially, but of course can not be a permanent benefit or furnish sufficient depths for a continuous navigable season. It is expected that this can be secured by the carrying out of the system now inaugurated, which contemplates the construction of locks and dams in all those portions of the rivers included in this survey. Some of the more important regulation improvements which have been made from time to time by the State of Kentucky and the General Government are enumerated below. The walls mentioned were generally loose bowlders piled in ridges, and the banks and bed have filled in behind and over them frequently until they can scarcely be distinguished. No attempt has been made to show them on the map on this account. For clearness they will be mentioned on each fork separately, beginning at the mouth. There have been no such improvements on the main river. On Levisa Fork they are as follows:
A wall was built on the west side, at Bumble Bee Shoal, 250 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 3 feet high. This shoal has disappeared.
At Chestnut Shoal walls were built on each side of the chute, 300 feet long, 6 feet wide, 4 feet high, and many large rocks were blasted out.
A wall 350 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 3 feet high was built at Little White House Shoal on the west side, and a number of large rocks were removed.
At White House Shoal walls some 800 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 5 feet high were built on each side the chute. The State also built some small walls here. This was formerly one of the worst, if not the worst, shoal on this fork, but is now not a serious obstacle to navigation, although needing more work done.
At Wild Goose Shoal about 500 feet of wall has been built on the two sides of the chute.
Greasy Shoal has walls on each side of the chute about 600 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 5 feet high.
Buffalo Shoal is three-quarters of a mile in length and has a wall on each side, averaging 8 feet in width and 4 feet high. An old milldam was removed here by the State. While this shoal is much easier passed than formerly, it is still the worst shoal on the river and needs much more work done on it. It has a fall of 5 feet.
A wall 6OO feet long, 9 feet wide, and 3 feet high was built on the west side at Hells Gate Shoal.
At Devils Drawbars Shoal there is a wall 350 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 3 feet high on each side the chute.
Hager Shoal has about 400 feet of wall 6 feet long and 3 feet high.
At Wiremans Shoal a wall 700 feet long was built on the east side of the chute.
At Moody George Shoal, a flat, shallow place, the State removed some large rock and the Government has built a wall along the west shore 500 feet long, 7 feet wide, and 4 feet high.
The State also did considerable blasting at Abbott Shoal and put in a wall on the east side. The Government also built a wall 450 feet long. This was formerly a very swift place, but is now quiet.
Prestonsburg Shoal is long, flat, and shallow, and has about 600 feet of wall on each side.
Sugar Loaf Shallows was once about three-quarters of a mile in length, but has been pretty well cleaned and improved. It has no walls.
At Robert Hall Shoal there is 400 feet of wall, and at Prator Shoal there is 500 feet.
Grimes Shoal has a large wall on the west side 700 feet long and on the east side about 400 feet.
Long Shoal is about three-quarters of a mile in length, and has a wall 3,960 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 4 feet high.
This completes the list for Levisa below Pikeville.
There are many places not named where large rocks have been blasted out and other important work done, but the object here is to mention only those works which stand out prominently in the general system. These various works have been fairly well maintained, the rock cleaned out of the shoals having been piled up on the walls or used to repair breaches therein or sometimes to build cross walls between the guiding walls and the banks.
I have only copied here a small part that deals with the Big Sandy river near us, and a couple of other interesting tidbits. Of most interest to me was learning how they manipulated the river bank in front of our house to try to lessen the effect of the shoals on boats.
The following may not be of much interest to anyone but my family, but that is the main focus of this blog, anyway. I have the entire report downloaded, but I thought I would go ahead and record some of it here, as well:
Captain: I have the honor to submit the following report, with accompanying maps and profiles, of the survey of the Big Sandy River, Kentucky and West Virginia, including the Levisa and Tug forks, made under the act of Congress approved March 3, 1899…..
The information obtained will be found in the tables. It does not indicate that pool level can be maintained with daily lockages during the dryest seasons or during the extremely dry portion of the average season, but it is believed that with a dam as tight as that at Louisa it will be possible to maintain pools of sufficient depth for all ordinary navigation purposes throughout the summer and fall and a 6-foot or barge stage the greater part of the time.
Map*.—The total number of maps pertaining to the survey is 100, with 1 index and 3 title sheets, divided as follows: Sheets.
Big Sandy River 18
Levisa Fork 51
Tug Fork 31
Index and title 4
The size of the sheets inside of border is 25 by 38 inches. These maps were all traced from pencil copies. It is the intention to make ink originals later on, if the funds are sufficient for the purpose, for file in this office. These will show contour lines and other information of use in locating the works of improvement.
One complete set of blue prints was made for your office and one for this office; also two sets to accompany your report……
III. DESCRIPTION OF RIVERS.
General features.—The Big Sandy River is formed by the junction of the Levisa and Tug forks, at Louisa, Ky. It flows in a northerly direction to the Ohio, about 27 miles, at Catlettsburg, Ky. It is the division line between the States of West Virginia and Kentucky.
These tributaries have their sources in Virginia. That part of Levisa surveyed below Pikeville, Ky., is 88 miles long, and that part of Tug surveyed below Pond Creek is 58 miles in length, making the total length of survey, including the 27 miles of Big Sandy, 173 miles.
The Levisa Fork flows northwesterly to Prestonsburg, Ky., where its course changea to northeasterly, while the Tug keeps a northwesterly course and forms the boundary between the States of Kentucky and West Virginia.
The average width of the Big Sandy at mean low-water level is about 300 feet, and it is about 500 feet between tops of banks. Levisa and Tug are, of course, considerably smaller, the former being about 350 and the latter about 300 feet in width between tops of banks. The banks are usually sandy and unstable, and the bed is sand, except in the upper portions of the two forks, where some gravel is found……
On Tug Fork the following-named places have been improved with works worthy of mention……
On Levisa Fork the total fall between Pikeville and Louisa is 116 feet, an average of 1.3 feet per mile. There are about fifty shoals and ripples in this part of the river, but most of them are of no importance, particularly in the lower portion of the stream. When the survey of 1875 was made there was considerable fall at nearly all shoals, but the pools between them have filled with sand, and some of the shoals have been gradually cut down in the removal of rocks from the chutes? until now they are little more than ripples, and do not show except in extreme low water….
CharactŠµr of commerce.
—Considering the shortness and uncertainty of the navigable periods these streams carry a remarkable quantity of commerce. This is largely in saw logs, cross-ties, and staves, but there is also considerable live stock, poultry, and produce sent out of the valley by water. It is not upon this commerce, however, that the people must rely for their wealth and support, but upon that to be developed by the advent of slack water, the opening up of the vast coal deposits found in almost all sections along the rivers and their tributaries…..
Navigation.
—As will be noticed in the discharge reports there is not sufficient flow for constant navigation on either of the three streams surveyed. In addition to the lack of water may be mentioned the obstructions which constantly form in the sandy bed. These obstructions are much more numerous because of the sandy character of the banks, which are easily undermined, and thus whole trees are thrown into the channel with their roots and branches intact. An attempt has been made for several years to remove these obstructions during the low-water season, and it has been fairly successful, but the funds have usually been insufficient for complete and perfect maintenance. Another cause of the shortening of the navigation season and probably as effective as any other, if not the chief difficulty, is the tendency of the river bed to pile up in sand bars covering the entire width of the stream. It is not practicable to maintain a low-water channel in such a formation, the water spreading out over the whole bar in a sheet barely covering it. This is particularly troublesome in the Big Sandy itself and in the lower portions of the two forks. The length of the navigation season varies greatly. Some years boats may run every month, while others the time is reduced to three or four months in the winter and spring. In the Big Sandy the season is, of course, much longer than in either fork, and in the forks Levisa usually has navigable water considerably longer than Tug.
The character of boats employed for general traffic is a light-draft, side-wheel, flat-bottom, single-deck affair, about 120 feet long and 18 feet wide, with a carrying capacity of about 50 tons. Their draft is from 12 to 24 inches. There are, however, a few better boats—stern-wheel, 120 to 140 feet in length, from 20 to 25 feet in breadth, and carrying about 100 tons, with a draft of 3 feet. In addition to these, towboats 120 to 130 feet in length make trips with barges of staves, tanbark, spokes, etc., during times of sufficient water, and push-boats operated by men run during low-water periods. The latter are usually about 8 feet wide and 75 feet long, and when loaded usually have a draft of less than 7 inches.
The total number of boats navigating these streams has varied with the amount of commerce and length of time of navigable water. There are usually about a half dozen regular boats with now and then a few months with more. There are generally at least two regulars run in connection with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway between White House and Pikeville. There is a line of three or four plying between Catlettsburg and Paintsville, with occasional trips to Pikeville, and a large boat or two between Catlettsburg and Pikeville. There is also a boat between Louisa and the Ohio and a boat or two running up Tug Fork from the Ohio.
Regulating works.
—In Major Merrill’s report on the survey of 1875 is the following: "It is evident that the only feasible way of procuring a sufficient supply of water for navigation, and especially for a navigation by coal barges, is to canalize the river by means of locks and dams. In doing this we at once have our choice of two methods—the French method, recently invented, of movable dams, and the method in use on the Monongahela, Muskingum, Kentucky, and other rivers, of permanent dams. The first method is decidedly the better of the two where the natural navigation lasts for several months continuously, but its greater cost of establishment and of maintenance naturally causes the selection of the second method for rivers on which the total amount of navigation is not great. * * * Mr. Bell’s report shows that in many places the bed of the river is full of large bowlders that should be removed. It is also full of snags, and the banks are encumbered with inclining trees. A good work can undoubtedly be done by removing these bowlders and snags and cutting down the inclining trees. * * * If Congress should be unwilling to appropriate sufficient money for the construction of a complete system of slack water, or if money were only appropriated for one or two locks, it would still be a very great advantage to navigation to have the bowlders and snags removed."
In accordance with the latter recommendation, a project for the removal of obstructions was adopted in 1878 for Big Sandy, and in 1880 for Levisa and Tug, and on June 18, 1878, $12,000 was appropriated for the purpose. This was supplemented later along by numerous appropriations of small amounts for the work and for maintaining that already done. In addition to this the State of Kentucky had previously constructed some wing dams and other regulating works.
The project was modified in 1880 by authorizing the construction of a lock and dam at Louisa, in the Big Sandy, and this has been completed and was put into operation in 1897. Two other locks and dams have been authorized between Louisa and the Ohio River, and their construction will be entered upon soon.
It will be seen from the foregoing that the improvements so far made are almost wholly those of obstruction removal and regulation by the construction and maintenance of walls, dikes, and wing’dams. These are all of inferior character, and are usually made by piling up in ridges the bowlders removed from the shoals. They are very helpful" to navigation and extend its season materially, but of course can not be a permanent benefit or furnish sufficient depths for a continuous navigable season. It is expected that this can be secured by the carrying out of the system now inaugurated, which contemplates the construction of locks and dams in all those portions of the rivers included in this survey. Some of the more important regulation improvements which have been made from time to time by the State of Kentucky and the General Government are enumerated below. The walls mentioned were generally loose bowlders piled in ridges, and the banks and bed have filled in behind and over them frequently until they can scarcely be distinguished. No attempt has been made to show them on the map on this account. For clearness they will be mentioned on each fork separately, beginning at the mouth. There have been no such improvements on the main river. On Levisa Fork they are as follows:
A wall was built on the west side, at Bumble Bee Shoal, 250 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 3 feet high. This shoal has disappeared.
At Chestnut Shoal walls were built on each side of the chute, 300 feet long, 6 feet wide, 4 feet high, and many large rocks were blasted out.
A wall 350 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 3 feet high was built at Little White House Shoal on the west side, and a number of large rocks were removed.
At White House Shoal walls some 800 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 5 feet high were built on each side the chute. The State also built some small walls here. This was formerly one of the worst, if not the worst, shoal on this fork, but is now not a serious obstacle to navigation, although needing more work done.
At Wild Goose Shoal about 500 feet of wall has been built on the two sides of the chute.
Greasy Shoal has walls on each side of the chute about 600 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 5 feet high.
Buffalo Shoal is three-quarters of a mile in length and has a wall on each side, averaging 8 feet in width and 4 feet high. An old milldam was removed here by the State. While this shoal is much easier passed than formerly, it is still the worst shoal on the river and needs much more work done on it. It has a fall of 5 feet.
A wall 6OO feet long, 9 feet wide, and 3 feet high was built on the west side at Hells Gate Shoal.
At Devils Drawbars Shoal there is a wall 350 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 3 feet high on each side the chute.
Hager Shoal has about 400 feet of wall 6 feet long and 3 feet high.
At Wiremans Shoal a wall 700 feet long was built on the east side of the chute.
At Moody George Shoal, a flat, shallow place, the State removed some large rock and the Government has built a wall along the west shore 500 feet long, 7 feet wide, and 4 feet high.
The State also did considerable blasting at Abbott Shoal and put in a wall on the east side. The Government also built a wall 450 feet long. This was formerly a very swift place, but is now quiet.
Prestonsburg Shoal is long, flat, and shallow, and has about 600 feet of wall on each side.
Sugar Loaf Shallows was once about three-quarters of a mile in length, but has been pretty well cleaned and improved. It has no walls.
At Robert Hall Shoal there is 400 feet of wall, and at Prator Shoal there is 500 feet.
Grimes Shoal has a large wall on the west side 700 feet long and on the east side about 400 feet.
Long Shoal is about three-quarters of a mile in length, and has a wall 3,960 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 4 feet high.
This completes the list for Levisa below Pikeville.
There are many places not named where large rocks have been blasted out and other important work done, but the object here is to mention only those works which stand out prominently in the general system. These various works have been fairly well maintained, the rock cleaned out of the shoals having been piled up on the walls or used to repair breaches therein or sometimes to build cross walls between the guiding walls and the banks.
Light Brahmas
I thought I should not slight our other rooster, William Carey. Of course he is named after the famous missionary to India during the early 1800s. I like the India connection because the Brahma breed is an Asian breed.
King Arthur and Sir Lancelot are our roosters from our Engilsh breed and Abraham Lincoln is the rooster from our American breed, so I needed some great character from Asian history. There are some great names of Indian and Chineese leaders of the past, but none of them are worth emulating, in my opinion. The obvious reason for this stems from the non-Christian world-view of those leaders. So, I remembered some great names of Christian missionaries to Asia. William Carey was one of the first and most prominant missionaries to India. He ended his last 41 years of life spreading the gospel to those people.
I really like the looks of our Light Brahmas. We have 5 hens and they are all very large and pretty. None have gone broody yet, and we have not yet separated them from the flock for hatching eggs, but I have plans to do so before summer is over.
Here is what our hatchery, Murray McMurray had to say about them:
The Brahmas are a very old breed from Asia, probably originating in India and brought to this country about 1850 by Yankee sailors on their return from trading in Far Eastern ports. Because of its massive size, full feathered shanks and toes, and striking black and white plumage pattern, it has always been one of the most interesting varieties to work with. Brahmas are exceptionally quiet, gentle, and easy to handle. Their small pea comb, great size, and heavy plumage make them almost immune to cold weather. The hens are good layers of brown eggs, especially in winter, and will also set. Cockerels develop a tremendous frame, grow rather slowly, but when fully fleshed make a beautiful roasting chicken. They are easy to dress with light plumage and yellow skin. Baby chicks are creamy white, but some have shades of gray on the back.
Here is a picture of William Carey. He sure looks mean in this shot, but he is really gentle:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 29, 2009 at 3:46 am
He is very pretty, or handsome. Either way his colors are very pretty. Love his name
King Arthur and Sir Lancelot are our roosters from our Engilsh breed and Abraham Lincoln is the rooster from our American breed, so I needed some great character from Asian history. There are some great names of Indian and Chineese leaders of the past, but none of them are worth emulating, in my opinion. The obvious reason for this stems from the non-Christian world-view of those leaders. So, I remembered some great names of Christian missionaries to Asia. William Carey was one of the first and most prominant missionaries to India. He ended his last 41 years of life spreading the gospel to those people.
I really like the looks of our Light Brahmas. We have 5 hens and they are all very large and pretty. None have gone broody yet, and we have not yet separated them from the flock for hatching eggs, but I have plans to do so before summer is over.
Here is what our hatchery, Murray McMurray had to say about them:
The Brahmas are a very old breed from Asia, probably originating in India and brought to this country about 1850 by Yankee sailors on their return from trading in Far Eastern ports. Because of its massive size, full feathered shanks and toes, and striking black and white plumage pattern, it has always been one of the most interesting varieties to work with. Brahmas are exceptionally quiet, gentle, and easy to handle. Their small pea comb, great size, and heavy plumage make them almost immune to cold weather. The hens are good layers of brown eggs, especially in winter, and will also set. Cockerels develop a tremendous frame, grow rather slowly, but when fully fleshed make a beautiful roasting chicken. They are easy to dress with light plumage and yellow skin. Baby chicks are creamy white, but some have shades of gray on the back.
Here is a picture of William Carey. He sure looks mean in this shot, but he is really gentle:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 29, 2009 at 3:46 am
He is very pretty, or handsome. Either way his colors are very pretty. Love his name
Jersey Giants
I’m still cleaning up the files on my computer and saw some things I had saved about Black Giant, or Jersey Giant chickens.
We got our first Black Giants from McMurray on June 24th, 2008. We had 5 hens and two roosters, but we sold one rooster and one of the hens disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Even though we have had them almost a year now, the jury is still out on them. I really like our rooster, Abe Lincoln, and the hens are nice. The jury (me) is still concerned about their body size and egg size. They are supposed to be the largest chicken breed, but ours have not been any larger than the Buff Orpingtons or Light Brahmas. They may even be a bit smaller than some of those others. Some of my Black Australorps are also as big or bigger than the Giants, and it is very hard to tell them apart from each other. Their eggs are also medium to small, but I was hoping for larger eggs.
We have hatched 6 eggs from the Black Giant hens. Three chicks are all black, and three are crossed with the Buff Orpington and are black and buff. The chicks are all very pretty. Perhaps they will grow to the extra-large size? We also just set 5Buff Orpington eggs under a broody Black Giant hen, so maybe we will get to see what kind of mama hens they will be.
Here is what McMurray has to say about them:
This is the original Jersey Giant developed in New Jersey in the late 19th century by crossing several of the large, dark Asiatic breeds. It is a super heavy bird even a little larger than the whites. Its black plumage has a beautiful green sheen, the eyes are dark brown, shanks and toes are black except for yellow skin showing on the bottoms of the feet. With the straight red comb and tremendous size it makes an unusually handsome variety for exhibition. Hens are good layers of brown eggs and especially persistent through cold weather. Baby chicks are mostly black but do show creamy patches on the underbody, wing tips, and around the face. The white persists in the plumage until final molt of chick feathers takes place.
http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/product/black_giants.html
Here is some interesting info from the American Livestock Breeds Conservatory:
Jersey Giant Chicken
The Jersey Giant chicken was developed between 1870 and 1890 by John and Thomas Black in Burlington County, near the town of Jobstown, New Jersey. As its name implies, these typically mellow chickens are impressive in size with mature roosters weighing 13 pounds and the mature hens weighing 10 pounds, making them the largest purebred chicken breed.
The original intention of the Black brothers was to create a chicken that could potentially replace the turkey as a premium table bird. During the breed’s development, Black Javas, Black Langshans, and Dark Brahmas were used to try and reach this objective. Around 1895 the term “Giant” was used in reference to the breed, and they became known as “Black Giants” in honor of their creators (not because of their color.) The name was later changed to “Jersey Giant” by Dexter P. Upham of Belmar, New Jersey, in honor of the state of origin. Mr. Upham was an early breeder interested in improving Black Giants. In 1921, the American Association of Jersey Black Giant Breeders Clubs was created and the name “Jersey Giant” was officially adopted for the breed by the group. The standard developed for the birds included a gigantic frame, single comb, yellow skin color, relatively rapid maturity, good vigor, and fine foraging ability. The Jersey Giant was recognized by the American Poultry Association (APA) in 1922. Today Jersey Giants are accepted in the APA Standard of Perfection in three color varieties – black, white, or blue.
Jersey Giants are dual purpose chickens, but they excel as a meat bird with their great body size. They are well-suited to producing very fine and large capons. The young birds grow relatively quickly but take time to fill out their hefty frame to produce a marketable bird – most take up to 8–9 months to reach a harvestable size with good body proportions. They are an excellent roasting bird when fully mature.
Concerning egg production, the hens of this breed tend to lay more eggs than those of other heavy breeds. Their eggs are extra large in size with color varying from dark brown to light cream. When incubating eggs, the Jersey Giant breed sometimes takes 1–2 days longer to hatch than most chicken breeds.
Status: Watch
http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/jerseygiant.html.
I will end this post with a picture of our Abe Lincoln. He is a beutiful bird! This picture does not do him justice, but at least you can get an idea:
(I will try to get a better picture of him someday)
We got our first Black Giants from McMurray on June 24th, 2008. We had 5 hens and two roosters, but we sold one rooster and one of the hens disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Even though we have had them almost a year now, the jury is still out on them. I really like our rooster, Abe Lincoln, and the hens are nice. The jury (me) is still concerned about their body size and egg size. They are supposed to be the largest chicken breed, but ours have not been any larger than the Buff Orpingtons or Light Brahmas. They may even be a bit smaller than some of those others. Some of my Black Australorps are also as big or bigger than the Giants, and it is very hard to tell them apart from each other. Their eggs are also medium to small, but I was hoping for larger eggs.
We have hatched 6 eggs from the Black Giant hens. Three chicks are all black, and three are crossed with the Buff Orpington and are black and buff. The chicks are all very pretty. Perhaps they will grow to the extra-large size? We also just set 5Buff Orpington eggs under a broody Black Giant hen, so maybe we will get to see what kind of mama hens they will be.
Here is what McMurray has to say about them:
This is the original Jersey Giant developed in New Jersey in the late 19th century by crossing several of the large, dark Asiatic breeds. It is a super heavy bird even a little larger than the whites. Its black plumage has a beautiful green sheen, the eyes are dark brown, shanks and toes are black except for yellow skin showing on the bottoms of the feet. With the straight red comb and tremendous size it makes an unusually handsome variety for exhibition. Hens are good layers of brown eggs and especially persistent through cold weather. Baby chicks are mostly black but do show creamy patches on the underbody, wing tips, and around the face. The white persists in the plumage until final molt of chick feathers takes place.
http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/product/black_giants.html
Here is some interesting info from the American Livestock Breeds Conservatory:
Jersey Giant Chicken
The Jersey Giant chicken was developed between 1870 and 1890 by John and Thomas Black in Burlington County, near the town of Jobstown, New Jersey. As its name implies, these typically mellow chickens are impressive in size with mature roosters weighing 13 pounds and the mature hens weighing 10 pounds, making them the largest purebred chicken breed.
The original intention of the Black brothers was to create a chicken that could potentially replace the turkey as a premium table bird. During the breed’s development, Black Javas, Black Langshans, and Dark Brahmas were used to try and reach this objective. Around 1895 the term “Giant” was used in reference to the breed, and they became known as “Black Giants” in honor of their creators (not because of their color.) The name was later changed to “Jersey Giant” by Dexter P. Upham of Belmar, New Jersey, in honor of the state of origin. Mr. Upham was an early breeder interested in improving Black Giants. In 1921, the American Association of Jersey Black Giant Breeders Clubs was created and the name “Jersey Giant” was officially adopted for the breed by the group. The standard developed for the birds included a gigantic frame, single comb, yellow skin color, relatively rapid maturity, good vigor, and fine foraging ability. The Jersey Giant was recognized by the American Poultry Association (APA) in 1922. Today Jersey Giants are accepted in the APA Standard of Perfection in three color varieties – black, white, or blue.
Jersey Giants are dual purpose chickens, but they excel as a meat bird with their great body size. They are well-suited to producing very fine and large capons. The young birds grow relatively quickly but take time to fill out their hefty frame to produce a marketable bird – most take up to 8–9 months to reach a harvestable size with good body proportions. They are an excellent roasting bird when fully mature.
Concerning egg production, the hens of this breed tend to lay more eggs than those of other heavy breeds. Their eggs are extra large in size with color varying from dark brown to light cream. When incubating eggs, the Jersey Giant breed sometimes takes 1–2 days longer to hatch than most chicken breeds.
Status: Watch
http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/jerseygiant.html.
I will end this post with a picture of our Abe Lincoln. He is a beutiful bird! This picture does not do him justice, but at least you can get an idea:
(I will try to get a better picture of him someday)
Monday, May 25, 2009
Old Time Hog Killing Memories
I enjoyed this article back when I was researching butchering our own hogs. It is a good read, and everything he talks about makes sense now that we have killed our own pigs. We skinned ours instead of scraping, and we have not yet tried our hands at making sausage. Other than that, his memories mirror the ones we have created at our own homestead.
Old Time Hog Killing, Sausage and Lard Making
by Thurman Dwight Lane
You may ask, what has killing hogs and making lard got to do with genealogy? Well, I’m glad you ask. Genealogy is about the past and my past and my genealogy for many generations was in the rural areas of the southern states of Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia to name a few. Making do with what you had at hand was not by choice but a necessity. With the relatively small farms and the profusion of trees, grass land was not plentiful enough in most cases to raise herds of cattle, except for milking and oxen for working. Hogs on the other hand could live quite well in the woods and thickets. These hogs along with a few chickens and hunting wild game provided the protein and fats needed for survival. I would venture to say that every man, woman and child in the genealogy section of my family had some knowledge of how to set a hen, skin a rabbit, hitch a mule, and butcher a hog. It was a way of life.
FREE RANGE
I grew up in Lawrence County, Arkansas and I have traced several lines and generations of my family. Most lived in Lawrence, Sharp, Izard and Independence Counties in Arkansas. They settled there in the 1840s and 50s and continued a way of life their forefathers had lived. In most places the law of the land favored open range, and families had a brand or ear mark for their animals that was known to everyone. You let your hogs free range and checked on them occasionally to keep up with their condition and location. If my memory serves me correctly, hogs fattened on acorns tended to have a bitter tasting meat and did not produce bright white lard. For this reason most hogs to be slaughtered were rounded up and fattened on corn for a month or longer. We did much the same except our hogs only free ranged our own farm. A day or two before the slaughter the hogs were taken off all their food and just given water.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A bit of Advice:
The first thing I would point out is the danger of slaughtering and preparing your own meat, of any kind. The need for clean working areas and tools along with the difficulty of keeping proper temperature makes it almost impossible to do this in a manner that is without risk. My advise is just don’t do it, leave it to the professionals. If your response is that it has been done for centuries then just remember the life span was much shorter back then. The purpose of this accounting is to acquaint you with a chapter of family life that I only had a brief glimpse. I was born in 1943 in rural Arkansas where electricity was a thing still hoped for and the old way of life was quite common. In many ways life was about the same as it had been for generations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ The people who think their meat comes wrapped in plastic at the local Safeway may want to stop reading about here. }
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEATHER AND SCALDING BARREL
The time of year to butcher hogs depended on the weather, it had to be cold enough to keep the meat from spoiling but not cold enough to freeze the carcass . Utensils , knifes, buckets, straining cloths and barrels were gathered. The wood for the fires was cut and neighbors and friends were waiting. Butchering day started before daylight, a fire was built just to keep warm and one was started under the scalding barrel and iron kettle. The scalding barrel we used was just a 55 gallon oil drum that had been burned out and cleaned. The kettle was used to keep fresh hot water to replenish what slouched out of the barrel and to heat water to clean.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KILLING
Killing the hog was usually done with a single 22 caliber long or long riffle bullet between the eyes. A larger caliber was too destructive. Draw an imaginary line from the right ear to the left eye and a line from the left ear to the right eye. Where these lines crossed is where you placed the shot. This job was usually given to an expert hand and for good reasons. There is a lot of “good eating” on the hogs head. One delicacy is the pig brains. I have had this a few times and as a butcher have sold many, many pounds over the years. One way to eat them is with scrambled eggs. It was important to place the shot where it would not splinter the bone and ruin the brain. Another reason was a misplaced shot could just injure the animal and a 180 to 240 pound hog can be very dangerous. Immediately after the hog was shot , it was bled. This was accomplished in more than one way. One way was to insert a knife about three inches behind the jaw on the left side of the neck and cut the jugular vein. Another way was to lay the animal on its back and find the breast bone . Insert a long, 6 inches or more, knife pointing to the rear and parallel to the back bone, with an upward thrust sever the carotid artery. The important thing was to bleed the animal within about two minutes of shooting it. If you waited too long the animals blood pressure could increase and a condition some called blood splash” could occur, It didn’t ruin the meat but it did give the meat an unpleasing look.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCRAPING
After the hog was bled an incision was cut in the hind legs just above and back of the foot. The gambrel tendons in the back of the leg were stretched out and the hooks from a “single tree” {used to hook a horses harness to the wagon or plow} were inserted and hooked to a hoist. In this way the hog could be lowered and raised in the barrel as needed. The water in the scalding barrel needed to be heated from about 165 degrees to "just to the point of boiling". If it was too hot it would set the hair and make it almost impossible to remove and if too cold the hair would not slip and could not be scraped. I have been told it helped the scalding water to add just a little wood ash, to soften the water and loosen the hair.
You judged the time by raising the hog and scraping a small section to see if it slip or remove easily. It was important not to let the hog stay in the water too long or the hair would set and was almost impossible to remove. Small places of hair was removed by pouring hot water on it and scraping. It was important not use a scraping knife that was not too sharp. The idea was to scrape it and remove it ,roots and all, not shave it. After the scraping a very sharp knife was used just in case any hair escaped the scraping. Today some people use propane torches to burn the hard to reach hair. Just be careful and don’t burn the skin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOIST
I have seen several methods used to hoist the hog up and keep him off the ground. One way was to build a tri-pod out of poles and hang the animal, I have used a pole hung between two trees and I have seen Y-Poles stuck into the ground and a pole placed between them. I have also just hung them from a convenient tree limb. I remember one time when some friends of mine were butchering a calf for a celebration in Memphis, Tennessee and hung it from a tree limb. The limb was not strong enough and broke, and the calf fell to the ground. A short time later the local police arrived and said they had a call that some people had shot a calf out of a tree. In that case I think it is a good idea to invite your neighbors over so you can keep an eye on them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEAD
Removing the head was next and this was done simply by cutting around the neck at the base of the head until the entire neck bone was rounded. It was finished by a quick and firm twist and set aside for later use.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GUTTING
It was important to have your tubs ready for this operation. This was also the time you appreciated the withholding of food for the last day or two. The idea was to open the entire gut cavity without puncturing the gut. It was done by carefully separating the outer skin and the membrane that holds the gut. A cut was made from the crouch to the chin. With this done and the tubs ready the large intestine was cut loose at the anus and tied off with a string and the entire mass was allowed to slide into the tub. When this was done the liver was removed and the gall bladder was carefully removed. Some of the liver was most times eat that day for supper or used to make liver sausage. [recipe later] Here is where you find people differed in their eating habits. Almost all the hog could be used for some purpose or another. The lungs, heart and (.?.) were almost always used and the stomach and small intestines were considered a delicacy by some. I have eaten chitterlings only once but as a butcher I have sold them in 10 lb. buckets by the truck loads. More about the chitterlings later.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CUTTING THE CARCASS
When the carcass was cleaned inside and out it was time to cut it into usable pieces. This was usually done with the equipment at hand: Butcher knife and an chopping ax. At the same time a sausage making operation was started and the lard pot was going. The lean trimmings went into the sausage mill and the fat went into the lard pot. The lard pot was started while the hog was still hanging with the fat from the inside cavity around the intestines or leaf fat . This is also where you get cracklin’s and if you ain’t had cracklin cornbread, I just don’t know what to say. The ax was used to cut the hog down the middle into halves. In the old days they just cut down the back bone on each side staying as close as they could. you got some good meaty backbones and a nice thick piece of fatback. Nowadays it is cut in half using a saw and the loins are removed whole. The hams and shoulders are removed at the joints and you have the middling or side meat left. Separate the ribs from the side meat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LARD
Making lard was in some ways the most important chore of the day and required careful attention to detail. This was an art that you could become know for and your expertise was in demand on hog killing day . In fact , messing this job up, could make you known also. The lard bucket could get vary rancid before the winter was over, if you didn’t do the job right.
As mentioned before, the lard pot was started early in the operation. We used a large iron kettle or pot. A slow fire was built out of small sticks of wood so the temperature could be controlled. The first thing into the pot was a small amount of leaf fat from the gut cavity. This was the most pure fat and the easiest to render. As the leaf fat begin to render, the other fat was added slowly and the fire was increased until a slow boil was achieved. Cooking the lard took a couple of hours or more and was stirred constantly with a large wooden paddle. If you were a kid, this was a good time to be somewhere else or you would be put to work. If you ask my brothers, I am sure they will tell you that, being somewhere else, was something I was good at. The art of looking busy and just hiding came in handy.
The temperature of the fat should be kept at about 212 degrees. As the water evaporates the temperature will rise but it should be controlled. This is where the small sticks of wood came into play. They could be added as needed or could be raked away from the pot if it became too hot.
You knew the rendering process was complete when the cracklings turned brown and floated to the top. When the pot quit boiling and the water had evaporated out of the fat, it was time to strain the liquid through several layers of cheese cloth into your lard bucket or pails. As the lard set, it was stirred until it became creamy and if you had not left too much lean on the trimmings or scorched it while cooking, you had supply of pure lard that would meet your cooking needs, hopefully until next winter at “Hog Killin” time.
Hog lard has been given a bad ‘rap’ the last several years and I am sure that if my kin folks had lived in a region of the country where olives were grown, I would be writing this about olive oil, but they didn’t and if you ever had a young farm raised chicken fried to a golden brown in hog lard! I won’t have to say anything about biscuits made with lard and Martha White Flour!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAUSAGE
Here is where everyone is an expert and a critic. There are as many “old family recipes” as there are old families. I will start with just the basics. Good pork sausage is made by grinding and seasoning lean pork trimmings from the bellies, hams, and shoulders. Sausage should contain from 20 to 30 percent fat. If more fat is included, the sausage may be too greasy and shrink too much in cooking. If entire shoulders of hams are used, it may be necessary to add some fat.
Good sausage should start with good ingredients. Great care should be given to the selection of meat to be ground and since sausage is usually made on the farm in somewhat large amounts it is wise to make even batches, say 10 to 15 lbs. at a time. The spices should be added sparingly, just remember, in this case it is easier to add than subtract, and a test batch should be fried up and enjoyed by all, before you proceed to making the whole batch. Just remember that spices shorten the freezer life of the meat and fresh sausage can be kept safely frozen for about 1 or 2 months. If you have more trimmings than you need it would be wise to freeze the trimmings and later thaw and grind them into sausage.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAUSAGE RECIPES
MILD SAUSAGE
10 lbs. GROUND PORK
6 TABLESPOONS SALT
4 TEASPOONS SAGE
3 TEASPOONS BLACK PEPPER
white pepper can be substituted
for the black
MODERATELY SPICY SAUSAGE
10 lbs. ground pork
5 tablespoons salt
3 teaspoons black pepper
4 teaspoons ground red pepper
5 tablespoons sage
2 teaspoons dry mustard
2 teaspoons ground cloves
Add 2 to 3 teaspoons Cayenne pepper if you like it HOT.
Get your hands in and mix.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have used several ingredients to liven up the taste of pork sausage but a really well made sausage does not need much.
Add a quart of buttermilk to about 20 lbs. of sausage and hand mix well, after it sits over night it is indeed a wonderful flavor. I do not know how this will freeze, I have never had any left over long enough to try it.
Cayenne will give it a hot flaming taste.
Honey will sweeten it.
Thyme is a good addition.
I am not going to tell you how to make sausage gravy to go with the hog lard and Martha White Flour biscuits. You will be over at my house every morning for breakfast.
It may be best when making large batches to just stick to the tried and true recipes you know and love. If you want to experiment try small batches at first and when you reach perfection, go for it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEAD CHEESE–SOUSE
Here is another place the iron pot or kettle was used. After cleaning the hog head and removing all the hair it was cut into quarters and soaked in cold water overnight. It was given a thorough rinsing in cold water and put into the pot along with other scraps like skin, bones, tongue and heart. This was simmered until the meat slipped from the bone and the skin was easily pierced with your finger. The skins were cooled and ground through the fine plate, about 1/8 th inch holes, on the meat grinder and the meat was picked from the bone and ground through the large plate, about 1/2 inch holes. This was mixed together with broth to the consistency of cake batter. you then added the spices.
FOR 1 HOGS HEAD
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
dash red pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
dash of marjoram
dash of savory
Bring this mixture to a boil and remove from heat. Pour into loaf pans and chill. This will setup into loafs and can be refrigerated for a few days and frozen for a month or two. A head cheese press is sometimes used. It can range from a press designed for the job to a heavy weight set on top of the loaf pan. The hogs head usually produces enough gelatin to set the loaf without a press.
Break out the crackers!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIVER SAUSAGE
Liver Sausage is similar to Head Cheese and uses most of the same ingredients with the addition of the liver. The pork liver is just an ingredient in this and should not constitute more than 20 percent of the total by weight.
Liver Sausage:
Cook 3 lbs. of pork liver for about 12 to 20 minutes, until done. If you cook it too long it will crumble.
Add this to 12 lbs. of cooked head meat and scraps. Grind this together using a small hole plate on the grinder.
Add enough of the broth to make a soft, not runny, mix.
Season to your own taste:
8 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons ground sage
1 tablespoon allspice
add red pepper if you like or omit the sage or allspice if you prefer.
Pour into loaf pans and store in refrigerator for a few days or freeze for 1 to 2 months.
This is a excellent candidate for smoking. Stuff it into beef casings and smoke it, you have made Braunschweiger.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
janaeel on May 25, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Lots of useful info. Thanks for posting the article
Old Time Hog Killing, Sausage and Lard Making
by Thurman Dwight Lane
You may ask, what has killing hogs and making lard got to do with genealogy? Well, I’m glad you ask. Genealogy is about the past and my past and my genealogy for many generations was in the rural areas of the southern states of Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia to name a few. Making do with what you had at hand was not by choice but a necessity. With the relatively small farms and the profusion of trees, grass land was not plentiful enough in most cases to raise herds of cattle, except for milking and oxen for working. Hogs on the other hand could live quite well in the woods and thickets. These hogs along with a few chickens and hunting wild game provided the protein and fats needed for survival. I would venture to say that every man, woman and child in the genealogy section of my family had some knowledge of how to set a hen, skin a rabbit, hitch a mule, and butcher a hog. It was a way of life.
FREE RANGE
I grew up in Lawrence County, Arkansas and I have traced several lines and generations of my family. Most lived in Lawrence, Sharp, Izard and Independence Counties in Arkansas. They settled there in the 1840s and 50s and continued a way of life their forefathers had lived. In most places the law of the land favored open range, and families had a brand or ear mark for their animals that was known to everyone. You let your hogs free range and checked on them occasionally to keep up with their condition and location. If my memory serves me correctly, hogs fattened on acorns tended to have a bitter tasting meat and did not produce bright white lard. For this reason most hogs to be slaughtered were rounded up and fattened on corn for a month or longer. We did much the same except our hogs only free ranged our own farm. A day or two before the slaughter the hogs were taken off all their food and just given water.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A bit of Advice:
The first thing I would point out is the danger of slaughtering and preparing your own meat, of any kind. The need for clean working areas and tools along with the difficulty of keeping proper temperature makes it almost impossible to do this in a manner that is without risk. My advise is just don’t do it, leave it to the professionals. If your response is that it has been done for centuries then just remember the life span was much shorter back then. The purpose of this accounting is to acquaint you with a chapter of family life that I only had a brief glimpse. I was born in 1943 in rural Arkansas where electricity was a thing still hoped for and the old way of life was quite common. In many ways life was about the same as it had been for generations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ The people who think their meat comes wrapped in plastic at the local Safeway may want to stop reading about here. }
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEATHER AND SCALDING BARREL
The time of year to butcher hogs depended on the weather, it had to be cold enough to keep the meat from spoiling but not cold enough to freeze the carcass . Utensils , knifes, buckets, straining cloths and barrels were gathered. The wood for the fires was cut and neighbors and friends were waiting. Butchering day started before daylight, a fire was built just to keep warm and one was started under the scalding barrel and iron kettle. The scalding barrel we used was just a 55 gallon oil drum that had been burned out and cleaned. The kettle was used to keep fresh hot water to replenish what slouched out of the barrel and to heat water to clean.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KILLING
Killing the hog was usually done with a single 22 caliber long or long riffle bullet between the eyes. A larger caliber was too destructive. Draw an imaginary line from the right ear to the left eye and a line from the left ear to the right eye. Where these lines crossed is where you placed the shot. This job was usually given to an expert hand and for good reasons. There is a lot of “good eating” on the hogs head. One delicacy is the pig brains. I have had this a few times and as a butcher have sold many, many pounds over the years. One way to eat them is with scrambled eggs. It was important to place the shot where it would not splinter the bone and ruin the brain. Another reason was a misplaced shot could just injure the animal and a 180 to 240 pound hog can be very dangerous. Immediately after the hog was shot , it was bled. This was accomplished in more than one way. One way was to insert a knife about three inches behind the jaw on the left side of the neck and cut the jugular vein. Another way was to lay the animal on its back and find the breast bone . Insert a long, 6 inches or more, knife pointing to the rear and parallel to the back bone, with an upward thrust sever the carotid artery. The important thing was to bleed the animal within about two minutes of shooting it. If you waited too long the animals blood pressure could increase and a condition some called blood splash” could occur, It didn’t ruin the meat but it did give the meat an unpleasing look.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCRAPING
After the hog was bled an incision was cut in the hind legs just above and back of the foot. The gambrel tendons in the back of the leg were stretched out and the hooks from a “single tree” {used to hook a horses harness to the wagon or plow} were inserted and hooked to a hoist. In this way the hog could be lowered and raised in the barrel as needed. The water in the scalding barrel needed to be heated from about 165 degrees to "just to the point of boiling". If it was too hot it would set the hair and make it almost impossible to remove and if too cold the hair would not slip and could not be scraped. I have been told it helped the scalding water to add just a little wood ash, to soften the water and loosen the hair.
You judged the time by raising the hog and scraping a small section to see if it slip or remove easily. It was important not to let the hog stay in the water too long or the hair would set and was almost impossible to remove. Small places of hair was removed by pouring hot water on it and scraping. It was important not use a scraping knife that was not too sharp. The idea was to scrape it and remove it ,roots and all, not shave it. After the scraping a very sharp knife was used just in case any hair escaped the scraping. Today some people use propane torches to burn the hard to reach hair. Just be careful and don’t burn the skin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOIST
I have seen several methods used to hoist the hog up and keep him off the ground. One way was to build a tri-pod out of poles and hang the animal, I have used a pole hung between two trees and I have seen Y-Poles stuck into the ground and a pole placed between them. I have also just hung them from a convenient tree limb. I remember one time when some friends of mine were butchering a calf for a celebration in Memphis, Tennessee and hung it from a tree limb. The limb was not strong enough and broke, and the calf fell to the ground. A short time later the local police arrived and said they had a call that some people had shot a calf out of a tree. In that case I think it is a good idea to invite your neighbors over so you can keep an eye on them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEAD
Removing the head was next and this was done simply by cutting around the neck at the base of the head until the entire neck bone was rounded. It was finished by a quick and firm twist and set aside for later use.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GUTTING
It was important to have your tubs ready for this operation. This was also the time you appreciated the withholding of food for the last day or two. The idea was to open the entire gut cavity without puncturing the gut. It was done by carefully separating the outer skin and the membrane that holds the gut. A cut was made from the crouch to the chin. With this done and the tubs ready the large intestine was cut loose at the anus and tied off with a string and the entire mass was allowed to slide into the tub. When this was done the liver was removed and the gall bladder was carefully removed. Some of the liver was most times eat that day for supper or used to make liver sausage. [recipe later] Here is where you find people differed in their eating habits. Almost all the hog could be used for some purpose or another. The lungs, heart and (.?.) were almost always used and the stomach and small intestines were considered a delicacy by some. I have eaten chitterlings only once but as a butcher I have sold them in 10 lb. buckets by the truck loads. More about the chitterlings later.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CUTTING THE CARCASS
When the carcass was cleaned inside and out it was time to cut it into usable pieces. This was usually done with the equipment at hand: Butcher knife and an chopping ax. At the same time a sausage making operation was started and the lard pot was going. The lean trimmings went into the sausage mill and the fat went into the lard pot. The lard pot was started while the hog was still hanging with the fat from the inside cavity around the intestines or leaf fat . This is also where you get cracklin’s and if you ain’t had cracklin cornbread, I just don’t know what to say. The ax was used to cut the hog down the middle into halves. In the old days they just cut down the back bone on each side staying as close as they could. you got some good meaty backbones and a nice thick piece of fatback. Nowadays it is cut in half using a saw and the loins are removed whole. The hams and shoulders are removed at the joints and you have the middling or side meat left. Separate the ribs from the side meat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LARD
Making lard was in some ways the most important chore of the day and required careful attention to detail. This was an art that you could become know for and your expertise was in demand on hog killing day . In fact , messing this job up, could make you known also. The lard bucket could get vary rancid before the winter was over, if you didn’t do the job right.
As mentioned before, the lard pot was started early in the operation. We used a large iron kettle or pot. A slow fire was built out of small sticks of wood so the temperature could be controlled. The first thing into the pot was a small amount of leaf fat from the gut cavity. This was the most pure fat and the easiest to render. As the leaf fat begin to render, the other fat was added slowly and the fire was increased until a slow boil was achieved. Cooking the lard took a couple of hours or more and was stirred constantly with a large wooden paddle. If you were a kid, this was a good time to be somewhere else or you would be put to work. If you ask my brothers, I am sure they will tell you that, being somewhere else, was something I was good at. The art of looking busy and just hiding came in handy.
The temperature of the fat should be kept at about 212 degrees. As the water evaporates the temperature will rise but it should be controlled. This is where the small sticks of wood came into play. They could be added as needed or could be raked away from the pot if it became too hot.
You knew the rendering process was complete when the cracklings turned brown and floated to the top. When the pot quit boiling and the water had evaporated out of the fat, it was time to strain the liquid through several layers of cheese cloth into your lard bucket or pails. As the lard set, it was stirred until it became creamy and if you had not left too much lean on the trimmings or scorched it while cooking, you had supply of pure lard that would meet your cooking needs, hopefully until next winter at “Hog Killin” time.
Hog lard has been given a bad ‘rap’ the last several years and I am sure that if my kin folks had lived in a region of the country where olives were grown, I would be writing this about olive oil, but they didn’t and if you ever had a young farm raised chicken fried to a golden brown in hog lard! I won’t have to say anything about biscuits made with lard and Martha White Flour!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAUSAGE
Here is where everyone is an expert and a critic. There are as many “old family recipes” as there are old families. I will start with just the basics. Good pork sausage is made by grinding and seasoning lean pork trimmings from the bellies, hams, and shoulders. Sausage should contain from 20 to 30 percent fat. If more fat is included, the sausage may be too greasy and shrink too much in cooking. If entire shoulders of hams are used, it may be necessary to add some fat.
Good sausage should start with good ingredients. Great care should be given to the selection of meat to be ground and since sausage is usually made on the farm in somewhat large amounts it is wise to make even batches, say 10 to 15 lbs. at a time. The spices should be added sparingly, just remember, in this case it is easier to add than subtract, and a test batch should be fried up and enjoyed by all, before you proceed to making the whole batch. Just remember that spices shorten the freezer life of the meat and fresh sausage can be kept safely frozen for about 1 or 2 months. If you have more trimmings than you need it would be wise to freeze the trimmings and later thaw and grind them into sausage.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAUSAGE RECIPES
MILD SAUSAGE
10 lbs. GROUND PORK
6 TABLESPOONS SALT
4 TEASPOONS SAGE
3 TEASPOONS BLACK PEPPER
white pepper can be substituted
for the black
MODERATELY SPICY SAUSAGE
10 lbs. ground pork
5 tablespoons salt
3 teaspoons black pepper
4 teaspoons ground red pepper
5 tablespoons sage
2 teaspoons dry mustard
2 teaspoons ground cloves
Add 2 to 3 teaspoons Cayenne pepper if you like it HOT.
Get your hands in and mix.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have used several ingredients to liven up the taste of pork sausage but a really well made sausage does not need much.
Add a quart of buttermilk to about 20 lbs. of sausage and hand mix well, after it sits over night it is indeed a wonderful flavor. I do not know how this will freeze, I have never had any left over long enough to try it.
Cayenne will give it a hot flaming taste.
Honey will sweeten it.
Thyme is a good addition.
I am not going to tell you how to make sausage gravy to go with the hog lard and Martha White Flour biscuits. You will be over at my house every morning for breakfast.
It may be best when making large batches to just stick to the tried and true recipes you know and love. If you want to experiment try small batches at first and when you reach perfection, go for it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEAD CHEESE–SOUSE
Here is another place the iron pot or kettle was used. After cleaning the hog head and removing all the hair it was cut into quarters and soaked in cold water overnight. It was given a thorough rinsing in cold water and put into the pot along with other scraps like skin, bones, tongue and heart. This was simmered until the meat slipped from the bone and the skin was easily pierced with your finger. The skins were cooled and ground through the fine plate, about 1/8 th inch holes, on the meat grinder and the meat was picked from the bone and ground through the large plate, about 1/2 inch holes. This was mixed together with broth to the consistency of cake batter. you then added the spices.
FOR 1 HOGS HEAD
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
dash red pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
dash of marjoram
dash of savory
Bring this mixture to a boil and remove from heat. Pour into loaf pans and chill. This will setup into loafs and can be refrigerated for a few days and frozen for a month or two. A head cheese press is sometimes used. It can range from a press designed for the job to a heavy weight set on top of the loaf pan. The hogs head usually produces enough gelatin to set the loaf without a press.
Break out the crackers!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIVER SAUSAGE
Liver Sausage is similar to Head Cheese and uses most of the same ingredients with the addition of the liver. The pork liver is just an ingredient in this and should not constitute more than 20 percent of the total by weight.
Liver Sausage:
Cook 3 lbs. of pork liver for about 12 to 20 minutes, until done. If you cook it too long it will crumble.
Add this to 12 lbs. of cooked head meat and scraps. Grind this together using a small hole plate on the grinder.
Add enough of the broth to make a soft, not runny, mix.
Season to your own taste:
8 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons ground sage
1 tablespoon allspice
add red pepper if you like or omit the sage or allspice if you prefer.
Pour into loaf pans and store in refrigerator for a few days or freeze for 1 to 2 months.
This is a excellent candidate for smoking. Stuff it into beef casings and smoke it, you have made Braunschweiger.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
janaeel on May 25, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Lots of useful info. Thanks for posting the article
Riverboats In Front of Our House: 1871
It has been many years since steamboats have sailed up and down the Big Sandy, but for a time it was a common sight. I’m going through documents I have saved from the web, and came across this piece.
It is interesting because the following incident happened right in front of our house. The shoals in front of our house are known as ‘Wild Goose Shoals’ and this spot is mentioned in the following article.
I hope you enjoy reading this little anectdote from the riverboat days!
BIG SANDY RIVERBOATS:
The following article, written by W.D. O’Neal, appeared in the Ashland Daily Independent newspaper on March 15, 1940.
"The ‘Dew Drop’ lacked the lighting conveniences of boats of the present day. It ran at night by light from burning pine knots in iron baskets on the bow on each side, and pine torches were used in receiving and discharging passengers and freight. The river was the main artery of commerce and travel. All roads led to the river. It was the highway for those moving out and those moving in to this great valley.
The ‘Dew Drop’ register of April 20, 1871 shows among the passengers leaving Catlettsburg and their destinations, the following: Pete Marcum and W.M. Marcum, Mouth of Blaine; John Caldwell, Whites Creek; J.G. Burgess, Burgess Landing; W.M. Cains, Jake Rice, Rolen Burns, F.T.D Wallace, Mrs. John Rice, J.N.See [John N. SEE], John Hatcher and Mont Goble, Louisa, KY. Other passengers were rigistered for points up the river.
As interesting as steamboating may have been in the 60′s & 70′s on the Big Sandy, it was not always smooth sailing. There are several shoals where the current is too swift for a boat to stem its engine power and it was necessary to "warp" through. A line was pulled along the waters edge and fastened to some solid object, the other end was wound around the capstan, and the boat moved on by a combination of manpower.
Sometimes there were amusing incidents. On one occasion the ‘Dew Drop’ was entering Wild Goose Shoal. The deck hands took the line and were wading up stream to make the tie when suddenly they stopped as they ran into a trot line. The mate yelled, ‘hurry up’. One of the men replied, ‘Alright captain, but you’ll have to wait ’til I git these here d–m fishhooks out of my britches!"
Had our house been situated where it currently is at the mouth of Pure Water Hollow, and had my family been here, I’m sure our dogs would have been barking and we would have been down at the river to see what all the commotion was!
=================================================
While I’m on this topic, I thought I would record another bit of info I discovered while researching our shoals. In 1871 the US Corp of Engineers did work to reduce the shoals in front of our house to make riverboat traffic more accessible.
I recently purchased a 14 foot john boat and I am looking forward to using it down on our river. I think it will be interesting to explore the waterways that were once so important that even the government was concerned about it’s condition!
Here is part of the report I found with everything deleted except our part of the river. I have also left in some of the mis-spellings, etc.
"Captain: I respectfully submit my report of operations on the improvement of Big Sandy River, West Virginia and Kentucky, during the months of August, September, October, and November, 1871), at that timo under the direction of Major William E. Merrill, United States Corps of Engineers.
Operations were commenced August 25, and continued until November 20. The work was done entirely by hired labor, and the force employed was divided into three parties—one party on the main river and one party on each fork….
…LOUISA FORK.
On this fork, from Louisa, Ky., to Piketon, Ky., a distance of 86 1/2 miles, -47 shoals were improved, as follows: Twist and Wind, Twin Brother und Contrary Shoals, by blasting and breaking up the bowlders and confining the water to one channel, by means of low wing-dams built from the blasted rock.
Griffith‘s Creek Sand Bar, by changing the channel over bar. Fish Trap, Graves, Bumble Bee, Joe Border’s Ripple, and several small shoals near Lost Creek, Chesnut, Jas. Davis, Murray Shoals, Nathan Border’s Ripple, and Little White House Shoals, Big White House, Vanhoose, Red House, Wild Goose, Ward’s and Greasy Shoals, were improved by blasting large rock, and removing small stones and gravel from the chutes, and repairing the old wing-dams,
The following were improved by constructing riprap wing-dams: L. Preston Ripple, Win. Preston Ripple, Jas. Proston Ripple, BĆŗllalo Shoals (j of a mile long), and Twin Maple Shoals.
The following were improved by removing rock, straightening the chutes, and making the channel wide enough for the navigation of push-bouts, the only boats with which it is possible to ascend the river in low-water: Purgatory Ripple, Miller’s Creek, Bird and Preston Shoals, Parter Hippie, Auxier, Hager, and Wireman’s Shoals, Bay Ripple and Moody Shoals; Abbot Shoals by removing stone from channel and cutting down a sunken barge.
Middle Creek Sand Bar by removing snags and timber piles, half buried in the sand, in order that the river might resume its natural bed. Welt, Davidson, Joy, Strattoii’n, and Long Shoals were improved by blasting and removing bowlders and large stone from the rhaunol."
Many of those names of the various locations and shoals are familiar, although we don't know where many of them exactly are yet. I wonder when the last time was that the government dredged our river? I don't think it has been touched for many decades, but I sort of like the idea of the river going back to the natural state it would have been in when the first pioneers and Indians traveled it!
It is interesting because the following incident happened right in front of our house. The shoals in front of our house are known as ‘Wild Goose Shoals’ and this spot is mentioned in the following article.
I hope you enjoy reading this little anectdote from the riverboat days!
BIG SANDY RIVERBOATS:
The following article, written by W.D. O’Neal, appeared in the Ashland Daily Independent newspaper on March 15, 1940.
"The ‘Dew Drop’ lacked the lighting conveniences of boats of the present day. It ran at night by light from burning pine knots in iron baskets on the bow on each side, and pine torches were used in receiving and discharging passengers and freight. The river was the main artery of commerce and travel. All roads led to the river. It was the highway for those moving out and those moving in to this great valley.
The ‘Dew Drop’ register of April 20, 1871 shows among the passengers leaving Catlettsburg and their destinations, the following: Pete Marcum and W.M. Marcum, Mouth of Blaine; John Caldwell, Whites Creek; J.G. Burgess, Burgess Landing; W.M. Cains, Jake Rice, Rolen Burns, F.T.D Wallace, Mrs. John Rice, J.N.See [John N. SEE], John Hatcher and Mont Goble, Louisa, KY. Other passengers were rigistered for points up the river.
As interesting as steamboating may have been in the 60′s & 70′s on the Big Sandy, it was not always smooth sailing. There are several shoals where the current is too swift for a boat to stem its engine power and it was necessary to "warp" through. A line was pulled along the waters edge and fastened to some solid object, the other end was wound around the capstan, and the boat moved on by a combination of manpower.
Sometimes there were amusing incidents. On one occasion the ‘Dew Drop’ was entering Wild Goose Shoal. The deck hands took the line and were wading up stream to make the tie when suddenly they stopped as they ran into a trot line. The mate yelled, ‘hurry up’. One of the men replied, ‘Alright captain, but you’ll have to wait ’til I git these here d–m fishhooks out of my britches!"
Had our house been situated where it currently is at the mouth of Pure Water Hollow, and had my family been here, I’m sure our dogs would have been barking and we would have been down at the river to see what all the commotion was!
=================================================
While I’m on this topic, I thought I would record another bit of info I discovered while researching our shoals. In 1871 the US Corp of Engineers did work to reduce the shoals in front of our house to make riverboat traffic more accessible.
I recently purchased a 14 foot john boat and I am looking forward to using it down on our river. I think it will be interesting to explore the waterways that were once so important that even the government was concerned about it’s condition!
Here is part of the report I found with everything deleted except our part of the river. I have also left in some of the mis-spellings, etc.
"Captain: I respectfully submit my report of operations on the improvement of Big Sandy River, West Virginia and Kentucky, during the months of August, September, October, and November, 1871), at that timo under the direction of Major William E. Merrill, United States Corps of Engineers.
Operations were commenced August 25, and continued until November 20. The work was done entirely by hired labor, and the force employed was divided into three parties—one party on the main river and one party on each fork….
…LOUISA FORK.
On this fork, from Louisa, Ky., to Piketon, Ky., a distance of 86 1/2 miles, -47 shoals were improved, as follows: Twist and Wind, Twin Brother und Contrary Shoals, by blasting and breaking up the bowlders and confining the water to one channel, by means of low wing-dams built from the blasted rock.
Griffith‘s Creek Sand Bar, by changing the channel over bar. Fish Trap, Graves, Bumble Bee, Joe Border’s Ripple, and several small shoals near Lost Creek, Chesnut, Jas. Davis, Murray Shoals, Nathan Border’s Ripple, and Little White House Shoals, Big White House, Vanhoose, Red House, Wild Goose, Ward’s and Greasy Shoals, were improved by blasting large rock, and removing small stones and gravel from the chutes, and repairing the old wing-dams,
The following were improved by constructing riprap wing-dams: L. Preston Ripple, Win. Preston Ripple, Jas. Proston Ripple, BĆŗllalo Shoals (j of a mile long), and Twin Maple Shoals.
The following were improved by removing rock, straightening the chutes, and making the channel wide enough for the navigation of push-bouts, the only boats with which it is possible to ascend the river in low-water: Purgatory Ripple, Miller’s Creek, Bird and Preston Shoals, Parter Hippie, Auxier, Hager, and Wireman’s Shoals, Bay Ripple and Moody Shoals; Abbot Shoals by removing stone from channel and cutting down a sunken barge.
Middle Creek Sand Bar by removing snags and timber piles, half buried in the sand, in order that the river might resume its natural bed. Welt, Davidson, Joy, Strattoii’n, and Long Shoals were improved by blasting and removing bowlders and large stone from the rhaunol."
Many of those names of the various locations and shoals are familiar, although we don't know where many of them exactly are yet. I wonder when the last time was that the government dredged our river? I don't think it has been touched for many decades, but I sort of like the idea of the river going back to the natural state it would have been in when the first pioneers and Indians traveled it!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Kids Born at Purewater Hollow! (Take 2)
It has been 11 days since Mamma Belle gave birth to her kids, in which 2 of three survived. (One boy and one girl.) Belle and both kids seem to be doing great!
Now, Belle’s kids will have some nephews to play with! Little LuLu gave birth to 2 cute little black and white boys today! LuLu had bolted out of her stall earlier today when Matthew opened it to feed her and she headed up the hill! She did not seem to be in labor at that time.
A bit later, the pigs came down to the house, (which is unacceptable). When the children ran the pigs back up to the barn, Matthew noticed that LuLu was not with the other goats on the hill. A brief search revealed 2 little kids and LuLu just a bit above the goat barn. The kids were dirty from rolling down the steep hill some, but they were ok otherwise. We carried the kids down to the stall where we had been keeping LuLu and eventually rounded LuLu up and got a rope around her neck to take her back to the stall. She was not very cooperative, but after some sweat and work, Matthew persuaded her to get back into the stall.
Here is what they looked like when we found them:
You can sort of tell how steep the hill is in these shots:
And here they are exploring the barn stall:
And starting to nurse off LuLu:
When we left the barn, mother and babies were all doing fine. LuLu was cleaning up the kids and they were both nursing some on each side of her udder.
Belle gave birth to the first kids of Purewater Hollow, but LuLu gets an asterisk in the record books as giving birth to the first kids actually born on Purewater Hollow soil. (Belle technically gave birth over the ridge about 50 feet off of our property, but LuLu delivered right in the heart of the goat lot on the hill.) !
So, our goat herd of 5 has now increased to 9 with the addition of these three boys and one girl. We will probably keep them all for the foreseeable future, making the boys wethers, and allowing them all to continue clearing up the briars and kudzu, making the hillside suitable for cattle one day, hopefully.
This may not be the best time to mention this next fact, but LuLu, the mother, is half Alpine and half Boer. Alpine is a milk breed, but Boer is a meat breed. It is possible that LuLu’s kids could be very benefitial to our homestead as a meat supply, someday, even though that is not neccessarily our plans for this litter.
We are thankful to God, and the future of our homestead is in His hands, as always. We just want to be good stewards of what He gives to us!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 25, 2009 at 4:32 am
Sounds like things are going good.There is just something about an animal being born on your own land, for the first time that just makes you step back and just praise !!!! Have a wonderful day.
Now, Belle’s kids will have some nephews to play with! Little LuLu gave birth to 2 cute little black and white boys today! LuLu had bolted out of her stall earlier today when Matthew opened it to feed her and she headed up the hill! She did not seem to be in labor at that time.
A bit later, the pigs came down to the house, (which is unacceptable). When the children ran the pigs back up to the barn, Matthew noticed that LuLu was not with the other goats on the hill. A brief search revealed 2 little kids and LuLu just a bit above the goat barn. The kids were dirty from rolling down the steep hill some, but they were ok otherwise. We carried the kids down to the stall where we had been keeping LuLu and eventually rounded LuLu up and got a rope around her neck to take her back to the stall. She was not very cooperative, but after some sweat and work, Matthew persuaded her to get back into the stall.
Here is what they looked like when we found them:
You can sort of tell how steep the hill is in these shots:
And here they are exploring the barn stall:
And starting to nurse off LuLu:
When we left the barn, mother and babies were all doing fine. LuLu was cleaning up the kids and they were both nursing some on each side of her udder.
Belle gave birth to the first kids of Purewater Hollow, but LuLu gets an asterisk in the record books as giving birth to the first kids actually born on Purewater Hollow soil. (Belle technically gave birth over the ridge about 50 feet off of our property, but LuLu delivered right in the heart of the goat lot on the hill.) !
So, our goat herd of 5 has now increased to 9 with the addition of these three boys and one girl. We will probably keep them all for the foreseeable future, making the boys wethers, and allowing them all to continue clearing up the briars and kudzu, making the hillside suitable for cattle one day, hopefully.
This may not be the best time to mention this next fact, but LuLu, the mother, is half Alpine and half Boer. Alpine is a milk breed, but Boer is a meat breed. It is possible that LuLu’s kids could be very benefitial to our homestead as a meat supply, someday, even though that is not neccessarily our plans for this litter.
We are thankful to God, and the future of our homestead is in His hands, as always. We just want to be good stewards of what He gives to us!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 25, 2009 at 4:32 am
Sounds like things are going good.There is just something about an animal being born on your own land, for the first time that just makes you step back and just praise !!!! Have a wonderful day.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
1909 America
What was life like 100 years ago? Well, this came across in an email and I thought it was interesting. I have not personally verified any of these statitistics, so they may not be accurate. We tend to believe everything that we hear or see in print, but who really knows? I do think that this has the ring of truth to it, however. Enjoy!
~Eric
THE YEAR 1909
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
The year is 1909.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1909 :
************ ********* ********* ****** ********
The average life expectancy was 47years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour. The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year . A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as ‘substandard. ‘
Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said,’Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health’
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !
I am now going to forward this to someone else without typing it myself. From there, it will be sent to others all over the WORLD - all in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
IT STAGGERS THE MIND
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Purewater on May 21, 2009 at 1:56 pm
OK. I looked the flag up, and Oklahoma became a state in 1907. The 46th star was added to the flag and this flag became official July 4th, 1908. So there were 46 stars and not the 45 the email states.
I think I will check a few more of these facts out.
~Eric
THE YEAR 1909
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
The year is 1909.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1909 :
************ ********* ********* ****** ********
The average life expectancy was 47years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour. The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year . A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as ‘substandard. ‘
Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said,’Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health’
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !
I am now going to forward this to someone else without typing it myself. From there, it will be sent to others all over the WORLD - all in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
IT STAGGERS THE MIND
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Purewater on May 21, 2009 at 1:56 pm
OK. I looked the flag up, and Oklahoma became a state in 1907. The 46th star was added to the flag and this flag became official July 4th, 1908. So there were 46 stars and not the 45 the email states.
I think I will check a few more of these facts out.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Question about daytime chicken predators
I have some sad news. Yesterday we apparently lost our mamma hen, Wingleg, and 7 of her 14 chicks. 5 of the Buff Orpington chicks and 2 of the White Rock chicks are gone. We heard the chickens making a commotion around 5:30 yesterday evening, but when Simon ran back to check, everything got quiet and he didn’t see anything. Later that evening, as we went up to milk Belle, we found several feathers that were the color of Wingleg. She apparently put up a fight, but a handful of feathers was the only evidence.
Also, last Friday, just 4 days earlier, a similar incident happened. We heard a commotion late afternoon/early evening, no evidence at all that time, and one of my Black Giant hens did not show up to roost in the coop and hasn’t been seen since.
I am diligent about locking the chickens up in a secure coop at night and they stay in a fenced lot all day until about 4:00. We then usually let them out to free range and enjoy the sun, grass, worms, and bugs for the last 4 or 5 hours of the day and then they all come back to roost in the coop and be shut in.
We have an abundance of tree, bush and weed cover for the chickens. We also have 4 dogs running around to protect the property, although they do nap a lot during the day.
What could be getting our chickens in the middle/end of the day? All I can think of is a hawk, but would a hawk take out 7 chicks and a mama hen all in one swoop?
I’m planning on leaving them all locked in their lots today, but I don’t want to do that all the time. I think they are healthier and happier when they are allowed to free range some. If I continue to free-range them, will I just have to accept loosing some of them every once in a while? But two attacks in 5 days is too many!
Any ideas or suggestions? Does anyone else have trouble with day-time chicken predators?
Thanks for the comments in advance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karen on May 20, 2009 at 11:36 am
If we hadn't seen it with our own eyes we wouldn't have believed it. A fox was doing the same thing exactly as you have described to our chickens. The fox is so sneaky and sly about it that it's just a wonder that we saw him in action one day after chickens had been disappearing when we'd turn them out late in the afternoons.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jrejhkids on May 20, 2009 at 11:47 am
We let ours out in the afternoon as well. We haven't lost any yet, but we don't have the woods, etc. Ours roam in the pasture with the steer and goat. We have lost one to a pig, when it flew into the pig pen and the pig ate it.
Hope you find out what killed them.
~jrejhkids
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mountainmama on May 20, 2009 at 11:47 am
A fox could be it or possibly a coyote. They travel in packs and could easily kill many chickens. They are also hard to spot.
I hope you find what is doing this. Last year we discovered a rat was killing our chicks. I sympathize because it is frustrating.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lorena on May 20, 2009 at 11:57 am
We turn 80 this year and no longer live in the country our son lives on the farm now. We had a sneaky fox one year during the day at night we had a chicken fence around a yard where they could go in and out the chicken house.Each niight we would find the heads of some birds as they likely stuck their heads out. After sitting in the car all night it was the bigest great horned owl I had ever seen.Your place sounds wonderful.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
karen in MS on May 20, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I also think this sounds like a fox. They are very sneaky and hard to catch.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 24, 2009 at 5:16 am
I guess the fox also, even though a tom cat will do the same thing. We had a big yellow tom cat that we saw go in an take one of our hens over the fence. Could you tie one of your dogs around the pen area to get his scent around the pen? That might help until you find whats around you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
janaeel on May 27, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Racoons are most known for there nightime raids be we recently killed one that was after ours at high noon. Our dog treed the rascal and it met it demise. Not a big racoon fan. Have fed too many chicken dinners to them.
Janaeel
Also, last Friday, just 4 days earlier, a similar incident happened. We heard a commotion late afternoon/early evening, no evidence at all that time, and one of my Black Giant hens did not show up to roost in the coop and hasn’t been seen since.
I am diligent about locking the chickens up in a secure coop at night and they stay in a fenced lot all day until about 4:00. We then usually let them out to free range and enjoy the sun, grass, worms, and bugs for the last 4 or 5 hours of the day and then they all come back to roost in the coop and be shut in.
We have an abundance of tree, bush and weed cover for the chickens. We also have 4 dogs running around to protect the property, although they do nap a lot during the day.
What could be getting our chickens in the middle/end of the day? All I can think of is a hawk, but would a hawk take out 7 chicks and a mama hen all in one swoop?
I’m planning on leaving them all locked in their lots today, but I don’t want to do that all the time. I think they are healthier and happier when they are allowed to free range some. If I continue to free-range them, will I just have to accept loosing some of them every once in a while? But two attacks in 5 days is too many!
Any ideas or suggestions? Does anyone else have trouble with day-time chicken predators?
Thanks for the comments in advance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karen on May 20, 2009 at 11:36 am
If we hadn't seen it with our own eyes we wouldn't have believed it. A fox was doing the same thing exactly as you have described to our chickens. The fox is so sneaky and sly about it that it's just a wonder that we saw him in action one day after chickens had been disappearing when we'd turn them out late in the afternoons.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jrejhkids on May 20, 2009 at 11:47 am
We let ours out in the afternoon as well. We haven't lost any yet, but we don't have the woods, etc. Ours roam in the pasture with the steer and goat. We have lost one to a pig, when it flew into the pig pen and the pig ate it.
Hope you find out what killed them.
~jrejhkids
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mountainmama on May 20, 2009 at 11:47 am
A fox could be it or possibly a coyote. They travel in packs and could easily kill many chickens. They are also hard to spot.
I hope you find what is doing this. Last year we discovered a rat was killing our chicks. I sympathize because it is frustrating.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lorena on May 20, 2009 at 11:57 am
We turn 80 this year and no longer live in the country our son lives on the farm now. We had a sneaky fox one year during the day at night we had a chicken fence around a yard where they could go in and out the chicken house.Each niight we would find the heads of some birds as they likely stuck their heads out. After sitting in the car all night it was the bigest great horned owl I had ever seen.Your place sounds wonderful.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
karen in MS on May 20, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I also think this sounds like a fox. They are very sneaky and hard to catch.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 24, 2009 at 5:16 am
I guess the fox also, even though a tom cat will do the same thing. We had a big yellow tom cat that we saw go in an take one of our hens over the fence. Could you tie one of your dogs around the pen area to get his scent around the pen? That might help until you find whats around you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
janaeel on May 27, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Racoons are most known for there nightime raids be we recently killed one that was after ours at high noon. Our dog treed the rascal and it met it demise. Not a big racoon fan. Have fed too many chicken dinners to them.
Janaeel
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
You've Got To Be Kidding!
The 13th of May was a beautiful, windy afternoon. The sun was shining, but fluffy, rain filled clouds were encircling the sky like a school of hungry sharks surrounding a life raft in the ocean. There was a magical feeling in the mountains this day, as the trees swayed in the breeze and the sky continuously swirled and churned. The distant rumbles of thunder were both foreboding and exhilarating.
We were not in the mountains today just enjoying God’s wondrous nature. We were on a mission of serious importance! The entire goat herd was missing and Belle had been seen earlier in the day with the early discharge that would precede kidding. We had wanted to put Belle in the barn to give birth, but she had disappeared during the time it took the children to return to the house with the news. Matthew, Christina, and Simon spent all afternoon searching the entire east side of our hollow for the goats to no avail. It is quite a hike up to the ridge, and after criss-crossing the goat pasture hill and beyond they were pretty wore out!
We had gotten Mama Belle back in the spring of 2007 along with her three 6-week old kids. During the past couple of years we have gradually worked on our goat fencing and facilities until we decided that we would finally be ready to start raising goats from birth. (We still have much we need to do to complete the goat pasture and things we want to do in the goat barn. I guess things will never be “perfect” enough, so may as well trudge ahead!)
We borrowed a buck from a friend in December and kept him all winter long. Apparently he and Belle bred almost immediately, because she was now giving birth just 151 days after she had first met this buck! (150 days is the gestation period for goats, give or take a week.)
After work I hurried home to help look for the goats. They had never disappeared so completely before! I guessed that Belle had set off to deliver her kids in private and the rest of the herd had followed her far away, but at the same time I was prepared for the worse. I hoped the goats were ok, but I also instructed the children to search for signs of an attack from a pack of wild dogs or coyotes and we were prepared to find some seriously injured or killed goats. There are some very steep cliffs up at the ridge, and it could be possible that an ill-timed jump or a slip of the hoof could cause a goat to plummet to its death. We organized a search party of Matthew, Christina, Simon and I, with Lisa and Erica holding down the fort at home.
Christina and Simon trekked once again up the ridge beginning at the house. I started at the goat pasture, following the trails to the ridge top. I sent Matthew to check the neighboring hollow on his four-wheeler, in case they had gone up and over and perhaps gotten lost. All the while we were noticing the beauty around us we were also looking under briars and next to rock cliffs for signs of destruction!
We were connected to each other via two way radios, so Lisa could listen in to our progress as we gave periodic reports. It wasn’t too long before Christina and Simon reached the spot on the ridge above the goat lot where I was, with none of us seeing any sign of the goats. Matthew drove as far as he could on his four-wheeler before he was blocked by fallen trees in the road. Since no one lives over in that hollow, no one had cleaned up anything after our February ice storms and wind storms. Mathew had to backtrack out of there instead of coming on up to the ridge like I had hoped.
We spread out, once again, and started combing the ridge and hillsides “manhunt” style, being just far enough away from each other that we could not hear each other unless we yelled pretty loudly. Simon and I took the lower spot on the opposite side of the ridge, Christina took the top part of the ridge, and Matthew was going up to the North rim to come back toward us.
It wasn’t too long before Simon and I thought we heard strange sounds up in the distance. It sounded like it could be horns butting each other in playful combat! After hearing it a couple more times, Christina broke the radio silence with a euphoric, “I found the goats! At least some of them…” When I asked where she was, it was a bit comical at first, because she couldn’t say for sure. I thought, “Christina found the goats, but now we’ve lost Christina!” A couple minutes later we heard her come over the radio, “Here’s Belle. She’s ok.” And after a few moments of silence she came back on, “And she has kids! They’re adorable!”
I soon ascertained the position of Christina and the goats. Belle was way up under a rock-cliff cave and the other goats were on top and around the giant rock. It was a rather strenuous climb to get up to where they were from the angle I was coming from and Simon quickly outpaced me up the steep hillside.
It is difficult to describe the topography of this spot. There are sheer cliff sides that are impossible to climb, some as much as 20 to 30 feet while others are just 6 or 7 feet. There are several crevices amidst the cliffs and overhanging rock ledges. It is similar to the areas on our side, but we had not been on this land much, since our property line stops at the top of the ridge and this was on the other side. The unfamiliarity lent to the excitement and wonder of the whole situation!
It was also impossible to get any pictures that really do the spot justice, since we couldn’t get back far enough to take in the whole spot in the viewfinder of the camera. But perhaps these shots give some idea of the terrain we were navigating to get to Belle and her kids. This was the rock that Belle was hiding out in:
Here is Christina next to what I am now calling "Goat Rock":
Here is a picture of Belle on guard; probably something like Christina first saw when she rounded the side of the rock:
We did not have our cameras with us on the search and rescue mission, so all of these pictures were taken after Matthew volunteered to go back to the house to get the cameras, a rope, and some sacks to carry the kids in.
When I got up the cliff, Christina and Simon were admiring two very cute, little goats that were still wet. Belle was in the process of cleaning them off, and she had the beginnings of the after birth material still attached to her backside. (I don’t know how to describe that delicately.) We figured that these kids had to only be perhaps 30 minutes old, since we have read that they dry off quickly. There was a female that was mostly black, and a male that was mostly white. Unfortunately there was also another male that looked just like the black female that was lying to the side, dead.
Here are some pictures of them up in their "birthing room" under Goat Rock.
The boy:
The girl:
A close-up:
Mama Belle knew how to take care of them:
We all enjoyed watching the new kids as we were aware that we had just stumbled upon a miracle of God!
You can see in the above picture a bit of the ledge that this rock crevice was on. We knew that we needed to get them to the barn for their safety. I was afraid that the little goats would hop out to the edge and then fall about 15 feet down and get hurt, or perhaps those wild animals we thought of before would find an easy meal up here, away from our dogs normal patrol route.
The trek carrying the kids down the mountain was full of adventure and adrenaline. For one thing, the sky had clouded up quite a bit and coupled with the wind and thunder, it looked like we could be in for a good storm! We put each kid in a feed sack and hoped that Belle would follow their bleating down the mountain. It turned out that Matthew needed to put a rope around her neck to lead her down the mountain side. For some reason she was more concerned with eating greens than keeping up with her babies. Maybe she knew they were in good hands? Matthew and Belle found their own route off the mountain while Christina, Simon and I did the best we could getting down without shaking or squeezing the kids too hard.
We took turns carrying the kids because of the difficulty of the hike. Christina and Simon had a much easier time than I did! It was difficult finding solid footholds climbing down the hill and I actually fell a few times. Once I caught my leg under a fallen tree and could have broken it had I fallen forward instead of backward! By the time we got down to the goat barn, the sweat was drenching my undershirt. I was glad to get them into a stall in the old barn and that Mama Belle still wanted to take care of them in the stall!
Here they are in the barn stall before we retired for the night:
We took some more pictures the next day. We have been vascillating some concerning names for the kids, but it seems like "Galadriel", named after the elf princess in Lord of the Rings, has stuck for the black girl. We have been calling her "Galaddy" or "Gladdy" for short. It seems the boy will be named after Lord of the Rings’ Tom Bombadil, "Master of wood, water and hill." We have been calling him "Tom" or "Tommy" but we have also been calling him "George" after Curious George.
So this adventure took place last Wednesday, May 13th. We estimate that Tom and Galaddy were born about 4:00 in the afternoon. They are 6 days old today.
A couple final notes:
Lisa milked Belle last night and the evening before! Belle is full Alpine, so she should be a good milk goat. Milking a goat is new for us, and so far we have just taken enough to make Belle more comfortable. For some reason, one side of her utter has been very much engorged compared to the other side. We are considering working out a regular milking schedule, but we definitely do not want to bottle feed the kids. Maybe we will be able to share with the kids. I am pleased with the taste of the milk; there’s not much difference from store bought cow’s milk. Any suggestions on milking a goat would be welcomed!
Our other doe, Little LuLu, seems to be near kidding. We have her in a private barn stall, so there will not likely be such an adventure as we had with Mama Belle’s kidding. This will be LuLu’s first kidding, even though she is over two years old. She is half Alpine (from Belle) and half Boer, so she should be a good milk goat also. The problem with her is that she is not very friendly toward us, and I don’t know if she will let us milk her or not. We are hoping she will be able to deliver without any complications.
It has been exciting to welcome the first goats born at Pure Water Hollow. We didn’t get to witness the birthing first hand, but we were close! We are very thankful for the kids that have joined our homestead and we give God the praise for His creations! Had we not found them in time, this episode could have ended with in a tragic note. Perhaps things are starting to turn around for us at Pure Water Hollow for the better!
There is another sad footnote to the day of May 13th, however. While we were looking for the goats, we noticed one of the Rouen ducks were gone. We later found Champ, our chocolate Lab, with a duck wing in his mouth! We don’t know for sure if he killed the duck, or just finished her off. Either way, it has pretty much sealed his fate. We will try to find a new home for him.
I hate to end this post on a sad note! I am pumped up about our new kids and they are so cute! If you want some cute, friendly little animals at your homestead, all I have to say is, "You’ve got to be kidding!" Ha! Ha!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
karen in MS on May 19, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Wow!! What a day you've had!! You live in a truly beautiful place way up in those mountains. We don't have any mountains in South Mississippi, but I've always loved them.
Good luck with your new baaaaaaaaaabies, lol!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 24, 2009 at 5:34 am
Wow !!! what an adventure, the kids are cute……yours plus the four legged ones….if your lab took the duck could he have taken the chicks ?… .
We were not in the mountains today just enjoying God’s wondrous nature. We were on a mission of serious importance! The entire goat herd was missing and Belle had been seen earlier in the day with the early discharge that would precede kidding. We had wanted to put Belle in the barn to give birth, but she had disappeared during the time it took the children to return to the house with the news. Matthew, Christina, and Simon spent all afternoon searching the entire east side of our hollow for the goats to no avail. It is quite a hike up to the ridge, and after criss-crossing the goat pasture hill and beyond they were pretty wore out!
We had gotten Mama Belle back in the spring of 2007 along with her three 6-week old kids. During the past couple of years we have gradually worked on our goat fencing and facilities until we decided that we would finally be ready to start raising goats from birth. (We still have much we need to do to complete the goat pasture and things we want to do in the goat barn. I guess things will never be “perfect” enough, so may as well trudge ahead!)
We borrowed a buck from a friend in December and kept him all winter long. Apparently he and Belle bred almost immediately, because she was now giving birth just 151 days after she had first met this buck! (150 days is the gestation period for goats, give or take a week.)
After work I hurried home to help look for the goats. They had never disappeared so completely before! I guessed that Belle had set off to deliver her kids in private and the rest of the herd had followed her far away, but at the same time I was prepared for the worse. I hoped the goats were ok, but I also instructed the children to search for signs of an attack from a pack of wild dogs or coyotes and we were prepared to find some seriously injured or killed goats. There are some very steep cliffs up at the ridge, and it could be possible that an ill-timed jump or a slip of the hoof could cause a goat to plummet to its death. We organized a search party of Matthew, Christina, Simon and I, with Lisa and Erica holding down the fort at home.
Christina and Simon trekked once again up the ridge beginning at the house. I started at the goat pasture, following the trails to the ridge top. I sent Matthew to check the neighboring hollow on his four-wheeler, in case they had gone up and over and perhaps gotten lost. All the while we were noticing the beauty around us we were also looking under briars and next to rock cliffs for signs of destruction!
We were connected to each other via two way radios, so Lisa could listen in to our progress as we gave periodic reports. It wasn’t too long before Christina and Simon reached the spot on the ridge above the goat lot where I was, with none of us seeing any sign of the goats. Matthew drove as far as he could on his four-wheeler before he was blocked by fallen trees in the road. Since no one lives over in that hollow, no one had cleaned up anything after our February ice storms and wind storms. Mathew had to backtrack out of there instead of coming on up to the ridge like I had hoped.
We spread out, once again, and started combing the ridge and hillsides “manhunt” style, being just far enough away from each other that we could not hear each other unless we yelled pretty loudly. Simon and I took the lower spot on the opposite side of the ridge, Christina took the top part of the ridge, and Matthew was going up to the North rim to come back toward us.
It wasn’t too long before Simon and I thought we heard strange sounds up in the distance. It sounded like it could be horns butting each other in playful combat! After hearing it a couple more times, Christina broke the radio silence with a euphoric, “I found the goats! At least some of them…” When I asked where she was, it was a bit comical at first, because she couldn’t say for sure. I thought, “Christina found the goats, but now we’ve lost Christina!” A couple minutes later we heard her come over the radio, “Here’s Belle. She’s ok.” And after a few moments of silence she came back on, “And she has kids! They’re adorable!”
I soon ascertained the position of Christina and the goats. Belle was way up under a rock-cliff cave and the other goats were on top and around the giant rock. It was a rather strenuous climb to get up to where they were from the angle I was coming from and Simon quickly outpaced me up the steep hillside.
It is difficult to describe the topography of this spot. There are sheer cliff sides that are impossible to climb, some as much as 20 to 30 feet while others are just 6 or 7 feet. There are several crevices amidst the cliffs and overhanging rock ledges. It is similar to the areas on our side, but we had not been on this land much, since our property line stops at the top of the ridge and this was on the other side. The unfamiliarity lent to the excitement and wonder of the whole situation!
It was also impossible to get any pictures that really do the spot justice, since we couldn’t get back far enough to take in the whole spot in the viewfinder of the camera. But perhaps these shots give some idea of the terrain we were navigating to get to Belle and her kids. This was the rock that Belle was hiding out in:
Here is Christina next to what I am now calling "Goat Rock":
Here is a picture of Belle on guard; probably something like Christina first saw when she rounded the side of the rock:
We did not have our cameras with us on the search and rescue mission, so all of these pictures were taken after Matthew volunteered to go back to the house to get the cameras, a rope, and some sacks to carry the kids in.
When I got up the cliff, Christina and Simon were admiring two very cute, little goats that were still wet. Belle was in the process of cleaning them off, and she had the beginnings of the after birth material still attached to her backside. (I don’t know how to describe that delicately.) We figured that these kids had to only be perhaps 30 minutes old, since we have read that they dry off quickly. There was a female that was mostly black, and a male that was mostly white. Unfortunately there was also another male that looked just like the black female that was lying to the side, dead.
Here are some pictures of them up in their "birthing room" under Goat Rock.
The boy:
The girl:
A close-up:
Mama Belle knew how to take care of them:
We all enjoyed watching the new kids as we were aware that we had just stumbled upon a miracle of God!
You can see in the above picture a bit of the ledge that this rock crevice was on. We knew that we needed to get them to the barn for their safety. I was afraid that the little goats would hop out to the edge and then fall about 15 feet down and get hurt, or perhaps those wild animals we thought of before would find an easy meal up here, away from our dogs normal patrol route.
The trek carrying the kids down the mountain was full of adventure and adrenaline. For one thing, the sky had clouded up quite a bit and coupled with the wind and thunder, it looked like we could be in for a good storm! We put each kid in a feed sack and hoped that Belle would follow their bleating down the mountain. It turned out that Matthew needed to put a rope around her neck to lead her down the mountain side. For some reason she was more concerned with eating greens than keeping up with her babies. Maybe she knew they were in good hands? Matthew and Belle found their own route off the mountain while Christina, Simon and I did the best we could getting down without shaking or squeezing the kids too hard.
We took turns carrying the kids because of the difficulty of the hike. Christina and Simon had a much easier time than I did! It was difficult finding solid footholds climbing down the hill and I actually fell a few times. Once I caught my leg under a fallen tree and could have broken it had I fallen forward instead of backward! By the time we got down to the goat barn, the sweat was drenching my undershirt. I was glad to get them into a stall in the old barn and that Mama Belle still wanted to take care of them in the stall!
Here they are in the barn stall before we retired for the night:
We took some more pictures the next day. We have been vascillating some concerning names for the kids, but it seems like "Galadriel", named after the elf princess in Lord of the Rings, has stuck for the black girl. We have been calling her "Galaddy" or "Gladdy" for short. It seems the boy will be named after Lord of the Rings’ Tom Bombadil, "Master of wood, water and hill." We have been calling him "Tom" or "Tommy" but we have also been calling him "George" after Curious George.
So this adventure took place last Wednesday, May 13th. We estimate that Tom and Galaddy were born about 4:00 in the afternoon. They are 6 days old today.
A couple final notes:
Lisa milked Belle last night and the evening before! Belle is full Alpine, so she should be a good milk goat. Milking a goat is new for us, and so far we have just taken enough to make Belle more comfortable. For some reason, one side of her utter has been very much engorged compared to the other side. We are considering working out a regular milking schedule, but we definitely do not want to bottle feed the kids. Maybe we will be able to share with the kids. I am pleased with the taste of the milk; there’s not much difference from store bought cow’s milk. Any suggestions on milking a goat would be welcomed!
Our other doe, Little LuLu, seems to be near kidding. We have her in a private barn stall, so there will not likely be such an adventure as we had with Mama Belle’s kidding. This will be LuLu’s first kidding, even though she is over two years old. She is half Alpine (from Belle) and half Boer, so she should be a good milk goat also. The problem with her is that she is not very friendly toward us, and I don’t know if she will let us milk her or not. We are hoping she will be able to deliver without any complications.
It has been exciting to welcome the first goats born at Pure Water Hollow. We didn’t get to witness the birthing first hand, but we were close! We are very thankful for the kids that have joined our homestead and we give God the praise for His creations! Had we not found them in time, this episode could have ended with in a tragic note. Perhaps things are starting to turn around for us at Pure Water Hollow for the better!
There is another sad footnote to the day of May 13th, however. While we were looking for the goats, we noticed one of the Rouen ducks were gone. We later found Champ, our chocolate Lab, with a duck wing in his mouth! We don’t know for sure if he killed the duck, or just finished her off. Either way, it has pretty much sealed his fate. We will try to find a new home for him.
I hate to end this post on a sad note! I am pumped up about our new kids and they are so cute! If you want some cute, friendly little animals at your homestead, all I have to say is, "You’ve got to be kidding!" Ha! Ha!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
karen in MS on May 19, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Wow!! What a day you've had!! You live in a truly beautiful place way up in those mountains. We don't have any mountains in South Mississippi, but I've always loved them.
Good luck with your new baaaaaaaaaabies, lol!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 24, 2009 at 5:34 am
Wow !!! what an adventure, the kids are cute……yours plus the four legged ones….if your lab took the duck could he have taken the chicks ?… .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)