How to Freeze Summer Vegetables

At this point in the season the farmers market tables are a riot of color, piled precariously with mountains of perfect produce – succulent heirloom tomatoes in their misfit beauty, corn fit to burst at the touch, luminous summer squash lined up in flirty nonchalance. But you know what will happen. The abundance will slowly dwindle as the apples start taking over, and all of a sudden, it’s roots and kale until spring.

With the canning revival in full swing, sterilized jars and water baths are covering the counters of many a kitchen. But if you shy away from canning or have ample freezer space to supplement the pantry, freezing produce is an excellent way to preserve the local harvest for the bleaker months. Although frozen vegetables have taken a bad rap in the past, I’d take frozen produce in a heartbeat over old produce, commercially canned products, or produce imported from afar. Nutrients aren’t lost, and if frozen properly, neither is texture nor flavor.

The Basics

Use the freshest produce you can find, and freeze it as soon as you can—the quicker the better. Make sure to avoid the 12 most toxic fruits and vegetables.

Wash and dry everything thoroughly. Remove pits and cut into uniform sized pieces.

Use containers, freezer bags or a vacuum seal system—and remember to leave headroom for expansion.

If you are watching your use of plastic, the ever-popular Ball makes freezer safe glass jars—yay! Label with contents and date.

Blanching

Although freezing slows enzyme action, it doesn’t completely stop it – therefore, most produce requires some method of heat treatment, generally blanching, to inactivate the ripening enzymes and to preserve color, texture, and flavor. To blanch vegetables, place the washed, prepared vegetables in a pot of boiling water. Roughly use a gallon of water per pound of prepped vegetables. Boil water, and time the blanching as soon as the water returns to a boil after submerging the produce. After the recommended time has elapsed, remove the vegetables and plunge them into very cold (you can add ice) water for the same amount of time that you blanched them for.

Most frozen produce should be good stored for nine to 12 months. These are the basic methods for summer’s most popular produce.

Friesian Dairy Cow

Friesian Cow is best known for its outstanding milk producing capacity. These Friesian Cows are healthy and have long-life.

Some Interesting Facts :

Originated in the Netherlands
Quickly recognized by their distinctive black and white color markings
Outstanding milk production
Color Patterns can be either of black and white or red and white.
A healthy Friesian calf weighs 40 Kg or more at birth
A mature Friesian cow weighs about 700 Kg and stand 150 cm tall at the shoulder
Friesian heifers can be bred at 15 months of age, when they weigh about 360 Kg.
It is desirable to have Friesian females calve for the first time between 24 and 27 months of age. While some cows may live considerably longer, the normal productive life of a Friesian cow is six years.

Milk Production Capacity : The average milk production for a Friesian cow is 7800 Kg of milk per lactation

How to Tattoo Your Goats for Easy Identification

No matter whether you're keeping goats because they contribute to a sustainable lifestyle or as a 4-H project for your kids, you'll need to mark them for easy identification. Tattooing your goats is relatively inexpensive. Basic equipment for tattooing costs less than $100 and only a few dollars a year after that.

Microchipping is also an option. Tattooing, although slightly more painful for the goat, doesn’t come with many medical risks; microchipping, on the other hand, has been known to cause tumors.

If you plan to register goats, you need to check with the registry you will use to find out what method they allow and what tattoo sequence (letters and numbers) you need to use.

Supplies for tattooing include gloves to protect your hands from ink, a pair of tattoo tongs, special tattoo ink, and letters and numbers to use in the tongs. You can use black ink on light-colored goats, but green shows up better on dark-skinned goats.

Secure the sequence of letters and numbers you will use in the tattoo tongs.

Squeeze them on a piece of paper to ensure that they are in the right order.

Put on your gloves.

Clean the inside of the goat’s ear or tail web (the loose, hairless area under the tail on either side of the anus) with alcohol, making sure that you have the correct ear for the tattoo you are using.

LaMancha goats’ ears are too small for tattooing, so you need to use the tail web.

When the ear is dry, rub tattoo ink on the inside of the ear or on the tail web.

Hold the ear out and position the tattoo tongs over the inside, being careful to avoid the veins to minimize bleeding.

To tattoo the tail web, position the tongs with the prongs facing the hairless side of the tail.

Puncture the ear or tail web firmly with the tattoo tongs one time, then release.

The goat will try to pull away, so make sure to hold securely.

Apply more tattoo ink and rub it in with your finger or a toothbrush to ensure that it fills the puncture.

Change the tattoo digits to the sequence you will use for the second ear and repeat Steps 3 through 7.

Supplemental Feed for Your Goats

Goats need supplemental minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients in addition to those they get in their hay, grain, and browse. Vitamins and minerals are essential to keeping goats healthy, making sure they're growing well, and assisting in reproduction and the development of skin and bone.

You can supplement your goats' browse and feed them essential minerals and vitamins by supplying them with free-choice loose minerals or a mineral block, which you can find in most feed stores. Goats prefer minerals with salt; if you have to get a salt-free mineral, supplement it with a salt block.

Never buy a so-called "goat/sheep mineral" because it doesn't have enough copper for a goat's needs. The amount of copper that a goat needs can kill a sheep. If you can't find goat-specific minerals, you can use a cattle or horse mineral.

With good hay and an adequate mineral block, your goats get by just fine. But you can also give them some of these supplemental feeds to make them even healthier:

Beet pulp: Beet pulp adds fiber, protein, and energy to a goat's diet and contains calcium and phosphorus. It comes in 50-pound bags and is cheaper than grain but doesn't supply as much energy and so shouldn't be used as a substitute.

Black oil sunflower seeds (BOSS): Black oil sunflower seeds contain vitamin E, zinc, iron, and selenium and also add fiber and fat to the diet. BOSS make the goats' coats shinier and increase the butterfat in their milk. Mix the seeds into your goats' grain; they eat them shell and all.

Kelp meal: Kelp meal is a good source of iodine, selenium, and other minerals. Used as a supplement, it helps protect goats from iodine deficiency. Kelp also improves dairy goats' production, increasing milk volume and butterfat and helping decrease mastitis.

Baking soda: Many goat owners offer their goats free-choice baking soda, which aids digestion by keeping the rumen pH-balanced. If one of your goats has a digestive problem, offer baking soda. Baking soda is also one of the treatments for floppy kid syndrome.

Apple cider vinegar (ACV): Some goat owners add unfiltered apple cider vinegar, which is full of enzymes, minerals, and vitamins, to their goats' water.

Treats and snacks: Just because goats love grain doesn't mean it's good for them to have all the time. You can find plenty of other nutritious snacks for goats:

*Corn chips are a good grain substitute for wethers because the saltiness encourages them to drink water, which helps prevent urinary calculi.

*Goats love apples, watermelon, peaches, pears, grapes, bananas (peel and all, if organic), and dried fruit. Just make sure that the fruits aren't in pieces large enough to cause choking.

*Vegetables are a nutritious addition to any diet. Goats love carrots with their tops attached, celery, pumpkins, squash, lettuce, spinach, and other greens.

Avoid members of the nightshade family, such as potatoes and tomatoes, which contain alkaloids, as well as plants with oxalates, such as kale. These can be poisonous to goats.

Belgian Fawn Goat

Created in Belgium, the Belgian Fawn descended from another breed called the Chamois Colored goat from Switzerland. It is also related to Oberhasli goat found in the United States.

These goats are horned, black or brown in color with a black skin. Adult males weigh on average 65 kg and females 60 kg with an average wither height of 81 cm and 71 cm respectively.

Belgian Red Cattle

The Belgian Red was developed in West Flanders region of Belgium.  It is a dual-purpose breed, producing both meat and milk, and is similar to the Flemish Shorthorn.

During World War I the pastures of West Flanders were turned into battlefields which practically eradicated the cattle population.  Two important native types, the Cassel and the Veurne-Ambacht, were among these breeds. 

After the war the breeders cooperated to form a new breed which was called the West Flemish.  It later became known as the Belgian Red.  Belgian Red cattle are now found throughout West Flanders and constitutes about 7% of the Belgian national herd.

Cows average 138 cm in height and weigh about 725 kg.  Males stand 153 cm and weigh 1,200 kg.  In 1978, cows averaged 4,089 kg of 3.79% milk in a 305-day lactation.

The Most Important Domesticated Animals

Cattle are among the most useful of all domestic animals. It has been said that modern civilization began when people first began milking cows and using oxen to plow their fields. Cattle have wild relatives in many parts of the world. They must have been domesticated in Asia first, however, for their bones have been found in settlements there earlier than anywhere else. Shorthorn cattle are supposed to have been introduced into Europe from Central Asia when the long-horned urus (now extinct) was still running wild. The urus and the Celtic ox were domesticated later than the Asian breeds of cattle.

Sheep have been so changed by breeding that their wild ancestors are hard to identify. Like the wild sheep, the domestic sheep of Egypt in 3000 BC had coats of coarse hair. The dense wool was gradually developed by selective breeding.

Pigs were derived from the wild boar, which can still be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In Egypt their flesh was not eaten. They were instead kept as scavengers. They loosened the soil by their rooting and so prepared it for planting. They were also used to trample down the seeds after sowing and to thresh the grain at harvesttime.

According to archaeological records, chickens were first domesticated in the cities of the Indus Valley in about 3000 BC. The donkey of Mediterranean lands is thought to be a descendant of the wild ass of Western Asia.

The horse was the last important animal to be domesticated. The only species of wild horse still living are Przhevalski's horse, very small numbers of which survive in the wild in western Mongolia, and the Riwoche horse, a few of which survive in northeastern Tibet. The tarpan, a wild horse of Europe and Northern Asia, became extinct in the mid-1800s. These two species were probably the ancestors of the modern horse breeds.

A Semitic people who conquered the Mesopotamian region in about 2300 BC were mounted on horses. The ability of these people to domesticate horses may explain their success in war. The first sight of a person riding a horse must have struck terror into the hearts of people unaccustomed to such a sight. In addition, the myth of the centaur, half horse and half man, probably had its origin in just such an experience.

In North America before the arrival of the Europeans, the only domesticated animal among the Native Americans was the dog. After European settlers brought domesticated horses to the New World, the horse effected great changes for the peoples of the Plains (see Indians, American, or Native Americans).