Beau Jackson

Merry Christmas everyone!

It was a white Christmas for us here in Southwestern Missouri, but coooooold!  Brrrrrrr!  It was about 15 degrees today, and the wind was howling.  Needless to say we did not go outside to play in the snow.

It was also kind of a humble Christmas for us.  We did things a little differently this year.  We didn’t put up our Christmas tree until the 24th.  Heck, we didn’t even do any Christmas shopping until the 22nd.  We opened the vast majority of presents on Christmas eve – St. Nicholas only brought candy and one toy – a “Little People” nativity scene for the two youngest kids (although the older girls still play with it too).  Our Christmas day dinner is just a roasted chicken, with mashed potatoes, green beans, and some cranberry sauce.  We didn’t have lots of family over, or go to their house either.

We tried very much to keep Christmas (the day of Christ’s birth) separate from all the other things that we tend to get caught up with in the holidays.  Sadly, we weren’t able to go to Mass today – the roads were not in good shape, and Elizabeth was running a fever of 102, so we wouldn’t have gone regardless.

In any event, I thought it was a nice day…we’ll probably do it again this way next year too.

Once again, Merry Christmas to everyone!

If you’ve ever watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon that involved Elmer Fudd, you’re probably familiar with the term “hasenpfeffer”.  I recall asking my folks what hasenpfeffer was as a child, and though I don’t remember the exact answer, it was something like “rabbit stew”.  Thus was a misconception born.  I have held this misconception since childhood until last night when Allena and I actually looked a recipe for hasenpfeffer.

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  It is NOT rabbit stew.  The recipe looks WONDERFUL, and we will be trying it soon.  It’s apparently one of those dishes that everyone cooks just a little differently, but every recipe we looked at sounded outstanding.  Check out the Bavarian Grill for just one variety.

So why all this interest in hasenpfeffer?  Well, because we butchered some rabbits on the ol’ ranch last night (five of them) and we were searching around for good ways to prepare them.  Allena has fried rabbit before, and rabbit stew would be easy enough to figure out but we like to try new stuff.  Hasenpfeffer is definitely on the list – we only lack some dry wine to cook the sauce with and that will be acquired today.

We probably won’t make it until the weekend, but I’ll definitely let you know how it was.  Bon Appetit!

Some friends came over to visit today.  I suspect there might have been some showing off going on.  Elizabeth decided she would try to ride Bridget (one of our dairy goats).

Now, I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see, but I do know Bridget.  She is a not what you would call “bucking stock”.  She’s very calm, and I imagine she just started walking.  However, Elizabeth is not exactly an expert bare-back goat rider and she fell off.

This was around 3:30pm today.  I’m now writing this post at 10:15pm from the side of her hospital bed.  She’s finally gone to sleep.  Poor thing keeps getting itchy spots on her face and she can’t scratch them because one arm is in a sling and the other has an IV in it.

Long story short – she broke off the lower part of her humerus (which is the upper arm bone), right where the lower arm bones connect to it.  That broken piece of bone also displaced.  So she had to have surgery to have it pinned back together.  Her arm is in a splint and sling for a couple of days and then she’ll get a cast.

We’re sure going to get that family deductible paid on the ol’ insurance policy this year, that’s for sure!

If you’re inclined to pray, prayers for Elizabeth’s speedy recovery would be appreciated!

We got a new dog on Tuesday evening.  His name is Strider (formerly Rambler), and he’s a Great Pyrenees.

Great Pyrenees

This is *not* him, but you get the idea.

So, he was with us for about two hours, and then I went out to check on him and he was gone.  We had him tied up, but he slipped his collar, hopped the fence and headed on down the road.  We drove around looking for him but didn’t have any luck.  Wednesday, Allena put up signs at the local grocery store, feed stores, and vet’s office.  We drove around some more but still didn’t see him.

Tonight, we got a call from a man that saw one of our signs – Strider was at his place in Dunnegan.  I clocked the drive over, and it was about six miles away.  Strider is back home now, and he’s in a more secure place (the garage).  We originally put him in our stock trailer, but he managed to climb/jump out of that, and it has at least a five foot tall wall.  That’s kind of discouraging, because it means we don’t have a fence on the place that will contain him.  Hopefully after a week or two, he’ll decide this is where he belongs and stick around.

As my regular readers will have noticed (since I’ve been busy adding you as friends) I’ve been playing around with Facebook over the last few days.  This has answered the question “why hasn’t Jerome posted in so long?” for me – why?  Because he’s been posting on Facebook instead of his blog.  Sheesh…you try to keep up with peoples lives and they go and change the way the news is being distributed ;).

So why sign up with Facebook.  Mostly because I’ve come across Facebook profiles for people that I’ve known in my life who otherwise have no web presence, and I wanted to see what was going on with them.  I even found out my sister has a Facebook profile…who knew?

In other news, William has a(nother) new scar on his face.  That kid is really hard on himself.  He was twirling around, tripped on a pillow and slamed his cheek into the edge of the coffee table.  One trip to urgent care and $75 bucks later and his cheek is super-glued shut with some stuff they call “dermabond”.  I was told that the scar will be much smaller this way than it would have been with stitches.

We also got three new lambs this morning – two girls out of DuClair and a single girl out of Piper.  All in all a busy weekend!