My Adventures in Shea Butter: Part 2

After I had finally finished the container of my last batch of Shea Butter, I set to making it again. 

I melted the Butter, got the oil all set up, and measured, then I waited for the Butter to cool. This time I waited until it was just ba-arely cloudy, because "then maybe it will stay whipped better." (No.). After waiting, I poured the sucker in, and started the mixer. I waited until it was nice and fluffy, then set to putting it in the dish.

I noticed about halfway through that it was getting hard again.

Dang it. Well, better luck next time!

In other news, I have started oiling my hair using Shea Butter. I'm starting to think that I like it! I've noticed that my hair is thicker and fuller. But it still gets staticky (Staticy? Statiky? Static-y?) which looks very unusual. Greasy static. Imagine a squid stretching. Kind of like that. Only mouse brown with bits of auburn in there.

 It DOES make my hair look.....oily, so I'm working on getting around that. I don't like people thinking that I don't wash my hair. Fortunately I wear my hair in a ponytail a lot, and that mainly covers it up.

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I Still Exist!

Hee-eello!

Yeah, sorry about that long break. The weather here has been lovely and I wanted to spend my time outside. So I did. Right now, it's cold, windy, and damp, so I'm trapped, so I got on here to post.

I hate winter.

Having to deal with the ice, and the hail, and the snow, and the cars-that-just-won't-freaking-START, and the baby goats that died, or the ones that lost their ears, and the chickens who lost their toes and combs.

I would MUCH rather deal with having to carry water out three times a day than this. All week it's supposed to be staying in the forties. In the words of  Moriarty from Sherlock BBC, "Just...staying!"

Well, my husband just walked in, and I realized I'm bleeding, so I'm off!

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The Great Outer of Doors

So before we delve into the whole post, I thought I just had to show you this picture:

D'awwww!

So.

♪We're gonna take a walk outside today! Gonna see what we can find today! Gonna take a walk outside today! Gonna see what we can find todaaaay!♫*

These are the sisters of the little black baby we have inside the house. (That sounds oh!-so racist.) The white splotchy one's name is Peony. The others is Rose. (I call her Rosey. Or Roseanne. Or Rosemary.)

And because you can never have enough pictures of my Holly, here's their Mommy. 

What's that? You wanna know what the other's Mommy looks like? Well, here you are.

This is her eating with her Mommy. She's the one eating.

This is Ivy stuffing her face. Hi Ivy!

This is...a cat. How'd that get in there? Oh, well. Hi Jasmine!

These are the turkeys. And a goat with hay on her butt. That's Daffodil.

This is the turkey's lady. We originally had three. One was really mean, so she...well...let's just say she was REALLY helpful on Thanksgiving. The other died just a few days ago. If you want to know how (It's VERY graphic. Like, REALLY, REALLY graphic.) go here. It's really graphic. We're planning to buy more female turkeys if when spring comes.

Let's go back into the barn.

Aww, this is one of our other goatie's babies eating hay. 

Awwww! Rose and Peony are laying together! Isn't tha- oh.

"We will eat your soouuuuul..."

Ooookay. Let's go look at other babies.

Aw! Like these. Let's go see.

These are Honey's babies. She's Ivy's Mommy.

This is what they look like without flash on.

I was going to show you more, like the geese and ducks, the boer goats, but then it started to sleet. So as I hustled inside, I snapped this picture for ya. 

Hi guys! How're you?? "Maaaah! Maaaaayyy!" Good to hear!

                                         *

 

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My Adventures in Shea Butter: Part 1

A few months back (4-5) I was flipping through one of out BackWoods Home Magazines when I stumbled across an article for Homemade Lotion. I was slightly intrigued. ("Oh! This looks so cool! Everyone shut up so I can read!") They had a recipe for a Basic Shea Butter Body cream.

4 oz. Shea Butter
2 oz. Olive Oil

Shea Butter is slightly on the expensive side, but Christmas was just over, and I had gotten Amazon Gift Cards (People ask me what I want, and I always say, "Don't get ME anything. Send blankets and dog treats so I can give them to the Animal Shelter. They never do.) so I got on there and looked it up.

After reading through reviews and a LOT of searching, I found Better Shea Butter ($25.00 for a pound. $17.99 with Prime.).

 I ordered it and got down to business ("Where's the magazine?? I need the magazine! Who threw out the magazine??!! I need the recipe!! Wher-oh. It's right here."). The recipe said that after melting the Shea Butter, you had to let it cool "until cloudy." Umm. Okay. I set it outside (14° out there) to let it cool. I didn't exactly know what "cloudy" meant. ("It's kinda hard to see through. Is that cloudy? But it was like that before. What am I looking for magazine???") So I waited, and waited, then when it was "mostly cloudy" I brought it in. (I now know that I let it stay out there for too long.) I poured/glopped it into the mixer, added the Olive Oil, and let 'er rip. After it had become "whipped" I scooped it out, and put it into a container. It shortly became hard as a rock. What happened???

And that, is my first Adventure in Shea Butter.

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Our bottle babies!

Hello, and welcome!

Today I thought I would introduce our bottle baby goats!

These two little girls were born on a VERY cold day (19° I believe.) and because their mother was a first timer, she rejected them. We just didn't have the luxury of trying to get them to bond, they were very limp, their mouths were cold inside, and they kept calling, and calling. So we wisked them inside, and held them in front of our heater, rubbing them with towels.

The little one on the left (Who we call B, the one on the right, A) was having a very hard time drinking from the bottle. We put them in this laundry basket, set in front of the heater, with a heating pad underneath. They were STILL shivering.

When they finally DID warm up, we brought them into the kitchen, and set them up here. The heating pad is still plugged in. 

You may also have noticed that Bella is sitting next to them. She became their Mommy. She licked them all over, cleaned up their faces and bottoms, and protected them from Maggie. (She doesn't like Maggie. She seems to think that Maggie is out to get her. But she was fine when Chelsea came over. Dummy.)

She would lay there for HOURS, with her babies.

What topped this picture off was the fact that they were born on Valentine's Day.☺

Lily is absolutely TERRIFIED of the 3 pound baby goats.

Skipping ahead about 2 weeks, we end up here.

This is the new pen we got them. They have this whole arena, all to themselves.

What's that you say? There's THREE babies in there?? Well, yes.

The little black one is another baby we had to bring in. 

You see, we have a goat named Holly.

This is Holly. Holly is our bow legged, fat, pedigree goat. 

  All of our other goats have babies, sisters, or mothers, that they curl up to when they sleep at night. (I know. It's so cute! Even when they are two years old, and have their own babies, they still go back and curl up with their Mommies.) Holly however, has only ever had boys. We can't keep a buck with a bunch of does, and a wether (neutered male goat) doesn't give milk, and can't get our girls pregnant. So we bred her this year, hoping that she would have girls. She had three girls, and one boy (I think she got sick of our begging). One of the girls died, (We couldn't get her to breathe, but her heart kept going for about 15 minutes.) but her three other babies were nice and strong. However, after a few days, we noticed her babies weren't growing, and were often hunched up. After a bit of investigation (feeling Holly's udder to see how full it was, bottle feeding the babies to see how hungry they were, etc.) we were able to tell that she just didn't have enough milk for them. So we took the boy away, to feed him inside, so the girls could get the milk, and they would all bond. 

  We're debating breeding Holly again, because the first time she had babies, one was stillborn (okay, happens with first timers), the second time, she had one stillborn, and one that died a few months later, (his name was Willow, and I will always have a soft spot in my heart for him. I'll post about him someday) and this time, of course she had a stillborn, but the first baby also had it's feet tucked back (a massive no-no) and my daughter had to reach her hand in to grab them.

In completely other news, look at these pictures I got of Maggie and Chelsea yesterday!!

                             

Here you can clearly see Chelsea's underbite. I love this picture of her. I may have to frame it.

Thanks again for reading!

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'Allo There!

Hello and welcome to That one blog. Thank you for reading this!

I thought it would be fun to keep a blog, and just post fun, weird, stuff. I'll post about My Adventures in Shea Butter, about My Animals, and Any Other Stuff. Occasionally One of My Animals may post, because for some reason they like to get on my computer.

I'll probably post about all of my animals, but for now, I'll just post a few.

This is Bella, who is 7 years old, and is a big old teddy bear, farm dog. 

Bella's best friend is Chelsea, who is a bit of a ding bat. 

She also likes to smile. (Not really, she has a very severe underbite, which comes from her being part Boxer. Sometimes her lip catches on her underbite, which causes her to look like she's smiling. But it's so cute isn't it??)

This is Lily. She's a long haired Chihuahua. She's also the most spoiled dog you'll ever meet.

Contemplating life.

This is Gus. He's not the brightest bulb in the box. Heck, he's not even bright. He's never worked. He's shattered. He's not even in the box!!! He was left at the hardware store!

Gus with his new haircut.

This is Maggie. Maggie is our newest dog, and is 1 year old. She seems to be stuck in a permanent "puppy phase". 

Maggie is Chelsea's best friend.

This is Misty. We found her when she less than a year old. She had been shaved, and dumped. When we took her to the vet, they said that she had been about three days from starving to death. Now she's a fat and sassy cat that lounges around all day on her bed.

This is The Cat That Will Never Die. She's 16 years old, and is currently snoozing behind my laptop.....wait......................yup. She's just snoozing. Not dead. ☺

Well, that 7 out of our 100+ animals. I'll introduce them all to you over the course of the blog.

Thanks again for reading!
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