Harley the horse

 Meet the newest member on our farm, Harley.

   

I'm not much of a horse person.  I've ridden on horses once maybe twice in my 

entire life.  I didn't hate it but I wasn't impressed either.

Hubby and the kids have been wanting a horse.  So about a month or so ago we 

finally got a horse.  Hubby had a horse growing up so he knows how to handle horses

and has been teaching the kids how to properly care for Harley and saddle him up etc.

Harley is a 14 year-old Tennessee Walker.  He is actually really mellow.  He likes

carrots and apples.

He is a good riding horse.  The whole family, including myself have ridden him.  

I like how he loves kids.  In the morning when we walk the kids out to the bus stop he 

would usually come up to the fence to say hi.  It's so cute.

In this picture, the ferrier is giving Harley a pedicure lol  And while he was getting

his pedi done, I decided to give him a Donald Trump hair-do.  lol  Doesn't he look so 

handsome?

Mr. ferrier said Harley's hooves look great.  He does have a crack on the bottom of

one of his hooves though.  The ferrier said it's nothing to worry about.   During the 

hot wet months here in Texas with all the rain and wet ground horses walk on the

wet ground and making their hooves wet and soft.  The ground usually dry faster 

than their hooves so when the ground dries up and the horses walking on the now 

dried-up hard ground with their soft hooves sometimes make the bottom of their 

hooves crack.  but I was told that the crack should get better during the winter 

months when it's more dry and not as wet.  I'm just slowly learning all these new 

things about horses.

Barbacoa

 So we just took our two steers in to get butchered about 2 weeks ago and we just got our meat back 2 days ago.  My little chica wanted to make barbacoa so we kept both of the heads.  This is both myself and my chica's first experience making barbacoa.  Let's just say this is an interesting experience and at times gross.

Doing barbacoa is a lot of work and it was really messy.  First thing we did was to soak the heads in water for a few hours.

Then we washed the heads super good (when I say we, that means chica, chica's hubby, and my hubby, I helped occasionally without really getting my hands dirty).  We scrubbed, sprayed, rinsed, and even pulled the brains out of the heads.  Afterward, we soaked the heads in salt water over night.

Next thing we did was rub seasoning on the heads/meat then put them in the pot and steam with some garlic and onions.  The heads were big enough to where we had to use 2 separate 32 qts pots to cook both of them at the same time.

After about 8 hours of steaming, the meat just fell off the bones.  Meat was nice and tender.

This is what 8 hours of steaming did to the cow head.

The eyeballs kind of melted too after being steamed for so long.  No one dared to eat the eyeballs so we just pulled them off the heads and tossed them.

   

I'm actually surprised at how much meat actually came off the two skulls.  It was enough to feed 2 fairly large families and we still got leftovers.  My chica cooked the tongues as well in a pressure cooker separate from the skulls.  The pan of meat has a mix of the meat from the skull, tongue and even the brain.  The meat in the top upper corner was the brain, the top left was the tongue and the rest was all from the rest of the head.  Interesting thing is that I didn't think the meat from the head would be so fatty.  The tongue meat actually tasted pretty good too.  I didn't try the brain...but those who tried it last night said it was really really fatty and greasy.  

In conclusion, this stuff tasted good.  But would I do it again?  No, a big heck no!  From start to finish it was so much work and messy.  If I ever crave for a barbacoa taco, I'll just go straight to a taco truck and get me some.

Texas BBQ

If you know Texas, you know we are famous for our BBQ.  For quite some time we have been wanting a smoker and learn how to smoke meat.  We had tried the "manual" smoker where you have to use firewood and have to constantly check the smoker for temperature to make sure the temperature stays where you want it etc.  It was just too labor intensive.  So finally, after doing a lot of research we decided to go with a Pit Boss smoker.  For half the price of a Traegger the Pit boss smoker performs really well.  Super easy to use.  We purchased the Pit Boss Austin XL from Walmart.  We can't be happier with it!  We already tried smoking ribs, pork butt, chicken, and pizza in the smoker but we were delaying our attempt at brisket because brisket is really the hardest and most intimidating to master, I think. 

 

But we finally decided it's time to give it a try.  The hubby did a little bit of research and we thought we got it figured out.  We had to trim off some of the fat because there was a lot of fat...but maybe next time we will try not trimming so much fat off.  We went with the tin foil wrap instead of the butcher paper.  Originally, we calculated the smoking time would be like 18 hours or something like that.  So we decided if that was the case we needed to start smoking the meat before we went to bed at around 10pm or so.  But after being in the smoker for like about an hour or an hour and a half or so the meat temperature was already much higher than we anticipated.  And so at this point we were like, well shoot, if the meat is cooking this fast we wouldn't need to start smoking so soon.  So we decided to take it out of the smoker and let it stay wrapped in the tin foil and left it on the counter over night.  (Now thinking back it was a big mistake!  Because the heat inside the tin foil still continued to cook the meat even though the meat was gradually cooling off during the night).

So the next morning we woke up, fired up the smoker and we put the brisket back in the smoker to smoke some more, and we didn't even try to open the tinfoil up to see how the brisket was looking.  But now thinking back, it was probably already partially cooked.  So we started the "normal" process with smoking the brisket again and everything until the temperature reached the desired temperature of doneness.  Next we pulled the brisket out of the smoker, did the towel wrap and cooler for an hour or so.

 

  So this is what the finished product looked like, it was a bit on the dry side/overcooked.  Taste was good and smoky but just dry.  We went with just the plain salt and pepper for our choice of seasoning.  We will try to smoke brisket again.  But next time we will probably try not to trim off so much fat and make sure we don't "double cook" our meat.  One day, one day we will be a Pit Boss!

The new and improved

 Back in March of this year our garage caught on fire.  It was completely burned to the ground.  Almost 3 months later, we finally have a garage again!  Yay!  Oh how I miss my garage!  And another thing I really missed is our tools.  Not having tools around when you need them is quite inconvenient.

The original concrete  pad was damaged enough so before putting another garage up we had to cap the old concrete pad.

 

                So another 3 1/2 inches of concrete was poured on top of the original concrete pad.

 

 

The last garage that we had our contractor built.  But this time we decided to go with the pre-fab metal building/garage.  The guys were able to put it up in just 1 day!  

 

 

                                            We are pretty happy with the results.  It looks great!

                                                    So happy we have a garage again!!!