A little excitement and a little Dudley...

Below will be a few of my wife's favorite parts of Dudley Farms, followed by a couple of mine. First, I wanted to tell you about collecting lard though!
A brother from church has been promising me that he would let us butcher his large hog for awhile and today he came through! This hog was a cross of some kind that resulted in a large (350 lbs.) strange looking pig. We think there was some pot belly mix in him. One things for sure, he was MEAN! He was cut about a year and a half back when he was less than 2 weeks old, but still got pretty nasty near the end. It made the job a lot easier for all of the children since he had worn out his welcome a while back.
Anyway, my wife and I have been wanting to try our hand at soap making from real lard, but alas...when your as poor as dirt a true lard type hog is hard to come by. Enter Kenny, ( my church brother). Kenny got all excited a few years back when I was on a roll about the advantages of growing your own pork at home. Unfortunately, he ran out and grabbed the first 'free' pig in the paper! Turns out that this wasn't the bacon type he had hoped for! Still, we got over 150 pounds of meat the way we figured it tonight! Not bad for a lard hog! My involvement was strictly gathering fat. Another fellow from Kenny's work came and did the gutting and skinning while I did the trimming of fat with the help of my 13 year old son. We were very wasteful and only took the easiest fat away. We came up with about six gallons and could have gotten triple that at least if we were more experienced and had cooler weather. I have the fat on ice now and Saturday we will begin rendering it for lard! We have never done this before so we are not sure how much soap making supplies we will get. I seem to remember that the Ante family agrarians did this one time and will try to look it up and let you know how it compares. Don't expect much. We are novices.

Here is the follow up on Dudley.
The first pick is the outdoor kitchen. My wife LOVES it. The barrel up front contains water from the catchment system with a screen over it to keep out the bugs. The little 'child' gate that you see in the doorway is to keep visitors out. We took the pics from the doorway.

Here is the dining area and open hearth that the family ate at during the war of Northern aggression. That means the Civil War for all you p.c. folk;) Note the simple cupboard for dishes. Very quaint and practical.

This is the second room in the kitchen. The room above is directly behind the wood stove that you see. Check out that stove! If you have ever been to Lehman's you know what that thing would cost today! It actually glistens like brand new when you see the real thing. Photography is not my strong point...

This is one of the small treasures of the farm, I think. This is not the main well for drinking, but is an original hand dug well complete with integrated rain catchment system!The gutters were all made from wood! This supplied all the washing and boiling water. Wonder if 'acid rain' was a problem for them...

Here is another example of ingenuity. With a simple folding board, the pump water would flow into the trough pictured and travel down to an elaborate system of livestock stations. There are 50 cattle, a mule, a registered cracker horse, and many chickens and turkeys in different locations that are watered from this one point! Some of them are 100 yards or more in different directions and paddocks! Very neat!

Next time we will visit the outhouse! And we will try and get a look into the corn crib that still grows a 159 year old variety of white dent corn that we are taking to the University of Florida Ag center for identification! Cool stuff...