I believe I have discovered where I truly reside! Our dreams of hundreds and hundreds of acres, barns and rolling pastures filled with livestock are just that a dream. We would love to someday have all that, but for now we have about three acres and I think that is a good place to start. I call it farm-urbia!

We live in a quiet little town that still has a few large farms and quite a few open fields, but we are not primarily "farm country." I had to change my way of looking at where we are. I was becoming angry because we didn't have enough land, not enough barns and definitely not enough area to put all the animals we wanted; but we do have plenty of all of those things to get started! We have our little flock of chickens, we are getting two little goats, we have a medium size barn, a small barn and plenty of ambition. In our lives right now that is just what we need.

I want to be ready when we get the opportunity to have bigger, but I have reconciled with myself that if we "bit off more than we could chew" we would end up hating everything we had worked towards and and wanted for so long. We are as you would say "Green-horns" at our life’s little venture. I grew up on a beautiful little farm but have spent the bulk of my adult life enjoying the easy or, as I like to call it, lazy way of life.

I am tired of living lazy, I want to be a participant in every single aspect of my existence, and I want my children to see the rewards that can be had from making your own life, not just living along with everyone else. I want to be part of that group of amazing human beings that can tell you how, who and where every item they have comes from. I want to feel proud when I sit down with my family and enjoy a meal that "we" farmed, raised and made with our own two hands and hard work. I believe that we can get our feet off the ground and get our start right here in our little piece of "farm-urbia" for now; at least until bigger and better comes our way!

When creating trendy outdoor living spaces... don't forget to give the chair rungs some flare.

Break up the monotony of green grass with tasteful lawn ornaments.

Adding accents to flowerbeds keeps spaces interesting and also serve as a great places to hide your spare keys. Dual purpose landscape-design details are always a plus.

A classic country item like a barrel or trough can easily be converted into a fountain. To keep water from becoming stagnant, it is a good idea to install a windmill water pump.

When updating your country kitchen, keep in mind that faucets are one of the most important components of your kitchen area. Select a faucet that is not only functional but also gives your kitchen a customized look especially when matched with a unique and stylish spout.

If you choose to carpet the bedrooms of the house, be sure to select shades to compliment any color or style of furniture.

The garage should be outfitted with workbench and storage. Artwork may be added to define the space. Remember to bring the outdoors in with elements of nature in every room.

Be sure to also visit Lacy over at  Razor Family Farms .

This could also be subtitled, "From the Why-I'm-Late-for-Work" file. Some days, it's the light that makes me do it.

This morning, for instance, I went outside for a quick dash around the orchard to give the critters their morning outing and after we'd gone a few steps I turned around to flag down old Bob Dog, who tends to meander away because he's so blind. I looked around and the sky just took my breath away.

So even though I was in a hurry, I dashed back in my house, grabbed my camera and did a little shutterbugging before shuttling the boys back in the house and heading for the office. You can see more of my photos from that morning right here.

I sometimes think of moving back in town, just to keep the commuting miles to a minimum. Then I stop to look around.

In my last post, I talked about getting started with raising backyard chickens. I left off with the little ladies in the brooder box that I had made out of an old Dell computer box, so I'll pick up from that point. 

One of the wonderful things about old boxes is that with the help of a little duct tape and some “outside the box” thinking, you can make just about anything you could need! In this case, as the girls got a little bigger and started needing a little more room, I basically just added an addition to their little home, and what I like to call the "chicken condo" was born. There was enough space with this little setup for the chicks to get old enough that they were nearly all feathered out, and I had enough time to build a better coop. Now I could hang their food and water on one half of the box and their light, which they still needed, on the other. The tower attachment allowed me to control the height and thus the intensity of the lighting that they got. 

You may have noticed that our chicks are still in the house at this point. That's because we ordered them online from IDEAL poultry in early February last year and received them on February 19th. We did this so that while the chicks were young and required additional heat and light anyway, we could keep them in the house and get some growing time on them while the winter was idling by outside. Typical hens won't start laying until sometime around 20 weeks and then will often taper off in egg production through the cold, low, light winter months. We wanted our hens to start "earning their keep" as soon as possible and doing this really helped. By the time the weather was nice, they were ready to go outside and be on their own.

But I digress. My point in explaining their living indoors was to make the greater point that smell and sanitation was very important to us since they were in close proximity. To control odor what I did was make a habit of lightly turning the coarse sawdust bedding every time I fed or watered them. This helped to keep any fresh manure under the bedding and the odors were able to absorb. Every couple of days, I also added a light covering of the sawdust with a layer of new bedding.  I could generally go 1.5 to 2 weeks this way before I had to pull out the bedding and replace it. I have no complaints about this method at all.

As I said in my previous post, raising chickens is not, in my opinion, the hardest thing in the world. There are, however, a few things that need to be watched for and treated immediately if found. One very common problem that young chickens have is called “pasting up”, and can kill them if you’re not careful in watching for it. What it is, is when the vent of the chicken (the vent is the technical term for the part of the chicken where the manure and the eggs come out.) gets essentially clogged up with dried and hardened manure. Here’s a photo of what it looks like.

What happens with the chicks is that when the vent becomes clogged or blocked, the chicken cannot evacuate as it needs to. Because of this the chicken remains “full” and will stop eating or drinking.

The treatment for pasting up isn’t the most fun thing in the world to do, but I found that a clean paper towel soaked in warm water does the trick wonderfully. All you need to do is clean off the blockage, and make sure the chick has access to fresh water all the time. (Basically she needs her bum wiped.)

The chick will protest loudly against this, but it’s for its own good.

Now then, once the chicks are fully feathered out, and no longer need to be kept under lights and given supplemental heat, they’re ready to be moved outside. The chicken condo won’t do for this however. In fact it’s more than likely that it’s going to be barely holding its self up at this point, which means it’s time to build a chicken coop.

Building a coop is a project with so many varied outcomes that it’s hard to pin down just one or two ways to do it. There are certain things though that every coop should have and as long as they’re covered you should be good. For instance, chickens can’t stand having wet feet, at least not for long. Scratching around in the snow or rain puddles for worms is one thing but not having a dry place that’s up off the ground when they need it could mean sickness or death. Also, even if you decide to free range your hens, they’ll need a safe place where they can roost up at night and rest peacefully when most of the predators in nature are out looking for dinner, even in the suburbs. I have a neighbor who was a bit lackadaisical about this and lost all his birds to a neighbor’s dog. 

It’s generally recommended that you allow for at least 4 square feet of space for each bird. This will allow them enough space to spread their wings and will help to keep them from picking at each other. You’ll also need to add a nesting box or two. Generally about one per five hens or so is enough. If you don’t give them proper nesting area, it’s possible that the eggs will get broken or eaten or both. The coop I came up with for my 9 hens allowed for all of this as well as being (relatively) pleasant to look at. That, more than almost any feature of your coop may end up being the biggest part of how well your chickens are received by neighbors if you keep them in a residential area like mine.

Remember, chickens are a great addition to any home. They’re great fun to watch, they’re superb composters and they provide a healthy consistent protein source for your family; all this while providing excellent fertilizing for your garden, too. If you’ve been debating making them an addition to your home, I encourage you to make the leap. Give it careful thought of course, but don’t feel intimidated at all.

All the best to you …

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse 

I am fascinated by folklore. There’s European folklore, Medieval folklore, American folklore, Native American folklore … the list goes on and on, and I find it all very interesting. Plant lore is a personal favorite of mine. And then there’s word-lore.

Origins of words and phrases intrigue me. Have you ever wondered where some of the things we say almost on a daily basis came from? I thought it’d be kind of neat to get to the bottom of some the words, phrases, and colloquialisms that have a GRITty spirit to them.  

Take the word “farm,” for example. Do you know that it was the “farmer” who once did the tax collecting instead of government collecting taxes from the farmer? How’s that for role-reversal? Doesn’t it make you sometimes wish for the days of old? It’s not as good as it sounds, though. “Farm” comes to us through the French word ferme, which is derived from the Latin firmus, meaning fixed or settled. When the term was first used in France and England it referred to the fixed annual rent, tax or revenue payable by people, towns or counties to an overlord. The “farmer” was the person who collected those payments.  

Until Revolutionary times, the French general farmers, or the fermes generale, collected annual taxes (called farms), paid by individuals and towns to the royal treasury. Farmers, always an ingenious breed, kept a little aside for themselves to save for a rainy day. Rain must have been predicted often in France back in those days, because the farmers became excessively wealthy pocketing the difference between the amounts collected and the amount that was actually due.  

In England, land used for agricultural purposes was most often leased by a tenant who worked the land. A “farm” was the fixed annual rent paid by the tenant on that leased land. It was not until the 16^th century that the word “farm” referred to the land itself, and not the taxes paid upon it.

Whether you were a land tenant in England back then, or a farmer in the sense of the word as we use it today, you’d want to avoid buying the farm. “To buy the farm,” nearly everyone knows, means to die. But when and why did we start associating purchasing a farm with death?

The phrase started appearing in print during the 1950s. The origin of the euphemism has three possibilities, all pertaining to the U.S. military. An edition of American Speech from 1955 suggests that a farmer may sue the government for compensation if a jet were to crash on his property. If the amount of that compensation was enough to pay off the farm’s mortgage, in essence, the pilot “bought the farm.”

While off at war, it was the dream of many U.S. servicemen to return home, start a family and settle to a peaceful life on the farm. The second theory took this dream into account when in the unfortunate event that the serviceman was killed overseas. It was said “he bought the farm early.”

The third way a serviceman might have bought the farm is by his family using the military service personnel insurance to pay off the mortgage, if the soldier was killed in action.

Ok, so you’ve bought the farm – literally, and not figuratively speaking. Chances are, on that farm, you’ll find a barn. E-i-e-i-o. “Barns” originally referred to buildings used for storing barley. The word is derived from combining two words in Old English: bere, meaning barley, and ern, meaning house.

My mother, probably out of her mind from the pain of childbirth and obviously using a self-preservation form of selective memory, must have forgotten where her children were born. She constantly needed reminding. “Were you born in a barn?” Typically following her question as to our place of birth, she needed another reminder as to who was paying the utility bills. “Do you think I’m heating the outside?”

Though it is often used interchangeably with “were you raised in a pig-sty” (there were times Mom apparently forgot where we were brought up too). The rhetorical question, “Were you born in a barn?” means the door to the outside has been left open.

A realistic assumption would be the phrase originated from the practice that the barn door was left open when the cows were let out to pasture, and closed when they returned in the evenings.

But there is a theory that the phrase originally was “Were you born in Bardney?” The Tupholme Abbey is a monastery built in Bardney in Lincolnshire, England. Legend says that when Saint Oswald was killed, his bones were delivered to the abbey, but the gates were kept closed, barring entrance. A light shining down from above during the night fell on the bones, illuminating them outside the locked gates – it was a sign to the monks inside the gated abbey that indeed, this truly was a saint. The gates were quickly opened to allow Saint Oswald’s remains to enter. From that point on, the gates of Tupholme Abbey stayed open. This gave rise to the phrase, “Do you come from Bardney,” which meant that a door was left open. Later, Bardney was shortened to “barn.”  

It doesn’t matter if you’re a monk in an abbey, or heating the outside for the general purpose of annoying your mother, you most definitely do not want to be caught with your barn door open. Do monks have zippers? This polite euphemism is used commonly in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom for pointing out that one’s zipper on the front of the pants is undone.  Its origins are best left to the imagination.

And there you have it – the nitty-gritty of farm life, death, high utility bills, and fashion faux pas, all in a nut shell. In a nut shell? I wonder where that phrase came from? I may have to do another “Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty” installment here in the future. If you have a word or phrase you’d like to know the meaning of, leave me a suggestion, and I’ll see what I can dig up.  

Oh … the barn pictures I took with my cheap little point-n-click camera. To see some absolutely gorgeous barn photos, check out The Spirit of The American Barn by Bill Thomas in the current issue of GRIT.  Simply beautiful!

Sources: Dictionary of Word Origins, 2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions, and The Phrases Finder (www.phrases.org.uk ).

I’m trying to figure out when it hit me that by golly, we were country folk. Was it the very first day on the farm when we found ourselves alone, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by acres of woods, hay fields and a trillion crickets? Or perhaps it was upon tasting that first egg from our new brood of hens. Then again, maybe it was the arrival of the donkeys… or the goats… or the horse.

Yep, I’m thinking it was then.

For years my husband and I yearned to kiss the city life goodbye and move to greener pastures. We'd spend hours talking about living in the country and the ways we'd simplify our lives: we’d raise animals, grow food and reduce our dependency on cheap oil.

As we both worked from home – me as a freelance writer and my husband as an IT consultant – we were free to live almost anywhere, or so we hoped.

Then we found it: our 71-acres of rural happiness.

When we told people we were moving four hours east to a little village in the country, most asked about our farming experience.

None, we replied. "You're brave," said some. "Are you nuts?" the rest asked.

Perhaps. But we also knew we'd regret it if we didn't try. We decided to dive into country living head first and learn to swim along the way.

So, last summer we said goodbye to our 150-year-old semi-detached home in the burbs and traded our minivan for a pick-up truck.

There are times that I think we’re in over our heads. Like when we’re faced with an ornery head-butting goat, when our wood is disappearing faster than expected and the forecast says, “long cold snap ahead” or when our bank account is as low as our wood pile.

Yet I already know how a mid-morning walk through our woods soothes the soul, how incredible a home-grown tomato tastes and that nothing could replace the looks of sheer joy on my kids' faces as they explore the four corners of our farm.

I’m the first to admit we've still got a lot to learn. But already things that were once extraordinary -- felling trees, collecting eggs, tending a woodstove -- are now part of our ordinary. We've fallen into a comfortable routine of rural existence. As busy and full as this life is, it's the only one that makes sense to us now.

Read more about our early adventures in homesteading at Rowangarth Farm.

 The numbers are in for 2008 and they look good for the seed industry. They look even better for folks who want to grow vegetables from seed and save money in 2009.

By some estimates, garden seed, especially vegetable seed sales, were up by anywhere from 40 percent to well over 100 percent compared with recent years. In fact, some industry watchdog organizations suggest that seed companies in North America and much of Europe experienced their best year ever in 2008. We’re talking record seed sales … AND they project another record for 2009.

So, what is the fuss all about?

Easy, people are looking for a safer food supply, while adapting to a tighter economic outlook. If you have never grown a vegetable garden, or started your own garden plants, there’s still plenty of time to save money in 2009 by growing your vegetables from seed. If you are like me, you will be amazed, and thrilled, by all the different varieties of vegetable species from which to choose. If you are looking for that little early-maturing tomato called Bison from your youth, you can find seed and save money by growing your own in 2009.

 

Even the American government recognized the value that a garden-growing public could offer to a war-embroiled and slow economy. They no doubt also recognized the community building value in making it easy for folks to grow with one another in the garden patch. At those times, it was much more important to feed the folks at home and share the excess with others than to worry about E. coli-infested spinach … oh, that’s right, we hadn’t pushed our agricultural production models so far, back then, that E. coli and other fairly benign microbes had yet to figure out how to be pathogenic.

Our government called those programs War Gardens during World War I and Victory Gardens during World War II. I don’t know what to call the new wave of gardening frenzy, but I do know that it is exciting, and will, no doubt, play a role in healing our culture.

When you consider that a package of tomato seed might set you back a couple of bucks, and that you might get 50 viable seeds in that pack, it doesn’t take much math to figure out that you can grow hundreds of pounds of tomato fruit from that $2 pack of seeds. Even if you factor in the value of a little labor (it can be hand labor, mind you), a small piece of ground, a source of supplemental water and a few miscellaneous supplies, those tomatoes will be cheaper than cheap. But more importantly, the growing, nurturing, eating and processing will pay that elusive dividend of extreme satisfaction; no amount of store-bought or farm-stand-bought tomatoes CAN EVER bring that. Farm-stand tomatoes, when grown locally, do have added value in the dividend department, because at least you are supporting the local economy at its root level.

 

Add the pleasure you will receive from spending time AT HOME and WITH FRIENDS and LOVED ONES working in, marveling at, and generally enjoying your garden, and those tomatoes pay even more. And if you happen to have an extra-giant bounty, think of the joy those tomatoes will bring as you share them with others in need … or sell to pay for that tank of propane when winter arrives.

The way I see it, if the pleasure from that $2 pack of tomato seed replaced the pleasure of just one latte at the local coffee shop and the fuel needed to drive there and back, you are at least $10 ahead. That’s right, folks, vegetable gardens can pay big time if you only let them.

If you are skeptical of my analysis, check out Paul Gardener’s personal blog and follow his annual fresh food tally. He and his family produce a significant dollar-value of crops in minimal growing space. And they don’t factor the weight of family fun, joy, etc., into the formula to inflate those numbers.

Look for all kinds of gardening resources on this website and at Mother Earth News for everything you need to know about how to prepare for and plant a vegetable garden from seed that will save you money in 2009.

I was a little disheartened Thursday when I learned that Contagious Equine Metritis (CEM) has made its way into the United States and has infected several horses at one farm out East. This is especially surprising because the United States was declared to be CEM free as late as 1998.

Growing up, my family had six horses – one for each member of the family and an old Shetland pony we rode as young boys. We even traded a colt from our best Missouri Fox Trotter for my older brother’s first truck.

Horses were a big part of our family when and where I grew up. Evenings were often spent riding through an area my dad called “the motherland,” in search of deer and other wildlife and always culminating with watching the sun set from the same ridge we’d been to a hundred times before.

Once it was dark, we turned the horses back, and ran them fairly hard back through the motherland towards home, them knowing they were headed for oats and water. I unsaddled many more horses in the dark than during the day, I know that for sure.

For my three brothers and I, horses played a prominent role in our entertainment on the farm, our bond with each other and our bond with our parents.

We had very good luck with horse health, and it seemed our friends did too. No one really had to be concerned with diseases like CEM.

TheHorse.com reports that CEM, a highly contagious venereal infection, causes short-term infertility in broodmares. Foals born to infected mares can also become infected while in the uterus. The danger, to me, seems to be the ease with which the infection can spread, either through natural breeding or by artificial insemination. Since there are no visible or behavioral symptoms, the likelihood of a widespread outbreak is even higher.

Stallions, too, can become carriers of the infection, and harbor the organism (Taylorella equigenitalis) externally on genitals and can spread CEM to mares and farm equipment. It can also be spread by farm hands, handlers, breeders or grooms who don’t maintain proper hygiene while handling horses.

The scary thing, for people like myself (though I don’t currently own horses), is that this infection surfaced at a prestigious farm, and mares bred at this farm now may have been sent back to their home farms and further spread the infection. At that point, CEM would seem to me to become very difficult to track. The surfacing of the infection could also affect equine transport.

Again according to TheHorse.com, currently, no known vaccination will prevent the infection. Treatment involves strict cleansing and applying chlorhexidine, and then nitrofurazone ointment once the chlorhexidine dries.

Hopefully, these animals can be quarantined and the infection can once again be eradicated from the United States. Get the most current information at www.TheHorse.com.

Anybody else out there heard more about this issue?

Photo courtesy TheHorse.com.

It's been a while since we last updated on the sheep but I assure you all they are doing fine.

As a refresher, we currently are raising about 50 Dorper ewes and rams. Over the course of the summer we spent a great deal of time updating our fencing and learning (sometimes the hard way) the intricacies of these delicate and demure animals.

As the leaves began to redden and the sky to darken we began discussions about what to do with our new woolly friends once the snow began to fall. Our plans took on many iterations and in the end we were able to agree on an idea that fully met all of our needs.

We decided cut a hole in the back of the "back barn" which is a large barn that is furthest from the house in an easterly direction. We would then be able to leave the sheep with a direct route out to the pasture. Although the promise of delicious greenery has been long forgotten the sheep still thoroughly enjoy being able to run free and play in the snow.

On the inside of the barn we sectioned off a large area that we were using for square bale storage. We combined this with a small paddock that we normally reserved for special cattle functions (cocktail parties and inter-breed mixers). Ok that last part isn't true but you get the idea ...

I spent a large part of the time securing our previous indoor fencing as well as building this feeding area. This type of system is called a "tombstone" setup and is designed so that the sheep are able to squeeze their heads in and slide them down to reach the feed on the outside. We have to do it this way as some of the yearling ewes (female sheep that are about a year old and probably not yet bred) have very narrow shoulders and with some sheep yoga could most like be able to wiggle through some traditionally designed mangers.

Once this was finished we bedded the area with some freshly shelled corn cobs and topped that with wheat straw. We ran a couple more lines of electric fencing and let the girls in. It took a bit of persuasion with some super-tasty hay but they were eventually safe and sound. And, not a moment too soon as we got a taste of Old Man Winter's fury 4 days later with about a foot of snow.

When we returned from our trip to Colorado we had the last task before us. It was time to make some of the happiest rams in the world. Normally this happens several weeks earlier but we have been behind all summer due to our slightly, shall we say, ambitious activities. We put up a couple hundred feed of temporary poultry net fencing and coaxed two of the rams over to the waiting ewes. When the rams were safely moved over I called the ladies and what ensued were several tender, though slightly PG-13 exchanges.

When the ewes ran in, the dominant alpha ram began to scent the ewes (smelling their hindquarters) in order to determine who was cycling (ready to be bred). I had seen this many times with cattle but the ram did something that I did not anticipate, and I scared a few of the ewes with my very audible guffaw. After "inspecting" a few of the ewes, the ram found one that was ready to mate. Once he had scented her, he lifted his head up abruptly, looked back at me and turned his upper lip upward and almost inside out, baring his gums. It looked positively ridiculous. What happened next is pretty easy to guess.

I left the men to their duties with a proud heart. The animals were happy and well taken care of. There is nothing like the feeling after a doing a job to the best of your abilities. I rest well knowing that our little sheepies are safe, warm and happy. I check on them daily to pitch feed and give them water but for the most part we have seen the End of Winter Sheep.

Now if only I could say the same about the chickens!

Andy

I’d love to own a farm.

There are very few days that I get up and go off to work as a computer programmer that I don’t wish I was just throwing on my overalls and heading off to a day working the earth, feeling it between my hands, smelling it. I’d rather be tending animals, building relationships with them as I master the role of steward and gain understanding of how lives are intertwined. But for now, I head off to an office and code away my day. It’s a normal life; one not unlike most people around us. I make a good living and we have a nice home in the suburbs a little ways north of Salt Lake City Utah. All around us are more average homes with green lawns, a few flowers and maybe a dog or cat, and you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that; the suburbs have been given a bit of a bad wrap I think. Yeah, they have some shortcomings, close proximity, nosey neighbors and the dreaded Home Owners Association, but over all they’ve been exactly what we wanted them to be, safe, clean, stable neighborhoods with decent proximity to everything we need at this point in our lives. So it warrants the question, what can a person that wants to work more closely with the earth and its creatures do while their stuck in Suburbia? The answer: Quite a bit actually.

Is it a farm? No. But truth be told, if I did have a farm tomorrow, I wouldn’t know everything that I would need to do to maintain it anyway. I’m a city kid, or more to the point, a beach bum. Yes I know I said I live in Utah, and yes the Salt Lake does have what some consider beaches, but I grew up on the beaches of Southern California about as far away from farm life as one could imagine, so really I’ll always be a bit of beach bum truth be told. The point is that as much as I’ve always felt a calling to grow things and to have my hands in the earth, and I have felt it, I’ve never had an opportunity to learn how to do it. So when, a couple of years ago, my families circumstances led us down a path that brought us to a closer relationship with our food and our surroundings, I began truly yearn for that idyllic little piece of acreage with the barn and the fields where we could begin to provide more for ourselves. Unfortunately, we were not yet in a position to try and do something like that, nor could I see it on the horizon. I began to feel like I may never be able to have my dream place as I imagined it and honestly become quite depressed about it. Then I had the awakening. “You fool,” I thought, “You’re complaining about not having the land you want, that you wouldn’t even know how to work anyway, while you’re squandering the land that you do have…why not use it to its maximum potential and learn a few things along the way?” And so began a process of transforming our lives.

We had a little bit of a garden, a very little bit, and we decided to start improving and expanding it. We’d us it to use it to learn how plants, earth and insects related to each other and how we could grow things organically and efficiently. We wanted to keep chickens too, but they were currently illegal in our zoning, so along with some support from other neighbors and some lobbing of the city planning commission and council, we got the laws changed and now have a healthy flock that provides us with daily eggs as well as organic soil amendments.

This year we managed to get over 500 lbs of food from our yard growing in a little less than 400 sq feet of garden as well as some 450 or so eggs. We’ve added another couple of hundred square feet again this year and expect to expand it again in the spring by about another 2-300 sq feet as we move into our front yard a bit. We’re also learning how to preserve and keep all of this bounty and to cook healthy and simple foods. Oh we still have a frozen pizza from time to time, and you will indeed find “sugar cereal” in our pantry, but we’re learning a lot more of the old ways of doing things and how to make things from scratch and loving doing it. It’s made our family a little more secure, and brought us a little closer to each other I think. We’ve seen what’s possible and now we want to show it to others.

I’ll be focusing on a lot of the small scale side of things that really separates me from some of my fellow writers here at Grit. I’d love to be in the country one day, but for now I think that the country life style is really more of a mind set than a location. I’ve decide that I’ll focus on what’s possible for me where I’m at, learn a few things along the way, and see where I end up. Maybe I can help you see what’s possible where you’re at too. Either way, I think it’ll be a great time!

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse.

We got started a little late with this year’s laying flock … I don’t remember the exact date, but it was at the end of spring. We needed to start over this year because our independent minded chickens took to roosting in the pine grove last year, much to the coyotes' delight. Actually, they were safe in the trees, but they were easily startled, which caused them to fly to the ground at the sight of a coyote and into the waiting jaws of the trickster himself.

It would be accurate to say that we were bummed about that chain of events, but we also know that coyotes need to eat too. So this year, we enclosed the flock in a portable electric net. They roosted in the mobile pen (I built as a modification of this plan), which was located inside the net. Surprisingly enough, we didn’t lose one chicken to anything, and the netting helped the dogs get used to watching chickens rather than chasing them.

Now that we have staked a firm claim on this formerly uninhabited farm, the coyotes give us wider berth. Our dogs taunt them some, but so far they have agreed to keep a healthy distance. I recently moved the chickens into a semi-permanent pen that’s about an acre in size. We surrounded it with welded wire that’s 4-feet high and topped that with a single strand of electric. When we installed the welded wire, we took care to give it good ground contact … not even Woodrow the Cairn Terrier has been able to squirm under the fence.

As winter approached, we were just a little blue that we hadn’t had any fresh eggs from the flock yet. And then it happened. Last week, one of the Welsummer hens began delivering some of the most beautiful and delicious eggs we have had all year. Kate says that they poach perfectly. I just marvel at the bright orange yolks, firm whites and yummy flavor. I also think the copper-colored shells are absolutely beautiful. For more on the joys and benefits of home-grown eggs, check out this article.

As a youngster, my mother taught me how to tie a basic fishing knot before I can remember. She had fished the same farm pond ‑ 30 years earlier ‑ that I would fish throughout my childhood, and she had me tying my own knots as I first learned to bait a hook and cast a fishing pole. In fact, I think I may have learned how to tie a basic fishing knot while wearing Velcro sneakers, or at least it was close.

The knot is paramount to any fisherman. And, in a lifestyle where quick, improvised countermeasures can mean the difference between such things as getting a hay harvest in before the rain or not, knots are sometimes equally important in farm life.

Aside from fishing as a young boy, I dangled from our two-story hayloft on more than one occasion, and I know my health was preserved because someone, maybe before I was born, constructed a solid knot in the rope upon which I was dangling.

Less seriously but equally important at the time, knots salvaged the quality of many a winter day when any number of unfortunate events would sever one of the ropes tied behind my father’s 1966 Chevy truck (“Old Blue”). A quick square knot later and all three sleds could again be racing through snow drifts.

Something about the need to improvise in the country seems to make knots used more frequently than in urban life, and old farmers – in my experience – always seem to have one or two go-to cinches.

Myself, whether it’s just luck or the actual quality of knot, I’ve always had the best luck with fish while using the improved clinch knot (a variation of the taut-line hitch, shown in our “Tie the 10 Most Useful Knots”).

The timber hitch is my knot of choice when cinching horses to trees. It has yet to leave me stranded, holding nothing but a grudge against a particular type of knot ‑ often the result when you get burned by one you feel you tied securely.

What about you? What sorts of knots have you had the best and worst luck with?

Early 20th-century philosopher and educator John Dewey once said, “To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”

If that’s the case, I consider myself in possession of a shiny new set of brass that I feel will allow me to expand my knowledge, professional skills and acquaintances to new horizons in a facet of life I’m very passionate about – country living.

Until I was about 15, my family – my mom, dad, two older brothers and an older half-brother – called just under 200 acres in southeast Kansas home. Our place was over a mile from our nearest neighbor and 30 miles from the nearest town of more than 300 people.

As boys, my brothers and I had horizon to horizon to call our own, and that sub-200-acre farm still seems today as if it had to have been in the thousands of acres. From sunup to sundown, when we weren’t attending school, after the work for the day was done – animals fed, garden and yard maintained and anything else my father had for us to do – we were given free reign to run as boys and grow as outdoorsmen.

We each had a horse, pet (at times our own bird dogs) and plenty of hunting and fishing gear to test our aptitude and ability to self-sustain.

Hunting became the favorite of Josh and me. Josh is four years my senior and my favorite hunting buddy today. Two years each way between us, the middle child, Andy, developed more of a fondness for fishing, but both realms have combined in all three of us, and we share an appreciation for nature forged in that childhood setting.

Hunting, for me, was a right of passage. I can remember walking through the snow behind my Uncle Fred – who taught us how to hunt and harvest meat, since Dad didn’t hunt – with a BB gun, my mother’s brother laughing as I tried to pick up my boots high enough to make it through the snow without tripping.

I finally felt like a man after I passed a hunter’s safety course at about 9 years old and carried a shotgun of my own along the hedgerows searching for bobwhite quail.

Aside from the hunting, being so far away from others’ homes helped us develop a genuine appreciation for family, the solitude and serenity of rural life and all that that encompasses.

The chance to work in the magazine industry dealing with this type of content was a great opportunity for me. I’m happy to be the newest member of the Grit editorial team, and I look forward to getting to know everyone.

As I go forward with this blog, especially as fishing season comes to a close and bucks prepare to rut, I’ll share observations, experiences and analysis of important hunting, fishing and outdoors issues as they come up. The opportunity to share photos and experiences with you has me more pumped than ever for hunting season to get under way.

Tight lines and straight shooting,
Caleb

Slowing down in a fast paced world is not easy for those of us who have been programmed all their lives to achieve and become successful.  You become wrapped so tight, you forget how to loosen up and enjoy.  Nature’s beauty goes unnoticed and you can easily become a robot in a make believe world.

But then … you reach milestones in your life and they scream for your attention.  Ours came when we prepared to send our first child to college and we realized that the status of becoming empty nesters was only a few years down the road.  Our second child leaves for college next year; we have taken notice.

As we prepare our children for independence, we are also preparing ourselves for the same.  How ironic that as the next generation heads into the high-pressure world, we are preparing to leave it all behind.

Our children face many challenges as they enter this new phase of their lives; so do we.  The children will have many trained teachers to show them the path. We will have one – a piece of land, in the country.

We purchased our country home last year and we are slowly learning to adjust.  Although Stan has already proven that the pond is full of healthy fish! The pond has also taught us a tough lesson: ponds don’t maintain themselves! This fact was recently proven over the course of a weekend when we pulled 3,000 lbs. of algae and weeds from the pond – Stan in the canoe with me on land, rake in hand.  We prevented our pond from becoming a swamp, and have since purchased an aerator to oxygenate and circulate the water (not yet installed).  Our country property consists of 18 acres, 8 of which a local farmer plants for us – this year soybeans. 

As an Illinois native (47 years) I feel most comfortable here; however, traveling back and forth between our current home in St. Charles and our place in the country (a 5 hour trip one way) gives us plenty of time to reflect on the diverse beauty along the way.  Even though the two locations are in the same state, the differences (soil, weather, towns, people and lifestyle) are profound. Click here to see my farm-diversity slideshow.

I am focusing my passion for gardening on our new property.  As I learn, I will share my experiences and I hope others will join me with their knowledge and own experiences!

One of the reasons I was eager to move back to the farm is that I know from experience the opportunities for daily wonder that abound out here. Not that they don’t abound in town but, living in the city, I’m not as tempted to walk out the front door and pay close attention to what I see. Part of my sacred pledge to the life force of this world is that I will notice, and I find that easier when nature is so close at hand.

Here on the farm, wonder is only a walk away – and sometimes not a far walk at that. This morning, for instance, I took the dogs and went to pick some blackberries for breakfast, with a quick cruise over to the peach trees just in case. The peaches were ripe and the berries perfect – even CP, my new pup, agrees.

He’s taken to eating a few berries (green, not ripe, thank you) off the lower branches while I’m picking. Last week, I heard something crunching down the row from me and was afraid to look because I just knew the dogs had been hunting and some little creature had bitten the dust. Instead, I laughed out loud when I saw CP’s head sticking out from under the blackberry bush, merrily chomping on unripe blackberries. He had no idea dogs just don’t do such things.

We walked back to my place and as I looked down I spied this beautiful moth, displayed as if pinned in an exhibition. I thought he was dead, but discovered otherwise when I reached down to pick him up. I don’t believe he was long for this world because he barely moved – but it was enough to startle me into dropping him (or her. I don’t know how to determine the sex of moths – and am not hugely motivated to discover the secret).

I ran back in the house to grab my cell phone and take a photo (which still sounds nonsensical to me, even though I do it routinely these days) and was thrilled that the moth was still in place, having the good taste to die beautifully right where I could get a good shot of it.

I wasn’t so lucky for my second wonder of the day. I just couldn’t get the phone/camera out in time, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

As I drove down the road that runs beside the farm, I saw ahead what were obviously a mother bird and her babies, crossing the road. Looking more closely, I recognized the feathered-football outlines that identified the bird as a guinea hen and her half-grown offspring. Bringing up the rear was not the daddy guinea, as I first imagined, but a wild turkey hen, shepherding the straggler keets and urging them to keep up, keep up.

They were minding right smartly, providing a tender tableau of mom and her BFF – a best friend forever, even if from a slightly different species – marching the kids off to relieve the field of a few of its grasshoppers.

I wonder if her accent was funny to them.