Where as most women have a favorite pair of heels (which of course I do too), I would have to say that my muck boots are one of my most favorite items I own.

Of course I don’t just have plain old black muck boots.  Mine are black with cute little colored hearts all over-and a buckle at the top (accessories are important even where muck boots are concerned).

It may sound silly, but when I slip my bare feet into their cool, slick insides, I feel a sense of calm and comfort.  I know that for at least the next few minutes, I will be outside in the fresh air doing what I love the most; tending to my little homestead.

My mind shifts directions and settles.  With my muck boots on, the bills that need to be paid float away, the multitude of responsibilities of adult life subside temporarily.  I walk with peace and purpose.

The peace that washes over me with my muck boots on is much different than the emotions I feel when I slip my knee-high compression socked feet (no varicose veins for this girl) into my Dansko clogs.  With my Danskos on, I am focused and serious.  I am all business-mixed with exhaustion and prayers that the next 12 hours won’t be totally brutal.

Although muck boots are a bit of a spiritual experience in themselves, they are also super practical.  They protect my legs from the itchy, wet grass.  They are also great for walking through the ridiculous mud that accumulates in our pig pen.  When Houidini is feeling less than pleased at his isloation from his woman, it protects my calves from his grumpy nips.  When I dash out to the pig pen in the wee hours of the night to check on Lady-Bug for the millionth time, hoping she is having those darn piglets, they are easy to slip on.

This redhead is full of muck boot love.  If you don’t have a pair of muck boots, I highly recommend you purchase a pair and stomp around in the mud for awhile-it just might change your life.

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog at www.homesteadredhead.com and be sure to like our Facebook Page. 

If you are on the outside looking in, homesteading can feel like an overwhelming transition from the common way of life these days.  Speed and convenience are the catalysts for society and admittedly, this makes life a bit more manageable with our hectic schedules.  Who doesn’t love to jump in your car, head to a store, swipe a card and come home with everything you think you need and want?

However, the normal way of life is having severe consequences on us as a nation.  Our physical health is suffering significantly from the “go-go-go” lifestyles and the pre-packaged, artificially flavored “food”  this nation is consuming at ridiculous rates.  Our relationships are suffering from the lack of face to face contact, ease of legally dissolving marriages and utter physical and emotional exhaustion of all of our responsibilities.  Our mental health is suffering.  The majority of the population, including children, are using antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications or utilizing alcohol or illegal drugs to self-medicate.

We are left feeling starved.  Starved for food that does not leave us feeling sick and empty, starved for emotional fulfillment and pride in our accomplishments.  Starved for a true connection to someone or something.  There is another way.  There is another life.  Homesteading is where I found my answer.

Homesteading is a general term for living off the land and being self-sufficient.  It is the basics of what our country was built on and it worked for decades.  It is filled with the clucks of contented chickens, the crisp taste of home-grown vegetables and the sound sleep of working hard and accomplishing a goal.  The beauty of homesteading is it can be individualized in every aspect.  You don’t have to sell your apartment or suburban home and move to the middle of nowhere.  You can start exactly where you are.

Basics 

“All good things are wild and free.”  Henry David Thoreau

Do some research and find out what you are interested and passionate about.  There are so many causes for concern in the way our society functions that the options are endless.  One of my passions is the ridiculously poor quality of our nation’s food.

In 1970, the US spent 6 billion dollars on fast food.  In 2006, this expense increased to 142 billion dollars.  McDonalds alone feeds 52 million people daily (Reference).  52 million people, including lots of innocent, growing children, are eating food that is chemically enhanced from animals who are not given proper nutrients in the first place.

And we wonder why heart attacks, cancer, diabetes and obesity are killing us by the thousands?

In my opinion, food should be grown under a warm sunshine and out in the open air.  Cattle and chickens should be given proper nutrients and respectfully culled to nourish our families.  If you want fresh food, you don’t have to go buy a farm.  Look into organic markets, local farms and food co-ops.  Support those that are giving their time and efforts into growing and raising food as nature intended, if you are not able to yourself.

Whatever you find that you believe has a better way of being done, do it.  Talk to local farmers, other people who are currently homesteading and do plenty of research online.  The great thing about homesteading is there are many different ways to accomplish the same goals.  You get to decide and that’s one of the most important freedoms we have.

Getting Started 

Start small.  As you do more research, you will become inspired to get involved in many homesteading projects.  Focus on a few main changes or projects you would like to make, and start there.  You don’t want to become overwhelmed with too many projects, this is the opposite goal of homesteading.  Homesteading focuses on hard work and caring for your body, soul, mind and the land in a peaceful, natural way.

Some simple projects to get your feet wet:

1. Grow a garden
2. Raise chickens
3. Start a compost pile
4. Make your own laundry detergent
5. Cook a meal with locally grown ingredients

Whatever you decide, remember it is about you working with your own two hands (and your family/friends) to accomplish a goal.  It is incredibly rewarding to use your own mind and body to do something productive for yourself and your family.  It is incredibly validating to know you didn’t have to pay someone to get a job done, but instead you did it with your own time and energy.

Lessons Learned 

Homesteading is forgiving.  There isn’t a hard line between the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things in homesteading.  Luckily, if your tomato plants develop blight, that doesn’t mean you have to go without tomatoes for a year, like it did in the time of our ancestors.  We are exponentially blessed with the option to live in the best of both worlds.  You can utilize your own efforts, but also if need be, use what is readily available to you.  One of the joys of homesteading is learning from the mistakes you make, as well as the mistakes others have made before you.

Rewards 

After a few homesteading projects, I can almost promise you will begin to view the world differently.  You will walk with a prouder stance, feel more respect for yourself and your ancestors and feel more physically and emotionally satisfied.

I work as an emergency room nurse in a busy, rural hospital.  I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt and a friend.  I got married, bought a house, began working as a nurse full time and graduated with my bachelors degree in a matter of a few years.  I was left feeling tired and frustrated at my endless to-do lists and responsibilities.  I was working so hard and yet felt like I had little to show.  Homesteading changed my life and my attitude.

Over the last year, as my homesteading practices have grown, I have developed an incredible sense of peace and pride.  I know that if something were to happen to society or government as we know it, I could provide for my family.  I know that if something breaks around my homestead, I can fix it or figure out how to fix it.  My homestead is my respite for the chaos of the emergency room and the duties of my personal responsibilities.  The work on the homestead is hard, but is more rewarding than I could have imagined.

While true 100% lifestyle change to homesteading may not be for everyone, there is a benefit in incorporating some homesteading principles.  You owe it to yourself and your family to change your perspective and spend a little more time together working toward a common goal.  Laugh, work hard, learn and grow.  Nourish your body, your mind and your family with a journey into homesteading.

Don’t miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog at www.homesteadredhead.com  and be sure to like our Facebook page HERE. 

 
Last week we sheared the llamas. They had not been shorn in so long it was almost a new experience for them. The "baby" had never been shorn. I gave the wool a good dip in bleach water to kill any bugs and eggs and then laid it out on fences, chicken netting and empty cages to dry. The llamas, visibly taken aback at being suddenly naked, kept coming over to look at their former coats. They seemed to be trying to figure out what on earth we crazy humans were planning to do with all that wool. 

 

Meanwhile, Mabel the Marvelous Dancing Jersey Milk Cow, has finally acquiesced to breeding and is once again with calf. I think she got wind of a little conversation I had with the butcher, but it seems to have worked. Now to feed her for the next 9 months until the calf gets here and she starts giving her rich, creamy milk again. Sigh.



The llamas have proceeded to soil their new coats by rolling in the dirt. I wonder if the neighbors will do a double take when they drive by and see them without all that fluffy hair. Now I just need to get some wool cards and parts for the spinning wheel. I've got four 30 gallon bags of llama wool to clean, sort and spin.

For updates and more adventures Around the Homestead stop by the blog:  http://mrsdshomestead.blogspot.com 

For the website and to visit the Homestead store stop by:  www.mrsdshomestead.com 

This time of year, makes most of us full of outdoor project ideas and Spring delight.  We spend hours (and loads of money) on planning out our landscapes and garden designs.  We carefully select which veggies to plant and which flowers to grow.  Has the following scenario ever happened to you?

After back-breaking work in the warm sunshine, you stand up and stretch your sweat-soaked body.  You step back and enjoy the spoils of your work.  After a long day, it’s time for rest and you head to bed and dream of all the delicious vegetables growing steadily outside your window, and the handfuls of fresh cut flowers you will soon have.

As you awake to the streams of morning sunlight, you run to the window to take in an eyeful of beautiful landscaping and what do you see?

Half eaten flowers here, uprooted veggies there, trampled plants and crushed bushes.

While in your fury you may be brainstorming about deer torture devices-save yourself from an animal cruelty charge and keep reading.

This scenario happens all too often.  As we quickly invade the earth, the deer and other garden loving critters are running out of room.  They have quickly learned what delicious delights are left unattended in the gardens at night and make good use of  this all you can eat buffet.  Why not make this year, the year that the buffet closes down for good.

Short of wearing camo and stalking out the deer when they are mid-munch with your rifle (which is great when it’s hunting season!), there are few totally foolproof ways to keep critters (mostly focusing on deer) away, but join me as we explore some fantastic options.

Human Hair 

This is an age old remedy for keeping unwanted critters out of your gardens.  Take your shed hair out of your hair brush and spread it around in the trees and on the ground surrounding your garden.  The strong scent of humans is said to deter critters.  This is a free option-if you have hair to spare!

(Photo Credit) 

This is a store bought remedy.  This is harvested coyote urine that you spray around (not on) your garden.  The scent is supposed to deter deer.  I have not personally tried this one.

Store Bought 

There are endless sprays on the markets to deter unwanted critters.  Some of these are chemically created, but most are elements of garlic, putrescent eggs, and fish oils.  I would be very hesitant, despite the company’s claims of being safe for edible gardens, to spray on actual edibles.  I have tried the Liquid Fence and sprayed it on the ground surrounding the gardens.  These have been moderately successful.  I have found that most dogs love the scents that are supposed to repel deer.

The one product I have had great success with is Sweeney’s 6-Pack All Season Deer Repellent.  These are little cartridges you hang or stake into the ground.  They are filled with a scent powder that is spread throughout the air that supposedly makes deer flee. I used these religiously last year and had great success.  They are around $20 and last all season.  I have heard some not so great reports from other people’s experiences, but mine was positive.  One downside to this product is my dogs loved it.  They would find the cartridges, chew through the plastic and eat the scent powder.  Good at repelling deer-not good at repelling dogs!

Hot pepper spray is also a remedy some gardeners swear by.  You can purchase this, but I recommend making your own.  Here is one recipe I found: Homemade Pepper Deer Repellent Spray. 

Defensive Planting 

You can also plant in a way that hides the most delicious plants.  You can plant large bushes around the desired area, but the downside to this is it is not as aesthetically pleasing.

You can also utilize plants with strong odors to cover up the scents of the other plants the critters are after.  These include Rosemary, Parsley, Garlic, Basil, Chives, Chrysanthemum, Sage, and Elderberry-to name a few.

Dogs 

These are a good method for alerting you when deer are on your property.  Particularly if your dogs stay outside, their scent and bark will likely deter all critters.

Noise-makers and Movers 

This is a remedy I use in my gardens.  Stealthily and strategically place things that will rustle, bang, move or shake.  Last year, I put plastic bags tied to the fence posts to rustle in the evening breeze.  Many people use tin foil pie plates.  One of the reasons I have ribbon on my fence posts currently, is to create movement-and it looks very whimsical!  Deer are flight animals and will flee at any sign of danger or disturbance.

Fencing 

This is about the only nearly guaranteed method of keeping critters away from your beloved gardens.  This method is typically the most expensive, but a great investment.  Raised bed gardens are a good option for creating Fort Knox inspired areas.  The following is a picture of one of my raised beds-they have one section of the fencing that is on hooks for human access:

This has been totally critter proof in the years I have used it.  There is initial cost that can be pricey, but it lasts for a few years.  The area is small enough that deer won’t jump into the fenced area and secure enough rabbits can’t hop up and under.  Full instructions HERE. 

Along with fencing, is the use of netting.  I recommend using this in conjunction with your fencing, but some lower cost alternatives can be made.  For our blueberry bushes, we like to ensure that they are safe from our chickens, the local birds and deer.  We constructed a portable PVC pipe plant protector that is easily removed by a human, but safe from all critters.

We spent about $15 on each plant protector.  We measured to ensure the plant had growing room, cut the PVC pipe to make a box or rectangle shape, attached with pipe with PVC joint connectors, applied netting and secured with zip ties.  This was a fairly inexpensive and easy project.  You could even spray paint the PVC pipe to make it blend in better.

Just make sure the netting holes are big enough for bees to move in and out.

I hope some of these methods help protect your gardens and veggies this year! I would love to hear what methods you have tried in the past or are currently using.

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With the chicks growing faster every day, we are in need of another coop.  Currently Solstice and Princess are living with the pigs and they typically bunker down in the pig houses for the night.  I wanted to make sure that when the chicks are moved to the pen, there is a coop that provides everything they need.

I definitely didn’t want to buy one, so I looked around at what we had available here on the homestead.  Luckily for us, we had plenty of pallets that were waiting patiently to be repurposed.

I used three pallets to make a three sided structure and secured with wood screws.

After the sides were secured, I found some sticks in the woods that would serve as their roosts.  I positioned them at different heights and secured in with a few wood screws .   

We had some scrap metal roofing laying around, so I decided to put it to good use and used a few pieces as a roof.  I secured to the pallets with roofing nails.

I also added our black nesting boxes from the girl’s coop and attached them with screws to the sides. 

  

Overall this project only took a few hours and I didn’t have to purchase anything.  If you don’t have any extra materials laying around, check on Craigslist in the free section for any materials you could put to use in this project.  I resisted decorating and making it cute so it would continue to not cost anything!  

With the glorious rebirth of Spring, your lovely hens’ egg production will likely increase.  As the eggs stack up in your fridge, you will likely become quite creative with how you can incorporate them into all your meals.  Fresh eggs are one of the most simple, delicate pleasures on this earth.  However, after the fifteenth meal in a row where the main course involves eggs, your pleasure may begin to dwindle.  Instead of culling all the hens and replacing those egg meals with chicken, I have another solution…

1.  Use crushed eggs in your compost

2.  Use as paper mache for crafts-mix with water, flour and sugar

3.  Make your own spa hair treatment-mix egg yolk with water and olive oil

4.  Use the egg whites as leather cleaner

5.  Crush up a few egg shells and place in your coffee grounds prior to brewing-improves the taste of the coffee

6.  Use as decorating paint on cookies and cakes-mix 1 egg yolk with 2 mL of water, add food coloring and decorate your baked goods

7.  Use as glue substitute-the egg whites are quite sticky as they dry

8.  Use as spa facial-helps improve the look of fine lines and puffy eyes.  Can use either yolk or egg whites

9.  Make your own musical instrument-poke small hole (big enough for rice to barely fit through) drain insides, rinse, let dry thoroughly.  Add rice, shake your way to a musical masterpiece!

10.  Place around plants as a protectant from unwanted critters, particularly slugs

11.  Use crushed shells to scrub pots and pans in place of steel wool (just make sure your pots and pans won’t be damaged by abrasive cleaning material)

12.  Good old fashioned game of egg toss (or toss them at your spouse in a comical way to end a fight…or start one)

13.  Poke small hole in bottom of egg, crack shells in two parts (like 1/3 to 2/3 ratio), rinse insides, add soil and use as seed starter container

14.  Use shell as candle mold-poke small hole in top, drain contents, rinse, alow to dry thoroughly.  Carefully pour hot, melted wax in hole, add wick allow to cool and harden.  Crack egg shell and voila-egg shaped candle!

15.  Use in first aid-if you have a particularly deep laceration, apply wet egg whites over laceration, helps create membrane over open area.  Can also use the white membrane in between shell and hard boiled egg.

16.  Poke small hole in bottom of egg, drain, rinse and decorate for some unique trinkets around the house

17.  Go egging…on your own property of course.  This redhead will not be coming to bail you out of jail!

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, be sure to check out the full blog at www.homesteadredhead.com 

Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.” -Sir Winston Churchill, UK Prime Minister (1874-1965) 

Before I was shoulder deep into homesteading, as I am now, I was very misinformed about pigs.  The extent of what I knew about these snorting, mud loving creatures was that as piglets they were one of the cutest things ever and as adults they tasted delicious. 

However, with lots of research and experience I have learned a thing or two.  I now want to share this with you.

A few general terms in reference to pigs:

• Sow-female pig
• Gilt-young female that not farrowed
• Farrowing-giving birth (a litter of piglets is called a farrow)
• Boar-male pig
• Barrow-castrated male

First of all, pigs are an interesting species.  In terms of the animal world, they are quite brilliant.  They are the fourth smartest animal in all of the animal kingdom.  They can actually put thoughts together and problem solve.  Domesticated pigs can actually learn all kinds of tricks-faster than most dogs.  Check out this video HERE.  Surprising right?   

This is one thing that can make owning pigs tricky.  Their excellent problem solving skills make them incredible escape artists-hence the reason our male is named Houidini.  Any fencing you plan on putting up to contain pigs need to be electric.  This is my recommendation after many failed attempts at any other type of containment.  We currently have cattle wire fencing with a string of hot wire around the base.  Pigs love to snuffle in the dirt and are excellent diggers with their snouts.

Pigs need plenty of water-they drink literally gallons a day, plenty of food and a shelter with hay to cuddle in.  Pigs don’t need a massive amount of land, average recommendations are 10 full sized pigs on a half acre of land.  The more foraging ground the better, but if you are short on space, just provide plenty of food and hay.

Pigs are fairly inexpensive homestead additions.  If you purchase them as piglets, they are anywhere from $15-$100 depending on the quality and breed.  Craigslist, animal auctions or local farms are good places to start your search.

There are many types of pigs.  What most people tend to think of when they think of a pig, is actually a hog.  Hogs can grow to massive proportions (several hundred pounds) and their main purpose is for meat.  Although “eat like a pig” is a very true statement (and THIS is why), naturally, pigs are slender.  However, for production purposes, they are overfed and pumped with hormones-another great reason to raise and butcher your own pigs).  There are many breeds of pigs.  Most commonly, hogs are sold as crossbreeds and called “feeder pigs.”

Another common breed of pigs are the potbellied pigs.  These swine have distinct drooping abdomens.  Most people keep these on their farms as pets.  These are also typically what you see at petting zoos.  They can also grow to be several hundred pounds, but this is not at all a healthy weight.  Just like with humans, pigs should maintain a sensible weight.  This means they should have a slightly protruding belly, but they should be able to see clearly without any fat rolls interfering with their vision.

(pic courtesy of Wikipedia-extremely overweight pot-bellied pig) 

There are also feral pigs, which are pigs that live in the wild.  These cause devastating damages to farmers and are incredible aggressive.  There are many areas where there is an open season to hunt feral hogs due to their destruction of crops.

We currently have two mini pot-bellied pigs, both around 35 pounds.  We do not keep the pigs for meat, but instead they serve our homestead with breeding, compost and waste reduction.

In the pig world, micro, mini and teacup pigs raises an enormous amount of controversy.  There are some breeders who claim these smaller versions of pigs do not exist and are merely starved animals.  However, if you take a look at some of the price tags of the smaller pigs they will cost you upwards of $1,000-$3000.  Surprisingly, these are being purchased for that price.  Celebrities like Paris Hilton helped fuel the mini-pig craze (and the prices!).

 (photo courtesy of http://www.examiner.com) 

This is a more recent photo of Hilton and her pig, which I am sure she paid thousands for the “teacup” title.  

(photo courtesy of http://www.celebuzz.com)   

This being said, expect that the smaller breeds of pigs, which are for pet purposes only, will grow to be around 40 pounds if fed appropriately.  These pigs have been making many people fall in love with how easily trainable and smart they are.  Many people litter train their pigs and keep them indoors.

Despite the rep of pigs being filthy, they are typically very clean animals.  The like to designate a place to sleep and a place to use the bathroom (if you are wondering, their poo looks like dog poo).  Pigs are not able to sweat, due to the fact they have no sweat glands.  They wallow in mud to cool down and protect their skin from the sun.

Many people think of large scale hog farms and recognize the distinct smell.  Any state with large hog farms also knows of the pollution from all the fecal matter these farms produce.  I think pig has a distinct smell, it can be slightly offensive, but with proper hygienic conditions it is not overwhelming.  Pigs themselves give off a slightly sweet, musky smell.

Keeping feeder pigs is an excellent addition to homesteading.  Not only can you get the obvious meat, but they serve other purposes as well.

Pigs are the world’s best roto-tillers.  In true self sufficiency fashion, after the growing season has gone by, or you are rotating crop fields, let your pigs onto the field.  They will till up the earth better than any man made machine.  Absolutely no inch of earth will remain unturned, so be sure you are finished with the area of land for the season.  They also will help fertilize the soil with their droppings.  We currently compost our pigs droppings.

One of the other top reasons we keep mini-pigs is because they are amazing waste receptacles.  We feed them grain on a regular basis, but they also enjoy the delights of our scraps.  We feed them most everything except meat-this is not recommended as pigs are naturally primarily herbivores, but if hungry enough will literally eat anything.  All old leftovers, fruit that has gone by (but no obvious mold) candy we are trying to get out of the house and pretty much anything else gets sent out to the pigs.  Sometimes the choice is tricky-pigs or compost bin?

When we move to our larger farm, we will definitely be upgrading to keeping hogs for a food source.  Owning pigs is really a fun adventure.  Before your purchase pigs, make sure your land is zoned for agriculture use (reference your local zoning office).   A really excellent resource is “Storey’s Guide to Raising Pigs” by Kelly Klober, it goes into detail about most everything you need to know, from farrowing to butchering.  You can get it from the library or purchase on Amazon for around $8.00.

Hope you enjoyed this mini lesson on pigs, happy hog raising!

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Carolina Country Magazine is featuring an article by Homestead Redhead coming in May-be sure to pick up a copy next month!  

With the upcoming farrowing of our mini-pot bellied pig Lady-Bug, we knew we had to build a separate enclosure for her (farrowing pen).  It is very important that laboring pigs have a quiet, undisturbed birth experience to encourage healthy piglets and good mothering.

We love to re-purpose pallets (who doesn’t!) and had plenty hanging around the homestead.  We wanted to build a secure farrowing pen for Lady-Bug but weren’t quite sure how to put it together.  With some brainstorming, we hadn’t decided on the best option.  Since I was a bit under the weather on the day hubby and I were supposed to build it, my hubby gets full credit for this project!

We have two houses in the pig pen and wanted to utilize one of these for the farrowing house.  They are pretty close together and super heavy.  You want the farrowing pen to be secure and private, but access to assist the laboring pig if needed.  We also wanted plenty of places to watch!

Hubby arranged the pallets around the second house and used some of the existing trees as support.  He then took wood scraps we had on hand and screwed all of the pallets together across the tops.  With the areas in between the pallet panels, you can place chicken wire so the piglets don’t slip out of the cracks (if you have mini breed pigs = tiny piglets).

We used a large piece of board as the gate that you can just push it in and out.  If you have larger pigs, I would recommend securing the gate with latches as well as attaching a few more boards around the bottom of the pallets for extra security.  Larger pigs are much stronger than our little ones!   

We used 10 pallets, scrap wood and wood screws.  Not too shabby for not having to purchase any additional materials!

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Do you recall the kinds of games you played outdoors as a child? Do they bring back fun memories? As a child of the late 1960s, I spent many days every summer at my Grandma’s 100-acre farm in Hamel, Minnesota. My cousins and I would run and play outside until we were ordered to come in at night.

Our favorite outdoor running game was called Moonlight Starlight. It was a game that had slightly different versions throughout the U.S. The game involves running from scary ghosts. The ghosts attempt to grab you while you run around the entire perimeter of the house to goal (the front porch) where it is safe from those ghastly ghouls.

Game Setup: 

•  Number of players–4-6
•  Playing cards-1 ace (the “real” ghost); 1 King (the runner); two to four
•  Numbered  cards (extra ghosts)
•  Lots of bug spray for everyone
•  Well tied running shoes

Rules:  

Shuffle the playing cards and fan them out face down. Each person picks a card. I pick the runner card so I am the only one to show my card to everyone. I stay on the front porch and count aloud;

“One O’clock, two O’clock, three O’clock, four O’clock, five O’clock, six O’clock, seven O’clock, eight O’clock, nine, O’clock, ten O’clock, eleven O’clock, twelve O’clock, Moonlight Starlight hope to see a ghost tonight.”

 The rest scatter near the house to hide in bushes, under trees and dissolve into the dark corners of the old pump house waiting to scare the daylights out of me.

 As the runner, I dash around the perimeter of the house and get back to goal as quickly aspossible. I don’t know who the real ghost is, so I must run from all ghoulish figures in the yard who scream and chase me. As I touch the first step on the porch I yell, “1-2-3 goal!” This is the triumphant cry screamed out indicating I am safe and the dark forces can no longer seize me. If I don’t make it to the porch, then I must run again.

 It’s hard to say who had more fun, the runner or the ghouls. Either way, we all received great heart-pumping exercise and a fulfilling night of thrills.

I have been trying to spend more time in the pig pen to make sure that Lady-Bug is comfortable around us.  I want to make sure she won’t be afraid if we are nearby when she goes into labor.  This way we can help her if necessary.  I decided to bring out some peanut butter to lure her over to me today.  She will eat out of my hands now which is a huge improvement from her running like crazy in the opposite direction.  She is definitely still timid without the use of food.

Once they got a taste of it, Houidini and Lady-Bug were all about the peanut butter.  It took a few licks to get the concept they couldn’t also eat the metal spoon.

As you can hear in the video, they have excellent table manners: Pigs & Peanut Butter 

In the end, Houidini attempted to take it all for himself.

On the crop front, I planted some viking potatoes in a container today.  There are several methods for this, but I chose to take a few of the starter potatoes and plant them directly into the container instead of cutting or letting them develop eyes.  We will see what happens.

I also took the older plants outside for some hardening.  It is warm today, but really windy.  It’s actually always windy here at our homestead.  I used hair clips to attach the crops to their support stakes so the wind wouldn’t break them.

I have lettuce and cherry tomatoes in hanging planters on the porch, so they were watered today and are soaking in the much needed sun.  I have been keeping them inside at night since the temperatures are still in the 30′s.

I put Solstice and Princess in the goat pen today to give them some more time to get acquainted   There is also plenty of room to run if Princess gets after Solstice again.  The chicken drama never ends around here!

Tonight I am looking forward to my agriculture class because we are meeting at a large, local composting center.  I am hoping to learn some interesting things about composting and vermicomposting (composting with the aid of worms).  After class I have to work until the morning, so I hope the shift goes by quick!

Until next time…

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE.  

As the winter slowly fades into Spring, I have heard quite a few inquiries and questions on keeping chickens.  For the next few blogs, I am going to share some of what I have learned in the last year of keeping these delightful, feathered friends.  I happily welcome any questions or feedback.  The following recommendations are for keeping chickens as an egg source and not as dinner.

Where to Start 

The first place to start is to see if it is legal for you to have chickens on your property.  You will need to find out what zoning laws exist for where you live.  To find this information, you need to look on your city/town’s website, contact city hall, or contact the local zoning office if there is one.  Due to the recent heightened interest in backyard chicken keeping, many cities have become accepting of backyard flocks (yay!).  Most neighborhoods also have their own rules about backyard chickens-check into your homeowner’s association.  Hens are obviously much more accepted in a city setting than roosters since they are quieter.

Gathering the Supplies 

If you have found out you are legally allowed to keep chickens, that’s exciting news!  If you aren’t allowed, it’s time to start a petition to get those laws changed!

A medical word of advice: chickens do put off a dander so if you or someone in your family has a lot of animal allergies, asthma or COPD, make sure this will not aggravate their conditions before you go through the time and expense of getting everything established.

Next is to obtain the necessary supplies you will need over the next few months.  Anticipate spending anywhere from $50-$100 on supplies.  This is the higher average, it is definitely possible to do it for less with more frugal choices.  Chicks need to be kept in a brooder box for several months (if you get day old chicks).  A brooder box is a secure box that houses food, water, a heat lamp and the chicks themselves.  My general rule of thumb is they stay in the brooder box until their chick fluff is gone and they have feathers to keep them warm.  Typically once this happens, it has warmed up outside as well (in our area).  Some people move the chicks out to the coop sooner than later and place a heat lamp in the coop.

The brooder box needs to be a deep box with enough space for the chicks to walk around comfortably.  There are all kinds of ideas for brooder boxes, from plastic swimming pools to wood crates.  We used a large plastic storage bin and cut the inside of the top out and replaced it with chicken wire.  Make sure you have a top on the brooder box because they can find their way out!  In the brooder box you need to have a watering container that is kept full of fresh water at all times.  Make sure you get one that is especially designed for chicks, they are not very smart and can drown in an improper container.  You also want to have a feeder and a heat lamp.  Both of which can be purchased at the local feed store.  Wal-Mart also sells heat lamps near the car/camping section and the bulb will be with the regular house light bulbs.  Chicks are little and unable to maintain a steady body temperature.  We kept the heat lamp on most of the time and made sure it was angled at one end of the box so if they got hot, they can move to the other side.  Just be careful of fire hazards, make sure its not too close to anything flammable, they get very hot.  Here is what we used (with the top off):

There is conflicted feedback on what type of shavings to use with chicks.  The majority of what I read says that cedar chips are toxic.  Just keep in mind that chicks are babies and will likely eat whatever type of bedding you use, so make sure it’s something natural and non-toxic.

Check out your local feed store for chick feed options.  You can also purchase feed online, although I never have.  Tractor Supply and Southern States are our local franchise options.  However, we like to support the local feed store down the road.  Make sure you are buying the right feed for the age of your chickens.  There is different feed for each major phase of life.  We chose to keep our chickens natural and hormone free so we made sure our food was sans antibiotics.

You now have all the materials you will need for your little chicks.

The next step is to find and purchase your future egg layers!  Check back for the next blog to continue our chicken learning adventure.

Until next time…

Don't miss the whole chicken talk series, check out the full blog for more info HERE.

Despite the bitter cold of low twenties over the night, this afternoon (which is my morning) was filled with warm sunshine.  With two night shifts down and one more shift to go tonight, I am a little weary.  The animals, with no obvious concern of my exhaustion level, decided to continue with their escape from Alcatraz campaign that has been the theme this week.

For the last several days, Houidini has been a ring leader in assisting everyone to escape from their safe, large, plenty to do in there pen.  Pigs are the fourth smartest animal in the world, so they say, and I can definitely see why.  There are a few weak spots in the fencing we used.  Our fence was put up in a bit of a hurry so we just used cattle panels staked into the ground and secured on the trees.  Houidini has been able to inevitably discover every possible weak spot and rout his way under them.  This in turn leads Ladybug out, which then attracts Buster (our professional escape goat) to creep down on his knees and flatten his body against the ground and slide under the fence panel.  This bends up the cattle fencing big enough for the larger goats, Bo and Luke, to join the escapades.  Our goat No-Name is much to fat to escape this way, so he is usually stuck cheering loudly from inside the fence.

This morning when I awoke, everyone had escaped.  The pigs were casually munching grass in the yard, while the goats were continuing their tirade in the chicken coop.  The water had been knocked off the hanger, the feed had been turned over and devoured and the ground nesting boxes disheveled and moved around.  Luckily, our animals have never wandered.  They seem to sense the fact they have it very easy here on the homestead.  Since our animals have a food drive the size of Texas, it merely takes a shake of feed for the goats, chickens and pigs to come running.  I can easily lure them back into the pen, which is a blessing.  After sufficiently barricading the hole in the fence with rocks, wood panels, and an old chicken waterer stand, I am hoping this will survive until at least tomorrow when my husband gets home to fix it.

The pigs and the goats are now happily munching on corn securely (at least for now) in their pen.

Until next time…

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures.  Check out the full blog HERE. 

This has been my first week on Baylor shift and it has been fabulous.  Although this week has been busy, it has been so nice to have consecutive days away from the chaos of the ER.  This week my husband and I started P-90x.  Not only are we getting our crops in shape for the spring, but we are getting ourselves in shape as well.  I also made dinner for my parents and in-laws which turned out really nice.  Our menu consisted of Prime Rib, honey carrots, roasted potatoes, croissants, mushroom rice and banana pudding and a chocolate caramel tart for dessert.  Although I wasn’t able to use any of my own crops yet, I look forward to the day when getting groceries simply means stepping out into the yard and harvesting what I need.

My husband and I also visited my grandparents this week, it is always such a blessing to speak with them and eat some of my grandma’s delicious homemade food.  She also passed along a few family recipes.  One family recipe was for cheese souffle, which is from my Grandma Alice, who was my Farmer Grandfather’s wife.  I also brought along some treats for them including homemade butter, fresh eggs and some leftover slices of the chocolate caramel tart.  For those of you that have never made butter, it is very simple and the taste is super creamy.  One really neat thing about making your own butter is you can add additional flavors, like garlic or herbs, which would taste delicious on homemade bread.  Here are a few general instructions on making butter…

Make sure that you are using heavy cream, whipping cream will not work and you will just end up with very whipped, whipped cream.  I typically set the cartons of heavy cream on the counter to help warm them up a tad.  This makes the process faster.  There are several options for the actual act of “churning” the butter.  You can choose to do it in a mason jar, but this involves lots of shaking and upper body strength.  The few times I have done it this way, I put on the song by Outkast “Hey Ya,” for inspiration, and shake the mason jar in up and down motions while the song plays several times.  Although this is very entertaining to watch, it is pretty tiring by the end of all that shaking!

I now make it in a food processor which is faster and easier.  After the cream has set out for 15-20 minutes, I pour it in the food processor, replace the top and push the button.  Hard work, I know.  After around 10-15 minutes, you will notice the consistency has begun to change.  Take a look here,

The point of all this churning is to separate the actual butter (or what will be butter) from the whey in the cream.  The longer you churn, the thicker your butter becomes.  I tend to churn for a few minutes and then scrape down the sides and poke at the clump with a spatula.   This helps squish out the whey as well.  I then do several cycles of the churning and scraping until the butter is formed and thick.

I then carefully pour out the whey from the container.  I do not save this whey, but I know many people do to reuse it in other elements of cooking.  After getting as much whey out this way as I can (squishing it with a spatula and pouring again helps) I take out a blob of butter and flatten it in my hands or on a plate.  The purpose of all this activity is to get as much whey out as possible.  I have found that the wetter the butter, the faster it will spoil.

I also have plastic molds I use to put the butter into and let them drain for 20 minutes or so over a pan to catch the whey.  After you are satisfied that all the whey has been removed as possible, you can salt the butter if desired (just a pinch).  Make sure you spread the salt around evenly (or mix the butter in your hands after salting) so all parts of the butter are evenly salted.  You can also make shapes with your butter or just put them in a container for use.  Keep homemade butter in the fridge in an air tight container or plastic wrap when not in use.  With two little cartons of heavy cream I made a 6×2 inch butter rectangle (which is not pictured) and what is seen below.

Homemade butter has such a rich taste and is not full of all the preservatives and chemicals like store bought butter.

In other news, with consideration of the recent hawk attacks, our girls have only been allowed to free range when we are outside with them.  This has led to hen boredom while they are cooped up.  While I have made sure there is plenty of food and entertainment available in the coop to try and prevent this, they are none to happy about their new arrangement.  Poor Princess has been suffering the brunt of their boredom, and has become a source of even more intense bullying.  They have been keeping her from the food and water as well as pecking the mess out of her.

We have decided that it is definitely time to remove Princess from that coop and get her one of her own.  She will also be getting a new Silkie buddy to keep her company.  If anyone has looked into buying chicken coops, you know how ridiculously some of the coops are priced.  I have found coops anywhere from $500-$6,000.  Ridiculous, I know!  Due to our time constraints, we were unable to build another coop.  We found a reasonably priced small coop on ebay and are looking forward to a happier Princess.

Until next time…

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead Adventures, check out full blog HERE. 

No matter where you live, at some point, your homestead will experience weather extremes.While nothing can prevent a storm from passing through your area, keeping in mind possible or likely weather events when you plan your backyard farm will give you a greater level of success.   

• Hurricane/cyclone
• Tornado
• Flooding
• Hail
• Heavy/damaging Winds
• Blizzard
• Ice Storm
• Drought
• Heat Waves
• Extreme Cold

• Assure that buildings and structures are sound, insulated where needed, and not overcrowded
• Create drainage for areas that are likely to flood – especially places where animals live
• Collect water in barrels, cisterns, or a pond
• Plant a variety of crops, since certain types may survive specific weather event better than others
• Have a generator on hand or another means to generate heat
• Cut down or trim trees or branches that may fall on your home, barn, sheds, or garden
• Prepare a disaster plan for when things go wrong
• Consider which event occur most commonly in your area, and prepare for those events

It is finally a clear sunny day on the homestead.  It has been rainy, freezing and altogether dreary.  They are again calling for a wintry mix tomorrow.  However, with the last frost of the season date about a month away, I know winter is well on its way out.

The next few days brings a tough work schedule as I am working two more days this week and one day off with the next day switching to my night shift schedule for several shifts.  It has been a long week already, so I am trying to hold on to a positive attitude through these next few days.

Everyone seemed particularly bright this morning when I stepped out into the fresh air.  The sun shone brightly on the screaming goats and restless chickens throwing themselves into the coop door.  As if I wasn’t already fully aware they are not pleased being in their coop when its obviously not night time.  I brought down several treats for everyone including a leftover sweet bundt cake and raisin bagels.  The pigs thoroughly enjoyed an appetizer of coffee cake before their grain.

The girls scrambled to be the first to partake in the raisin bagels, it typically involves one hen snatching a bite and running for her life while others chase her down.

  

  

  

  

  

  

I love the circular beauty of taking care of animals and they in turn take care of you.

If you have never spent time with a flock of chickens, I highly recommend it.  Not only is it pure contentment for the soul, but it is some of the best entertainment around.  I am constantly cracking up at the big personalities of my hens.  They are all each very unique in their own way and never cease to put on a good show.  Today they were full of poultry sass.

After the hawk attack, the girls have remained very close.  Sometimes they bring closeness to a whole new level.  In our chicken yard there are four lovely, hay filled, quiet nesting boxes to choose from.  Two are located on the ground in dark boxes and two are located in the coop if the girls need a little more privacy.  Over the last few months they seem to constantly rotate which one they prefer.  At one point several months ago we had noticed a huge drop in egg production.  We figured it was due to the change in season and did not think of it again.  However, our productive little poultry had not had a decrease in egg production at all.  I discovered this as I went to clean out the goat houses and found dozens upon dozens of beautiful, weeks old eggs stacked high in the corners of the goat houses.  Lesson learned!

Needless to say, there are plenty of options for private, comfortable egg laying.  However, Gerty and the Barred Rock prefer to lay eggs this way…

I am sure there is no closer bond than laying eggs together beak to tail feathers.

Now this intimate bonding causes quite a ruckus.  While this is going on the other girls are anxiously clucking wildly looking up at the nesting boxes.  Apparently they disapprove.

Lucy is looking into the nest box at this gregarious behavior and clucking her opinion.  Ethel flew to the top of the coop to try and get a better look at the shenanigans below.

These silly girls provide a constant source of delight and entertainment for us as well as delicious fresh eggs.

Until next time…

(Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, view this blog HERE too)

I am often met with surprise that I am “into this farming stuff.”  I am not sure if I should take this as a compliment or an insult.  However, I will be the first to admit my tastes and hobbies are about as varied as they can be.  Perhaps I do not look like or talk like what most people identify as a “farm girl.”  Like most other women, I enjoy little spoils like a pedicure, however rare they may be, but I also thoroughly enjoy the feeling of the earth underneath my bare feet.  While I have always harbored an intense passion for animals, it has been in recent years, as I have completed my transition into adulthood, I have discovered this passion for farming and homesteading.

One big reason I attribute this passion to, is the simple truth that farming blood courses through my veins.  Before Chapel Hill was consumed with shopping centers, banks and paved roads; it was a thriving, rural community.  The land that University Mall sits on, is the original home of my family’s farming beginnings.  Parking lots and trim boutiques have now replaced the stomping grounds of my Daddy’s childhood.

Below are excerpts from an article written by the local paper years ago…

“Since the 1960′s, agrarian landscapes that once prevailed around Chapel Hill have given way to urbanization.  One example is the replacement of the former Conner dairy farm.  The owner of the dairy farm, Luke Conner (1891-1974), was born and raised in Vermont, graduated from University of Vermont in 1917 and married Alice Briggs (1894-1975).

One a trip north, Conner stopped in Chapel Hill, liked the area and in 1929 bought 254 acres of farmland west of town.  A 10 room house costing $5000 was built on high ground on the Conner land.  The Conners were no sooner settled in their new home, than the Depression started.  Conner managed to stay afloat financially during the following lean years by the sale of timber from his land, milk from his dairy and 60 acres of low lying land to a neighbor.

Large crops of hay and corn grown there fed a herd of 20 dairy cows, each named for a movie star.  In 1940, Conner built a large red barn that became a local landmark.

The first segment of the two lane US 15-501 bypass cut through his farm in 1952-53.  That inconvenience along with his older age and lack of farm help contributed to Conner’s decision to retire from farming.

By 1969 the Conner farm buildings and cow herd were gone and the Conners were in a nursing home.”  (article written by Doug Eyre)

This article speaks volumes to my simple, farming heart.  I am extremely proud of the back breaking work and creativity my Great Grandfather showed through those terrible years of the Great Depression.  He had a true self-reliant homestead.  I would have loved to meet him and walk the acres of his farm, quietly relishing in all of his stories of years past and tricks of the trade.

I love hearing my grandparents’ and my Daddy’s stories of the movie star named cows, homemade butter and hot summer days spent working hard.  I can only imagine the quiet heartbreak and hopefully peace, of my great grandfather as he must have walked his many acres listening to the contented moos of the cows for the last time, before coming to the decision that not only was his life beginning to face its decline, but times were irreversibly changing.

Through all the modern hustle and bustle around where my family’s farm once stood in all its simple glory, it is hard to imagine acres of rolling green pastures, a bright red barn and cows lazily grazing in the sunshine.  The times I am passing through this area, I stop my truck, roll down my window, and listen as hard as I can, in hopes of hearing the almost imperceptible crunch of my great-grandfather’s boots as he made his way in the dark of early morning to milk his movie star cows. 

The Conner Farm barn in all its glory. 

The large Conner Farm pond where my Daddy fished as a young boy. 

Another view of the Conner Farm barn. 

Wherever you live, the weather and climate have a major impact on your backyard farm.  The climate controls what crops you can grow, which animals are likely to survive, and what supplies you need on hand, and on any given day, the weather influences your daily chores and changes the needs of the plants and animals on your backyard farm.

Over the next several weeks I will share a short series on weather and climate specifically related to the backyard farm.  I'm planning to discuss some of the climate terminology related to gardening, explain some of the traditional weather sayings, and discuss how to prepare and overcome weather and climate challenges.

Weather versus Climate

Weather is what is happening at the moment, and is usually predicted over several days at a time.  Climate is the average weather over a long period of time for a specific location.  Many of the climatic averages you are likely to hear are computed over a 30 year time period. While the weather can change dramatically over the course of just a few hours, climate is generally much more stable; although short term or long term shifts can and do occur.

As a backyard farmer, the climate allows you to plan and predict the success of your crops and your ability to raise specific animals, but the weather of any given year (and your ability to adapt to the weather) is what will determine which crops will grow and what needs to be done to keep your animals safe and healthy.

What is Your Climate?

When you begin to plan your backyard farm, it's important to determine the specific climate that occurs in your backyard.  Your climate is impacted by your height above sea level, terrain, distance from the equator, proximity to a body of water, and any number of smaller influences. Determining your climate gets tricky since climate not only changes across large areas, but changes over incredibly small areas, making the climate across even your backyard variable.

You can start to understand your specific climate by looking at the climate averages in your general region (this is how planting zones are identified).  You can get a general sense of the climate by making observations around you, but if you are someone who likes to see the numbers in front of you, you can get to work collecting some data.

The most important data to collect is temperature and precipitation averages (although wind strength/direction will also be important if you live in an open, windy area).  You can find the data from a number of sources, but for the United States, I prefer the National Weather Service.  You can find climate data for your area by clicking on the map and than selecting the NOWDATA tab on the top right.  Pay special attention to the average date of your first and last frost, the number of growing days, and the amount of precipitation per month.

Once you've determined the general climate in your area, it's time to determine the micro-climates that occur in your neighborhood, and even within your yard. Small areas in your yard may experience dramatically different climates. And even though a certain plant won't generally grow in your zone, you may find that a certain part of your yard is warm enough on certain years. Look carefully at the layout and general placement of your backyard farm.  If you are located on a hill, you are likely more exposed to cold temperatures in the winter and heavy winds, while if you're at the bottom of a valley, you may find that cold air settles and you experience earlier frosts than homes located uphill.  Here are some basic 'rules' for finding the micro-climates in your backyard:

• Southern facing areas are usually warmer (especially when these southern areas are against a building) The soil here will also dry out more quickly
• Areas in the shade are cooler and retain moisture
• Areas near water are more temperate (warm when it's cold and cooler when it's warm)
• Areas at the bottom of hills (even small hills) will be colder on still, clear nights as the air sinks, this is especially important in the fall and spring as these spots will likely experience a frost earlier than nearby areas
• Small spaces protected from the wind will experience warmer temperatures and conversely, exposed areas will be subject to wind
• Gardens that are under the edge of your roof will get more run off when it rains and will be wetter

Once you've determined your climate and microclimate, you can use this information to plan the crops and animals that with not only survive, but thrive in your area.  Next week I will discuss the specific parameters that can help you select crops, but the best way to plan your garden, is to find someone in the area and learn what works for them.  If you don't know anyone locally, try talking to people at farmers markets, or even simply observe what varieties they are growing.

Weather for the Backyard Farmer

Climate may be important for planning your garden, but this year's weather is what will determine your success or failure.  The weather reports get a lot of grief for the number of times they get it wrong, but when you realize they are making predictions of air movements that impact each other horizontally and vertically across large and small areas, it's often more impressive that they get it right so much of the time.  Weather reports also have a much more difficult time making predictions for a small area.  It may be possible to predict a thunderstorm is in the area, but very difficult to predict where the storm may travel, and even harder to predict where in that storm the strongest winds may be found.  As a backyard farmer, you should approach a weather prediction skeptically and recognize that a variety of different weather phenomena might occur over your region at a given time.

Temperature

Temperature is important for the farmer: it dictates whether a frost will kill off your seedlings, whether your greenhouse will get too hot, or whether your animals water will freeze and need thawing throughout the day.  Temperature prediction are often more accurate than other forecast predictions.  In general, your temperature will change based on the amount of clouds in the sky as well as the larger scale circulation. Clouds keep the sun from warming the ground during the day, but keep the ground insulated and warmer at night.  As air masses and fronts move through your area, they can pull air from warmer and colder climates causing rapid changes in temperature. 

Precipitation

Precipitation is even more difficult to predict than temperature.  As a backyard farmer, the type of precipitation your yard receives is more important the the amount of precipitation.  Strong heavy rains will often run-off the surface and may not replenish your garden.  On the other hand, slow, steady drizzles may only drop a small amount of rain, but will actually be more readily absorbed into the soil.  It is always a good idea after a rain to dig into your soil a bit and see how well the rain replenished the moisture.  By collecting you own rainwater, you can more easily adjust to changes in precipitation.  You can also install a cheap rain gauge to track total precipitation.

Wind

For many people, wind plays a dramatic role on their garden and farm.  Wind cools plants and animals, evaporates water, and can knock over struggling seedlings or even trees.  It's important to know the dominant wind direction, and to protect your plants and animals using wind barriers when necessary.  Winter winds especially can make a cold night significantly more dangerous for animals since wind causes the warmth from an animals own body warmth to dissipate.

Stop by next week for more backyard farming weather and climate!

Weigel’s Farm  

Their farm buildings were demolished. A large barn is gone; a hay shed gone, barbed wire fences, all gone. They stopped farming after their last child went to college. All that are left of any outbuildings are, a double garage plus two chicken coups, now housing nine feral cats. In Pauline’s clowder of felines, her orange tabbies were most friendly, yet they still ran when we got too close to pet them. My friend Rita tried to feed them canned tuna to gain their trust. She made little trails of tuna leading to her feet. Two days later, they were still enjoying canned tuna with no human contact. She’s such a pushover.

Their house was built in 1941. They didn’t move in until 1960. One guest bedroom was supposedly haunted. However, I remember sleeping well in that bedroom. If you ask a ghost politely to leave you alone they will. I swear I smelled Frankincense or Myrrh in that bedroom at night.  It was interesting that a poster of a 1980’s Snap-On Tools pin-up girl hung next to a picture of Jesus on one bedroom wall.

Pauline’s basement was filled with talking cookie jars. One jar was ocean blue with a surfer gliding across it shooting a curl while “Surf City” played when you opened its top. Another jar, was a pig dressed in a cop suit that squeeled, “Hold it right there, put that cookie back,” as you attempted to open it. My friend Rita giggled like a little kid as we both opened each jar to listen. Soon after, we were hungry for cookies, big time, that night so we went upstairs at 10 p.m. to make a batch of snickerdoodles.

I walked with my friends along an old farm path near one of their property lines one evening. A most engaging, deliciously sweet aroma wafted across my nose. I had never smelled such purity. Tony told me it was Sweet Clover. My God, I could not live without breathing that scent each day of our visit. I plucked a few sprigs to place in my book I had picked up at a local thrift shop to read as we drove across North Dakota.

Pauline said she hated trees. She liked to see as far across her property as possible in all directions. There was one big tree outside their dining room window that she wanted gone. She didn’t like to smell evergreen when she opened a nearby window in summer. Tony wouldn’t do it. That was one thing on this Earth he wouldn’t do for Pauline was cut down that beautiful old spruce tree.

Remember when the word senior conjured up ideas of high school graduation—young minds with great ideas, ideals, goals set before them?

What happens to our vocabulary as we age?  Now when we hear the word senior, we automatically think of AARP and wonder how much of a discount we’ll get on the state park pass when we hit those magic years. All of a sudden, women are no longer ashamed to tell their age, but actually shout it out as they near the cash register at the local Bob Evans. We envision our grandparents or parents in nursing homes, our children buying us hearing aids for Christmas, our knees creaking as we walk up the steps.

I like to think of entering senior citizen statehood as entering Autumn. Leaves turn vibrant colors; Indian summer is just days away; apple orchards offer the pick-your-own pumpkin fields; open windows in the night allow the curtains to catch the cross breeze and flutter in the shadows of the full moon; fodder shocks symbolize blessings of harvest. Of course, with all the good things, we must also face mice being run out of the fields into our homes; the cold quickly approaching; heating bills rising; blizzards and bleakness descending.

As in most situations, bad comes with good. But the most promising part of our lives’ autumn is the wisdom we have gleaned and the opportunity to digest the meat of the Word of God and share the milk with those who are babes. As Twyla Paris sings…How Beautiful the feet that bring the sound of good news and the love of the King….How beautiful the hands that serve the wine and the bread and the sons of the earth….How beautiful is the body of Christ…we are encouraged and blessed to serve.

How wonderful it is to give back to this world in need, to make a difference in the lives of those who still think that senior refers to an 18-year-old who never quits dreaming. How beautiful it is that as we look toward the future, we can, even in the autumn of our lives, have great ideas, ideals and goals! 

And what a great opportunity to be surrounded with young people with whom we can share all that He has taught us.

We raise Pekin ducks on our farm here in Virginia, right alongside our chickens.  We have four ducks, Penelope, Sasha, Sonia and Brigid and one drake, Gregory, and collect between 3 and 4 eggs every day, right through the winter. In fact, the ducks out laid our chickens this past winter!

The ducks are a lot of fun to raise, but what we love best about them is their eggs.  I had never eaten a duck egg before our ducks started laying them for us, so I didn't know what to expect.

Turns out, they are pretty similar to chicken eggs.  Of course the duck eggs are larger - about 30% larger to be precise.  Our duck eggs usually weigh in right around 3 ounces, which is considerably heavier than even jumbo chicken eggs. 

Duck eggs contain slightly less water and more fat which makes them superior for baking.  They make cakes and breads rise better. On the flip side, overcooking them makes them rubbery, so they aren't best used for frying or scrambling, although we do eat them both ways with care taken not to overcook them.  I find the eggs do have a bit stronger 'egg' taste than chicken eggs which makes them stand up better to strong cheese such as Swiss or sharp cheddar, say in an omelet.

I always use our duck eggs in a one-to-one ratio in recipes that call for chicken eggs (I try and use the smallest for baking), but since a large chicken egg contains roughly 3 Tablespoons, you can also lightly whisk the duck eggs and then measure out 3 Tablespoon amounts to equal the number of eggs the recipe calls for.

Duck eggs stay fresher longer than chicken eggs due to having thicker shells.  Their whites are firmer, and ounce for ounce they contain more calcium, Vitamin B-12, Vitamin A, and Vitamin D than chicken eggs. They contain less Vitamin E and about the same amount of protein as a chicken egg, and one duck egg delivers almost a full day's serving of cholesterol.   Neither duck or chicken eggs contain any Vitamin C.  One duck egg contains about 130 calories, half of which are fat calories.

Their larger size and thicker shells make blown duck eggs very much coveted among the pysanky crowd to hand paint or otherwise decorate.

Overall, the large, rich duck eggs make a nice contrast in color, size, taste and composition to our chicken eggs and  I feel blessed to have both provided by our backyard flock.

Like any good chicken or duck 'mother', I pride myself in thinking I understand for the most part what our chickens and ducks are trying to tell me by the different clucks, growls, shrieks and quacks they use.  If you spend enough time around them, you will come to recognize a low throaty cluck of a broody hen, the sort of growling sound when they spy a hawk, the high-pitched chirp-chirp of a lost chick, and the Morse code-like chatter of the ducks when they're excited.

While I would never claim to be able to communicate with them on every level, their body language also helps convey their message and between the sounds they make and their expression, we seem to be able to get our messages across to each other at least most of the time.

So when Gregory, our Pekin drake, came over this morning while I was filling the ducks' pool and started chattering away, I assumed he was just excited about having a clean pool, so we 'chatted' about it for awhile with him getting more and more worked up by the minute....well, imagine my surprise when I glanced over my shoulder to see the run gate had swung partway open and all the chickens were escaping!

As I ran to get them back into the run, I swear Gregory waddled away, completely disgusted by my failure to communicate with him.  And yet again, I was humbled and reminded how much I still have to learn about our backyard flock.

When I was a young child Christmas at the Family Farm was a special treat.  I was the only grandchild my grandparents saw on a regular basis so I reigned supreme.  Gramdpa scanned his acreage every year for just the right tree to cut for decorating.  The house smelled of pine, cinnamon, Luzianne coffee, and vegetable soup.  I loved all the decorations Grandma pulled out of the old trunk - the cellophane wreath with a red light bulb, handmade ornaments, and especially the bubble lights.  I watched those lights for hours.  It seemed miraculous that the heat could make them bubble and glow.

We strung popcorn and cranberries, listened to Christmas carols on the radio, and trekked through the snow to tend to the animals.  Ben and Blue, Grandpa's mules, paid no mind to the snow.  While the chickens only burrowed into the straw and tried to peck my hands when I "picked" the eggs out from under them.

Christmas dinner lasted practically all day beginning at Grandma's and ending at Mama Sewell's.  They had adjoining farms but in weather like this, we took the car instead of the path.  The best gift was playing with my cousins.  I counted the days until school was out again and I came for my summer visit.

Happy memories at the Family Farm.  I can only hope my seven grandsons have experiences like this to create happy memories in the future.

 Our spring kidding season starts in about 3 weeks.  This, of course, is cause to reflect on our December kiddings.  For the past two years our does have been divided into a March kidding group and a December kidding group.  It has worked well for us.  Winter kidding obviously has its trials and is a bit more labor intensive (we’re in Missouri, so the winters could definitely be worse but are still below freezing) but the flip side is that we have kids reaching market weight right before Easter.  So we can sell when the market is at it’s peak in this area, which is no little thing to consider. 

Here is a glimpse of the amusement that these last kiddings brought to our farm:
 
Anyway, our December kiddings were overall a success, but started on a trying note.  Our first doe to kid was Ruth, a young first timer who went about a week early.  Luckily we happened to be out in the barn checking on things when she delivered twin bucklings.  One was 99% dead at birth, we managed to resuscitate it but it slipped away again a short time later.  

This is Ruth (Though mostly wild, apparently she is a ham for the camera...see following pictures.):

The second kid was loudly letting us know that it was alive, hungry and deeply offended at being brought out into this cold world.  But he was weak, barely able to lift his head and nowhere near trying to stand.  And, his mother wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

(Please note, I do not like goats in the house and firmly believe that they should stay in the barn with other goats whenever possible so that they don’t forget that they are goats.  However, there is one thing I despise worse than goats in the house and that is: COLD.  Especially at 1am.)   Therefore, after both my husband and I, the doe and the goat kid had all reached a suitable level of frustration I simply milked colostrum from the doe and we brought the kid to the house to warm up and gain strength.

 
After a successful round of tube feeding I fell asleep on the basement couch thinking, “Isn’t this the life?” - with my then 3 month old human baby in a bassinet on one side and a baby goat in an old playpen on the other.  Needless to say, between the two babies, there wasn’t much sleep for me to have that night ...
 
I remember making a comment after the first buckling died (the one that we had briefly resuscitated.)  It went something like this: One of the things that I really appreciate about working with animals/farming/nature is how they keep you humble and realistic.  There is a lot of self-empowering talk in society today about how “Anything you dream, you can achieve” and “You can be anything you want to be!”  I’m all about setting goals, having dreams, and working hard to see them come true - but I also think we have to be practical.  As a somewhat slight built 5'4" female, I’m probably never going to be an NFL football player no matter how much it may be my dream and I may want to do it.  (And no, that isn’t actually a dream of mine.)   But sometimes dreams and desires just don’t align with real life (or “whole life” as our 3 year old calls it.)  So, no matter how much, for example, I wanted that goat kid to survive - he didn’t.  I worked hard, did everything I know to do, hoped, prayed, willed him to survive, begged, poured everything I had into that tiny creature for the short time I had with him....I wanted him to live.  And he didn’t.  Which brings me back to my point: Nature keeps us grounded.  It’s hard, it hurts and usually it downright sucks, but generally it does us good to be reminded that we are not masters of the universe - not even our own universe.

Stay tuned for the 2nd installation of the kidding saga.  (And, in Ruth's defense, we were able to graft the kid back onto her a day later when he was able to stand and she has been a great mother since then.)
 

Hello readers! My name is Marie, and I enjoy talking about the rural lifestyle. My husband, Jim, and I have always been “homesteaders at heart,” though most of our life has been spent in urban and suburban settings. We bought our first acreage in 1981, moved several times for job changes, and then found our “finally farm” in 2007.
 

Though they live elsewhere, our children and grandchildren share this slice of heaven with us. They come and go as they can, participating in farm projects and working on their own cabins and future home sites. Jim and I feel blessed to have great relationships with all our family members: the four that we raised, the four that married them, and our baker’s dozen of beautiful grandchildren.

Together we spent three years developing our property before Jim and I moved here full time in 2010. Gradually it’s all coming together. We now have a small home, a large utility barn, a chicken coop, and a garden shed/greenhouse. Two Maremma sheepdogs and a small flock of laying hens live on the farm all year long.

We raise meat chickens in the summer and have plans to add beef cattle and pigs to the mix. The family has planted an orchard which promises future fruits and berries. We have a nice sized vegetable garden and preserve some of our bounty by canning, freezing, and dehydrating. It’s a wonderful feeling to sit down to a meal that originated right here on the farm.

A family of adventurers, we like to try new and old methods of farming, gardening, and homemaking. Our parents and grandparents set examples for us, and we desire to live close to the land and be good stewards of it as well. Now we’re seeing another generation follow suit as even our young grandchildren jump right in and help with animals and gardens.

Our projects reveal the engineer here, the administrator there, and creativity in many forms. The complementary interests and skills of all eight adults result in a myriad of ideas. We win some and lose some, with our share of projects that worked better in our heads than in real life. But we also see many successes and have a lot of fun.

Though the farm chores and other activities keep us busy, I always make time for writing. With other family members I review kitchen equipment at The Homesteader Kitchen and share practical how-to’s at The Homesteader School. We also offer encouragement and tips for the urban-to-rural transition at Rural Living Today.

And now I’ll be writing here at Grit about our journey along the rural roads of life. It’s truly an adventure, and I look forward to sharing it with you! 

I took advantage of the somewhat warmer temperatures last weekend to spend a bit of time in the barn working on our kitchen island project. I managed to get the door frames and panels put together and hung, and I also managed to mill and install the drawer fronts. All the pieces will need to come apart again for sanding and finishing, but it was motivating to see the progress and to better visualize what the final piece will look like. So far, all the lumber has been a windfall from the farm. Pine, standing dead for several years in our grove, and American black walnut from trees we dozed off a couple of pond dams. We milled the lumber using an Alaskan chainsaw mill and a Hud-Son homestead-sized bandsaw mill. You can read about all of this in the earlier installments here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Now that the doors and drawers are more or less completed, I cannot wait to work on the kitchen island's black walnut top.

I cut open mortises on the stiles (upright framing members) and tenons on the rails (horizontal framing members) for the kitchen island's cabinet doors. The open mortise and tenon joint also goes by the names: "corner bridle joint" and "slot mortise and tenon." Don't you just love language? I did all of this machining with my table saw and cleaned things up with a 1/4-inch chisel.

When done well, the open mortise and tenon joint is strong and makes squaring up your door frames a snap. The table saw is a little crude for this kind of work, but in my case, crude is OK, just as long as it is strong. Before I glued the frames, I milled some 1/4-inch stock for the panels. I joined the panels using a floating lap joint -- hopefully this will allow sufficient movement to keep the boards from splitting as they move.

I glued the works up with Gorilla's wood glue, which likes to cure at temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. So, I glued and clamped in the little laundry room in the barn where the heat currently comes from the drier, which we run twice a day. I ran it for about 50 minutes during this exercise to be sure there was plenty of heat to cure the glue.

Since this entire project is based on using what you have and spending virtually no cash, I opted to hang the doors using some 1970s vintage cabinet hinges I had removed during a room-demolition project back there. These particular hinges are 3/8-inch surface mount inset hinges, and in order to make them work properly, I needed to chop 3/8-inch deep notches in the kitchen island's legs to accommodate the hinge design. Squint a bit and you can see the notches on the righthand leg pretty well. An added advantage of this is that the hinge pins are recessed and won't try to grab the person working on this, the sink-side of the island. I say that to make it look like I really planned to chop those notches from the beginning -- which I did not.

For the drawer fronts, I milled out 5/8-inch pine and screwed it to the door boxes. It took a little fussing to locate the fronts -- I used a couple of spacers to get it consistent. These door fronts still have a date with the router or one of my hand planes for final shaping. The drawer box needs some quality time with hand plane and sander as well.

There you have it. Cool, eh? I spent at least 10 minutes trying the doors and drawers and feeling warm in the 40-degree shop because everything worked as planned and looked decent to boot.

As I was admiring my handiwork on the kitchen island, Karen came out to see if I had cut and milled that black walnut for her. She has some projects of her own in mind, and I had promised long ago to grub out the raw material for her. With that gentle reminder, I sawed and planed some of the more interestingly figured pieces of the black walnut I milled with the bandsaw mill. She sanded the dickens out of it and applied a food-safe oil finish to the pieces. I was taken aback by the wood's beauty, which makes me even more motivated to get going on the kitchen island's black walnut top. Stay tuned.

I finally managed to get back to the kitchen island project last weekend (see part 1 and part 2). This time, I focussed on framing in the drawer slides and enclosing the sides and installing the bottom shelf. As fate, or luck would have it, I ran out of suitable lumber for the sides so I took the opportunity to put a Hud-Son Homesteader HFE-21 sawmill to work. I cut another 9-foot long length off the long-dead pine that I felled last spring. That tree will have yielded all of the lumber needed for the island except the top and then some. Even though sheet goods might make more sense for the drawer bottoms and the cabinet doors, I am committed to building the entire kitchen island from lumber grown and milled right here on the farm. I know that's no great feat for folks living in New England, but here on the Kansas plains, dead trees of any kind tend to get bucked for firewood, dozed into holes and buried, or dozed into piles and burned.

The kitchen island is finally taking shape. The pine planks and timbers will be painted or stained once we decide what the top will look like. We're leaning toward solid American black walnut at the moment, but that is subject to change.

This is only the third time in my life that I've built and installed drawers in cabinets. This time I am making old-fashioned wooden slides that I plan to lubricate with soap or hard tallow -- the slide framing is installed here. I broke down and used some carefully placed screws to help with the installation. As always, bore pilot holes for best results.

The Hud-Son bandsaw mill came in mighty handy for cutting additional planks from the well-seasoned pine log. One advantage to this mill over the Alaskan chainsaw mill is that it wastes much less wood. It's also faster, quieter and the little 6-horsepower Briggs engine didn't put me to sleep with both big barn doors open and the Kansas gale-force breeze blowing through. When not in use, it's easy to tuck the entire mill out of the way.

Planking the bottom was straightforward. I chose 0.75-inch rough boards, milled them smooth and nailed them to the frameworks. Rather than butting planks against one another, I cut half laps along their edges so they would overlap by about 0.75 inch. These ship-lap style joints will allow some expansion and contraction but prevent opening to daylight. For the sides (and back) I nailed 3/8-inch thick planks spaced about 3 inches apart. The joint cover-boards are about 4.5-inches wide with laps milled into both edges sufficient to overlap the planks by about 0.75 inch. I don't know what it's called, or even if you are "allowed" to use such crude joinery anymore, but that's how the back and sides were planked on a cool antique cabinet I saw at a flea market -- so I went with it.

Here you can sort of make out how the lapped board fills the space between the two wider planks.

This is the main reason that I believe the kitchen island's top will be made of American black walnut (pardon my shadow). It felt good to get the bulk of the largest downed walnut converted into some nice lumber. I'm still  not certain that the kitchen island's top will be solid walnut, or exactly how I will join the heavy planks. Stay tuned to find out.

Things that flow from one thing to another.

What I mean is … a relative had white grapes and had left over white grape juice. My husband asked if I wanted to make jelly. Sure. So, I came home from work early, and thriftily turned her left-over grape juice into jelly. Of course, I had to buy pectin. Which sort of makes it less thrifty. But at least it wasn’t the way it was earlier, when I had to purchase jars also. My first year in graduate school, I was enrolled in a poetry writing course. Trust me, I’m no poet, but I wrote a poem about the free tomatoes my husband brought home.

The Tyranny of the Tomato 

"Do you want some tomatoes?" 
The Man asks me.  

"Sure," I foolishly reply. 

That evening, he returns 
Armed with four grocery bags full; 
I know he thinks he’s being kind. 

Tomatoes are free from a friend. 

They won't last. 

To town I go for all I need for salsa – Jalapenos, onions, habanero peppers, green chilies. $20.  

But the tomatoes are free. 

A day spent – Washing, cutting, cooking tomatoes; 
Roasting, peeling, seeding peppers; 
Boiling canning water. 
Electricity, water, jars, lids, bands – 
Not studying.  

But the tomatoes are free. 

I’m not sure I can say more than this …

More things I didn’t know about the farm. You realize this could be an endless list, but I’ll start with just a few things:

• Straw. I had no idea where straw comes from. None what-so-ever. Then, my husband said something about “wheat straw” and the light came on over my head. For some reason, I knew that corn stalks were ground for insulage, but I just never thought about straw.
• I couldn’t figure out why when they sprayed the soy-beans that they didn’t die along with the weeds. Then, he said the phrase “Round-Up Ready soy beans” and once again, the light dawned.
• I keep calling the steers cows. Now to me, all of those bovine things are cows. Just one stinking cow after another. (Cows and I are not friends - more on that later.) We are selling shares of the critters for slaughter and I told him that I was talking to people about the cows. “Steers” he corrected me. “I have to get you to stop that, people will be thinking only of hamburger.” (Apparently, cows are mainly good for hamburger, while the steers are for the better cuts of meat.) I thought of the city people I’m dealing with, and I’ll bet they have no idea, either, between cows and steers. But I promised to do better.
• I was fortunate in that I knew how to can such things as jelly and salsa. But what surprised me was the volume of work from gardens. I’ve had a small garden, or would go and pick a few fruits from the farms pick-your-own farms in New Jersey. But my husband comes home with tubs of beets or dozens of sweet corn from family members. Or last year, for example, we had buckets of sour cherries that had to be dealt with immediately. The work was a bit overwhelming, and I discovered things like you really can’t double a recipe for canning cherry jam. I ended up with many, many jars of unset cherry jam when I didn’t boil it long enough, out of sheer exhaustion. But, I’m making a virtue out of necessity, and using the semi-solid jelly for pancake syrup. I should claim that I did it on purpose.

I feel like I started my shiny new GRIT blog without properly introducing myself. So, here is a bit of how a dirt-hating city dweller got to the point of writing about chasing sheep around the countryside on the weekends. 

I grew up at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills, not exactly rural America but more country than city. I always was an “indoor girl” with the desire to avoid sweat and grimy hands. For many years my family had virtually no water to take care of our ¾ acre, so hauling heavy buckets from the house and weeding star-thistle were much avoided summer-time tasks.  

Like most little girls I eventually grew up, however reluctantly. I survived high school, went to college and landed in nearby Sacramento, the City of Trees, doing accounting work. I got my Certified Public Accountant license as soon as I could … and then realized staring into the cold glow of a computer screen for a living was not my idea of living. 

I spent a couple of vocationally discontented years treading water in my jobs until one day last December the mention of a goat hit me straight in the heart. My boyfriend kept talking about wanting goats; he even brought a book home from the city library. Out of the blue, a passion for all things agriculture and food related was awakened in me. 

As soon as this passion was exposed, I acted on it. I found a flexible internship with local shepherd, Dan of Flying Mule Farms, which I started in February 2011. At the time I figured sheep were close enough to goats; I just wanted to start getting comfortable working with livestock. I now spend most Saturdays working with Dan, the sheep and at the farmer’s market selling grass fed lamb and beef. The weirdest part – I am now proud of getting sweaty and dirty!  

I really enjoy working with sheep; they are the highlight of my week. I sit in an office during the week and daydream about farming. As of now I would like to open a sheep dairy … no easy task for someone with no land, no sheep and little money. My preferred bridge to having my own dairy is to intern at someone else’s dairy; plans and hopes for that are currently in the works. I am also recently engaged, so throw in a little wedding planning and you have a pretty good idea of my life today.

I have been blogging since March here, so if you would like to check out any of my previous posts, I invite you to it.  For the most part the two blogs will be identical from here on out.

Thanks for reading! I welcome feedback and advice.

Callie

We've been watching one of our Mulefoot sows for more than a month, thinking she would deliver any day. And then it got hot. And then it got hotter and the Mulefoot sow grew larger. Yesterday, summer's heat peaked (we hope) with 111 degrees at the farm. The massive Mulefoot sow lumbered back and forth between the mud wallow and what appeared to be the area she picked for her nest. Only this time she dug a shallow trench through the hay and into the soil, ridging up the hay on both sides. This morning I found that Mulefoot sow sleeping peacefully on her side, in the trench with her 9 baby pigs in a peaceful heap on the hay.

This is one of our most experienced sows. She has successfully weaned many litters to date. Most of the time she has chosen to make her nest in one of the farrowing houses and will even carry hay to the house to make it more snug. I think I know why she chose to farrow outdoors last night. I suspect she made the trench nest to help her keep cool by pressing her side to the hay-insulated soil. I also suspect that she knew her little ones might overheat in the hut. I suspect that she held onto those little pigs until last night because she knew the weather would break. The difference between a high temperature of 111 degrees and a mere 95 degrees might not seem like much, but when you weigh less than 3 pounds and live outdoors, it can mean the difference between surviving or dying.

Raising pigs outdoors, on dirt and able to root, is compelling. Observing the miracle of birth and expert motherhood is uplifting. When asked why we raise pigs the old fashioned way, I say because it is beautiful.

 
I thought I would share a few tidbits from the farm, and catch you up on what's been going on. We've had a VERY busy spring, and keeping up on all the farm chores, our "regular day jobs", and every day routines leaves little time for anything else. But we love it, and welcome each new day. We've got five kittens on the farm, old enough now that they've started bravely exploring the area around the storage/feed shed they live under.
 
Oddly enough, the females are the friendliest of the bunch. Usually, it's the boys. When they're old enough, they'll visit the vet for a little snippity snip, and come back to the farm and take up residence in the barn.

 
The garden is growing, and just starting to produce edibles. We enjoyed our first picking of green beans on Friday, and we enjoyed our first zucchini on Saturday! We've got more zucchini ready for picking, as well as a patty pan squash, and a handful of beans. The cucumber vines are LOADED with flowers, but 99% of them seem to be male flowers. Hopefully the female flowers will be along soon. The tomatoes are doing well, and I'm starting to see a few hints of red!

The rattlesnake pole beans planted around the hackberry limb tee-pee trellis we built have sprouted! I can't wait to see the trellis filled with bean vines!

The Thumbelina Zinnias were the first flowers to bloom, and their bright cheery faces are a wonderful thing to see! I look forward to more zinnias, and lots of sunflowers, too!

 
In other critter news, we are patiently waiting for our red Dexter cow, Lucy, to deliver her 2011 calf. Come on, Lucy! We're READY when you are!! Looks like she'd rather be out in the pasture with the herd, but we've got her in the barnyard where she can deliver her baby under our watchful eye.

 
The other calves have all been weaned, and are enjoying the good life. Dexters for Sale, Dexters for Sale! 

 
We've got a few new chicks on the farm, too! I snapped this photo yesterday afternoon while making rounds with the camera. Looks like a great way to travel, when your legs are short!

 
The hens are enjoying daytime free-ranging. Lots and LOTS of bugs to eat! Lots and LOTS of yummy eggs to produce!

 
We continue to count our blessings on the farm, and hope you and your families enjoyed this Memorial Day weekend.  June is upon us, and it looks like summer is here to stay for a while.

So many folks that have never really thought about the wool being spun into yarn ask me, "Exactly how is that done?" So I'm going to do my best here to try to walk you through it with pictures and brief explanations.  Here we go, spinning 101.

You can see in the previous  post how the sheep is sheared and the wool is skirted by hand (cleaned) getting it ready for the really big cleaning at the mill. Off to the mill it goes to be washed and put into what is called roving. Roving means all the wool is clean and carded (almost like combing it) making it all go in one direction for ease of spinning. So when it comes back from the mill we have a big bag of roving from each animal.

The next step is to start spinning it through the spinning wheel.

As you can see we treadle (peddle) the wheel to make the wheel turn. 

A cotton string is attached around the wheel and up over the bobbin (where the wool is stored while spinning).

There is a knob on the wheel that adjust the tension of the string, so a little tension causes the wool to be pulled through the orifice out of the spinners hands and onto the bobbin. While the spinner spins they must draft (pull) a little of the fiber out which is the part that will be spun into the yarn at that moment. The amount drafted, thickness or very fine is what determines the kind of yarn spun, either lace weight, bulky ect.

So we treadle and draft, treadle and draft filling the bobbin.

When the bobbin is full it is taken off the bobbin and wound onto what is called a niddy noddy which puts it into skein form. 

The next step is to wash and set the twist in the newly spun yarn. I use an organic lavender essential oil  with a gentle soap to  let it soak. This soaking sets the twist up nicely and gives the yarn its final cleaning. The lavender treats the wool so that it is moth proof!

Then the yarn is hung to dry with a weight that also helps set the twist in the yarn. The yarn may take a couple of days to dry depending on the weather.

When it's dry it's twisted back into a skein and is ready to knit with.  

I hope this gives some kind of idea of what the process of spinning wool into yarn is. A number of different spinning wheels are on the market, all doing the same job. The height or how smooth they spin or treadle may vary, so its important to try a wheel before purchasing. Or work with someone that can give you some idea of how a number of wheels work.

So, you're now ready to spin! You have completed Dream Come True Farms Spinning 101.       

Well spring has arrived here officially on the farm. And none to soon for me. We in New England had our fill of winter! This past week I started spinning some wonderful natural colored fleece into yarn. I completed many skeins, washed and set them and moved them into the shop waiting for the right person to come along and fall in love with them.

I also completed a wonderful little shoulder shrug with some hand dyed hot pink yarn. It's just enough to keep the chill away, worn over the shoulders ending above the elbows. I added a really cool square button which I think was perfect for this little shrug. Great for Spring!  It came out just perfect.

I weeded the strawberry patch, and rhubarb patch which took some time,  a little here, and a little  there  over the week and it was done before I knew it.

Looking good! I'll make strawberry rhubarb jam for the shop in a month or so, as soon as the strawberries come.

I had my little  farm helper two days this week, Luke my grandson who knows that chores are never done on the farm. So, he lends a hand driving his tractor  filled with weeds and dumping them for me. A great farm hand he makes!

So another week has passed, and all is well here at Dream Come True. Life is good...Have a great week. See you in a week or so!  Pam 

It was just after the first U.S. case of mad cow disease was confirmed in December of 2003 that it became clearer to me than ever that my diet needed to consist of more natural, organically produced meat. That was also the first year my folks took a step into a more eco-responsible diet as well. My family collectively purchased 1/2 side of Angus beef and a 1/4 side of hog. Both animals were raised responsibly and were harvested to our specifications. Why should we care though? 

Thanks to all who entered the drawing to win a free copy of our 2011 On the Farm calendar. We hope 2011 shapes up to be a successful year for us all; I'm looking forward to baby chickens, of course! *grin*

I entered each commenter's name into a mug and Alan pulled out one lucky winner ... big congrats to Nebraska Dave!! Get in touch with me Dave, and I'll get your choice of small or standard sized calendar out to you right away! We hope you enjoy spending your year with our calendar.

As always, you are invited to read more about our life on the farm.

Thanks for checking in!

I love photography and am always finding fun things to photograph here on the farm. Last December I went through my photos and put together a special 2011 On the Farm calendar featuring various critters here on the farm, some images from the garden, and even some farm landscapes. The purpose of the calendar was not only for our own home use, but it also made wonderful gifts for the holidays, and we also hoped that sales of the calendar would bring in a little cash that we could put towards caring for the farm critters.

I thought I would offer up a free calendar to one lucky Grit blog reader! If you would like to enter the drawing for an On the Farm calendar, simply leave a comment on this post and tell me what you most look forward to in the coming year. I'll randomly select one name from all comments on Friday, January 21st at 10am Central. The one lucky reader selected will be given their choice of a small, or standard sized, 2011 On the Farm calendar.

And well, if you don't win the drawing on Sunday, it's not too late to order up your own copy of On the Farm!

As always, you are invited to read more about our life on the farm.

Thanks for checking in, and happy weekend!

In his new book Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want, Bryan Welch challenges us to quit moaning and groaning about the environment, economic predation and a host of other uglies and instead take a proactive role in creating a future worth living. Welch's fundamental premise is that humans are smart enough to figure out how to make something happen, but when it comes to the future of the earth, and our species, we can't seem to get past just pointing out the problems and pointing the finger at those perceived to be at fault. Finger pointing and special-interest-agenda grinding will most definitely prevent any future world concept that's fair, beautiful and abundant or worth living.  

Vegetarians blaming beef producers and Prius drivers blaming Hummer afficionados for using up all the natural resources and causing all the pollution, or political pundits pretending there's no end to oil and that global climate change is just some pork-providing hoax, simply skirt and divert attention from the real issues.  Adjusting our consumerism to include guilt-salving environmental bandaid purchases like compact fluorescent lightbulbs doesn't make much of a long-term impact either. As with life in general, there is no environmental magic bullet that will keep our way of life going without us first carefully defining where we want to be and agreeing on a path to getting there.

Nope, a future worth living is not going to be conveniently purchased with a certifying body's stamp of approval, it's not going to wear some political party's slogan, it will challenge cultures, religions and traditional ways of thinking. Building the world we want is going to take honest engagement, cooperation among groups that have not historically cooperated, and untold lifetimes of dedicated work. Building a future that appeals to a common human vision won't likely be televised, but it may well be continuously streamed.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that creating a beautiful and abundant future is entirely within the human realm. As Welch eloquently points out in his book, humans visualized being able to fly for about as long as history has been recorded. The big breakthrough occurred in 1903 and look at us today. If we can visualize it, we can make it happen. So let us start visualizing how a naturally beautiful and economically abundant earth might look because it will likely take a while to get there.

One of the most compelling lessons for me in Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want is that an amazing amount of human effort is being currently squandered in the battle over special-interest slices of the environmental issue. What a waste. Imagine where we'd be if that energy was aimed at a desirable outcome with near universal appeal.

If you are dissatisfied with the contentious and derisive wheel-spinning discussions of the present condition and how it relates to the future, I suggest you read a copy of Welch's Beautiful and Abundant. At the very least, you might be moved to think about the world and your place in it. But more than likely you will experience a paradigm shift in thought -- a ureka moment of sorts. It seems so simple: without a vision, our future is completely lost.

For more information on Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want, click here. To order your copy today, click here. 

I'm pleased to report that I managed to remember to add the clarifier and carry out the few intermediate steps in the Artful Winemaker's foolproof wine making kit and finally got around to bottling the brew the day before Thanksgiving. I think that's a little over 28 days total, which means that the wine making kit better be foolproof since I didn't follow the instructions to the T and I neglected to install the seal on one of the funnels. How I missed that instruction is beyond me, but the wine was clear, smelled like wine and so I went ahead and followed the directions for bottling.

The first step in this process was to install one more component (a funnel) into the Artful Winemaker's fermentation vessel, which was designed to seal the substantial sediment away from the spigot's inlet. In spite of my somewhat clumsy nature, I managed to get the seal  installed on that funnel and get it inserted into the wine without stirring up that sediment -- whew.

Next, I dissolved the sulfite packet in water and rinsed the artificial corks and the wine bottles, taking care to slosh the solution all around to be sure that no stray yeast cell or bacterial spore could escape certain death. After that, it was simply a matter of filling the bottles with the spigot, and inserting the bottle closures. I was ready to call it a day, but my Partner in Culinary Crime noticed that the box of supplies included lovely bottle labels and foils to cover the corks.

So she carefully applied labels to the bottles and I installed the foils before setting the entire case of foolproof homemade red wine in the corner of our yet-to-be-completely-completed-mudroom-addition turned temporary wine cellar.

We cracked a bottle of the stuff on Sunday, just three days after bottling and wow, were we pleasantly surprised. Our homemade Cabernet was entirely drinkable (and looked great in PICC's crystal wineglass) and accompanied our supper of turkey tetrazzini quite delightfully. I was really amazed at the outcome of this experiment and found the foolproof wine to be much more enjoyable than the Franzia boxed Cabernet sitting on the kitchen counter and the bottle of Bogle in the wine rack. I enjoyed the entire process so much that I ordered a couple of kits to send as gifts.

Photos Courtesy Karen Keb

When our guests arrived at the same time Thursday morning, we were a bit surprised. One couple, our friends and coworkers at St. Brigid's Meadows, live across the street. The other couple, my parents, live 3 hours east of us. When our guests came in the door bearing gifts of smiles and pies, we knew this would be a good day. Welcomes and introductions aside, we settled in for a homemade brunch consisting of farm raised foods and good cheer.

In the background, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade added atmosphere and we all dug in. Soon, we fell into comfortable conversation and before long, the pretense of new faces was shed. It was a great start to the holiday, followed by a group effort clean-up in anticipation of the Big Meal later in the afternoon. The Blankenheims' left around mid-day to check on the animals, do a few chores and take a nap. We continued cooking and child entertainment with my folks, leisurely setting up the house for a Christmas tree and catching up. It was amazingly comfortable, and I found myself hoping the minutes wouldn't tick by the way they were. Mom alternately cleaned and played with the kiddoes. Dad helped Andy with a couple projects and played make-believe baseball player with Elly. I managed to get some accounting work squeezed in and Andy happily prepared the side-dishes and the turkey for our grand meal.

It was a long distance from where we were in our relationship just a short month ago. But to fully understand what happened in the last month, I must back up nearly two years. (Don't worry, it won't be a day-by-day account!)

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As Andy and I dove more and more fully into this farming take over at Foxwood Farm, we had to start thinking differently. When we first moved back to Wisconsin from Colorado Springs, we were still in the corporate rat race. I had quit full time graphic design to freelance from home, in anticipation of our first child in a few months. Andy took a sales position that had him away from home over 10 hours per day. Between long work hours and late pregnancy, we did not have many thoughts toward the farming endeavor and only had a few planning meetings with my parents on the direction of the farm. Our initial interest had been a tourist type farm with a few niche artisenal products and more of a hobby farm atmosphere. As we progressed into our pregnancy, we took a natural birthing class and learned a great deal about nutrition and diet for a pregnant mother. Logic told us that what was good for the pregnant mother was good for everyone, and we started to change the way we ate. We found a local source for eggs and switched to whole milk, some organic fruit and whole grains. For my birthday in 2007, I got a book from my oldest brother that became the catalyst for an entire life paradigm switch. The book, The Untold Story of Milk, completely opened our eyes to the benefits of fresh, unprocessed milk ... and the amazing government take-over of our food system in the last 100 years. We had the time to read most of it together and when Elly was born, continued reading it individually. We knew then that we had to get hold of this milk, but did not know how.

In August of 2007, we moved to the farm. Andy still worked the same job, and I had my freelance work, with a baby, and our lives were not yet involved in farming. Andy took care of the animals on weekends, but it wasn't until winter of that year that we knew we couldn't work a full time job and farm. There were not enough hours in the day. Our plans for a tourist destination had morphed into providing local, everyday folks with the type of food that would nourish them and not poison them. Suddenly we were in the mentality that this was no longer a hobby dream. This was the real deal. When Andy quit his job in February of 2008, we had taken the plunge. There was no going back then. We'd intentionally burned the boat and we were here to stay.

Looking back, that fierce "Pilgrim" mentality was both our greatest driving force and our deepest downfall. Our focus on what we needed to realize this dream became like a laser beam. Others outside that focus had trouble getting a word in edge-wise and most often that was my parents.

We were very conflicted with our plans. On one hand, Mom and Dad were very supportive of our future goals, yet on the other hand, we felt a lot of pressure to do things that Dad had always wanted to do on the farm. It was a battle from nearly the beginning. In June of 2008, about the time we first began this blog, Andy quit his part time FedEx job and devoted all his strength, time and thoughts to Foxwood Farm. There was much to do. A lot of the farm had been allowed to decline for several years because at the time, my father saw no one coming to take over. He was thinking of retirement and buying new machinery or fixing not-so-urgent problems was low on his list of priorities. Now, with a young, entrepreneurial man ready to take it all on, there were several years of clean up and catch up to do. The hours were long and hard. Andy learned so much that first year.

And he also learned about the dynamic of The American Farmer. My dad is The American Farmer. He is independent, often working weeks at a time alone, relying on neighbors for seasonal help and in turn helping them in season. He has gotten by for years on his own ingenuity, thriftiness, and self-reliance. Cold days, sweltering days, sick with the flu; no matter. There is a job to be done and The Farmer will not call in sick. (He can't!) That self-reliance is what has kept the people farming through this difficult century.

And that same self-reliance has the unfortunate effect of closing off new or unproven ideas. Bring in Andy; completely new to farming, having no credibility, and a learning style completely foreign to my father. Andy asks questions about everything. He just has to know why/how/when things work. "Why do you do that with this tool?" "I'm not familiar with this process ... wouldn't it go more efficiently if you eliminate that?" "Couldn't we try this method?"

In trying to ascertain the "WHY?" of farming, Andy became to my father a great hold up in the progress of things. He was not interested in teaching Andy. He just wanted to get the job done and on to the next bullet point in the never-ending list of To Do's. But for Andy, just doing something and moving on was not teaching him anything. If the same problem occurred, the cognition to recall how to fix it might not be there because he didn't fully understand the process from the first time around. It wasn't but a few months of this delicate question and answer dance that tensions arose between the two of them. When we took our turn at being shepherds in the summer of 2008, relations were already strained. As a family, we decided to look into group counseling, to help us understand the dynamics we were confronting on a daily basis.

From early fall 2008 to early spring 2009, we went faithfully as a group of four (Elly had a babysitter during that time) to work out our personalities. It was rough at first, but after coming to a safe place to vent our feelings, reveal hidden emotions and talk through misunderstandings, the four of us felt like we could "graduate" and meet weekly at home to continue planning for the ramp-up of Foxwood Farm. Suddenly we had a basic platform on which to talk through ideas successfully, and all of us were renewed with hope.

With a new baby in the mix, I was pretty much taken out of the farming equation, and it was again many hours with Andy and Dad working side by side. As our product line expanded from free-range eggs to grass fed beef, we looked forward to gaining a milking herd. The sheep continued to be a source of future promise for independent income, and we expanded our family garden to a quarter acre.

As our first cow Charlotte freshened a whole month early, we scrambled to set up the barn for milking. Our dream of having fresh, unprocessed milk was finally here and hopes were high. Dad taught Andy and I to hand milk her as we had NOTHING ready yet. But within the week, and then the following month, we got sufficiently set up with a milking system. We revamped the milk house, built an on-farm store and bartered for some essential freezers and electrical work. By the time our second cow, Tilly, came into the barn, it was just about June of 2009, and we had already pre-sold shares for her milk. We finally felt like we were underway.

And you know the rest of how it all went down, as we detailed the chickens, sheep and garden story right here in this blog. Our customer base was growing steadily and so was our milking herd. By the end of July, we had 7 cows and more milk than we could sell (at the time). So we decided to become part of a processor to pick up our excess milk. On Andy's birthday in August, our first milk pickup occurred. It was exciting and bittersweet. We never wanted to go outside our customers and sell commercially. But the pressure for bills and rent caused us to reconsider.

During this time, our families still met weekly, but the meetings were less and less productive. They became more centered on money and bills and becoming profitable. Mom and Dad were rightly concerned that they had put a lot of saved cash back into the farm, but were seeing little, if any, return on the investment. We were also rightly offended that they would demand as much return on investment so early in the game. After all, statistically it takes new businesses upwards of five years to become fully profitable. We were barely into our first year. The problem was two-fold. Our unwillingness to do things as they "always had been done" (Andy's questioning everything, either out of sheer thirsting for knowledge, or actually asking if there was a better way) and an out-of-the-box marketing strategy. What we wanted to do was not only foreign to the farming community in which we lived (crop farmers, government subsidies and selling everything off the farm wholesale), but it was foreign to how my parents had farmed as well. Though they knew it could work, and we all had studied several successful families doing direct-to-consumer farming, the actual nuts and bolts of working within that framework were still hard to adjust to.

As the months passed, it became more and more obvious that Andy and Dad could not even work together on projects. They divided the farm responsibilities between them and went about business as usual, barely talking and often, not seeing each other throughout the day. It was a mutual decision in order to keep the farm running without constant battles throughout the day. In the fall of 2009, we were asked to start paying rent on the house, cows and land. This was something we had been graciously pardoned by my folks from the time that Andy quit FedEx the previous summer. With our current bills and income, we were only able to pay on the house rent. All other rents silently added up ... on paper and in our heads. We sold the sheep, having too many projects for Andy to take care of effectively all at once. We continued selling the milk via word of mouth. At the end of 2009, we were actually poised to become profitable. If our milk sales continued the way they were, we could quit selling commercially. By autumn, our beef calves would be old enough to sell direct to consumer and with the added income, we'd be able to start paying all the rent for the farm. It was a hopeful time, and we couldn't wait to ease the tensions that were at a breaking point with Mom and Dad. In December, we "got off the truck" from our commercial milk hauler and welcomed the New Year with high hopes.

In January, we got the letter that would send our business into a tailspin we were never able to recover from. With our infinite tax dollars, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection had surfed this very blog and found us "guilty" of selling fresh unprocessed milk directly to consumers. They threatened to shut us down if we didn't cease what we were doing.

In fear and desperation, we shut down our personal blog, erased our Facebook page, canceled our LocalHarvest page and had this very blog purged of anything related to raw milk. Every source of viral advertising that had been steadily leading consumers to our door was effectively silenced. Our patron base plateaued as we asked our current milk customers to keep their favorite product on the down low. All our hopes turned to the pending raw milk bill coming through our legislature in the coming months.

We asked for more time with my folks and they granted it. We and others rallied our friends and customers and overwhelmed the public session on the bill in March of 2010. 700 people from around the state came to show support for the bill that, although flawed, would keep farms like ours in business until a better bill could be passed. In April, the bill passed both the House and the Senate by just under a two-thirds majority. It seemed we had won and Andy and I began getting the farm ready for the new bill requirements and updates. We had a massive marketing campaign ready at the very minute we heard the green light from the governor's mansion. And so we, along with my parents, and the rest of the fresh milk farmers across the state (and the nation), waited on that signature.

It was sure to come. He had stated support early on and for months, reiterated that he would sign a reasonable fresh milk bill. A month passed. Still we waited. The controversy grew. And we began to feel the pressure. Even before we learned of the governor's veto, the dam had broken on Foxwood Farm. A few months back, my parents had written a letter explaining their needs and feelings in the farming effort. It was basically saying, if you can't make a go of it by June, we all have to be done. The strain, the relationships, and the financial burden was coming to a head.

It had been half a year and we had managed to take on almost all the livestock and building related bills. We had taken over all animal husbandry, and while there were still mistakes being made, we felt the crash course had really given us a surviving knowledge of how to farm on our own. But we still could not pay anything but the house rent. The DATCP letter, compounded with the lack of new customers, had left us far from our end of 2009 projections and once again, we were not showing Mom and Dad what we promised.

To make matters worse, when we thought the bill would pass, we changed the way we sold milk on farm. We no longer bottled for people; we asked them to buy our bottles and fill jars on their own. We also eliminated assigned days for people to pick up milk (a way to regulate a finite supply of milk). In doing these two necessary changes, we lost almost half of our regular patrons between April and July. Our income dropped to half of what it was and we were desperate.

Most of our former customers don't know this, but every time just one of them didn't come to get milk in a given week, or opted to buy milk from the store because filling up in the milk house wasn't convenient, we were one step closer to losing hold of the farm. This is not to blame any one family or person. It's just a simple fact of small businesses. It's the people that know the service is there and choose not to spend their dollars at said business that eventually see the "Closed" sign on the door.

Though we hadn't talked with my parents directly in months, we could sense on a spiritual level that our time at Foxwood Farm was at a close ... unless we did something. In a last effort, we all met with a mutual friend and had a mediated meeting about the future goals of each family. Andy worked for several days on a counter-proposal to my parents' initial demand: buy the whole farm, rent the whole farm, or we're all done. In his well reasoned proposal, we would rent only the number of cows we needed, only the number of acres we could manage and all the buildings. This brought the monthly rent to a manageable amount that also brought my parents a nice monthly income. In addition, it allowed us to focus heavily on ramping up our current products in order to begin saving to buy the farm.

Unfortunately, that wasn't at all in the goals of my parents. They had reached a point that they just wanted to be done with the farm, and us taking over only five to ten acres was not a viable solution. What would they do with the rest while they once again waited on us? It meant more crop farming for Dad, and at the time, he was much more interested in his personal pursuits that did not allow for a farming lifestyle. All of this was completely understandable and totally within their rights as landowners. They had a lot of money built up in the equity of the farm and at the end of their 60s, wanted to see some of the fruits of their labor.

June came and went. We barely talked to them anymore. One morning as Andy and I prepared to head to church, our friend Gale stopped in unexpectedly and told us that we needed to do something regarding the farm. He didn't know quite what, but he'd been feeling this for a long time and had finally felt he needed to sit us down and talk with us. "You've got to ask for help," he told us. "Maybe make your story known and see what happens." It began a ball rolling that we never ever dreamed of.

My parents took a short trip to visit my brother in Colorado and during that week, we wrote a letter to five or six people within our sphere of influence explaining our dire situation and asking if they had wisdom and advice for us. Each of them came back with amazing ideas and empathy, but one happened to know a farmer in La Crosse that was looking for a family to hire. The rest of that thread you all know very well.

By the time my parents returned from Colorado, we had already met with Vince once and had determined to follow this unexpected path as far as it would lead. We were unsure of how to do this, but needed to break the news to Mom and Dad that we were pursuing a plan that did not involve Foxwood Farm. We took them out to eat and told them the whole story. When they told us we had their blessing and that they felt this was a good plan, we knew that there was no turning back.

I think it was that very day Foxwood Farm actually died.

For we knew, if working at St. Brigid's Meadows didn't pan out, there was no net for us at Foxwood. We were either moving west, or done farming. Period.

In August of 2010, just a short 15 months since we had begun milking a single cow, we packed up the house and left the place we thought we'd call home for the next 40 years.

We left the farm, but we couldn't leave our feelings of failure, hurt, sense of unfairness, and a lingering ache that our dream had been robbed of us. Initially we shut off all contact about the farm. It was too painful to hear. And since my parents were intimately involved in the dissolution of the farm goods, we needed to squelch contact with them as well.

Andy and I were harboring intense feelings of betrayal and anger towards my folks. In order to deal with them, we didn't. We busied ourselves in our new jobs and dove head-first into our new roles at St. Brigid's. We set up boundaries for what we would or would not talk about on the phone. We had need to return to the east side of the state a couple times and purposely took roads that did not pass the farmstead. It was a complete shut down.

I knew it was a temporary fix, but it's all we could do in the immediate. The distance was a welcomed barrier and the only thing we were sad about was the fact that many of our patrons had to flounder to find another source for their milk. We could fool ourselves that we were dealing with the loss of Foxwood Farm, but my subconscious knew better. My Spirit wouldn't let me get away with it that easily.

A few months passed. I found myself encountering dreams about the farm and the farm house on a nightly basis. In fact, as I talked through these dreams with Andy, I realized I'd been having an awful dream relating to the farm nearly every single night since mid-September. They were not necessarily nightmares, but filled with an overall uncomfortability about the events unfolding. They ranged from real life knowledge to ridiculous, but all were themed around the farm house and the changes being made to it. They became so frequent, that I quite telling Andy the details and just said in the mornings, "Had another farm dream."

We finally sat down and talked about what to do about it. Obviously I needed to deal with this painful loss in a more constructive way, but was unsure of what to do. Initially, I wanted to write a letter to my parents letting them know exactly what I felt, as a way to get them to understand their role in everything. It was a very human and self-centered plan. And a normal one. As we prayed for guidance in this delicate issue, my brothers contacted me about getting in on an anniversary gift for Mom and Dad. Their anniversary is right after Thanksgiving.

This is important because they wanted to honor our parents with a substantial gift to celebrate 45 years of marriage. I found myself wanting not only to participate, but help dictate how we could make the gift more meaningful for the two of them. I mused on this feeling before church one morning. Why was I so eager to honor people who had dishonored my dreams and family so recently? It was a deep desire within me to do something very special for them. I pondered this as we drove to church. The sermon that day was all about honoring those in authority, regardless if we agree with them or not. I couldn't believe it. God was setting me up! (He's good at that.) I listened at the edge of my seat. I had no notebook to take notes, so unfortunately I can't recall most of the details, but the Bible verses the pastor found in both the Old and New Testaments confirmed and reaffirmed my desire to honor my parents.

Within the week, I wrote them that letter, but it had a completely different tone. I didn't mention everything I had wanted to unload on them. Instead, I came in the opposite spirit and told them that for the first time, I was beginning to see God showing me the role Andy and I played in the very demise of the farm. That we were just as, or maybe more, in the wrong from the very beginning of the farm endeavor. That we did not honor them and that we allowed the perceived offenses to keep us from seeing their part in the farm. It wasn't long, but I laid it all out for them.

And as deer hunting season opened the week before Thanksgiving, I went to visit them with the kids for the weekend. It was a nice visit, and we officially invited Mom and Dad to have Thanksgiving at our home in Coon Valley. They graciousy acknowledged the letter and as the two of them walked in our door, it was a truly an event to be thankful for.

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Thursday late afternoon, we sat down with the Blankenheim's, my parents and our little family said a substantial prayer of thanks. Just the fact of us sitting there was a testament to the humbling grace of God and what he can do with broken hearts. We aren't through it yet, and there is much more healing to be had, but we are positive this step was the first good step in a long time, for our relationship.

Then Dad gave a toast. It was short and could have easily been missed in the following conversation, but I heard it loud and clear.

"Here's to an interesting and painful year...and a beautiful ending to that year."

I have found myself with the rare opportunity to blog during the middle of the day. Andy is watching the kids so I can spend time at the office (farm office) and get some accounting/customer relations taken care of.

In the meantime, I am sitting in a warm, wood-paneled office with a window view of Dawn's fall garden and the fog slowly misting by. It's just above freezing today and a leather office chair, soft lighting and free time is making for a pleasant combination.

After posting about a week ago about our renewed interest in blogging, I have gotten an amazing response from folks I never even knew were reading about our family. It's been heartening, edifying and a direct confirmation that this is what I need to be doing. If you haven't noticed, I am already starting to blog with more intention and the more I write, the less I have to catch up on. You know, like when you haven't talked to a friend in a few months, you are often left with little to say because the small details in life are lost and the major ones don't take up that much space. So it is with you all, my friends from all over. I haven't written in so long, I don't know how to catch up with you all! But if I do this blogging intentionally, and give you daily/weekly updates and thoughts...well, the whole idea of writing isn't nearly as intimidating as it was.

So today, with my precious afternoon "off," I will catch you up on what's happened to us since we parted ways with Foxwood Farm.

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When we drove out of that gravel driveway for the last time, it was a moment I'll never forget. Next to our hand-built patio, we left a small crowd of friends/farm patrons who had helped us pack up the moving truck or just came over to say goodbye. I looked out the rear view mirror, even after Andy told me not to. I saw them all waving, melancholy yet strong, and I found myself welling up in tears. I was driving our mini-van, packed to the gills with breakable items, our friends Kat and Cortnie (who helped us immensely on our farm), and Elly. Andy was driving the moving truck with Ethan and our friend Ben. My parents followed, Dad in his pickup with outdoor items and Bret (Cortnie's older brother) and Mom drove separate with yet more items in her SUV.

I accelerated passed the the maple trees that mark our front yard. Two Norman Maples and one Sugar Maple, planted when my dad was a kid to give shade to the south side of the house in summer. I found myself thinking of my childhood under those trees.

They were the perfect climbing tree for a kid; low branches and thick sturdy wood. I had many "secret" spots in which to perch and watch the lazy summer days pass by. The shade was so effective that for years only patchy grass could grow underneath. In the fall, countless leaves would rain golden onto the earth, covering the lawn so completely that we would make several ten foot tall leaf piles to jump into.

My mom taught me how to make leave "houses" out of the golden carpet. You take the rake and uncover square areas of lawn, connect them with lawn "hallways" and make rooms with them. Below, 6 month old Elly sits in a leaf hallway dedicated to the Packers.

My brothers showed me how to play "camping" with various GI Joe action figures at the base of the tree. A Norman maple has a thick trunk that often has exposed roots making for amazing miniature worlds of canyons, caves and hills. In recent years, Andy hung our hammock in between the two trees, making for perfect summer snoozes and cute candids of the kids. And sometimes, they were just magnificent trees, pushing back against hard winds, sheltering us from southern storms and standing grandly with their foliage bright and glimmering in the setting sun.

I was snapped out of my dreamy thoughts by Elly asking if we were going to "catch up the truck" in reference to the lumbering moving truck a thousand feet ahead of us. "Yeah, honey, we're going to follow Daddy and Ethan all the way to the Blue House."

The Blue House. That is our home here in Coon Valley. It's been referred to as the Blue House since we first met with Vince at the top of a beautiful ridge back in August. He was cutting hay for second crop and the late afternoon sun gleamed off the hood of his well-kept tractor. Andy and I had just driven 3 hours one way to find a man who might be the key to our future as farmers. It had not been but 36 hours before that we first learned about the opportunity to be market gardeners in La Crosse from a mutual friend. Of course, we didn't know the friend was mutual until that day. On a whim and several prayers, we headed west...toward our new destiny. We didn't even know where we were exactly going until about an hour in, when Vince called us back. "By the way, we're heading to your farm now. How do we get there?"

A deep guffaw from the other end was reassuring and we made arrangements to meet around 5pm. When we arrived, we could not find Vince at either farm and made some calls to his cellphone. After awhile, we got a return call to meet him in the field of The Short Ridge. We had no idea what that meant, but driving up and down the winding single lane road from one farm to the other revealed an opening to the east that happened to have a hay field and a farmer cutting it. This had to be The Short Ridge, and the man named Vince.

It was on that sweet scented hilltop that we all revealed our stories of life and consequence, farming and family, journeys and new beginnings. It was starting to feel like destiny.

"Have you seen The Blue House?" Vince asked amidst a myriad of tours and questions. "It's right across from the dairy farm."

And that's where we first glimpsed what was to be our new home, though at the time we were looking at each other as if this were some colossal joke, hoping against hope that it was true, but feeling that everything was just too good.

On our late night drive home that day, we could barely speak to each other. Everything we had ever wanted or dreamed of at Foxwood Farm was happening here at this farm 100 miles away. We stopped at a rest stop on I-90 and took a bathroom break. We read a historical marker that told about the ancient goelogy of the Driftless Region of the Upper Mississippi. And we just stood in awe of the place we were at.

It wasn't more than a week later that we hosted a visit from Vince and Kristin (the feminine half of the couple who run St. Brigid's dairy farm). And it wasn't but a few days after that, we learned that we had been hired.

So there it was. On the edge of despair and hopelessness, we cried out for help. And help came. It came in a form we could never have put together ourselves. A mere 8 days that changed the course of our lives forever. The position we came to fill was not just gardening anymore. Once Vince learned of our specific talents and interests, he found a niche for us here. Web, email, marketing, blogging, photography, graphic design, sales, cooking, promotions, event planning...all for a farm that does exactly what we always wanted.

Andy says it's easy to sell a product that you believe in. Well, we believe in this. Organic practices, grass-based dairy, pastured poultry and free-ranging hens. Hogs to clean up the waste and thrive off milk products, beef animals allowed to graze and maintain the beautiful coulees and ridges. Direct customer interaction, community relationships, open minds and open hearts. A full dedication to the land and the people around us. And a patron base that is loyal til the end.

Not even a month after we arrived, we were rushing around putting the finishing touches on our

first event at St. Brigid's Meadows: The Cider Festival.

Above, Andy prepares to smoke some veggies. This was about 8am. The festival started at 4pm with dinner at 6. Just so you know, we started the night before. We attempted to harvest three of our farm ducks for one of the dishes. It doesn't get much fresher than that! Unfortunately, all we know about butchering chickens has nothing to do with butchering and de-feathering ducks. I'll spare you the details on the actual killing of the ducks, but when the birds were brought back to our kitchen it was about 7pm. We began boiling water to pluck them. What we didn't know was that most people use paraffin wax to dunk the duck in and get most of the down off the body. We also didn't think about the fact that a duck is built to NOT get wet in water, so dunking them in scalding H2O rolled right off their back. So we were stuck hand pulling and picking fuzz after fuzz off the bodies. Before we knew it, it was pushing 9pm and we STILL had not cleaned a single duck. Andy began skinning one, which proved amazingly difficult as well. By the time we skinned the other two and pulled the meat off, it was 10:30pm and we were exhausted. Our friend Kat had come to visit and was helping us with this task. We all knew the next day would prove just as exhausting, and earlier than before, so we threw in the towels and went to bed.

Here, Andy and Elly skin a bunch of apples. These were intended for smoked apple sauce.

After cooking all morning at The Blue House, we moved shop to Vince and Dawn's home, where the festival was taking place. Above you see Andy directing his worker bees in the finishing of the various meal pieces.

In the very clean workshop, Vince and Jason had set up the dual apple presses and tables for the meal. Everything was ready to welcome the guests. I had been in charge of taking RSVPs and so sat at the entrance and welcomed all the patrons to the festival. It was a fun job because I gave everyone name tags and since I was the most visible person representing the farm, many people came back to me throughout the afternoon to ask questions about the farm or our products. Andy held down the food court with much help from Dawn, Kristin and various relatives. As the event went on, Andy set up shop behind the smokers and grill and commanded his own audience of interested onlookers who watched as he prepared meat and veggies.

Here you see Elly and Ethan enjoying some bread on the hay wagon. Ethan got into the rain barrel early on and had to borrow big Sister's jacket and boots. With a flowery top and pink puffy snow boots, it wasn't surprising for me to overhear another parent asking his child to nicely share a ball with the little girl. That little girl was, of course, our long eye-lashed Ethan.

Below, a shot of the people in line to grab the great spread of food. In the center, you can see a bunch of 8-10 year olds continuing to grind apples for cider all on their own! In the bottom right corner you can see Andy telling folks about the dishes as he helps serve.

Here a team of UW-La Crosse professors work hard to grind a few buckets full of apples.At the end of the night, we still had several flats of apples left, so farm employees and family relatives took turns making the last of the cider. Below, Vince (in maroon) and Andy (behind, in the checked shirt) had a dual to see who could grind and press a whole load the fastest. You can see Ethan "helping" Daddy by throwing some apples into the hopper. In the end, it was pretty much a tie, but a great way to make another gallon of cider in about 5 minutes.

We cleaned up and divided the leftover food amongst the late helpers and families and headed home to bed. I had a couple of cold and tired babes to get into bed and Kat had a long drive to MN right away, so we left earlier than the rest. All in all, everything got wrapped up by about 10pm, with most of the patrons gone by 7pm.

The event was a great opportunity for us to meet a lot of the people we would be serving. It also taught us a lot about the new community we are becoming a part of.

There are so many like-minded individuals in the Viroqua/La Crosse region. The difference we began to see was that neighbors supported neighbors in more than just lip service. We noticed how everyone seemed to know each other and how they fit into the area. Families live within driving distance of one another. Names go back generations, with streets, roads and even coulees named for folks whose ancestors still live and work in the same place. There is a sense of permanence here that we never got in the Fox Valley. The feel of community is vast and deep.

We took our time exploring the region between work and errands. Andy and Ethan at the top of Granddad Bluff, look over the city of La Crosse. The bluffs on the other side are Minnesota.

The kids and I look out over the Mississippi River on Hwy 35, the Great River Road.

And here you can see me at about 5-6 months into our third pregnancy.

We are due near the end of January, early February. To be honest, I don't really know if it will be even then. We don't have a clear conception date and we opted out of an ultrasound. According to the best date we had, I am still measuring small. We have another appointment just before Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll have "caught up" then. In the meantime, we are taking it one day at a time. I am now roughly into the 7th month and very much showing. Baby is active, kicking and generally doing a tap dance on my ribs every few hours. Just this week, I have begun experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions on a very regular basis. It's a little uncomfortable at times, but I know they are just necessary practice for the big day ... whenever that may be.

It's ok that we aren't on a due date deadline. You see, we are going to have a home birth this time around and are working with a well-known area midwife to achieve that goal. More on that in the future, I'm sure!

We've also taken the time to get to know our new farm animals here at St. Brigid's Meadows.

Above, our friendly Jersey cows check out the kids and our double stroller. We love the old girls. They are so gentle and curious. There's something peaceful about momma cows, and Jerseys are so much smaller than most dairy cattle. They are very approachable. As are the calves! Elly demonstrates below with some blown kisses to one of the heifers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the days grew shorter and our lives fell into a routine, we had more time to think about those we left behind. We had basically cut off communication about the happenings on the farm. We just weren't emotionally ready to hear it. That brought in another set of dynamics which I will talk about in my next post.

For now this blog has taken me into the late evening in several writing sessions and I must now close. But I will bring you up to speed on our emotional and spiritual journey since leaving Foxwood in the next week.

For some reason, Nina Planck's 2007 book Real Food: What to Eat and Why never appeared on my radar screen until earlier this year when my Partner In Culinary Crime picked up a copy and started reading passages to me. I recently commandeered her copy and have pretty much been devouring Real Food the past few days. Real Food is a seminal piece on why American's are overweight, unhealthy, prone to diabetes, prone to heart disease and so much more. And guess what? The problem with our health has everything to do with the fat-free, vegetable-oil, industrialized cheap food craze that completely overtook our country in the middle part of the last century.

Far from being a bandwagon breast-beater, Planck offers a rigorous and brave analysis that pretty much calls into question everything you ever learned from mainstream Extension Service dieticians, university agriculture experts, vegetarian and vegan diet proponents, the American Medical Association and so many other pundits of proper eating. Planck’s thesis goes something like this: If all the so-called experts are right about diet and the nutritional value of cheap, industrial food, then why are we growing less healthy by the day? And in a delightfully refreshing, non-combative, non-incendiary, matter-of-fact voice, Planck leads us through a concise analysis of mainstream science (both old and new), anecdotal evidence and obscure dietary studies and leaves us with a most compelling conclusion. If we eat more traditionally, we will lose weight, lower our risk of heart disease, feel better and raise thriving children.

Did you know that the human brain needs fats to work right and that unprocessed animal fats are among the most important fats the brain needs? That’s right, fats like lard and tallow supply things that we need to keep our brains in tip-top shape, while plant and processed fats, especially processed vegetable fats (oils) do not. Consuming lean grassfed meats and pastured eggs actually reduce your likelihood for developing heart disease, while consuming processed vegetable fat does not. Did you ever consider that cholesterol levels in some native cultures are naturally and healthfully higher than the level recommended by our very own FDA? Did you ever wonder why we weigh more than ever before even though we are consuming more low fat and fat-free foods than ever before? Did you know that some unadulterated animal oils are as effective at treating depression as many pharmaceuticals?

In Real Food: What to Eat and Why, Nina Planck makes a lovely and logical case for reconsidering our relationships with food. Fat is not necessarily bad, red meat isn’t your ticket to an early grave, cheese won’t make you gain weight, whole-grain breads are good, eating a diet consisting of only vegetable matter will starve your brain, wild fish may well be the most important protein and fat sources that allowed our species to develop such huge brains.

I won’t give it all away here, but I would encourage everyone who cares about the relationships among health and diet to read Real Food: What to Eat and Why. It’s time to rethink our entire food system, if for no other reason than it isn’t working terribly well the way it is.

Where does most of our food come from, and how has it been processed? I find this question occupying a significant portion of my mind these days.  I’m sure I owe some of my meditations to the ever-more-common media broadcasts of food-borne illnesses and large-scale contaminations.

In the past few years, there has been more concern about GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in our seed crops, along with a loud outcry against the abuse of hormone and antibiotic-injected animals in crowded, dirty feedlots. I know it’s getting more difficult for me to go to the supermarket and purchase vegetables, fruits, and meats when I know the processing methods are controversial or downright inhumane, and most likely harmful to our health.

Advocates for good stewardship of our planet, which includes a healthier food environment, have raised the public awareness about our industrialized food supply and all its connected society ills.  These advocates are tirelessly touting small-scale and sustainable farming as a way for us to get back to the local, seasonal and regional food supply with unending benefits for our health and our planet.

The book Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat heralds the growing movement of women who are at the forefront of changing how we eat and farm in the United States.  Certainly men are involved in this movement too – it’s just that women (as usual!) are not being given credit where credit is due.  For example, women are the fastest growing number of diversified farmers in our country, with a 30% increase in women farm operators from 2002 to 2007.

Think about it – women have always been the primary nurturer in the family unit.  Women have the largest impact and concern when it comes to what they feed themselves and their families.  So it only makes sense that they are the fastest growing demographic to own and operate farms in the U.S., and they are tending towards diversified, direct-marketed foods that create relationships with eaters.

Each chapter in Farmer Jane focuses on a different area of change – from “Building New Farm-to-Eater Relationships” to “Advocates for Social Change” to “Networks for Sustainable Food” -- you’ll read the tales of women working to bring sustainability back to our dinner plates.  Trust me, this book will inspire and motivate you to have more control over your own food supply.  To help you, there is a Recipe for Action at the end of each chapter – ideas for how you as an eater, a farmer, or an owner/employee of a food business can join in. Even if you have no desire to farm or garden, there are many tips in Farmer Jane on how to eat well and help your community thrive at the same time.

I haven’t even finished the whole book, and yet it has already affected my food meditations. We have a distinct advantage since we already live on 27 acres in the country, and our first garden this year produced a fairly bountiful harvest with enough to preserve for winter, plus we learned a boatful about growing our own produce and preserving it.  Now it’s just a matter of expanding upon what we are fortunate enough to have (27 acres) – the possibilities are certainly endless and limited only by our capabilities and time (ah yes, the TIME bandit!).

I always say “start small”.  I can’t change all our ways and [bad] habits overnight; if I try, I’m going to overwhelm myself.  But I can pick a few items to change each month so that I will rely on commercial, grocery-store products less and less as time goes by. My goals are to buy less at the supermarket and make or grow more things ourselves, or source them organically through fair trade organizations.  As an example, I can’t grow my own tea or coffee, so I will source them through a company that has an organic and fair trade philosophy.  I bought my first loose-leaf black tea from Arbor Teas today, so I can still have my delicious iced tea everyday.  No more supermarket tea for this gal!

Next, I want to experiment with making my own shampoos and conditioners, and eventually my own lotions and perfumes. Yes, I want to make and source more than just my own food! If I can grow my own lavender, that might dovetail nicely with making perfume in the future.  I’ve done a small amount of research into the how-to’s, and it all seems very doable.

Read this book, research other books on the food industry, and start your own mini-food revolt.  You vote with your dollars every time you buy either chemical or non-chemical agriculture.  Think about it – if everyone can afford new cars, the latest cell phone or other techno-gadget, expensive jeans and shoes, etc. – well, then, you CAN spend more on your food.  Eating organic, seasonal, fresh food does cost a little bit more.  It’s up to you what commands more of your earned dollar – fun new gadgets, or fresh healthy food?

Make a conscious choice and “vote with your fork” to eat for a healthy body and for a more sustainable planet.  And visit the Farmer Jane website to find out more about this timely and information-packed book, along with links to some fantastic sustainable food and farming websites.

I love exploring around the farm. FarmMan does too. You just never know what you might find.

We have found several beautiful Native American arrowheads.

Here are some of the bottles, buttons, and arrowheads we have found. The bottle on the right is an old Windex bottle. The sprayer still works! At the bottom are a few of the rattlers from the Timber Rattlesnakes we came across when exploring.

I found this 1904 Indian Head penny near one of the old homestead sites on the farm.

FarmMan found this heart shaped wasp nest near the old pond just in time for a Valentine's Day Gift (to me!) Ahhh..romance!

I didn't find this Hoosier Cabinet on the farm but I did find it when taking the trash off to the county dumpsters. I hauled it home in the back of the car and FarmMan "fixed" it up and recycled it.

We use it in the kitchen. Very thrifty.

Can you imagine some one throwing it away?!

We still find old cross ties and railroad spikes from the old train track that used to be on the farm. The metal track was taken up in the 1930's.

We found several old homestead sites on the farm.

We found remnants of an old log building and near by was an old farm implement that had been there so long that a tree had grown around it. Some one told us it was a peanut plow or planter.

We found where the old mill pond had been (this is after FarmMan had put it back).

And when FarmMan was digging out the old mill pond site we saw:

This bottle:

We found where a water wheel once stood over a hundred years ago.

In the creek we found parts from the old waterwheel.

FarmMan put the water wheel back too!

There were many many days of hard work that went with "putting" things back.

We have enjoyed exploring and finding where people before us walked, worked, lived, and loved this little piece of earth they called home and for now...we feel privileged for our turn to call it home.

Do you enjoy exploring? What have you found?

I hope you will visit us to see more about our farm here: Life on Southern Farm

This summer has been very long, hot, and humid. At the end of another week of heat advisories for our area, another week of non-stop work, another week of a few set backs, we sometimes wonder why we keep doing what we do here on the farm. I understand that this way of life is not for everyone.(I really understand). It is hard work. It is the life my husband and I choose and at the moment I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Here are a few of the reasons why:

Have you ever...

Been so thankful for life that you thought you would burst?

Loved a goat...

Or two?

Have you ever...

Dried your clothes in fresh air and sunshine?

Built a boat?

Smelled fresh cut hay?

Skinny dipped in a pond with your husband in the moonlight?

Kissed a chicken?

Just watched a cow graze?

Have you ever...

Built a rock bridge from rocks on the farm?

And a water wheel?

Made a bale of pine straw?

Seen a snake in a tree?

Have you ever...

Been a young family and built your own home? together? three times? never worried about a mortgage? never ... ever?

Worked the soil, grew, and preserved enough fruits and vegetables for a year?

Have you ever... been so thankful for life you thought you would burst?

Oh yes, I remember now!

Just a few reasons why we keep doing it all over and over again.

What are you thankful for this week?

Please visit us at our farm here: Life on a Southern Farm

Well, it's been a couple of crazy weeks here at Foxwood Farm. First of all, thank you for the outpouring of support and well-wishes. Knowing people far and wide are behind this transition helps a great deal when the days get long and the details get overwhelming.

In the days since we first talked about our amazing opportunity at St. Brigid's Meadows, we did not yet know what would become of the home farm. There were several ideas on the table between my parents and us. One option that we both hit upon seemed too good to be true. But then again, this month has been full of "too good to be true" moments.

There is a family in the Omro area that has been very supportive of their local farmer. They are the kind of family that every direct-market farmer longs to have in his list of customers. Starting nearly two years ago, we became acquainted with this family through a local homeschooling group. They came to buy pumpkins and gourds from us (our first crop!) before we had anything else to sell (not even eggs). The mother talked about her awareness of locally-produced, whole foods and expressed interest in our products if we ever sold eggs or milk.

Over the winter, we got to know them better at our local church. When we began milking Charlotte last May, this family came to our farm for a tour with their homeschooling group. About 10 families showed up that day and several became regular customers of ours. During that visit, the two oldest kids showed an interest in helping us with our gardens, and our two little ones. We arranged with the parents to have Bret and Cortnie come out nearly every weekday to help me plant, weed, water and harvest in the family garden. In exchange for the summer of help, they got half the money from what we sold in the store, half of the produce for the family to preserve and a solid foundation in gardening, chicken mainenance, and child care. At the end of the season, we were able to feed both our family and theirs for the entire winter.

This past winter, we all determined that the whole family could become involved in the farm, all ten of them. We planned an even larger garden, with the mother fully in charge of maintaining it. They filled in from time to time as our relief milkers. They took care of our chickens and chicks when we had to be away from home. They supported us financially throughout the months when we needed a little extra boost, all in exchange for wholesome food.

Every farmer should want a dedicated family like that building them up and supporting their endeavors. We couldn't have been more blessed by them.

* * * * *

And then, we were.

We are pleased to announce that as of September 1st, 2010, Gale and Rita Gehrking and family will be taking over the farm responsibilities here at Foxwood Farm. They grew up working on dairy farms in Minnesota, intimately know our operations here and are entirely devoted to a quality farm product.

Not only that, my parents had thought of them as the perfect family to take over here, completely independently of us. They have seen the work that the Gehrking family has put in month after month here on the farm, with the only compensation being food from the farm. There is a level of trust on both our parts that can only be earned from seeing people in action.

Gale and Rita had a big decision on their plate, just as suddenly as we did. We could not tary. We had to know if they would take on this endeavor or we had to move on to plan B. Fortunately for everyone, God had his hand in this transition as well. All the people most closely involved felt strongly that this was the right move for Foxwood Farm.

A few key points:

• The name will not change. Foxwood Farm is still the farm here. It will just be defined by a new family. The email address, website and blog will not change. Rita is taking over administrative duties and is eagerly looking forward to taking up the reigns on this very blog! Foxwood Farm will continue, with a whole new perspective.
• I will continue blogging about The Sells on the St. Brigid's Meadow's blog. Our family story will continue over on the western part of the state and if you come with us, you can learn about all the wonderful things happening with a whole different farm.
• There will be no lapse in product offerings. The Gehrkings are taking over all aspects of the business: free-range eggs, grassfed beef, dairying and gardens. In the future, they hope to expand to pastured poultry and a subscription-style garden.
• The entire month of August, Andy and I will be training Gale, Rita, Bret and Cortnie on all our chores. By the end of the month, they will be fully transitioned into the daily routine; so much so, that we won't actually be doing the chores anymore. (This works out well for us as we will be in the midst of moving!)

We have full confidence in the Gehrkings to put 100% into this farm. It's not just a job to them; it's a way of life they have longed to have for years. We can't wait for them to get started!

GRIT associate editor, Caleb Regan, texted me one evening last week to know whether the funnels that had been sighted several miles southeast of Carbondale, Kansas had crossed my farm. I had seen some weather on the way home, and noted a certain closeness to the air while doing chores, but I was blissfully unaware that tornados were on the prowl in my neighborhood. Sometimes it's just not possible to keep tabs on Mother Nature down in rural Osage County. Mostly, I don't even try to keep tabs.

Back in the late 1980s, I watched a tornado blow up a neighbor's barn just across the section. I was transfixed by the sight, sound and power of it.

I was amazed by how quickly it appeared and how rapidly it moved. The thing about the prairie is that most of the time you can see weather coming -- all you have to do is pay attention.

In the 1990s, while cultivating half-mile-long rows of newly-planted South Dakota shelterbelt, my long hair quite suddenly stood up and bushed out from beneath my Stetson.

I caught a good whiff of ozone as I dove from the still-cultivating tractor and hit the earth a split second before the bolt of lightning obliterated a century-old Cottonwood tree growing in the creek bottom about 100 yards away.

As fast as that squall snuck up on me, it was gone -- poof. Lucky for me, I managed to roll out of the cultivator's path and catch up with the tractor before destroying the young trees.

Powerful tornadoes, and other damaging weather have avoided my 1907 four-square farmhouse for the past 103 years. I anticipate that the place will stand more or less unmolested for the next 103.  If not, so be it. There's nothing I can do about the weather on my patch of the Kansas prairie. And that's exactly the way I like it.

I have been staring at this empty block for almost a half hour now. My only company the sound of the overhead fan in my 5th-wheel office. I don't like to write depressing things. I don't like to add too much of the world's reality into my own life or writing. But today I can't seem to help it.

I turn to food for comfort. These past two months I have gained probably 10-12 pounds. What could I possibly be stressed about? Beyond the transition of a new job, a growing homestead, Pan and I trying to start a family, and the influx of media I am forced to swallow each day, I guess nothing. But each day I wake up, down a cup of coffee and a little pick-me-up (usually fruit or a bowl of mueslix) and flip on the news. I am not specific in which channel or news team. Delivery is delivery no matter how much Splenda you might put in it. BP. Wall Street. A failing presidential office. War. Sex Trafficking. Terrorism. Obesity. Obsession. It is all a bit much over what should be "the best part of waking up." After about 15 minutes though I cut it off and join the sun as it rises into the sky.

My first stop is at the herb boxes. I love to smell them and wonder just what recipe they will end up "completing" or how Pan will dry them for tea or shaker spices. I then ramble on towards the corn. We try to water it every other day, and when I say water I mean for a few hours. Because of the position of the field it gets pummeled with afternoon sun and needs every drop of liquid it can get. It is usually at this point that I can't help but checking on the chickens. I can hear them so they are pretty hard to ignore. And now with the new chicks ... well, who doesn't want to see new chicks fumble around and play what looks like a game of poultry rugby?

And then it is on to the main garden. I can't step into it without being washed over by its miracle. At the risk of sounding emotionally drippy, this garden is so much more to me than probably to most. It represents new life in its most raw form. It is my church. It is where I was baptized a second time, changing from the consumptive person I thought I deserved to be in life to the humbled man I am now. I typically reach down and poke my finger in the dirt. Most mornings it is moist with dew; a reminder that each day is a new one and everyone deserves to be cleaned and refreshed. And then? Well, then I park it. I sit on a bench made of old granite curbing that we recycled from a downtown renovation project. I stare at the plants thinking about how Pan and I have poured hours into it hoping for a harvest that will last us well into fall and early winter. I think about how we tithe the first of the harvest and give thanks to God for what he has blessed us with on Odom's Idle Acres. I think about how a tiny seed turns into a huge plant that bears food. Think about that for a moment.

What starts out as a seed ... well, perhaps Robert Schuller (yes, the televangelist ... so sue me) said it best, "Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed." How amazing is that. And as I stare at that garden – what it once was, what it is now, and what it will be in a month – I find my hunger being satiated. No, I am not talking about a twinkie I hid amongst the okra but rather a satisfying bite of relief; freedom from the very stresses that one hour ago gripped me tight like a boa constrictor on his prey. And it is at that moment the world makes sense again. It began in a garden. A garden shall sustain us. And if I have my druthers, it will all end in a garden.

Fox and his Friends can say what they want, but when the world gets extra hairy and Uncle Sam reaches out his hand one last time, I am headed to the garden. And there I will find new life, new hope, and a new understanding of what we are here for.

Image of the garden on March 25, 2010, and then again on May 27, 2010.

Rice is among my favorite starches. I’d rank it well ahead of potatoes, except perhaps waxy new potatoes dug fresh from the garden. Until last weekend when I tried some Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice sourced from Eighth Wonder, Inc. (a purveyor of heirloom rice grown in the Philippines) I thought brown rice was pretty exotic and about as tasty as that grain gets. When given the choice between brown rice and pasta, I probably pick pasta about 65 percent of the time. With this beautifully pigmented and nutty-flavored Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice added to the mix, the pasta vs. rice decision just got a lot tougher for me.

Last weekend after a day of hanging, taping and mudding sheetrock in my slow-but-sure mudroom repair project (hoping for no more frozen pipes) I felt like dinking around in the kitchen with a partner in culinary crime who tolerates my experiments incredibly graciously. And since I had this package of Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice, and a freezer full of grass-fed lamb sourced from GRIT publisher Bryan Welch’s farm, I had a plan.

I followed the directions on the back of the Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice package to the letter. The rice cooked up plump, maroon and sticky. I had to sample it as it was – it tasted nutty and had a nice tooth – not mushy at all. As the rice was resting, I heated up my favorite 12-inch, cast-iron skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. When that was good and hot, I added about a pound of ground lamb along with a diced onion and sliced jalapeño – I stripped the seeds and then rubbed my eye and did some other things that made me remember why I like to just leave the jalapeño seeds alone. I browned the works. Actually I just browned the lamb and by then the veggies were just right.

With the flame turned down low, I added a couple of cups of cooked Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice and tossed it around until the rice grains were more or less unstuck. A little sea salt and Northwoods Fire Seasoning (daughter Alaina gave it to me for Christmas) later, I had a delicious dish on my hands. Supper that night also included some awesome simmered carrots with a dill gravy on them and a heavenly, crunchy-crusted, no-knead rye bread – both compliments of my partner in culinary crime (she had a second helping of my lamb and Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice dish, which I take as a good sign).

Not one to let leftovers go to waste, I ate the rest of the Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice for breakfast the next morning – it was delicious reheated with a pat of butter and drizzle of homemade cane syrup. I have a couple of other varieties of heirloom rice from Eighth Wonder yet to try. I can’t wait.

I didn’t care much for winter before we moved to the farm, but now I love it. When we lived in town, I didn’t dress for the cold, since most of the time I was just hopping from car to house to office. Here, if you go out you’re going outside for a while, so I dress for it. I’m not cold, I’m warm, and that makes me comfortable, so I can appreciate how lovely the woods and fields look under the snow. Another thing I love with the low sun angles is that you can see the lay of the land. Especially at dawn and sunset, the shadows on the snow show exactly where the low spots are in the fields and exactly how they drain.

Chores are pretty light around here in the winter. The cattle come up for water and grain each day so I can count noses and make sure everyone is healthy without having to go further than the barnyard. Once a week I trek out to the outwintering area to flip hay feeders onto new round bales. I like to do this before the previous bales are quite gone, so the cattle have a warm dry spot to lay in what’s left of the old hay.

The bales were placed out in the field in rows last fall, about 30 feet apart in each direction. I put an electric fence around them. One side of the fence is attached with handles, so it’s easy to move it back as the cows finish the bales in a row and are ready to start a new one.

The chickens don’t like cold and snow, and won’t go outside. Our coop is built into one corner of the barn, so I let them run in the barn during the day. It’s messy, but I hate to keep them shut up all winter and would rather do some extra cleaning than have unhappy chickens. On sunny days they sit in a row at the open front door of the barn, soaking up the rays.

The donkeys are feeling sorry for themselves. They’d like to be out with the cows stuffing themselves with hay all day long, but that makes them incredibly fat. So they have their own pen in the barn with an open door so they can come and go as they please. They’re usually out, but are always there waiting for me at feeding time. Donkeys don’t like diets!

Ann Larkin Hansen is the author of The Organic Farming Manual, available here. 

I got my wish. We had a white Christmas down at the Osage County, Kansas farm. The ice pellets that I drove home in on Christmas Eve turned into snow by supper time. The wind howled, first from the north and then from the west. The cedars to the north and west of the house protected us from the bitter brunt and contributed to the substantial drifts that greeted me on Christmas morning. It was a glorious morning – still blowing and still snowing.

In spite of the wind and cold, it was a lovely white Christmas morning and I thought it fitting to celebrate by giving the animals an extra ration of feed and tossing an extra 1500-pound round bale of hay to the hogs – how they love to tear those bales apart, eating and sleeping the day away. I also figured the white Christmas chores would be a lot easier to complete if I didn’t need to trudge through knee-deep drifts, and the footing would be firmer if I bladed and shoveled out the gates. So I decided to trade the loader-equipped Kubota tractor’s utility bucket for the purpose-built snow-bucket. I’d need the tractor later to move big round bales of hay – so there wouldn’t be any harm in pushing a little snow first, right?

Wrong!

Perplexed as I was that quick-attaching the snow bucket to the tractor’s loader didn’t go too quick, I was preparing to make the first lane-clearing pass when I noticed that the tractor’s right front tire was not only flat, but it was only partially on the rim.

Yikes!

No wonder the loader-arms were uneven as I presented them to the snow bucket – neatly stored in a level place.

Suddenly, firing up the Kubota for some white-Christmas morning seat time didn’t look like that great of an idea.

I knew what to do – but I didn’t really want to have to do it.

Using the loader as a jack, I raised the tractor’s front axle and removed the offending wheel and horsed it back to the shop. The tire went onto the rim with only a mild sweat, in spite of the fact that it was stiff from the cold. The tire’s beads swelled out to the rim sufficiently that it sealed, once I wrapped and tightened two binder straps around the tire’s edges and pounded on the tread with a mallet. A few minutes with the compressor pumping high-pressure air into the works and soon enough, the wheel and tire were ready to go back on the tractor. The entire process went so well that it was a little like magic.

With only a half hour interruption, the day developed into a white Christmas celebration that exceeded any of my expectations. The animals seemed pleased, my loved ones seemed pleased and I was pleased.

I'll admit it, I like snow. I like snow on the ground at Christmas. I like to spend time out in that snow. It's like magic to me.

When I was a kid, up in North Dakota, snow meant that we could build great forts of the frozen stuff and toss icy missiles at one another; it also meant we could build snowmen or Jackalopes -- magical creatures complete with antlers shaped from branches we collected from the lilac thicket. Snow also meant that hikes on the Missouri River bluffs with my entire family, or down on the wooded bottoms with just my dad, would be especially fun because of all the animal tracks.

One particularly white Christmas season, the family nursery business was closed and my dad was off for several days in a row. One of those days he took me for a hike through the riverine forest along the Missouri River, south of Bismarck. By then, I could recognize deer tracks, rabbit tracks, and an assortment of smaller rodent tracks and snow tunnels. What I wasn't prepared for that day was to see the largest rabbit tracks I had ever experienced -- I was not yet 5 years old. I recall spying the tracks and being amazed at their size -- dad didn't seem too impressed. I concluded that rabbit tracks of that size could be made by a single creature: the Easter Bunny. In fact I was so secure with that conclusion that it took me more years than normal to accept that the Easter Bunny was a myth.

That same particularly white Christmas hike was memorable for a bunch of other reasons. I was impressed with the fact that at lunchtime my dad stopped, gathered a few handfuls of Burr Oak branches and created a fire with matches and tinder he pulled from the pocket of his bright red, cotton-shelled parka. But that trick was nothing compared with the thermos of hot chocolate and package of hotdogs and buns that appeared from another of the parka's pockets.

We sat on a log and roasted dogs, using only jackknife-sharpened sticks and the buns themselves as utensils. We didn't talk much during that snowy repast although I remember thinking my dad's red parka was magic because cool stuff just kept coming out of its pockets. Upon reflection, I think the magic was simply in the pure, unadulterated father-son moments we spent together.

Years later as a young adult and a not-so-young adult I spent several white Christmas seasons in Wisconsin on a pair of cross-country skis with a tent and other camping gear strapped to my back. My dad joined me on one of those excursions. We saw plenty of animal tracks that year. We chuckled about the Easter Bunny evidence I saw back in North Dakota and concluded that the tracks were created by a Jackrabbit; those tracks really weren't that big after all. In spite of brutal sub-zero temperatures on that trip, there was plenty of magic in gliding for miles silently through the wilderness.

A winter storm warning  is in effect for my part of Kansas this Christmas Eve day -- there are similar warnings over much of the region. I know that many folks are anxious about travelling. I'm lucky because I get to spend the next few days at my Osage County farm. I am hoping for a white Christmas and the magic the day will bring.

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 feet 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.