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One day I asked my friend Mark Freeman, an older cattleman, "How’s life on the farm?" anticipating he would pick up on my reference to John Denver’s tune. "Kinda laid back," was his answer as he gave me a big hug. Then, "You know," says he, "Merry and I are convinced that that young man never set foot on a farm." {laf} Spoken like a true farmer. I love Mark and Merry to pieces.
Well, the van thing didn’t go as I’d hoped. He wouldn’t trade. I was sorely disappointed but am consoling myself with the thought that when things don’t go my way it usually means God has something better for us. If we don’t end up with something else we will customize our van by ripping out the roomy back seats and installing a 4 person bench and a 3 person bench. Whatever. We have a bit of time. On to other things.
When did I post about ordering the herbs? I received both orders in the mail Saturday. Wow! That was fast! I’ve been drinking almost a half gallon of Mama’s Red Raspberry Brew a day. The kids helped me encapsulate some alfalfa and the dandelion we dried ourselves and I take a capsule of each 3x a day. Between that and getting back in the hang of power snacking (a carb w/ protein every 2-3 hours) I seem to be doing better. Nearing the end of the first trimester helps. =) Having accomplished some major jobs that were weighing me down helps. Air conditioning helps. =D
I’d better go in order of things I mentioned last time...
Chickens
We’ve kept our 15 hens and 2 roosters (McMurray Hatchery’s "Rainbow Layers") in a 20’x 20’ fenced area off the coop since we got them. Someday we’ll have two or three pens like this to alternate, but you know how "someday" goes. Well, I was chewing on the idea of letting them out to free range. I’m a "pros & cons" kind of person, so...
Pros:
less bugs
I love watching chickens in the yard
better eggs
happier chickens
much smaller feed bill
Cons:
the roosters (a white and a red leghorn) are downright mean
will the hens continue to lay in the coop or run off and hide their eggs?
will they stray into the road and suffer gruesome deaths like most of our guineas?
will they be eaten alive by stray dogs?
will my barefoot children constantly be stepping in chicken doo?
Well, we decided to try it. I found a sure method of keeping the roosters from attacking my children. It involves a hatchet and some bloodshed, but it works great and the results are also edible. Allow me to rabbit trail... This was the very first meat we’ve raised ourselves. Bobby’s roadkill deer in March was pretty cool (and the best roadkill I’ve ever had, so tender and flavorful), but to actually raise it from a babe for the dinner table feels really, really good. We’ve done veggies for awhile, eggs for awhile, goat milk this year, and now meat. We had chicken and dumplings (more of a cool weather dish, so we turned on the AC) and it was fantastic. You homesteaders know what I’m talking about and that’s why you do what you do. There is nothing like sitting down to a meal and looking at dishes full of things you produced right in your own backyard. To think that’s the way life was for most people not too long ago! I wonder if it will ever be something I take for granted? How long before we face the fact that if we want to eat we have to produce it ourselves? Or at least produce something worth trading with so-n-so down the road for what he produced. Well, I just thank the Lord for this abundant life, for loved ones to share it with, for a wonderful husband who’s willing to work at this with me... even though he left town when he heard we were going to butcher chickens...
I’ve gotten more than my fair share out of that city boy. When I hinted he help with the butchering his words were something like, "I told you before we moved to the country that there were certain things I wouldn’t do when we got there. I’ve built a chicken coop, built a barn, put up fencing, hauled goats, bottle fed goats... I’m not butchering your chickens."
So, with my handy dandy Encyclopedia of Country Living (a must!!!) and some other articles from the internet (Encycl. of CL didn’t cover how to skin a chicken - I might have taken this to mean it’s a no-brainer - ha ha), I set about the dirty deed Sunday afternoon. I tell ya, the first 25-30 minutes are the hardest. After that, it’s a breeze! Yeah... ‘cause after tackling the messy carcass with a knife that I couldn’t get sharp enough (shame on this homesteader - I still haven’t a single good knife) I decided to call the Martins (good neighbors and friends) and beg them to send over one of the boys (or at least a sharp knife!). I told Mrs. Martin when she answered the phone, "Uh... I started something I can’t finish." She was very sympathetic and sent 16yr old Joseph down. After quickly finishing up the 1st bird he showed me how to do it start-to-finish on the next. Apparently he learned how to do this from my crazy mountain-man pen-pal in OR and was so good at one point he could do it in 5 minutes. Color me impressed. I think I’ll see about hiring him next time I decide I want to eat some of our pets.
The hens are happy as can be in the yard and I love watching them. They continue to lay in the coop (if they should decide they like other areas better, I’d leave them penned up until after noon, when all the laying is finished) and Murphy (the Great Pyr mix) keeps an eye on things, keeping strays away and such. So far there’s not much mess and I’m still hoping they stay away from the road.
Cats
This is new for me. I like cats, but cannot bear the smells they produce. We have never and will never have a house cat. But I told the kids a long time ago that when we moved to the country and had a barn, we would have barn cats. The day has come. Introducing James and Helen Herriot (after the author and his wife - named by my two eldest):
(the girls would not budge from this position despite swarming flies because the kittens were asleep)
Turns out all you have to do is ask around at your local feed store and you can bring home thousands of kittens... :) We opted for two. I would have preferred two males because they’re much cheaper to have fixed (which we will do the moment they are old enough - which will probably be too late), but the lady didn’t know how to sex them so we ended up with one of each. I never would have thought cats would round out barn life so well. They fit perfectly into our little farm. They hang out around the milk stand and were spoiled quickly by a dish of fresh milk at every milking. My kids are thrilled, Blue especially (her pet chicken - the one that got out every day no matter what we did - just isn’t as special now that all the hens are out).
Goats
One night, as I was milking, I started doing some calculations. Gran has been producing about 24oz and Dessy about 34oz at each milking (bare minimum)- we milk twice a day. That’s a total of 116oz, not quite a gallon (128oz) a day between the two of them. The babies should be getting a combined total of 160oz each day - 20oz each, twice a day. We’ve been supplementing with our drinking milk which sometimes is whole cow milk from the store and sometimes fresh goat milk from the Martins. The Martins learned of this and were good enough to give us, free of charge, as much "baby" milk as we want (they have a goat or two that produces off-tasting milk). But the calculations continued (me! who claims never to have liked math)...
Gran and Dessy both give delicious milk. They have great shaped udders and are easy milkers. Gran will probably give even less milk next year, assuming we breed her this fall. Dessy will give more, but won’t reach "prime" for a 2-3 more years. We’re keeping the two doelings and will breed them next fall. So, next year we won’t be ahead any in milk, and the year after that we probably won’t have Gran, Dessy will hopefully be giving a good amount and we’ll have two first fresheners. Hmm. I got to thinking (someone make it stop!)... maybe we should pick up a doe that’s in or near the end of her prime, something that produces a goodly amount of milk. I talked it over with Bobby and he thought it a reasonable idea (just don’t ask him to butcher her, right?). I talked with the Martins first and they offered us Brownie, a beautiful Toggenburg giving almost a gallon a day. Good deal. We brought her home Tuesday (I was just getting things ready for Brownie when my sister happened to show up with a truck - it was meant to be). I think she’s the most beautiful goat I’ve ever seen.
Don’t you?
She’s relatively well behaved and loves attention. Okay, now the Martins are wondering if they gave me the right goat. :) She was their only horned goat and bullied the rest of the herd. Gran tried to show her who was boss right away and they went at it for a little while, but Brownie is significantly bigger and couldn’t have cared less about Gran once Gran stopped attacking her. It was pretty funny to see such a little goat being so bossy. By well-behaved I mean she goes into the pen without a fight when you want her in the pen, on and off the milkstand with ease, and is easily led through the yard. She cried the first night but settled into the routine immediately after that.
Well... then I got thinking (see how out of control this is?) that the feed-to-milk ratio with Gran isn’t really worth the money and if we’re getting enough from Brownie maybe we’d sell Gran at the next swapmeet (July 5th). It’d be no big deal to keep her if I had a pasture fenced in, but tethering three goats is not something I’ll be able to keep up long. We did add a run for Brownie and that’s so much easier than the corkscrew stakes (hard to drive into dry summer ground but apparently not hard to pull up because every day I have to chase goats around at least once or twice - good thing my garden’s fenced in, eh?).
But now we’re not sure we’ll keep Brownie. Turns out we’re not real fond of her milk. It’s not "goaty" tasting (that taste similar to how a buck smells), it just has a different kind of taste that would take some getting used to. I know Bobby won’t like it and my older kids turn up their noses. Such a shame, because she gives so much of it! For now we feed it to the babies (who’ll be weaned in a couple weeks) and it frees up Gran and Dessy’s milk. I’ll talk to the Martins this weekend about whether they prefer I keep her for a couple weeks until our babies are weaned, or have her back now and we’ll take their goaty-tasting milk by the gallon for our babies. What a blessing to have such great folks as neighbors.
After the babies are weaned... (this was about 2 weeks ago - can't believe how much they've grown since then!) ...we’ll just have to see if Gran and Dessy’s milk is enough for us. We can always get the occasional gallon from the Martin’s and keep our eyes out for a good deal on another doe.
Must...stop...thinking....
Garden
I suppose I have to concede that summer is upon us. I much prefer all the other months, but will accept summer as my garden loves it so. And cold well water is never so refreshing as in the summer.
The garden a few weeks ago:
The garden last week:
Decided to grow at least one Blue Berry in the garden this year:
 Probably won't eat her, though.
Staking my tomatoes was one of those chores that I was getting bummed out about because it needed to be done (should have been done when I put in the ‘maters) and I just couldn’t muster up the time and energy needed to do it. I wish it were as easy as buying stakes, rebar, cages or whatever (ideally, I’d make 4’ tall cages out of 6’ stakes and 4’x4’ sections of fencing), but we just couldn’t afford to buy anything. I was faced with the free, but labor intensive, method of harvesting saplings (they’re never as straight as they look, are they?). I spent the morning hiking through the woods with a bowsaw cutting down mostly hickory and cedar and having the kids drag them into the yard. I lopped the branches, sawed them down to size, hacked a point onto them with a hatchet and drove them into the garden soil with a hammer (see, my energy level is up). I needed 24 for my 48 plants. I used one at each end of a row of four and ran strips of an old sheet between the two, weaving the plants between them. So far, so good. I started right after breakfast and finished up just before dark. My ‘maters are Siletz, an heirloom (open pollinated) variety. Early dwarf bush type. I can’t wait to see if they’re any good. If they are, I’ll save seed for next year. If not, I’ll try something else. I decided to let them grow crazy this year instead of pinching off the side growth like I’ve always done. We’ll see how that works.....
Now we’re pretty much down to maintenance. Weeding, watering, redirecting rowdy squash plants, hand-picking pests. Here’s my pest control team:
I pay them a penny a pest (and 2 per Japanese beetle, of which we’ve had only a couple). The cabbage worms are the absolute worst! I will invest, somehow, in row covers next year. I still have plenty of broccoli and cauliflower coming on, and I’m going to start some seeds this week for my fall crop (I hear the bugs aren’t as bad in the fall).
I absolutely love having flowers throughout the garden (I love flowers but haven’t bothered much with flower gardening figuring if I was going to invest that kind of time it would have to produce food) and will make a point to start lots more of them and start earlier next year. My zinnias are starting to open, marigolds are doing great, cosmos will be blooming soon. The asters and nasturtiums are slow (I think they require more water) but coming along. I also want to do more herbs but can’t seem to get my act together. I’ve learned this about myself - I can’t direct sow anything amongst my existing crops. I just don’t keep them watered enough. So, next year I’ll start as much as possible inside and transplant later. I had also wanted to plant perennial flowers (mostly by seed) and herbs all along the perimeter of the garden. We tilled once and never got back to it. I’ve given up the hope of growing things there this year and will concentrate on preparing the site with the no-till/lasagna gardening method.
Which brings me to this... Don’tcha love taking annoying trash and making it useful? The paths in my garden are about 3’ wide. That’s also how big a 50# feed bag is when you cut it open. I’ve taken my whole stack of used feed bags (the only thing I can’t use is the dogfood bags because they’re glossy inside and out), cut them open and laid them in my paths and spread straw on them. Simple, but I’m quite tickled with myself. (Maybe thinking isn’t all bad....) Now I’ll cut them in half and use them to start preparing the bed around the garden. I hope to be able to produce enough compost that I won’t have to buy any more of that weed-infested stuff I got this year. Very dark and fertile, but wow there was so much of that one weed. Here’s a picture of it:
 What is it? Mark Freeman calls it a cockle-bur. It has a thorn at every leaf joint.
Midwifery
For those who don’t know, we’ve had 4 out of our 5 babies at home. The one hospital birth (Willie3) was enough to make us want to have the rest at home even if we couldn’t get a midwife. Which is what we did with Willie5. Now, I actually don’t know what this law being in effect means for me. I don’t know if there are midwives in my area that will now come out of the woodwork and start practicing. I’m just praying and talking around. If I knew of hospitals around me that had practicing midwives or anything, I would check it out. When we lived in Ozark we met a doctor in AR who used to be a midwife and had an absolutely wonderful practice and even the hospital she delivered at was very small and laid back. She was two hours from us then, at least 6 hrs now (Amy Jo, we live halfway between St.Louis and Poplar Bluff, in little ol’ Fredericktown). Up till now Certified Nurse Midwives were the only legal option in our state but mostly practiced in hospitals and our state’s one birth center. They could only do home births if they had a physician who would "cover" them. There is apparently only one physician willing to do this and has two midwives working under him. This is the midwife we went through for 3 of ours, and we used the covering physician with our hospital birth. (I have heard of a physician in St. Louis that will do home deliveries, but that’s a little far away for me at this point.) The new law legalizes a different kind of midwife (Certified Professional Midwife, I think) which, from what I understand, requires basically the same rigorous midwife training, without the nursing degree and without the requirement of a covering physician.
Enough for one day....
Enough for a month...
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