This is a boy who knows where his food comes from

We take animal slaughtering very seriously and the kids are on hand to help or watch if they so choose. So far Eliza has chosen to opt out, but Scotty has been a willing and thoughtful helper.

Here is our outdoor abattoir, or chicken slaughterhouse.

Scotty helps to bring in the chickens and keeps them calm


and he has begun to learn how to eviscerate them. Here he is working with Crystal, our most faithful helper on butchering day.

Interesting but not surprising

The kids spend their days on the farm moving from one activity to the next, often on their own initiative. A couple of weeks ago Chris came upon this scene:


Note the safety goggles and ear protection. Apparently it hadn't occurred to Eliza that a shirt might be a good idea too.


I'm not sure what they were doing but it certainly looks interesting! They do seem pleased with the results.

A Blessed Unrest

Thank you to my new friend who I met last night and shared this wisdom with me, and thank you Martha Graham: (and how did I get this far without ever hearing this before?)

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.... You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

~ Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

New cows

Our new dairy cows joined the farm family last month. They are both jersey cows and they came from Texas.

Reina is a young heifer who is about 9 months old and will be bred to our mini jersey bull next Spring. If all goes well she will have her first calf sometime around November of 2009. She was a show calf for a teenage girl so she is halter trained and very tame.


She is a real sweetheart and very beautiful.


And this is Chloe, a six year old cow who originally comes from a grass based dairy in TX and was most recently owned by a homesteading family. She has been hand milked but isn't as cooperative as Reina. She does love grain as a treat though so she is quite easy to manipulate if you have a bucket of sweet feed. She is a standard sized jersey and because of her age she has the classic look of a mature dairy cow. The rounded "hay belly" is a good quality and it is normal for them to appear bony across the hips and ribs. They look much different from beef cows. Note how much bigger than our mini-jersey bull she is!

Chloe is bred to an angus bull and due to calve in March, so barring any complications we will be milking then!

Speaking of the bull, I must report that he has turned quite aggressive over the last few weeks and is now very dangerous. Last weekend he ran me into the fence and gave me quite a bruise:


This was entirely my fault, for I had become too friendly with him and he did not fear me. Also I was trying to move him while he was riled up over one of the cows in heat. I learned my lesson, and was lucky to have only minor injuries. The advice I am getting now is to butcher him, but we will wait until he breeds our cows in the spring. We might be able to sell him. We'll see.

Wool processing workshop

A month ago we held a wool processing workshop here at the farm. Chris' stepmom had met a gal who is quite skilled at processing and spinning wool and she arranged to have her come to the farm for a day-long, hands-on demonstration. Gwen was younger than I had expected and full of enthusiasm for her craft. About a dozen people came down for the day.


It's a good thing that we are learning how to process fleeces, because we have quite a pile of wool from this year's shearing!


The first thing we learned was called "willowing" which is simply hitting the fleece with a wire rug beater or the equivalent to knock out much of the dirt and debris.


Next she showed us how to wash the fleece. We had a warm water wash and a cool rinse, and she demonstrated how careful you need to be to avoid felting the wool. She commented on how clean our fleeces are, which amazed me because they sure seemed dirty to me!




After washing the fleece is laid out on screens to dry and get a final picking over.



Then, with already washed fleece that she had brought with her, Gwen showed us how to card the wool. This was a very satisfying step in the process, although we were surprised at how much waste there is. The waste wool can be used for some things though, like quilt batting or even garden mulch.



Everyone tried their hand at carding and we all worked on making enough wool to practice spinning. The kids really liked this part.




Here is a rolag, which is the bit of wool you get after carding. At this point it is ready to spin.



Eliza really liked combing the wool.



Then after a wonderful pot-luck lunch it was time to spin! First we tried the drop spindle, which is pretty intuitive to use but not terribly easy. It's really a challenge to keep the spindle turning and get an even yarn. But we didn't do too badly for our first try!



Using the wheel was more satisfying when it actually worked, but was definitely a challenge. It's one of those things where three of your four limbs need to be doing something different at the same time, so much coordination is required. Gwen was very patient and helped each one of us give it a go. I'm definitely interested in learning more about how to use the wheel.




I'll bet you already guessed what Scotty's favorite part of the day was!



We had a wonderful time and we were thrilled to be able to give Gwen a venue for her workshop as well as an audience. She did a great job and we are looking forward to having her here again to show us how to dye the wool!

Busy as bees

The same week we got our pigs we also got our bees! We strongly believe in barter as means of trade so we made a deal with a friend to board two of his ewes over the winter so they could be bred by our ram, and in exchange he gave us two of his beehives! These are top-bar hives, which are cheaper than the conventional Langstroth hives. They are a bit easier to work for the novice beekeeper like ourselves, but they yield less honey and more wax.



My local farm friend keeps top bar hives so last week I went over to her place to get a crash course on how to take care of my new hives. Here we are with a makeshift smoker because hers was on loan to her dad.



She showed me what to look for in each hive to be sure it is healthy and growing. She showed me how to maintain the combs to be sure they are growing straight. I learned how to identify workers, drones, eggs, larvae, capped honey, capped brood, and the queen. The next day I got into our hives and found that they are doing well!




The most fun part is seeing the little honeybees out and about on the farm. Last night I was planting beans and there were bees foraging in the clover nearby. I can see why people get so excited about beekeeping! It's really fun.

Social Studies?

Last month Chris invited the kids to decorate the floor of his shop with clay paint, which would stick to the earthen floor before it was oiled. I was walking outside the shop and I heard Chris say "wait for it, wait for it......" and then a "ppffttthhhh" sound. Then a lot of giggling. Turns out they were having a little anthropology lesson, using a prehistoric technique to leave hand prints on the floor and walls.

First a mouthful of (non-toxic, totally natural) clay paint:


Mix with water:


And blow!


The kids both gave it a try.






Cool!

Farm help continues

I keep forgetting to get the camera out on our farm work days! So much has been accomplished in the 5 weeks we have been doing this, and we have met some great people as well as had the pleasure of spending more time with old friends. We have planted a large plot of peas, several smaller plots of lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, radishes, gourmet greens, and wildflowers, and a plot of jerusalem artichokes. We have installed several hundred feet of fencing and worked over the tree land. We also finished the shop floor and are now in the process of oiling it.

I do have some snaps of some of the homeschooling moms taking no mercy on some trees that required some serious thinning and pruning.





As usual, the kids pitched in with gusto.

Cultivating community

This season we have made an effort to invite members of the community to come down to the farm and help us produce food and build infrastructure. We have been amazed and inspired by the incredible response that we have had to our invitation. As Joel Salatin says, people seem to be looking for a relationship with their food and their farmers lately, and we as farmers are definitely looking to reciprocate.

So last Saturday was our second farm work day of the season. On the first day a week before we were so busy that I forgot to get the camera out, but this week I managed to get some photos. We had 8 adults and 4 children here working in addition to the four of us so it was an incredibly productive afternoon. Our main goal for the day was to install an earthen floor in Chris' shop. We were hindered by the fact that our floor material (left over from the house project) was frozen solid at the beginning of the day. This meant that a lot of muscle went into breaking it up so it could be mixed. We also worked on fencing and dealt with a shipment of bare root apricot rootstock for grafting as well as some bare root apple and cherry trees.

The kids were incredible! They were not expected or required to help us, but they really wanted to. Here they are working on breaking up the frozen floor material. These are all homeschooled kids, by the way.



And here they are helping to trowel on the earthen floor and deliver plaster to the trowelers. You can see that the earth plaster that we applied to the walls during the previous week's work day is still drying.




While some of us worked on the floor, others dug out an old bed in the garden and "hilled in" our apricot rootstock. This will keep it alive until we are ready to graft and pot/plant them.



The apples and cherries were already potted by the time I got the camera out, and work on fencing had begun. Here they are taking down last year's fencing, which works for cattle and sheep but not chickens. This will be replaced with a chicken-proof fence to keep our free-range layers out of the new gardens that we will be digging this year.



A crew then took the old fencing and loaded it onto the trailer so it could be distributed around the pasture to create more paddocks for rotational grazing. We decided this year that we don't want to rely on electric fencing any more, mainly becuase we just don't have time to walk 10 acres every day to maintain it. With Chris' full time job and having small kids at home it just isn't practical. So cattle panels cut in half will be the majority of our fencing.



All of the kids joined in on this project. I'm sure the trailer ride around the farm was a big part of the appeal.




Meanwhile, back in the shop the girls and I were cranking out the floor. After doing this a lot I have observed that men tend to have a more difficult time with this job because they get pretty uncomfortable down there on the floor for so long. I'm guessing it has to do with flexibility in the hips. Anyhow, we got everything that we could mix that day onto the floor, which amounted to over half the shop.



It was a great day, and we really want to thank everyone who came out to help. There is nothing like the feeling of working towards a common goal with like-minded folks. We feel truly blessed to have you as part of the farm!