It is amazing how this simple liquid is the elixer of Life. And a critical ingredient in our Story of the Day.
We have ventured into Goats. Or, goat - specifically, one Kinder goat we bought in February scheduled to kid in June. May or June. So, we've been watching her rather beadily these past couple weeks because she is waddling around with an udder the size of Manhattan but no indication otherwise of Anything Imminent.
This morning she presented a little mucus and immediately thwarted all attempts to catch her as she is the world's only goat completely and thoroughly uninterested in humans. Or grain. She is The Goat That Walks Alone, apologies to Rudyard.
Well, we went about our day and I came home alongside my pal Judith to discover our Middy grazing grass with what looked to be a dead kid hanging out of her. I sprinted for surgical gloves and we tried to figure out what was going on. We called Mark to come home and our pal Tammy who knows goats and then the vet. The baby was blue and wet and cold and not budging. I tried to figure out what how things were stacked up in there but couldn't make heads nor tails of it. At some point Mark got home from my frantic call, attempted the same, and we decided the baby was done and now it was time to save Middy. She was frothing at the mouth, screaming, her tongue lolling to one side and her eyes beginning to roll back. It was a long, long (and bloody) ride to the vet's.
Judith heroically put my groceries away and spirited the boys up to her house and fed them. (hugs, Judith).
But, a funny thing happens in the hands of a pro: we lifted the hatchback of the - thank god, OLD - subaru and our pal the on-call vet Dana reached in and pulled a baby goat right out without so much as a ble from the mama. She did some minor karate chops on the little wet noodle and low and behold, he breathed.
And here he is. Bottle fed and warm-towel warmed, he's here to tell the tale. Welcome, Trooper.
The phoenix of order arises from the ashes of total porch chaos.
Our pals Jan and Rich rented a power washer this past weekend and I had mentioned that we'd like to get in on the action. Saturday was crummy - yet one more day in this dismal June of temperatures in the 40s and 50s (yes, I said 40s) and rain, rain, rain so I assumed that the deal was off - wrongly.
Suddenly Saturday afternoon I discovered that Jan and Rich had been hard at work on their place and pretty soon now we'd be in possession of said machine. I had switched gears and merrily had winter comfort foods like bolognese and stock burbling on the stove while my son and his pal enjoyed a Voyager marathon in the den. Power washing the porch seemed but a distant dream.
Now, you have to appreciate the state of my porch to understand why coming into a time-limited power washer induced no small amount of panic among my insides. My pals on the island are smiling knowingly now. As of Saturday, our front porch had pretty much evolved into an outdoor closet, with every manner of useful and not-so-much items littering one's entry. There was a tiny path from driveway to door that welcomed both inhabitant and guest alike into our home.
It was ridiculous. And humiliating. It had taken us many months to grow it into such a state.
But, enter power washer. And a 10AM deadline.
We fell out of bed around 7:30, half and hour behind schedule already according to my precise timetable laid out on the kitchen counter the night before, and got to serious work.
And by golly, it just wasn't that bad. Not the way most guys would choose to spend the wee hours of Fathers Day, but hey - by 9:30 we were done, I spirited the machine back to its rightful owners, and now we have this back. A real, live outdoor room that is once again a joy to spend time in and no longer an embarrassment to stand behind when a car pulls up.
It's the little things, I guess.
It may not look like much, but this little beauty represents a giant leap for SSF. For the last 4 years, the only outdoor water for our 5 acres has been from house or the wellhouse - so it was long hoses and hauling for most H2O-related tasks.
But now! Behold the indescribably beautiful "frost-free"! This one lives in the small space between the almost-greenhouse and the chicken coop, handily supplying future plant starts and thirsty hens with this singular life force.
It's twin is installed in the garden (of course). Ready to attach to the equally-wondrous drip irrigation system Mark designed and ordered and is currently installing - with timers!!!
20th Century technology finally arrives at Stop Sign Farm. Yay!
This morning is the first of 2010 that I can do this on the steps of my front porch. I won't pretend it's balmy - I'm sitting on a towel to keep the damp away and I'm wearing my trusty, ever-present blue vest - but it's downright pleasant out here and a relief to take my morning coffee outdoors...finally.
Crisis has its silver lining, namely moving the projects that are hovering near the bottom of the pile right smack up to #1. Thus, finishing the large chicken run so we can finally plant landscape plants again and say good-bye to the perennial bird poop on the porch suddenly found itself Urgency #1 when eagles and raccoons made Stop Sign Farm their favorite neighborhood bistro. So: done. Done! With electrical tape top and bottom to give the raccoon his appropriate welcome and bird netting above to give pause to hungry national symbols. And while I miss the sweet peckings of curious hens, moving ever closer to one's feet in hopes of spare treat, I can't pretend this long overdue separation of Human area and Animal area isn't welcome.
Mark got lots done on getting water to the almost-greenhouse - the almost-greenhouse whose plastic skin won't...quite...stretch...to...meet in the cold weather (argh!). He was knee-deep in standing trench water laying pipe yesterday and by week's end, I do believe we will have irrigation to both garden and almost-greenhouse. Plus, it's almost worth the trials just to get to see him in Mucks and Carhart overalls. Who'd ah thunk it? I'll sneak a photo later today and slip it into my next post...
Progress.
Sigh.
It's turning into a tough spring here at SSF. We have practically wrestled our majestic national symbol into letting go of a half-eaten - and still alive - hen, been on high alert for a couple of neighborhood dogs that enjoy prowling the area, and once again find ourselves facing at least one raccoon that's missed the memo on his or her nocturnal-ness.
The last two weeks, we've become the cafe du jour of a local bald eagle and his mate. I would be lying if I didn't admit that they are indeed majestic close up - but their sheer size on close inspection - especially when you're fighting over a living part of your farm - is daunting and, frankly, infuriating. These birds are mammoth and completely unafraid. Bald eagles are actually supposed to be "opportunistic eaters" - AKA scavengers, only hunting when necessary. But a free-range chicken farm a mere 500 yards from the nest is too convenient to ignore, I guess.
So, a week spent readying a nice spacious area, complete with 8-foot fence and a couple of swaths of bird netting overhead to deter predatory avian swooping, and we were feeling a little better yesterday - even if we could count at least 6 missing hens lost to who knows what these past couple weeks.
And then today, washing vegetables at the kitchen sink, what do I see but of course a raccoon, taking advantage of the contained birds and somehow finding a weakness in our fencing.
This is now the 4th or 5th time in just the last few days I've been and acutely felt my helplessless in the face of a predator just doing its job at the expense of our farm. It's too much.
I never thought I'd find myself - a lifelong advocate of gun control and a sworn non-gun-owner, feeling I have little choice but to give up what I do or buy some kind of gun. In my own defense, I have always believed that guns have a place - just not a place where there are kids (which includes my farm) or close proximities, like urban areas. One visit to Montana and I knew immediately I would never live there without a firearm at the ready. In that wild state, full-scale predators can literally - and do - show up on your doorstep.
So, I guess in some small way, I'm experiencing Montana on a micro scale. But the reality is, I have animals I'm responsible for, animals I've placed in a certain environment - and to ignore their safety is irresponsible not to mention horrific.
So, pellet gun, .22, or??? Ugh. Would that I ever thought I'd be facing this dilemma. But, it has to be done. I can't stand the prospect of continually looking up - as I have so many times this past month - to see a killer in my midst and have no way to protect those in my charge. Mark has gallently rushed out with bow and arrow, but that's a one-shot-deal at best. It's not the answer.
And, no. I won't be shooting any bald eagles. My plan is just to put my girls away where the eagle can't get to them, then deal with the raccoon - a cute cartoon character to city kids, but a true villain out here - more aggressively.
The less bloodshed the better. But my poor girls deserve to be safe in their own house.
The less fun side of farming.
Lately I have reading and thinking about and cooking meat. I am re-reading Bill Buford's HEAT, an amazingly engaging and thoughtful book about food, cooking, and, well, meat. Just before that I whizzed through a small memoir by a chef who cooks for Italian billionaires on their $8M yacht for a summer. Both these books have strong connections with Italy so I am thinking about food and farming through something of an Italian lens.
It's common that I become reflective about meat in the Spring because that is when lambs are born, and most of those lambs are destined for the freezer. It is the time of year when people stop by the farm and light up at the sight of babies frolicking, only to drop their eyes and murmur some question about the sadness of it all.
It is the time of year when I contemplate what it means to eat and what it means to eat honorably.
Here is what I think is sad: I think it's sad that we've come to - actually been in for a quite a while - a time in our culture when it's rare we even think to purchase animals as the sum of their parts to use as food. Most of us rarely even roast a whole chicken. For us, in North America, our recipes call for ridiculous collections of breasts and thighs. We're used to it - it's how we cook, how we shop. "6-8 skinless, boneless thighs" the magazine says. "2 breasts, bone-in, skin removed."
What happened to buying a chicken, flattening it against your cutting board, and using all of its parts to make dinner? Did folks develop specific preferences for thighs and breasts and then supermarkets began supplying our dinners that way? Or did processors and groceries predict that they could make more money from "specialty cuts" priced as such and these specialty cuts evolved into the way we thought about chicken?
I don't know. But, a while back I volunteered in my son's Humanities class to help replicate the mummification process used by the Egyptians. My son's teacher is a gleefully creative man who looks forward to this process of decay each Spring. It helps to have a few grown-up types around to make sure the teams of 6th graders don't out-gross each other too much.
But, the first day revealed something surprising to me. We had a straightforward task: take a packaged supermarket guinea hen out of its shrinkwrap, rinse it, then pour salt in and over it, and seal it in a ziplock bag. Nothing to it.
Except these kids - these country kids, who live or have been on a farm of some type - were absolutely beside themselves at the thought of touching a raw supermarket hen. I mean, this is about as sanitized a piece of meat you're ever going to come in contact with, and keeping the squeals of both girls and boys down to a dull roar was by far the toughest part of the day.
These are 11 and 12 year olds. What do they think they've been eating? And where have they been while mom or dad has been frying up dinner? How can kids out here on this island of groovy little farms be so totally disconnected from the food they eat?
It's a little discouraging. There may be a food revolution out there, with micro farms like ours popping up across the land and an explosion in the vendors at farmers markets...but most kids still think their hamburger arrives in its bun essentially by magic.
This year, we expanded our non-supermarket food acquisition by purchasing both a quarter-side of beef and an entire pig with a couple other families. The challenge? Well, you have to cook a lot of different things - not just steaks and chops, because cows and pigs are not composed of steaks and chops. And when that delicious bacon is all used up, it's time to make sausage out of the ground.
But, this cow and this pig were raised by hand, in the open air, on pasture. They didn't get sick, because they didn't stand around in what we'll euphemistically call "muck," and they died quickly and well.
And all who went in on this deal agree: The best tasting beef and pork - ever. Ever. Somehow, too, it does feel more...honest. That our meat is all of one animal, rather than the choicest cuts of many combined. It somehow says, this is what nourishes us, all of you, we thank you. We do not pick the chops and turn the rest into dog food. Outside of North America, with the exception of Great Britain and Down Under, this is still the way many people approach their dinner. It is most definitely the way Italians and French, although the results are quite different, buy and cook just about everything. Buy or grow it whole, break it down, treat each piece with respect, and enjoy it.
Small food counts when its fresh green and luscious tomatoes. Definitely. But I think it counts - in every way you can imagine - even more if you eat meat.
Buono gusto.
It whizzed right by and suddenly summer is afoot although today it feels a lot more like January than June. It has been a rollercoaster of a couple of months, with new animals arriving and new challenges arising at every turn.
Describing the current state of Stop Sign Farm the other day, I paused and finally said, well, it looks a bit like someone's garage threw up all over us.
That pretty much sums it up.
After a year or more of feeling like progress was progressing along, we've gone back into a kind of construction mode, trying to take the farm to the next level. Just as our chicks were hatching out of the incubator, we were faced with the sudden opportunity to acquire 23 young laying hens - a real time and effort saver. That necessitated a little heavy lifting and rearranging of coops but hey that was just fine because at the very same time we'd also scored a commercial greenhouse from an island farmer who was moving and selling it all.
The greenhouse, in addition to needing to be dismantled (how come we dismantle, but don't mantle?) also required 240 electrical to run its heating and venting systems. Which required a long, deep trench. Which required a tractor.
Enter our pal Jake, who putt-putted over on his big blue rig and made all manner of wondrous things occur - the long, deep trench, the new hen area, wood waste to the rescue of the exceedingly disgusting sheep pen, and even a little pot-hole filling to boot.
Whew.
So, All hands on deck to take down, transport, and ... not quite put up the greenhouse. Yet. But, it's getting there. New lambs upon new lambs came into being throughout April until 6 fuzzy babes were frolicking about.
Greenhouse, greenhouse, greenhouse. Not that trench-hopping doesn't deserve to be an Olympic sport - I mean, it sure is fun, but ... greenhouse greenhouse greenhouse.
And, oh yea, that garden. Where is it? Well, it's hard to see under the 3-foot tall pasture grass that takes over the second you turn your back. Luckily, it appears that garlic, onions, and potatoes are hardy souls indeed. We took a couple hours away from greenhouse fretting and shaking our fist at the weather - always too windy, rainy, or sunny to actually work on the greenhouse - to fight back nature and reassure our baby crops that mama and papa have not run off to the city and abandoned them forever. Although...
Lest we feel that the greenhouse might be in danger of completion and our farming selves facing some possibility of success, we simultaneously discovered that our new hens have taught our old hens - now all totalling over 50 - a wondrous trick: how to eat eggs! Turns out, eggs are quite delicious and full of protein and are, well, right there! No need to tire oneself out with all this endless foraging - no ma'am!
Setting aside the sort of grim yuckiness of the act, one can understand the attraction of such an easy and healthy meal. As a long-term evolutionary strategy, however, it does appear to have some vulnerabilities.
So, that's been an interesting challenge to face: observing and identifying the worst offenders, putting them in the brigg, and hoping for the best, along with very frequest egg collection. So far, our fingers are crossed and we're cautiously optimistic.
Onward. More soon.
