Once in a Blue Moon

In Boulder, I never paid much attention to the phases of the moon. Here, it’s much more obvious. When I turned out the light last night, I had to double check to make sure that all the lights were off, as it was still so bright in the bedroom. All the lights were off, but the moon is full today, for the second time this month. Happy Blue Moon Day, and Happy New Year’s Eve.

Phil, incredibly, felt ill again yesterday. So much for moving to the country for better health. He had managed to place 15 cattle panels in three days, which made me despair of ever actually getting our place fenced in. Five panels a day would finish the job in about 50 days, but he’s working on the easiest section right now: the level, cleared area near the road. I need to not stress about it. But I do!

I decided to attempt the ram lamb post-mortem. I managed to cut the animal open and see the guts, but then I didn’t know how to proceed, or how to keep extracting without making a big mess. And I didn’t think the really pertinent parts (reproductive organs) were large enough for my untrained eyes to observe what they needed to see.

But for someone who fainted after losing a tooth, and who passed out when having a blood sample drawn, cutting open a dead mammal is a pretty big step in toughness. Good for me!

Today Phil did more fencing. I kept an eye on Acorn, who I think has dropped (since last Saturday or Sunday). Is she acting oddly? I actually touched her and she didn’t bolt, which means she’s more friendly. Is her udder filling, or is it just my imagination? Is labor imminent? At some point in the next month, yes.

The older boys and I had a great time reading Ella Enchanted until after 10pm this evening. We did that most of the afternoon, too. I was glad they liked the story so much—it’s a good one.

A few photos of our farm on this, the last day of 2009.

Our view across the creek

Our incredibly slow growing pigs

Our 80 augered holes, with no trees

Our driveway and dwelling, partly obscured by the brush pile

Abigail

Most of our flock, with Chrystal the goat lying in front of the lambing jug in the background

Greedy goat Annabelle

"Gotcha Day" for Babydoll Ewes

Yesterday was “gotcha” day for our three babydoll ewes. Hopefully they have been bred, and I will be watching for lambs starting in early April.

I had only seen the ewes twice before, and had forgotten/not remembered how very much larger they are than the little half-year lambs we have. Apparently, the babydoll sheep are the original Southdowns, from England, first registered in 1780 and reaching America in 1803. They are, apparently, hardy, with tender meat and good flavor.

Around the time of WWI, the Southdown breed was bred for larger, quicker growth. In 1986, Mr. Robert Mock went around and found all the old Southdowns in the world that still looked like the Southdowns of the early 1800s. In four years he found 26 sheep; a longer search finally turned up 350 (some with papers that went back to 1780!). These few animals became the foundation of the breed he renamed “Olde English Babydoll Southdown Sheep.”

Phil would like to point out that adding the name “Babydoll” effectively rules out the breed for half the population: the male half. What man really wants to have a babydoll? For female hobby farmers, though, the breed appears to be popular enough. And, as I suppose I am a female hobby farmer, I was not immune. I own babydolls.

The main website, despite mentioning the taste and quality of the meat, markets the babydolls as mostly good for companionship/pets; for grooming an orchard or vineyard (our main purpose: they both trim and fertilize, and, supposedly, do not harm trees; they are too small to eat the fruit, too, apparently); and for their wool. The wool has “more barbs per inch” than any other wool type, which makes it “ideal for blending with other fibers.” I’m more impressed with its 19 to 22 micron diameter. It is soft stuff, but pretty dirty at the moment.

The chickens love to sit on the ruminating sheep’s backs. This is pastoral, but also crappy (the chickens poo on the sheep’s backs).

One book I read suggested putting jackets/covers on the sheep. The fleeces are worth twice what an uncovered sheep’s fleece sells for: it is premium quality and delightful right away. That does sound pleasant. But, as Phil said, it’s not very natural. Do we really want to look over at the flock and see a lot of vinyl jackets? We haven’t decided yet. Will economics or aesthetics win the day? For this year’s wool, it’s too late to make a change, so we’ll enjoy the natural look for now.

I arrived home with the three ewes in the back of the minivan. I like the smell of sheep, but these poor stressed animals had kicked the tarp I had laid down, and then made the back of my van dirty. We’ll see how much I like the smell of sheep next time I get in the van.

Phil put the halter on the ewes, then lifted them out of the car. He could not believe how heavy they were. And stubborn! I led the sheep and Phil pushed them from behind. Eve (from the Bible family) stamps her feet when she is frustrated, which is very dear. Isabella (from the Royal family) lays down if she doesn’t want to move, and a limp 100 pound woolly animal is not easy to steer. Tsarina (or Zara, from the Russian family) is the best mother, apparently. She is also the most dutiful: first to catch, easiest to get to the paddock. (In the photo, left to right: Eve, Tsarina, Isabella, the black ewe with sunbleached wool.)

They appear to be adjusting well, and I enjoy the larger flock. It feels more full, more natural to have nine sheep. More like a flock and less like a dabble.

We also opened stuffed stockings, courtesy of Phil's mom Cheri.

Phil has spent several hours closing the books for his engineering firm (end of the year taxes and paperwork—blah). Consequently, he hasn’t been able to work as much as he would wish on the fencing. He has put up nine 16 foot cattle panels, which is about a quarter of our road fenced. A bit less than 4% of the project. The boys are helpful: they hold the flimsy fence and he pounds the T-posts.

The older boys spent much of today playing with one of our family Christmas presents, Piano Wizard. I am pleased that they are getting a bit of music instruction in our teeny trailer, while our lovely piano remains in the storage section of the construction trailer. After five or six hours, I had them put it away.

We Finally Make It to Church

We had all bathed since Christmas Eve, and haven’t been outside much since then. Our dirtiness factor was quite low. So we decided to go to church this morning for the first time since we’ve been here. (We have been faithfully attending Bible study, so we have not been entirely separate from the body, lest any grow concerned.) Martin and Molly Bush go to Charlottesville Community Church, a startup church that meets in a school, similar to our home church in Boulder. It felt, architecturally anyway, like home. (The homey feel may also have been because the entire Bush clan visited today, about doubling the congregation, which was mostly visitors from out of town anyway.) Phil enjoyed talking to the teaching pastor afterwards.

No red flags, so we plan to return next Sunday.

One of the families moved here in July, and has a daughter age 4, just like Abigail. They had a good time playing together, and the mother gave me her number. I don’t know how soon we can do a playdate, but it was good to meet new people.

I went into the paddock to see the lamb and noticed that Acorn the ewe no longer looks round like an acorn. Yes, she has dropped, so the wait for her lambing begins. Thankfully, there are no more hundred-year storms in the forecast. (I heard that the last time a single storm dumped this much snow was 100 years ago. The deep snow of 1996 was two storms back-to-back.)

We Open Presents for Days and Days

On Christmas Eve, with foot-deep snow on all sides, we hunkered down and opened a few more presents. I wrote five clues, one for each child, and sent the children out to find their presents. The sheep had tried to open the one I left in the jug, but we had a good time.

In the photos you can see three children filing out to find a gift under the tarp covering the hay; several of us returning to the house to open a gift hidden in the sheep pen (notice Isaiah petting the ewe lamb as she nurses); Jadon getting his gift off the pump house, with a tower of wood chips to the right of him; Abraham asleep in the middle of the afternoon, characteristically resting his head on his hands; and Phil playing pirate Playmobil with the boys.

At 9pm, we went to the Bessettes for dinner (prime rib from their Jersey!), and the children hung in there well until midnight.

The ram lamb was, thankfully, dead that morning. Emotionally, it was not as bad as the death of the first two chicks back in Boulder—that was the worst. Or maybe I had worked through the grief the day before.

UPS was unable to deliver some of our boxes. There are disadvantages to living four miles down a country road. That was a bummer.

Christmas Day was rainy and chill. We opened (more) presents, until our little trailer looked like a Lego and Playmobil factory exploded all over. In the evening, we headed to the Doug Bushes for six hours, where we sang and snacked and talked and laughed.

Today reached the 50s, which, combined with the rain from yesterday, finally started to reduce the snowpack. Abigail and I spent the morning at Johanna Bush’s house, where we had girl time with her and her daughter. This afternoon Phil and I walked down to see how high Hog Creek has risen. It hasn’t overflowed the banks yet, but is definitely running high.

We are talking about where we want to site our house; we’re thinking we’ll put it below the clearing, in the deciduous trees on a steep slope. This will be more central to the entire property, as well as leave some extra area for the orchard. And it will be further off the road, so more private.

The best homestead thing of these past days is the little lamb. Phil and I watched her chase chickens today—she did the adorable lamb leap! Oh, what a cutie!

Fun and Not So Fun, or, What I Considered Not Posting

The children had a good time today. We have enough presents waiting to be opened that I’m not sure where we will put them all. Not in a merely academic way, but in a literal THERE IS NO SPACE way. So we each opened a gift this morning, in hope that I’ll be able to find proper places for them. It was really fun! We watched Abraham’s DVD; Jadon worked on his activity books; and Abigail carried her Beanie Baby around everywhere. Phil opened a book on Forgotten Arts and Crafts which he loved. Seeing the section on thatching made him want to do a thatched roof. I think that sounds delightful, but I’m not sure it would be practical.

In the afternoon, Isaiah insisted we read Twenty and Ten, a great true story about how some French children save some Jewish children during WWII. We had read it earlier this year, but Isaiah wanted to hear it again, so we spent a few hours doing that.

And after dark, we broke some glow sticks that had been floating around since the summer. The children spent a happy hour or so in the dark, playing light saber and whatever else children think is fun in the dark with a glowstick.

So there was fun today.

But there was a dark side, too.

At some point this morning, Phil and I realized that our ram lamb’s failure to thrive is due to deformities, not insufficient or misguided care. Had we had the good fortune of seeing a healthy ram lamb at some point, we would have recognized much earlier that he was not going to make it.

But who would have guessed that we’d get a deformed lamb at the first? I assumed that all ram lambs have separate testicles that will later join to form one sack. And I knew that proper urination comes out of the proper shaft, near the center of the belly. So what is the yellow draining liquid from an unusual slit below the tail? The clincher for me came when, in a final effort to make sure that I had done all I could for the lamb, I gave him an enema. Rather than helping him expel meconium, or gain greater comfort, the water drained right out of that same unusual slit.

As Phil said, “There is something really wrong with his internal organs.”

Why did our first ram lamb have to be deformed? Why did we perhaps torture it in our misguided attempts to help it? Why on earth did God call us to farm? It’s a rough task! And while it makes for interesting cyber communication, it also makes for real tears.

We debated putting it down. We decided that, if it appeared to be in pain, Phil would put it down. That’s stressful for both man and animal, though. So since it is not in apparent pain, we’ll let it continue for the time.

Oh, little lamb, sleep near your mother, cradled by your sister, and drift to eternal sleep in the cold winter’s night.

Ram Lamb

Phil came in this morning with greater concern about the ram lamb. He hadn’t stood up since the first day; he lay, curled up, shivering, under the heat lamp, with dull eyes and lack of interest.

When I went out to see him, I had little hope for his survival. I was sure that the title for today’s events would be: “Ram Lamb: December 18 to 22, 2009.”

But instead, today became “diagnose the ram lamb” day. First guess: selenium and Vitamin E deficiency (it fit the dull eyes and the shivering). I had both the mineral and the vitamin for human consumption: how to deliver it to the lamb?

Well, I had purchased a drench, which looks like a syringe with a rounded metal tip. It is meant to deliver dewormers or other chemicals into the sheep’s mouth, but I hadn’t purchased anything to use with it. In fact, when I unpacked the box, my first thought was, “Why on earth did I order this?” But the drench was the perfect tool for delivering the vitamin and mineral to the lamb.

A bit later, we used the drench again. This time, we gave the baby all the colostrum I had milked out of Ashley that first day. Perhaps he was simply unable to nurse for a time and became dehydrated. And after he had eaten all of it (about two drenches worth), he stood up for, perhaps, the first time in a couple days. So that was good, but not great.

The book said that dehydrated lambs need an enema, in order to clear out their meconium, the tarry poop from their time in utero. What an adventure! From lambing to enemas in just a few days. Or, as my sister said, “It’s amazing the things you can learn from books!” I got my soapy water all ready, but, I’m embarrassed to admit, was unable to locate the small anus. In fact, I am even more embarrassed to admit, I worried about an extra hole that should be there. It looked like a slit, that was maybe peeing? But shouldn’t pee come from the penis?

I had Phil come and look, and he was clueless, too. At this point, the ram has two fuzzy fingers dangling from his underbelly, identical in size and shape. Our guess is that one is his penis and the other his not-quite-all descended testicles.

All I can say is, it’s a good thing we didn’t try to castrate yet. (!) And I cannot report the results of the lamb enema, because that didn’t happen either. Probably just as well.

The next round of save-the-ram-lamb required the other thing I had no idea why I ordered: a sheep halter. We put it on Ashley and Phil held her while I milked her. A few more drenches of fresh milk went to the baby, and by now, he was standing up regularly. He still refused to nurse, and he still shook, but his back was not so hunched.

An hour or so later, we gave him another drench of mother’s milk. I figured, though, that this was the end. His sister was out frolicking in the snow with the larger sheep. He lay under the heat lamp with chickens crawling all over him (I’m assuming they were ecstatic to have found their missing heat lamp, because they did not want to leave). I went out to pick up his carcass a bit later, and found him walking around the jug with a babydoll.

Is the ram lamb in the clear? I have no idea.

What went wrong? I’m not sure. Shock from the early and incorrect tail docking. Then he got stuck at some point overnight in the pallet. It could be that that second night he was stuck for hours, unable to nurse, and oozing blood from his tail. That was also the night that the heat lamp—and all our electricity—went out. So the next morning, Phil and I were focused on our children, and getting us all to safe and warm quarters. When Phil checked on the lamb, he didn’t know about the hunched back symptom of shock or hypothermia, and I didn’t pay enough attention to look.

So although the lamb may yet die, I no longer feel like I would be a tail-docking murderess. I can see that the ram had a lot of strikes against him, from horrible weather during birth to inexperienced shepherds every step of the way, and that he’s made it this far is the grace of God.

This afternoon, Phil made Isaiah a lofted bed above my dresser. My old pastor’s wife Alona once said, “For spatial management, think UP,” and we have just about perfected that advice. Tonight it will be just Phil and I, Jonadab, the dog and the cat in our full size bed. What luxury!

Only Little Notes

For breakfast at the Bessettes this morning we had some of their incredible breakfast sausage from their own pig. Incredible. The children spent much of the day sledding. For children who like to be indoors, I’m so proud of them. Isaiah even cut his chin on the sled at one point, but after a little Neosporin, he headed right back to the slope.

For lunch, Michelle made tortillas out of spelt flour—delicious!

When we finally returned home about 4pm, Phil found one of the lambs stuck in the cattle panel across the entrance. Stuck as in, head through one metal square and legs through another. We have heard that sheep have suicidal tendencies, but I had no idea it could be so constant. First stuck in the pallet, then stuck in the cattle panel! Phil thought it was the ewe lamb, but looking at the two lambs a short time later, the ewe frisked about, while the ram stood with hunched back, a characteristic “chilled” sign. We’re guessing it was the ram lamb (again) who got himself stuck. (His mouth was still warm, though, so I think he’ll be fine.)

The ewe lamb cracked me up, though. Phil had finally let the chickens out of their entrapment in their house (with the snow covering their door, we figured they should just stay inside). One of the chickens had wandered into the jug, where the ewe lamb bounded up to it, curiously. The chicken left in haste.

This snowstorm is the deepest the Bessettes remember; I think the last deep snow like this in Virginia was in 1996. Butch said that the last time it took the county four days to plow our road. What a time for the lambs to be born!

I should mention the pigs. With the snow covering both electric lines, I had a small concern that they would either freeze or escape. Phil didn't even bother to check on them while the snow fell heavily. He figured they would be hunkered down in the hay. Sure enough—when he went to see them the second day, he brought food with him. A pile of hay exploded with pig flesh. I had a repeat performance today, as I approached them with the scraps of two days and two families. All I could see were little ears, until they bounded out, hay flying.

No Power = Freezing Cold

As I was finishing my book last night, the power went out. Neighbor Butch had called us early in the day to let us know that losing power was a possibility, and that he could come with his tractor to plow us out, if we needed him to. “When the heating goes out, those trailers get cold quickly” was his comment.

And the power went out. What would we do? Could we die?

Phil immediately assessed the possibilities: we could get all our blankets and stay in bed overnight. If we get too cold, we could head up to the truck or van and sleep in there with the heat running, even if we couldn’t get out of the driveway.

I went to bed, already chilled at the prospect of no heat for an undetermined period of time. And I awoke in the night, what felt like every hour, getting more and more chilled.

By daylight, my prayers for power were not answered. When Phil got up to do chores, he said, “Yup, it’s close to freezing in here.” A literal statement. The sun had come out, and the outside temperature was near 20. I think our sleeping room was warmer, with all our bodies, perhaps almost 40. Clearly not livable for any real amount of time.

For the next two hours, we headed to the Bessettes. First, I had to locate full snow gear for all five children and myself. That took a good long time. Phil had all the animals established for several days (including freeing the ram lamb from where he had got stuck in the pallet wall—these lambs are really not terribly bright). I was so, so thankful that the lambs were okay, despite the loss of the heat lamp. Had the power gone out the night before, how would they have lived? Yet another way that the Lord protected them.

Phil had hoped that the 4-wheel drive dually could get out our driveway without aid. And if the bed was loaded, it probably could have. But the bed was empty, so Phil used our rented skidsteer to plow, and then towed the truck out, with me “driving” in reverse. Then Phil drove us to the bottom of the Bessette driveway. A short third mile hike through 18 inches of snow, over two fences, and we reached our destination.

Parenthetically, I was so thankful for the clothes provision we had. Phil and I had waterproof pants from a previous Family Fun Week. And, incredibly, I had four pairs of snow pants for the four children who can walk. And they all fit. I think Phil bought a few pairs back in Boulder years ago, and we’ve never used them, but today, we used them all with gratitude.

I made some apple pies. Dennis, as grounds keeper at a boarding school, had plowed and kept the campus clear, then headed home this morning. He got to the top of our 4.5 mile road in his 2-wheel drive vehicle, then called for help. Phil and Michelle went to pick him up, and Phil’s expertise in driving impressed them all. (Dennis, who keeps wondering when I will write a book, wanted me to mention that we saved him, or at least saved him a long hike through deep snow. Since they’ve saved us many times, I am pleased to be able to return the favor.)

Dennis mentioned that sheep and other cattle purposefully give birth in bad weather; it’s a way to protect themselves from predators during their most vulnerable time. I suppose they then have to trust the people to care for their frozen progeny, but at least they protect themselves!

We’re staying the night at the Bessettes. Phil did head home to check on the animals, and returned with good news on all fronts: electricity restored; lambs doing well; all animals happy and healthy. God be thanked.

Wool Fiber: The Magic Fiber

Because of the precious lambs, I have been eagerly reading up on sheep raising. While the children watched THREE of the Star Wars movies, I read Shearing Day book on shearing with hand shears, rather than with electrical clippers. I read that clippers are, perhaps, easier to learn on. However, they sounded less desirable in every other way. Clippers cost at least ten times as much; they have many more parts that require maintenance (oils, fancy sharpening); they shear closer to the skin, which means the sheep are more likely to chill and die; they are heavy and noisy; they require electricity, and, as such, the shearer is restricted in location. In the hands of skilled shearers, neither tool is faster than the other, and neither is more likely to nick than the other. To my utmost relief, I read a line like, “Sheep are abundantly capable of healing from even severe wounds,” which was my greatest comfort in the debacle of the tail docking.

The best part of the book first listed different sheep breeds. Ashley, a Dorset, makes good yarn wool; her lambs, as well as Acorn the sheep, are a Dorset/Rambouillet mix; the Rambouillet descends from a Merino sheep, with a fiber diameter of about 20 microns. (For perspective, hair is about 150 microns.) Our Southdown Babydolls should have that lovely, premium micron count. I think the issue with itchy wool happens with fibers that are around 35 or 40 microns.

Next, the book talked about the actual wool. A good quality wool has more crimping. Perhaps a coarse wool has a crimp every centimeter; a quality wool might have 10 crimps. More “heritage breed” wools have both wool and hair, sort of like a downy coat and a hair coat our dog had when we were growing up. They might have four wool fibers to each hair fiber.

As the shepherds kept breeding, they were able to increase the numbers of wool fibers per hair fiber. Once the wool fibers hit 16 to 20, they cut the blood supply to the hair fibers, and the wool became uniform, with no hair fibers.

Good wool remains uniform all over the sheep, forming little clumps of fibers. And if the sheep is stressed, either from malnutrition or moving or anything else, it will grow a weak spot in the wool. The author said he can take a pencil sized amount of wool without any stress spots, and the tensile strength is such that he cannot break it with his fingers.

Wool is the most genetic of all sheep traits, more so than twin births or good meat or anything else. So, the shearer argued, all shepherds need to take responsibility to breed for quality wool, or the quality decreases rapidly.

I found the structure of the wool the most interesting: as the wool hardens, or keratinizes, the keratinized structure can absorb about 35% of its weight in water, and it somehow has an exothermic process (as it evaporates, maybe?), which gives off heat. Thus, the wool keeps a person both warm and dry.

Doesn’t this want to make you keep sheep, too? (Or maybe you just will want to buy wool products from a small flock, like Lona's, a Sonlight user.)

Wool fiber, the magic fiber.

New Things to Learn

Phil went out into the white wonderland this morning. I anxiously watched through the icicle covered (single paned!) window, as he slogged through knee-deep drifts. The chickens were trapped in their house, as the snow had covered their door. Phil put feed in through the roof, then went around to the lambing jug.

They were still alive! Standing up even! Way to go, little lambs!

Then my concern shifted to the other sheep, left in deep snow with no shelter (the goats are not about to share their pallet lean-to with the sheep, and the sheep probably prefer to be outside anyway. But maybe, my fears spoke, the babydolls got trapped overnight and suffocated. Thankfully, no.

As I read up on lamb care, I learned there were a few things I needed to do. Lambs are born with long tails (they almost touch the ground!), and they need to be docked to prevent droppings sticking to the wool (it actually gets worse than that—the droppings stuck to the tail attract flies, which lay eggs that turn to maggots. Poor sheep, dragging a maggot-infested tail weighing several pounds). So that’s really non-negotiable. Docking the tails needs to happen around 24 hours, I read, as after that the tail grows more nerve endings and becomes much more painful for the lambs.

This caused a mild panic attack: I had ordered a tail docker from a sheep supply place several weeks ago (never dreaming I would need it before the end of January!), but they had delayed the order (with my permission) due to a backordered item. I checked the status, and they claimed it had been delivered “to the front door.” When Phil had arrived home with the haybales yesterday, I had noticed our trampoline had been delivered on a pallet next to the driveway without my knowing, but I didn’t remember seeing any other boxes there. Because of the snow, I had covered the boxes with a tarp and left them.

Now I slogged through the snow myself, getting the snow inside my tall rubber boots. After futile digging around the boxes trying to locate the edge of the tarp, I was immeasurably relieved to see that the box of sheep supplies WAS there. God had sent it at just the right time!

Phil and I looked at the equipment we had received, and pulled the lamb vitamin booster and the tail docker (actual lovely name: emasculator). I went out to see the precious babies for the first time today. They were standing up, which surprised me: most babies sleep much of the first 24 hours, so the fact that they’ve been up each time we’ve visited is either a good sign or a bad one. I have no idea.

They didn’t much appreciate the vitamin booster. Phil came in to hold the babies as I docked their tales. They sheared off pretty easily, for which I was thankful.

Back in the house, though, I read another book that said, “Do not dock tales until 3 to 7 days, and if the lambs are thin, wait until 14 days. Do not do it in the first 24 hours, as that will severely stress the lambs.”

Worse yet (and this makes me feel sick), the emasculator is supposed to stay on the tail for 30 seconds after the actual cutting, in order to crimp off the blood vessels. Since the tool did not come with instructions, and the first two books I read about it didn’t mention it, I had no idea. Going back to check on the lambs several hours later, their tails were still bleeding, just a bit. I contemplated trying to just crimp the tails, but couldn’t stomach it. (I have conquered many phobias, but I fear that playing vet remains beyond my skill set.)

What comforts me as I think of verses like “My people [lambs] perish for lack of knowledge” is the reminder that these lambs are God’s lambs. By rights, they should have died at birth, in the snow storm.

What’s done is done, and now we have to wait and see.

How Cookie Cravings Saved Two Lives

Phil finished drilling the second row of trees this morning early. Jadon and I helped him layout the next seven rows or so, stringing baling twine attached to T-posts at precise intervals. Then Phil scraped the topsoil off several of those rows.

Sheep Ashley continues to appear more ready to deliver a lamb. Her bag appeared to me to be more full (even sticking out behind her legs a bit). In one of the reference books I frantically read yesterday, the author suggested that feeding grain at midday could force a daytime birth, so at midday I brought her some (organic) cracked corn. She ate with good will; I had a difficult time keeping the goats away from her as she consumed the first several cups of grain I’ve fed her.

Towards dusk, Phil left for Scottsville to get some straw bales, just in case Ashley went into labor. We wanted to make a “jug,” like a maternity room for women, where an ewe and her newly born lambs can rest, get acquainted, and begin life well. Phil had already put up some pallets with a tin roof on the backside of the chicken coop, so we just stacked strawbales three high all the way around the outside, leaving a little walkway in the center.

When Phil had left, snow had just begun to fall. By the time he returned, it was a few inches thick, and coming fast. As near as we could tell, Ashley was not in active labor (what does a sheep contraction look like, anyway? How would I know?). She was holding her tale out, almost like a duck, a sign that means “labor in two to three days.” This was very reassuring; I prayed that her babies would not come tonight, in the dark, in the snow.

After the boys went to bed, we were discussing which trees to keep, and which to get rid of. We don’t think all the trees will fit in the clearing, so are there some that are more vital than others? And, with the snow, we think we’ll send back the skid steer on Monday; we’re supposed to have snow cover for quite some time.

Phil had a sudden craving for cookies. Dear Berenice, an older woman from our Bible study, had brought beautiful decorated Christmas cookies (with wheat) for the five children. We had left them in the truck yesterday, as we tried to get all the sleeping children in the house after study, so Phil suited up to claim his prize (as he is the only one who eats wheat, he decided he could make the sacrifice). He left me typing this; I had got as far as “She ate with good will” when he opened the door, said, “Your prayers weren’t answered. Ashley delivered her twins. Get suited up.”

What an adrenaline rush! I tromped through 12 inches of snow, audibly praising the Lord that He was providing for these precious babies. Praising the Lord that Ashley is not a first time mom, that she delivered without incident, that Phil had a cookie craving.

We think we reached the lambs within minutes of their births. All the other sheep were crowded around; the three babydoll lambs watching (two learning what will happen to them in 2011). Phil and I each picked up a baby and carried them, at ground level, to the jug (thank the Lord we had prepared it before nightfall!). Then I became the task master and Phil the ready servant. Since I had read the books, I knew what to do.

First: towels for the babies. They were severely chilled. The firstborn, a ram lamb had actually frozen stiff in the few minutes outside; the second born, an ewe lamb, was not yet breathing, because the sac was covering her mouth and nose, and she, too, was extremely cold. I cleaned out her nose and mouth until she made little noises. When Phil brought blankets, I started to dry them off.

Thankfully, they were shivering. If they weren’t, that would have been a sign that they were too chilled, and we would have had to take drastic measures (ideally, submersion in warm water followed by a hair dryer; this would have been nigh impossible, as we have no running warm water and own no hair dryer). I also cut a bit off their umbilical cords and soaked their cords in iodine. All we had was 2% iodine solution which Phil picked up on his way home today; we are supposed to use 7% solution. I pray that, in this instance, the Lord will be gracious and protect those lambs from anything bad getting into their umbilical cords and causing an infection.

The lambs would not stop shaking. We put up a heat lamp (removed from the chickens—sorry, biddies!); Phil got a cattle panel and put it in front of the door, after we shooed out the four other interested sheep. (When I had first entered the jug with the babies, there was me, and seven snow covered animals in a pretty small space. I am not terribly claustrophobic, but it was a relief to get the others out!) I checked inside their mouths to see if their mouths were cold; thankfully, they never were, as I was concerned enough without negative indications.

I did my best to thoroughly dry the lambs off; their wool is dense, though, and it was not easy. Ashley is a mothering pro: she licked them and nickered to them (it almost sounded like a warning grunt directed to me, but I think it was loving to them). Phil brought her warmed water (what a treat!) with molasses in it, and fresh hay for them to lie on and for her to eat.

The other task I needed to do as sheep midwife was to strip her teats. The sheep get a wax plug that can freeze up in cold weather, so a person needs to strip it out. I almost thought it was impossible, so I’m thankful I didn’t make the lambs try to do it. I milked out just a little colostrum for future use, but Ashley wasn’t thrilled with my attempts, so I didn’t get nearly as much as I wanted. (Colostrum is important to have on hand in case an ewe dies in birth at some future date; lambs MUST have colostrum, because, unlike humans, they get no antibodies from their mothers in utero. Human babies get some through the umbilical cord and some through colostrum, but sheep get it all through colostrum. Thus, it is an absolute necessity.)

Having read many books about the necessity of colostrum, preferably in the first half hour, I was pretty concerned. I figured, though, that the Lord has been guiding us so graciously thus far, he wouldn’t stop now. After all, yesterday morning I thought, out of the blue, “I should go look at the sheep.” Which seemed like a frivolous and almost wasteful thing to do—I have five children to take care of, and now I want to frolic with sheep in the middle of the day? But the impression was so strong, I went, and that was when I noticed the enlarged udder and then the “dropped” appearance made sense.

Anyway, at Phil’s urging, I took a break from the sheep and lambs and went inside. It was now 11:30pm, and I read a few more tidbits that persuaded me to go out and try again to get the babies to eat. I milked more colostrum, and fed it, finger by finger, to the babies. Soon after this, they began baaing more lustily (yay!) and the ram stood up! Yippee! From frozen to standing in such a short time! He was pretty clueless about finding the udder, and I felt bad because ideally the ewe would be shorn before lambing (this is really not a seasonal birth, and there was no way I wanted to shear Ashley right at the start of winter). The baby kept trying to suck the dirty, wet wool, but Ashley was patient and directed him to where he needed to go. He drank noisily and happily a few times.

By then his sister was standing, but Ashley didn’t try to direct her. Ashley does lick her, so she has accepted the baby, but she didn’t give any of the helpful nudges or whickerings that she offered the ram lamb. Phil had joined me in the jug then, so we tried together to get the ewe lamb to drink. She does not appear to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but by physically putting the teat to her mouth, she, too, drank well.

Ashley passed the afterbirth without any trouble and so, at 1am, our task was done. The Lord was very gracious to us raw beginners on this raw night; the 12 inches or more of snow we have now would have left no lambs alive by morning, had Phil not had a hankering for Christmas cookies.

Lambing Time Already?

Phil unloaded the cattle panels and the T-posts, after he accidentally backed the trailer into our darned trench. Thankfully, Samson-the-dually pulled the trailer out, so Phil returned it without further mishap. That took all morning.

This afternoon, he drilled holes. On his second hole, the entire auger suddenly fell off the machine. He and Isaiah spent an hour wrestling it into place. Isaiah really helped: he drove the skid steer and lowered the arm and basically aided Phil however he needed it.

I was blissfully unaware of this trauma until the very end. But then I was frantic: we will never get these holes all dug, if we have to deal with leaking hydraulic fluid (Phil returned that first hydraulic unit today for a non-leaking one), and augers suddenly falling off the machine. Good gracious! What a mess!

But Phil remained unconcerned and plugged away, and managed to finish about 25 holes by the time darkness fell. I was proud of him.



My day was spent in terror/elation at what I thought was the imminent birth of our first lamb. As I looked at our full-blooded Dorset, Ashley, this morning, I noticed first that she looked really, really skinny, with protruding hip bones. Actually, my first thought was, “She dropped!” And then I noticed that her udder was swollen to the size of a minibasketball, or maybe a bit bigger. Since her udder used to be virtually invisible, that was an interesting development. AND she’s been standing up more, and been more friendly toward me, the human midwife.

All these signs, apparently, the books say could point to labor. But, like with women, the signs come at different times for different animals, and mean different things. So Ashley could give birth tonight, or she could give birth in a month. Since she was penned with a ram until we bought her, she could give birth at just about any time, and we'll have no way of knowing unless she gives us more definite signs.

I had figured I had a month to prepare, so I frantically read through all the basic info I could find on lambing. I think it comes down to just a lot of prayer. Vet bills will be more than the replacement cost of the animal; it’s distressing to think that a lamb and an ewe could die on my watch. I am praying instead that our flock will be like Jacob’s, where it increased in vigor and number because God blessed it.

Towing and Sprinkling

This felt like a long day. Jonadab fell asleep after 1am, and we were all up by 7:30. Phil went out and started drilling holes. In an hour or two, he had finished a total of 37, or all that he plans to do on the first row. (Eventually we’ll have 40 there, adding the one that Phil dug by hand, plus two on the ends where we have T-post markers now.

At 10am, Phil left to pick up the fencing. He first stopped at Rental City to rent a flatbed trailer. He knew it might be dicey, since the hitch we have is 2 ½”, while their equipment is 2”. While there, the guys in the machine shop adjusted our hitch (gratis!), so now we have a standard-sized hitch. That’s good!

But it took a while. Phil got back with about one-third of the fencing at 3:30. He used the skid steer to unload the heavy fencing (putting it to another use I hadn’t anticipated). He figured he had two loads to go. He took the boys with him on the second trip, and called me from Charlottesville at 6:30, saying they had almost loaded everything, and he hoped it wasn’t too heavy.

Over the next two hours, there were several specific moments where I felt the need to pray for my boys’ protection. The trip usually takes no more than an hour. After he got home, Phil confessed that there was one moment that he figured he had just killed all five of them. In order to avoid town traffic, he took an alternate route. On I-64, he had pushed the truck to the swift speed of 45 mph (which is pretty good for a dually towing seven tons). Suddenly he started fishtailing so badly he expected the truck to roll at any moment; he pulled onto the shoulder and came to basically a complete stop before he regained control.

It was the most scared he had ever been while driving.

Back at home, he looked online to figure out why that had happened, and how to prevent it. Based on a diagram, it seems that the trailer was loaded too heavily in the back, and the hitch had too much pressure, and tried to raise the back of truck. Or something like that. He went no faster than about 37 mph the rest of the way home, and arrived safely. Once again, God protected us.

My farm accomplishment was to stir biodynamic preparations and fling them on the ground. Biodynamic farms seek to use the cosmic forces (i.e. that of the moon, the planets, and the stars) in order to increase the health of the soil and the crop. This sounds very “New Agey” but I think it makes sense. The moon exerts an unmistakable force on the tides; labor and delivery nurses joke about how when the moon is full, they can hear the bags of water popping all over the city, so the moon exerts a force even on a much smaller body of water. I would suspect that other celestial bodies also exert forces—or, at least, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

And they use specific preparations or “preps” to improve the soil.

Most of these preps are embarrassing to even admit to using. My personal nomination for the most outlandish is BD [for biodynamic] 505: “In America 505 is usually made from the finely ground outer bark of the white oak tree (Quercus alba), which is packed in the cranial cavity of a domestic farm animal’s skull and buried for the autumn and winter in a spot where water trickles constantly.” (I told you it’s embarrassing!)

One of my favorite biodynamic thoughts came from the first book I read on the subject, A Biodynamic Farm, by Hugh Lovel. Overall, the book is disjointed, but quite interesting, nonetheless. Lovel says that Newton figured out that the apple falls due to gravity. But he didn’t acknowledge how the apple got into the tree to begin with—a force Lovel calls “levity.” (Great, huh?)

To insert a little levity into this email, I made pizza for dinner in the little convection oven. I used cheap shredded mozzarella from Costco. And Joe vomited up (levity there) the same horrid smelling, foul liquid that was a constant part of his first few weeks alive, before I cut out dairy. He hasn’t done that in a year, but I guess that’s a lesson to me: no more cheap cheese.

Hurry up, goats! Almost time to kid! I’m ready for milk of my own.

Our Friend the Auger

Rental City delivered the skid steer with 30” auger today. Phil drilled two holes in fairly short order, deep, topsoil mixed with subsoil. Therefore, not ideal. (The top six inches of soil have aerobic microorganisms, which need air to live; below about six inches are anaerobic microorganisms that need no air to live; if the layers get mixed, you get a lot of dead soil. Bummer.)

So Phil traded the auger for the bucket and scraped the topsoil off the location of the first two rows of trees. The rich topsoil is minimal in comparison with the massive quantities of subsoil the auger brings up, but I’m thankful to have it separated and available. (The photo below shows the visible difference between the topsoil and subsoil: the more orange soil in the background is subsoil.)



Next Phil ran to the hardware store to get spray paint (which really meant he also stopped at the bank and deposited checks, stopped at the gas station to get diesel fuel for the skid steer, stopped at the post office to mail a package and get our mail; he met Doug Bush at the gas station and had a nice chat, but that was an unplanned, added bonus). He marked the subsoil at 6’ spacing for these first two rows, and then settled down in the skid steer for the boring, repetitive, noisy task of drilling holes for trees.

At first, the holes look like this:



After a short while, as the perched water flows in, the holes look more like this:



All told, we think today produced 15 holes. Only 385 to go, plus backfilling and planting.

Okay, that’s really depressing. We’ll focus on the first number and forget the second.

The Miry Pit

Phil drove into Charlottesville with the four older children to pay for the cattle panels and T-posts that have come in. He didn’t bring them home, because 250 panels at 8’x16’ each would not fit in our van—nor our pickup!—but he did look them over before paying, and now gets to figure out how to get them home.

We went down to see the end result of his excavator work (although the rental place won’t pick up the machine until tomorrow, since we’re not paying for today, we didn’t use it today). It was both encouraging and discouraging.

I was encouraged by the amount of land that is cleared. I figure he probably only worked maybe six hours, without ideal equipment, and probably cleared about 1/3 of an acre. If we rent a better piece of equipment for a month, I think he could easily clear all four or so acres down by the creek. Once we get the trees planted and the fencing up, that will be next on the list.

I was discouraged first by the soppiness of the ground. Isaiah had eagerly run ahead into the cleared patch; the mud literally sucked his shoes off, and he stood, sock-clad, sobbing, ankle-deep in cold, red clay. (Phil carried him to a tree, removed his socks, put his shoes back on, and then graciously carried the sodden socks back to the trailer—what a guy!) We have deep gullies on either side of our house and future orchard clearing, and they make a V-shape as they run into Hog Creek. The northern gulley cut a well-marked channel; until we cleared, we didn’t realize that the southern gulley suddenly spreads out into a delta, and the delta runs right over the newly cleared land.

Hence, the standing water and ankle-deep mud.

The sight of freshly scraped land also brings no joy to my spirit. I’m pleased to have unhealthy trees knocked down; I don’t miss the thorny briers. But the beautiful green carpet of ferns and moss underfoot has been entirely destroyed. I know enough of microorganisms and humus to know that heavy machinery on wet land is not only not ideal, but is, in fact, destructive. Farewell, soil structure! (To be fair, though, I noticed no dead earth worms, and the soil itself appears to be heavy clay, as the rest of the land. Perhaps such drastic measures are not as bad as I fear.)

If there were a way to clear the land without creating an orange morass, how wonderful that would be. However, I am also impatient, and I suspect that any hand-clearing method would take too long, at least for me.

Before we moved, I read about “compromise,” and how farmers have to do that sometimes. I suppose this is my third compromise (the second was bringing all my recycling to the dump; the first was using disposable diapers).

Another discouragement is the materials’ handling. I would prefer not to burn any organic matter, leaving it to compost instead. However, I’m steeling myself for the potential future compromise of burning, even while hoping to come up with a brilliant plant to avoid it.




The other big accomplishment today was that we ashed the skin of one of the deer Phil shot. Despite all the rain, it had dried enough to burn. Phil borrowed a 55-gallon drum from the Bessette land, and took a few of their logs. Then we burned the skin. We have heard that an effective deer repellent is to take the ashed skin and dynamize and potentize it (grind it and mix it with water in a specific way), then spray the water around the fields where deer are unwelcome. The book we read this in had this to say: “The effect of the deer ash could be clearly observed on an unfenced clover field. The animals had grazed the clover in the surrounding fields but not within two metres of the trial area. They had not crossed the line marked by the ash. Indeed the ash had radiated its effect two metres beyond it.”

I’m happy for deer repellent, no matter what form it takes. Keep the deer out of our orchard!

Mini-Excavator, Mini Pasture

Phil started on the mini-excavator work as early as possible yesterday. He re-graded the road, and filled in some last remaining holes and trenches along the drive. Then he went to dig holes for our future orchard. (This photo shows the field pre-orchard.)


He tried to finish the one hole he had started, and realized that the excavator was not the tool for the job. The bucket scoop was too long; in order to actually clear a hole three feet deep, the diameter at the top would be five or six feet.



Bummer! Yet another week without trees planted. We think an auger would do the job, but that is more money, more delay.

On the other hand, I am thankful that I had the trees delivered when I did; if we were trying to deal with all this in March, I would be pretty much frantic.

With nothing else to work on, and an expensive rental on our land for the weekend, Phil took the excavator down the slope to try his hand at clearing the future pasture by the creek. Sadly, the excavator was not quite what he ordered: it was missing the claw attachment, which would have allowed him to grip the trees and brush and move it easily. Instead, he was forced to attempt to use the bucket to move the downed trees—rather like positioning asparagus when you only have a spoon. Except it was way worse, because he had many levers and attachments to figure out, and the learning curve was steep.

He didn’t stop for lunch, trying to work straight through. It was SLOW going. At about 2pm, he had cleared two stumps and downed one tree, and was attempting to down a second tree. I was done with the darn machine, loud and slow and scratching large red slashes on my pristine forest floor. Bah!

Phil stuck with it, though, and 4pm had cleared a swath through the steep hillside down to the level acreage nearer the creek and knocked over about 11 more trees. And then he started cranking. Without the slope to contend with, he knew he wasn’t going to tip the excavator over; after a day’s practice, he knew the controls. He came back after the sun had set, pleased with his progress.

Of course, it did look like a moonscape, slashed and destroyed. But I was pretty stoked about today.

We woke to rain. What?! More rain?! The Bushes and the Bessettes have both commented on how unusual the amount of rain has been this season, but still! Not today!

Phil went to the Bessettes to help with slaughtering their other pig. As far as I can tell, a good time was had by all, and the libations in celebration afterwards were also enjoyed.

Abigail and I went down with Phil to see the patch he had cleared right before dark. He had cleared a patch of grazing land maybe the size of a personal pool, but to see bare sky where before there were only branches, to walk with ease where brambles grabbed before—incredible. We witnessed his technique, which was something like this: scoop on one side of the tree’s trunk; scoop on the other side of the tree’s trunk. Use the bucket to push against the trunk, and hope the tree topples over. Otherwise, scoop some more, until the tree falls and the roots come up.

For the bushes, a single scoop with the bucket removed them; for some of the brambles, simply driving over them with the scraper was enough to knock them down. Great piles of organic matter line the path of the excavator.

I think cutting the trees down with a chainsaw would be faster, but the roots wouldn’t come up, and the remaining stump could make future haying difficult.

The real issue is what to do with the downed trees and bushes. Some of the trees 70 feet tall; not large around, but, well, long. They would be fine firewood, or, perhaps, fine hardwood mulch for the orchard trees. So the materials’ handling question: how to move heavy trees 500 feet upslope and transform them into chips?

There’s always something to figure out.

Phil wondered yesterday how I spend my time. I was wondering myself, so I wrote a detailed list today. Apparently, I spend most of my time reading to the children, disciplining children, making food, cleaning up, and interacting with Phil (either talking about what to do next or watching him as he works). Good to know.

Grumpiness

Phil continued his convalescence yesterday. This has been one nasty bug. Because the Bessettes are out of town, he’s been sleeping there—it’s easier to close the chickens in at night and let them out in the morning when you don’t have to drive back and forth. And it’s nice for him to heat his chicken broth or use the neti pot to drain his sinuses in a place with running water (the water even comes out of the tap warm!).

I did the chores today and was stunned by the cold. I was warm enough, in my down jacket, but the sheep’s water had an inch of ice on the top; the chicken’s waterer was useless. I tried to refill the sheep’s water with the hose, but enough ice had blocked the line that I had to haul the water in the end.

The sheep and goats follow me hungrily around the paddock. I think because they are in with the chicks, who get purchased feed (instead of just purchased hay), they are ever hopeful that I will bring them some grain goodies.

The chicks are eating what seems to be a lot. I figured that we might have a bit of Arctic syndrome going on: I’ve heard that explorers at the Poles eat 8000 calories or more a day, just to maintain their weight and keep warm. So I turned their light on in their house, in hopes that they won’t be quite so ravenous. It’s a bit disturbing to dart into the barn and slam the door shut in the beaks of eager biddies. They do get in sometimes, and I have visions of them pooing on all my clean dishes, cleaned with water heated on the stove.

Which reminds me: I left the cleaning water in the plastic tub yesterday after doing dishes. It was a bit warm still, and it may have some further cleaning ability. And today it was frozen solid. I suppose that makes me feel like a “real” pioneer. Not until the water froze in my “sink” could I claim true hardiness. (Or would that be insanity?)

As the boys and I finished The Outlaws of Sherwood today, I read a quote that resonated. Marjorie, a delicate lady before she was spirited away to become an outlaw’s wife, says, “I have learnt things, these past months, that I had not expected ever to learn—about what it is like when you have not enough to eat and your neck is stiff from sleeping in the damp. I had not thought that these things might give you choices as well as take them away.” I guess that’s true: I realize now that I could probably survive in more primitive situations than I would have imagined.

I do hope, though, that I will not let myself go; that as I look on my cooktop with muddy cat pawprints across it, I know that my life will not always be so unsanitary or so bizarre. (What was the cat doing on my cooktop anyway? I shudder to think.)

Today was a day of aimless waiting. Phil waited at the Bessettes for a hay delivery. The man was over an hour late. And this afternoon we waited for our excavator delivery. That was two hours late. Phil spent those hours broadcasting clover over the pigs’ previous paddock, and then mulching the area with hay.

Phil requested vegetables for dinner, and I was bummed to see that my vegetables were looking worse for the wear. I pulled a turnip the size of a navel orange (the biggest yet), but the greens are all looking wilted and cold. The pigs have grown much longer hair in the chilly weather.

I try not to stew, but this week the relentless cold, the lengthy drive time, and the hours of aimless waiting (whether from sickness or tardiness) have taken their toll. Sometimes I don’t feel chipper; I feel thwarted. In Boulder, I multitasked and got a lot done each day. Now I heat water to wash dishes by hand and serve as much food as possible that requires no dishes. And I don’t usually listen to sermons while I’m in the barn either.

In the spirit of grumpiness, I will close with the list of “things that were sad” from Arnold Lobel’s charming children’s book Owl at Home. (Owl seeks to make tear-water tea, and the only way to do that is to fill a teapot with tears, so he deliberately makes himself cry by thinking of the following and “many other” sad things.)
• Chairs with broken legs
• Songs that cannot be sung because the words have been forgotten
• Spoons that have fallen behind the stove and are never seen again
• Books that cannot be read because some of the pages have been torn out
• Clocks that have stopped with no one near to wind them up
• Mornings nobody saw because everybody was sleeping
• Mashed potatoes left on a plate because no one wanted to eat them
• And pencils that are too short to use

When Phil Gets Sick, All Progress Halts

Despite his sinus-infection state, Phil managed a trip to the dump yesterday. He did the morning chores. But mostly, he sat, miserable, on the folding chair in one of our two rooms.

Today he grew worse, adding flu-like symptoms to a painful head. I took boys numbers 2 and 4 to run errands. We went to three stores, the post office, and the gas station and were gone six and a half hours. More than four of those hours were spent driving. That remains, perhaps, the most bizarre part of my life: as I loaded the treasures from Costco into the van, I realized I had a two-hour drive yet ahead of me. Rats!

The Bessettes had a death in the family, so we are watching their farm. This proved providential timing. Phil took the three non-errand children with him and rested and soaked in the tub all day. After I joined him there and fed the children dinner, the five young ones and I returned to the homestead, leaving Phil to convalesce in peace. I hope it’s effective—I miss him!

Lots Going On

Excepting the pigs, all our animals are in one pen right behind our office trailer. It is fun to have chickens under foot (as the electric net does not contain them well) and sheep and goats close at hand. I looked over yesterday and saw one of the babydolls standing with the mineral bucket upturned on her head. Sadly, Annabelle the goat charged the babydoll, who escaped by charging over the (flexible) electric net. In that charge, the mineral bucket fell off, and the babydoll found herself free, in a field with some little stands of uneated oats.

I expect that the temporary stress of the electric net underfoot was immediately repaid by the pleasing repast. While the other sheep and goats looked on enviously, blatting on occasion to remind the lamb that she really belonged with them (or were they simply encouraging her to leave some greens for them?), the escaped lamb happily ate her way around the yard. Thankfully, she is the friendliest of the babydolls, and came happily for the grain Phil offered. He grabbed her, and she put up a fuss, but, as with all sheep, once her front legs left the ground, she assumed she was done for, and gave up the fight. We checked her hoofs and Phil carried her back to her pen. Such excitement!

The weather turned very cold. Sadly, the water froze even in Phil’s espresso maker in the barn kitchen. I was hoping that barn would offer a bit more insulation than it did: our coffee plant inside also froze and appears to dead. Thankfully, the lemon tree has survived thus far, but I’m not tempting fate: it has moved into our ever-smaller house. Jonadab has only dug in the dirt one time so far, and he looked very guilty as he showed me the displaced dirt.

With the freezing temperatures comes a freezing cook. That would be me. I thought about the happy childhood stories where the pioneer children would go bounding down to an “already warmed kitchen.” Nice for them, but bummer for the parents who had to rise early to start the fire. While I would not presume that my life, complete with espresso maker for Phil and countertop convection oven for me, is anywhere near as difficult as theirs, I feel a certain freezing affinity for those pioneers.

Phil and I were debating whether to dig the holes for the trees by hand. If we could do ten a day, that would surely get the orchard in the ground by March, and Phil’s a good digger. He could perhaps do ten a day.

Or so we thought. After he triangulated the previously set rows to make sure that we were on in our reckoning (we weren’t always, which would have made sloppy rows), he began to dig. After about 18 inches, he hit perched water, which means that water from the previous rain had hit a rock barrier and ran in sheets, like underground streams. His hole became sloppy as the water streamed out.

With our hard clay soil, I was not expecting drainage issues, or standing water (er, flowing water). We had talked about digging a drainage trench down to a (yet to be built) pond. I think such a drainage possibility became a drainage necessity.

Phil quit digging about two feet down. He had uncovered a few worms and a toad with a very slow metabolism, but we had not prepared the site for even one tree. It had taken him several hours.

He called to hire a mini-excavator, set for delivery this coming Friday. So now we’re waiting on the excavator to dig trees and the fencing to install a perimeter. What to do with the week ahead?

Phil needed to mail some checks, and he knew we had a registered letter waiting for us (it had been waiting at the post office on Saturday). When he got the mail, it turned out to be a registered letter from our insurance, stating that our car coverage expires at midnight. I’m thankful Phil went to get that letter when he did! Our agent took care of it.

Phil also brought our trash to the dump. Yes: in the country there are no lovely trucks to haul it away. I had been carefully separating all recycling from regular trash since we moved here, but Dennis laughed at such fastidiousness: all except the aluminum just gets dumped into the landfill anyway! I have no idea if that is true, but I had reached the limit on trash around the living area, and the recycling center was closed today, so off to the dump went all my glass, paper, and aluminum. So much for the “earth-friendly” living I’m doing here. (And what was that about disposable diapers? YES—I’m still using them! Cloth is really unpleasant to deal with away from a washing machine!)

As we look to the year ahead, once we get the trees in the ground, the perimeter fence up, four acres near the creek cleared, and buy some cows, we won’t have much to do with ourselves until we need to harvest the fruit. Which leads into the big project we’ve been ignoring till now: building a dwelling.

Up until now, we’ve been in the Proverbs 24:27 mode: “Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house.” But with the cold weather, I think my patience with the exterior kitchen is reaching its limit. I can do it this year, I think; I would rather not do it next year, too.

So Phil and I talked about the next stage. Our current plan is to use the trailer pad as our driveway/parking area, and build a log cabin just downslope from where we are situated currently. Both the Bessettes and the Zach Bushes have used Old Virginia Hand Hewn Log Homes. (One designed their own, and one modified the Allegheny B, which you can see here.) We spent several hours discussing the benefits and drawbacks of the various designs within our very pie-in-the-sky budget. I think Dennis said to estimate $150/square foot, which is a lot of money for even a small home. We need wisdom to know how to proceed, but I am feeling good about our initial conversation.

Driving Through a Winter Wonderland

We had planned to spend the day in lovely productivity. Phil wanted to try digging several holes by hand, just to see if he could, and how long it would take. We also wanted to get our packages at the post office, bring our trash and recycling to the dump, order 250 cattle panels for our perimeter, and see the elaborate gingerbread houses that our friends the Rachel Bushes created.

The weather had other ideas. We woke to rain, which soon turned to wet snow. Phil would dig no holes this day. And lifting wet boxes and wet bags in cold wet weather also did not much appeal. I was feeling desperate for some progress, though. I walked the perimeter with Phil, admiring his machete work through the brambles. I enjoyed seeing the actual lay of the land. I felt like the child who doesn’t know where the boundary is around the playground, so she huddles in the middle. With proper boundaries, the entire area becomes available for play. I can’t wait for Phil to get the fence up!

We made it to the post office at 11:25, right before it closed for the weekend at 11:30. Sadly, the post office employee had just left. Our boxes will have to wait for pickup until the next time we can get to the post office during business hours. One of the prices to pay for rural life—deliveries can take a long time.

As we drove to Charlottesville, the scenery reminded me of a clichéd winter wonderland. Really? Are trees bedecked with ice and snow really this beautiful? Really?

Indeed. And cars really do go off the road. We weren’t one of them, thankfully, but it was sobering to see the several distressed vehicles.

Phil ordered cattle panels and got a nominal bulk discount, which we appreciated. They should be in in two or three weeks, and then he’ll have another large task ahead of him. He hopes he can get them all in place in about a week. I will remind you all that Phil is an optimist. Myself, the pessimist, wonders if we’ll get cows in 2010, or if we’ll have to wait until 2011. We’ll see.

Then we went to see the gingerbread creations on display downtown. Theirs were unbelievable. Rachel had made “Mistress Mouse’s House,” a stump complete with lichen, fallen leaves, mushrooms, a ladybug and snail, and moss. It had something like 8 or 10 batches of gingerbread in it. Her children had created an incredible tree house, precariously balanced and beautifully executed, with a licorice and pretzel “rope” ladder and small gingerbread squirrel balanced on the railing. Their entirely edible art had taken a week to create, and I hope it wins all the accolades it deserves. A joy to behold.

We treated the five children to lunch at Chipotle, and, despite their somewhat grubby faces, we enjoyed several compliments on their behavior and appearance.

By the time we drove home, the snow had turned back to rain, and washed all the winter wonderland away. All-in-all, a very nice day, and even a bit productive.

How to Plant These Trees?

Friday morning we decided to gather materials for tree planting, so that whenever we get the backhoe or other machinery, we’ll be ready to backfill. Sadly, the thick layer of leaves that fell in October appears to have gone with the wind, as there is now a 1” layer of leaves, with about ½” layer of leaf mold underneath. Then red clay soil. How many acres of ½” leaf mold would we have to scrape clean in order to get 12 to 18 cubic feet of muck per tree? The equation staggers the mind.

We reassessed. I should say, I shut down and began to read to the boys, while Phil looked again at different tree planting methods. He realized that Michael Phillips in The Apple Grower recommends a 3’ diameter hole, dug down to 16 inches, then backfilled with the same dirt. So whether we follow the super-awesome-lot-of-work method of tree planting, or the standard tree planting, we’ll have to dig a 3’ diameter hole. But we like the idea of pipe in the bottom of the hole in order to introduce air into the hole (change the barometric pressure?), and we like the layer of rocks in order to increase the magnetic pull on the roots. (See the full planting method here .) So even if we backfill with the same dirt, we think it’s worth it to dig the hole deeper.

And maybe we’ll buy in compost. Or maybe a mix. I read somewhere that a chestnut grove calculated their costs at about $30 per planted tree. It could be that we get to that eventually.

That made me a bit upset—how long will it be before this orchard pays for itself? Well, I found some figures on approximate yields for the different trees we bought. I calculated we have the potential to grow about 38K pounds of apples; 12K pounds of cherries; and about 6K pounds mixed between peaches, plums, pears, and apricots. That’s a lot of fruit we’ll have to figure out how to sell.

But first we have to grow it, and before that we have to plant the trees, so we’ll take it a step at a time.

After the leaf mold/how to plant lengthy discussion, Phil went to measure the perimeter of our land, in order to calculate how many cattle panels and T-posts we need for perimeter fencing on this side of Hog Creek. It’ll be about 3500 linear feet. It took Phil about three hours to hack through some of the brambles along the creek, but he was thrilled to actually walk the perimeter of our property. Isaiah stuck with him, holding the measuring line.

I started out measuring the line, but the baby woke up in the trailer, so I went back. As I returned to the house, though, I realized that the sheep AND the goats were bleating at me very insistently. Now the animals don’t usually call to me, so I stopped and tried to pay attention to them and their needs. The mineral bucket hadn’t been refilled since we returned, so I got some minerals for them.

They ate 9 cupfuls between the seven of them. I couldn’t believe it. I held minerals in my hand, and they licked them off. I gave the goats their minerals and the sheep looked on enviously. I gave the sheep their minerals (similar to goat minerals, but without the copper that’s toxic to sheep) and the goats charged the sheep. I put minerals in the bucket and the Babydoll sheep knocked it over to get to them. They all seemed happier after their glut, though.

While feeding the minerals, all the birds vanished into their house. I looked up to spot five raptors circling slowly overhead. Phil found four dead birds around their house (the children were playing in the house and came across one—blech!). I wonder, though, if the other five or ten missing birds vanished to the predators in the sky.

The other noteworthy thing today was that Abigail sat on my lap and listened to the entire book The Light at Tern Rock. It’s 62 pages about a lighthouse, and we saw and climbed a lighthouse on our trip at Thanksgiving. I was amazed, though; when Abigail first came, she listened to board books and picture books. And yesterday she just made a dramatic jump in her listening ability. Hooray!

Goat Contortionist Available for Hire

Phil took down the former pig fencing today, pulling T-posts with Jadon's help. He moved the sheep and the goats into a “permanent” pasture with the chickens for the duration of the winter months. He fed the chicks some feed and Annabelle the goat was most interested: she did everything she could to get the grain, so we breathed a sigh of relief when the chick feeders were filled and safely ensconced in the little chicken house.

Shortly afterward, I noticed a frequent clang, that sounded much like horns on a metal light. Or like an Annabelle happily eating the chick grain within the chick house! We moved the chick feed outside the electric fence while we pondered our next move. It’s not going to work well if the goats eat all the chick food—that stuff is expensive! (After a few minutes, Annabelle slunk out of the small hole on her belly—we had no idea she could fold herself so tightly. If she doesn’t work out as a milk goat, she might consider a second career as a contortionist.)

Phil and I spent the afternoon starting to stake the orchard for planting. The measurements looked perfect on paper, but the reality is not quite as tidy. I expect this process will last some time, but it felt good to get the first temporary posts in, to get a glimpse of how the rows of trees will appear.

What Next?

We returned from our Thanksgiving vacation last evening. Chloe the dog stayed at the Bessettes, and when we left their house sometime after 10pm, she was asleep by the fire, and didn’t follow us out to the car. She is 12 ½ years old, tumor-ridden, now hard of hearing and seeing, and, we think, was just happy to sleep in a warm, dry place. Apparently, though, for the first 24 hours after we left, she stayed out by the car we left at the Bessette’s. Faithful and heartbroken. Abraham says, “I think Chloe’s the best dog in the world.” He may be right.

Our November rainfall broke records. We woke this morning to more relentless, driving rain. The children happily played together all day, as they rediscovered toys and played new creative games. Phil and I both experienced re-entry shock a bit from all the little and big things we want to get done. This day, the pigs were the fortunate two: Phil created a new pasture for them to plow, and he moved them without even calling me. They were ready to go.

Somehow the pigs’ water was turned off while we were away (mischievous children, perhaps?). Michelle mentioned that they had called to her every time she would come over, so she fed them. I bet they were thirsty; I am thankful the rain fell and made them puddles to drink from.

Phil wonders if we lost about 20 chickens. They aren’t quite big enough to stay in their netting; perhaps an animal got them on the ground; perhaps they are too ignorant to stay indoors, away from a winged predator. Or, as I hope, perhaps all 50 are still there, with some simply hiding.

On our vacation, I had some opportunity to read. The Barefoot Beekeeper excited me: a simple, do-it-yourself frame, stocked with some bees, then left alone, is about all you need. That is quite do-able, I think.

We also talked about the next stage of our farm-building. Some things take precedence over a house: we want perimeter fencing and cows, all 400+ trees planted, and pasture seeded and garden growing. Then we’ll re-evaluate.

We were all set to buy a backhoe: good for planting our trees and clearing pasture, as well as making ponds and clearing land for all future buildings. But Dennis said he would never buy a backhoe unless that would be his livelihood: the maintenance costs are too great to make it worthwhile. But, if he were to buy just one piece of equipment, it would be a backhoe.

Humph. Where does that leave us? Uncertain and researching.

And it is good to be home.