"The Flaw of the Excluded Middle"

When I woke up this morning, it was sunny—and 5 degrees outside. As Phil bundled up to do the chores, he said, “I bet you’re glad I couldn’t fly out yesterday.” Yup. (Though morning comfort was not the only reason; I still had to head out to bake today’s bread.)

With church canceled for the day, we just hung around the house. I spent some time outside with the sheep. Tsarina, one of the babydoll ewes, cannot get enough attention, which I really appreciate, among so many skittish sheep.

I also continued to look at buying a milk cow; it’s proving more challenging (and disappointing) than I expected. The idea that we may be another year without a good milk cow is both the reality and the disappointment of the moment. But as I think about it every few minutes, I’m trying to just remind God that we are really ready for a slightly wider diet, really ready for the manure and the butter, the whey for animal feed and the milk to drink. May he grant us the right animal in his time. (And may his time be soon.)

Totally off topic: I’ve been meaning to write about “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” an article I read about in The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Western Christianity deals with the bottom level, the empirical, the things we can see and touch. If our senses can sense it, we’re good. Western Christianity also deals with the top level, the big questions of God and good and evil, the sacred.

What it doesn’t deal with is the middle: the immediate future, the recent past, the present, and all the little non-guarantees there are. As a fledgling farmer, I recognize such middles every day: once we plant the tree, will it grow? What about these seeds? I know that, in general, a carrot seed produces a carrot, but what about THIS carrot seed? Or these ingredients? Will they form a good loaf of bread? Or will it burn, or dry too quickly? Will Phil safely reach his destination or meet with misfortune? What about this little sore throat I’m fighting? Will it get better, or worse?

These questions all seem to be the realm of the medicine man, or shaman. I found that interesting; it made sense to me that traditional societies would try to integrate Christianity with their tribal religions. If Christianity can’t offer anything for that middle, the old ways would be appealing, I suppose.

The Celtic Christians solved this by praying over everything. When they fed the animals: thank God for the feed, bless these animals in my care. For the bread: thank him for the bread of life, give us this day our daily bread. And the list goes on.

Elegant, don’t you think? I incorporated such prayers in my daily life for a few days last fall, but then forgot about them. Maybe February will be my chance to make the Middle a new habit of prayer.

Starting with the cow. May the Lord grant our land be a place of milk and honey.

A Frost Day

Phil dealt with tire fixing and paperwork much of Friday. Despite an unconventional life, we still deal with balancing checkbooks and laundry. Happily, Phil thought to keep the busted truck tire; he’s promised to make the children a tire swing once the weather improves.

He faithfully left home before 7am this morning, off to catch a flight. Snow dusted the ground, and he made it safely to the airport. Sadly, Charlottesville Airport is not DIA, and apparently own no de-icing equipment or plows; the airline cancelled his flight last night, long before the snow started to fall. All three departing flights today were cancelled by 10am, so he began the time-consuming drive home. By the time he hit our road, the front of the Corolla was plowing the snow up over the windshield.



I went out to do the chores and found snow-encrusted sheep munching hay. Good advertisement for the warmth of wool!



I was heating some dinner tonight and experienced the underside of an avalanche. I think the rising heat from the propane stove warmed the roof of the barn, so that large sections of 9-inch snow slid off the roof onto the ground, with a louder crash than I would have expected. I’m thankful that I didn’t experience the mini-avalanche directly.

And as I returned to the trailer, I noticed that Phil has fenced along the border far enough that I can see our boundary fence opposite our door. In the dead center of this photo, were it blown up to full-screen size, you could see it, too.



It is cold, but "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," and I know that spring will come soon.

Five Panel Day

Last night I found an A2 Dexter bull for sale—here in Virginia! I fell asleep dreaming about buying him. He’s not even THAT expensive, since he’s a calf (and, therefore, unproven). However, I don’t think this is the week to buy a bull. I am beginning to wonder if part of the joy of beginning farming is the acquisition: acquire some sheep; acquire some chickens; acquire some new knowledge; acquire some new equipment.

Phil spent most of the day working on the fence. He first had to clear about a 5 foot path through dense, bushy growth. We think he’s heading through about the worse terrain of the perimeter right now, with the growth and the constantly changing elevation. The cattle panels are ideal fencing for the strange slope we have; I cannot imagine trying to fence any other way.

I ran support: clearing brush and firewood; bringing T-posts over; laying out the measuring line; feeding the family. We got five panels up (80 feet), and that finishes twenty percent of the panels we bought. That’s an accomplishment!

The children took advantage of the great weather. Jadon climbed about twenty feet up a vine after he swung, Tarzan-style. Joe found a little place where rain run-off had created a “sand” box (really just fine clay globules). Abraham pulled the wagon into the woods and deserted it; Jadon picked up Joe and put him into the wagon, then hauled him up to the trailer. Abigail and Abraham slid down the tarp covered hay bales.

At the end of the day, Phil went up to fix our van tire. Yup—second flat in a week. We think it’s just a little puncture, and fixable, so he’ll take it in tomorrow.

100 Year Flood

As soon as Phil woke up, he suited up and drove the truck out of its mud trap. Amazing how easy it is when the ground is frozen solid (and, thus, solid!). Then he did the chores.

After breakfast, he changed the tire. He couldn’t find his hydraulic lift (the result of living a life with little storage space), so had to resort to the one included with the truck, which took a long time spinning. But he got the tire changed before lunch, and that was a huge load off his mind.



We walked down near the creek and saw that the creek had jumped the bank into the 100-Year Flood Plain. (In the photo above, you can see the line in the woods where the water came.)

So the rain on Sunday night WAS unusual. It was a 100-Year Flood. (On checked the Weather Underground website, I was shocked to see that we had just about two inches of rain, actually. This makes no sense to me, since our 5-gallon buckets in the middle of the yard were filled to four or six inches depth, but I suppose 5-gallon buckets are not official gauges, so we’ll go with the official reading.)



The waters have receded, leaving behind a scrubbed earth, with some leaves piled against obstacles like small downed trees. Moss and grasses poke greenly through the springy earth.



The shape of the river is new, with the banks denuded of vegetation and new gravel spits and sand deposits instead.

Phil loves it. “I love this land more every time I walk on it,” he said. That was a relief to me; with the land next door currently selling for less per acre than ours, I have second guessed our purchase at times, wondering if we were too hasty. (But what price can I put on neighbors like the Bessettes and Butch … and all the Bush clan?) So to hear Phil remain so pleased with our purchase is a great relief.

Thankfulness is becoming on anyone, I think.

Phil put up four more cattle panels this afternoon, after repositioning the last few he had put up. Then he hacked out the path for the next few panels; adjusted the new feeder he made for the sheep, cut Isaiah’s hair, and held B.B. the ram while I castrated him.

Real farmers use a knife to open the scrotum and pull the cords. I am not there yet. I had a hard enough time opening the elastrator and putting two rubber bands at the top of the scrotum. Supposedly, these bands will, over the next two weeks, cut off the blood supply until the scrotum falls off.

Continuing Ed with Dr. Paul

Phil left before 7:30am this morning for a seminar put on by Lancaster Ag, the company that blended our minerals. Dr. Paul Detloff, head veterinarian for the Organic Valley milk co-op, presented. I have heard several lectures by Dr. Paul—what an interesting man! He uses homeopathic medicines on the herds under his care, as well as paying attention to things such as stray currents.

Phil said that he pulled up to the home where it was held and there were only about three cars in the parking lot, and he thought, “Am I the only one here? These three cars could all belong to the residents. How awkward!”

When he walked in, there were about 20 guys sitting in the room. He couldn’t figure out how they all got there until lunchtime, when he walked by an outbuilding and saw dozens of bikes. Amish or Mennonite! In Boulder world-class athletes bike to train for major races; in Virginia, religious farmers bike for higher education.

I had pushed for him to attend, and was a bit concerned about the whole thing. Would it be just an extended sales meeting? How distressing! After a quick stop at Costco (fairly close to the seminar), he came home and told me about it. And it was worth it!

Some of the new or good review thoughts: the most important natural resource on the farm: water. If you have hard water, your minerals won’t be able to penetrate the soil. Action: we should at least test our water’s softness, and if it’s hard, we should consider a reverse osmosis system for the farm. This would help in crop irrigation, animal and human drinking water, foliar sprays, and probably some other applications I’m forgetting. (Rain water, in general, doesn’t need softening. It’s long descent from heaven makes it well suited for irrigation and drinking.)

Good nutrition will improve your animals’ genetics. Almost impossible to believe, if we improve the babydolls’ nutrition, their offspring will be closer to the ideal babydoll. Exciting! And disconcerting, as the opposite is also true: poor nutrition quickly degrades the offspring. We have more to learn about this, but I am pleased to know that good food helps the animals so much.

Aloe vera: the miracle juice. Useful generally for animals and humans. Action: get aloe vera juice!

Most farms need five to eight years to really heal from non-organic agricultural practices. Lancaster Ag sees many farms that go organic for three or four years, and their yields and crops are just not that good, so they give up, just a bit too early. Phil came home encouraged that we aren’t trying to heal poisoned soil, but simply rebuild naturally eroded and exhausted soil. It seems less daunting.

Marketing: “Never fall in love with your product: fall in love with your customer.”

Biochemistry trivia: Dr. Paul wondered at one time why we are carbon life forms, and not, say, selenium life forms. A younger vet said, “That’s easy, Dr. Paul. Carbon is the only element that can bond to itself.”

Most important: Dr. Paul mentioned the book Devil in the Milk, a book on the connection between certain milk and autism, type 1 diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia. Most European and North American cows produce A1 milk, which has a protein fragment (a beta-casein), that studies link to all those maladies.

The great thing is, cows in other parts of the world are A2, which means that their milk doesn’t have that bad fragment, and is safe and good for humanity. Even better, the trait is dominant. So if a person had an A2-A2 bull, all the progeny he bred would be A2, with good milk. And animals can be tested by sending 20 hairs in a Ziploc bag, so we would know what we’re buying.

Can you imagine the marketing potential? With one in every 150 children today in the US diagnosed with autism, there is a huge market! (Not to mention heart disease!)

Needless to say, Phil came home energized and happy. The children and I had a good, if uneventful day, too.

After the Great Deluge

I fell asleep Sunday night with no trouble, but Phil had not quite drifted off when the rains came. And came. And came. He thinks we got perhaps four inches between 1am and 8am.

By the time I went outside, the rain had tapered off. But much of the dirt slope next to our barn slid down over our gravel driveway. A hose lying along the drive contained the dirt—barely. The dirt came up to the top of the hose. (Thus, almost an inch of topsoil slid down in those few hours.)



The sawdust around the tree roots washed away in spots. The 80 tree holes were all filled almost to the brim.

Michelle Bessette called to say that she could not believe the amount of rain.

Thankfully, our good hay stayed dry under the tarp. The sheep and goats continue to waste a ridiculous amount of hay, so Phil tied together a few pallets, like the prow of a ship, on the side of the chicken house. Now we have a temporary feeder. (While Phil was getting twine, a pallet fell on little B.B., but he scampered off unscathed once Phil lifted it. That was a bad moment, though.)



With everything saturated, Phil figured he could move the pigs into the newly cleared land. A pile of poles stood in the path of the new electric line. (Poles: saplings too big to chip but too small for firewood, set aside for small construction projects.) He brought the truck over the basically level ground to load the poles.



And skidded dozens of feet as he drove out, finally getting completely stuck. And frustrated.



Worse, on exiting the cab, he heard “sssss.” Yup. Sidewall of the front tire punctured; irreparable.



Wet, muddy, frustrated, stuck; he went back and finished the pig pen. I was so proud of him.

And I think the pigs grew overnight; all of a sudden they look big to me. Maybe not big enough to EAT, but they are getting close. They’re seven months old now; the Bessettes killed theirs at eight months. We haven’t fed ours as consistently as they did, but ours also haven’t had to contend with the stress of the summer. Maybe ours aren’t the world’s slowest growing pigs after all!



While Phil dealt with difficult circumstances, I was in IPod euphoria in the barn. Before we put our house on the market in Colorado, I had a CD player that let me listen to agricultural lectures and sermons, so I felt like my mind expanded. During the stressful house-on-the-market and living-in-a-tent phases of my life over the last year, I didn’t miss the lectures. My brain was full.

But yesterday I realized I could listen to lectures on the IPod. I didn’t need to unplug my computer and gingerly carry it between house and barn, balancing it as I maneuver the step-stool stairs! And, better yet, I had the brain capacity and desire to do so.

I hadn’t done dishes since before the family got sick; most of us didn’t eat a whole lot last week. So while I caught up by doing just about every dish, pot, and utensil I own, I listened to a couple hours’ worth of lectures, and LOVED it. Grow high brix food! Take your vitamins! Agriculture and nutrients determine sickness and health more than genetics! So encouraging. So uplifting. So heady. Ahh. (Acres USA, perhaps the Economist of the agriculture world, publishes a monthly magazine and puts on an annual conference. I buy the back conferences and listen to 40 or so hours of lectures for about $3 per hour lecture. An incredible deal.)

While Phil succumbed to temporary and unusual sorrow, I became the cheery voice of hope. Role reversal! But how good of God, too, to not let us both hit a bad spot at the same time. How distressing that would be.

Totally different note: Isaiah and I tried to pollenize the lemon tree today, using a Q-tip to move the pollen between the stamen and the pistil. That was fun!

Lots o' Laundry

After church, we brought Mt. Laundry to the laundrymat. Five loads (and 2 hours) later, the clothes were incredibly, marvelously clean. Not every garment has been permanently stained orange! They just needed hot water to actually get the dirt out. Back home, I put the sheets back on the bed and the pillowcases, which avoided vomit, didn’t make it into the dirty clothes bags. The pillowcases stood in stark contrast to the clean sheets, as you can see below.



In the meantime, we stopped at Country Blessings, a store that sells mainly local foods. We enjoyed Dr. Pepper with sugar (not high fructose corn syrup!), amazing Tahitian Vanilla Bean gelato, and a pepperoni sausage while we waited for the laundry. A fun little treat.

Then we went to the Bessettes and had a pleasant afternoon and evening.

Finally, a note about our sheep. You know, we started with goats, and bought them expensive minerals to keep them healthy. Then we bought the big sheep. I knew that sheep should not have copper: all the books say so. But I asked the guys at the high-end mineral/supplement store whether they agreed. One said, “I would not risk it.” And the other said, “I have always done it, and it has been fine.”

So I fed the sheep the old goat minerals. But when we bought the Babydolls, I wanted them to have the best, so I bought sheep minerals, sans copper. Over time, though, I would occasionally put goat minerals in the feeder. After all, none of the sheep have shown the slightest problem.

In reading back issues of sheep!, however, I came across a heart-rending tidbit. Sheep store excess copper, until a stressor triggers its release. Then they quickly die.

And I remembered that that same reassuring man at another time had mentioned that his sheep tended to die easily and unexpectedly.

The horror! I may have doomed my six Babydolls to sudden death.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Gravel Run and Not Much More

Thankfully, I did not get all the way sick. I lounged around half yesterday, which gave me a chance to watch a BBC production called The Monk and the Honeybee, which showed Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey as he endeavored to improve the honeybee. The bees I’m getting in April are Buckfast bees, so I know now how Brother Adam bred them. Artificial insemination of the queen: use a very small pipette.

But after a half day, I guess I felt better, because I was done lounging around. I don’t remember doing anything terribly exciting other than making pizza and brownies, but I suppose food in general after a few days off IS exciting.

Today, Phil went to the quarry for another load of gravel. He and several children spent an hour shoveling the gravel out of the truck. I spent that time putting a layer of gravel in the predug holes, and adding more subsoil back. I think the holes settled a good bit since we first filled them in, and I am happy to add more subsoil back. I’m nowhere near done with this stage of tree planting, but I am glad to be able to do something towards planting!

Next, Phil and I laid out the remainder of the apple orchard as close as we can using string and spray paint. The number of trees I can actually plant in the upper meadow keeps shrinking. Which means I have to decide which apple trees not to plant, or which trees to plant in the lower pasture. Neither option appeals much.

We headed to the Bessettes to get cleaned up for church tomorrow. They weren’t there, so we raced through five baths and two showers. I remember when Isaiah would play in the tub for three hours until he was a white raisin. Now he gets about three minutes to get sudsy and clean.

Back home, I finished adding photos to previous posts, so you can check those out, too.

Sweeping Sickness

Wednesday morning Phil drove into Esmont to pick up his new axes at the post office. The felling ax works wonderfully—it bites deep, it’s light to heft, the handle extremely durable. He cleared most of the way around the apple part of the orchard, ensuring we have space to maneuver on the edges of the layout before a cold misting rain commenced.

We bought several ¾ bushels of “applesauce” apples, or seconds, from a local orchard. I boiled up two pots of quartered apples, then ran them through my new food mill. I had hoped it would save me time; some of those tiny apples take a long time to peel, quarter, and core. It probably could save time, if I had a pot large enough to cook many apples, and if I had warm running water in which to wash the device. (The entire device must be broken down and cleaned, which takes a good bit of time in my odd kitchen.) For now, I’ve boxed it up for future use.

Abraham and Isaiah took it easy during the day; Isaiah’s recovery was slow. By evening, first Abigail, then Jadon, the Phil, and finally Jonadab all got the vomits. I felt a bit like Job’s servants: “And none but I escaped to tell the tale.”

Today Phil slept; the children watched plenty of movies; I cleaned up after Joe who is the only one still vomiting, but also the only one who has no control whatsoever.

I am beginning to feel less than healthy myself. I considered ending this, “I shall write again … when I can,” but that seems a little too melodramatic.

More Holes Than a Golf Course

Isaiah and Abraham apparently have the flu. This is better than food poisoning, which I initially suspected, though how frozen potatoes could cause food poisoning was more than I could say. One of the hazards of germ exposure at church, I think. They stayed in bed all day.

Abigail and Jadon, though, helped Phil and I. We had a row of 39 deep holes, filled with, in cases, 18” of water. We had to pump the holes and backfill with dirt. I expected it would be a two-day job; by our calculation, a few of the holes had up to 70 gallons of water (most of them more like 20 or 30, though), and the repetitive motion of pumping (especially when Phil’s pumping arms were already tired) taxed us.

But we got it all done! Jadon was the hero of the day. He pumped almost constantly, breaking only for lunch and a movie with the sick ones, then voluntarily heading out again. In the end, our rhythm was this: I scooped water from the side with a bucket, until my arms couldn’t reach anymore. Then Jadon came with the pump and finished it off. Phil and Abigail followed behind, sawing off the drainage tile, finding large enough rocks, spreading minerals to mix in with the backfill.

In this way, we all stayed busy all the time, and Jadon provided a truly useful service.

After a full day’s work, he and Phil were jumping on the trampoline and the two lambs played chase all around the paddock. So cute! Their little bodies are so muscular and scrumptious, so visible under their short wool.

After he went to bed, he pulled his second tooth this week (also the second time this week that he’s done it after bedtime).



Joe, like his older brothers, continues to sneak some alone time with Mommy and Daddy, staying up until after 11pm most nights. He is a character!

We All Work Together: Perfect!

We all had a great day. The children and I finished Dangerous Journey, an illustrated retelling of Pilgrim’s Progress. Phil put more wood chips in the chicken house. Abigail and Abraham then sat on top of the house, holding chickens.


Isaiah spent several hours with the sheep, hand-feeding the minerals that are available to the sheep at all times, and holding ram lamb B.B.




Jadon hacked through a "fairly large" tree with his hatchet.

Phil cut down more trees along the fence line, both with the regular saw and the chainsaw.


After lunch, Phil tried out the new bilge pump, trying to get enough excess water out of the tree holes so the drainage tile won’t float, and cover that bottom foot with subsoil with some minerals mixed in.

The weather was in the 60s, so all the frozen ground that has vexed my planting plans thawed beautifully. The pump worked exactly as we’d hoped, and by the end of the day we had not 10 holes one-third backfilled, but 38! Phil was the main worker, with the children and I offering support as best we could. Jadon pumped out a few holes, and when I complimented him on his strength, he said, “That’s my lumberjack muscles at work.”

All of us working together—the vision and dream we’d had when we moved. But today it came true. Abigail helped move drainage tiles. Jadon pumped water. Isaiah moved rocks. Abraham tromped down the dirt in holes and used his little mallet to knock more dirt in. Joe picked up the hacksaw we used for cutting drainage tiles and wandered around with a very pleased grin.

And when, at the end of the day, Isaiah jumped into a hole that hadn’t been refilled and sank into the miry clay, Abraham said, “I’ll save you!” And offered him the end of the mallet, thinking he could pull his brother to safety. Phil was rinsing the pump, and Isaiah was not in dire need, but Jadon jumped in, too. So Phil rescued them both, dirty mud almost up to Isaiah’s knees, and one boot completely submerged (there was muddy clay inside all the way to the toes.

So all was good until about 11pm, when both Isaiah and Abraham had the projectile vomits within minutes of each other. No warm water, no running water, no place to bathe them, no place to bathe me, no washer to put the very dirty bedclothes. . . . An unanticipated challenge.

Today: the beautiful reality and the less pleasant reality. I'll take it!

Chainsaw Chain Damaged Directly

Phil used his chainsaw on Saturday. Within about a half hour of use, the chain caught as a tree fell, and bent the $18 chain. “Glad thing,” as Isaiah would say, that he purchased two extras, but that’s a pretty steep price for not much use. He wore his Kevlar chaps, so if the chainsaw did touch his leg, he would be more protected.

And we’re not convinced it’s much faster to use a chainsaw. He cut down saplings, but, rather than carefully setting down the chopped trees, they more-or-less just fell, creating a heavy pile of sapling pick-up-sticks. The materials handling took longer, I’d say. Probably the bucking, or chopping the trees into shorter lengths, will take less time, though. So they will each have their place.





We measured the area now cleared, and I was encouraged. On paper, it looks like I should be able to plant all the cherries, all the peaches, and all the plums on one side of the driveway, towards the road from the trailer, leaving just the apples and pears (and three apricots and whatever other fruit and nut trees might catch my fancy) on the other side of the driveway. The clearing Phil did made a big difference, and we like how it looks, too.

After a short stop at the Bessettes (they headed off the church, and we all bathed), we went to bed. I was worn out!

I woke in the night and heard rain on the roof. “Oh, well; I guess we won’t be going to church, since we won’t get the van up the driveway in wet condition,” I thought before I fell back to sleep.

On waking, though, I found out that Phil had let Chloe out in the middle of the night, and realized it was sprinkling. So he drove the truck up the driveway, then backed the van up, so we were able to leave for church. What a guy!

We intended to stay in Charlottesville all afternoon, and attend the “lifegroup” Bible study at 4:30pm. We made it through church (Abraham even went to children’s church rather than sitting through service with me. And he had a great time!). We managed lunch at Chipotle (Abigail hasn’t wanted to try the beans and rice there, but we keep setting it before her, and today she both ate it and eagerly anticipates eating it again next time we’re there); we made it through a stop at Whole Foods; we survived a stop at Martin and Mollie Bush’s house, to see what renovations they are doing. But then it was 4:15, the children were tired, I was tired, and the lifegroup wasn’t going to study Scripture, but a Lee Strobel book on apologetics. So we headed home.

It was helpful to see what our limits are, as a family. All day excursions with five young ones, when they must be confined and calm in unfamiliar environments, probably won’t be a good option for a while.

This evening I found out that photos need merely be copied into Blogger directly. (I had been dragging my feet posting photos because I thought I had to reformat them, and even that simple extra step was more than I could do.) Working backward, I am done through Christmas. I also finished September, leaving October through Christmas for me to fill in as time and energy permit. I’ll have to take some photos tomorrow, and post them right away. What fun!

Enjoy!

Stihl, Stihl, Stihl

Phil borrowed Doug Bush’s chainsaw at Bible study last night. He wanted to experience the chainsaw again, to see if it was as bad as he remembered last year, or if it had a place in our life.

He didn’t hate it as much. It’s cooler weather, so the oil fumes aren’t quite so penetrating. He’s in better shape, so the discomfort of holding a 13 pound vibrating lethal machine didn’t bother him as much as it had. It definitely cut the stumps off flat and low.

So we talked through pros and cons. Potentially lethal but faster. Louder but flatter end result. If we bought one, would he use it? If we didn’t, would he regret it?

In the end, he went off to buy a Stihl, perhaps the "John Deere" of the chainsaw world. (In our book The Backyard Lumberjack, they say this: "the Stihl/Husqvarna debate remains as lively in some circles as the Ford/Chevy conundrum does in others. Actually, they're pretty much the same circles." The stereotype makes me laugh: stereotypes are there for a reason!)

In proper backwoods style, he combined this trip with a trip to the feed store. I have yet to acquire a good sense of how much the animals eat. In mid-December, I bought 300 pounds of feed for both chickens and hogs, hoping that would last until the delivery date late this month. I was two weeks short.

The feed, too, resulted in a lengthy discussion. The Bessettes buy from a man who mixes grains and field peas for about 1/3 the price we’ve been paying. Our organic, soy free blend, has expensive additives like kelp (seaweed) and acidophilus (cultures also found in yogurt to help digestion). I don’t care much about organic, but I don’t feed soy to my family and don’t feed soy to my animals.

We need to contact the Bessette’s supplier, because it could be that we switch, and just add our own kelp and vitamins. That could work. My concern, though, is that the grains might be genetically modified. My understanding is that most non-organic grains in the US come from genetically modified seed. (“Genetically modified” means that man tampered with the DNA of the seed, by inserting, say, a fish gene into the plant gene. This is a combination that would never occur naturally, and I cannot imagine good coming of it. Muckraker Jeffrey Smith wrote several books on the topic; I’ve read Seeds of Deception and would recommend it.)

As Phil and I discussed feed prices, I realized that is an issue I’m not willing to bend on. I would prefer not to eat meat that eats soy or genetically modified food. So until we find out about the Bessette’s feed, we’ll stick with our pricey feed.

My calculations today make me think that, before the chickens start laying, we’ll have spent about $20 per bird (price of the chick plus price of the feed), and then they’ll cost about $4 per bird every month thereafter. I am used to paying about $.30 per egg for the industrial organic eggs; at that price, I think it is potentially possible to break even, or maybe even come out ahead.

The pigs were less encouraging. I have my suspicions that we won’t break even, once we factor in the price for butchering. But perhaps I am being too mercenary. After all, experience, manure, and free plowing are all worth something, albeit not much monetarily. And perhaps, in the end, they, too, will break even. Or we'll eat well.

A Lumberjack Surprise

Thursday morning Phil scooped new wood chips into the chicken house. I’m embarrassed to admit that we hadn’t added new wood chips since the chickens moved outside, back in mid-November. Phil smelled the ammonia from their manure, which means we’re losing some of the valuable fertilizer to the air. Good management would be stink-free.

While he was in the pen, the children wanted to join him and play with the animals. Isaiah somehow caught Strangey, his freebie exotic bird, and the other children all held chickens as they ran around. Even Abraham, who had a hard time keeping the wings under control and the legs at the same time—somehow the chickens kept slipping.

Crotchety old goat Chrystal felt frisky, we think—she pranced on her hind legs. Then she turned super aggressive, even knocking down Joe (who wasn’t holding a chicken). She butted him in front and he fell on his back. His jacket, and the thick hay-bedding protected him, but he cried in anger just the same. Naughty goat! Phil cannot wait to be done with goats. I hold out hope for fresh milk, and I am glad to have had these months to experience goats, but I do not want them anymore. And if they do not give me milk, goodbye, goats!

Phil next tried to replace the broken axe handle. He had hopes that, since he bought the replacement handle with the axe, he would have no difficulty slipping the new one in. Ha! Yet another piece of wood to sand smaller. Frustration! He ordered some fiberglass “unbreakable” axes.

When Phil finally returned to felling trees, he dropped a large one. And it didn’t go into the clearing where he wanted it to go, but got hung up on another tree next to it—a dangerous scenario, where the cut down but not fallen tree could fall, and any efforts around the cut tree must be cautious. As dusk fell, he used the truck and some slings to skid it down, but I think it bummed him out. Before that, all the trees fell right where he predicted.

Then, as he looked at the foot-high stumps he has left, he said, “I wonder if a chainsaw would be better.”

I could hardly believe it. For a year I’ve been close to nagging that perhaps a chainsaw might be a better use of time and effort. And Phil has steadily and stubbornly fought the idea. Now, after two weeks of manual labor to clear a small plot, he thinks a chainsaw is the way to go?

And this while Jadon happily hacked through a log almost the size of my hand with a hatchet. It took him a long time, and there was no real purpose for it, other than it was there. I remember digging a huge hole in the backyard as a child, big enough for six children to stand in up to their waists, just for the fun of it. I suspect this had the same appeal.

49 Degrees!

We had a mini heat wave break out today, as the sun pushed the temperature to 49! It wasn’t enough to thaw the apples I cut for applesauce, nor thaw the potatoes I put whole into the pot for mashed potatoes (just a note: freezing potatoes does not improve their taste, but hungry boys and mother will eat anything). It partially thawed the eggs, but only enough to ooze into the egg carton; on removing the yolks, I could still put egg shaped lumps of coldness into a freezer bag and into the freezer. All of this was only possible because the rest of my body was not cold; my fingers, touching so many cold, damp foodstuffs, froze.

So this evening we read about missionary to China Gladys Alyward. (You may have heard of her through a movie about her life, called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.) On her way to China, she is driven off the train in the middle of nowhere in Siberia in winter, and walks 30 miles through the snow and wind to the previous town. (She even falls asleep in a snow bank on the way back, but wakes up again!) The description of the cold, the frostbite, the fatigue startled me. What great extremities God calls his followers to and leads them out of! I’m thankful my life circumstances are nowhere near so difficult.

One of the questions Phil and I had when coming here was: how do farmers fill their day? I mean, morning chores take 15 minutes. Really almost no time.

One answer: maintenance. Phil bought a double bladed axe a couple of years ago, and the wooden handle broke. We’ve hauled the axe around, unusable, but Phil researched proper tree felling techniques (once again, it’s amazing what you can learn in a book). He bought a replacement handle, and spent the morning extracting the stubborn old one, and grinding down the top of the new one to insert it.

That sort of task would drive me bananas. I understand why we have a disposable society: much easier to toss the broken item and buy a new one, rather than repair the mostly-functional old one.

All afternoon, Phil improved his felling technique. Trees that seemed enormous only a week ago, he cut down with ease. I had a new hacksaw, and cut off sapling crowns; the thicker trunks go to the pile for future construction projects; the wide but misshapen logs go to the future firewood pile; the saplings and crowns and other branches go to the future chip piles. Sometimes it seems that much of life is materials handling.

Phil loves cutting down by hand. He loves the quiet, the comparative safety, the manual labor. He has no desire for a chainsaw. Maybe when we get to trees with cross sections larger than dinner plates he’ll change his mind, but I rather doubt it.

The children play imaginative games every chance they get. At one point, I came in to find Jadon playing “poke the belly button” with Jonadab, while Isaiah and Abigail were a baby shark and a mermaid, respectively. Abraham was the keeper of those two interesting characters, though his keeping appeared to involve building Lego cars, so I can’t imagine his responsibilities were terribly onerous.

Back to the Yurt

Phil was really sore today. Apparently the bulging arm muscles are not yet balanced with bulging muscles on the lower body, and swinging an axe on a steeper slope yesterday made for a sore bottom today.

So Phil went to the hardware store and the farm supply store. Almost three hours later, he returned having spent time visiting with: another Colorado transplant who works at the farm supply store; the Sri Lankan who works at the nearest convenience store, a man who’s been in the States for two years and is saving up for his wife and young child to come here, too (hasn’t seen them for those two years!); and postmistress Judy.

Apparently, I get my words out electronically via these missives, and Phil gets his out chatting up the locals.

After some discussion, this morning we put a large round bale into the sheep pen. Phil had been feeding them armfuls; the one previous time we put a round bale in, I felt like the animals wasted so much of it! (And they did.) But we calculated, and a 500 pound round bale should only last about 10 days, with the number of animals we have. I hadn’t realized how much hay would cost; it’s good we’re easing into this.

We felt pretty bad, though: after we put the bale in, the sheep ate for probably an hour and a half, burrowing their heads into the bale. They were hungry. And we were negligent (ignorant!) husbandmen. May the Lord grant that there be no long-term ill effects.

I made eggs for dinner. I mentioned that the eggs froze in their shells and split the shells. What I didn’t mention (because I had forgotten) was that we have about 15 dozen eggs from Costco; living two hours from Costco has made me stock up as much as possible. But 180 somewhat cracked frozen eggs sounds bleak. Bleak to deal with their coldness now; bleak to deal with runny eggs in warmer weather. It’s a “raw” deal, any way I think about it.

Our thoughts turn toward a future home. We were fairly set on a log cabin, hoping to get the basement at least put in this year. Then an off-hand comment from Michelle made me reconsider: our taxes would go up several thousand a year, and I’d rather not pay those taxes. Besides the $150/square foot construction costs we’d be facing.

BUT—if we did a finished basement, and then put a yurt on top of it, we wouldn’t have a residence, per se, just a “root cellar” and a tent. We would have plenty of square feet, and not too bad a finished cost—large yurts, while not cheap, are still the cheapest and easiest form of square feet we’ve found.

And if we ever needed to sell, we could put a log home on the basement and take the yurt.

Phil likes the idea. I pretty much like it. But since we’re not doing anything about it at the moment, I’m okay with not deciding today, too.

Phil v. Rocky: Whose "Guns" are Bigger?

As in many areas of the country, Virginia has had an extremely cold winter. The Virginians ask us how we’re dealing with the cold. We have heat in our trailer—not efficient, not well-insulated, but functional. Last week, though, I noticed that the children’s hands and feet were frequently chilly, and I wondered why I was colder than usual. Saturday night, Isaiah asked me to PLEASE turn up the heat. When I finally remembered to do so, I realized that somehow the thermostat was at 59 degrees.

No wonder we were cold. But as long as the thermostat is set correctly, we’re doing fine.

Sunday we went to Charlottesville Community Church for the third time, and I think we’ll keep attending. We like churches that meet in schools, and churches that don’t have the same pastor preach every week (Kyle and Bill have alternated), and churches that are missions’ minded. But the single thing that pushed me into the “WOW” category is that when Bill preached, Kyle was in the nursery with the children and some other helpers. When Kyle preached, Bill was in the nursery with the children and some other helpers. Imagine—a church that puts the children on equal importance with the adults. I’m thrilled.

We visited the Bessettes all afternoon yesterday. We tried Dennis’ bacon and ham that he cured himself from their own pig. What an amazing BLT we had. Even the boys ate bits of BLT, lettuce, tomato, and all. And they all had seconds! Incredible.

When it was time to go, I told Jonadab to get his shoes. He walked through the dining room, the kitchen, and into the foyer, got a shoe and brought it to me. After I put it on, he went and fetched the other. HUGE smile on his face.

I spent my evening finalizing a seed order from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a local seed company that specializes in the mid-Atlantic growing zone. Even though I have seeds from last year that didn’t get planted, gardening catalogs entice with succulent descriptions. And I would be delighted to grow more food for the animals, too: feed corn, sunflower seeds, kale, turnips, rutabagas. We’ll see how it all plays out. Spring is right around the corner, and we still have no trees in the ground. (But we have a pump on order, so we’ll get the water out of those holes one way or another!)

Today Phil made incredible progress on clearing the land. He’s pushed through the most recent growth, and he downed the most slender saplings. So what’s left are the larger trees, most of which require the axe. His muscles are almost obscene—swinging a 6-pound axe for a couple hours a day grew his muscles quickly. He is very sweetly proud of them, and gives me "gun shows" showing them off.

While he wouldn’t quite match Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’s probably giving Rocky a run for the money.

In other news: the cat has been banished to the outdoors permanently, as he cannot control his bowel movements. The unrelenting cold has gradually frozen most foodstuffs in my barn. Although the temperature is not lower, more things turn up frozen every day. Today it was the eggs that had frozen and burst their shells, falling into the pan in a gelatinous frozen lump. Bizarre.

In which we get a chipper after all

In order to backfill the holes more effectively, Phil bailed water with a 5-gallon bucket for a bit. Since the holes were filled with ice, and about as deep as he could reach, he soon gave up. We’ll try to find an inexpensive pump to dry the holes. When Butch brought us some more hay, he said that we should be okay, despite the perched water.

I look at the holes and wonder whether anything will grow; whether the perched water will flood out the young trees, or serve as a helpful subterranean water supply. And I think about all the trees we have yet to plant, and I get discouraged easily. Thankfully, Phil bounces that discouragement off of him, and doesn’t appear to absorb it. If we both thought dour thoughts, what a bad state we’d be in! But we’re not.

After all my talk yesterday about burning, my Dad wondered, quite rightly, if slash-and-burn is all bad. After all, not all the minerals burn up. What’s left is mostly potash, or potassium; of all the minerals we have in our soil, the one that is closest to ideal (we’re only about 2% low, compared to 90% for calcium and some others). So if we burned our wood and added the ashes to the soil, we’d be over-indulging in potash, which would throw the overall ratios out of balance still further. (An ideal phosphorus to potassium, or P:K ratio is 1:1. Ours is .03:1.)

Also, the most important humus-building element, the carbon, would go up in smoke. Over time, the carbon in the wood composts to humus, and humus holds moisture. We want humus! We need carbon!

But I was still not sure if, financially, it made more sense to burn our saplings and buy in mulch. I figured I should probably check out how expensive mulch will really be. To get a decent industrial chipper with motor included costs about the same as 50 cubic yards of mulch. If we lived in suburbia still, fifty cubic yards would be enormous. But as I look at the several acres of orchard that will all need deciduous mulch as a nutrient supply and soil builder, that’s a measly amount of chips.

So, after two years of “planning” to get a chipper, we finally ordered one today. I look at the small piles of saplings we have scattered around our clearing and rejoice that soon they will transform into useful mulch.

Phil spent several hours clearing more overgrown pasture. He wields the axe skillfully, and I think we’ve cleared about 100’ x 80’. Once the area is cleared enough, and the larger downed trees are skidded out and the smaller brush is chipped, we’ll move the pigs in to root it up pre-planting.

We headed to the Bessettes in mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, they must have been delayed at a wrestling tournament, as we didn’t get to see them. But we all bathed and did some laundry, so we are ready for church tomorrow.

Slash and Burn Agriculture

Phil and I were working on our augered tree-holes when Michelle Bessette drove up to deliver some apples. “It’s a raw day today—I’m impressed you’re outside working!” she said.

But work outside we did. We have 80 tree holes augered, out of about 400 trees total. We’ll see if we like the 3-foot-deep method. So far, it’s been a huge time, money, and emotional energy sink. I may have mentioned that, as we augered, Phil hit perched water about two feet down, which means that the holes filled with water that had run in sheets beneath the surface. Strangely, one hole will have 18 inches of water, and six feet away, the next hole will have none. It’s very odd.

It’s also very wet. We don’t think that the water is like that at all times, since otherwise our land would be basically a swamp. But since we got more than an entire year’s worth of snowfall at one time, and since the weather has not made it much above freezing since then, the major precipitation isn’t going anywhere.

As part of the tree-planting method, we’re sinking drainage tile (basically ugly black corrugated plastic tubing, about 4 inches in diameter, with slits on all sides) into the hole in hopes of introducing some air underground. Does this change the barometric pressure? I don’t know. But since we have so much water in the holes, the tiles aren’t sinking; they’re floating. And does it do any good to have drainage tiles to introduce air if they’re placed in six inches of water? Will it do good eventually? We have no idea.

After the puzzling drainage tile issue, we scatter about five pounds of our leftover mineral mix (mostly soft rock phosphate and limestone, with some other smaller things thrown in) on the subsoil around the hole, then shovel it back in.

The next step I assumed would be no problem: we’re supposed to add a layer of pebbles or rocks, about 1” thick. This is supposed to concentrate the magnetic force and enhance growth. Perhaps that sounds kooky, but I think that it makes sense. We’re coming from BOULDER, and Boulder has its name for good reason: it’s not lacking rocks.

Apparently, though, central Virginia is. As Phil shoveled subsoil and topsoil back into the hole, I watched diligently for rocks. Sure, we uncovered a few, but nowhere near enough to make a 1” layer. So it looks like we’ll need a few truckloads of gravel. Thankfully, gravel isn’t too expensive. But it is another thing to deal with.

Absurdly, backfilling seven holes one foot deep took us until early afternoon. So much discussion; so many decisions; so much angst. Learning new things certainly stretches us. And after seven holes, Phil quit for the day: the incredible water seepage wore him down. It could be that it will drown our trees, too. That’s a bummer for sure.

After that, we continued working on clearing by hand. And I had a sudden realization why Dennis Bessette has said repeatedly, “Just burn the brush piles.” I don’t want to burn anything: everything that grows is a product of the minerals in the soil, the sun and the rain that the Lord sends.

But today I faced the economics of brush disposal. To rent an industrial chipper: say, $1800. Most of our brush pile is less than 4” in diameter. So we’d be feeding hundreds of tiny trees into the chipper one-by-one. So maybe we pay someone to chip. That could work: but then we have major equipment and the expense of hiring. Or maybe we buy a small motor-inclusive chipper for $1800. And spend our precious time chipping hundreds of branches.

Small saplings don’t produce much mulch. I wonder how much mulch we could buy for $1800.

This was all academic, so I don’t have figures to support any way definitively. But I suddenly realized why Dennis says we should burn: if burning ours and buying new costs less than renting or buying chipping equipment, it’s hard to justify not burning.

I felt a new affinity for the farmers in the Amazon practicing slash-and-burn agriculture.

P.S. A note about yesterday’s confusing comment about Isaiah having spent one-third of his life with us: most American teens traditionally leave home around age 18, whether to pursue higher education, missions, employment, or something else. Six years is one-third of the full-time residence Isaiah is likely to have in the Philip Lykosh home. It made Phil and I pensive when Jadon turned six, and it did the same this year with Isaiah. What a glorious time in life to have these little ones in our home. (And, much though I might like to, I cannot claim this profound insight as original. I read it in some parenting book early on in our marriage.)

A Hawk and a Nest

Today, Isaiah’s sixth birthday, Phil went out to do chores and found that all the hydrants were not working. He headed up to the $1000 pump house and found the light bulb burned out and the tank frozen solid. Hmm. So much for the warming effect of the pilot light. Thankfully, he doesn’t think there is any permanent damage done; no frozen lines, no expensive repairs. He put a heat lamp on the pump, put a new bulb in, and in a few hours, our running water returned.

Because we’re celebrating one-third of Isaiah’s life with us (approximately), I went to make a cake. I knew I couldn’t fit the 9x13” pan in the convection oven, but I figured I could mix the ingredients and bring the cake to Bible study to bake. It took a long time. The olive oil was solid at the bottom of its large bottle, so I had to thaw it out to pour it. When I had to chisel the frozen carrots out of their bag one-by-one, I gave up and put the ingredients aside to mix at Bible study.

The children and I drove up to Esmont to get the mail, and a few packages for Isaiah. On the way in, I saw my first cardinal: the Virginia state bird. And on the way back, I saw my second cardinal. Beautiful flashes of red against the dirty snow.

At the post office, substitute mail clerk Sandra mentioned that she was driving in to work today when her driver’s side mirror exploded and scared her half to death. A friend drove by the spot a bit and found a huge dead hawk in the middle of the road. Sandra said she now could be one of those “You know you might be a redneck if” jokes: if a hawk destroys your car mirror while you’re driving to work.

Phil cleared a bit more land; I gathered brush. He uses the handsaw for most of the trees, all those under about 3” in diameter. For the brambles (wild blackberry and raspberry), he can use his scythe, but there aren’t many brambles. The small remainder of the trees he chops with an axe, but that wears him out very quickly.

At eye level in one of the slender trees, I found a bird’s nest. What a beautiful thing to take and gently hold. Leaves on the base, small soft needles on the bottom, and thin twigs curving around. What a lovely round shape: what a delicate dwelling!

Phil's a Lumberjack, and He's Okay!

With colder weather, our humanure pile does not compost much. In fact, it’s mostly frozen solid. Shortly before Christmas, Phil came across a couple men chipping wood up the road, and asked them if they would bring their chips to our property. They brought a small mountain of pine wood chips: not much good for mulching fruit trees, since fruit trees need hardwood chips, but good for carbon for the compost pile.

Phil spent the morning refining our current compost pile. He added the humanure and the dead lambs, then shoveled cubic yards of wood chips on top and around. It makes me excited to think what great compost we’ll have! (And, for the horrified, no, we don’t plan to use humanure compost on products for sale. We’ll use it for our personal garden only.)

The sheep and goats are creating good compost, too. We put hay down, and they eat some of it and poop on some of it. The layers have built up until the ground is spongy to walk on. Phil thinks that little bugs are bedding down, since the chickens go and scratch around. Come spring, that will be another large lot of raw material for our composting pleasure. Yay!

Phil next went to chop down a large double tree up near the road. Based on the conformation, we figure it was a stump that sprouted two trees, each about the diameter of a dinner plate, and each about 50 feet tall. We wanted it down because it’s in the future cherry orchard, and the future cherry orchard needs more space.

Phil the Lumberjack got to work. First, he chopped a wedge in the side using an axe. Then he took his huge one-man crosscut saw and started to saw on the other side. (The saw was one purchase made back in Colorado, as we stocked up for our life in the wilderness. This was its inaugural cut.) He sawed for a long time. It looked like hard work. He had to take frequent breaks. The tree was a tough customer.

But, after about half an hour from the time he began, he pushed on the tree and we could both tell that it wasn’t ever going to return to its proud upright state. TIMBER!

The second trunk he wedged with his axe on one side and wedged with his axe on the other side. And that one was down in about 6 minutes.

What kind of an insane person in this day and age does not use a chainsaw and get the job done quickly? To be honest, I have wondered that myself. For Phil, who sawed through his jeans, his long johns, and a bit of skin in one stroke with the hacksaw yesterday, I think safety is an issue. I’ve read that chainsaws are the most dangerous tool on the market that one can operate without a license.

Phil has used a chainsaw once, and hated it: the noise, the smell, the jarring fatigue, the maintenance required. A handsaw is simpler, quieter, and not smelly.

But it could be that, in the balance, we get him a chainsaw and he uses it for parts of the job and not others. I don’t think he’s quite ready to take the plunge, though.

In the afternoon, we cleared a bit of land together. He sawed down trees and scythed down brush. He limbed the larger trees and carried them aside for future building purposes. I gathered the downed bits and created a brush pile. I would hope that we can chip it—fruit trees like hardwood chip mulch—but, perhaps, we just burn it all.

Butch came by near sunset and we talked to him for a time. We like him. Neighbor Brian had stopped by just before and talked to Phil for a time. He’s a good neighbor, too. He walked the quarter mile up the road to talk to us, which was very neighborly.

The Long-Realized Dream of a Trampoline

I went “shopping” in the Bessette basement this morning. We purchased beans and grains in bulk when we first moved here, so I don’t have to mess with the bins at Whole Foods. I go through about 45 pounds of spelt every three weeks, and it is sure handy to simply pick up another 5 gallon bucket from the Bessette basement when I need more. We hadn’t been to the Bessettes since Christmas Eve, and we are missing them!

(Slightly unpleasant note: Michelle told me that, so long as I didn’t hear a snap, I didn’t break the lamb’s neck; all dead animals flop out, since there is nothing to hold up its head. This was a huge relief to me; there was a question in my mind that the lamb may not have been dead. But now I can feel better, that I saved the ewe and B.B.’s lives.)

Phil put up the trampoline with Jadon and Isaiah’s help. That dream has been years in coming for me; when Jadon was about two, I realized that there was no space on our Boulder lot that would allow a trampoline—now we have one. It has a great bounce, and my heart skipped happily as I jumped.

Isaiah went in to greet the sheep today. B.B. the ram lamb could not escape capture, and Isaiah held him peacefully. Little Bethlehem the ewe lamb is much more canny, and much quicker. Neither Isaiah nor I could catch her—she skips away with her little docked tail wagging.

In this photo, you can see Acorn feeding her little B.B. and larger Bethlehem sneaking in for a drink. Notice the length of the tail naturally, versus the docked tail.
This afternoon, in about three hours, Phil put up four more cattle panels through the trees. He chopped down some trees with an axe. After he put up the panels, he began to clear the southwestern corner of the land, making brush piles.

One of the things I like most about winter is that we can walk easily through brush and scrub that is very challenging to push through during the summer and fall. It makes sense that farmers tend to do forestry during the winter.

All-Day Church Excursion

Immediately after breakfast yesterday, we headed off to church. We enjoyed the service, and went out to lunch with Martin and Molly Bush at Chipotle. Then we headed home. We pulled into the driveway after 3:30pm. So that was Sunday: the day of the all-day church excursion.

That huge time commitment made us hesitate about making Charlottesville Community Church our home church. They are a young church: Phil would be about the oldest man there, at age 36, and I would be among the five oldest women (Jadon, at 7, would be the oldest child). They’re a 15-month-old church plant, set to plant a Spanish-speaking church in April. I love the multiplication, and I thought the teaching good.

Much of the singing was the standard contemporary platitudes about how much God loves me, which I find hard to stomach. But the distance is the main detraction: the attendees are all north of the church, and we’re 40 minutes south. Not much hope for good community or mid-week fellowship on that front. May the Lord guide us.

Today, Phil finished fencing along the road, and started down the south side of the property. He got two panels down into the woods. It took much of the day, as he had to cut down saplings, and line up the fence-line with the compass and the occasional professional property marker.

As we looked around where he was working, it was fairly clear that a section, perhaps a quarter acre, had been cleared at one point and has been growing in saplings for five or ten years. I’m jealous for that land, though, so I’m hoping we can clear it and put good fruit trees or brambles or something there. First, though, we’ll move the pigs there to root around.

We let B.B. and Acorn out of their jug today. B.B. was hobbling around, still not fully confident that his legs will support him. Bethlehem, only two weeks older, looks large by comparison: plump, proportionate, sprightly, fun.

The weather is cold enough that it froze the liquid in my tuna can. That was surprising!

Happy Palindrome Day: 01022010

The ram lamb has a palindrome birthday, and I think that’s fun: 01/02/2010. The boys didn’t like the name Palindrome (my mother suggested Pali, which is cute!). We were laughing over B names—as the second generation of animals here on the farm, we want them to be Bs. (The ewe lamb, born around Christmas, Isaiah decided should be Bethlehem.) Phil had wondered if Bob would be a good name for the ram (short for shish keBOB). But Abraham’s sometime nickname is Bob. So we named the ram Baby Bob, or B.B. for short, which the boys think is absolutely hysterical.

Phil and I talked a lot today. Since he was the main decision maker in the events of last night, I asked him if he would have done anything differently. I was relieved by his answer: not a thing. He felt like he had given Acorn every chance, and by checking on her every 30 minutes, he could visually tell when she was exhausted and incapable.

I think we learned a lot, and that is good. Incredibly enough, we still like sheep! I saw an ad for another babydoll herd for sale in Virginia. I called the woman and spoke with her at length, and I rejoiced because I knew better questions to ask than when we first moved here and just wanted a sheep to practice on. We have had practice! What kind of birthing experience do the sheep have? What living conditions do they have: pasture? (When the grass is growing.) Dry lot? (In the winter when there is no grass and we must feed hay.) What are the animals in the herd? When do you lamb? What interventions have you had to do in the lambs?

The woman’s philosophy on sheep rearing fit well with mine. In fact, every answer was exactly what I hoped to hear. We’ll talk price, and we’ll see what kind of flock increase we have. I expect that, after adding a few more animals (including a ram or two, for breeding), we will “close the flock” and build up from within the herd. Better pest resistance that way.

It was bitterly cold today. I realized I could go and try to plant trees, but the ground was frozen underfoot, and I realized I would have little success shoveling ice-solid earth. Phil put up fence until his hands and feet froze.

In the future, I don’t plan to overwinter pigs. They burn all their calories staying warm, so we feed them and they don’t grow. Now, when we bought the pigs, future food for human consumption was low on the priority list. We wanted them to plow our land and root up the poison ivy. I suppose they have done that. But as we feed them, the price input increases, and I expect that our end price for each pound of meat from these pigs will be commensurate with pork at Whole Foods: pricey. I do enjoy the squeaky, snorty kitchen-scrap consumers, overall; I just wish they lived on air.

A final note for coffee drinkers out there: sad times for Phil. Chloe knocked his French press off the coffee table in a horrific slow-motion “NOOOOO” moment. Broken glass, coffee grounds, tepid water across the floor. Worse was yet to come, however. Phil boiled water and put it in the espresso maker in the barn. Some of the internal parts had frozen, and he needed to unfreeze them. They did unfreeze, but we think the machine had a line that burst, as his dear espresso maker works no more. Sad times.

But at least he had a willing helper as he tried to fix the espresso maker!

Ovine Obstetrician Amy Ain't an Expert: A Mixed Report

At 11pm last night, I was ready to try to pull the lamb, but as we reread the sheep books we have, we figured that Acorn was in an earlier stage of labor than I had thought. Phil was game to check her every half hour, so he sat up with Harry Potter while I went to bed at midnight.

At 2:30am, he woke me with the great news that Acorn had progressed! Her bag of waters was protruding! That is an actual sign of labor, and a sheep has 30 minutes to deliver without trouble once that happens. We wanted to give her some time, so we suited up slowly and went out.

Now something was definitely wrong. Ashley, concerned matriarch ewe, was calling to us constantly: help my friend, help my friend. Acorn was down, and not getting up; no lamb was out.

I heated some water and soaped up for an exploratory search. It was much harder than before. Acorn was in a prolonged contraction, and her vaginal canal was dried out. It took me perhaps several extremely long minutes to reach the uterus and locate any part of a lamb.

I will spare you the warm straining, the working blind, the sorrow of finding a lamb without a protective bag of waters. At one point, I got a bottom (or something) within an inch of the vaginal opening, where it wedged entirely. Poor Acorn! I had to push the lamb back into the uterus.

I located what I thought were two legs, but on extracting to the opening, it was only one. Both Phil and I thought it was a back leg. I couldn’t find another leg for a long time; couldn’t find anything. Acorn was on her side, and the lamb was wedged on the bottom. I could get no traction; she could get no satisfaction. All the time Acorn was grunting and straining. And we were fairly certain the lamb was dead—absolutely no movement. Acorn sounded like she could die at any moment. It was awful.

Bad Paragraph: Worse was when I somehow managed to get the lamb out. Apparently I had grabbed a front leg and the head was tucked back, and the lamb was born with a broken neck. The only relief I can find from that horrible fact is that we believed the lamb was already dead. Which makes me only a mangler and not a killer. Tuition in the school of farming is awfully high. I tossed the dead lamb over the electric fence and focused on Acorn again.

Better paragraph: Immediately after the dead lamb came out, the hind feet of a second lamb came out, still in the protective amniotic sac. I think Acorn was in shock, as she lay without pushing. I tugged gently and the second lamb was born in its sac. Phil asked, “Is it dead, too?” But the lamb shook himself all over and took a breath as best it could. What a blessing!

Acorn did not stand up to lick her baby. We brought him to her, and she half-heartedly licked him from her side. We somehow got her to her feet; better prepared farms have sub-dermal shots to renew an ewe in shock—that seemed a bit much to us, so we had none. We led her to the jug, but she left again almost immediately.

She walked back to her lambing spot and called for her other lamb. She bleated and bleated, and I could only think of Rachel calling for her children and refusing to be comforted (Matthew 2:18). That was as upsetting than the actual birth of the lamb. Acorn was a good mother, and I couldn’t explain to her that her baby would not return.

The baby ram (not deformed this time!) shivered alone in the jug. Phil fixed up the door for him, then headed to the trailer to comfort Joe, who awoke to an empty bed. I remained in the jug and after a half hour or so I milked some of Acorn’s colostrum and used the drench to feed him. When I left them at 4:30am, he had not yet stood up nor nursed on his own, but I felt there was nothing else I could do for them.

I turned off the light in the barn and headed to bed.

My first thought on waking was, “The light in the barn connects to the heat lamp in the jug. You left the shivering lamb without an extra heat! And he probably has internal injuries from his birth; he probably never stood up and is dead in the jug. Maybe Acorn died, too!” I am really not an optimist.

But baby ram is alive! Despite no heat lamp and 23 degree weather outside! He bleated, and stood to nurse; Acorn, too, appears to be doing well.

Sadly, Acorn is set to cull. In all the books I’ve read about good animal husbandry, a most important point of breeding is to only pass on good breeding genetics. If a sheep or cow does not birth well, they are not fit to keep. Or if they birth deformed animals, they are not fit to keep.

I think this has both something to do with keeping the genetics of a flock as good quality as possible, and keeping the farmer costs down. If labor is one of the highest costs of production, a lamb that requires hours of intense farmer effort is an expensive lamb. And anything that might require a vet visit is instantly ruled out. For a $150 sheep, any vet visit is not going to be worth it. To be profitable, farmers need quality animals that birth easily and without medical intervention.

Celebrity farmer Joel Salatin says it better in Salad Bar Beef. He selects for cows that have

“an unassisted calf every single year. . . . Every time we give that proverbial ‘second chance,’ every time we get overly attached to a cow when she’s messed up, we regret it later. I used to ask the vet when we had a breech birth or a prolapsed uterus: ‘Well, what are the chances she’ll do this next year?’

His response was always: ‘No greater than any other cow in the herd.’ I used to believe that, but not anymore. Now her chances of a duplicate mess-up are much less, because she’s hamburger long before next year. Dr. Ike Eller, longtime beef specialist from Virginia Tech, used to tell farmers to cull for ‘the three O’s: open [unbred/infertile], old, and ornery.’ That’s pretty good advice” (77).

Ewe Vaginal Inspection and Dead Possum: Happy 2010!

Doug and Denise invited us over for breakfast, so we trekked over and had a relaxed meal of waffles with blueberry sauce. We contributed Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider that didn’t get drunk on Christmas, but was festive and fun for the New Year. We all bathed, too, and even though the children have mostly been inside for the last week, the water when they had gone through one-by-one still looked like greasy spaghetti sauce: dark orange with darker flecks. Incredible. Where did it all come from?

By the time we got home, it was after 2pm. Phil put up some more fencing, and I watched this process. It requires something like 7 unique metal attachments for each panel, two unique T-posts driven into the ground, and one 16’ cattle panel lifted off the truck and set in place. Phil has driven the middle support stakes in at 16’ centers. As he goes, he puts up the supports on either end. He listens to sermons on his I-Pod so the tedium does not drive him mad. I felt antsy just watching him.

Acorn began signs of labor at about 4pm, and it was so great. With Ashley, she didn’t do any of the typical labor signs. She just looked like she dropped, bagged up and her tail flipped out a little more than usual. Acorn, though, gave all the “right” indications. She would lay down and stand up. She would paw the ground making a nest. She would stand apart from all the others.

As the evening progressed, I grew more nervous. We have a book named Managing Your Ewe, which reminds me a bit of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, the most stressful pregnancy book on the planet, as it tells everything possible that can go wrong with an ewe during labor. I am not an ovine obstetrician, and this book is a bit much.

At 8pm, Acorn had been leaking fluid and visibly contracting for almost an hour. I know because I was out there with a flashlight, watching her posterior for that entire time. In the wind. (Another reason to accuse Zach Bush of luring us here under false auspices: he claimed it never snowed and there was no wind. Ha!) Based on the book, I decided an internal exam was in order. Long-suffering Phil held the halter as I imitated James Herriot. I soaped my hand and arm in wonderfully warm water and inserted my hand in the vaginal canal.

As far as I could tell, the amniotic sac was still intact and just inches from birth. Relieved, I withdrew my hand and decided to wait.

It’s now about 11pm. Acorn has still not delivered, but does not appear to be unduly stressed. And, since she had (perhaps unwelcome) company from myself until not too long ago, it’s possible she just needs some alone time to labor well. That’s Phil’s theory. He’s an optimist. My theory is that something is horribly wrong and we need to intervene. I’m a pessimist.

The harsh reality is that, unless she lambs on her own, it’s a death sentence for her. If she dies today, that is the worst, as we won’t get her meat, and we’d have to dispose of a 150 pound ewe with frozen or mucky ground (and the rental place has picked up the auger, so no help there!). If she doesn’t die today, but we have to do radical intervention—by which I mean I would have to somehow pull the lamb or lambs out manually—that would mean she is on the cull list. A polite euphemism for dead before bred. Maybe even dead before spring, so the grass can be utilized by “permanent” animals.

That’s one of the hardest things about Ashley’s deformed ram lamb: she will not be bred again, and her lamb will not be bred. They are terminal in 2010.

In other news, Phil watched our cat Tiger pounce on a mouse in the barn this morning. What a wonderful blessing that cat is!

This evening, Phil spotted our unwelcome possum visitor in the barn for the second night in a row. He tried to shoo it out, but the wily possum evaded his pursuit and my ineffective aid. A bit later, Phil checked the barn again; the possum was in Chloe’s food bag. So Phil got the .22 and plinked it. Goodbye, possum.

Maybe the mouse of this morning was actually a baby possum. Happy hunting, Tiger.