First Day with Baby Belle

About midday, Phil and I grew concerned for baby Belle. She was curled up next to the haybale, and hadn't moved in a few hours. Her mother would call, and she wouldn't respond. She looked entirely tuckered out. Her mouth was still warm (good!), and the rain was not chilly, but due to the persistent rain, she had never yet been dry. When, at last, she began to shiver convulsively, Phil and I went to take action.

She stood on her own, and staggered around on new legs, but after she sought her mother and laid down again without making contact, we corralled Bethany and Belle into a pen of their own. Phil put a tarp over part of it, and tied Bethany's head. I milked out some colostrum, but then Belle realized she was supposed to be doing that, so she came over eagerly and nursed a good long time.

I'm used to baby lambs, who need maybe eight ounces or so of colostrum at a time. I've had to carry Belle about the paddock a few times today, and she is a chunk. I picked up Jadon for comparison, and I would guess that little Belle weighs about 60 pounds (oh, how happy Bethany must be that her baby is OUT!).

A 60 pound baby needs about 1.5 quarts of colostrum about four times during the first day. That's about 24 cups, or 1.5 gallons! She should have a good amount of antibodies, with that much food.

We're leaving mama and baby in pen for a bit. The rain has now stopped (6.5 inches this week!), but until it's a little more dry, we'll leave them to bond, and keep that equal opportunity nurser Beatrice away for now.

Belle's little poops are good, too. She passed her meconium, and has started to poop the bright yellow colostrum poops. Perfect!

Because we missed the birth itself, we aren't sure whether Bethany is retaining the placenta, or whether she birthed it and then ate it. Some mamas do, wanting the extra nutrition.

None of our other animals have had any issues with retained placentas, perhaps due to the free choice kelp. My immediate assumption was that she was retaining it, and Phil's immediate assumption was that she was not. Time will tell. If she grows feverish in a couple of days, we'll have to take DRASTIC ACTION, but until then, we'll bask in healthy animals. And the end of the rain.

A Watched Pot Never Boils

When I went to bed last night, Bethany gave no more indication of labor than she has for the last five days. Since the rain continued to fall, and I felt a bit ill, I told Phil I didn't plan to get up in the night to check on Bethany's progress. He said, "Yeah, I don't know why you would."

I half awoke a few times during the night to pounding rain and blowing wind, and when Phil measured this morning, he found that we have had over six inches of rain so far this week.

To put that in perspective, that's half a five-gallon bucket. That's a lot of rain.

Hog Creek is rushing by only about two feet below the banks. Phil was thankful his tent in the lower pasture, with chainsaw and tools, didn't wash away (and I'm thankful the water hasn't yet even come close. The tent is fine).

I do realize that a falling barometer is often a labor inducer, but since it's been raining off and on most of the week, I hardly thought the continued rain would trigger labor.

Perhaps, though, the almost three inches of rain was what Bethany needed. (Perhaps she wanted a water birth?)

Phil came to get me first thing: "She had her baby!"

Of course.

Bethany was placidly eating, and her sopping baby stood nearby, shivering. Visions of Rotten Isabella immediately triggered, and I rushed to get a dry towel, FastTrack nutrients, and a milking pail for colostrum, almost weeping for fear of losing this life. And angry that the mother would not be a good mother. No more bad mothers on this farm! Stop already!

While Phil tried to fix up a tarp, to get the baby out of the rain, I tried to milk Bethany, who would have none of it. She kicked at the pail and walked away. We briefly tried to corral the cow, but Phil stopped that after a few moments.

Phil, more level-headed. He advocated watching and waiting. While I went to get iodine for the umbilical cord, he stood in the rain and watched the baby nurse. She was doing just fine.

The relief hasn't yet sunk in.

A healthy mother. A GOOD mother, who managed a birth in the dark during a three inch rainfall, fed her baby, and took care of herself. I watched the baby poop, another good sign of adequate food consumption.

Baby Belle. Another precious heifer calf. (Named both for the beauty of the sound, and as a salute to my favorite Disney movie, and favorite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast.)

The Lord is good to us.

Our 2010 Calf Crop: baby Beatrice and baby Belle.

Do You Think We Have a Baby?

How can any cow be on the verge of delivery for so long? Yesterday her teats swelled to a new smooth girth, her mucus flowed again, and when I checked her at 11pm, she was lying down, panting and straining (or so I thought). I've had four children, and I thought I recognized contractions when I see them.

But maybe she has a bad case of Braxton Hicks, because checks at 3am, 5am, and 7am showed nothing much out of the ordinary. Sure, sometimes she's off by herself, and I caught Beatrice, an equal opportunity nurser, guzzling away the colostrum from Bethany, who proceeded to lick her and, amazingly, moo to her.

Since, up until today, we've only ever heard Bianca "speak," to hear Bethany's voice for the first time was pleasant.

Then yearling Babe joined in, and we had a lovely chorus of moos.

But no baby.

When Butch stopped by to visit, I asked him about first stage labor. "Can it really go on for days and days? I mean, a woman who has early labor for days eventually has a C-section."

"Oh, no," he said. "You don't really intervene until the cow appears to be in distress."

And since Bethany continues to placidly chew her cud when she's not licking Beatrice, standing off by herself, or mooing, I can hardly say she looks like she's in distress at all.

It's me that's in distress, mostly for her sake. Poor mama! Deliver that baby already!

We had Giovanni out this evening to palpate our Fern, to see if the last AI took, or if we have to buy a bull. He confirmed that Butch was correct, and that Bethany just must not be ready. (He did eventually confess that, like with women, cows can have issues, but I think he was trying to make me believe that all would be well. And it very well probably will be.)

After almost three inches of rain earlier this week, the forecast this morning said another three inches in the next two days. Sure enough, by about 9:30am, drops fell, and by evening, the paddock was a morass of mud and dung.

Into this muck Giovanni came. The moment of truth: time for a bull?

Thanks be to God, NO! The AI took, and Fern is expecting around next June 7. Joy, joy, joy!

Giovanni said that the uterus of a cow has two horns. One horn has a bulge a little smaller than a walnut: the baby.

In other good news, Phil managed to fix the truck during yesterday's break in the rain. He is much relieved.

I went to my garden and noticed that several square feet of newly planted beds had been scratched away by the chickens. I had taken down the chicken netting when my family came to visit, because it didn't look very good, but I would rather have good vegetables than an aesthetically pleasing landscape, so I put the netting back.

Phil and I have been brainstorming an underground house, and it is very exciting. I think, in some ways, a year of living in 224 square feet has shifted my perspective dramatically. Had I tried to move into 1200 square feet from our Boulder home with 2700, I think it would have been a hard adjustment. But now, 1200 sounds luxurious, but cozy. Doable.

Blast from the Past: Maybe Underground House?

The rain gauge showed 1.8" of rain when I got up, and another half inch before night fell. "Sopping" would be an apt word to describe our homestead.

We welcome the water and the mud. With no rain since August 26, we were ready.

I was curious how baby Beatrice would handle the wet. She lay next to her mama and slept. Newborn calves sleep a lot, just like baby humans.

I felt Bethany's teats before darkness fell, and they felt full and smooth to the touch, rather than wrinkly. Maybe tomorrow we'll have a new calf.

I called to order minerals for the orchard today. I am so happy to not have to do that for the first time, as I did last year: I knew to ask for a custom blend, I knew that ammonium sulfate is not the same as 11-52-0. I knew not to allow a full 3000 pound tote, since the skidsteer cannot unload it easily!

We were reading the latest Mother Earth News and they had a rather uninspiring article about underground houses. And we both asked why we weren't still thinking about an underground house. That had been our original idea, back at Christmas in 2007, when we were enthralled by the $50 and Up Underground House Book. A $50 house appealed to the cheap part of me, and though I don't think I actually want a dirt floor covered by carpet (think of the bugs! Think of the dirt!), an adobe floor with radiant heating might not be that bad.

After having just settled last week on building a concrete block basement down slope, with intention to build up at some point in the future as funds permit, now we're equally firm in the decision to build an underground house near our current construction trailer "dwelling."

Which is to say, we still have no idea what we're doing, but at least we're talking seriously about what we should do.

Waiting for Labor = Personal Growth

I checked on Bethany's impending labor at 1:15am and 3:30am. Nothing much appeared to be happening. Nor at 7am, when I was up for the day.

Was she acting a bit uncomfortable? Was she pawing the ground more than normal? I scared myself reading a book about calving problems. Should an old cow with a pendulous udder and weak abdominal muscles try to give birth, her uterus won't contract all the way ("uterine inertia"), and that's bad.

Or, even worse, if a calf undergoes a prolonged labor, it can die in utero, and then begin to decay. In which case, we'd need the vet (no kidding). Who reads these depressing books?! Yikes!

In the end, there was so little evidence of labor that we headed off to church, unsure if we'd find a yet-pregnant cow, a calf delivered, or, worst case, a dead cow and calf on our return.

We found the former on our arrival back home. The baby was still very much alive inside, as we saw leg movements in Bethany's side as we watched her carefully all afternoon.

Since there were still no signs of real labor, we headed off to Bible study, and returned in a downpour.

We haven't had rain in a month, so we are incredibly grateful for the blessing falling from heaven. However, a calf born in a rainstorm is not much fun for the humans, and certainly, I would imagine, not much fun for the calf. To say nothing of the fact that we have no barn for comfort for cows or humans.

So it was with deep gratitude that we found Bethany still calmly ruminating.

I realized today that I have been praying almost with despair over the lives of Bethany and unborn baby. And that's silly. They both might die in childbirth. That would really stink, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. It wouldn't be a vote of "no confidence" from God. It might be due to our poor management, or ignorance, or outside of our control at all.

I think I'm called to a new level of trust, one that offers rest and peace whether we have an easy, healthy delivery of a second heifer calf, or wake up some morning to find a dead cow and calf. In either case, God is taking care of us. Maybe not in the way I expect or wish for, but in a real way nonetheless.

I can live in nail-biting suspense over whether Bethany will die, or I can live in joy and peace, knowing that, whatever the outcome, God is at work in my life and on my farm.

And that's a realization to celebrate.

If Making Soap, Use the Stick Blender

I had intended to drive the three hours to Floyd, VA today, to attend a workshop on making Biodynamic Preps. At 11pm last night, Phil pointed out that he had a church meeting to attend, and with the truck inoperable, he needed the car. So I went with him, and a good time was had by all.

It was quite restful to have the afternoon and evening to ourselves. I continue to gradually scrape away the extra accumulation of our week away. I even decided to make soap again. The first time was only a week ago; I had availed myself of a real kitchen on vacation, and roped my family into making soap with me. Two and a half hours later, when the mixture finally saponified, we were all happy, if only because our arms were shaking from holding the egg beater so long.

Today, having gone through the process once, the soap making went off in fine style. I poured the lye into the water in the Pyrex measuring cup (safety goggles on, of course). After about an hour, the temperature had dropped from 200 to 120. I heated my Costco olive oil to about 120, slowly added the the lye mix, and used the missing ingredient from the first soap making attempt: the stick blender.

If you haven't seen these (as I hadn't), the ingenious device looks like a large travel toothbrush container. The bottom looks something like an inverted bowl, with a small blade in the middle, and a scalloped plastic edge that protects the pot from scratching damage. Brilliant, really.

Five minutes later, the soap was ready to pour into molds. I had come prepared for a much longer wait, magazines ready, and was astonished at how swiftly the stick blender worked. Wow!

In other news, though Bethany is now oozing mucus on her backend, there is not much news to report.

A Few Good Butternuts

I am entirely astonished that Bethany has not yet delivered. Her udder and backend continue to swell (or at least so it appears). How can this be, without any relief for her? I don't know.

Baby Beatrice remains a bit skittish, though I sat next to her today while she was resting and she let me pet her like a puppy. Delightful! (I do know that if we have a bull calf that I will not be physically affectionate with him at all; somehow it makes them think butting is good when they grow up.)

When we first met Beatrice, she would caper about, with her exuberant tail flung up over her back. So undignified, but so adorable. I haven't seen her prance like that for the last few days, and, sadly, I didn't capture such antics on camera.

Mother Bianca, always the most vocal of the cows, now has a new call that she uses to soothe Beatrice. When Bianca first came, she would call, deep in her throat, MMMMMMOOOOOOOOOOOO. When she tries to comfort her daughter, she says softly mmoo. It's like Old MacDonald Had a Farm, which is sort of a relief, because I've wondered if the person who wrote that song ever actually heard a real cow. Apparently he had.

I was petting a cow when I noticed a chicken swimming in the watering trough. Thankfully it wasn't quite dead, but had apparently flown into the tank (thankfully not put in by a boy experimenting—I asked). I pulled out the bird, convulsively shivering, and put it under a heat lamp with the broilers. Last I checked, it was eating broiler feed with a good will. Another chicken's life spared.

I spent some time in the garden. I'm about ten days too late for many things, but I decided to put in lettuce, turnips, kale, and radishes again anyway. When I planted in early August, just about nothing came up. Maybe now something will.

Out of my large bed of pumpkins and butternut squash, I ended up with about five small butternuts. I peeled one today, and ate some thin slices raw. They seemed quite delicious, so I checked their brix level with the refractometer. (Be impressed: I managed to squeeze juice out of the squash in order to measure, and that was not easy, even with the vise grips!)

Poor squash has a brix of 6, and excellent has a brix of 14 or more. My squash measured 15.7! Yippee!

I wish I had managed to grow more than five pounds of squash total, but I'm happy that those five pounds will offer good nutrition and taste.

Phil has been wrestling with the truck's power steering for a week or more. Stubborn bolts, incorrect parts, lots of grease, and an unusable truck have made for a fairly unproductive week for him.

We Pull Peanuts

By yesterday night, I had (thankfully) gained some perspective on the horrific events of the day (thanks to all for the encouraging words. They were quite needed). I had prayed for protection that morning, and I realized that we were probably only minutes away from losing all the birds. To have, as of tonight, yet 27 living is a minor miracle. (I credit the homeopathic Belladonna as a major player in keeping about 20 of those birds alive. Many of them had reached a comatose state, but I mixed the pellets in a spay bottle of water and sprayed down the birds' throats.)

And the pigs have enjoyed a few of the birds, so the 25 pounds of dead bird are not a total loss.

More than half the birds yet live. I am thankful.

I've spent some time in the garden the last few days, too. So much has not worked in the garden, whether from lack of sprouting, or chickens pecking, or tomato hornworms. But we have had enough tomatoes for our own consumption. We have had okra enough and to spare. When we returned home from vacation, the plants had topped out at about 5 feet tall, and I picked several grocery bags of okra, which should yield plenty of seed for next year. That small patch was incredibly productive.

I had a bed of peanuts growing.

I pulled up a plant a few days ago, and the peanuts were clearly there.

A good size, too.

Not terribly differentiated, though.

I left them outside in the sun for a few days, and when I came back, the nuts rattled in the shell. They had dried to true peanut shape, appearance, and taste.

I love the peanut. The nitrogen-fixing, the beautiful greens that the animals devoured, the amazing underground growth with a high-protein food. Amazing! Maybe next year we'll grow some more.

As the sun set on this last day of summer, I tried to watch for the rising Harvest Moon. But, sadly, in the Virginia rolling hills, there was no place flat enough to see the horizons on the level. But we finally spotted the Harvest Moon, orange as a Smartie, larger than normal, beautiful in the sky.

Goodbye, Summer. Welcome, Fall!

Don't Miss the "Harvestest" Moon TONIGHT

This evening will be a Super Harvest Moon, as the sun will set as the moon rises. Today is the first time in two decades that we'll have this phenomenon, when the "autumnal equinox phenomenon will create a strange 360-degree twilight show as the moon will rise in one direction while the sun will set on the opposite direction" (as one website said). Watch for it around 6:45pm.

The moon will also look orange and gigantic, due to the "Moon illusion."

What is a "Harvest Moon"? Apparently, before electricity, farmers needed the moonlight to extend their workday and get all their ripening crops to market. The full moon closest to the autumnal equinox is "the Harvest Moon."

As a bonus phenomenon, summer officially ends at 11:09pm Eastern Time, when Jupiter will appear right next to the Moon.

Cool!

A Day So Bad, I Want to Throw Up

I woke up a bit blue due to some personal issues, which no doubt colors the rest of the day.

Phil was going off to buy animal feed, so before he left, I quickly calculated the cost of our broilers. I had hoped to sell them for about $12 per bird, processed, but when I totalled the feed and the initial purchase price, the total was about $12 per bird. Just for expenses. That would be nothing for infrastructure, nothing for labor.

Might as well do nothing for nothing as something for nothing.

Non-GMO feed, without soy, is just flat-out expensive. Fine. We'd have 49 chickens for our personal consumption over the next year. Plenty for uber-healthy chicken stock for winter colds, and one or two meals a week of top-quality birds.

After Phil got back, we noticed that Bethany's udder expanded a lot, just since this morning. The cows were all panting, so we sprayed them, and tried some homeopathic Aconitum for fevers. I sprayed Bethany's nose with a Caulophyllum homeopathic remedy, good for labor preparation.

As we headed back to the house, Isaiah had a broiler in his hands, and he was shaking it rather vigorously.

"Isaiah, don't shake the bird; it might kill it. Or ... is it already dead?"

"Yeah," he replied. "And there's lots more of them!"

He opened the door of the horse trailer and we saw a wall of dead birds.

As I write, Isaiah and Abraham are spraying the few remaining with Belladonna homeopathic (good for heat stroke) in water. I think about 20 are confirmed dead right now, leaving us with somewhere between 20 and 30 living.

To say that I was upset would be an understatement. I think I had a nervous breakdown (if that means a person hyperventilates and wails and wants to die). I plunged my head under a cold shower, and that helped a bit. The temptation to walk up the driveway and keep walking until I died was strong.

And that's melodramatic. Sure.

But the reality is, we took into our custody three weeks ago a box of 53 cheeping babies. Almost half of those babies died today due to our neglect. Ignorance, of course. Oversight, yes. But whatever we call it, they died because of our mismanagement.

We can make excuses about how we didn't know how hot it was. I peeked in on them earlier today and they were panting, but no more so than they have at other times I've seen hot birds.

But in a deep way, it makes me question our decision to be on the farm. If we can't take care of the animals we have, we shouldn't have animals. It's a mockery to sell "happy chickens" when the ones yet breathing barely escaped from roasting alive.

At the end of a year when we've lost five lambs, one goat, two hives of bees, a couple dozen trees, our entire patch of strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, several guineas and all but one keet, and almost everything I've planted in my garden, the loss of a few dozen birds we were hoping to eat is almost more than I can bear.

Blog Story Now in Print!

We wait for Bethany the cow's baby. Full moon is at 5am on Thursday morning, if Bethany makes it that long. Both Phil and I wondered if she was in labor this afternoon, since her backside seemed to contract, but she continues to ruminate as if nothing is happening. If nothing else, I'm learning patience.

When Phil picked up the mail yesterday, he was tickled to see the current issue of sheep! magazine, with an article by me! You can read Shearing "By the Book" online now (though if you've read this blog for some time, you first read this story right here).

We Meet Beatrice

When we reached home around 6pm, we went immediately to the animal pen to see our little Beatrice.

Now, I know that babies are little, but I really wasn't expecting Beatrice to be smaller than our little bucklings (Bright Star is next to her in the above photo, for scale). I didn't see her at first because I was looking for a slightly smaller version of our cows, not a slightly larger version of the sheep. Incredible.

Light-coated little Beatrice scampered away from us at first, though Phil and I, and Isaiah, all managed to get at least a little touch. Long, silky hair, rather than the short, slick coat of her mother. How good is God, I thought, to give the baby a thicker, fluffier coat than her mother. Beatrice was born with longer hair, able to insulate her from the vagaries of any weather.

We watched her nurse. Her mother's bag was surprisingly small still; perhaps her milk hasn't come in yet, and Beatrice continues to drink the antibody-rich colostrum.

Above: Phil's first touch.

Bethany appears much closer to calving. Her bag is larger, her teats more filled out. And I think she has dropped. Her tail, too, does not appear to be at quite the natural, relaxed angle. Could we have another calf by tomorrow? Very exciting, and how wonderful that we're home..

It is so good to be home. I enjoyed our vacation, filled with family, good food, lots of laughter, gifts and field trips, but even a 6-day time away showed stunning changes.

For example, our pigs. A week ago, I was concerned that they were on the brink of starvation: their sides appeared hollowed out, their bodies emaciated. And they had just been so plump!

Now, a week later, I wonder if they had simply lengthened temporarily, in order to fill out. After all, children get plump, then shoot up and look skinny, then lengthen again. And our pigs now look like little PORKERS. I cannot believe how jowly, how hammy they got in six days. They look succulent.

Our broiler chicks, too. We left them as rapidly growing little yellow balls. Now they are tween birds, awkward and ugly, white feathers mixed with patches of bare pink skin. They have almost outgrown their half of the horse trailer, and I think will be happy to grow into the other half.

In my garden, the okra grew another foot, but lost all its leaves. All production apparently went into its okra pods, dozens of foot-long behemoths.

Isaiah even managed to find a little toad, which entertained him for some time.

To Shade or Not to Shade?

Thursday morning, Phil and I talked about shade v. no shade for the cows. All summer, we have given them no more shade than was naturally available from surrounding trees. And all summer, with temperatures in the low 100s, the cows have not appeared to suffer unduly.

But now, with temperatures a bit lower, the cows need shade? We were confused.

We have read that only black cows need shade. Phil read an Ohio dairy man who said that there are no studies that show that cows do better with shade. People want to give the cows shade, but the cows don’t need it.

Is Ohio that different than Virginia?

Joel Salatin, an hour or two away from us, doesn’t use additional shade for his cows.

We had figured we didn’t need it. We had not provided it, not by neglect, but by a sincere belief that the cows didn’t need it.
However, as we talked, we wondered if, perhaps, difference came from the actual earth. Joel has lush pasture. As we wait for our pastures to improve, we have a fairly long recovery time, which has meant that the cows go into a dry lot and eat hay. The dry lot ends up looking like a red clay parking lot.

And parking lots are much hotter than grassy fields.

Also, human babies do not regulate their body temperature for the first 24 hours, which is why newborns need their heads covered. If cows are similar, the calf was pretty stressed without shade that first day.

As soon as Ken and Cheri made them shade, Bianca and Beatrice headed there, and Beatrice, apparently, perked up.

Frantic Call to the Vet

On Wednesday, my family headed into Colonial Williamsburg for a day of history and entertainment. The Plantation has Milking Devons, but the Plantation closes on Wednesday, so we didn’t see their cows.

We had left my phone at our home farm, so Ken and Cheri could reach us if necessary. When we entered the Colonial Williamsburg Complex, Phil noticed that his phone was almost dead, and left it behind in the car.

All day we enjoyed the craftsman, and when we sat down to dinner in George Washington’s favorite seafood restaurant, we were startled to find that my brother-in-law had taken a call from Cheri.

She had tried to reach us all day, and, in desperation, finally tried searching my phone to find a number where we could be reached.

Of all the awful things we could have done to a caretaker, this one is, quite possibly, the absolute worst: to leave without contact for twelve critical hours. (Murphy’s Law: it would have to be the one day of the year when we were out of cell service.)
Thankfully, the calf was okay, though appeared more listless than preferable.

But one of our yearling heifers was ill. Michelle Bessette came over and took her temperature (once again, how blessed we are with such amazing neighbors), noted the panting, foaming cow, and suggested that, with a fever of over 104, we should get a vet to come.

So we called the vet, after hours, to look at our heifer.

In retrospect, there was a triple blessing in that. Obviously, he checked our heifer.

Also, I asked him to look at Bianca. One of her teats is larger than the other three, and I was a bit worried about that quarter: what if baby Beatrice couldn’t nurse? Might we have mastitis on our hands? The vet checked for that: no problems.

He did say, though, that the calf was more sluggish than he would like to see. He recommended some form of shade, which Ken and Cheri set about constructing.

Finally, with BB’s potential bottle jaw, I asked him to pull fecal samples from both the sheep and the cows, to make sure that the parasites were not infesting the cows as well.

With great thanksgiving, I heard that the cows were clean. The sheep do have some parasites, but sort of mid-range for sheep. Considering we used a natural dewormer one time with Ashley and Acorn last October, the sheep we have are not terribly susceptible to parasites. (Most sheep are chemically dewormed on a regular basis.)

Notwithstanding, we plan to be more cognizant of what month it is, and make sure we do garlic juice, and some of the natural products we have, more regularly.

The heifer looked much better by the time the vet arrived. He went ahead and did an antibiotic because she was still feverish.

Was it medically necessary? We have no way to know, and were a good four hours away. She won’t be milking for another two years anyway, so, necessary or not, we hope it did no harm. Mostly we’re just so thankful that she is yet alive.

We Have a New Baby!

Our first full day at the Bay, we got an ecstatic call from Cheri. Phil’s parents had graciously agreed to watch the farm from Monday to Friday, and Cheri had happy news.

“We have a baby!”

Bianca had her calf by 1:30pm. No one witnessed the actual birth, but Cheri spotted the baby while it was still wet. It stood and ate without difficulty, and we rejoice in the healthy baby GIRL.

I finally have my Beatrice, a name I’ve had in mind for a decade. Not only the Queen of Holland (my ancestors); not only the level-minded older sister of Ramona Quimby, and the full name of my favorite childhood detective Trixie Belden. Beatrice is ALSO the smart and witty hero of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. And, pinnacle of literary merit is, of course, Dante’s immortal Beatrice (pronounced in Italian bay-uh-TREE-chay).
(Note: Though Ken and Cheri took photos of her first day of life, the photo above was taken Sunday, September 19.)

We Visit an Established Orchard

We visited the famous Carter Mountain Orchard. Sited in a glorious spot on a mountain ridge, with views to all sides, we had a hayride and a presentation to the children.

When the guide asked what a tree needs from the ground, Isaiah answered, “Nutrients from the soil,” and the guide’s mouth just about dropped open. “That answer was above and beyond,” she said.

With hundreds of acres of trees, and full teams to deal with planting, trimming, picking, and processing, I don’t expect we’ll ever reach the scale of Carter Mountain. That’s okay.

Since it appears to be impossible to find a Virginia grown organic apple, I have hopes for the future: small-scale niche apples, grown without chemicals. Is it possible? Time will tell.

Brother Justin Experiences Real Farm Life

My family came to Virginia for this week’s Family Fun Week. On Saturday afternoon, they all arrived at the farm to meet the animals and see the land, and on Sunday they spent most of the day there as well.

I was just about to walk with my parents when I looked into the sheep pen, to see Ashley the sheep with a blood-covered muzzle. Dripping blood. How disturbing!

And how was sheep still standing, with a constant drip of blood? Poor sheep!

Momentarily flummoxed, I finally figured we should treat her like an injured person: stop the bleeding and figure out the problem.

We corralled her, and I got some wet towels to stanch the blood. There was no obvious gaping wound to explain the blood, and it appeared to be coming out of her cheek, not her nose (nostrils were clear). Perhaps she got in the way of the cows’ horns, and she was badly scraped? It’s still a mystery, as her wool appeared to be intact, and by the following day, she appeared to have no more than a bruise on her cheek.

Rarely a dull moment!

Late that evening, we took advantage of my youngest brother Justin’s presence, and processed BB the ram lamb. We felt like the possibility of his demise while we were away from the farm was a bit too great. At about 10:30pm, my brother shot him in the forehead. He was expecting a pretty big kickback, a loud noise, and an exploding head, since he thought he was shooting a rifle at point blank range. When instead he heard a tiny plink from the .22 (a gun usually used for killing squirrels and snakes and other small critters), and a head still intact, well, he was surprised.

Brave Phil cut BB’s throat, and the lamb bled out. This is such a hard thing to do, but I think it’s nicer for the lamb to be around his own people, to be on his own land, to not have the stress of the transport and the unknown processor people.

Phil had a very hard time sleeping afterwards, though. The adrenaline, the sorrow; it was the first of the babies born on our land to die on our land.

Phil is getting better at processing. He had the animal gutted within the hour, and skinned in another half hour or so. Since it was after midnight, and Justin had a 7am flight, we cut the remainder into large sections and put it all in the freezer for another day. Done by 12:15am, it felt like a productive few hours.

Not Much of Interest, But the Farm Looks Great!

We've spent the last few days primping our farmstead. All the little building pieces for various toys now returned to their proper places. All the pallets, scattered here and there where they were initially needed are now stacked neatly in a useful spot. Phil did a dump run, and I've dragged branches and made a burn pile.

Our farm, for the next day or two, will look as good as it gets. For now.

It doesn't often look like this, for good reason: we have done basically nothing productive all week.

We had one good scare, though. Phil was pushing the emptied garbage cans back into the truck after dumping them, when he noticed a black widow inside one of the handles. Since we had both carried the cans over to the truck, that means one of us had our hand within inches of the spider, without knowing it. I'm thankful the spider wasn't more aggressive.

That brings our total to four we've seen or killed. I don't want to know how many are hiding where I can't see them.

Our Bianca is bagging up, which means her udder is growing larger. I think the Bessette's cow bagged up about three weeks before giving birth, so it's no indication of anything but, well, her day is getting closer. As it has been since the day she arrived here.

One more chick died. So we're down to 49 chicks. Attrition has set in.

After hearing about bottle jaw in sheep, where blood-sucking parasites cause such great anemia in the animal that they eventually die, we've been monitoring BB the lamb more closely. The first day, his entire jaw was incredibly swollen. The second day, it was perhaps half the size. Then it split into two small swellings, one on either side of his face, until yesterday it was just about gone.

Phil thinks maybe BB ate something, or had a sting, that made his lymph system go crazy, but he is gradually getting better.

However, the protuberance under the chin in bottle jaw also tends to reduce in the morning and return by night, and there is a bit of that pattern going on.

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do.

Phil tried to fix the power steering pump on the truck. He'd already replaced the hose, which was leaking, but the pump, too, appeared to be leaking. It didn't go well, and the new pump the store said was the right size was not the right size. He can't get one bolt on the old pump re-threaded, either, so the truck is not drivable.

Fire and Firewood

Labor Day was a restful day. Phil began a general clean-up of our land, so my family will not be too horrified when they come to visit. He picked up saplings he'd chopped down back when we were planting the orchard and chipped them; he burned a LOT of cardboard boxes and feedbags, and burned some ugly large roots that had been clustered in the orchard for almost a year. He had the fire going most of the day.

I decided to take down the unsightly fence that keeps the chickens out of my garden. After an hour's hard labor, I gave up for the day, half done: weeds had grown up through the netting, and I could release the netting inch by inch. No fun.

A second chick died. We have now the 50 we ordered, plus Tux.

We noticed lamb BB had an enormous swollen jaw. I wondered if it was a toothache, but he didn't appear to be in pain, and he was eating normally. Thankfully, today the swelling is much reduced. Maybe a histamine reaction to a bee sting?

Today we had a delightful visit from Berenice, an older woman who attended Bible study with us at the Doug Bush's house. I had run into her at the post office, and mentioned that we had questions about how to make firewood. Her husband Reggie has a small business selling firewood, and since we have about 40 acres that need to be cleared, I am interested in any method of income we can get from all that land.

Reggie lives in the house he was born in, the house his grandparents built at the turn of the last century. He remembers when they got electricity in the 50s, and when they got indoor plumbing. He said that last year's winter was more in keeping with the severity of winters several decades ago: maybe more snowfall, but the extremely cold weather was more normal.

Anyway, he said that he seasons his wood for two years. He doesn't bother to stack it as a cord (8'x8'x4'), but loads up his truck with firewood and sells the whole thing, at a price about 25% lower than the competitors. It's about a cord, but not stacking it saves him time.

On the production end, he will get a call for some downed trees. He cuts the tree into sections 16 to 18 inches apart, loads the rounds into his truck, backs the truck next to the hydraulic splitter, and splits them as he unloads them. So simple! Brilliant.

He thinks this is his last year, though. He retired from his job 11 years ago, and started the firewood business on the side. The work is catching up to him. (I would guess so, being in his 70s!)

So I will not expect income from a firewood business this year, but it probably makes sense to purchase a splitter at some point. Not yet, but someday.

Our Chickens in Suburbia

In the two years between the time we first decided to move to a farm and our actual move, we did what we could to experiment. (Which, in retrospect, wasn't a whole lot.)

Phil composted. He LOVED it: turning kitchen scraps into humus. It's like magic. Or, as some ego-ag people say, it's alchemy!

I tried to garden. I dug up two raised beds in our front yard (when a neighbor came by to ask what we were doing, I said, "I'm just burying a body," and he got such a queer look on his face! But the two mounds did look rather like burial plots). I grew some tomatoes from seed, and had a good crop of cilantro and lettuce. A few radishes and some flowers.

We bought a few egg layer hens from a friend.

And we raised two batches of broiler chicks, from babies to processed meat in the freezer.

Phil wished we had started with chickens when we first moved into the neighborhood. We actually met our neighbors! When we were outside moving the chickens, the neighbors would stop by to talk to us. Most couldn't believe it was legal to have chickens in suburbia! Phil had made a rectangular pen, framed in wood with chicken netting for the sides, and a corrugated aluminum top, and we marched the chickens twice a day around the small yard.

Our grass never looked better.

We'd catch neighbors bringing their toddlers over to see our birds. We'd talk about the different colors of eggs, about the feed requirements, about the personalities.

Our neighbor across the street called one day and asked why the chicken crossed the road. (We always did have one persistent hen that liked to explore.)

We had a few traumatic moments. When we first moved our beautiful chicks outside, they were so happy to scratch and eat. But the first time we moved them, we didn't know what we were doing, and ran our pen over two of them. They were so tiny, and so injured. We needed to put them down, in their fluff and beauty. But none of the methods we'd read about worked. Those little birds were so persistently alive. Phil and I would screw our courage to the sticking place, and try to kill these trusting, injured chicks. Several times over.

Even now I think we've done nothing more horrific. I was so thankful we were still close to my parents. We went down and verbally processed.

If we hadn't felt truly called, I think we'd been done right then. I'm a suburban girl! I have to lie down when having a blood sample taken, lest I pass out.

And then we did chicken processing. We didn't actually check the Boulder codes to know if that was legal, but did the first batch at a friend's house, and the second batch in our backyard. The first bird we actually had to kill was really emotionally tough. There is a distance between knowing that my food comes from animals, and killing those animals myself.

But we did it. It wasn't easy or pleasant, but we did it. Our first batch had about a 50% success rate, from chicks to chickens.

The second batch of chicks came during a freak cold snap. Rather than vigorous, happily cheeping chicks, we opened to box to find several dead chicks. We lost more almost every day. Maybe chicken pneumonia, acquired from the initial chill as babies? We had ordered about 30, and by the time we came to process, we had only about 15 birds.

As we raise our first batch of broilers here in Virginia, I am so thankful I've dealt with some of the challenges of chick raising already.

One chick came to us ill in appearance, and it died today. Fifty-one broilers, and Tux, remain.

Pigs Eat Acorns (But Maybe Not OUR Acorns)

After we moved the pigs this morning, we talked about where to put them next. Their log home is so heavy to move, and we're in the newly cleared section of the stone-fruit orchard, which means we have to pull the pen, with pigs inside, over stumps. Phil is the Incredible Hulk in terms of muscles, but I am not, and lifting a log cabin, even a small one, is not very fun.

Besides, we've run the pen downhill since we got the pigs, and now we were looking at uphill, over stumps. No thanks. I'd like to preserve Phil's back for many more years.

So we set up a two-strand electric pen, and the pigs went happily inside. They are large enough now that they can't fit through our cattle panel perimeter fence, and they have experienced enough jolts from the electric fence strung around the top of their log pen, they really respected the fence and gave it room.

They are in the woods, among the acorns. I read recently that pigs don't like all acorns, and I have no idea if they will like the acorns they have, but maybe they will. That would be nice!

***

I read a book this week about the Oregon Trail, and I was so convicted. Those folks had a really difficult time: cholera; Indian attacks; loss of animals through drowning, starvation, overwork, exhaustion. Mothers would give birth in the middle of nowhere, and keep moving the next day because, well, what else was there to do?

I have, at times, complained about our little house. But how large is our house compared to a covered wagon! How easy my cooking, with a fast and efficient propane grill, compared to a campfire made of buffalo dung. How easy my water, that comes out of the spigot, compared with drawing water from a creek—when there was a creek close by.

Concurrently with that conviction, I think my understanding of "home" has fundamentally changed recently. I had been thinking of my sleeping and cooking places as my home, and the outside was, well, the outside.

I realized last week, though, that my home is where I live. I had been forgetting that I live on acres of land, that that was part of the trade between upper middle class comfort in Boulder and white trash trailer life in Virginia. If I just think of 2700 square feet v. 224, it feels quite restrictive, like I made a bad choice. But that's not the whole package, and, on balance, I think we came out ahead.

***

I recently read a really stunning poem about women aging. It gives me great hope that, despite little wrinkles at the eyes and all the other bits of aging, that a greater beauty may await.

W.B. Yeats' "The Folly of Being Comforted"

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
"Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience."
Heart cries, "No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze."
Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

Broiler Chicks and Behemoth Refrigeration

Yesterday morning we didn't get a call from the post office. I had hoped that Cheri would still be here, to experience the magic of driving home with a box of cheeping chicks, but the chicks could arrive any day from Thursday to Saturday, and it was just a little hope.

We picked Phil up in the early afternoon. We were driving home, when I listened to a message: the Cville post office called! They had the chicks! And we were, literally, one block from the post office when I listened to the message. We didn't even have to make a special trip for the cheepers.

For all such provisions, small though they may seem, I am so thankful.

Back home, we scrambled to make a pen for the chicks. We planned to use the cattle trailer as their home (when we bought egg layers last year, we had space in the barn, but the barn is packed to the gills now). I needed Phil's strength to subdivide the trailer.

When we last had chicks, we bought wood shavings for their bedding. Yesterday, though, I simply drove the tractor to one of our several wood chip piles and shoveled them in. A little bit of self-sufficiency felt quite delightful!

So we put our 52 broilers, plus one odd-ball into their new home. They will live there for three or four weeks, spend four or five weeks in the field, and then be ready for processing.

Isaiah wants to name the new odd-ball "Different-y," in keeping with "Strange-y," the last odd-ball. Since the baby looks like a penguin, I like "Tux" better, if only because it is easier to say.

The weather has been warm enough, we have been able to forego the heat lamp in the day (they only need 95 degrees, after all). They cheap and eat and drink, and I enjoy thoroughly the Peep stage, since their fluffiness will pass in just a few days, and lingering ugly chicken adolescence will set in.

As I feared, we had no survivors of the two keets who had been trying to hatch, and the abandoned living one we tried to rescue. But the adult guineas proudly marched their six living keets (you can see them all in the photo) to join the chicken harem. Teeny striped babies!

Phil went to finish the K-Mag spreading this morning, to find that the riding mower had a flat tire. He knows about tire repair now, though, and after we bought a tire repair kit, he fixed it up.

He also went to pick up our monstrous refrigerator. It has a 45 cubic foot capacity (or four Lykosh boys) and weighs 521 pounds! Thankfully, the man we bought it from had a skid steer, and Butch let us use his for unloading. I kept worrying that the fridge would tip the skid steer, because it is so oversized (83" tall and four feet wide), but then I remembered that only totes of minerals that weigh 3000 pounds really daunt that little skid steer. It managed the fridge just fine.

Of course, in order to put the fridge where we wanted it, first we had to drive the motor home up the driveway, which meant unleveling it and unattaching it from water and electric. Then Phil backed it back into place. An effort in itself.

I spent the day running errands; some unpleasant ones. One example: for the first time in a decade, we sent off bills without stamps, or return addresses. I assumed that such envelopes ended up in the dead pile, but, sadly, no: they MAY go on to their destination, where the addressee MAY choose to pay the postage. Or MAYBE not. In the dead letter office, they MAY open the letter and send it back. Frustrating that they PROBABLY won't reach their destination, but they MIGHT.

In all this uncertainty, and knowing that, while I can afford both credit card and mortgage bills once in a month, I cannot afford them twice, I had to stop payment on both those checks.

Seriously, people, be smart: either write the return address, or pay your bills online.

However, if a $64 bank charge is the worst financial hit we've had due to miscommunication in a decade of marriage, I must consider myself blessed.

(Lest you wonder at my amazing ability to capture on camera four happy young sons, you are not seeing the 53 other photos that I took, none of which I would be happy to post. What wigglers they are!)

Soil Report Comes: So Pleased!

Father-in-law Ken drove Phil to the airport at 4am Tuesday morning. (I'm glad it wasn't me!) They were a mile down the road when Phil realized he didn't have his wallet. What a relief that they didn't get any further. Once again, God took care of us.

We keep watching the cows. I'm driving myself a bit crazy watching swelling on their backends, wondering if it has increased. Really, there's not much change.

Joe's potty training continues in fits and starts. He has finally wet or messed through all his undies, and all his brothers', so I did laundry today in my handwasher. I hadn't used it before. The actual washing took only several minutes, but the double rinse, and subsequent hanging up of a couple dozen undies (and shorts and shirts) ended up taking an hour total. Less time than I feared, but a good chunk of time nonetheless.

I didn't do any sheets or jeans. Those would be heavy and tiring, I suspect.

Some weeks are filled with blessings. For us, this week is one.

When Phil reached my sister's house, he found a check with part of payment that's been due since May 2008. Wonderful!

We are thinking about increasing pig production right now. If we bought feeders, they would just about be ready for the holiday market, since a pig takes about 4 1/2 months to raise (any weanling we bought would already be 1 1/2 months old). There are't many piglets for sale on craigslist; we'll see what we can find.

It's been so nice that, while I've been looking into pig rearing, Phil's parents are here to take care of the boys.

Our guinea eggs finally hatched. I understand why guineas are said to be bad parents: they hustled their keets away, over rough terrain. I'm not sure where they've hidden their few survivors. There was one tiny, chilled keet that couldn't keep up with the incredible pace the parent guineas set. I held it, and put it into a warming box. It did die after a few hours, but I am thankful it died in comfort.

Even as I write, another little keet is still breaking out of its shell. One wing is free. Sadly, I suspect it won't live long, even if it does hatch all the way, but who knows?

At most, of the 21 eggs the guinea sat on, she has seven live babies. We'll see if any of them survive.

For me, perhaps the best part of these last two days was the soil sample report.

As you may remember, last year's soil report was abysmal: we had 13% of the calcium we should have, for example. Our composite score was 3. Out of 100. It could hardly be worse.

So we spread minerals, and ran animals, planted an orchard, and hoped that all the expensive minerals didn't wash down slope in the rain.

I have heard that it takes organic farms about 7 years to get their soils fully ready. I hoped for progress, maybe even triple the number we had before.

So I opened the email with excitement and trepidation, to find this comment:

I know this program is expensive but you are building a foundation for a high yielding top quality orchard. By next year the quantities needed in the Broadcast will begin to reduce. You have made some good progress.

And our composite score was 38! Almost 13 times better than last year!

Our calcium is at 25% of where it needs to be. Still not good, but just about double a year ago. And other numbers are not great, but are getting better.

Even the hope that this might be the last year of 3000 pounds of minerals to broadcast per acre gives me good hope.

The land is healing! Praise the Lord!