Day Six: If Not One Thing, It's Another

With threat of rain and snow, my Dad headed out to plant. Phil went to plow and subsoil for him, and after a few feet, the subsoiler twisted entirely out of shape. Ruined. And without a subsoiler, the planting is almost impossible. Dad still made some good progress, but he has a ways to go.

Phil and I debated: should he drive up to town to buy another subsoiler? Or disc my garden bed so I can plant greens that are a week overdue to go outside? What would the rain do? Decisions! Argh!

The greens were calling, so Phil went to disc when Butch stopped by. He needed to run to town, and offered to make a special trip to get a subsoiler. What a blessing to have such a good neighbor!

My Dad has had a good opportunity to see what real farming is: good progress every day tempered with frustration that it's not more; equipment working until it breaks (and it breaks way more than it seems it should), constant decisions about spacing, land use, tree treatment. It's intense.

When the new bed was all prepared, Phil and I went to deliver hay to the Bianca paddock. (Thankfully, the rain had not yet started.) I opened the fence for Phil so he could drive in, and watched as the enormous bale set down, then rolled very slowly, then faster and faster until it burst through the fence, all animals following behind.

Phil, though, managed to get to the fence break before the cows, bull, and bucks built up the bravery to cross the downed fence. What a relief! And, even more incredibly, the enormous bale had stopped only a few yards downslope, in a maneuverable spot. So Phil was able to regrab it.

I was happy the animals stayed put. This morning, Phil and I spent some time trying to corral the escaping calves, Beatrice and Cleo. They have figured out that if they go fast enough through the weakly pulsing fence, they can graze the growing ryegrass on the neighbor's land, so they aren't terribly eager to return to their proper paddock. It took some effort, but they are again corralled and should not be able to escape again.

In other random tasks today: we moved the Freedom Ranger chicks outside into their movable pen, where they will grow out their lives eating clover and bugs and other forage.

The insulation arrived for the metal building. It is supposed to be kept dry, but since the building isn't up yet, that might prove challenging. (It needed to arrive by the end of the month, so clearly, we put it off as long as we could.) We put the rolls up on skids, and then covered them with greenhouse plastic and a canvas tarp. The rolls dwarf the car in front.

Surprisingly for me, Ewok's lamb, named Chestnut, continues to live. She is a peanut, and her relationship with her mother seems tenuous to me, but Phil has seen her nursing, while Ewok stands stock still. I witnessed this for the first time two days ago, and it brought me to tears. I had despaired of the baby's life and succumbed to extreme bitterness against the wretched mother. Abraham, though, in morning prayers, asked very purposefully that, "Ewok please stand still so her baby can eat." And that happened later that day.

Abraham continues to pray, and Chestnut continues to live.

Days 4 and 5: Work Continues Slowly

On Tuesday, my Dad planted the remaining 50 chestnut trees we had on hand. I potted on some tomatoes, which continue to grow beautifully, despite temperatures below freezing the last few nights. The little greenhouse must be fairly well insulated, and I am grateful.

I went to a fundraiser for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, an organization that offers legal protection to small farmers like us. Due to a funny chain of events, I was actually the representative for the Fund, and gave a little speech, followed by none other than celebrity farmer Joel Salatin. How intimidating!

A funny note: I wore a dark blazer with a maroon shirt and khaki pants (Joel wore the same color scheme, though he also had a tie). When I was packing my clothes in Boulder, I thought, "Do I really want to pack this? I've never needed to wear a suit before. Well, I probably should take it. Maybe someday I'll need to give a speech with Joel Salatin." Ha!

Wednesday dawned grey and cold, with a misty rain falling. I had a deadline to meet, so my Dad went off to plant a box with fruit trees (mainly peaches). He expected to plant 28 trees, and even got the holes all dug, but when the time came to put the trees in the ground, he found only 18. Once again, short!

More of the chestnut trees came via FedEx, and Dad got 35 in before the soil suddenly shifted from damp to saturated. Why the drizzle would suddenly cause such a shift in the soil was a mystery, but it did. And so today ends, with 435/1000 chestnut trees in the ground.

Phil was dealing with his own exercises in futility. Besides not being able to fix the off-the-shelf steering wheel of the tractor, he has had other pieces break. He drilled five or six holes for the fruit trees and the post-hole auger had a part break on him. Twice. The water pump in the RV suddenly stopped working, and so he figured out how to pull it out, which piece was not working, and then, after about six phone calls to the manufacturer and distributor, he figured out how to order a replacement piece (and how to jury rig the piece while we wait for the shipment). That darn water pump took up the whole morning.

So much of life is maintenance.

Getting a massive new hay bale down to the lower pasture took another hour or so. Phil had gone to check on the animals and saw they were out of feed. So we went to bring the hay bale down, me opening the three gates on the way. Two calves were missing by the time we got there, vanished in that short period while we were getting the bale. So Phil went to look, while I dozed on the tractor, in the rain. It was like a bad country music song.

I sat, exhausted, on the tractor
While you fetched the naughty calves.
The rain drizzled down my collar
And I wondered why we live the life we do.

Happily, such depressing moments are few.

The calves did get out again, though, and Phil and I ran up and down the neighbor's hills, getting them back in their paddock. The electric fence charger really needs more umph. Maybe we'll get to that tomorrow.

Planting, Day Three: We Have a Problem

After a much needed day of rest yesterday, Dad got off to a good start. During the course of the day, my Dad and I planted 170 more trees, bringing the total to 350 chestnuts in the ground. Good progress. Over a third done.

But somewhere around the three hundredth tree, we suspected we had a problem. The five boxes of trees were rapidly emptying. On doing a quick check, we realized that, indeed, we only have 400 out of the 1000 trees here on site. Hmm.

Somehow the seller had forgotten the order. Without a packing list enclosed on any of the boxes, we didn't realize the error until we were almost out. (Really, though, we should have suspected earlier.) Some, hopefully, shipped out today. Those (few?) will hopefully arrive on Wednesday, with the remainder on Thursday. That's not much time to finish the planting.

It's amazing how little in life goes off just as expected.

In other news, Phil went into the greenhouse today for the first time in quite a while and could not believe the size of the plants. They are doing so well!

We had our ninth ewe lamb born this, to our purebred but unregistered ewe, Ewok. Last night froze, though I don't know how cold it was. In keeping with the most common pattern this year, Ewok lambed sometime between 6am and 7am. And I realized that, with sheep, there is no way to win.

When we found the lamb at 7:15, Ewok was doing a good job licking her off. The lamb was standing, but shivering violently in the cold, still extremely wet from the damp ground and the birthing process. Her umbilical cord had torn off long, and she was standing on it. In retrospect, I still think I needed to intervene. Dry off the baby, get colostrum into her, cut off her cord and coat it with iodine to prevent infection. That's all very standard in the books I've read.

Ewok reacted so oddly to me coming in. I may have not come slowly enough; may have taken the baby away too quickly, so she didn't see where the baby went (right on my lap next to Ewok). Rather than staying near, helping me dry off the baby, she wandered off: sort of looking for the lamb, but when I carried her to Ewok, the ewe refused to accept her baby back. Sort of. She did lick it a few times.

Phil and I made a lambing pen for just the two. Like with Bethlehem, when Ewok showed signs of skittishness about having the baby nurse, we tied her up to give the baby a chance. And the baby did nurse. A little. But overall, the outcome for this lamb is bleak.

What is better: leave the lamb alone and let it freeze or die quickly due to starvation (which comes on lambs quickly after birth if they don't get the needed colostrum right away)? Or intervene in the lamb's life and risk parental alienation? In either case, the human loses.

Day Two: The Day of the Deformed Steering Wheel

Phil started the day as a problem solver. He went to check the lower pasture and found a tree had fallen across the electric fence. All the cows were still enclosed, but he had to hike up slope to get the chainsaw, down slope to cut up the tree, and back up again.

Almost immediately, he went to prepare for unloading ten tons of minerals for the trees. The driver of the truck called right about then. Having driven through the night from New Mexico, they had attempted to take a short cut getting to our road, and ended up on a single track dirt road, stuck, about two miles away.

Problem solver Phil jumped in the truck and towed the 40' trailer out (basically, he gave it a nudge so the wheels had traction again—he wasn't actually towing a 40' truck with 10 tons of minerals inside. The dually is strong, but not quite THAT strong).

Once the truck arrived, though, we faced another, more serious problem. The truck had no pallet jack, the nifty tool used to moved pallets with ease. Which meant that all the pallets were stuck in the truck, with no way to move them to the back for unloading. (Did they think we had a pallet jack? Maybe sitting next to the vacuum cleaner? What residence has a pallet jack!)

A word to the wise: should we (or YOU) face a similar situation, the wise and prudent thing that we would recommend would be to send the drivers on their way until they had a safe and sane method of moving the pallets to the back of the truck.

What actually happened: Phil connected the bucket of the tractor to a climbing rope and a sling with a carabiner in the middle, and dragged the pallets to the end of the truck. Unfortunately, one of the men helping unload didn't lock the carabiner, and the weight of the ton of materials warped the carabiner just enough that it would never lock again.

On the ninth pallet, the carabiner snapped, sending the largest portion zinging on the elastic climbing rope straight for Phil.

He sat, stunned, without realizing what had happened, while one of the drivers ran to him, asking if he was okay. He was, but as he tried to turn the steering wheel, it came up in his hand.

He looked down and realized that the flying carabiner had hit the steering wheel, traveling incredibly fast..

It warped, broke, and bent different sections of the steering wheel.

Then it deflected up and struck Phil in the chest.

Phil's re-enactment photo, showing the strike, was taken hours later. When the unloading was finally done, after well over two hours (!), Phil had to come back and just sit for a time before he was emotionally ready to do work. (Something else difficult, challenging, and frustrating happened on the eleventh pallet, but neither active participant in the scene is currently awake to tell me about it.)

The realization that it could have been his eye; his face and brain; his life: the Lord's hand of protection was strong on him today.

My poor Dad, meanwhile, had been waiting since almost the truck's arrival to plant more trees. The tractor was in use unloading, and he needed another row cut with the subsoiler before he could keep planting.

And after ending at 9pm last night, he was determined not to do that again.

So he was finally able to start planting at noon, and ended about seven. I helped for a couple of hours. Dad would mainly do the digging, and I would haul the bucket of water and the trees and the soil amendments from place to place.

Dad managed to get twice as many trees planted as yesterday, bringing the total to 180.

I also planted the last eight apple trees in my order. I could, probably, have transplanted, but with a fairly severe cold front coming in during the next four days, I think the tomatoes would rather be on the heated grow mats, rather than on the unheated, uninsulated, drafty greenhouse floor. Maybe I'm wrong; we'll see.

Finally, to follow up with yesterday's disappointment: I noticed that all my onions are doing just fine, showing no sign of wilting or stress. I did water them, but I also looked more closely at the red cabbage. In the daylight, the leaves looked almost scorched. I wonder if the minerals I top-dressed the garden with (which I had intended to incorporate into the soil but forgot during the time of tilling): I wonder if the minerals were too much for the tender plants. Maybe it was a mixture of all of the above.

I am thankful, though, that the onions are thriving. I had no backup plan for onions, and onions tend to be a kitchen staple. It would have felt devastating to lose them. (Although, in retrospect, I suppose I could have then just purchased sets. Extra expense, but a second chance.)

The Lord was good to us today.

1000 Chestnuts in Seven Days: Day One

My Dad flew in yesterday. He hopes to plant 1000 chestnut trees in the next few days on the land next door, and he was up bright and early, ready to go. Here he is holding a bag with ten little chestnut trees in it.

The first snag: the swales we cut were not quite what they could have/should have been. Based on verbal instructions from our mentor, we did what we were supposed to, but Phil and my Dad went over with the level and laid out swales according to what made sense to them spatially. One of the cuts changed by 80 feet!

That took all morning, and much of the afternoon. Then they ran out of flags, so Phil used our new subsoiler to make a trench in the earth, and then went to recut the swales with the plow. My Dad started to plant. It was about 3pm.

Meanwhile, back on our farm, after I had potted on some tomatoes, I had turned my attention to the 23 trees that arrived for me yesterday. Three were to replace trees that didn't take last year. It was pleasant and easy to dig up the dead whips and put in vibrant new trees.

Then I went to dig holes for new apple trees. Roots! Rocks! Hard soil! Sometimes it felt like I was chiseling away.

And yet, it wasn't unpleasant. Perfect transplant weather: not too cold nor hot, overcast. Joe was my companion (he climbed on the woodpile and posed at one point, when he wasn't scrambling over logs), and I saw worms in almost every hole, so it felt good. I was making progress. I got 12 apple trees planted in the afternoon. Watered, mulched (well, eight were mulched). I am awesome.

Apples are so great! A few are leafing out.

Then Phil called to let me know that my Dad had started planting, and had a few in the ground. I went the 300 yards or so to see, and in that time, my Dad planted five more trees, taking about two minutes each. How could that be!?

The subsoiler had cut a deep trench, on the down slope of the swale. (In the photo: swale on the left, wheel track in the middle, subsoiler's trench, which actually looks like a little rise.)

All Dad had to do was stick in his specially designed shovel, ratchet it back and forth a bit, pull out some dirt (maybe two shovels' full), put the tree in, and tamp around.

It helps that the roots aren't extremely large.

How easy! Had we had all these tools and know how last year, we would have saved ourselves a month and a half of heavy labor! Wow! (That's not regret speaking: more just amazement at how easy mechanization can make things.)

They had to water all 60 trees after dark, using a tank on the back of the truck, so they didn't eat dinner until 9pm, but 60 trees in a partial day of work, while still figuring systems, is remarkable progress.

We had two loads of gravel delivered to the farm, and the excavator smoothed it out. That's all the progress for this week. I need to get used to the difference in topography: where the trees were all on level before, there is now a two-foot berm right behind some of the cherry trees, like a giant orange step up the hillside.

Amid all these wonderful bits of promising progress, I was devastated to find that the little broccoli sprouts and red cabbage sprouts that I set out earlier this week have all died. I'm guessing the trace waterings we've had almost every day were not enough for them. In retrospect, I could have even set a lawn sprinkler in there with them (not worrying about evaporation), if I didn't want to hand water. (It could be frost damage, perhaps: I didn't cover these seedlings, and it hit freezing last night. My gut says lack of water, though.)

What upsets me is that I didn't even think of those little seedlings. It's like they simply didn't exist for me. I need to water the onions, in those same beds, but by the time I realized it, dark had fallen and I needed to get dinner for seven ravenous people.

I feel like I have been successfully juggling five balls (which is pretty hard to do), and one just fell and bopped me on the head.

Four are still going, and the successes at the end of the day outweigh the losses, but I didn't want that loss.

I suppose this post sort of echoes my day: mostly cheerful, pleasant, with a downer ending.

May the Lord help those 2000 onions survive, despite my scattered (mis?)management.

Ewe Lamb Number Eight

After a short while planting and transplanting today, I was reading to the boys when Phil poked his head in: "Bethlehem dropped a lamb."

Ewe lamb number eight! Bethlehem did a great job overall, although I did tie her nose at one point to trim her dirty wool tags and allow her baby to actually nurse. As a first time mother, I think Bethlehem was squeamish about anyone or anything touching her udder.

Experienced mom Acorn, though, doesn't mind her lamb kneeling to eat. What a cute thing to see!

Baby name: Capernaum, in keeping with the names of cities in Israel.

We are starting to wonder if we will be able to sell all our sheep.

Abraham, Isaiah, and Joe all go into the sheep pen to love on bum lamb Catechism, not so rejected now, as Isabella lets the baby eat and the baby doesn't wander around, pitifully bawling and trying to nurse from rams and wethers.

Abraham especially loves to just sit and hold the baby. He hasn't shown much interest in any of the animals in the past, but he is liking this one.


This was an exciting day for me, in many ways. Before we started farming, I wanted to grow nutrient-dense food, especially for people who had read the transformative Nourishing Traditions and would desire raw milk, soy-free eggs and meat, pastured chickens and beef. And today I was able to sell some food to a stranger who had asked.

What an amazing privilege: to have healthy food available for one who needed it! Yay!

Phil seeded the neighbor's land with grass seed. He is glad to be done with that seeder. (He also finished our taxes and got more hay, but that is less interesting to read about.)

And the contractors came today to level our metal building, bringing a huge excavator and a man with a laser level. The excavator man would take a scoop, and the level guy would check the height. In this way, they apparently finished the 40'x50' pad in about four hours, or something else similarly fast.

The redbuds are just peeping out pink. Maybe you can see some behind Joe's head.

Spring Has Sprung!

Celebrate with us!

A single stalk of purple asparagus.

A pink peach branch.

A lovely pink peach blossom.

A pink branch.

The peach orchard.

The leaves and flowers of a plum.

And another plum.

Purple flower in the clay.

My small garden of garlic, onions, and kale is thriving.

The longed-for peas have emerged, in four straight lines.

Even the Virginia Crabapple is leafing out.

And the clover, in spots, is so deep it covers Joe's boots.

More, More, More!

Phil was out plowing and tilling a second garden bed this morning even before I got started milking.

He made piles of roots: that must have been a section with many trees.

Shortly after breakfast, he went to pick up a new hay bale. It filled the back of the truck so that, even with both of us pushing with all our strength, it wouldn't budge. We finally got tree limbs as levers, and used those to roll the bale onto the ground. The lower pasture cows were quite happy.

The new mama cow, yet unnamed, and her nine-month calf were in the holding pen with the bull and Bianca.

The calf really doesn't belong in there, since she is old enough to go in heat, but if she were to be bred now, she would be too young to deliver safely. She needs more time to grow. The new animals are fairly skittish, though, and the mama didn't let us get close. We tried using an electric line to corral them, as we can for all our other animals, but these cows, on an Amish farm for the last year, are not trained to electric and sauntered underneath our "barrier." Hmm.

Happily, the baby hasn't nursed, and had no real allegiance to her mother. I ended up offering the baby kelp in my hand, and she ate through three handfuls, at which point she let me scratch her ears and rub her neck. We grabbed her, and haltered her, and Phil led her down to the lower pasture. The calf comes up to his waist, and it was so sweet to see them together, in the dappled sunlight along the road.

A space in my heart opened up to that little heifer. She's much more manageable than our own calves, much more tractable. Born in a "B" year, she came in a "C" year. Is there a good name with both B and C? I had tried "Baby Cow-y," but after the happy contact, I thought "Beautiful C__," and Phil said "Cleopatra." So maybe the baby is Beautiful Cleopatra, or Cleo, for short.

In the lower pasture, Phil walked her over to the hay and other cows. Along the way, she tried to bolt under the electric line there. One touch on her sensitive nose, and she was well-trained to stay away! Little Beatrice came over and played chase with her through the underbrush.

The mama cow was dehorned at the previous owners. She had her horns, then, for about seven years before they were surgically removed. In a pen with two bovines and two bucks, all still with horns, leaves her completely defenseless. She must give way even to the bucks, who she probably outweighs by about ten times. It makes me sad. (Below see Bianca's magnificent horns, and mama cow's bare head.)

My heart goes out to this mama cow. She has the saddest face I've seen in a long time. I hope our farm will become a place of rest and healing for her. As you can see from the photo below, her udder is in bad shape. She's had a hard time of it, I fear.

After seeing the cows taken care of, Phil then went to seed the neighbor's land. He spread about 1000 pounds of peas and triticale over 5 hours. He needs to do another pass to spread the grass seed, but that will happen another day.

When he was getting started, the seeder simply would not hook up correctly. He went to check on something, and I thought, "isobel Kuhn would pray, 'If this frustration is from You, I accept it. If it's not from you, I reject it.'" I prayed that, and the seeder immediately began working.

For myself, I was in the greenhouse.

I realized that the tomato and cucumber transplants go from 8 cubic inches of space to 64 cubic inches, which is enormous. It's enormous in volume, which requires much hauling of potting soil and water; enormous in footprint, which requires space in growing trays and in the greenhouse. And rather than 50 2" pots per tray, I can fit 8 4" pots easily, with two more, if I cut them down and re-form them.

I don't have space for 70 more trays in my greenhouse. I barely have space for seven. What to do?

I have no idea. Cold frames might be a possibility. It could be that I need to be content with 100 tomato plants, not 500 (which was, perhaps, a bit too ambitious anyway). Rather than being frustrated with how much I can't plant, I can be thankful for every flat I do get planted; thankful that I don't have to pay $5 per started tomato; thankful that, even without the big greenhouse, we've still gotten a lot done. (The 30 cukes, potted on below, could, possibly, be sufficient. I think. I don't really know how many cukes a single plant can grow.)

In fun growing news: we got our Wood Prairie mix of potatoes today. I already had Yukon Golds, so I added the new Yukons to the batch that I've been waiting to sprout for a couple of weeks now. Notice the difference, in the background, between our fresh potatoes and the two week old seed potatoes; notice the little sprout forming in the foreground. Very exciting.

We also got seven other varieties, in different shapes and colors.

Beautiful!

While Phil and I have been working hard, the boys have mostly been left to themselves. Joe comes with me most places, and he's still young enough to enjoy hamming it up for the camera, as here, when he picked some dandelions.

The others spend hours drawing, reading, and playing in the mud.

Joe gets his share of dirty, too, though.