Rotational Grazing 2011

As Phil rotates the sheep through the orchard, they do a great job eating down the armpit-high forage.

The stalks left on the ground are part of the "stockpiled forage." I had always assumed that graziers meant that they had fields untouched, ready to be grazed. But that's not stockpiled forage. Rather, it's leaving some of the forage alone, almost like a living hay, to regrow and regraze later. I like the living hay idea.

And it's always fun when the sheep first enter a new paddock. They are just about invisible. In less than twelve hours, they will be readily apparent.

As the sheep keep rotating through the garden, I keep removing plastic protectors and trimming extra suckers (growth from the roots) and watersprouts (shoots growing vertically out of a branch: there haven't been many of these). Phil and I were pleased to find this little nest in an apple tree. With its one pale blue egg, I'm guessing robin.

To commemorate the shearing of 2011, I submit the photo of Isabella, shorn, with her lamb Camelot. Shearing sure takes the pride out of the poor sheep.

Phil is doing the black sheep first. He has to catch the quick little guys. He is good at getting the shepherd's crook around their necks. Contrary to what I thought when we first got it, the crook does not hold the sheep for long. You have about three seconds to nab the sheep before it wriggles free, but three seconds is long enough for Phil. It's a little arm extension, a little advantage.

Once captured, Phil walks the sheep over to a canvas for some level of cleanliness and comfort, off the prickly grass. He turns the head and presses the rump to make the sheep sit down, and rocks it back. Once its front legs are off the ground, it assumes it's dead, and (mostly) sits still. The sheep generally releases both bladder and bowels, which makes shearing the nether regions quite unpleasant.

The belly wool is felted, filthy, and hard to get into. It's a relief when that part is done.

As we wait for the tractor, and as the heat index showed 106 at 3pm, we spent much of the day inside. The boys and I are getting a good amount of schoolwork done! (One of the benefits of homeschooling: punch it hard in the summer and winter, when it's hard to be outside, and take breaks in the spring and fall, when all we want is to be outside). Despite the heat, when UPS delivered new reels and electric line, we headed down slope to move the cows in the lower pasture to new paddocks.

Joe came with us, but he is a bit timid with the cows. Which makes sense: at 30 pounds, he underweighs all of them, even the littlest calves, by a goodly amount. When sweet Cleo came a little too close to him, he came up with idea, all by himself, to get in between two trees. He then called for me loudly and persistently, but what a clever way to protect himself (at least psychologically).

Gardening, Good and Bad

When it was over 90 degrees on Monday, we didn't go outside a whole lot. Memorial Day doesn't mean a whole lot to us out here, but Phil slept on and off all day. Physically, with the scything and fencing and general work he's been doing, he had mentioned multiple times how sore he was. He really used the Sunday and Monday to rest up.

I spent the day rather unsuccessfully fighting discouragement. While there is much that continues to go well on the farm, there are challenges. A fairly humorous one: Charles the pig had escaped yesterday down to the cows. Somehow he hopped the electric line Phil had strung up especially for him. Then he walked the fence line until he found the one cattle panel that Phil had removed to work on a new pig area. He slipped through there and headed for parts unknown.

Phil and I each took a gully to search for him. Phil found him quickly, and lured him with grain right back to the pig pen. No big deal. But hiking through tick-infested woods in weather topping 100 (with the heat index), drippy, sticky. Ah, well. Not all of farming is glamorous.

Also, I submit gardening news: the Good.
Joe wanted to help me pick cucumbers. He went running off and came back proudly carrying his little blue sand pail. It held about ten cucumbers, but he was thrilled to be able to help, and I was thrilled with his ingenuity and companionship. What a great little guy!

I turned those cucumbers into sliced pickles, the lacto-fermented way: some whey, some Celtic sea salt, some mustard and some dill. When we get garlic, that will be even better.

The garlic has begun to brown on the tips. Probably a few more weeks before harvest.

My one most-perfect cabbage is just about ready to turn into sauerkraut.

The strawflowers, I'm surprised to see, actually have a texture of straw: shiny, and a bit flat. Very unusual.

Some of my potato plants are ridiculously large.

And gardening news: The Bad.
Some of my potato plans are just about nonexistent. These are plants that probably heated over 90 degrees in the greenhouse. A few are valiantly struggling up through the thin soil, but it appears the grasses are winning.

And even in the healthy plants, I was horrified to find what I assume are potato beetles. I probably should have killed them, but I took the photo, and promptly headed off to get dinner, forgetting the beetle issue entirely until I noticed these photos. Oops.

And the Asian greens, among others, are going to seed. I used a few of them. They grew beautifully, and decorated my garden nicely. But now that they are going to seed, they are about done.

not up

Eat Stracciatella!

On Saturday, with more than two gallons of delicious stock in the refrigerator, and no real inspiration to use it, I found a recipe for Roman Egg Soup, or Stracciatella, in Nourishing Traditions.

2 qt. chicken stock
4 eggs
4 T. finely grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
sea salt and pepper
2 T. very finely chopped parsley

Boil stock. Whisk eggs and cheese. Add the egg-cheese mixture in a thin stream, whisking all the time. Season to taste, and stir in finely chopped parsley.

This is now my go-to meal. So simple, so incredibly tasty and rich.

Phil and Butch worked together on a project at Butch's; soon Butch will come here to help us on a project. Phil is starting to fence the final 35 panels down the south side of the property, so we can move the pigs. We need to move the pigs so we can use the gorgeous compost they are turning over for us. That compost will go in the greenhouse, and the ground should be ready before we erect the greenhouse overhead.

The amount of steps before any one thing gets done always surprises me.

I planted some bean seeds, next to my little corn sprouts, and near my melon and summer squash transplants. As time and rain and sun keep happening, my vision of the garden as an orderly, beautiful place is fast become a feeling of sheer overwhelmedness. The tomatoes, rather than climbing neatly up their strings, have sprawled all over the one foot walkways, making an almost impermeable bed of three foot greenery. It's beautiful, and I see no red yet, but I think about harvest and I shake my head.

The lovely, water-catching swales, which work well, I think, continue to grow up as weedy strips, despite my intentional planting of melons, raspberries, and sweet potatoes along them. This is perhaps the worst: I don't know how to manage them. They are so far outside the mainstream market garden that I am entirely at a loss.

The recalcitrant cabbages have again produced enormous leaves and no heads; the mustard greens are setting seed (as is the cilantro/coriander), which is all fine, but should I feel bad that it didn't get harvested and sold?

We did start to market today, and that feels like a huge step forward. Phil and I talked and talked over the price, and I grew more and more frustrated until I realized, "When I think about this endeavor, it's like there is no price that I would find fair. There is no price for living in a construction trailer for who knows how long. No price for 26 dead chickens on waking. No price for no leisure time except a few moments snatched late Sunday night."

But that's silly. As much as I can rattle off the difficulties, the (more thankful) other part of me can list the benefits, that also wouldn't show up in the price: the interesting animals we get to interact with, the interesting skills we've acquired (or tried to). The opportunity to eat what this bit of earth produced. The early morning sun and the brilliant stars at night.

Once I removed my emotions from the pricing discussion, the conversation became much easier.

The 500th Post: A Celebration of Past and Future

Recently I heard a lecture by Nicholas Gonzalez, a physician in New York who is having amazing success with protocols for pancreatic cancer, and other, usually lethal, disease. He offered many insights in his 6-hour presentation, including reasons why the blood type diet might work (and it has nothing to do with cavemen and evolution, despite what the Eat Right 4 Your Type book might claim).

Rather practically, he suggests that we would be well-served to eat the foods of our ancestors. If your ancestors came from Hawaii, a diet low in fat and meat and high in fruit would be a good choice. But if your ancestors came from Alaska, the Hawaiian diet would be a poor choice: you would need a lot of animal fat and meat. The Mediterranean Diet is a great diet for you, if your family came from the Mediterranean. The Chinese diet: good if you're from China.

Which made me wonder: what did my ancestors eat?

My Grandma turned 90 this year. She grew up on a farm in Holland, and she and my Grandpa immigrated to the US in the early 1950s. She lives alone, in her own house, and is still "sharp as anything" (or so my mother reports). I wrote and asked her what they ate when she was growing up.

As far as I can remember, yes, we drank milk from the cow. Bread for breakfast and for supper, potatoes, vegetables for dinner. We ate meat we slaughtered, a pig mostly, so plenty of bacon. Every dinner my mother would fry bacon and the fat she put in a small bowl and was placed in the center of the table so everybody could dip his or her potato in that fat to eat.

Bread we must have bought because I cannot remember that we baked it. Cheese my father made, especially during the war. We had chickens and a vegetable garden. Also fruit trees.

We did make sauerkraut in a big tub, which was white cabbage sliced and a big rock on top. In the long run it became sauerkraut.

We had raspberries and gooseberries. I cannot remember if we drank goat milk. During the war we slaughtered every calf that was born. Otherwise the Germans took them.

I read this in amazement: I am my Great-Grandmother! I save the bacon drippings and fry the boys' potatoes in them! I have raspberries growing, drink milk from the cow, kill pigs. I have fruit trees and raspberries (hopefully productive one day). I make sauerkraut!

My sons are eating the diet of at least two of their eight great-grandparents.

May they live into their 90s and beyond and tell stories of their mother, who made sauerkraut and bacon.

Tractor Woes

Before we moved to the land, we wondered what farmers did all day after they get their land in working order, more or less. Move cows, harvest fruit, chop firewood, write articles and go to conferences in the winter. What else, though?

We had a hint before, when our chipper/shredder broke repeatedly the first year, but now we know. Fix equipment.

Phil went to bring the cows hay today and the lift arm of the tractor didn't work. This has happened before and self-repaired, but this time, no improvement was forthcoming. Apparently, tractors need maintenance work every 200 hours, and we've put about that on since we purchased ours. Time to bring the tractor to the shop.

Which brings up the interesting question of conveying it thence. A tractor shouldn't drive on main roads. The repair shop offered a pickup and delivery fee, which would run about $400. Happily, though, Butch has a truck and trailer. How do farmers survive without helpful neighbors with many toys? I don't know. (They pay the $400, and count their blessings that they don't have to buy a new truck and trailer, perhaps.)

That took much of the day, by the time Butch's tractor delivered hay to the cows, and returned to his home, our tractor went to Butch's for towing, and all the other swaps (hay spear on, hay spear off, trailer on, trailer off). I was happy to read to the boys peaceably in the home, since that sort of thing is like skiing: a whole lot of spent time with not much to show.

Checking his watch, Phil prayed as he left that he would reach the shop on time. They closed at 5pm, and he rolled in at 4:55pm. He returned home, thanking the Lord for the timing.

And for the rain, that allowed him not to worry too much about the irrigation that isn't happening.

On his return at 6:30, Phil was getting a drink when he noticed that it looked like we only had four pigs. I chuckled, since often a pig will bury itself in the hay so much that it remains unseen, but, no, Charles the boar really didn't seem to be in the pen. We slopped the pigs and four large chunks came. Could Charles have suffocated under the mound of hay? I hopped in the pen and gingerly poked the hay with a fork, but he wasn't there.

No, he was down with Fern, Catherine, and Snowman, and despite being tempted with whey, he showed no inclination to follow Phil back up the hill.

So we put up a second electric line that we hope will contain him overnight. By tomorrow morning, he may be more interested in feed.

Fern's udder is getting a bit bigger, and Phil watched her back end contract and expand, but her teats remain wrinkled. I have heard that when they become smooth, birth is imminent, so we continue to watch.

I confess to a certain planting exhaustion at this point. There is still plenty to plant, but I found my mind asking, "What's the point? These melons will all die without floating row covers." So I went up to make breakfast, and just didn't find the time to return.

And because we have no tractor, the two sections of land that are mostly prepped cannot be tilled yet. Perhaps I should take this respite as a gift, hoping to be in a better frame of mind when I have fields to plant the last 80 pounds of potatoes, the winter squashes, the sunflowers.

What's in the ground, with the possible exception of the melons and summer squashes (which are mostly growing, but suffering bug pressure), grows well. A second planting of cilantro, and kale, backed by the final tomatoes.

I saw today that the first planting of corn is peaking up from next to the transplanted squashes/melons.

These are the not largest tomato plants, but they look so orderly!

And even the 200 sweet potato slips that I planted in the depleted subsoil on the tops of swales are holding their own. They looked SO bad by the time I planted most of them, I checked a few days back with trepidation, and was thrilled to see little vines standing upright every foot. Good for them!

In the lull before tomato harvest, the boys and I are doing some school. We started reading one of my childhood favorites today, By the Great Horn Spoon!. The boys were supposed to read this to themselves, but I know they will love it, too, and decided to read it aloud to share it with them. Jadon and Isaiah both laughed, predictably, at the Captain almost setting his beard on fire, but I was surprised to hear even 5-year-old Abraham chuckle. I love that part of homeschooling.

Saturated Fat Does Not Cause Heart Disease

Do you know how many people died of heart attacks in 1900, four years before Crisco was introduced?

NONE!

Everyone ate lard and butter, and their hearts were fine. So let's not listen to the massive marketing campaign, now in its second century, to persuade people not to eat the healthy fats eaten worldwide for millennia.

Crisco, made of the industrial waste product cottonseed oil (the name comes from "Crystallized Cottonseed Oil"), with hydrogen added to make it stable at room temperature, was billed as a lard substitute. Originally created by brothers-in-law Proctor and Gamble, who had made soaps and candles with lard and tallow, they saw their profit margin increase dramatically by turning cottonseed waste into substitute lard. But with Edison's invention of the electric light bulb, the need for candles diminished. What to do with all that cottonseed oil?

Well, if it can be used as lard in candles, why not use it as lard in cooking?

And because it is cheap, cheap, cheap to make, they had plenty of money to spin the marketing any way they wanted. Certainly cheaper than butter and lard, they could call it a "health food." Economical and healthy.

And, when people started dying of heart attacks fifteen years later, that was such a long time, it was hard to draw the connection. And when industry did draw the connection, they simply turned up the cry: "Butter is the cause!"

The farmers were out milking, and didn't have much money to fight the marketing juggernaut.

But we have the internet now, so this farmer is speaking out.

If you love your family, don't feed them Crisco. Even if the hydrogenation process wasn't extremely harmful, the cotton itself is one of the biggest genetically modified crops. Don't eat Roundup Ready cotton.

Eat butter. Eat lard. Live well.

[Summarized from a fascinating presentation by Kevin Brown of Liberation Wellness, presented at the Weston A. Price Foundation's annual conference in November 2010.]

Time to Break Free

With no rain predicted for at least the next 24 hours, I finally managed to spray the chestnut trees with deer repellant (Plantskydd by name). I had finished about a third when I suddenly heard Phil call me faintly (the acoustics of where I was standing must have been just right). "I need you!"

So I dropped the sprayer and ran. Based on the direction of the call, and the fact that he sounded urgent but not frantic, I figured no one was injured. Perhaps the pigs had finally broken free?

And, yes, the pigs had broken out. Phil, up working on fencing, came down for a drink and suddenly wondered where the pigs were ... in the garden! Incredibly, the five pigs didn't actually do any damage. They were grazing on the grass around the edges, not trampling my tomato plants or smooshing my lettuce. Phil had managed to corral the five with the lure of whey, but had temporarily misplaced the wire needed to hold the cattle panels together. While he ran to get a wire substitute, Chunky broke free again. So Phil called me.

It's not easy to hold pigs in. If they had really determined to break free, they probably could have, with just my weight standing on the fence. They could have lifted me. Happily, they were not fiercely determined, and Phil wired them in successfully.

He realized later that he had simply forgotten to feed them this morning. Without adequate communication with negligent farmers, they took matters into their own trotters!

The other unusual animal experience today was when Phil went up to shear another black sheep and found Isabella flat on her back. We haven't seen that before, but a quick internet search reminded me of what I had heard as a child: a sheep on its back cannot get onto its feet again. So a quick tug on her legs, and Isabella staggered off, and began grazing within a few minutes. How she happened to fall on her back, I'm not sure. Those four inch variations of height don't seem to be that hazardous.

The weather is HOT: 92, and feels a bit hotter. Phil and I spent the hours from 1pm to 4pm inside in the air conditioning. Then I went back out to finish spraying while Phil finishing stringing fence.

The spraying was physically strenuous, with a four gallon backpack sprayer without padding on the hip area. Ouch! Many, many of the chestnut trees have been chewed, though whether by deer or by bugs, I'm not sure. There were about 20 that appeared dead, but that's only two percent of the trees. Most had been chewed, and most have been overshadowed by the ryegrass, triticale, and field peas. As time passed, I became fairly good at spotting the trees in the midst of runaway growth.

I was much relieved when the project was finished. I went and showered, trying to get rid of the terrible itching on all exposed body parts. The plants fight back!

Asian Salad and Beginner's Bouquet

The heat of summer has arrived! Phil ran necessary errands in town while I worked inside, camped in front of the oscillating fan. When he got back, he stepped inside, said, “I think it’s time for the air conditioner,” and immediately installed it. Life is livable.

Even when we got a call that the turkey accident damage will run over $3000. (Life almost felt unlivable there for a moment for me when I heard that number. What a horrific amount of money to spend on such a stupid bird! How many thousands of eggs would we need to sell to make up that loss? Enough to feed two people farm fresh food for a year. Unbelievable.)

I took the Boardman feeders out for the bees. They are no longer clustered around the entrance to the hive, so I trust they are expanding properly now.

The warm weather is making the sheep pant. It’s shearing time. Phil sheared Isabella today. Last year, that three-hour ordeal was published in sheep! magazine. This year, it took about an hour, and I didn’t even go to see his work.

It was a good day of Spring Forth food. After homegrown eggs with lard for breakfast, Phil and I shared an Asian salad for lunch. We didn’t raise the olive oil, maple syrup, or vinegar for the dressing, but we raised everything else: chicken, snow peas, Asian greens, cucumbers, cilantro, red onions. It was a recipe I found online and I was pretty stoked to realize that we have every main ingredient growing here now.

Dinner was our own pork chops from our Berkshire hog. We haven't tried any of those yet, and I was ecstatic. I'm not a confident pork chop cook, but just putting the chops in a bit of lard and cooking over high heat, flipping three times total, produced succulent chops with delicious fat and no off flavor. I've never had meat like that, and I can't wait to have some again.

Our pigs are doing a great job turning up the well-manured sheep dry lot, and the compost pile that has been sitting for a year. Phil sprayed them down today, and Charles the boar was so happy, he rolled over on his back and let the water fall on him. Phil loves the pigs. (They intimidate me too much to love them, but I like them and am happy for their presence here.)

I also picked some flowers today and attempted my first bouquet. Flower arranging is an art that I don't possess yet, but I hope I'll get better with practice. And, as the plants get bigger, I'll have longer stems to work with. For now, though, i just desperately want the color out of the garden and into my house, where I can admire it.

The strawflowers aren't quite opened, and the gomphrena has such delicate coloring, it delights me. Basil as a filler works well; cilantro as a filler does not (too floppy too quickly).

Did I mention the lacto-fermented beets I made last week? I made both beet kvass, a powerful liver detoxifier, and lacto-fermented beets. The latter is so delicious, I made almost a gallon more. After cooking the beets and peeling the beets (which I may try to do before cooking in the future, since cooked beets take forever to peel!), I julienne the beets and put them in a jar with whey from our cow, Celtic sea salt, cardamom seeds (one of my favorites!) and water. After about three days, the beets taste like cardamom-beet pickles. Even Phil, who objects to the earthy "dirt" flavor of beets, thinks these are good.

And you can't beat (beet?) the color!

Pea Pickers

Phil finally fell asleep at 4am. He was up at 6:30, though, and plugged away doggedly at a range of tasks all day, with a much better attitude than I would have had, if I was running on less than three hours sleep. I was impressed.

He unloaded over a ton of feed, then moved it 15 feet away, dodging large hay bales. He brought hay bales to both sets of cows. He picked up all the cattle panels he recently took down along the road. We talked about the minimal amount of fencing we need to get the cows grazing as soon as possible, and he ordered more grazing electric wire. The 1300’ we have on a reel isn’t enough.

In moving the sheep, he noticed that the apple trees are producing suckers (shoots up from the ground). He pulled off a white plastic wrapper that we’ve had for mouse, vole, and rabbit protection, only to find that the graft of the tree was rotting and ant-infested. He pulled another plastic wrapper and found the same thing. So he pulled wrappers and pruned suckers, as well as removing fruit and leaves or twigs that appeared distressed. He didn't get through all 300 apple trees, but made good progress where the sheep had already grazed.

We moved the next batch of broiler chicks outside (currently we have 94 out of the original 102 yet living). We moved the 14 (or is it 15?) ducks in with the laying hens. The guinea asserted its dominance and the ducks stuck together, quacking.

The ducks have an entirely different body than the chickens. It is odd to pick them up. Their torsos are squishy and feathery (so soft, with all the down); their wings almost nonexistent, their feet kicking. Rather than carrying them around dangling by the legs, as you can with chickens, we boxed them up, except for the largest which we carried under our arms. They tried to bite my hands as I carried them, with their little bills. That amused me.

When opening hives, the beekeeper is well advised to go in on biodynamic fruit or flower days, and to do so between 10 and 3, the earlier the better, and only in sunny weather. More bees are out foraging in the middle of the day, and I’m not sure why morning is better than afternoon, but it is. So right at ten I suited up and headed down. The bees have been clustering around the entrance to the hive. They are over crowded, and not utilizing the space in the upper “deep” (or hive body box).

Gunther had told me to take frames out from near the edges, like the second and ninth frames, and swap them for the empty middle two frames on the second level. This will draw the bees up properly.

With a swollen, clumsy pointer finger, and slightly puffy hand from my sting yesterday, I was a little concerned about my dexterity in handling the frames. The Celadon hive was a bit touchy, so much so that I ended up taking two frames from one side and closing it up again as quickly as possible.

The Celestial hive continues to try to grow bee frames from the bottom up. They had made a beautiful half circle, working against gravity. I scraped it off, apologizing. Each worker bee can make eight flakes out of her abdomen each day, and it takes nearly a million flakes to make one frame of wax. To take even a small amount represents a great effort on the part of the bees, and I want to be sensitive to that.

Happily, no stings (which makes sense, because I had almost no body exposed). I moved four frames up in the Celestial hive, in hopes that they will build well and correctly from now on.

I was in the garden and found something I had never seen: a fungus that looks like a pile of eggs.

The boys had an outstanding day. They all helped me pick peas (even Joe, who would point out peas to Abraham, who would pick the peas and hand them to Joe, who would put them in the bucket).

I think we all had fun.

Jadon even noticed me with the camera, and allowed me to take his picture without grimacing. He picked into his shirt pouch, then would dump 50 or so peas at a time into the larger bucket.

Bitsy, always eager for an adventure, came, too. She would eat peas out of the bucket. Or at least chew them. I don't know if she swallowed. (I did give her chicken heads after using them in my stock. She gobbled those with good will!)

Isaiah found a tadpole swimming in the pond. Then he found a bunch of them, and somehow strained water or something with my kitchen towels and glass storage containers. I’m not sure what, but it appeared creative and scientific, of a sort. (With all the rain, we have frogs and toads all over right now. Isaiah carried around two he found under his bike, until he found one the size of a Clementine orange. That one won out.)

Our new school books arrived today, and Abraham and I read the stories and poems from the first two weeks. He was pretty pleased with himself. (And I was pleased that Jadon and Isaiah hung around and listened, too.)

Isaiah and Abraham did good, creative work with pattern blocks, and then Jadon and Isaiah both learned a few pages on the recorder. By dinner time, they were playing (very simple) duets. I’d hear them count “3, 4” and then begin, and it was, overall, just so, so precious. Their excitement, their ability to work together, the absence of competitiveness.

We Process Freedom Rangers and Love It

When I woke at 6, I thought, "Oh, shoot! We were supposed to get up at 5 to process chickens before the flies came out en masse."

I woke Phil, and although he wasn't excited about the prospect of both gathering all the needed gear and then starting, he did the chores while I attempted to assemble equipment.

When we processed chickens last fall, neither the scalder or plucker worked. Phil basically plucked by hand after an imperfect scalding experience, since the plucker broke wings and legs and otherwise destroyed the Cornish Crosses. So we were not expecting much.

Today, though, the scalder lit, first try. We figure it must have been just breezy enough last year to blow out the flame. Every time. Maybe it was just our prayers, since the outdoor stove is absolutely not working, so we couldn't have rigged up the same metal tub scalder. And the RV stove would have been too small and crowded. The Lord provides.

So Phil killed the first two birds, and we put them in the plucker and watched in amazement as the feathers flew off perfectly, leaving pale yellow skin and no feathers, no breakage.

I am the skilled eviscerator. This has always been a fairly nasty job, with stinky inner organs to contend with, fear of gall bladder breakage, and many pounds of unusable parts for the pigs or the compost pile.

So, with our new birds this year, the Freedom Rangers, I was thrilled to find that there was no objectionable odor at all. Even when "femat [fecal material] happens," there was no awful smell.

I had used the very clear instructions by Herrick Kimball to process chickens the first three times. This time, I had read an article by Harvey Ussery on how to process chickens while retaining their nutrient-dense parts. So besides the standard necks and feet for stock, I made stock today with chicken heads (the beaks just pop off after scalding!), and saved the gizzards, heart, and liver for some future experiments.

The actual killing and processing of the birds was done by noon. It took two more hours to do another cleaning, and then to weigh and stuff the large birds into bags. The largest bird was 5 pounds, 9 ounces, and that is a BIG bird for a gallon ziploc. We need to look into other options.

Then I dealt with peeling the feet, and didn't really get done with chicken processing until after 5. And that was only 23 birds! I'm not sure what we'll do when we have 125 a month to deal with.

Flavor, though, was excellent. Tender, succulent. The white meat was unlike anything I've had before. It wasn't at all pink, but it wasn't at all dry or stringy. A very new experience.

In other news, I went to feed the bees more sugar water, and as I took the feeder out, a bee flew up and stung my finger. No warning, no provocation. Only minutes before, a bumble bee had lightly stung Joe's shoulder, so perhaps there was something odd in the atmosphere right then that made the bees more aggressive. (My right ring finger, in case you can't tell from the photo. At this point, I can't even straighten it entirely, and the rest of my hand is swelling up.)

Isaiah wanted me to take a picture of his new tent. "You can post it on your blog," he informed me.

And Joe made a sandwich for breakfast. Other children make mud pies. He makes mud sandwiches. I expect they taste about the same.

Expanding the Apiary

Since the bees are thriving, I took a day to attend a bee workshop. I went to the first lecture last year, in my one day of bee keeping bliss, and learned so much. This year, I was thrilled to see that I was not the youngest. There were older beekeepers, but of the 25 or so of us, there were seven college students, who were all involved with their campuses organic gardens, and wanted to learn more about apiaries. They were passionate and enthusiastic, and I am grateful that the enthusiasm for bees is spreading to younger people.

The topic of conversation was expanding the apiary. I don't know how most bee keepers manage this, but we learned that the best way is to let the bees swarm. When we went out to the farm, there was a swarm, an enormous swarm, three times the size of a normal swarm, hanging on a new peach tree. Totally unprotected, Gunther and his wife, with an experience beekeeper holding the catch box, bopped the tree and the swarm fell in.

Sadly, we think the swarm had been out for a day already. They were more irritable than expected, and the beekeeper got perhaps 60 stings, Vivian perhaps forty. Most of the viewers had a sting or two; thankfully, I was standing in a different spot and avoided them altogether. I swell up so badly!

This was absolutely the worst case scenario. Most workshops Gunther holds end without a single sting. But everyone chewed plantain and put it on the stings. The worst-hit beekeeper didn't look much worse for the wear in the end: minimal swelling, despite a bald pate and bare arms.

It was good to see this, though. That was the worst case; no one died or was even unduly stressed. Some people might have an eye swell shut, but then, I heard that swollen eyes aren't that big a deal. One girl mentioned that a sting in the nose is worse, and Gunther agreed. I cannot even imagine. (Shiver!)

I had had so many stings last year, and it broke my heart because I felt like I approached the bees with love and respect, but they were rejecting me. It restored me, though, to hear that that happens. Even Gunther, yesterday, sustained a few stings as he opened various hives. One on the ear. One on the finger. He didn't get upset or feel like a failure; he just carried on.

He did say, though, that if a bee gets caught in your hair, you need to squash it as fast as you can, because you will never get it out. "A single bee is like a blood cell, a small part of the organism." Later in the workshop that happened to me, right on the wisps on my forehead, and I squashed it against my head. No sting, no guilt.

Besides catching a swarm, you can also allow your bees to artificially swarm. Once a hive has a capped queen cell, an indication that the hive will swarm (and a queen cell is totally different than a worker or drone cell, looking almost like an olive at the bottom of a frame), then find the queen and catch her. Take a box and, with about eight frames, vigorous shake the bees, frame by frame, into the box, until you have about four pounds of bees. Then put the queen in, close them up overnight and put them in a cool place. The next day, late in the day, put them in a new, empty beehive, where they will make rapid progress on making new comb, maybe six frames in a week.

Then see if there are queen cells on two different frames (or more). If there are two frames, put a frame in a new box and leave a frame, then split the frames of honey and brood and, from one hive, now you have three healthy, happy hives. And other than the (considerable) expense of buying new hives, you can build the apiary rapidly.

So I had an interesting day, and Phil had a restful day with the boys, doing many little tasks (like vacuuming the RV) that make life nicer.

Multi-Task Friday

When Phil moves the sheep each day (and he's getting faster every time), they have eaten down a huge amount of the weed load. The line across the photo is the line where they grazed down. (The sheep are grazing in the far right: they're hard to see until they eat more.)

One of the innovations he learned at his grazing class was not to cut down the residue after the sheep go past. Instead, leave it standing upright. I think this is similar to the advice we had that, if we want a tree we cut down to actually die from the roots, to cut it off about three feet high. The roots will spend so much effort to get sap up those three feet, it will grow exhausted quickly. Whereas if you cut it off at the base, the roots have plenty of oomph to get the growth restarted. By leaving the weeds tall but stark, they will have a harder job of resprouting.

Phil is very pleased: it all looks like what he learned about, even down to the mashed down weeds where the sheep lay down.

Phil is also trying to move the laying hens more frequently. As soon as the ground around him begins to look bare or abused,

he moves their pen a bit further on, so they have a delicious feast of flowers and greens.

Phil is in the uncomfortable position of having only three things on his plate: fencing the perimeter so we can graze the cows, putting up the greenhouse, and putting up the metal building. Every one a huge project. Fencing has priority, so he is working to get the electric line hooked up. That requires putting up two more corner braces along the road.

The first one he did makes the entrance to our property look more open than it did before, with the cattle panels. I like it.

I planted the last of the raspberries, along the base of a hazelnut-planted swale. That meant I had to face my hazelnut disappointment square on. Of the 114 plants we put in the ground while my Mom and sister were here, 41 have green buds or leaves. That's a really disappointing survival rate. (The ones I planted first came through at about 100%. I'm guessing my failure to heel them in properly made a huge difference. Again, disappointing to receive healthy plants and not care for them well.)

I also planted squash and watermelon transplants. These ones had just started to reach the borders of their soil blocks (for the most part), so I'm hoping they will do well and grow happily (a few, on transplanting, simply keeled over. Those may have been held a bit too long). There are four rows of squash and melons, and I planted corn between in five rows (like a hand: the fingers are the corn, the spaces are the squash). Soon I'll plant bean seeds next to the corn, and have a three sisters patch. Hopefully surrounded by sunflowers, so it will be a four sisters patch, which, I've heard, is more accurate.

The globe amaranth has more blooms, each about the size of a marble. A stunning hot pink and white combo is my current favorite.

But there's also dark orange, light orange and light pink (from the same plant). They are the earliest of my intentional flowers, and I appreciate them.

Joe is walking next to the strawflowers, planted next to tomatoes. The strawflowers have shot up, but no blooms yet.

One or two of the borage, planted in the tomato beds to hopefully repel bad bugs have started to bloom. I had hoped for a good many more, but I had a miserable germination rate: 15% or less.

The surprising food for me is cucumbers. The plants just keep producing. I pick them daily for our salads, and think I've got them all, and I go the next day and find more. It's amazing! I didn't think I was a cuke person, but I like these ones.