Two Years and a Few Days

This last Tuesday was our two year anniversary on the land. This last year has had a lot of death, a lot of disappointments, and not a whole lot of completion. Part of a greenhouse, part of the base of a metal building, part of the fencing up. A market garden that got halfway to harvest, the idea of a dwelling that isn't even halfway realized on paper. A struggling orchard, a weedy patch for future production, milk cows that aren't producing much milk (and one that died), sheep with a second year of 50% losses, chickens now finishing their second month of molting.

But beneath that rather depressing list of halfway accomplishments, the reality is

• we have another year of experience


• we have the layout of a garden, beautifully in line with the contours of the earth


• we are halfway DONE with several projects that will be a boon once completed, maybe by the end of 2011


• most lambs didn't die at birth, but in odd accidents later; our birth rates were much better


• Phil has learned much about rotational grazing, and practiced it


• we've had four calves born this year, and our herd has grown from five to twelve in the last year


• the bees did not leave in the first three days


• we know that market gardening is really not the best enterprise for our family


• we have at least the start of an idea for a dwelling, which is more than we had a year ago


• we have all grown spiritually.

With such a list of progress, it has clearly been a profitable year, in every way except financially. And though I might wish to have a profitable enterprise right now, the Lord provides. We get to enjoy the ride.

I Find Arcturus

The long awaited rain came, a little, Saturday night. It fell gently, a tenth of an inch, and we woke Sunday morn to grey skies, which soon gave way to another gentle sprinkle. While a bit more than a tenth isn't nearly the inch a week that healthy plants appreciate, any moisture from the sky was enough to make us rejoice. Even the bees today were actually flying around their hives, rather than sitting, listlessly, by their entries.

Phil has been moving the sheep. They grazed the apple orchard twice this year so far, and now he's moved them into their winter dry lot and the garden area that had onions (now harvested). The weeds have grown up significantly, and the sheep are going to clear it for us. They are round and happy, and I am pleased to see that they are eating down the grasses and weeds.

Saturday morning, our friend Tyson brought us a new trailer we purchased from him. The plan is to put the 300 gallon water tank into it. We need the tank to water the cows each day, but since it's in the back of the truck right now, the truck isn't useful for much else. Three hundred gallons weighs over a ton, so we don't move that tank very often. It will be nice to have the back of the truck freed up for other uses.

Phil and I had a long and productive conversation this afternoon. I had reached a point where I wanted to know what the vision is for the year. Where are we going? What do we want to accomplish. And Phil had a good answer: finish the greenhouse (with about 20 steps, including several I need to do, and what the order ought to be); deal with the metal building, probably starting in about a month; weed and tend the garden, perhaps planting perennials; continue fencing.

It feels good to know, at least a bit, where we're headed.

And with that, the boys and I took advantage of the clear, warm night, only a day or so since the new moon, and we found constellations. I remember trying to do this once before, but it was winter, and cold, and no one had very good success, and we had to run back to the house a good many times. It was difficult enough, I haven't tried it since, even though we have the best possible book on the subject: H.A. Rey's The Stars.

Tonight, though, the older two boys and I had a great time. We found the Big Dipper, and from there, Polaris (the North Star), much higher in the sky than I expected. We found the Dragon, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and, so happily, Arcturus, one of only 21 stars of the first magnitude (greatest brightness) in the sky.

We had an enthusiastic, spirited time for a couple of hours, and my decades-long wish to be able to spot and name the constellations has started to come to fruition.

It slipped my mind last week, but as we drove to church, the cars ahead of us stopped. We saw smoke billowing, and the rumor came back to us: a truck is on fire. The road to church is quite curvy, but we could spot flames occasionally. As we sat, suddenly there came a fire truck. Within two minutes, there was a cloud of grey smoke from the chemical spray, the fire was out, the traffic resumed, and we passed an old beater truck, burnt to a crisp.

It isn't often that you get to witness a complete episode: trauma-rescue-resolution. I wanted to get teary, but Phil pointed out an interesting fact. In the ten or so vehicles ahead of us, two were RVs. There aren't usually any RVs on that road, so this was a bizarre coincidence. "I bet both those RVs had fire extinguishers," he said. "But no one thought to use them. If they had caught that fire quickly enough, it wouldn't have flared so that the fire department had to come."

It gave us a passing thought to get a little fire extinguisher for the car.

As a funny postscript, at church right after we sang a song with the line, "Your love is like fire that burns for all to see." At the time, I thought, "And I am just that burned out truck," and faster than words came a vision of fire with pure gold coming out. Let me be that gold.

This Little Piggy Cried Wee Wee Wee (all the way home)

Phil and I were up at 5:15, ready to deal with pigs. We had closed the first two pigs in the front of the trailer when we loaded the third, and the front two slept the night through. Connie, alone in the back, was a bit more restless. For perspective: the cattle trailer.

And here she is, looking out the top slat!

Phil had a good bit of maneuvering, while I ran support as he shuffled tractor and truck, but by 6:45, I sent Phil and his three charges off with a merry heart. Three less pigs! The joy!

The early morning farm was beautiful. The forecast was 100, so I enjoyed the cooler morning weather.

The few apples we have this year glowed in the first rays of sun.

Our new Barred Rock Rooster crowed.

The ducks, always birds of feather flocking together (so that even their heads stand still in the same way) waddled and quacked.

The wasp nest that was so perfectly formed and small at the beginning of the year has swollen to larger than a basketball. It's still a thing of wonder, but no longer vase-like.

With such a marvelous start to the day, I was utterly taken aback when, two hours later, Phil called. He had just unloaded the pigs when he saw a small sign. "It says here that they don't accept intact boars, and if you leave one, they'll call you to come back and get it."

Well our Chunky is nine months old. The woman we bought him from said she never cuts (castrates) her boars. Another pig owner mentioned he was about to kill a boar and get 600 pounds of sausage.

It never crossed my mind that boars would not be accepted at the abattoir. I never read anything in all the books I've looked through; the person I've spoken to at the abattoir several times never mentioned intact boars might be a problem. In the moment, it was devastating, devastating news. I was happy Phil was there dealing with the inspector, because I would have burst into uncontrollable sobs, I'm afraid. After so much aggravation, to find that Phil would have to bring a pig home ... it was almost past enduring.

But, happily, while Phil drove two hours home, I had a chance to gather my wits. This is not the end of the world. Chunky returned to his home. We'll kill him in the next few weeks. What we'll do with Buttercup, Charles, and six little piglets was the topic of discussion, and we did not reach a decent resolution. Other than that somehow we need to catch the three little boy piglets and cut them.

There are hard things in farming.

But good things happen, too. Phil got the tractor fixed. After reading an article in Mother Earth News about The Ten Worst Garden Weeds, Phil said, "I think we have nine of those." And reading about quack grass, crab grass, and Bermuda grass, I was inspired to get those out of at least my perennial asparagus bed. The article said that the only way is by hand: hoeing and tilling just cut up the roots and make it more happy to spread. So I've been weeding my asparagus.

And that's rather cathartic. For today, those weeds don't find a resting place in my garden. I like that.

Phil and I had given the cows a large area to graze yesterday. It had a partial hay bale, and a little section of grass they had missed last time. So I was startled to milk Catherine today: after a few days of flaccid udder and 1/4 cup, her udder again looked lush, and she gave over a half gallon. It was a stark enough contrast that I went looking for Clover, to make sure he hadn't died in the night.

I know where he rested yesterday, and he wasn't there anymore. I only had the will to push through the brambles for so long, and I never did spot him, but Catherine wasn't bawling, so I suspect he's just fine, keeping cool in the brush.

Three Is Infinitely More Than Zero

Today was the day I've been looking forward to with eagerness and trepidation: the day to bring the four pigs to the processor. After reading up on the web about how to easily load pigs, Phil had withheld feed yesterday, expecting that they would merrily trip into the cattle trailer when he put the feed in there today. He had set up the trailer, put up the ramp, and laid out the fencing around it, so all would be ready this morning.

But, as we should have expected, nothing goes as easily as it should.

Phil tried to put a bucket over the head of one and back it into the trailer. No go. He tried enticing. No way. It was impossible.

So next Phil go the chainsaw, cut down the little trees and brush near the trailer, and then put up cattle panels around the pen, trying to make a secure holding area, where we could do a better job forcing the pigs into the trailer.

We got the pigs most of the way in, and then they pushed their way out. We tried again. The second time, we actually had all four pigs in the pen, and Phil got them totally wired in, secured with strong T-posts every few feet. It seemed impermeable, but how to get the pigs onto the ramp?

I was going to get smaller sections of cattle panels, and a pallet, in order to push the pigs, when Charles rooted underneath strongly enough to actually escape. I am happy I didn't see it, but I heard Phil's cry, and I met him a few minutes later. He said, "I'm done! When I wanted to start punching and kicking the two escaping pigs, I decided I needed to be done for now, so I let the other two go, too."

That was 11:30am. We took a break, and tried again, but we couldn't even get the pigs near the pen in two laps, and they showed no interest in food or drink, only in sleep, so we gave up for the time. Phil called the processor, and they said, "You aren't the only one today. The pigs just aren't loading."

Which made us feel a little better, but not much.

Although my feet were not painful any more (I only had one blister from the burn, and it was so little painful, I at first thought it was a poison ivy patch!), I had been jabbed badly by a pig, and have a raised bruise on my leg about two inches long from the first encounter with the pigs. Ouch!

Oh—and I got to hold a piglet. It had been mashed between two of the bigger pigs, so I grabbed it. It felt like a brick: very, very solid. It wasn't cuddly at all. So much for Charlotte's Wilbur.

In the evening, Phil went back to the pigs. He had read that some load pigs at night because it's cooler and the pigs aren't as freaked out. In short order, he corralled three pigs (not Charles, who had forced his way out this morning and was much more chary than the others; we had already decided that if we could get three, we'd settle for that). Those three were pretty hungry and thirsty, and with some enticing, and one pig that loaded, bolted, and loaded again, we have three pigs in the trailer as of 8pm.

We need to get the tractor's tire fixed, and get the tractor hooked up to the trailer. After the tractor pulls the trailer uphill, we need to hook the trailer to the truck, and then drive the truck up to the processor. We have until tomorrow, 9am. But with three pigs loaded, infinitely more than the zero we had at 7pm, we are determined.

A Problem with a Pot of Soup

Happily, Phil was functional enough on Tuesday to do his chores (including move the sheep). We had gone to the Bush's house on Monday night so he could take a bath, and I added a pound of salt and a pound of baking soda to the water. He said the water turned a shocking shade of yellow-orange (he had just bathed the morning before, and hadn't been outside much since then). I'm guessing he was detoxing something, as he started to feel dramatically better almost immediately.

But despite feeling better, he was still recouping his strength, so we didn't get much done besides basic maintenance.

We lost the rain roulette this last week. While the county south of us was pounded with two inches of rain, and the land north of us was also drenched, we watched the lightning streak all around, without a drop. Three days in a row: dark clouds rising, wind picks up, nothing on the ground but more dry hardness and dust.

Catherine continues to be a frustration. She was well hidden yesterday, but after fighting brambles, I found her, before her calf did! So we got a nice 3/4 gallon of milk. Today, we didn't find her before her calf did, and we got barely 3/4 of a cup. Phil has boosted the voltage running to the perimeter wire, so hopefully she will feel more compelled to stay in, and not require bramble searching any more. I look forward to a time when I'm not searching, milking, and moving cows for an hour and a half.

To round out the list of discouragements for the last two days, Phil moved the pig ramp down for tomorrow's expected haul to the butcher. And he broke the valve on a different tire, so he had the second flat in two weeks.

Just after he did that, I was making tomato soup for dinner. As I was pouring the pot into our bowls, somehow the potholders lost their grip. I have a vivid impression of the eight cups of steaming liquid balancing on the edge of the table, as I jumped back shrieking, just before scalding liquid splashed my feet and leg.

After I stopped screaming and hyperventilating, I took a bunch of homeopathic remedies and soaked my feet in cold water. My right foot is painful and red, although not blistered ... yet.

As I struggle through emotional crisis after emotional crisis, the boys seem to be having a good time. They ask daily to light a fire, and we often let them. They play and build, tell stories, work on critical thinking worksheets, read, and come with us when we go to milk. Abraham said today, "There's lots of ways to have fun on a farm! Like, you can go to milk!" Which is humorous, because I wouldn't say it's been terribly fun, and he certainly doesn't do the milking. But it was a nice vote of confidence, that he's pleased with where we are.

The Opportunity Cost of Sheep

When we got home from our trip to town yesterday, Phil fell asleep. He roused himself enough to put on a movie for the boys, and then dozed, on and off. This morning, he was worse, unable to get up to do the chores. So I did them.

The six piglets are bounding around their pen now. Although Buttercup did not accidentally kill any, one does limp. I was curious about whether it was hurt enough to need attention, but it zipped away, almost as fast as its companions. I might as well have tried to catch a jackrabbit.

When it came to moving the sheep, I expected a several hour ordeal. It only took about 75 minutes, all told, but it was a horrific 75 minutes, made worse by a very sour attitude on my part. After pulling 26 stakes out of extremely hard clay (with basically no rain for three weeks, and hot temperatures, even pulling posts is a matter of muscle), I then laid out the new pen, approximately, wrestling my way through mean brambles devoid of fruit. Then I pounded the 26 posts in with a rubber mallet, some more than once, since, despite my best attempts, I still managed to flip the fencing over on itself. Phil often laughs ruefully at my issues with ropes and strings: I have an incredible ability to tangle.

When I went to drive the truck up to water the sheep, filled with trepidation, I could not get forward motion, no matter what I did, but lurched backward, until I ended less than a foot from the electric fence surrounding the cows. Hyperventilating from heat, fear, and frustration, I made my way back to the house, determined that the sheep must go: today, if possible. Not another minute must be spent moving those little mammals!

Clearly, I needed some breakfast, to get out of my pajamas, and get back into the air conditioning. (And I needed Phil to drive the truck, with 4-wheel drive engaged, or something like that.)

The experience, though, did make me wonder about the sheep. They aren't expensive to keep, and the boys do love the lambs. They are definitely helping the soil in the orchard. Their manure and hooves improve the sod.

The main cost is opportunity cost. If we (mostly Phil) spends about an hour a day moving them and dealing with them, plus sometimes shearing, sometimes chasing, that could be 400 hours a year that could be spent on other things: clearing the land, spraying biodynamic preps on the trees in an orderly fashion, sawing lumber. That's a LOT of time.

But Phil loves the sheep. He loves being a shepherd.

At some point, we'll have a conversation. But Phil will need to be able to stand upright more than three minutes at a time.

We hadn't seen baby Clover since Friday night, and Catherine since Saturday night. When I first went to water the cows this morning, I had several cow heads pop out of the woods, Catherine among them. Still no sign of Clover.

When I went to milk in the evening, there was no sign of her or her baby. The rotten cow! Hiding when she knew I would come around! So I wandered the woods, picking up a good collection of seed ticks, smaller than the head of a pin, that even now are making my skin crawl. I try not to get irritated, but I always think about all the other things I could be doing, rather than playing hide and seek with a stubborn cow.

I had almost exhausted my possibilities when I looked down and saw a patch of cleared earth, very much cow sized. A few minutes later, I saw her, and her baby, both lying quite still in the thick trees along the edge of the clearing. On the far side from where we water, but within yards of the edge of their pen. Even Catherine shows how much she's a herd animal.

I tugged to get her to stand up, which didn't work at all. Then I patted her son, who stood up quickly and walked away. That got Catherine up. I tried to milk her, tied only to a tread-in post, but she was able to pull that out with ease, unless I stood on the base, which was hard to do simultaneously with milking. So I tied her to a pine tree, and milked as quickly as I could.

I hope Phil feels better tomorrow!

Bad Bugs

I had a hard time falling asleep on Friday night, imagining and researching all the possibilities related to bramble fruit production in greenhouses. One site said that some growers pay off their greenhouse the second year! That seems quite profitable. And the boys, when asked, claimed eagerly that they would love to help harvest. (Quite a far cry from the pepper and tomato harvest "torture" they've endured twice this year.)

I also researched ponies. Surprisingly, they were quite affordable. But then, according to Wikipedia, they need tack, six farrier visits annually, an annual dentist visit, proper fencing (which we probably don't quite have, with cattle panels), hay, daily grooming and exercise. I talked to the boys about all the requirements, and they quickly claimed they had lost all their desire for a horse and would stop praying about it, thank you anyway. (My Mom says that she never did any of that when they had their horses growing up. I'll keep thinking about it: it would be good for the boys to have something they enjoy.)

The heat index, apparently, hit 117 earlier this week. Even with shade, water, and belladonna, we had a few more chickens die. I was reading in the air conditioned trailer with Abraham, and noticed his nose was covered with sweat beads. Everything and everywhere was hot.

The boys went outside as little as possible. They built towers out of pattern blocks and rediscovered old toys.

After a week, Phil said, "I just don't think this AC is working right." He looked at it, figured out where a door opened to a filter, and pulled out a filter, covered with dust and dirt almost an inch thick. After thirteen months, it really was overdue for a cleaning. He also wiped down the caked fins, and the immediately grew cool. We were slightly disgusted that we hadn't figured that out earlier, but ever so thankful for the blast of cool air when we re-entered the house from outdoor efforts.

The heat made me feel a bit more feisty than usual. And not just me. Catherine has figured out how to plant her feet so she will not go. We've been tying her to the truck as our movable yet stable support, but getting her to the truck can be quite the job. We slap her rump, thwack her legs, poke her, tug her. Her head is too big for the halters we have; she figured out quickly that Phil's loud clapping behind her, and his crazy yipping don't mean anything.

So, with no more chance of tugging her to the truck than of tugging the truck to her, we tried putting a stake in the ground, tying her to that right where she stood, and milking her.

And that worked really well! I went to try it today, but she and the two baby bulls had exited the pen and taken refuge somewhere where I didn't look. So tomorrow I will try field milking again.

I had a bee fly up and sting my middle finger yesterday as I was feeding them. It was interesting to watch the swelling move down my finger and the back of my hand. I had no knuckles for a while.

And in another bad bug moment, I was emptying the trash under the sink when I realized my hand was inches from a black widow on the trash. "Most women don't have to deal with black widows as they empty the trash!" I fumed, but crushed it with the garbage bag without difficulty. We've had enough black widows around that we realize they aren't aggressive, but it still is uncomfortable to be in such close proximity with something so dangerous.

Phil downloaded all my photos onto a hard drive. Back in Colorado, I put them on discs, but I've not done that for a while. A long while, apparently: he downloaded over 8000 photos. My computer has a good bit more memory available now!

And, finally, some photos of the garden.

I had planted a row of marigolds to border what I hoped would be a nice flower bed in the center of the market garden. The marigolds look beautiful, only it's hard to look at them through the weeds. I love that marigolds are so dependable. I stuck seed heads, gathered from my Mom's garden probably three years ago, into the earth and did nothing else to them. Almost none of my flower seeds do that.

I cleaned out the bed with potatoes, and the celosia in the next bed shows off its beauty when I walk uphill from the bees. I appreciate the pink.

The one patch of corn we got planted is now tasseling. (None of the beans I planted around it are growing, and the squash I planted has shown no signs of producing, which is a bummer.)

I did manage to get a fairly good-sized watermelon, and a few little cantaloupes. I hoped they were muskmelons, since I do remember planting a melon with "green" in the name, but the green melons were awful. A little more time to ripen. The watermelon was watery but edible. Phil commented on how soft the rind was, fresh from the garden. Maybe I should try to pickle it. We'll see how much time I have.

The hens, bitter that I found their trove of eggs in the barn, decided to take revenge by laying eggs in the middle of my drying onions.

And my ground cherries gave up the ghost. It's okay. No one else liked them much except me.

Reading about gardening, I am struck how long-time gardeners can look at a plant and say, "This plant needs more food. The nutrients in the soil are too low." I don't have that ability yet, but maybe one day.

Snowman: Trouble?

Snowman the bull was covering Toots yesterday when we went to milk. It was hot enough that he let her drink, but he was not letting her get more than about two feet away. When we went out today, she was holding her tail a couple of inches out from her backside.

All is not great with that scenario, though: ten weeks and two days ago, we thought Snowman had bred Toots. I do hope Snowman isn't shooting blanks! And how distressing if Toots can't get pregnant. A year of feeding that heifer (plus the very costly drive up to the border of Canada).

Ten weeks doesn't fit into any kind of normal heat cycle, though. Perhaps Toots miscarried?

In any case, the calf I had hoped for in February 2012 is not going to be born. End of April becomes the new hope. On the plus side: what a relief that we have a bull to at least alert us to her heats. If we were trying to catch her heats in order to do AI, I think we'd be sunk.

We went and milked Catherine at 5pm yesterday, instead of 7ish. I liked that a lot more. Little Clover hadn't roused himself yet from his evening nap, and so I got a bit more milk than normal: four cups, instead of one. She still isn't fully letting down (Clover nursed as soon as I was done tonight, and I saw the milk, and even squirted a teat), so I will try to get a good peppermint lotion to assist her.

I checked the bees this evening. I was pleased to see the larger hive had only consumed about a cup of syrup. So if they are hungry, they're not desperately hungry, and they're smart enough not to drink the fake stuff. With temperatures actually at 100 (not "feels like" but actual), the bees of both hives were lounging outside their entrances. It was a bee lido deck, minus the pools.

Without a massive market garden, we're trying to figure out the best use for the newly improved two acres of soil, and for the 2160 square feet inside the large greenhouse, whenever we finish it. I am fond of the idea of a little fruit tree nursery. (Really, I'm fond of the idea of an olive grove inside the greenhouse, but that is neither cost effective, nor practical, with such amazing and inexpensive olive oil coming from Italy.) Perhaps there is a better idea, though. Virginia-grown ginger? That would probably be better under low hoops. Tulips? Too much of the year without a crop. Other ideas? Forthcoming, perhaps.

It is interesting to me that the boys pray almost every day for more fruit, "especially raspberries." So maybe a highly productive bramble patch would be a prudent use of space. I bet I would have more enthusiastic help picking than I get for peppers or tomatoes, neither a favorite food for the young men in this family.

Hungry Bees

The Dog Days of summer have arrived in force. Happily, the hundred degree (or close) days don't have the same feeling of assault as they did in early June. Maybe because I expect them? Or because it's been such marvelous weather in the 80s for so many weeks?

I have been systematically stripping the Principe Borghese drying tomatoes from their vines, then slicing in half and drying. It takes about 15 minutes to get a tray ready (washing, sorting, slicing, laying out the little tomatoes). With nine trays to fill, I have spent hours getting those tomatoes harvested and stored.

Phil has spent a good amount of time moving animals, watering animals, making sure the animals are cool enough. He has done little things, too: ordering supplies, making calls, mowing the orchard after the sheep go through (to get rid of the most lignified, or woody, stalks), moving the chickens.

My Celadon beehive has worried me a bit: there are dozens of bees lounging near the entrance. It made me wonder if they were preparing to swarm, so I opened the hive today.

There was some brood, so babies are coming. But not as much as I would expect. And there was so little honey! Even one of the combs had been chewed through. The frames, so heavy with food and babes earlier this year, are now light and empty. I looked it up, and apparently, when there is little food available, the bees cannot make frames, cannot make honey, prefer to lounge than to make many pointless flights to collect little pollen (which would result in a net loss of energy for the hive). Poor, hungry bees, eating through their stores.

So now I am feeding two hives again, and hoping that these two hives survive well: the hungry hive and the miracle hive.

And, a final story. Every day now, I ask for the Lord's protection. I thank him for our wonderful van, and ask that he protect it. Driving home from Bible study tonight, we were cruising at about 60mph, car following us, when a deer bounded out of the woods. Phil braked, but not as hard as he could have: the deer was moving fast enough, it could make it in front. But it slowed! And Phil swerved.

No thump, no crunch. Happy silence, pounding hearts. Van intact, deer intact, thanksgiving intact.

Bird of Prey

Monday was a mellow day. Phil researched why the plants have all set fruit once and quit producing. He thinks that they probably ran out of calcium. It makes sense: since our soil had barely 10% of the ideal calcium level when we moved here, the mineralization we've had done so far isn't going to make up all of that lack. Next year: better crops.

I cut up most of the little peaches, poured some of Catherine's milk on it, and sprinkled sugar. Peaches and cream from our land: it's a good life.

For lunch I cut up chicken, combined with mustard, homemade mayo, and homegrown, lacto-fermented pickles. Joe wolfed it down, and after each bite, he would flash a thumb's up, and say, "I LOVE this!" What good taste for a 2-year-old!

After finding several dozen eggs in the weeds on Saturday, I noticed that several of my onions had fallen behind my storage table.

I bent down to gather them, and found another couple of dozen eggs back there behind the bulk beans. Our house: a constant Easter egg hunt.

Late yesterday evening, I harvested half a bed of potatoes, and the boys and I finished the bed this morning. Last night I thought, as it got dark, "I should really stop soon, lest I accidentally meet up with a poisonous spider." So it gave me a little thrill this morning to see a black widow walking along the row right as we were beginning to harvest. This time, I squashed it.

We didn't weigh them, but I'd guess we got about 30 pounds from that one bed. Then I weeded for a while, which felt so great: I was impressed by how much better the bed looked. Some of the 10 feet weeds simply knocked over and made the bed look much more clean. I don't think I've ever literally drenched my clothes with sweat, but although overcast, it was in the 90s, and my clothes were soggy by the end.

I also picked some more jalapenos, and pulled about ten of my drying tomato plants. They just about filled the nine trays on the new Excalibur dehydrator, which holds a ridiculous amount of cherry tomatoes, and seems a good bit faster to load than my old circular dryer.

While picking tomatoes, Phil came and got the camera. He figured out what got our chicken last week: the same predator as got a chicken today. A small bird of prey, unable to fly away with its prize.

He was so excited about the beauty of this predator, he was happy just to take photos. I was more concerned: once a predator finds a fast food farm, they return again and again. And sure enough: just a few hours later, Phil found another dead bird.

In other news: Catherine, after her wonderful gallon and a half day, has given very little the last few days. I could feel a nice half gallon in her udder this evening, but she simply wouldn't let down, no matter how much I massaged and bopped. Since a quart of milk a day isn't really enough for us, I'm actually considering feeding some grain. I don't like the idea from a health standpoint, but if we need it, we need it.

Genie in a Bottle

Reese died today. As far as we can tell, she hadn't recovered properly from her bad fall about a week ago, and had reached a point where she couldn't stand up. Phil dug the hole with the backhoe, dispatched her, and then buried her. It was unpleasant. A sad end to a dramatic, aggravating, puzzling four weeks on the farm.

We haven't had to go shopping for groceries much these last months. A new, enormous Whole Foods (or "Whole Paycheck" as we affectionately call it) opened near us, and we stopped in today for some of the more odd or tropical ingredients: lemons, bananas, sesame oil, dates.

And I had culture shock when I walked in. We've been so focused on the little bit that we're producing—the few raspberries, the many tomatoes (though few perfect, and most plants now dead), the lettuce, the buggy peaches—I had forgotten that such a visual feast could be fine, for just a small price. Plums, nectarines, peaches, squash, greens. And almost every cart I saw had cut flowers!

As we left the store, I could not believe how easy it is to eat in America. Inexpensive canned tomatoes: much easier than home canning. All the produce, in variety and quantity, you could possibly eat. Fish, already deboned. Chicken, breasts or thighs. Clean bags of potatoes, without dirt or (many) bad spots. And if it's not good, just return it!

Truly, a grocery store is the equivalent of a genie in a bottle, offering whatever culinary ingredients you made need, not for the rubbing of a lamp, but the swipe of a card.

To expel a myth: I had remembered yesterday that I could put the newly found eggs in water and see if they float. The floaters would be rotten. So the boys and I tried that, and it worked well. We found perhaps seven out of three dozen that needed to go straight to the compost heap. The rest we assumed were good.

Poor Phil, taking eggs from the pile of "good" cartons, cracked an egg into the milk he would use for a smoothie. That egg was also rotten. The moral? Avoid floating eggs, but test the rest.

To close, a family funny. When Phil installed the truck battery this morning, the truck still would not start. He walked home to get the gas can, wondering if the truck was simply out of gas. As he approached, he had to think about which side the gas tank is on. (The truck has two gas tanks, but only one still connects properly to the engine.) And as he considered that, he remembered that Joe had sat in the driver's seat for about an hour yesterday while Phil put up the electric line for the cows.

First Joe had rolled the window up, while his head was poking out. He couldn't draw his head back inside, so he simply called for help until Phil rescued him. Then his idle hands needed an outlet, and he must have pushed the various buttons and switches as he pretended to drive the truck. And one of the switches was for the gas tank. Sure enough, as soon as Phil switched to the proper side, the truck started right up.

Those little guys! What rascals!

Six Baby Piglets!

Phil whispered this morning, "Come see the piglets!" before the boys woke up. Buttercup hadn't come up to eat her breakfast this morning, so Phil went searching, and found her, hiding away in the farthest part of the pen, safely hidden behind downed trees. She had six little spotted babies, crawling all over her and each other.

Although we didn't get close enough to pick them up, I would guess they each weigh about four pounds. They were cute enough to tempt me to want to keep breeding pigs, so it's probably a good thing that the stud is scheduled for processing.

Phil and I both mentioned how delightful it is to have six. We could sell some, or keep them all. And because this isn't our income stream, instead of being extremely disappointed that she didn't give twelve (after all, these are some expensive piglets, since I had originally hoped for babies in April!), we can just be thankful for an uncomplicated delivery, and for the adorable antics of the six cuties. My favorite trick is when the piglets get stuck on Buttercup's nose: they try to walk over it and get a bit hung up. Her snout is on the ground: their underbellies can hardly get over. Amazing the size difference.

Isaiah, always the most eager, crawled out on the thin branch directly over Buttercup, so he could get a better view. Sort of like Superman: pigs look up as little as people, and he had a safe and happy time up there.

I spent several hours picking onions. The largest of them is the size of a plum, and most are more like golf balls. Some I should have harvested weeks ago, I think: the onions hidden by tall weeds are much more squishy than the perfectly hard globes found in the sunshine. I even found one clump of three leeks. They weren't huge, but they were tasty.

I found a couple dozen eggs as I was picking onions. The free-ranging hens liked the tall, uninterrupted grass, and took up laying. I gathered the eggs, though I am concerned to crack them open. It's always a bit risky.

While in one onion patch, I noticed that the peaches were beautifully red. And mostly crawling with bugs. I picked one and ate it, odd blemishes and all. It was delicious. I decided to summon the boys later (and ate a second one).

The boys came out to harvest a bit reluctantly. But I took photos of them all, picking their first fruit on the farm.

The total came to a little more than seven pounds of fruit. I probably had the boys pick them a bit early, since the two I had earlier today were great, but the ones picked with the boys were mixed.

This taste of summer won't last longer than a few days, but since we just planted the trees last year, to have fruit on all four of the Contender variety is a little gift, and I am grateful.

The older boys have also been picking raspberries almost every day. They walk the swale lines, finding the bushes, and enjoy their little red rewards.

For Phil, the day was again a story of petty irritations. He ran errands, and got everything on the list, except to pick up the bag of ice he paid for. He finished clearing a path for the tractor, but when he went to knock down the sides of the little run off creek a bit, to make a ford, the tractor got stuck. Very stuck in the mud.

After trying to put downed trees under the wheels and still getting no traction, he managed to pull the tractor out with the truck.

Later, he forgot that the cigarette lighter on the truck runs down the battery. He had left his iPod plugged in, and the truck battery was dead, with 200 gallons of water in the back that he needed to water the cows. So he drove the tractor around to try to pull it out, but the tractor wasn't strong enough. He tried the jumper cables, but the tractor battery is small enough that it didn't help the truck at all. Finally, he reformed the cow pen so he could water them with the truck in place, and took the truck battery home to let it charge overnight, plugged in.

He's also researching how to get the orchard ever more healthy and how to construct stone buildings without metal reinforcement.

We have been delighted with the weather the last several days: in the mid-80s, sunny and overcast by turns. It feels like a perfect spring, not the middle of July. Virginia is a great place to live.

Lacto-Fermented Jalapenos

Baby calves can be worrisome. They sleep a LOT, and very deeply, and breathe quite shallowly. Twice today I went to check on Clover, found him nestled in a thicket where his mother stood guard, and watched anxiously until I saw the little breath. I would pick him up onto his feet and watch to make sure he could walk, and he would stand, bleary-eyed, then suddenly trot after his mother.

Catherine is awesome! She is very short, and very wide, and doing once a day milking, leaving the baby on full time, she gave about a half gallon from her three nursed out quarters, and her ugly, blown quarter gave well over a gallon before my bucket was full to overflowing. Then I milked into a little bowl, which Bitsy would lap up, and milk more onto the ground before the bowl was ready again.

That quarter was still throwing little round, hard, lumps. At one point, one got into her teat that would not squeeze out. Phil came and held up her tail so she wouldn't kick. I squeezed with right hand, with left hand, with both hands. I tried stripping the teat and milking the teat. I put some muscle in it. I tried massaging the plugged teat so the clumps would break up and come out more easily. It remained clogged.

I prayed. And a bit later, as I held the teat with my left hand, in a fully milked position, I squeezed the tip, with the clot with my right hand, and it shot out. I didn't even get a glimpse of it on the ground, but I'm sure she felt better after that.

And by the end, the milk was clean, the extremely swollen quarter, that had only allowed two fingers and thumb to milk before (which was both agonizingly painful and painfully slow), actually felt like a normal teat, and I could milk in the satisfying, full-handed squeeze.

She isn't a perfect milker. She dances a bit, and kicks a bit. But I can always catch her foot, and she isn't vicious in her kicking. She goes for the bowl, not for me. I suppose dealing with Reese's antics has an upside: I know how to deal with flying hooves.

The two fingered milking took a long time. When finished, I started to walk her back up the slope, and she took off running. I yelled to Phil: what do I do? Just hang on.

As we approached the electric wire, she slowed and stopped. She knows the voltage that wire puts out, and had no desire to touch it. Isaiah lifted the stake, wire still connected, high above his head, and I finally managed to get her to walk under, and as soon as I unclipped her lead, she went right over to Clover's hiding spot.

It was a fulfilling milking in every way, even if my forearm is sore. (We recently bought one of the EZ Milkers: I might try that on her quarter tomorrow. I meant to do it today.)

I was also pleased to find a use for the mounds of jalapenos we're growing. I picked only seven plants yesterday (out of 50), and had the better part of a box. So I chopped them and put them in a lacto-fermented brine: raw whey from our cow, Celtic sea salt, water, and garlic. It should naturally ferment over time, preserving the harvest without purchased vinegar, or much effort on my part at all.

Phil had a bit of a frustrating day. He was going to shovel the chick's trailer, full of manure and wood chips, into the greenhouse, but when he maneuvered it with the truck, the space wasn't large enough and the truck got stuck in the winter dry lot, with its deep bedding.

So he went to clear a tractor path in the lower pasture, and, after several profitable hours (I love the lower pasture when the brush is cleared away), he ended up both running out of gas in the chainsaw and getting a flat tire on the tractor.

The life in the soil and the land is exploding. I saw the first (or maybe second) hummingbird down in the flowers yesterday. A bluebird of happiness sometimes startles out of the tall weeds. Every night as I walk between trailer and motor home, I see a little hopping shadow, as the toads come out in force. I was in the lower pasture today when I suddenly was stung on the back of the thigh by, probably, a honeybee (since the stinger stayed in me; it was a horrible burn, but I think the upper thigh isn't a bad place for a sting: if I do swell up, I'm not going to be able to tell, the way I do with a facial or finger sting).

Joe and I had gone to look for potato sprouts when we saw a web in the earth, with a black widow winding her thread around a victim: probably a fly, though I wish it was one of the hornets. We watched her for a while and she spun her threads with her tiny black legs, while Joe received a stern admonishment to leave black spiders with red abdomens alone! And then we left her in peace.

And Phil noticed that where we have cowpies, the underneath is entirely worm castings, with beautiful night crawlers poking their heads out. When we moved here, we marveled over the lack of worms. They are multiplying now, though, and I like that.

Welcome, Clover!

I checked the cows yesterday morning and didn't see Catherine, but I had to hurry back for breakfast, and she is often by herself. Since she was dehorned, she keeps to herself a bit.

After a FULL day of canning (nine hours or so), Phil and I headed down to the cows in the gathering dusk, and although I walked the perimeter of their pen and looked in every crevice, I couldn't find her. And by then it was totally dark in the woods, and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we headed home.

I was distraught: what made me decide to can on a day when Catherine could be giving birth?! What was I thinking? She could have been lying somewhere, calf stuck, and I would find a dead mama, good milker!

It woke me in the night and kept me in fitful sleep.

But daylight didn't bring relief. I ran to look for her before breakfast: nothing. Phil headed down to look with me after breakfast, and we searched the area thoroughly. As he headed home, he called, "Here she is!" In her old, familiar pen, next to a little runoff creek, she had found a level, shady, grassy area, and there delivered her baby bull and the afterbirth.

I am torn between wanting the cows to only deliver in my easily observable locations, which would save stress, and between wanting them to deliver in whatever perfect, instinctive location they select.

When we found them, they were both standing, he completely dry, she relaxed, protective. Phil managed to get her collar on, which he hasn't been able to do since she came to the farm, and then I milked out her very misshapen udder.

The largest, most pendulous quarter, which dangles only about four inches off the ground, has been slightly swollen for a long time: perhaps because she wasn't dried off appropriately? Or maybe because the udder is misshapen? In any case, I easily milked out a half gallon of colostrum, and then painfully, slowly stripped her enormous quarter, with plenty of crunchies coming out. Poor girl. The quarter itself is pliable, body temperature, and does not appear to be hurting her, but I didn't quite finish before the baby began to bawl for her, and I stopped.

By evening, the baby was strong, frisky, and shy of me. While little Charlemagne was beautiful, like a soft deer, baby Clover is more robust, with slightly protruding eyes.

In other news, Phil scooped up the compost piles made in 2010, and dropped the compost in the greenhouse frame.

The boys helped spread the compost for a short while, then went and picked raspberries.

I attempted canning yesterday, and had made 20 quart-sized jars, after boiling the jars for a half hour, when I suddenly realized that I was probably just filling them too full. It turns out that when you calculate head space in the jar, you need to calculate it not from the jar's rim, but from the ring at the base.

I also tried Melanie's trick, too: flip the hot jars upside down to cool. So the 36 jars I made (during eight batches of canning!) will hopefully turn out better this time!

And the final little happiness: Joe found his missing flip flop!

Pair of shoes, successful canning (we hope), and a little Clover: what a great day.

The Boys Offer Input

One of the things we have decided to do is include the boys more in our decisions. One of the big decisions we have is whether to bring the pigs to the abattoir for slaughter, or just use the meat ourselves. We hate the idea of transporting a stressed pig two hours away, and we don't like giving over these lives we've raised at the final part of their life. And it's pricey.

On the other hand, although we have an empty, industrial fridge/freezer, and it could probably hold a pig for chilling, it probably couldn't hold a second pig, with the processed meat of the first pig in it. And then it couldn't hold a third pig, and a fourth. And four pigs might be a bit much for Lykoshes to consume: we may need to sell some meat, and that requires an abattoir. And if we're going to drive two hours, we might as well drive four pigs, rather than two, and save ourselves the job of killing and processing.

The older boys talked all this through with Phil and I. They had good ideas about the pros and cons of where to process; they had good insight into the strongest arguments for and against.

And at this point, we have four pigs scheduled to go to the abattoir.

Phil and the boys moved the June chicks to the outdoor pen. They were all dripping by the time they got back. In the afternoon, Phil and the boys did laundry here. It didn't sound like much fun to me, but they seemed cheerful every time I'd go past.

We Pay Tuition

In the school of farming, we've been paying tuition for several years now, and today another bill came due.

Although the temperature was only 92, the sun beat down strongly. After my friend came down in the morning and we removed the tree protectors in the stone fruit orchard, I stayed inside or in the shade.

At about 3pm, Phil went to clear a new path for the cows' electric line, and noticed that the broilers were not doing well.

Last Thursday night, he had closed their pen, and made sure all the large birds, ready for processing, were inside. That made it MUCH easier to catch them the next morning: they were contained! But, without thinking much about it, he hadn't raised the pen back up.

And as the heat index hit 107 or more, the birds sought shelter wherever they could find it: under tall grasses, behind the feed barrel, next to a stump. And then more birds came for shelter.

The birds on the outside died of heat stroke. Not enough shade, no breeze. And for us in the shade, we simply had no idea.

The young broilers in the cattle trailer fared a bit better. Rather than almost 30 dead, we lost only three this afternoon. When I went back this evening, though, having dosed the group with Belladonna and done my best to cool them and relieve them this afternoon, we had lost another twelve! Argh!

Phil was much more upset than I was. Thirty dead broilers, only a week or two from processing? I've been there, done that. The first time I wept: it was my fault, because I had left the electric fence off. This time, again, we simply didn't have the common sense or the experience to know how to properly care for the animals under our care.

In some ways, it was a good confirmation for me that yes, we really had no business trying to get even a small commercial farm open this year. We would have just lost, through our ignorance, a half a year's supply of chicken for one family.

***

In other news, Phil and I are having good discussions about where we see the farm going, how we plan to pay for it (without customers), if or when we should try to build a dwelling. I feel like we're really tracking together for the first time in a long time, and I like that very much.

In Which I Break Reese's Neck (Or Something Like That)

A bug flew in my ear at 4:30 this morning. Hardly awake, I remember smooshing it, then wondering why our bed was crawling with maggots, so that they were even crawling in my ear.

This horrifying thought was so awful, I immediately came fully awake, and didn't relax enough to go back to sleep. So I spent several happy hours going through messy files on the computer and messy piles of papers on my desk. Not quite clean, but I feel like I am making progress on getting the living space a bit better.

The family looked around for a good tree for a treehouse. At some point, hopefully we'll build one. We then headed down to milk Reese, all boys coming: Joe because he follows me, Abraham because he wanted to machete, the older two because they wanted to shoot the Cricket.

Reese was ruminating, and the only way to get Reese up is to put the halter on. She's strong and impervious to collar tugging.

Eventually, Phil and I did manage to get her up. Fern approached me in a way that appeared aggressive, and I am definitely jumpy around her now. Since yesterday, she's developed the sneaky habit of purposefully walking on the wrong side of the tree I'm passing, causing constant hang-ups.

She pushed her head into a small copse of trees, and there was no way to get her out. Like a naughty child, I didn't want her to get away with such bad behavior, lest she grow obdurate in her irritating tricks. But just then, one of the heifers approached her, and she side-stepped around another small tree.

At this point, Phil started yelling at me to drop the lead rope, but I didn't hear a thing. I watched in horror as Reese fell heavily (again). But this time, the lead was wrapped around a tree, holding her head imprisoned, completely turned back along her side.

She took an agonized breath, and Phil yelled at me to loosen her lead. But she had fallen tight and hard enough, with her lead rope under her 1200 pound body (or something like that), I couldn't figure out how to loosen it. And her halter, tight at the best of times, was now impossibly tight. Another agonized breath.

In the end, I hoisted her heavy head, and Phil was able to unsnap her lead, then take off her halter.

And there she lay. Tail twitching, but without any movement from her legs. We would nudge her legs: nothing. I tempted her with treats. No movement. The other cows came over, curious. No movement.

Phil was convinced her neck was broken. I didn't remember hearing a crack, but then, I hadn't heard Phil yell to drop the rope, so I wasn't sure my senses were reliable. And she had acted like that before....

While Phil headed home to get the cows more water (they had gone through much more than we expected), I headed to the field to watch the boys shoot the Cricket. Jadon had a shot almost on the bullseye, and was quite pleased.

Abraham cut down little trees. He really hacks hard with that machete!

What was oddest to me was that I had no real sorrow or guilt. I guess it was so fast, so unexpected, and so unavoidable, there was no reason for me to feel guilt.

I felt worse when Phil came back and ran over the expensive milk pail. I must have been very oblivious, because I had two pails, nesting. Knowing that Phil would be backing the large truck down the road to water the cows, I apparently lifted the smaller pail out and hung it up, not noticing that I had left the larger pail on the open ground. And since I am usually extremely careful about making sure I get both pails: how did I miss it this time? That was avoidable, and I had even taken actions to try to avoid it.

Phil came back with the water saddened that he had found four more broilers harried to death by a dog, despite the electric fence, and another one dead in the electric line.

This was turning into one expensive evening!

And then, just as I was saying that I would need to get the rifle, since it wasn't right to leave Reese injured on the ground overnight, Reese kicked out with all four legs. A convulsion? Or sign of intact spine?

Phil and I had tried to roll her over on her backbone the last time she went down, and she had really kicked out vigorously. So we flipped her again, this time without trouble. And then she raised her head and tucked her legs under her. I dumped a bit of her grain (leftover from when we bought her) just out of reach, and she stood up slowly and walked forward.

Then she walked over, and I milked out less than half a gallon, and we went home for the night.

My peace and joy have not left, though, despite four hours of sleep and some of the most stressful events since moving here. For that, I say thank you, Lord!

No Longer Down the Wrong Road

When you’re going down the wrong road, the first thing you need to do to get back on the right road is stop going the wrong direction.

This morning, as I was reading the Bible, I remembered that I am trying, any time I start feeling hate or anger, to cast my cares on the Lord (for he cares for me). So I started writing.

The first care was, “How are we going to store the meat?”

The pigs have been a source of concern for me for some time. They could easily eat through $50 worth of food a day (though we don’t give them that much). And with three ladies all potentially going to give birth, potentially to, say, eight surviving piglets each, two litters a year: that will quickly spiral out of control financially. And from a land management standpoint, too. Fifty or so pigs a year is about 46 too many.

But Phil likes the pigs. They have good manure; they eat the farm wastes; they do a good job turning over the earth.

Then suddenly, he realized that they aren’t fitting well into the rotations on the farm. They are moving, but they aren’t really integrated. They just do their own thing off to the side.

And so the pigs will go, and we will trust that, as we need more for our family and our land, the Lord will provide weaned piglets.

How to store 1000 pounds of meat or so? Hmm.

And then we have the chickens. I had planned for about 700 chicks this year, with some losses. That would give ten families a bird (or so) a week for the year. But I had expected them to already be taking birds, and we had hoped to have cold storage ready to store extra birds. When I managed to fit only about 35 birds in one of our freezers, and realized we have another 200 birds already in the pipeline….

My cares have been heavy.

The backlog of very expensive to produce meat, combined with the measly amount of milk, the three eggs a day, the market garden disappointment….

Not to mention the relationship strain this project has caused. Phil and I hardly have time to talk, other than, “This is what I’m planning to do today.” If he wants to talk about what he’s seen in the Scriptures, I get antsy: there’s more to do!

The boys are rarely incorporated: if I don’t do it myself, it will take too long!

And I used to like myself, not in a prideful way, but, I hope, in an honest assessment sort of way. And I have hated myself lately, not even recognizing the angry, stressed, vicious person I’ve become (mostly internal; I feel vicious).

So we decided to be done. No more full service CSA. We will figure out a way to kill our chickens and pigs. Hopefully we won’t have to rent a meat locker, but we value our organic, soy-free meat too highly to sell it at a loss. Or at least, not much of a loss. That stuff is expensive to produce! Maybe we’ll smoke the hams, dry cure pork sausage, can the chicken and make a lot of stock.

From the instant we decided this, the joy of the Lord returned to my spirit. I have been desperate for it; missing it; seeking it. And there it was.

Stop going in the wrong direction.

When we moved here, I prayed every day that the Lord would protect us and that we would do that day what he would have us do. I would guess that somewhere around the year mark, I stopped praying that.

Well, I’m starting again. I want to be fully in step with what God is doing.

And I look forward to seeing how he redeems this six month exercise in futility. I know he has a plan, that he redeems, and I am running toward that plan.

With a several year supply of high quality protein.

Fighting Disappointment

On Thursday, I woke up to find another six of my quart jars had spoiled overnight. I have 15 jars that still appear to be good, but with the early demise of the cucumbers, the poor germination of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, potatoes; the ill-advised staking of the 500 tomatoes; the incredible growth of weeds, many now over 10 feet tall: I have been fighting what seems like an ocean of discouragement.

Add to that a frequent hour search for Reese (tonight I never did find her) to get a half gallon of milk. And the amazing humidity, when 89 degrees feels like 106. In all honesty, it bummed me out enough that I asked Phil what he likes about this life.

He likes being with the family. He likes the physical labor, "much more than engineering." He likes the spiritual growth.

And all these things are true, and good. And I can acknowledge them with my mind, but it feels sometimes like my heart rebels.

Maybe that's like the Israelites, crying for their leek soup in Egypt, while they were fed the food of angels, the manna from heaven.

Maybe I can have grace for myself and not assume I'm the worst Christian in the world because I'm feeling discouraged: I can deal with life's disappointments without adding spiritual failure to them.

Today was pretty good (right up to the impossible search for Reese). Phil got up at 5am, and I followed twenty minutes later. We got everything set up for chicken processing (plus I did some dishes while Phil moved the sheep). We began processing 14 week old chickens at 7am, expecting to do about 70.

Surprisingly, we only had 52 to do, and some of those may actually be from the next batch. They varied by weight a good deal: one was 3 pounds even after processing. Four were so big they couldn't fit in freezer bags, and, thus, have not been weighed.

We were pleased to have, on this fifth batch of chickens, more than 50% to kill. Clearly, 68% isn't a whole lot better, but we are making progress. We were stumped a bit about where the chicks went: we didn't have any major death losses in their chick stage, and didn't have any noticeable losses after they moved outside. But still, 30% of our birds vanished.

Phil suspects that when we first moved them outside, they fit through the netting and were picked off by one of the neighborhood predators. It's a reasonable guess. We didn't have that sort of death loss with the first batch, because we kept them in the chicken tractor. By the time we quit that, they were too big to fit through the netting.

It's a good tip for the management of the next batch of birds, about ready to head outside: put them in a movable pen, and keep them alive. Don't let them wander, lest they die.

On a very different note, the boys and I just finished my absolute favorite book from childhood: Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game. I've read it probably more than 20 times at this point, and reading it aloud to an appreciative audience made me see new things even now. It's my comfort book, and it was a pleasant diversion this week.

Canning Disappointment

I was about to bring the last four jars of canned tomatoes over to their under-the-bed storage place, when I realized that, despite my lid testing after they had cooled, several jars were bubbling with white froth. A closer examination of the jars in storage showed six precious jars all ruined. I was just thankful I caught them before they exploded: glass shards and poisonous tomatoes in the bedroom is not a great combination!

I think I know what happened. The first batch I made, I filled to the base of the neck, and when I took them out of the pot, almost all of them bubbled over with tomato bits. I'm guessing it was those six that went bad: with tomato juice between lid and jar, they didn't seal properly. (Which is too bad: I suspected something might be wrong, so tugged on the lids after they cooled, and none moved.)

It could be, too, that I followed a recipe without lemon juice: just tomatoes in a jar. When I canned the tomato sauce today (22 pints), I added a tablespoon of lemon juice, in hopes that helps preserve the food.

Phil moved the cows all the way back down the slope, and combined the hillside cows with Fern and Charlemagne, Snowman and still-expectant Catherine. He said that the herd of twelve, milling around, renewing or establishing relationships, was all fascinating to watch.

Reese Houdini

I milked Reese early yesterday. Phil was heading up to serve with our church, and I didn't trust myself to manage to open the electric fence while walking the rebellious cow all by myself. So from 3pm until about 6pm today, Reese and the rest were grazing on their own.

So we were horrified tonight when we went to milk to find that Reese had escaped. We figured she had headed down to the creek to cool off in the water and shade, but after hiking all the way down the hill, I found no sign of her.

After another hour of hiking and searching, I still found no trace. Phil drove around the area: no sign of her.

Argh!

We called the neighbors to warn them that we had a cow on the lam. Michelle Bessette reassured me that, when she was ready to be milked, she would return.

This was comforting. So much so that as darkness was falling, I headed over to check their paddock, just to see if she had returned.

And there she was! I milked her, and returned her to the electric wire, where we hope she will stay.

In other news, I harvested probably about 50 pounds of tomatoes today, enough that I filled my big red bucket and had a hard time carrying them up to the motor home. Isaiah and I pressed them with the Roma food mill, and came away with ten jars of tomato juice. I have them in the refrigerator, hoping that they will separate overnight. Then I will skim the solids and boil them down to make sauce and, perhaps, paste. I read that the refrigeration is a way to hasten the thickening process: let the tomato juice separate naturally.

Our First Downer Cow

When we went to milk this evening, Reese was lying down, chewing her cud. She watched as I approached, and put her head to the side in her petulant toddler act when I slipped the halter over her head. I tugged gently, and she rose to her knees, then suddenly toppled over, so heavily and dramatically that all four legs waved in the air for a moment. She landed with her legs upslope, and she didn't get up.

This was quite unexpected. I tried prodding her so she would stand up, but she is a good bit heavier and quite stubborn. I called Phil.

He was quite concerned. He had gone to a vet clinic, after all, and learned about downer cows. They don't have long to stay down before they die. Very serious. She had acted so normal, and I had seen her "fall" four times before. Maybe she really is sick?

I ran back to the house for the homeopathy book and treatments, and I got some aloe pellets, which usually tempt Reese to plod along. She stretched her tongue out, but didn't move. I lifted her head: she squirted out the backend.

Phil and I tried to flip her over her backbone, but she kicked right before we reached the tipping point. We pulled her around. While Phil looked up anything that might possibly match her symptoms, I pushed Arnica pills in her mouth, opened her mouth to feed her aloe pellets by the handful, and tried to figure out if she was at death's door. (If she hadn't looked quite so healthy right before I put the halter on....)

She staggered to her feet, and stood there, swaying. It looked like a light breeze would knock her over. I turned to leave, expecting I wouldn't milk her small udder this day. But she followed me, so quickly that when I reached the electric line, without having attached her lead rope, she walked through the (live) electric wire in order to access the grass on the other side.

So much for our cow "at death's door." The rascal.

Other than cow drama, we had a fun day. Despite my nightmares all night that the canned tomatoes didn't actually seal, they were all fine when I checked them in the morning (I tried pulling the lids off, just to make sure.)

I checked the bees, and they are doing fabulously. The Celadon hive is moving up in to the upper level, and the Celestial hive is sucking down the sugar syrup and flying about purposefully. Both hives had pollen and wax in evidence, so they are still growing and changing.

Phil had the boys help with weeding. They cleaned up the raspberry/asparagus patch and ate some berries.

And then I helped them clean up the asparagus patch.

Then Phil took them down to shoot the Cricket, our little .22 rifle that we all love. Joe, happy to be where the family is, rolled around in the beautiful, tall grass, growing where a hay bale sat over the winter. He was pleased with his amazing pressing down ability.

Then he climbed up a cattle panel and showed off his dare devil abilities.

What a silly guy.

When he got done with that, he went over the Bitsy, who Phil had tied up. Every time the boys shot, she would race to the spot where the little dead animal should be, and she grew more and more distressed that she couldn't find any. So Phil tied her up. Joe sat just a bit beyond reach, and she would try to shake, and he would laugh.

Jadon and Isaiah would alternate shots.

One would shoot, carefully eject the shell from the chamber, then both boys would run to the target and admire the holes.

Abraham shot twice, but didn't get any hits, so he just handed bullets to his brothers.

When we headed home, Jadon eagerly volunteered to carry the Cricket, and practiced bringing the gun up to his shoulder as he walked. It was fun to witness.

After that, the older boys took the pruning shears and made pathways and mazes through the 7' tall weeds along the swales. They were very pleased with their secrecy.

Isaiah found a little watermelon, about the size of a Navel orange. We were pleased to see some fruit!

I found our first ripe tomatillo. I don't use a ton of tomatillos in a year, but they make a nice green salsa. I like that they split their skins when they are ripe: it gives them a really ready look.

The lower pasture animals all look great.

Charlemagne grows nicely: he is so shiny and healthy, it's a joy to see him.

Catherine is about as wide as she is tall. Looking at her today, I wonder if she's dropped: her roundness doesn't seem quite as tight as it did.

And Snowman is sleek and huge.

He has a nice face, I think, but after my run-in with Fern, I'm more cautious, and I don't get too close to him. (Or her. That may have ruined her forever, which would make me sad.)