Process Chickens All Day

Phil and I both spent eleven hours today processing 56 chickens. From 6:30am to 6:30pm, with an hour off for lunch, we captured, butchered, processed, rinsed, bagged, weighed, and froze the birds. Despite the fact that they were sixteen weeks old (and some of the females may have been five months: probably not quite large enough to notice the last time, they were right on the cusp of laying eggs), I would guess that half the birds were a good bit under four pounds. Very disappointing.

And, to make it worse, we have a fairly good estimate of how many more birds we have to process (about 70 in the pen, and probably another ten or so wandering rogue), I could get a price per bird estimate in hard costs (the birds themselves and feed: not infrastructure or time spent processing). Our price per bird came to right about $17 per birds, an outrageous, breath-takingly awful expense.

Add on the extremely slow processing speed, which Phil estimated at about $7 per bird (!), and we have 3.5 pound birds that cost us $24 to grow.

Of course, we had heavy, heavy losses. Out of 350 birds we purchased, we expect to process just over 200. Had we brought more to processing, clearly our bottom line would have been better. Probably not enough better to make it worth it to grow and sell, but maybe we'll try again nonetheless.

If we do attempt broilers again, I think we'll keep them in movable pens. The birds will be better protected from predators and, I think, the elements. And we will have an accurate perspective on how old the birds are: no more girls squeezing by an extra month, or large boys dying a year early.

So, live and learn. We keep paying tuition. Life goes on.

Jadon and Isaiah helped with the weighing. They had a little assembly line of writing the weights on the bags and on a reference paper. Initially resistant, by the end we were laughing and having a good time.

And then we attempted no bake cookies. Of the seven ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, cocoa, peanut butter, vanilla, and oats), most are different than I used growing up, and they never turn out quite the same as I remember from childhood. But I cut up homegrown apples and the boys dipped the hardened cookies and ate the apples and had a happy close of day.

New Freezer and No Sprayer

We did a surprisingly quick batch of errands today. When we loaded chickens in our cooler on Sunday, we were surprised to find that it only fit 11 birds. So we bought a second, larger cooler, so we have the opportunity to unload more, should the need arise (and I hope it does!).

And we bought a freezer, so we can process the largest broilers, now a week shy of four months old. Since most industrial chickens are processed at eight weeks, these birds are now ridiculously large and, I'm sure, ridiculously expensive.

I've been ridding my freezer of everything I can. I thawed the buck goat meat, thinking I might turn it to sausage. But it smelled just as bad after being frozen as it did at processing, so I "donated" it to Bitsy. She was happy.

After errands, Phil went to spray the orchard. We have a spray that is meant to grow rootlets of plants, which helps build soil humus. Towards the end of spraying the orchard, Phil looked back to find one of the boom arms on our sprayer completely torn off. It was the second use of that sprayer (which had also broken during assembly, so we've now had two breakages in two uses).

And as a funny close: I am glad to be growing our own food. For lunch today, I cooked up a pound and a half of meat, four cups of beans, four cups of rice, and shredded some cheese. The meat was gone, and maybe two cups total of beans and rice were left. Four hours later, the hungry boys came back, ready to eat again.

And they are only 3, 5, 7, and 9!

A Little about Lyme

Early this morning, I went to the bees again. I needed to reduce the entrance: with fewer bees emerging for the rest of the season, they need a smaller opening to defend.

I was embarrassed for myself when I saw that I had pulled the entrance reducer entirely from the Celadon hive. They must have had a difficult time trying to defend their home from robbers. When I replaced the entrance, immediately dozens of bees with golden pollen in their saddlebags huddled at the former opening, seeking the specific spot they could enter. So great to see the number of productive worker bees.

The Celestial hive was not as easy. I tried to remove the box from the base, so I could put in the proper sized entrance. But the heavy box stuck firm, as the bees have been sealing cracks with propolis. When I would move the box, the base would move, too. After brief wrestling, I did manage to remove it, but the entrance reducer was jammed, and then I got stung on the back of the hand, and the number of agitated bees increased. The honey water I'd brought down had first one drowned bee, then a dozen, and I was no longer in a good frame of mind to help the bees.

I did what I could at the time, and later went back and wrestled with the entrance reducer until it was back in place. And all was good. The hives are eating between a pint and a quart of thick honey water a day.

I spent a bit of time this morning reading Healing Lyme. With the number of ticks we've had on us or attached to us over the last two years, I figure I should know more about lyme.

What I read so far was fascinating. Lyme is not solely transmitted through ticks: mosquitoes, human fluids (like tears and saliva), mother to in utero child are all other vectors. But the tick is the most prominent.

Having intimate experience with ticks, I was interested to learn about the three sizes. Each tick lands on a host at each stage, and falls off when full. The teeny ones yesterday were tick larvae: about the size of the point of a pin, they are tiny but fast, and, of the sizes, not terribly infections. Today I found a couple new ones crawling on my leg. They were a bit bigger, the size of a pin head. These are the second level of tick development, and the most infectious, because they are small enough to easily miss, but are more likely to have the lyme spirochete (a corkscrew-shaped bacteria, pronounced SPI rah keet). The large, adult ticks are the least likely to infect people, mostly because they are easily seen. I have now had all three types on me: larvae, nymph, and adult. Blech.

The most surprising information to me was how the ticks both receive and transmit the spirochete. Once a tick lands on an animal with blood (mammal, bird, reptile), it saws through the outer layer of skin to reach blood vessels just below the surface. The tick secretes a milky cement that hardens around that penetration site. This both holds the tick in place and acts like a gasket to prevent blood loss or leakage of tick saliva at the point of entry.

Under the attachment, the tick gouges out a tiny pit to the dermis, which fills with blood. Then the ticks feed from the pool: they let the pit fill, and drink at their leisure, and as the tick feeds, its body engorges. When full, they drop off, and leave the cement behind, embedded in the skin.

As soon as they penetrate the skin, they release a unique blend of chemicals into the blood, which basically calls all spirochetes that might be in the host. The spirochetes come, like metal filings to a magnet, flow into the tick, and colonize the tick's gut tissues. This often happens to the larvae; then, as nymphs, they will be ready to infect their next host with the lyme spirochete.

On the host, the tick alternates between taking blood and releasing its saliva into the wound, and this is the really disturbing part. The saliva is very bioactive, and counteracts the three main immune defenses of the host, that should begin immediately upon the attachment of something like a tick: hemostasis (blood coagulation, platelet aggregation, and vasoconstriction), inflammation, and immunity (innate or acquired). So the tick shuts down the host's defenses while it eats.

The spirochete infects the host during the saliva’s activity. In test animals, the spirochete doesn't often infect the host, because the body's immunity is strong enough. But the tick's saliva is the problem.

So, there was my little lesson on lyme. At some point, I'll read more about how to counteract it. Apparently the rounds of antibiotics are miraculous when they work, but they don't work in 40% of the cases.

I have much to learn!

Fabulous Texans

In praise of some young ladies from Texas: after church this morning, they handed me an envelope. "We took a bunch of pork, and had a big cooking party. We invited our friends, told them what happened, and took donations."

Perhaps spontaneous fund-raisers are normal for Texans, as the Texans I've known have all been able to throw large parties with apparent ease. But state of origin notwithstanding, if that doesn't warm your heart, I don't know what will.

We all tried the three types of apples. Goldrush had a brix of 13.4, above the "Average" level of 10, and just a bit below "Good" at 14. The Braeburn was a 15.8 and the Fuji a 15.9, which weren't "Excellent" (18), but they were certainly good!

Then we went hiking. Jadon stayed in Hog Creek, playing, but the rest of us went further, looking at what we can clear easily, and where we have tractor access.

Abraham was the first to be covered with teeny ticks. He started sobbing, because they tickle as they crawl. When we got home, all of us stripped and picked: I didn't count ticks on Joe, and Isaiah picked most of his off himself, but I pulled 87 off Abraham. My skin crawls just thinking about it.

Bee Education

When my alarm failed to wake me at 5am Saturday, I woke from a dead sleep 67 minutes later, supposed to have been on the road a half hour and more. As I stepped outside, the wind whipped around me, and the early bits of dawn were a weird grayish yellow. Hurricane Irene was coming to a beach near me (well, three hours away) at some point that day, and if I left for my bee workshop, not only would I be out of cell range of my family, I would have our only real vehicle.

On the other hand, I knew little of the information from the bee workshop, and I am not sure if my poor bees will survive the winter. It was a real dilemma.

But in the end, I made the three hour drive to the Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary to get the third workshop on bees, unsure when, or if, I'd be able to get home.

Phil said later that there was windy and drizzle all day, and when I got home at about 8pm, the clouds were blowing the wrong direction: rather than west to east, as usual, they were going north to south, which felt odd indeed. But they were in no danger, and the meager .3" of rain we had was less than we would have wished. Irene passed us to the east, and so ends that story.

I always enjoy my trips to Floyd, Virginia. The three hours, alone, in the car gives me good reflection time. Some trips I have been in a very agitated state; some trips I'm exhausted, or discouraged. This trip was sheer joy. I sang hymns and meditated on Psalm 1, which says, "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night."

And it struck me, really for the first time, that the blessing for that man is that he isn't walking in darkness, but in light. I think I had always figured that the blessed man was getting external, material blessings. But I think the blessing is simply that he has delight. (And, yes, the next verse says that he yields fruit in his season, and whatever he does shall prosper, and I do like that part, but I'm not convinced that happens immediately, and maybe the fruitfulness is not, again, material prosperity.)

I thought, too, about not having a house. I laughed this week when I read The Boxcar Children to the boys. It had always been a favorite for me as a child, and reading it even now, I thought, "Oh, those lucky children! They just wander in the woods and find a boxcar and live there. How fun!"

And I literally had to stop reading for a bit, because I suddenly said, "Wait! I practically live in a boxcar now!" Except mine is better because it has electricity, so we can live here year round. It was as if I made peace with our living conditions. They aren't anything like the upper middle class life we had in Boulder, but there are benefits I've been gradually reconciling myself to these last two years. I like that.

At the workshop itself, we talked a bit about honey harvesting, and how to treat for mites, as well as how to secure the bees for the winter. I was interested to learn that the real period of frame building is done for the season, so to expect my bees to make a second level of wax frames and fill them, is really not realistic. It was helpful, though, to realize that's not the fault of anything I've done, or they've not done. It's just the season we're in.

The bees are also living longer. Bees born now might live until November or December. The short, six-week lives of the frantic summer workers are done; the bees now will live longer, albeit slower-paced, lives.

I was able to ask Gunther what to do about my poor hives, which haven't fully recovered from their horrible breakage issues this summer. (Gunther likes his hives to have two deeps and a super by the fall, which means two large brood boxes and a smaller box on top for honey; my hives, due to my interference, and their initial refusal to build comb from the top down, have only about nine frames finished in the bottom deep, and no frames done, and hardly any started, in the second deep.)

So, in the next month, I am going to feed the bees as much honey water as they can eat (I had been doing sugar water, but I'm going to try honey instead), no longer at a 50:50 ratio, but stronger, maybe 2:1 or even 3:1. I pulled the second deep off both hives, and concentrated the most completed frames into the bottom. Gunther said that, in a month, if both hives can have six frames of full honey, they have a chance for the winter. If not, I will need to combine them, in order to keep one hive alive, rather than lose both.

In opening the hives today, I had hoped to find some progress on the upper levels, but there was little activity there. It is definitely better to bring them both down to one deep, and feed them enough to get that lower level packed with food. Happily, both hives had growing brood, so they are still reproducing, living bees. And they had a good bit more honey stored than last time (which was almost none).

In the gorgeous, perfect weather we have right now, sunny and 85 degrees, the bees were incredibly mellow, even as I clumsily managed to peek in their hives. Glorious.

One of the best things about the Honeybee Sanctuary was seeing the bee garden. Just 3" twigs two months ago, the perennials and annuals have grown enormous, flowered, and fed the bees well. I hope to get my own bee garden going in the near future. (Both photos today are from the Hauk garden, not mine! Beautiful.)

Poplar and Cedar Lumber

Friday afternoon, Phil and Joe went down to the lower pasture to saw some more boards. I found them hours later, Joe not napping, though he often does, sitting on the tractor seat. Phil had a nice pile of freshly milled poplar, along with a few red cedar boards he had cut the day before.

For our Friday night date, Phil and I walked around the lower pasture for a few minutes, just the two of us, until Isaiah ran to join us after getting bored, hiding in the tractor bucket. We were pleased to see that, in the wooded bottom land, no trace of cow pies remain, and in the cleared area, only a bit of dried hay is still on the surface. The microorganisms in the soil are eating and thriving, and that is good for us all.

Phil has a couple other poplar sections to saw, but most of the rest of the downed trees are either too small and twisted to bother with sawing. He plans to cut up down some pines, and that will give us soft wood for interiors, but what to do with all the rest? Poplar, pine, and beech are not good for fires. Our chipper is really too small for the immense quantity at hand (though I wouldn't mind the mulch, if we had a way to chop it all up!). What I suspect we'll do is, once we have a section cleared for some time, Phil will make piles of brush in order to redirect runoff: making a little channel into Hog Creek. The bunch of branches will take a long time to break down, but that seems a fairly good option.

Three Apples

I had an energy surge late last night, so I was awake for a mild aftershock. The actual earthquake was such an amazing experience, standing barefoot in the dirt far from anything remotely dangerous. I just felt the earth gently ripple. So incredible. At 1am, though, when the loud rumble started again and the trailer gently shook, it scared me. Five boys I love slept peacefully in the next room. And then it was over.

This afternoon, while Phil was watering the cows and setting fencing, a wind picked up. The air was so charged; it was heady just to be out in it. As the cover of the feed blew off, I suddenly remembered that we hadn't put Tuesday's delivery in the feed bin (I think Phil hoped to use the older bags first). So I went out to cover the feed, and Jadon joined me. He hoisted a 50 pound bag of kelp off the pallet into the wagon, then dragged the wagon to the barn. What a guy! Lifting almost his weight (six months ago he weighed 50.5 pounds, and I doubt he's gained much weight since then).

Phil came in after the downpour started. Three-tenths of an inch in about 15 minutes. And then the clouds cleared and the sun came out, briefly.

My father-in-law requested photos of the cows, grazing in the neighbor's pasture. As I headed over to take photos, the broilers ran to meet me. Those Red Ranger chickens are so beautiful.

At the corner of our driveway, I can look south across our stone fruit orchard, and see the red cows in the distance.

The cows themselves were almost surreal against the clouds, grazing a bit of bush hogged grass, that Butch had cut for the owners to have easy access to their house.

The cut area is so orderly compared to the amazing grass only feet away, uncut but grazed. That land has such a beautiful sweeping view.

As I reached the apple orchard, I went to see our trees. I was surprised to find a single little Braeburn tree, only about five feet tall, had a little red apple on. How did I miss that one! Such a little tree shouldn't be producing fruit, but growing roots and trunk! A single large Beni Shogun Fuji apple was on a separate tree, just a bit pink, and beautifully sized. I picked it, probably a bit early, but that single apple was calling me. And the beautiful Goldrush trees offered a lovely green apple.

They are certainly not cosmetically perfect, but the Goldrush was completely delicious. Crisp, juicy, flavorful, yum!

And the Fuji and Goldrush were such a beautiful size. What a treat!

Tangible Work

Isaiah helped Phil most of the day today. They moved the broiler chickens, the bane of my existence, together. These delicious birds are enormous, fully matured and beyond, ravenous consumers of expensive grain—and we have no cold storage to process them. Frantic yesterday, I pulled every chicken bit I could out of the freezer: all the legs, heads, necks, and carcasses, determined to make massive quantities of chicken broth. I figured I would also cut up all the remaining 200 (?) birds as we kill them, and make stock right away from the backs. Surely that would save me space in the freezers.

After making my first batch, I started to fill quart jars in order to use my new pressure canner. And I completely lost it, as I realized that, with an inch of head room, a quart jar holds about three cups of liquid, and that, once pressure canned, the chicken broth could store at room temperature. Do I really want to consume a meat product that can be stored at room temperature? That just doesn't even sound natural! And it horrified me to imagine how much propane it would take to pressure can 100 jars of chicken broth, when, if I made broth as we ate chickens, I could just leave it in the refrigerator.

Stop the insanity! So I ended my plan to pressure can chicken broth. I have no idea how we will solve the much-too-much-meat dilemma. We will probably purchase another chest freezer, but that will only hold about 50 birds. What to do after that? Aggressively market our product? I don't know where to begin.

The chicken dilemma, combined with many cups of soaked spelt that refused to sprout and simply turned to mush inside instead (are organic whole grains flash pasteurized? argh! the things I don't know!), meant a mini-meltdown. But it was short-lived, and I soon felt better.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's not stuffing my angst! I let it all out!

The rest of the day was quite pleasant. Phil has figured out how to move the cows very rapidly. The chickens laid right about two dozen eggs. The boys jumped on the trampoline, so happily situated right in front of the motor home.

The sheep grazed in the stone fruits.

Abraham made a domino ziggurat.

He sounded out his name, and spelled it with wooden pieces, minus one letter "a." Abrham is an achievement for a beginning reader!

Phil and Isaiah headed down to the lower pasture to set up the sawmill.

At one point, they came back upslope to get some forgotten item. Phil had stopped the tractor, but hadn't set the brake, when Isaiah ran up to him. Phil's foot slipped, and in that split second, Isaiah jumped back while Phil re-engaged the brake. Phil came in and said, "I feel woozy. Isaiah just almost died." Life on the farm has death a split second away.

I read today in Hosea about a daughter named Ruhamah: "having obtained mercy." I put that on a sticky note on my computer, and all day long I've thought, "I have obtained mercy." In this case, Isaiah yet lives.

After spending most of the afternoon with level and wrench, precisely making sure that the sawmill was level, Phil sawed a few lengths of a cedar tree as dusk fell. He came up the hill, smelling delightful, and said, "I love sawyering! And the end of the day, I have something tangible to show for my work!"

Our Little Earthquake

While Phil was mowing the garden this afternoon, I was washing up some dishes while the boys played right outside. It suddenly felt like someone was shaking the motor home, just a bit, and the noise of the tractor was amplified, as if there was a train passing or a helicopter flying overhead.

I went out barefoot, and the boys and I felt the earth shaking, just a bit, beneath our feet.

When Phil was done mowing, I mentioned that we'd had an earthquake, and he said that he could hear it: despite mowing with the tractor, and ear muffs to protect his ears, sermon going to keep his mind stimulated. That's what a 5.9 earthquake, epicenter about 60 miles away, does in the deep country. Just about nothing.

And as I typed that, a car drove by, and our trailer shook, just a bit. An aftershock. (The car was totally unrelated, but enough synchronized to make me question what I was feeling.)

Two nights ago, Isaiah asked me about cacao nibs. In our schooling, we had read a bit about how chocolate is made, and I mentioned that I had some random cacao nibs. The box had a shortbread recipe, and I thought, "Why not?" So the boys and I made shortbread with cacao nibs, and they were absolutely unbelievable.

But I was shocked to realize that the boys did not remember any baking. I know they participated as boys in Boulder. They would pull up a step stool and roll up their sleeves. Two years and more later, though, they didn't remember what it meant to "cream butter and sugar," or the basic rule to mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, then combine.

So many things to make sure to teach in a boys' life! Tonight we made peanut butter bars. Jadon wonders what dessert we will make tomorrow. Hmm. We'll see.

Trampoline Restored

Saturday morning, after I had nicely planted my blackberries the evening before, I awoke to find that the pigs had come through, and, apparently, were not interested in blackberries solely for their milky root systems, but liked blackberries just because they liked them. Or some part of them—I was able to recover every one of the plants they dug up, so why did they? I have no idea.

Phil fixed their electric line, and they are again contained.

The sheep then escaped on Sunday night, but Phil and the boys and I corralled them, and they, too, are again contained.

Phil is getting ready to start sawyering again. We are in need of lumber for finishing the greenhouse, so he got the sawmill down to the lower pasture, where we have plenty of logs to cut up. He didn't start today, though.

We spent the morning having a "Holistic Management" discussion, in which we tried to crystallize our vision. That was intense, but good, and I felt like we were able to talk our way through some differences we've had in the past. Vision-related things, being so near the heart, can feel really contentious at any point where there's not total agreement.

In the afternoon, Phil put the new battery in our little Corolla, filled up the tires, and test drove it. We're hoping to sell that nice little car in the near future.

Then, Phil thought he would do something nice for the boys. We had the trampoline set up most of last year, on the sort of flat section right in front of the motor home. But mostly flat is still rather tilted, and we took the trampoline down last winter.

But we have a tractor with a bucket, and Phil has a pretty good idea of cut-and-fill (where you cut the upper slope and use that dirt to fill the lower slope), so he spent about an hour and made a perfectly level pad for the trampoline (yes, using the level and everything). I was surprised that the uphill slope was cut about 18", and so the lower slope was probably about 18", too, which means that the trampoline must have been much more sloping than I realized!

After we celebrated with jumps by all males, Phil was walking by the large commercial freezer. It had been making a louder sound than normal today, and he glanced at the temperature gauge. It was reading the in the "refrigerated" zone, not the "freezer" zone. When he opened the door, he found the sausages thawed. And the pork chops, the roasts, the spareribs, the bacon.

He almost threw up. Almost 300 pounds of meat which needs to be used up in the next three to five days. Five hundred dollars for processing alone so we could sell it legally, not to mention the price for the special soy-free, organic feed.

And it was now 5pm. How do we disperse that much meat, tonight?!

After a brief, frantic period of research to see if we could salvage the situation, we decided the best and only way to salvage the situation was to give it away. While Phil drove up to our church's parking lot (a local school), I called and emailed everyone I could think of. So he is there now, handing out pork.

And, you know? That's not the worst thing that's ever happened to us. From his occasional calls, he's had fun handing out delicious meat. After the initial shock, which left me crying and shaking, it became yet another challenge to be weathered.

Had we not discovered it until it went bad—that would have been an absolute disaster. This is a deep, deep disappointment. Another financial blow in a year that seems positively littered with them.

But we carry on, with hope and perseverance, and trust that the meat will nourish and bless our friends and community.

Greenhouse: Ready for Planting

When Phil went out to do chores this morning, he came right back to fetch me. Our pigs, freely wandering about the farm these days, mostly unseen, were certainly visible first thing.

There the nine were, lolling about the feed bin, waiting for breakfast. The babies, fortified with Buttercup's milk, went off to play.

I was impressed with Phil's calmness as he took out a bag of feed. Had it been me, with three hungry, full-sized pigs around me, I would have been sure they were waiting to tear into the bag. And perhaps they would have.

But for Phil, he simply hoisted the 50 pounds to his shoulder, and led the herd back down slope.

We had tentatively planned to kill Chunky tomorrow, but as I snapped photos of the rears of the hogs, I noticed that Chunky looked, er, more manly from behind. When I mentioned that to Phil, he said that Chunky does seem to have more vitality than the longer and larger Charles. So, for a bit longer, Chunky (or Charles) has won a reprieve.

Phil spent most of the rest of the day in materials handling. First, he scooped the rest of the lasagna bed into the back of the truck. He then shoveled that entire load out onto the greenhouse floor. That took a while. Next, he took down more of the cattle panels that surrounded our dry lot, and used the tractor to move more of the compost we had made last spring. That done, he tilled the greenhouse floor, until the lovely organic matter was incorporated as well as it could be. The greenhouse is ready for planting!

The energy must be good there, since all the boys were drawn to it. Joe was headed out to play at the wellhead, when he veered into the greenhouse, and dashed about, around and around. Then Jadon and Isaiah went in, and they paced back and forth, telling an elaborate story about Buster and Andy, in which they contribute alternating sentences. Abraham came over also, and he climbed the poles. Then he chased he brothers with a small shovel, in a game they made up called "home wrecker-y." No one was in danger of injury, and they all appeared to have a good time; I've heard tell of this game in the past, but had not witnessed it myself.

I was happy to finally have a place to transplant my poor blackberries. The few uncovered by the pigs look pretty horrible at this point, so I started by digging up some of the 100 I planted this past spring. Again, that was unexpectedly difficult emotionally. Here are these plants I had such high hopes for; many hardly grown a bit. The opportunity cost of six months of poor soil, and the time spent digging, planting, hoping, and trying again: it's no worse than most of the things we've tried around the farm, but I had to take a break after a while. I was blue.

But after a can of sardines (good brain food), I was ready to resume. And it was really quite pleasant to see the lengthening row of green in the gorgeous soil of the greenhouse, with the boys around me playing home wrecker-y.

While I did that, Phil fixed up the layers' little coop, giving them a sheet metal roof, and filling their laying boxes with fresh grass. He found a little nest of eggs underneath the boxes. We put them into the boxes, for Jadon to gather on the morrow, but Abraham decided he'd check the eggs. He was incredibly thrilled to find that there were twelve eggs, and proudly ran to the motor home to get the basket, carefully carried the eggs back, and put them in a carton, narrating the whole time. "Mom, there's twelve eggs! That's enough to fit a whole carton. One is really big, and one is just a baby egg, maybe the size of a guinea egg, and it's cracked." And so on.

In the final act of today's materials' handling, Phil took the compost made during our first year year and spread it in the apple orchard, bucket by bucket. He then tilled it in, and, since all green is now incorporated, and the soil is exposed, he plans to seed tomorrow.

I was amazed at the incredibly rich color of that old compost.

And as we get more of the area in front of the motor home cleared, it is giving me vision. We could turn the dry lot, right in front of the motor home, into a garden. It's already mostly cleared; already well fertilized; mostly flat; unused, near water. I think I could transplant many of the raspberries, currently hiding among the weeds in the defunct market garden. The raspberries planted in reasonably decent soil are doing quite well, and none of us would be sad to have raspberries to eat daily.

Goodbye to Lasagna Beds

Tuesday was a day of indoor work for Phil. Wednesday was a day to move chickens.

One batch of broilers is ready and past ready for processing. The second batch is getting close to full size. Phil was pleased that, once moved and the ground mowed, that part of the stone fruit orchard looked good.

The layers were a more tricky endeavor. He ended up moving them from the top of the apple orchard down into the market garden, which required about eight nets' worth of movement. The layers and ducks appeared quite content to be housed in my former tomato patch.

Before the chickens got there, Jadon and I pulled the T-posts out, and I tried to roll up the T-Tape irrigation. The weed overgrowth meant that the irrigation came up inch by inch, with much weeding as I went. It was, perhaps, the most frustrating thing I've done all summer, and in the end, I gave up. (When I woke up this morning, I thought, "Why didn't I just stand at the end and pull?" I don't know. Maybe I didn't want to damage the fragile stuff.)

I love the look of that area without all the T-posts poking up. It looks so natural. My hope is that the chickens will eat and fertilize the area well, and then at some point in November, I'll plant next year's garlic in that area.

Phil moved the sheep today. They had eaten their way through their area, and one spot had an odd type of thistle. The sheep had liked the foliage, since their faces looked like they were covered with carbuncles. Poor babies. We couldn't leave them with those pokey things all over, since they were potential eye irritants, so Phil caught them, sheep by sheep, and trimmed their hooves, while I removed the thistles and mostly stood around. (Old Ashley and the two rams avoided capture. Presumably their hooves are not bothering them, based on their speed during pursuit.)

After moving sheep, he mowed the area they had just finished.

As we see how nice the mown areas look, he keeps on mowing. Back behind the trailers.

Down the market garden road.

And after mowing, he scooped up my beautiful lasagna garden soil, which was brought to the farm in a dump truck two years ago, and amended with spoiled hay, tended with care, and so wonderfully productive. It has been the family garden and the garlic garden, my first successful attempt to raise vegetables.

But it was blocking tractor access to the stone fruit orchard, so it had to go. But with three inches of rich soil, I didn't want to just leave it to be driven over. And so he used the tractor to scrape it up, and brought it, load by load, down to the greenhouse.

Standing on the site of those hand made beds, now demolished, was harder than I expected. I didn't stay and watch the scrape for long: it made me sad.

Even though that soil will soon be growing something delicious in the greenhouse. And all that's left of the greenhouse, besides a few small bolts and metal pieces: the covering, a single large tootsie-roll.

Rejoice in Rain!

Our sheep decided to join us upslope yesterday. Rather than herd them back downslope, Phil just took a length of the electric net and contained them right by the house. So looking out the window, I can watch them eat down the weeds (and occasionally leaves on the trees, but not too often).

With almost an inch and a half in the rain gauge when we woke on Sunday morning, we were thrilled to have another almost two inches this morning. The rain gauge was so beautifully full: it's like waking to riches, after hearing the patter on the roof through the night. It still amazes us.

The land was quite wet, and since most of Phil's projects require the tractor, he spent an indoor day. We are thankful when he has engineering work, me perhaps more so than Phil: he just really, really likes being a farmer.

In Which We Take Out the Trash

When we lived in Boulder, the boys loved to watch the garbage and recycling trucks come by, with their automated arms that lifted the specially designed 32-gallon trash cans, sullying no human hand. We would dash from window to window at the sound, laughing.

The first time I read about living outside the city limits, I was struck that trash pickup wasn't automatic. What would one do with the wastes?

Today's farm trash day was an all day event. It included

• five black widows, at least four of which are now deceased, but all of which horrified and thrilled us;


• one tiny snake, so small I almost mistook it for a little squiggle of chicken dung, just hanging out under a pallet;


• one mama mouse, whose droppings I noticed in a pile of feed bags, but despite being on my guard was still startled by the very living little brown body; she dashed away as I shook her bag home;


• hours of trash consolidation in the back of the truck;


• shoveling minerals into the bucket of the tractor until a burst of rain, in which Phil had to both quickly dump the minerals in the greenhouse, then rinse the bucket out to avoid corrosion, despite the storm;


• a two or three hour round trip drive to the dump;


• and an enormous bonfire, to burn feed bags and busted pallets.

It was one of the most satisfying days I've had on the farm. We moved the last ten cattle panels away from the driveway, where they'd been stacked since October 2009. For the last two years, the weeds have been growing up inside them, and the wire industrial look has spoiled my view of the orchard as we drive down our driveway. No more. That spot is clean.

Another spot along the driveway had stacked pallets. No more. The worst were burnt, and the best stacked neatly in their proper place.

The final tote from our mineral spreading in fall 2009 we finally emptied, and that ugly white plastic tote has gone to the dump. The spot next to our compost pile is cleared, for the first time in almost two years.

Phil had a spot where he was drying lumber in front of the motor home; as he used the lumber, those pallets became handy stacking for garbage, but that meant that right outside our door always looked trashy (because, literally, it was). No longer. That pile is gone, including the heavy angle iron used to ship the tiller, and the moving blankets we brought from Colorado that have been sitting out in the elements for two years and more. They may have been reusable, once, but I am thankful they no longer are part of my living area decor.

The last of the large black plastic peat moss bags, all seven of them or so, are no longer lying right in the road down to the garden. They didn't fit in the truck for our last dump run, so they have been a minor irritation, uglifying the view of our entire property, for almost half a year. I'm happy they are gone.

And with that, we managed a general clean up. "Why are these pallets over here?" We must have fed animals on the other side of the fence at one point, a year ago. "I'll just move them away now." (And there was the little snake.) "What is this table doing here on the side of the road?" We used that for shooting. "Last Thanksgiving?!" Yup. "I'll just move that back up to the house."

T-posts: stacked. Extension cords: wound up in the neat daisy-chain pattern (clearly, Phil did that).

And the pile of broken wood with rusty nails and empty paper feed bags by the dozen, favorite dwelling places for spiders, beetles (also known by the less pleasant name "roaches"), mice, and others—the piles I was prepared to look around, since they were at least fairly orderly—those piles Phil burned.

The boys absolutely delight in fire. Two had already bathed for church tomorrow, but it was too mean to keep them indoors in clean condition, so they celebrated this day of cleaning house/farm, and we'll bathe them again tomorrow, when we hope to have more motivation. We're pretty happy to just sit and enjoy the sound of rain and thunder.

The Jawbone of a Pig

One of the most fun things about teaching the boys the Bible is that they get allusions. When I woke this morning, after boiling my pig's head for about 14 hours, it was no trouble at all to get the jawbone free. And what a massive bone it was! Samson killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (Judges 15:15), so I went into the house and asked Jadon, "Have you seen any Philistines nearby? I have a jawbone of a pig ready."

"Ha, ha," said Jadon, flatly. But I think his smirk betrayed that he was actually more amused than he let on. I mean, not every mom comes in with a pig's jawbone before breakfast.

Isaiah lost his fourth tooth yesterday, making two open spaces in his upper jaw. I had him pose with the jawbone for scale.

And then gave Bitsy the bone. Phil wonders sometimes what the dog eats, since she doesn't consume much of her dogfood. I'm pretty sure she survives on the softened bones from our chickens and pigs, and tomatoes from our graden. Not a bad diet.

Isaiah had picked me a flower to bless me and show me love, a beautiful present. It is from a noxious weed, bindweed, which grows with shocking speed, sending tendrils everywhere, wrapping trees and bushes. But even bindweed produces a delicate bloom, with a lovely lavender center. Even bindweed, I suppose, deserves a moment of appreciation.

Phil came in shortly after that, holding perhaps a dozen blackberry bushes. The pigs had systematically dug them up. They didn't dig up all they could have. I know what appealed to them in those few bushes. When milking, if the cow stepped in the pail or otherwise sullied the milk, I would pour a few tablespoons on the blackberries as I came up the hill. The boost of calcium is supposed to be good for the plants. Incredibly, a month later, the milk smell is still strong enough to attract the pigs. Or, perhaps, that soil just tastes better.

I hope the plants make it; we'll transplant them into a happier place soon.

Phil spent most of the day working on the greenhouse. Our greenhouse has sides that can roll up, and Phil put up the first of the side supports. Progress there, though, must come to a halt until he saws some more lumber. The greenhouse needs some wood for framing the base and sides.

While he was working, he noticed a smoke smell. By evening, the smell was rather strong. We were heading out for the evening, and I wondered if there would be a homestead waiting for us when we returned. The internet showed no signs of what the smoke might be, but on our return, we read about a 6000 acre fire in southeastern Virginia. Amazing that something so far away could cause a heavy haze to obscure the Blue Ridge Mountains, only a few miles away.

Should a fire come, I have no plan. We can't evacuate a dozen cows, let alone nine pigs, over a hundred chickens, skittish sheep. How did settlers deal with forest fire? How would one fight a homestead fire without running water (for if the electricity stops, the pump stops, too)?

Something I have no control over, and so I leave the farm, as I always must, in the hands of the Creator and Sustainer of life.