Two Long-Standing Hopes Fulfilled

The year before we moved to the land, we learned as much as we could. One of the most elegant things we heard was that, given a choice of minerals, cows will eat the proper nutrients that they need, and then excrete those minerals onto the deficient soils. A biological soil test of sorts.

After we moved here and got ruminants, we tried to always make sure they had kelp and salt; we offered clay and humates, but they weren't terribly interested. But it's never been as good as it could; we've grieved for our cows and their gradually releasing placenta; grieved the slow breed-back. We figured it was a matter of nutrition, and when Phil headed to his veterinary class in spring 2010, he learned of the Helfter Free Choice Minerals. That sounded like what we needed.

But the special box, which had spots for the 14 separate mineral supplements, was $1000; double that with minerals included. And so the cows have been stressed while we tried to earn the money needed.

But now, behold Phil's brilliance. He figured that if he bought a rubber mat, that could be strong enough and water-proof for a lid. Put in wooden divisions (sealed well with caulk), and there's a box with fourteen spots.

He labeled each box, so we'd know what to put in each container, and know what the cows devoured most quickly. (He had bought metal brackets, but realized after the fact that the wood worked even better.)

We love the healthy smell and beautiful colors of the minerals.

In order to prevent the bottom rotting out, he put 2"x2" runners on the bottom. The whole box rests on those, shielding the box from friction and damp.

How to move the minerals regularly, though? With about 140 pounds of minerals at any given time, plus the heavy wood box, even he can't carry it about when he moves the cows daily.

Creatively, he designed it to fit in the tractor bucket. He ratchets it down, and moves it easily.

With minerals on the front, and hay on the back, the tractor becomes a cow support system.

The curious cows came over to see what the new box contained. We suspect they stayed there most of the day, as when Phil went back at dark, one was still there. The cows had almost finished the Sulphur, the B-vitamins (especially important for stress), and the Iodine.

When we watched how happy and focused the cows were—what a great moment. Delayed for a couple of years, but finally accomplished.
***
This afternoon, we headed down to the lower pasture, new chipper in tow. For about two hours, I separated branches while Phil fed them into the chipper, which shot them out into the bed of the truck.

We ended two hours later when the truck bed was overflowing with beautiful, tiny chips.

Phil had us start at the entrance of the lower pasture. Two years ago, he had knocked down a swath of trees. We couldn't quite feel motivated to burn the downed trees, and so the lower pasture has been covered with debris for two years. And while piles of downed trees isn't as bad as, say, a pile of concrete rubble, it's not very beautiful.

So we were ecstatic—truly overwhelmed—at how wonderfully the chipper took our downed trees. It truly did self-feed, and the power of the PTO, combined with the 8" diameter, meant that the chipper took just about everything.

We cleared a section, well covered in downed trees and branches, about 40'x40'. Not bad for two hours.

Phil then couldn't get the truck to run, so it is stuck in the lower pasture, but he'll deal with that tomorrow.

While we worked, the boys had a great time. Isaiah took photos.

Jadon played in the creek and took photos, too.

Joe and Abraham found little twigs that fit their hands: light saber bases. They had wonderful fights, complete with sound effects.

***
To round out an exciting day, I went to check on my bees. I expected to find them mostly clustered, hibernating still. And there was a section that was doing that, presumably surrounding the queen, who has (presumably) begun laying already.

But there were bees crawling on both inner and outer cover, bees foraging, moving. I had expected few; I saw so many. I had expected tranquility: I found vitality. Marvelous. I had one pesky girl who kept trying to sting my face. The whole time I was checking on the food stores and overall hive health, this bee kept flying into my veil: thwunk, thwunk, thwunk.

After the hive was all assembled and I was walking away, another bee achieved her desire: she stung me on the forehead through the veil. Because another bee was buzzing my head all the way up the driveway to the house, I couldn't check the sting. It wasn't until later that I actually looked at it: stinger still intact.

And though I tried to scrape it off with my fingernail, it would not come.

Through the afternoon, my vision was unimpaired, but now my left eye is (again) swollen shut. It is very odd: half my face is normal, and half is puffy.

But the thrill that the hive is doing well, that the cows are fed, and the pasture will be cleared without burning: a swollen eye is not enough to dampen my enthusiasm.

Osage Oranges Sans Seeds

I had a great time going through my Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog! I still have plenty of seeds left over from my seed-buying frenzy last year, but I enjoyed going back through the catalog to see the things that did well.

I was surprised by how very little did well last year. Absolute crop failures on all varieties of winter and summer squash; no melons, no corn, no sunflowers, no beans. Early expiring tomatoes, early expiring cucumbers. Almost no cabbage.

But we had some successes, and it was fun to remember that. We had beautiful greens, as long as the spring weather held. The chard planted last spring is still producing now, nine months or so later. I had nice basil, adequate parsley, more than enough drying tomatoes. And some of the flowers did well: celosia, strawflowers, globe amaranth. Other flowers were epic fails (almost no marigold, cosmos, nasturtium, zinnia), but I think the plants that were started in the greenhouse did well, and the broadcast seeds did badly.

How satisfying to have my seed order placed!

I had two little reassurances that shed light on last year. Another epic fail was the osage orange fence I attempted to establish last year. We had gathered the osage oranges, let them freeze and thaw all winter, then dribbled the sludge into a trench in the spring, hoping that we would eventually have a living hedge. Great in theory: no sprouts in practice.

I tried again this last fall, carefully gathering the osage oranges off the ground, where they fall when fully mature. Today, I went to check them, and was amazed to find only about 20 seeds total in about thirty of the fruits. Since good osage oranges can have 200 seeds apiece, these fruits were almost 6000 seeds short. No wonder I had no germination: if the fruits themselves were almost sterile, it's awfully hard to grow a hedge!

Not my fault, and I could, perhaps, have been more observant (and maybe that wasn't the problem at all): there are plenty of things to take into consideration.

Second, we had our forester come by with a plan for our woods. I was chatting with him, and he mentioned at one point that there is a band of rich farmland, just about six miles north of us, that runs east-west across the central part of the state. That band has topsoil a foot and a half deep. No wonder we've been languishing here, and nearby friends have thriving gardens. Our soil needs some help!

And that's fine. But it's another piece of the puzzle in why 2011 was such a rough year. (I had forgotten that our first composite soil test came back with a score of 3 out of 100. It doesn't get much worse than that!)

Isaiah borrowed the camera and took some great photos.

Original sheep Ashley (still not in the freezer!) and her daughter Bethlehem.

One of the skinny, incredibly productive Leghorns. They had a rough week last week, producing only about three dozen eggs all week, after the dog attack Monday. They stopped altogether for a day or two, then produced at half pace the rest of the week. I think they're approaching normal rate now, though, after a week.

The orchard, still dormant. I am tempted to prune, since I think the trees are getting ready to bloom, with the warm winter we've had ... but I didn't start yet.

And since I've tried ever so many times to get good photos of the birds, I am impressed with Isaiah's ability to capture a clear, striking image.

A very satisfying day, my 33rd birthday.

My dear in-laws sent me a cake mix, so I actually had a birthday cake on my birthday, which I haven't had for some years. I borrowed a page from Isaiah's playbook, and would like to share the underlying meaning of the cake: I am both well-rounded and not quite square.

Chipper Assembly

Phil's task for the day was to bring the chipper from shipped state to assembled state.

It took most of the day.

Not only were the directions unintelligible, the steps were out of order and, in the end, the three-point hitch didn't fit with all the bolts in place. Oh—and they didn't send all the proper hardware. He borrowed bolts from the metal shipping crate itself.

But by midafternoon, he chipped a small tree. We'll be ready for action come Monday.

Bitsy might be ready for action in the next week, too. Her teats are distended, and her belly chubbed out. The puppies are coming!


I had a much more fun day. I have realized that Jadon is a fan of regular cleaning. He cheerfully reassembled the bed after I shook the sheets out the window and swept under the mattress. Joe likes to help sweep; Isaiah is usually good for a vacuum, and Abraham begrudgingly picks up the scattered toys.

By the end of the day, though, the cleaned room had returned to a state of toy scattering, though the dirt had been removed. Jadon said, "Ahh! We just cleaned this up!" (I think it is a mystery of nature that when I only cleaned every several months, I would get a pile of dirt, and a full vacuum canister. But now that I clean every week, I still get a pile of dirt and almost a full vacuum canister. Where does it come from? Where did it go before?)

January is supposed to be a good month to plant onions. I haven't received seeds yet, but I took the little failed onions from last year, the ones that only grew to the size of a pea or a marble or a plum, and went and put them in the ground in the uncovered greenhouse, then mulched with hay. Most of them had sprouted already, and maybe they'll live and grow large for me. I hope so. We eat a lot of onions. And if not, I'll start some from seed soon.

While I was planting onions, I heard a familiar buzz. One of my honeybees was foraging nearby. It's not even February yet, but my hive had awakened! I went down to visit, and there were bees. I was amazed to see that some were returning with pollen bags full! What's in bloom in January? A mystery. (I noticed later that I have a few dandelions blooming. Perhaps the bees were harvesting dandelion pollen.)

I have wondered at times if the 10,000 daffodils will be a total bust. I walk by the swales where they're planted and see ... nothing. But that changed today. Down by the beehive there was one precious shoot poking up.

But that was nothing. A little later, I walked through the apple orchard and found several trees with almost an entire ring of green already up: eight or ten out of twelve bravely poking up about the ground. It's enough to make me cheer!

I belatedly remembered to check the biodynamic calendar (it's been some months since I actually planted), and realized that it was a leaf day, so I also seeded my first tray of greens: two varieties of mustard, arugula, collards, and kale. Since I only need enough for my family, I figure a flat is sufficient for the week. It's a much more manageable pace than many flats for many people.

And how lovely to have a year's experience with making soil blocks. What took hours last year, both in failed attempts and research in how to do better, took minutes this year: right amount of soil and water right from the start, a flat of soil blocks done with no mishaps.

When I think of this day last year, when we had wrestled with getting the truck fixed for a solid month, where everything felt frantic and behind, hopeful but frustrated, I'm deeply grateful for a month like what we've had. Time to read to the boys (me) and play card games with them (Phil). Time to dream and work indoors. Maybe we're not moving forward swiftly, but to not have major repairs for a solid month, like last January—that's a blessing in itself.

Of Stewing Hens and Caffeine Highs

The great burst of sorrow dissipated quickly. Isaiah went to bed Tuesday night, and woke the next morning without any sign of real gloominess. (I, however, fell asleep sniffling, sad that the beautiful coasting of the little Mallard wouldn't be seen here again.) We totaled the price of the two birds, and expect we probably spent $120 total to feed them and raise them. Not that the price is the real total of their value, but it made it seem within the realm of possibility that we would have ducks again.

Today ended the Persephone Days, the period of less than 10 hours sun when plants do not actively grow. Here in Central Virginia, we have about an eleven week period, from November 19ish until now. Phil is looking forward to the pasture greening over again. And since I still haven't received my favorite seed catalog in the mail, I'm looking at starting the growing season a bit behind. Ah, well. Maybe the catalog will be in the box next time we check.

We received our new chipper today. Rather than asking neighbor Butch to help us with his skidsteer, Phil realized that our tractor hauls half ton hay bales around; surely the tractor could unload a less than half ton chipper. And it did, without any trouble. Another little way that we've become more self-sufficient (and we are thankful every day for the tractor!).

Because we'd had .4" of rain fall in about 20 minutes this morning, the ground was too soggy to actually test the machine, but we're excited to start using it.

On a totally random note, Phil had been a two-pot a day coffee drinker for a couple of decades. He could drink a couple of cups after 11pm and fall asleep at any moment after.

Last year, he suddenly said, "I'm not in bondage to this," and he quit one day. He might have a cup for fun at church, or a friend's house, but he realized lately that if he drinks a cup in the afternoon or evening, it keeps him up until 3am. (At least, that's what we suspect, due to the 1:1 correlation between drinking:sleeplessness.) It's even got to the point that if he drinks a cup in the morning, he can't sleep in the night, fourteen hours later.

I shudder to think what his poor adrenals must have been dealing with. If his natural reaction is such sleeplessness, his body must have been massively overriding the natural systems!

Rooiboos tea has been the beverage of choice, and I expect that will continue.

***

As we have, yet, six freezers filled with meat, I have needed to figure out ways to use the more unusual things. Sliced side meat (uncured bacon), sausage, and broiler chickens are all fairly straightforward.

But what about duck? I cooked my first one this week. The recipe said 300 degrees for four hours. The skin did get beautifully, tastefully crisp, but the meat dried out. Maybe three hours next time. The boys weren't big fans (duck is dark and rich, and they are white meat eaters, if at all).

I had also cooked a stewing hen, a tough old layer. It was a disaster. The tough tendons prevented the meat easily coming off the bones, and the meat itself was chewy so as to be almost inedible.

But old timers rave about the rich flavor, so I did some checking and came up with a recipe where I put two stewing hens in a pot and covered them with water. I simmered them for about five hours. THAT worked well. The meat was falling off the bones, tender, juicy, still quite flavorful.

Then I used the broth to cook homemade noodles, which were actually much easier to make than I expected. A cup of flour (I used freshly milled spelt, but any flour should work, I expect) and two eggs. Stirred, then kneaded, with however much flour added to make a smooth, not sticky dough.

I rolled the dough as flat as could be with a round glass, sliced into strips, and dropped in the broth and boiled for a few minutes.

A rich, comfort-food use for the stewing hens. And that's a relief, because we have plenty of them!

Devastation/Restoration

I awoke to a frantic crash: the duck had, apparently, emerged from her private hiding place and stumbled either upon the cat, or upon the boys' Playmobil, or something. It was a terrific noise in the silence, and as I staggered up to let the panicked duck escape the confines of our little house, she was so scared she hissed at me, and briefly attacked my leg.

I managed to get the door open finally, and the Mallard flew-fell to the ground. She sought sanctuary immediately in the electric-net protected laying house, quacking loudly all the way. She called her friend; her friend could not reply.

Half an hour later or so, I heard a sudden rumpus among the birds, and I came out to find the predator dog back on our land, but no birds in her mouth. The dog yet lives, an unpredictable threat.

But the mallard had gone missing. For an hour, Isaiah and I searched all the hideouts we could imagine, high and low, protected and open. She was gone. Missing in action, presumed dead.

We realized, too, that the Barred Rock, who had finally (!) started to lay eggs last week, was also gone. I found a feather. Recent? Who knows. Perhaps she was carried away on Sunday.

As the realization that his pride and joy, the Mallard, was gone, Isaiah's broken-heart was horrible to see. Made so much more poignant by the beautiful daylight that now settled on his shoulders and head, the first sunny, warm day in a week.

"Why did you let her out?" he asked me. And I had no real explanation, other than that she wanted to find her friend, to get out of the unnatural house environment and eat, poop, lay in her normal places.

How can it be that such a simple action as opening the door can lead to such devastation?

How can one mother bear up under the grief of her son?

***

That was a bad time. Certainly one of the worst hours of my life.

Abraham, on hearing the news, said, "Well, may the Lord help her to be safe." Oh, to have the faith of a child!

Phil and I talked through the events of the morning. I wanted some resolution, but that isn't always possible.

We walked over to the layer house. And there was the duck, where we had looked so many times before, huddled down, very much alive and not dog fodder.

I went to get Isaiah. I didn't tell him why, but he came with me, and so I saw his sad, tragic face lighten in a quiet smile as he saw her again.

Phil and he agreed that she should come back inside. They caught her and brought her in, Isaiah again faithfully cleaning her messes. She stood on his hands in the sunlight, feathers gleaming.

All was well. Restoration; Abraham's answered prayers; beloved pet recovered from the jaws of death.


***

For a few hours.

The Mallard had been spot-bleeding even yet. I watched her poop a great puddle of white liquid. She was not doing well.

And then Isaiah came, sad-faced again. "The Mallard died."

Whether from a broken-heart, companionless; whether from internal injuries; whether the loss of a friend made her lose her desire to live, the Mallard was, indeed, dead.

But what a difference than a traumatic loss to a dog. She has a permanent place on the farm, buried next to Chloe. Isaiah and I put daffodils on her grave, put a Sharpied headstone at her head. Rather than the unrestrained grief of the morning, this was simply deep sadness.

When my heart is overwhelmed, hear my cry, give heed to my prayer.
And my eyes are dim with tears, oh, Father, make them clear.
From the ends of all the earth, when my heart is fainting
Let me know that you have heard, and lead me into safety.

Lead me to the Rock, the Rock that's higher,
Lead me to the Rock that's higher than I,
Lead me to the Rock, the Rock that's higher,
Higher than I.

You, oh Lord, have been to me a refuge from my enemies.
Let me live within your strength, in the shelter of your wings.

Classic Animation

After several hours of crying over the duck, I figured I was in an unproductive cycle of sadness, and needed to get off the farm. Time to think of something else. As a family, we headed out to see the re-released Beauty and the Beast, courtesy of a Christmas present.

It was a shock to see both the beauty of the 20-year-old animation, and the difference that computer animation (a la Pixar) has created. The colors and vistas still amazed me, even as they did when I saw the movie in the theater as a 12-year-old. (Phil said that he had seen it three or four times in the theater with his college friends.) It was, perhaps, mean to take the littlest Lykosh. I had forgotten how very mean the Beast is, and he burst into tears at one point, "I don't like this movie!" But with a running description of what was about to come, he made it through. He admits he liked the library, but everything else ... not so much.

We went to Chipotle, too, after dinner, as I had nothing thawed or prepared. There was a family with five young children, cute, trim mother in a NorthFace jacket. It was like looking at who I would have been (or at least wanted to be), had we not moved to the farm.

And then we headed home. I idly asked if the electric fence protecting the chicken was on, and one of us was reasonably sure that it wasn't. That last hour took forever, as I wondered what kind of carnage I would find on the return. If we had no egg layers left living ... but it was too dreadful to contemplate.

And, thankfully all were living. The duck will stay the night inside, faithfully tended by Isaiah, who warms cloths for her back, and picks up her dung.

Not all was bad. Abraham made Joe an impressive Duplo sword and shield. They weren't much good in actual combat (perhaps I should be grateful), but they looked good.

And, for the record, we have had snow now. A light sprinkling Sunday morning, just enough to make the trees look pretty for an hour or two.

Death Comes Down the Driveway

We sang the song, "10,000 Reasons" at church yesterday.

The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning;
It's time to sing Your song again.
Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me,
Let me be singing when the evening comes.

This brought to mind several really hard days over the last few years, when we've lived through hard things. Most devastating, certainly, when my niece died. Personally hard when yearling lamb Blessing died in birth; when we had a dog attack that killed twenty-six almost ready-for-processing chickens.

The chorus of that song continues

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
O my soul,
Worship His holy name.
Sing like never before,
0 my soul.
I'll worship Your holy name.

I woke to that refrain.

Perhaps, then, it shouldn't have surprised me to casually glance out the window to see that same chicken predator mauling a white bird. I shrieked for Phil, but by the time we got outside, the dog had taken off, bird in mouth, down the road and quickly out of sight.

We have debated putting a gate across the driveway to discourage such predation. It seems it would also discourage deliveries, and make chores more difficult—Phil has to drive the tractor over to the cows several times a week. Not to mention the hassle of opening and closing the gate for every errand. But it is worth it? How many tears, how much loss is worth the inconvenience?

Any layer bird is a loss, both in our kitchen and in dollars. But the loss struck deeper this time.

Phil said, "Look at the mallard." She was hobbling under the office trailer. "Was it the Harlequin duck that died?"

And it was. Our one, beautiful, faithful laying Harlequin duck. Our sole companion for Isaiah's beloved mallard. And while we are thankful the mallard isn't dead, she had dog saliva on her feathers, and a bloody patch on her back. I can only speculate: how does a little duck escape from the maw of a deadly predator?

Perhaps when her friend flies to her defense and dies in her place.

The weather continues grey and dreary; a fitting, sorrowful sky for a sad, sad day.

And Then There Was One

Around 5pm yesterday, Phil headed over to check on the cows. He found that they had knocked part of a hay bale over the electric line, grounding it out. Then thirteen of the fourteen had headed out of the paddock for the open fields. He called me to come over, with flashlights and shepherd's crooks.

For the next half hour, in the fast-falling night, we stumbled through brambles and over swales. I almost tripped myself twice with the crook, and once I snagged the flying end of the (non-electrified) electric line. It had come loose for a second time. (Phil had caught it the first time.)

But the reality is, Phil knows how to manage the cows. It wasn't traumatic; it wasn't unreasonably difficult. Really, it was almost a non-event. Which I suppose shows how far his animal husbandry abilities have progressed.

And happily, this all happened before a very little bit of snow fell: our first snow of the season. Just enough to dust the ground. Then a half inch of rain came.

I continue to read through Harvey Ussery's book. Last night I read about how to improve a breed. Mark each chicken with a toe punch. Weigh each chicken at about eight and 16 weeks (or 12), to see which are the heaviest. There is also a way to select for egg production, or meat production. So interesting! One of these years I hope to get 250 birds from one of the critically endangered breed of chicken, and start to improve that breed.

It was an interesting exercise, to think about what I would like in a bird. Of the chickens we've had so far, my favorite is Tux, who is (I think) a Black Australorp. She's a faithful layer of nicely proportioned brown eggs. I like her chunky, squat body, in contrast to some of the skinny, leggy, long-necked birds. Compared with the flighty Leghorns, I like her calm temperament; she lets Isaiah interact with her. The colored sheen of her feathers is visually interesting. She forages for food diligently.

From a cursory scan of the critically endangered breeds, both the Holland and the Redcaps appeal to me, though Phil pointed out that a dual-purpose breed isn't as necessary in chickens: they're small enough to run two unique flocks.

Always something new to learn; always something new to try.

Creative Design

Phil has done some creative thinking the last few days. Rather than calculating the diameter of timbers for a reciprocating roof, or trying to lay out a compact dwelling design, he went back further. We had once talked of what rooms a normal house should have: a kitchen, a bathroom, at least two bedrooms, if not three or four, a living room. But he went back even more.

He calculated the size each room would be, at a minimum. A kitchen needs space for a refrigerator, sink, range, and a certain amount of cabinet/counter space. A bathroom needs a tub, sink, and loo. What square feet does a standard dining room table require, with the chairs around it? How about a standard bedroom?

He figured a "normal" dwelling would need about 900 square feet for a small but comprehensive dwelling. If the bedrooms were to be a bit larger than 10'x12', perhaps 1400 square feet at the outside.

We had a 2600sqft home in Boulder, and it had plenty of wasted space. And although 900sqft seems small, compared with 224 here in the construction trailer, it sounds palatial.

While Phil has been creative, I have been having little bursts of creative insight, which Phil tolerates when he emerges from the design cave. A stray comment in Mother Earth News made me think, "We can put a spring house over our spring!" Someday.

Storey Publishing will soon release The Organic Backyard Vineyard. Incredibly, an acre of wine grapes can produce somewhere between 1800 and 5400 bottles of wine. And if it's not terribly edible, it seems one could use it to run a vehicle. "We can put in an orchard!" Yup. Someday.

One of the little gulches on our land could be transformed into a series of descending little pools, slowing down the runoff to prevent the rapid erosion. It won't happen this year. But someday.

From mushroom cultivation to rice paddies; from fast-growing and fast-spreading bamboo to the desire for sugarcane (if not quite the proper climate): the world is full of so many things to think about, research, and try!

Mouse Damage

Phil was on such a roll designing that he stayed up till 2am. Then he suddenly realized that all his design efforts of the last week have been an exercise in futility. He did some rough calculations and realized he would have needed something like 18 beams, 20' long and 18" wide. And while I pointed out this morning that that shouldn't be too hard to source, the question of how to hoist them to their proper place on the roof certainly brought a halt to any design progress.

With all his time in the office lately, a few days ago Phil came face to face with a mouse there. He bought some mouse traps and caught four in two days. He hopes they are all gone now. I do, too. I went out to the barn and thought, for some reason, to look in one of the drawers.

The smell of mouse wafted strongly up, and I noticed that one of my pairs of "good" shoes had been thoroughly chewed by mouse. I shook mouse droppings out of the other three pairs, relieved to see neither babies nor apparent damage, and decided the barn is probably not a good place for personal goods. Seeds, tools, and freezers, fine. Shoes and clothes: no.

Phil checked the water filter he had installed at the pump house. It was so caked with silt, he had to scrape silt away with his finger before he could even pull it out. Then he brushed it off, not realizing I would like a photo of the half inch of silty buildup. The animals would have had that in their water: it's just as well we're filtering it out.

After that, Phil went and shoveled sodden hay for a few hours. I'm sure he'll be sore tomorrow, but he wanted to build a wind block for our six sheep. And the hay does need to move off our road at some point. I think he was just ready to do some manly labor, clear his mind, get away from the design board.

While I was doing dishes, I watched a movie about Rainbow Valley Farm, a permaculture farm in New Zealand. Although the original farmer passed away a few years ago, for the previous twenty years, he and his wife transformed the barren land into a paradise of 13,000 trees, a hand-made home, a self-sufficient system. They lived for two years without electricity or phone, and began with thorny gorse bushes which they removed by hand. But their system worked, and with enthusiasm and hard work, they created beauty.

Success stories inspire me!

Sprouting

Sunday night I was reading Harvey Ussery's most excellent book about chickens. I had reached the part about feeding chickens from homestead produced feeds, and he mentioned that he is playing with a permanent boundary hedge of Goumi, Goji, and Siberian Pea Shrub, all of which are useful for animal feed. (He has other ideas that fit with permaculture: planting mulberries, pawpaw, and using the extra fruits for chicken feed; using acorns or beechnuts as feed.)

He also settled a little concern I had about the hazelnuts I've interplanted with a few of the apple trees. When I ordered my hazelnuts, the photo looked like a nice, perhaps three-foot shrub, very cute. I came across a photo in a nut-grower book, though, which showed massive, 15 foot, multi-trunked shrub-trees. There was no way those enormous plants would fit in my dwarf apple orchard.

Harvey cleared up my issue. Somehow I didn't know this, but there are Corylus americana, which I have, and Corylus avellana. My type produce nuts only about a half inch, and are small bushes. The dessert-type, grape-sized hazelnut is the other version (and, certainly, the type in the book.) This is good to know. It will not ever be worth my while to harvest by hand little nuts the size of peas. They shouldn't go in my orchard. They are certainly useful for chicken feed (or pig, or cow, I expect), so they will be just great as part of a hedge or a forest garden.

I had even ordered 500 hazelnuts last fall, but was able to cancel that order when the workload compounded around here. Makes me quite thankful.

Anyway, the vision of the productive privacy hedge must have captured my mind, as I awoke in the middle of the night, ready to get to work researching what trees to plant at what spacing; what trees can grow from seed, since I'm not in a desperate hurry (I had read about goji sprouting).

Many hours later, I had a list of 43 trees, bushes, and vines, and the approximate height they would reach, from the 100 foot tall pecan, to the three foot tall huckleberry. Inspiring, if not immediately actionable.

I love the winter hibernation: so many interesting thought paths to pursue.

The boys and I have been entranced with the growth of the sprouts. After soaking the clover and daikon overnight on Sunday, we saw tiny white sprouts on a few seeds already on Monday morning. By this evening, the clover has taken off!

Phil has spent many hours lately in the office, designing something unique to him. We feel like this is a building year, and it was interesting, then, to have our sermon on Sunday be out of Joshua 17. At one point, Joshua says to some of Joseph's descendants, "[G]et thee up to the wood country, and cut down for thyself there in the land." Basically, clear the land and build your house.

It feels like a time of sprouting all over: ideas, plans, seeds. Latent excitement building.

Fresh Turmeric

Saturday was bitterly cold. Phil spent the day designing on the computer, until late in the afternoon. We had gone out to replenish the chicken's feed bin, and discovered that, in the month since we last checked it, mice had done incredible damage to feed bags. And, worse, they had eaten into our $1000 worth of free-choice cow minerals. We had hoped Phil would be able to make a feeder for them already, but, as usual, we ordered and haven't yet put it to use.

We ended up putting the minerals into covered 5-gallon buckets, hopefully left in the open enough that our cat can catch those rascally mice!

I spent some time re-cleaning what I cleaned last week (and was amazed at how much dirt and grit had accumulated; I never really want to clean unless there's a noticeable change, and I was amazed at how great the change was!); then I made some further progress. I actually uncovered Jadon's dresser, and the books that had been buried thereon.

Sadly, that meant that I just paid it forward to my own desk, but since last week both the dresser and the desk were covered like that, and perhaps even worse, I feel like I've made progress.

We all went in to a local grocer today. Although the prices were higher for butter and yogurt, we were impressed with their selection of locally grown vegetables and fruits. And, since we had looked at leeks in a seed catalog, Isaiah asked if we could get one. Hmm ... a request for vegetables. I think I'll say yes!

Another fun purchase was sprouting lids. As a thrifty woman, I have resisted these sprouting lids for years. I can make do with wash cloths! But because it's not fun to wrestle with wash cloths and rubber bands, I usually don't. But sprouts should be a good homegrown winter vegetable. Currently soaking: daikon radish and clover seeds.

And we bought fresh turmeric! I have only used powdered, dried turmeric in curries, but I read an article last year about fresh turmeric. Supposedly a wonderful medicinal plant, as well as nicely flavored, I figured we could grow it in the greenhouse, but I have never tasted it fresh. So I bought some today (with fresh ginger in the background for comparison: very similar in shape, but the turmeric is smaller and much more yellow).