virginiaisforlykoshes: Frog Legs (er, Eggs)

With rain predicted on and off all day, I got up early and planted out lavender. That was a relief: another two trays out of the greenhouse and in the ground.

After breakfast, Jadon went and helped me pull the large leaves off the cabbages. We found one picture-perfect cabbage. And below it, the one toad. Coincidence? I think not.

We tried to put clean, nice leaves in one bucket, and leaves that were dirty but still potentially usable, in another bucket. The patch looked a bit denuded by the time we were done.

I think the glorious reality of growing things on a diverse farm really hit home today. I have cabbages that will hopefully grow better heads, now that I've taken four large buckets of outer leaves. Of those four buckets, the worst leaves, and, in the end, the dirty leaves, went to the cows. I turned the best leaves into sauerkraut, made from home-grown cabbages and hand-milked milk turned to whey. That took most of the afternoon. But while I pulled center stems, chopped hundreds of leaves, and hand-mashed pounds of cabbage leaves, I listened to lectures and learned and had fun.

So my cabbage patch has provided lacto-fermented food for my family, good nutrition for my animals, and will (hopefully) keep producing more food for ourselves and our customers. That seems so sustainable!

Phil felt a bit at loose ends: so many important things to do, but no URGENT fires to put out. I thought getting the bull away from the heifer calves was my first priority, so he and Isaiah went and moved the bull, and expectant heifer Fern, upslope for easier observation. Snowman the bull and Bianca the dry cow, constant companions for the last three and a half months, bawled back and forth for a time, but apparently the affection was fairly superficial, and they soon quieted.

I love having Fern just at the bottom of the clearing. Although she is 22 days from her due date, as she ate the cabbage leaves, she let me touch her udder for the first time. It's just a bit bulgy at the top, and the teats are protruding in a new way. They are quite wrinkled, so she's not nearly ready to deliver, but just having the promise of those nice fat teats is so exciting. Her backend is a bit swollen, and overall she has mellowed, not at all like the frantic Fern who gave me a fat lip the day she arrived a little more than a year ago.

The lower pasture cows had eaten through a massive hay bale in the last three or four days (perhaps using part of it for bedding). With the rain, there was no way we'd get the tractor down and, more importantly, back up, and so we reopened half the lower pasture that the cows haven't had access to for the last 40 days or so. They were ecstatic to head over and eat the new growth. May it last them well until the rain-soaked land dries and lets us deliver more hay.

By moving them over, though, Phil had to take the electric fence energizer from the layer hens. This left them exposed to possible predation, so he and Jadon set about installing an outlet in the pump house for more powerful electric netting. Although it rained a bit in the afternoon, he drove all five 8' posts seven feet into the ground to thoroughly ground the system. He had been dreading that task, and avoiding it, but the rain must have helped soften the ground. On the second or third post, he brought the driver down on his head (as he did last year), and it bled a bit, but within a few minutes he was back at work. Good for him. By evening, all our animals were again contained, protected, and fed.

The rain even held off for me to broadcast blue flax, phacelia, and calendula seeds. As we headed in for dinner, the rains came, at the end of another full day of fulfilling work.

Isaiah had a great discovery: frog eggs in our volunteer pond.

He and I went and collected quite a few and put them in a jar. One of my treasured childhood memories was a Sunday school class picnic where I found some just-hatched tadpoles, and took them home. I watched the transformation into almost-full frogs, and one of my hopes moving here was that we could someday have a pond where the boys could witness the transformation. I wasn't expecting that quite so soon, but I am happy nonetheless.

As Chestnut escaped, yet again, Phil called, "Look who I have." Jadon said, "If you take a picture, a good caption would be, 'Man confused about his child.'"

With a title like that, who could resist?

I also picked my first beets. Despite not thinning them, I had reasonable, peach-sized beets. With my first fifteen, I made fermented beets and beet kvass, an excellent liver tonic. I am so thankful to have beets from the garden. They always seem a bit extravagant in the stores, but beet kvass, with its slight effervescence and perky flavor, is such a treat. And maybe soon I'll bake and shred some beets for my salad. Yum!