How Cookie Cravings Saved Two Lives

Phil finished drilling the second row of trees this morning early. Jadon and I helped him layout the next seven rows or so, stringing baling twine attached to T-posts at precise intervals. Then Phil scraped the topsoil off several of those rows.

Sheep Ashley continues to appear more ready to deliver a lamb. Her bag appeared to me to be more full (even sticking out behind her legs a bit). In one of the reference books I frantically read yesterday, the author suggested that feeding grain at midday could force a daytime birth, so at midday I brought her some (organic) cracked corn. She ate with good will; I had a difficult time keeping the goats away from her as she consumed the first several cups of grain I’ve fed her.

Towards dusk, Phil left for Scottsville to get some straw bales, just in case Ashley went into labor. We wanted to make a “jug,” like a maternity room for women, where an ewe and her newly born lambs can rest, get acquainted, and begin life well. Phil had already put up some pallets with a tin roof on the backside of the chicken coop, so we just stacked strawbales three high all the way around the outside, leaving a little walkway in the center.

When Phil had left, snow had just begun to fall. By the time he returned, it was a few inches thick, and coming fast. As near as we could tell, Ashley was not in active labor (what does a sheep contraction look like, anyway? How would I know?). She was holding her tale out, almost like a duck, a sign that means “labor in two to three days.” This was very reassuring; I prayed that her babies would not come tonight, in the dark, in the snow.

After the boys went to bed, we were discussing which trees to keep, and which to get rid of. We don’t think all the trees will fit in the clearing, so are there some that are more vital than others? And, with the snow, we think we’ll send back the skid steer on Monday; we’re supposed to have snow cover for quite some time.

Phil had a sudden craving for cookies. Dear Berenice, an older woman from our Bible study, had brought beautiful decorated Christmas cookies (with wheat) for the five children. We had left them in the truck yesterday, as we tried to get all the sleeping children in the house after study, so Phil suited up to claim his prize (as he is the only one who eats wheat, he decided he could make the sacrifice). He left me typing this; I had got as far as “She ate with good will” when he opened the door, said, “Your prayers weren’t answered. Ashley delivered her twins. Get suited up.”

What an adrenaline rush! I tromped through 12 inches of snow, audibly praising the Lord that He was providing for these precious babies. Praising the Lord that Ashley is not a first time mom, that she delivered without incident, that Phil had a cookie craving.

We think we reached the lambs within minutes of their births. All the other sheep were crowded around; the three babydoll lambs watching (two learning what will happen to them in 2011). Phil and I each picked up a baby and carried them, at ground level, to the jug (thank the Lord we had prepared it before nightfall!). Then I became the task master and Phil the ready servant. Since I had read the books, I knew what to do.

First: towels for the babies. They were severely chilled. The firstborn, a ram lamb had actually frozen stiff in the few minutes outside; the second born, an ewe lamb, was not yet breathing, because the sac was covering her mouth and nose, and she, too, was extremely cold. I cleaned out her nose and mouth until she made little noises. When Phil brought blankets, I started to dry them off.

Thankfully, they were shivering. If they weren’t, that would have been a sign that they were too chilled, and we would have had to take drastic measures (ideally, submersion in warm water followed by a hair dryer; this would have been nigh impossible, as we have no running warm water and own no hair dryer). I also cut a bit off their umbilical cords and soaked their cords in iodine. All we had was 2% iodine solution which Phil picked up on his way home today; we are supposed to use 7% solution. I pray that, in this instance, the Lord will be gracious and protect those lambs from anything bad getting into their umbilical cords and causing an infection.

The lambs would not stop shaking. We put up a heat lamp (removed from the chickens—sorry, biddies!); Phil got a cattle panel and put it in front of the door, after we shooed out the four other interested sheep. (When I had first entered the jug with the babies, there was me, and seven snow covered animals in a pretty small space. I am not terribly claustrophobic, but it was a relief to get the others out!) I checked inside their mouths to see if their mouths were cold; thankfully, they never were, as I was concerned enough without negative indications.

I did my best to thoroughly dry the lambs off; their wool is dense, though, and it was not easy. Ashley is a mothering pro: she licked them and nickered to them (it almost sounded like a warning grunt directed to me, but I think it was loving to them). Phil brought her warmed water (what a treat!) with molasses in it, and fresh hay for them to lie on and for her to eat.

The other task I needed to do as sheep midwife was to strip her teats. The sheep get a wax plug that can freeze up in cold weather, so a person needs to strip it out. I almost thought it was impossible, so I’m thankful I didn’t make the lambs try to do it. I milked out just a little colostrum for future use, but Ashley wasn’t thrilled with my attempts, so I didn’t get nearly as much as I wanted. (Colostrum is important to have on hand in case an ewe dies in birth at some future date; lambs MUST have colostrum, because, unlike humans, they get no antibodies from their mothers in utero. Human babies get some through the umbilical cord and some through colostrum, but sheep get it all through colostrum. Thus, it is an absolute necessity.)

Having read many books about the necessity of colostrum, preferably in the first half hour, I was pretty concerned. I figured, though, that the Lord has been guiding us so graciously thus far, he wouldn’t stop now. After all, yesterday morning I thought, out of the blue, “I should go look at the sheep.” Which seemed like a frivolous and almost wasteful thing to do—I have five children to take care of, and now I want to frolic with sheep in the middle of the day? But the impression was so strong, I went, and that was when I noticed the enlarged udder and then the “dropped” appearance made sense.

Anyway, at Phil’s urging, I took a break from the sheep and lambs and went inside. It was now 11:30pm, and I read a few more tidbits that persuaded me to go out and try again to get the babies to eat. I milked more colostrum, and fed it, finger by finger, to the babies. Soon after this, they began baaing more lustily (yay!) and the ram stood up! Yippee! From frozen to standing in such a short time! He was pretty clueless about finding the udder, and I felt bad because ideally the ewe would be shorn before lambing (this is really not a seasonal birth, and there was no way I wanted to shear Ashley right at the start of winter). The baby kept trying to suck the dirty, wet wool, but Ashley was patient and directed him to where he needed to go. He drank noisily and happily a few times.

By then his sister was standing, but Ashley didn’t try to direct her. Ashley does lick her, so she has accepted the baby, but she didn’t give any of the helpful nudges or whickerings that she offered the ram lamb. Phil had joined me in the jug then, so we tried together to get the ewe lamb to drink. She does not appear to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but by physically putting the teat to her mouth, she, too, drank well.

Ashley passed the afterbirth without any trouble and so, at 1am, our task was done. The Lord was very gracious to us raw beginners on this raw night; the 12 inches or more of snow we have now would have left no lambs alive by morning, had Phil not had a hankering for Christmas cookies.

Lambing Time Already?

Phil unloaded the cattle panels and the T-posts, after he accidentally backed the trailer into our darned trench. Thankfully, Samson-the-dually pulled the trailer out, so Phil returned it without further mishap. That took all morning.

This afternoon, he drilled holes. On his second hole, the entire auger suddenly fell off the machine. He and Isaiah spent an hour wrestling it into place. Isaiah really helped: he drove the skid steer and lowered the arm and basically aided Phil however he needed it.

I was blissfully unaware of this trauma until the very end. But then I was frantic: we will never get these holes all dug, if we have to deal with leaking hydraulic fluid (Phil returned that first hydraulic unit today for a non-leaking one), and augers suddenly falling off the machine. Good gracious! What a mess!

But Phil remained unconcerned and plugged away, and managed to finish about 25 holes by the time darkness fell. I was proud of him.



My day was spent in terror/elation at what I thought was the imminent birth of our first lamb. As I looked at our full-blooded Dorset, Ashley, this morning, I noticed first that she looked really, really skinny, with protruding hip bones. Actually, my first thought was, “She dropped!” And then I noticed that her udder was swollen to the size of a minibasketball, or maybe a bit bigger. Since her udder used to be virtually invisible, that was an interesting development. AND she’s been standing up more, and been more friendly toward me, the human midwife.

All these signs, apparently, the books say could point to labor. But, like with women, the signs come at different times for different animals, and mean different things. So Ashley could give birth tonight, or she could give birth in a month. Since she was penned with a ram until we bought her, she could give birth at just about any time, and we'll have no way of knowing unless she gives us more definite signs.

I had figured I had a month to prepare, so I frantically read through all the basic info I could find on lambing. I think it comes down to just a lot of prayer. Vet bills will be more than the replacement cost of the animal; it’s distressing to think that a lamb and an ewe could die on my watch. I am praying instead that our flock will be like Jacob’s, where it increased in vigor and number because God blessed it.

Towing and Sprinkling

This felt like a long day. Jonadab fell asleep after 1am, and we were all up by 7:30. Phil went out and started drilling holes. In an hour or two, he had finished a total of 37, or all that he plans to do on the first row. (Eventually we’ll have 40 there, adding the one that Phil dug by hand, plus two on the ends where we have T-post markers now.

At 10am, Phil left to pick up the fencing. He first stopped at Rental City to rent a flatbed trailer. He knew it might be dicey, since the hitch we have is 2 ½”, while their equipment is 2”. While there, the guys in the machine shop adjusted our hitch (gratis!), so now we have a standard-sized hitch. That’s good!

But it took a while. Phil got back with about one-third of the fencing at 3:30. He used the skid steer to unload the heavy fencing (putting it to another use I hadn’t anticipated). He figured he had two loads to go. He took the boys with him on the second trip, and called me from Charlottesville at 6:30, saying they had almost loaded everything, and he hoped it wasn’t too heavy.

Over the next two hours, there were several specific moments where I felt the need to pray for my boys’ protection. The trip usually takes no more than an hour. After he got home, Phil confessed that there was one moment that he figured he had just killed all five of them. In order to avoid town traffic, he took an alternate route. On I-64, he had pushed the truck to the swift speed of 45 mph (which is pretty good for a dually towing seven tons). Suddenly he started fishtailing so badly he expected the truck to roll at any moment; he pulled onto the shoulder and came to basically a complete stop before he regained control.

It was the most scared he had ever been while driving.

Back at home, he looked online to figure out why that had happened, and how to prevent it. Based on a diagram, it seems that the trailer was loaded too heavily in the back, and the hitch had too much pressure, and tried to raise the back of truck. Or something like that. He went no faster than about 37 mph the rest of the way home, and arrived safely. Once again, God protected us.

My farm accomplishment was to stir biodynamic preparations and fling them on the ground. Biodynamic farms seek to use the cosmic forces (i.e. that of the moon, the planets, and the stars) in order to increase the health of the soil and the crop. This sounds very “New Agey” but I think it makes sense. The moon exerts an unmistakable force on the tides; labor and delivery nurses joke about how when the moon is full, they can hear the bags of water popping all over the city, so the moon exerts a force even on a much smaller body of water. I would suspect that other celestial bodies also exert forces—or, at least, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

And they use specific preparations or “preps” to improve the soil.

Most of these preps are embarrassing to even admit to using. My personal nomination for the most outlandish is BD [for biodynamic] 505: “In America 505 is usually made from the finely ground outer bark of the white oak tree (Quercus alba), which is packed in the cranial cavity of a domestic farm animal’s skull and buried for the autumn and winter in a spot where water trickles constantly.” (I told you it’s embarrassing!)

One of my favorite biodynamic thoughts came from the first book I read on the subject, A Biodynamic Farm, by Hugh Lovel. Overall, the book is disjointed, but quite interesting, nonetheless. Lovel says that Newton figured out that the apple falls due to gravity. But he didn’t acknowledge how the apple got into the tree to begin with—a force Lovel calls “levity.” (Great, huh?)

To insert a little levity into this email, I made pizza for dinner in the little convection oven. I used cheap shredded mozzarella from Costco. And Joe vomited up (levity there) the same horrid smelling, foul liquid that was a constant part of his first few weeks alive, before I cut out dairy. He hasn’t done that in a year, but I guess that’s a lesson to me: no more cheap cheese.

Hurry up, goats! Almost time to kid! I’m ready for milk of my own.

Our Friend the Auger

Rental City delivered the skid steer with 30” auger today. Phil drilled two holes in fairly short order, deep, topsoil mixed with subsoil. Therefore, not ideal. (The top six inches of soil have aerobic microorganisms, which need air to live; below about six inches are anaerobic microorganisms that need no air to live; if the layers get mixed, you get a lot of dead soil. Bummer.)

So Phil traded the auger for the bucket and scraped the topsoil off the location of the first two rows of trees. The rich topsoil is minimal in comparison with the massive quantities of subsoil the auger brings up, but I’m thankful to have it separated and available. (The photo below shows the visible difference between the topsoil and subsoil: the more orange soil in the background is subsoil.)



Next Phil ran to the hardware store to get spray paint (which really meant he also stopped at the bank and deposited checks, stopped at the gas station to get diesel fuel for the skid steer, stopped at the post office to mail a package and get our mail; he met Doug Bush at the gas station and had a nice chat, but that was an unplanned, added bonus). He marked the subsoil at 6’ spacing for these first two rows, and then settled down in the skid steer for the boring, repetitive, noisy task of drilling holes for trees.

At first, the holes look like this:



After a short while, as the perched water flows in, the holes look more like this:



All told, we think today produced 15 holes. Only 385 to go, plus backfilling and planting.

Okay, that’s really depressing. We’ll focus on the first number and forget the second.

The Miry Pit

Phil drove into Charlottesville with the four older children to pay for the cattle panels and T-posts that have come in. He didn’t bring them home, because 250 panels at 8’x16’ each would not fit in our van—nor our pickup!—but he did look them over before paying, and now gets to figure out how to get them home.

We went down to see the end result of his excavator work (although the rental place won’t pick up the machine until tomorrow, since we’re not paying for today, we didn’t use it today). It was both encouraging and discouraging.

I was encouraged by the amount of land that is cleared. I figure he probably only worked maybe six hours, without ideal equipment, and probably cleared about 1/3 of an acre. If we rent a better piece of equipment for a month, I think he could easily clear all four or so acres down by the creek. Once we get the trees planted and the fencing up, that will be next on the list.

I was discouraged first by the soppiness of the ground. Isaiah had eagerly run ahead into the cleared patch; the mud literally sucked his shoes off, and he stood, sock-clad, sobbing, ankle-deep in cold, red clay. (Phil carried him to a tree, removed his socks, put his shoes back on, and then graciously carried the sodden socks back to the trailer—what a guy!) We have deep gullies on either side of our house and future orchard clearing, and they make a V-shape as they run into Hog Creek. The northern gulley cut a well-marked channel; until we cleared, we didn’t realize that the southern gulley suddenly spreads out into a delta, and the delta runs right over the newly cleared land.

Hence, the standing water and ankle-deep mud.

The sight of freshly scraped land also brings no joy to my spirit. I’m pleased to have unhealthy trees knocked down; I don’t miss the thorny briers. But the beautiful green carpet of ferns and moss underfoot has been entirely destroyed. I know enough of microorganisms and humus to know that heavy machinery on wet land is not only not ideal, but is, in fact, destructive. Farewell, soil structure! (To be fair, though, I noticed no dead earth worms, and the soil itself appears to be heavy clay, as the rest of the land. Perhaps such drastic measures are not as bad as I fear.)

If there were a way to clear the land without creating an orange morass, how wonderful that would be. However, I am also impatient, and I suspect that any hand-clearing method would take too long, at least for me.

Before we moved, I read about “compromise,” and how farmers have to do that sometimes. I suppose this is my third compromise (the second was bringing all my recycling to the dump; the first was using disposable diapers).

Another discouragement is the materials’ handling. I would prefer not to burn any organic matter, leaving it to compost instead. However, I’m steeling myself for the potential future compromise of burning, even while hoping to come up with a brilliant plant to avoid it.




The other big accomplishment today was that we ashed the skin of one of the deer Phil shot. Despite all the rain, it had dried enough to burn. Phil borrowed a 55-gallon drum from the Bessette land, and took a few of their logs. Then we burned the skin. We have heard that an effective deer repellent is to take the ashed skin and dynamize and potentize it (grind it and mix it with water in a specific way), then spray the water around the fields where deer are unwelcome. The book we read this in had this to say: “The effect of the deer ash could be clearly observed on an unfenced clover field. The animals had grazed the clover in the surrounding fields but not within two metres of the trial area. They had not crossed the line marked by the ash. Indeed the ash had radiated its effect two metres beyond it.”

I’m happy for deer repellent, no matter what form it takes. Keep the deer out of our orchard!

Mini-Excavator, Mini Pasture

Phil started on the mini-excavator work as early as possible yesterday. He re-graded the road, and filled in some last remaining holes and trenches along the drive. Then he went to dig holes for our future orchard. (This photo shows the field pre-orchard.)


He tried to finish the one hole he had started, and realized that the excavator was not the tool for the job. The bucket scoop was too long; in order to actually clear a hole three feet deep, the diameter at the top would be five or six feet.



Bummer! Yet another week without trees planted. We think an auger would do the job, but that is more money, more delay.

On the other hand, I am thankful that I had the trees delivered when I did; if we were trying to deal with all this in March, I would be pretty much frantic.

With nothing else to work on, and an expensive rental on our land for the weekend, Phil took the excavator down the slope to try his hand at clearing the future pasture by the creek. Sadly, the excavator was not quite what he ordered: it was missing the claw attachment, which would have allowed him to grip the trees and brush and move it easily. Instead, he was forced to attempt to use the bucket to move the downed trees—rather like positioning asparagus when you only have a spoon. Except it was way worse, because he had many levers and attachments to figure out, and the learning curve was steep.

He didn’t stop for lunch, trying to work straight through. It was SLOW going. At about 2pm, he had cleared two stumps and downed one tree, and was attempting to down a second tree. I was done with the darn machine, loud and slow and scratching large red slashes on my pristine forest floor. Bah!

Phil stuck with it, though, and 4pm had cleared a swath through the steep hillside down to the level acreage nearer the creek and knocked over about 11 more trees. And then he started cranking. Without the slope to contend with, he knew he wasn’t going to tip the excavator over; after a day’s practice, he knew the controls. He came back after the sun had set, pleased with his progress.

Of course, it did look like a moonscape, slashed and destroyed. But I was pretty stoked about today.

We woke to rain. What?! More rain?! The Bushes and the Bessettes have both commented on how unusual the amount of rain has been this season, but still! Not today!

Phil went to the Bessettes to help with slaughtering their other pig. As far as I can tell, a good time was had by all, and the libations in celebration afterwards were also enjoyed.

Abigail and I went down with Phil to see the patch he had cleared right before dark. He had cleared a patch of grazing land maybe the size of a personal pool, but to see bare sky where before there were only branches, to walk with ease where brambles grabbed before—incredible. We witnessed his technique, which was something like this: scoop on one side of the tree’s trunk; scoop on the other side of the tree’s trunk. Use the bucket to push against the trunk, and hope the tree topples over. Otherwise, scoop some more, until the tree falls and the roots come up.

For the bushes, a single scoop with the bucket removed them; for some of the brambles, simply driving over them with the scraper was enough to knock them down. Great piles of organic matter line the path of the excavator.

I think cutting the trees down with a chainsaw would be faster, but the roots wouldn’t come up, and the remaining stump could make future haying difficult.

The real issue is what to do with the downed trees and bushes. Some of the trees 70 feet tall; not large around, but, well, long. They would be fine firewood, or, perhaps, fine hardwood mulch for the orchard trees. So the materials’ handling question: how to move heavy trees 500 feet upslope and transform them into chips?

There’s always something to figure out.

Phil wondered yesterday how I spend my time. I was wondering myself, so I wrote a detailed list today. Apparently, I spend most of my time reading to the children, disciplining children, making food, cleaning up, and interacting with Phil (either talking about what to do next or watching him as he works). Good to know.

Grumpiness

Phil continued his convalescence yesterday. This has been one nasty bug. Because the Bessettes are out of town, he’s been sleeping there—it’s easier to close the chickens in at night and let them out in the morning when you don’t have to drive back and forth. And it’s nice for him to heat his chicken broth or use the neti pot to drain his sinuses in a place with running water (the water even comes out of the tap warm!).

I did the chores today and was stunned by the cold. I was warm enough, in my down jacket, but the sheep’s water had an inch of ice on the top; the chicken’s waterer was useless. I tried to refill the sheep’s water with the hose, but enough ice had blocked the line that I had to haul the water in the end.

The sheep and goats follow me hungrily around the paddock. I think because they are in with the chicks, who get purchased feed (instead of just purchased hay), they are ever hopeful that I will bring them some grain goodies.

The chicks are eating what seems to be a lot. I figured that we might have a bit of Arctic syndrome going on: I’ve heard that explorers at the Poles eat 8000 calories or more a day, just to maintain their weight and keep warm. So I turned their light on in their house, in hopes that they won’t be quite so ravenous. It’s a bit disturbing to dart into the barn and slam the door shut in the beaks of eager biddies. They do get in sometimes, and I have visions of them pooing on all my clean dishes, cleaned with water heated on the stove.

Which reminds me: I left the cleaning water in the plastic tub yesterday after doing dishes. It was a bit warm still, and it may have some further cleaning ability. And today it was frozen solid. I suppose that makes me feel like a “real” pioneer. Not until the water froze in my “sink” could I claim true hardiness. (Or would that be insanity?)

As the boys and I finished The Outlaws of Sherwood today, I read a quote that resonated. Marjorie, a delicate lady before she was spirited away to become an outlaw’s wife, says, “I have learnt things, these past months, that I had not expected ever to learn—about what it is like when you have not enough to eat and your neck is stiff from sleeping in the damp. I had not thought that these things might give you choices as well as take them away.” I guess that’s true: I realize now that I could probably survive in more primitive situations than I would have imagined.

I do hope, though, that I will not let myself go; that as I look on my cooktop with muddy cat pawprints across it, I know that my life will not always be so unsanitary or so bizarre. (What was the cat doing on my cooktop anyway? I shudder to think.)

Today was a day of aimless waiting. Phil waited at the Bessettes for a hay delivery. The man was over an hour late. And this afternoon we waited for our excavator delivery. That was two hours late. Phil spent those hours broadcasting clover over the pigs’ previous paddock, and then mulching the area with hay.

Phil requested vegetables for dinner, and I was bummed to see that my vegetables were looking worse for the wear. I pulled a turnip the size of a navel orange (the biggest yet), but the greens are all looking wilted and cold. The pigs have grown much longer hair in the chilly weather.

I try not to stew, but this week the relentless cold, the lengthy drive time, and the hours of aimless waiting (whether from sickness or tardiness) have taken their toll. Sometimes I don’t feel chipper; I feel thwarted. In Boulder, I multitasked and got a lot done each day. Now I heat water to wash dishes by hand and serve as much food as possible that requires no dishes. And I don’t usually listen to sermons while I’m in the barn either.

In the spirit of grumpiness, I will close with the list of “things that were sad” from Arnold Lobel’s charming children’s book Owl at Home. (Owl seeks to make tear-water tea, and the only way to do that is to fill a teapot with tears, so he deliberately makes himself cry by thinking of the following and “many other” sad things.)
• Chairs with broken legs
• Songs that cannot be sung because the words have been forgotten
• Spoons that have fallen behind the stove and are never seen again
• Books that cannot be read because some of the pages have been torn out
• Clocks that have stopped with no one near to wind them up
• Mornings nobody saw because everybody was sleeping
• Mashed potatoes left on a plate because no one wanted to eat them
• And pencils that are too short to use