The Wheat and the Tares

"The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’"

This parable, from Matthew 13, makes some more sense to us now. Our spelt grew tall, but the weeds grew taller. We should have harvested it several weeks ago, I think. Phil went to scythe it down (the usual method of harvest), and the heads shattered, or split open, so that none was left on the stalks.

Next he tried to machete it down, handful by handful. But this wasn't great. He tried to cut the stalks with a knife, but that was very slow. Next he tried harvesting by hand.

In the end, I put on gloves and stripped the stalks, with the grains dumped into a 5-gallon bucket. I didn't try to get it all. Phil came behind with the scythe, so that while I captured much of the grain, he cut down the weedy growth.

I'm thankful we don't have to rely on our harvest for all our bread for the next year. I mean, it was a fine harvest, but it wouldn't feed us all, even if we could extract the kernels easily from the husks.

I'm thankful that we didn't have a large area to harvest. And it worked pretty well: in an hour or two, we found 16 hidden eggs, have a couple of feedbags of unhusked spelt, and our hillside is covered with a thick layer of mulch.

We were thrilled with the incredible clover we found growing happily under our spelt. (A few sections had wild roses instead of clover; roses are not good for animals.) Another reason to be happy for the pigs plowing last year: they did a good job fertilizing the land.

Phil noticed today that the top two rows of trees, the ones that we planted into enormous holes with extra minerals have shot ahead of our other trees. They are doing really well. He said, "We should have planted them all like that!" I don't know if I would have survived.

We can't be sure, though, that the planting method was the main benefit. Those trees are meant to be precocious, so they will produce early. He shoveled about 500 pounds or so of minerals onto the base of about 50 trees; a good start to the extra minerals we want to spread on all our orchard. It's been on my "to do" list for some time, but Phil caught the vision.

To join our broody barn hen (above), I added a dozen eggs under the original broody hen (below).

We thought she was crazy; she would lay an egg every day on the empty tote from our minerals. One day, she just started to hang out all the time on the tote, but never laid an egg. We were actually a little upset with her, the slacker! But now that we have a better understanding of what's going on, maybe she'll produce some chicks for us. We're making sure she has food and water nearby. I suspect she's getting hungry.

The trauma of the day happened early this morning. Even though the pigs don't leave the electric net outside their pen, we'd really prefer that they stay in their cattle panel pen. I went to help drive the two piglets back into the cattle panels. The electric fence was off, when Princess Buttercup went a little too close and caught her ear tag in the netting. She immediately started screaming, which is one of the world's worst sounds. I couldn't get her untangled, and the more she pulled, the worse her ear felt. I grabbed her back legs, and then one got caught in the fence, which pulled her poor ear even worse.

I was shaking by the time Phil got to me (probably only a few seconds later, really) and untangled her foot and her ear, and put her into the pen.

Isaiah and Abraham helped me pull some more garlic. We had a good time trying to see who would pull the largest head.

I weighed my elephant garlic today, and I harvested 4 lb, 6 oz from the original pound. The catalog says that the garlic should yield 8 to 1 under good conditions. With just over half that "expected" yield, I suppose I have plenty of room for improvement. But how great to have a crop at all!

Tom the pig breeder told us about some of the predator issues he's had to deal with. We left his farm yesterday filled with incredible awe at the very gracious protection the Lord has placed over our farm this first year. We are thankful for the chickens yet alive; for the chicks who survived their gestation and first day; for the lack of vicious dogs who would run our sheep to death; for only minor damage from deer.

Thank you, brothers and sisters, for your prayers on our behalf. We don't always realize the Lord's protection against destruction, but it is present, and we are thankful.

Berkshire Baby Buttercup

By the time we reached home after our day of errands, our van could not hold another thing. We left with six Lykoshes and a dog. We bought 300 pounds of feed at the feed store, and some cheese and fruit (and the last window unit A/C!) at Costco, and picked up three piglets, too.

What a good time! We spent about two hours talking to breeder Tom. He left DC about two years ago to start a small farm. He's settled on pigs as a favorite money-making opportunity, and it makes sense. As he said: "I can make $500 on a pig, or I can sell a piglet for $150. The economics are in favor of raising piglets."

That's what I've heard, too. Other than raw milk dairying, raising piglets is the most profitable enterprise.

So we bought a purebred Berkshire gilt (baby girl pig) that we plan to bring back to Tom in the fall so she can be bred with his new Berkshire boar. Berkshire meat is the "Kobe beef" of the porcine world; it wins taste tests because of more intramuscular fat than other pigs (more tender and juicy).

We bought two barrows (castrated boy pigs), too, and we hope to process them this fall (if we could avoid feeding through the winter again, I'd be really happy). One is a full-blood Berkshire, and one is a cross, so someday we'll do a taste test and see if Berkshire meat is actually better.

After we got home, we decided we wanted a more secure pen for the pigs than the cattle-panels we'd set up. So Phil scythed more of the amazing growth, and we set up poultry netting outside the pen.

This was prudent. Before the night was out, two piglets had escaped the cattle panels, but they didn't get any further. What a difference than the first time, with such horrific escapes! (Below, though, you can see that they weren't eager to leave their safe pen at first.)

And Phil was thrilled: as he was scything, he was amazed to find a dense stand of clover growing below the tall weeds. We think maybe the pig tillage last year improved the soil, and we are so pleased to have more of them.

They are smaller than our previous pigs: the bucket next to the three of them is the bottom half of a standard 5-gallon bucket. They are little!

And so cute. Because this is still a "B" year, our girl is "Buttercup."


Isaiah wanted the darker piglet with white feet to be "Socks," so we named the other "Fox," in honor of Dr. Seuss. Below you can see Fox.

In other news, on Michelle Bessette's suggestion, we put ten eggs under a broody hen, who has been hanging out in our barn. We didn't realize she was broody, so we took all her eggs, and she has been nesting, forlornly, on gravel alone. Maybe she will adopt these new eggs, laid today, and raise some chicks. That would be fun!

Corn Planting

My handy guide to planting claims that, based on the standard first frost here, I can plant corn for the next week. Now that the chickens are out of the animal paddock, and most of the manure is pushed up and composting, I wanted to try planting some of the dent corn I bought, but our ground is so hard, I wasn't sure how to get it in the ground.

One book recommended a jab planter, so I took one of the fence poles with a good point on the end and jabbed that into the ground, then poked the seed into the hole. This took much longer than planting with a jab planter, that would jab and release the seed all in one (upright) position, but I was pleased to get some seeds in the ground.

Overall, it was a frustrating experience, though. I wanted to plant on the contour, which means all the seeds in any given row are on the same elevation. This helps prevent water runoff. The problem was, as I bent over to plant, I would lose the contour. Rows that were supposed to be three feet apart would sometimes overlap! Oops.

I also tried to cover the seeds with agricultural cloth, to make sure the chickens don't scratch and eat all the seed. But I'm not sure I'm done planting corn, so I didn't want to cut the cloth. Later in the day we had a rain storm, so perhaps my cloth will now be moldy. Argh!

I was pleased to do that planting in the morning, before the heat of the day rose, but it meant we had a very late breakfast, and I was grumpy. I'm not sure how to balance the "outdoors while cool" with the "family must eat" dueling responsibilities.

Add to that conundrum, what is truly most important. Maybe I need to spread more minerals so my orchard will grow more quickly. I noticed today that several cherries are under extreme insect pressure. I had no idea. They need some help, and soon. That probably should be a higher priority than planting more corn, but it is so hard to have a "plowed, tilled" field (our former paddock) sitting open, not growing anything.

Phil ran some errands today. With about ten days until Fern's hopeful breeding, we want her to get used to the headgate (the small containment area where she hopefully cannot kick the technician), and the pelletized alfalfa treat (our newest attempt; since we don't want to do grain, and she was really uninterested in the molasses, I'm hoping pelletized alfalfa will be the reward that she enjoys).

Fifteen Chicks

Phil and I ended up getting the hen and chicks after dark yesterday night, and brought them into the trailer.

First thing this morning, I brought the hen and babies outside to their temporary pen.

Isaiah eagerly helped me move the hen and babies: nine yellows, and six whites.

I'll be interested to see whether their coloring is sex-linked. Maybe we'll have a good many roosters to eat in a couple of months.

After church, we headed to the homestead. After a few days of heat-reprieve, the temperature was again pushing 100, and the A/C in the motor home quit working. We all started to sweat, just sitting still, so we headed to the creek for some cooling off. (The hike up the hill afterwards usually eliminates most of the benefit of the cool water, but it's peaceful and beautiful down in the creek.)

Joe, at one point, almost dove into the water, and flailed his arms for a few seconds until Phil grabbed him. Crazy child came up grinning. He is a rascal!

Glimpses of Our Day and Week

Phil and Abraham headed down to the "lower pasture," as we call the unclaimed land down near Hog Creek, that bisects our land. Phil took his machete and a tape measure; he wanted to see if the fencing we have currently would be sufficient to enclose the four acres down there, so we can start the cows grazing in the woods and brush.

Abraham loved trying his hand with the machete, almost as tall as he is. He held the tape measure for Phil, and returned, dripping with sweat and thrilled to have helped.

Later in the day, Phil followed where the sheep had been and scythed down the lignified stems of the weeds the sheep ate.

He tries to do that regularly. He also cut a small patch of weeds, sprung up in the last few weeks since the sheep grazed, and found that, beneath the weeds, some good grass growing.

But what to do about the ridiculously tall weeds in the stone fruit orchard?

We think it might be time to get pigs again. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. They could plow down the growth, and eat the spelt ready for harvest. And by the time they're ready to process, I'm pretty sure our freezer will be empty. Good!

And here are some recent photos.

First, the back side of our beautiful Bethany, the cow we think was born in 2003. She's flicking flies; note her beautifully shiny coat. Marvelous.


And here is our beautiful Fern, two years old and ready for breeding. You can pray with me that she will be successfully artificially inseminated on the first try, which should happen around July 8. We are a little concerned about how to pen her enough that she won't injure herself or the technician; there's plenty to consider around that event.


A week ago, this was what I saw right near the living area.

Now the cows are almost all the way down the slope again. With once or twice a day moves, they get through the area quickly.

Ten of my twelve heads of elephant garlic. Look how large they are! (Elephant garlic isn't actually garlic. It's related to leeks!)


My cold frame. When I watered my still-diminishing seedlings today, I noticed a grasshopper sitting very still inside. Hmm. I can guess where my seedlings are going.


Happy Full Moon!

A Cheep Surprise

As we waved goodbye to Doug Bush, who'd dropped in for a visit, Phil heard an unexpected sound. Tiny cheeps from our parking area at the top of the driveway. He looked around and, unbelievably, saw a couple little chicks.

They look just like Strangey the Rooster looked when he first arrived, and one of our Rhode Island Red hens was hovering, broody, over those babies.

We saw two chicks at first, then three. What should we do with this unexpected blessing? Hens today, born in hatcheries after generations of artificial insemination, rarely go broody anymore. I have entire books on raising poultry that don't mention broody hens.

Well, praise the Lord for Carla Emery. HerEncyclopedia of Country Living covers everything imaginable. Here's what I learned.

Hens that go broody lay eggs for ten to 14 days in a secluded spot. Then they sit on their eggs for 21 days, getting up only once a day to drink water and eat some food. On the 21st day, the eggs hatch.

Incredibly, today was the 21st day! Those babies Phil spotted were only hours old. As we went up to see the chicks again, we saw a wet head peek out from under the mother: another baby, so newly hatched!

I could hardly tear myself away. I wanted to watch these little babes, with their yellow-and-black or white-and-black markings. I wanted to hold the balls of fluff, but I resisted.

The book said that, once the babies are hatched, move the mother and babes into a prepared area, about 4'x4', with food and water. We made a shelter out of hay bales and chicken wire, but as we grabbed two tiny chicks (so soft! so tiny!), Phil went to grab the hen, too, and she pecked viciously. Understandable. But as Phil distracted her with a twig, he lifted her a bit and saw more eggs, unhatched. We'll try again tomorrow.

The mother hen hovers over her babies. They can run under her wings, which she holds, a bit outstretched, over all eggs and chicks. She tears out some of her breast feathers in order to have better skin to egg contact, to warm the chicks better. And, she protects her babies quite well from intruders.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. . . . He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.

For now, we bask in the sight of the nine balls of fluff. And I enjoy anew one of my favorite poems. (It's worth it to really read it.)


"God's Grandeur," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Re-Entry

It's not easy to get back into the swing of things, even after a short absence. I felt for Phil, as I would catch him periodically staring into space.

We're not sure what to do about the sheep and the orchard. The first section of apple orchard we grazed has grown back astonishingly quickly. Some of the weeds are about 18" high, and ready to be grazed again. The rest of the apple orchard is bare, or almost bare: no more than a half inch for most.

On the other side of the driveway, the stone fruit orchard has some very tall sections of weeds, some as high as six feet. The sheep won't have an easy time grazing that. So maybe we should cut it.

On the other hand, if we cut it, we are coming into the hottest part of the year. If it's all cut and won't grow back, will we have to buy in feed?

We have so little experience, and have read reports on both sides of the issue, we're conflicted. So, for today, we do nothing.

The last two days I have tried to take the empty comb from the beehives. Yesterday I was astonished to see a marked queen bee in the Queen Esther hive. Probably the Queen of Sheba relocated next door.

Today I saw that many of the capped worker cells in the Queen of Sheba hive were now empty. Some of the comb had been demolished. Already! What could have eaten great chunks of wax in the last few days? I have no idea.

Phil and I moved the chicken pen into the recently-grazed pasture area. We put up netting and clipped the wings of the chickens. They are still flying out. Oh, well. Maybe they won't all fly out.

I don't know what's wrong with my cabbage seedlings. It seems to me that I had many more growing earlier this week than I do now. My hopes of a quarter acre of beautiful cabbage appears to be shrinking. Now I may have a bed or two of cabbage.

I've had very mixed success with gardening in general. Considering that seeds are programmed to grow, I am surprised that so few flowers came up (a few marigolds are all that's in bloom now). No watermelon seeds poke out of the ground; no tromboncino squash along the fenceline.

I am thankful for the things that do well, but do feel mystified by the hit-or-miss nature of growing.