October Hike

Friday night, right as darkness fell, we tagged both heifers. Beatrice is 21, and Belle is 22. It was extremely easy: disinfected applicator and tag goes between cartilage strips in the ear, and I quickly punched through and the process was done. No major squirming, no blood: what a great system!

I also tried extra teat removal, which is supposed to be an easy snip, not painful, with no blood (or at least, very little). Beatrice had a little extra, almost more like a mole, but the surgical shears I had didn't cut. Neither did the scissors I tried next. I'm not sure where to order sharp enough scissors, but that was one of the most distressing things I've done this year: to attempt what should have been a simple procedure without any success at all.

First thing Saturday morning, as we finished chores, Phil and I rolled a new hay bale into the pen (no animals escaped this time, thankfully). Phil then took a warped cattle panel, and a shorter piece, wired one side together, bent the whole wire around the bale, and used climbing carabiners for the other side. He snipped some sections off around the top for the cows, and cut little holes in the middle and bottom for the sheep, and we have a very effective feeder.

Unbelievable. After all that time, wasting 40% of our hay, to have a solution that worked in 15 minutes of time and maybe $25 in materials. Again, unbelievable.

We all spent the midday on our traditional October hike (we did one when we were camping in October 2008, when Joe was seven weeks old; one last year when we had Abigail, and now this year, too). We don't often make it to the back of the property, so it's always an adventure.

I made the mistake of showing the treats I was packing (lollipops and chocolate chips), so very soon after we left, the steady reminders of hunger and fatigue began. It made me laugh a little, and we did enjoy the treats: eventually.

With Phil hacking a trail with the machete (notice Isaiah holding it, below), we crossed onto the neighbor's land, and found an abandoned homestead, now just a fallen chimney. There's actually two chimneys on the neighbor's land, and an old wall on ours. It makes me wonder about the residents. Why did they choose this random location? For the fallen chimney, there is no immediately obvious source of water. Maybe they dug a well?

On the way back, we walked a trail Butch cut on his land. It was nicely cleared, but very steep, both up and down. Some of the sections felt like roller coasters: very steep. The division between his bottom land, in hay, is so pastoral.

Quite different than the neighbor's unused land.

Lots of room for improvement.

The October hike usually leaves me feeling overwhelmed. How little we've accomplished in a year: so little cleared, no home, so little fence. The to-do list feels endless.

I mentioned this to Michelle Bessette today, and she said, "Amy, what if you only had five acres? You'd get the five acres the way you'd like, and then there'd be nothing more to do. This way, you could spend the rest of your life making the land more productive."

That was an encouraging thought. I think, though, there's a part of me that wonders how much more we could pour into five acres. (Greenhouse? Raised beds?)

In the afternoon, I worked in the garden a bit. I realized I had neglected to plant cilantro, so I took my super-special bed I had begun earlier this year, the bed I put 200 pounds of sand in, the bed I had intended to double dig, though I didn't get around to it: I took this bed and planted it to cilantro. (For good measure, I added a few perennial Egyptian walking onions and a few elephant garlic bulblets. We'll see if they come up.)

To finish the bed, I dug into our compost pile, made from the last winter's dry lot.

I was pretty excited to see what alchemy occurred this summer, so I was disappointed to open the bed and find that the compost was filled with partially decomposed wood chips. The color was a rich black, but as I dug in, a few spots seemed to be mucky. One little spot was stinky.

Maybe not enough air? Maybe it needed more turning? It did hold water beautifully: still moist and spongy after our six inches of rain about ten days ago.

I put some over the cilantro, so disappointed in the texture. But as I spread, a feeling of joy and health sprang up. I wasn't expecting that. (Maybe that was the biodynamic preps, doing their job?) It made me quite enthusiastic for the compost for my garlic beds.

Phil finished the chicken pen, and we moved the broilers into it, only a week or two after they really should have moved. Then, we happily tried to catch our naughty feral chickens, that have been scratching up my soap on my barn-kitchen-counter, that have been eating cat and dog food, that have knocked jars off my table (and broken them). Bah! No more chickens in the kitchen!

Feral chickens are hard to catch until darkness fell. Then we could grab them off their roost.

One or two did manage to get out of the pen this morning (so resourceful), but how delightful to have them contained. The cat will be grateful, too.

Today, we had time to stop at the Bessettes for a while this afternoon. How delightful. We have missed them, and a little break from Bible study gave us the long-awaited opportunity to visit.

As we drove home from church, we followed up a tip and found downed road apples, or Osage Oranges. I have read several articles about living fences, the most recent in Mother Earth News. As I gathered some fallen "brains" into my car, a man stopped and asked, "Are they good to eat?"

No, but they should make a very nice living fence. Eventually.

Lots o' Deliveries

Phil returned to Virginia yesterday after a very refreshing stay in Colorado (though he went back for several jobs, he was able to touch base with dear friends, for the first time in a year).

He left as soon as he changed out of his travel clothes to help Butch put the bush hog on his tractor, so Butch could bush hog the next door farm that we help manage. He started yesterday and finished up today. The photo above was taken at the Harvest Moon: you can see that the area isn't that overgrown. It looks pretty good, really, though not groomed for the last year. The grass and brambles had grown up: Isaiah, below, gives perspective on how tall the growth was.

After nine hours of bush hogging, the land looked like this.

I imagine Butch is pretty sore tonight. Phil and I drove around in the truck, and it was a bumpy ride!

We've also taken delivery of two large purchases.

Right after Phil helped Butch, he went and borrowed Butch's little skid steer, so he could unload this year's batch of minerals. (If you don't remember our exciting experience last year, check out "Why the Bobcat Popped a Wheelie".)

The most traumatic thing happened right at the start. And it wasn't bad for us at all. The driver decided to try to back into our driveway, as you can see below. Now, it wasn't as long a truck as last year, but it was still pretty good sized. He was doing a great job, but then lurched forward and crashed into the opposite bank. (Phil wonders if he thought the grasses were just grasses, without anything of substance behind? It could be.)

Although it was a rather light thunk, it did bend his fender enough that it touched his wheel as he drove. Too bad. And he had come in facing one direction, but went to the end of the road, turned around and came back so he could unload without having to work against the slope of the road. It's cool.

For our part, though, like being a second-time mom, being a second time mineral-receiver was so much easier!

First of all, we knew that the skid steer couldn't handle 3000 pound pallets. And we knew that WE don't much like dealing with 3000 pound totes, even after they're on the ground. Lancaster Ag, that blends our minerals, had a great solution.

Not only could they put our minerals into 50 pound sacks (for only an additional $50 per ton: really unbelievable!). They also stacked two 1500 pound pallets on top of each other, as you can probably just make out, above. This way, we got the best rate we could on shipping, and it just took a little longer to unload, since Phil first had to unload the top pallet, and then the bottom one.

Ten thousand pounds of custom blended minerals, with Joe for scale.

***

Today we received delivery of much of the fencing materials for the neighboring land.

And just to brag on my favorite shipper for a moment, this truck was the first we've had that actually parked on the side of the road, rather than the middle. This was actually a good thing, because while both last year's mineral delivery and this year's lasted about an hour, and neither had a single car pass in all that time, we did have a car pass at the end of today's delivery. So kudos to the friendly, efficient driver and his impressive parking skills.

What cracked me up about this delivery was that the driver, rather than using a pallet jack, simply attached a sling to the skid steer (bless Butch who graciously let us borrow it a second day!) and had Phil pull

and pull

and pull

the pallet to the back of the truck. (The pallet must have been close to the front of the truck!)

Then he unloaded two more pallets and the driver was off.

The amount of high tensile wire astounded me.

***

In other news, while we were watching the driver run into the road bank yesterday, Joe fell out the window next to the bunk beds. Phil and I had no idea until the younger boys came up the driveway and we saw that Joe had a very red face. "He cried a bit," explained Abraham, "but now he's okay." (There had been screen there, but I'm guessing Joe was leaning on it and popped the staples out.)

Dirtiness, though, is nothing to Joe. All the boys played happily in the well tailings almost all day, but Joe was, by far, the dirtiest.

Pigs and Mast

As our three pigs continue to grow, their feed consumption has diminished. They eat about 2.5 pounds of feed per day, half what I would expect a growing pig to eat. (And a good bit less than the ridiculous 12.5 pounds a day our pigs last winter ate: but they were eating to keep warm, I think, rather like polar explorers and their need for chocolate. But I digress.)

The gallons of whey we get from neighbor Gail helps, I'm sure. Since mixing the whey with the feed kept clogging our feeder, we've tried various other methods of getting whey into the pigs. We fill their waterer with whey, and they do drink that, somewhat.

But for whatever reason, what seems to work the best is to dump a 5 gallon bucket of whey into a rubber waterer, and let the three guzzle it down. Maybe they feel the need to get their legs in the whey? I don't know, and it seems a bit gross to have brown whey from the dirt, rather than pristine whey in the feeder, but I suppose I'm not thinking like a pig. Pigs eat dirt on occasion, for nutrients, so maybe it's more palatable mixed with whey.

They get through about 10 gallons a day that way.

Today, though, I found the other explanation, and I rejoiced.

Acorns. The pigs are eating the acorns. Also known as "mast." Not all the acorns, for some of their pen has good acorn coverage. But the acorns I found right outside their pen and tossed to them, they devoured.

Jadon and Isaiah helped me gather some acorns, and Isaiah happily climbed in with the pigs to feed them. (Personally, I avoid going into the pen as much as I can. They nibble at my shoes, which is a very odd feeling!)

Buttercup, the lone female (and runt), came up first. While she didn't quite eat out of his hand, she did smell his hand.

Soon the boys joined her (see the photo at the top of this post). Her fellow Berkshire, Fox, almost visibly grows larger daily.

A Good Photo Day

I went to bed last night, thinking that nothing much had happened yesterday.

On waking this morning (to a temperature indoors in the mid-50s, but that's another story), I remembered how many odd things happened yesterday.

First of all, when I woke up yesterday, I still worried about the small calf, especially whether she had been warm enough. When I checked the thermometer, I found that the temperature was in the upper 40s, not the upper 30s, as it had been both nights Belle was in the house. What a gift from God!

***

More prosaically, the battle of the kitchen chickens continues. Our chickens are smart, and those that can, enter the barn at every opportune moment and eat the cat food, the dog food, bits of spilled feed, and general kitchen scraps (I caught one eating out of a skillet on the stove the other day!).

This is frustrating, but one of our chickens went broody again, so we've more-or-less let them be. Every once in a while, in a burst of energy, Chloe the dog or Tiger the cat will chase them away, and Joe always says, "No, chickens!" very firmly, but what really could we do, other than close the doors? And that won't happen soon, because enough of our slope has eroded down, Phil would have to shovel for some time to free up the doors.

The last few days, though, I've noticed an unpleasant smell. The broody chicken apparently had not paid a trip to the rooster lately, and all her eggs were unfertilized. And, therefore, rotten.

I was making lunch when she got up to seek a snack. Chloe came over and proceeded to attempt to eat the eggs. Which exploded in green nastiness, and made the barn kitchen extremely stinky. Bah! No more broody hens in my kitchen this year!

***

Beatrice has been a bit neglected lately, due to Belle's dramatic illness and recovery. She has grown at a tremendous pace, and is strong and sturdy. No more mistaking her for a goat anymore. She's a small cow now.

When she walks, her back foot touches the exact spot where her front foot had just been, which is exactly what we want to see. Great!

***

Isaiah and I went to milk Bethany in the evening. She was ruminating, and I felt bad disturbing her rest, but I did want to make sure Belle wasn't getting too much. After we finally prodded Bethany enough, she stood up and walked to her milking place. (She is so good! Although she was milked by machine, she is so patient, she will stand to be milked with only a rope on her collar tied around a fence, even without a treat to eat.)

I milked out all four teats and got about two Tablespoons. Apparently, Belle was hungry.

***

This morning, I woke up unusually cold. I sleep under a down sleeping bag, and was between two sons, so to still be cold did not bode well. Sure enough, the thermometer said 55 degrees. The heat attempted to kick on, and just wouldn't quite start.

Phil and I talked about what I should do if the heat went out. He said I should get a space heater at the hardware store. They had options ranging from about $60 to about $260, and I was overwhelmed by the choices and left without any.

If we survived one cold morning, we can survive another one or two. Maybe the heat is fixable, too.

Last year we didn't have a morning this cold until around October 15th, so we're about ten days earlier this year.

***

This was a good photo day. Here are a few.

When Joe sees the camera, he instantly turns on the extra bright smile.

Our animals waste a ridiculous amount of hay. We're not sure what to do about it. The standard bale feeders won't work with the glorious horns that our cows have. We had been snipping the bale twine immediately, and the big cows would come over and, with their horns, demolish the bale instantly.

We've tried a few bales now without cutting the baling twine. This keeps the bale intact much longer, which gives us maybe an extra day per bale. It also, though, is a bit of a hazard: in the five days we've tried this, I've had two sheep get themselves stuck in a loop around a leg. I am sure that, given enough time, we might have an accidental garotte. So I'm not very comfortable with that money saving method.

The search for a better hay feeding system remains. We'll see what comes next.

Oh: in the photo above, you can see two hay bales. The ground there was bare on Saturday morning.

Our buck Bright Star could almost be a hipster singer, don't you think, with that impressive set of bangs and little GOATee?

The colors are just starting to change here in Virginia. Apparently, because of the warm weather so late in the season, this won't be a great year for a spectacular show, but I like it just the same.

Tiny Tux, the unusual freebie bird from the hatchery, is simply tiny next to the quick-growing broilers. He was the same size chick, and now he's probably one-third the size of the largest broilers, and maybe half the size of the smallest. What a peanut!

My second batch of soap, cotton candy scent, drying. (The earlier batch, vanilla with yarrow, is in the back, but difficult to see.)

A Healthy Baby

With great relief, I went out this morning to find Belle curled up in the hay, warm ears and all.

I opted not to milk Bethany, and now, several hours later, Belle is perky, shiny, fresh-smelling, and bright eyed.

Sunday Night: Bring On Mama

The boys and I enjoyed a few chapters of Homer Pricebefore they went to bed.

I fed Belle outside. She wasn't as easy to contain, nor as interested to simply sit and let me put food into her.

After I cornered her, I had to make her lie down. Unlike Chloe the dog, I couldn't simply push on her backend. I did what the book said: reach over, grab the front leg and the flap of skin at the flank, lift up, and set down.

In life, it wasn't quite that easy. Ever tried to grasp the skin of the flank and use it as a handhold? And to lift so all four legs are off the ground (since even one back leg still in contact with earth creates difficulties) was more tricky than I expected. Lifting by both a front and back leg didn't feel good, so I quickly gave up that idea.

At last, she was down. I straddled her and kept her front leg tucked. After all our hours together yesterday, she didn't seem terribly happy to see me! But she took in diluted milk.

Joe, meanwhile, crawled into the pen through the cattle panel (!) and promptly stepped—barefooted—in a cowpie. He hates getting manure on his feet, so he began to fuss.

Then Bethany, anxiously watching from outside the enclosure, noticed Chloe approach the outside of the fence. She charged our dog, long horns through the wire.

Chloe ran off, and Joe began to cry in earnest. This didn't much help Belle take her food more calmly, but, after almost an hour, she had her food in her.

We watched her, and saw still a little diarrhea, but mostly urine.

I went down to do a final check on Belle, who had, at last count, had two pints of electrolytes, three pints of full milk, mixed with nine pints of water today. Her ears were, again, cold, but she had no scours at all. Her smell was much improved over the horridness of yesterday, and as I thought about it, her stomach had no longer made awful gurglings when I fed her.

I thought about bringing her back inside, but how could I maneuver the two gates by myself, with a watchful mama paying close attention? Do I have the emotional strength to once again set up a pen in the living room, to once again clean up the animal waste all over the floor?

Further, if the baby is cold, wouldn't her mother's bulk be better? I had milked the cow thoroughly this evening (4 pounds even), so there wouldn't be an unlimited supply.

Besides, I thought it very interesting: when Belle first went back into her pen, she peed near the fence, and Bethany did every contortion possible to lick up some of that urine. I know that human mother's milk changes based on what the baby needs that feeding (which is why even frozen breastmilk is not as good as straight from the source). Wouldn't Bethany's milk also change based on the needs of her baby?

Also, since we don't know what caused the scours, whether bacteria, virus, parasite, or simply overeating, it's possible that the bacteria, say, is now dead, and Belle is simply hungry, ready to gain strength.

With all these thoughts in mind, I opened the gate and let the mama and baby reunite.

The morning will show whether this 48 hour hiatus was at all helpful.

May the Lord bless Belle this night.

Overall, a Good Report

I meant to update last night, but I fell asleep early, worn out from feeding 26 cups of electrolytes to our very sick baby. While in Charlottesville, I bought a calf bottle, but she refused (was unable?) to drink from it, which meant I fed all 26 cups with a bulb syringe, which holds an ounce.

That's right: 206 squeezes on the bulb syringe to keep that baby hydrated.

I had also bought an esophageal feeding tube, in hopes I could just dump the electrolytes into the baby's stomach. It's a bit intimidating, because if you accidentally get the lungs, the animal drowns. I did manage, the third time, to get the feeding tube all the way in, but Belle wasn't very happy, and she thrashed so much, and the electrolytes drained so slowly, it wasn't worth it.

Back to the ounce by ounce method.

It felt like it was pretty dire. Her poop had changed from pudding to water, and our house quickly became incredibly foul smelling.

I tried to remember that the sources all say that the reason calves with scours die is because they get dehydrated, so I figured I could help with the dehydration.

Nonetheless, she didn't stand all day, just lay, resting, with cold ears (a bad sign).

She wasn't urinating at all, either. When she finally did, at about 7pm last night, I was extremely relieved. Around 9pm, i just prayed over her. She continued to scour, but her ears warmed up by the time I fell asleep.

At about 2am, I heard a strange thunking from the living room. I stumbled over many toys to find her, standing up, persistently trying to push the coffee table aside.

This could be disastrous. Our room, often strewn with small pieces of toys, was now covered with toys and books. We had removed school books from the coffee table shelf so we could tip it on end; I had cleaned out the motor home and not found a home for some toys. The carpet, too, was still there, folded up.

If she got out and scoured, what a disaster that would be!

Thankfully she went back to sleep.

Before church, though, we picked up everything off the floor, rolled up the carpet, and opened up the whole room to her, and left her. I had fed her a pint of milk mixed with three pints of water, and she peed out most of it and scoured the rest. We came home to quite a mess! But I had expected it, and with the help of some sawdust, soon swept the room.

She was antsy to get outside, so I brought her out to her calving pen, and prevented her mother from also entering. Too much richness! So there she is, after walking the fence and calling to her mama, her mama stands guard and she rests.

Since yesterday morning, I've milked Bethany three times, to make sure her udder stays in order.

I had been a bit concerned about flecks of blood in Bethany's colostrum. I brought out my California Mastistis Test (CMT) in order to check her milk, and saw that the box said, "Not for use for three days after birthing." Sure enough, this morning, the fourth day, her milk was clear, and her CMT showed her clean of mastitis. Presumably, she never had it, but her udder was just undergoing some trauma as it starts up production again.

Speaking of production, I am a bit concerned. The man who sold these two cows said, "I need all my cows to produce at least 40 pounds of milk a day for me to be profitable, and these ones don't."

Forty pounds of milk translates to a bit more than 5.5 gallons (8.6 pounds of milk makes a gallon). That's not much production for a Holstein (they're more like 10 gallons a day), but a reasonable amount for homestead Jersey.

I didn't expect the Milking Devons to do quite as well as that, though. They're getting no grain to boost production, and we really want to take a long view of them: good nutrition for the course of their life means many years of quality production.

Except I'm not seeing much production. I got about 3.5 pounds of milk this morning. If I get the same amount tonight, that's not even a gallon a day.

There's no way to be profitable feeding $160 worth of hay to the animals every week, and get 7 gallons of usable product (that's assuming we keep all her milk, and put both babies on Bianca. At this point, Bianca is giving us nothing, just raising her calf).

Assuming she does give more, though, we need to figure out VERY QUICKLY how to market this product.

Raw milk is illegal to sell in Virginia (though it's very tasty and, many would argue, myself included, it's more healthy and "living." I've heard studies that up to 70% of people who are "allergic" to milk are not allergic to raw milk; something in the pasteurization makes them ill. Also, I've heard that if a ruminant is fed no grains, that also is not usually an allergenic milk). Farms here set up "cow shares," where a person buys a share of a cow, which entitles them to a certain amount of milk from the cow. They pay the farmer a preset "care and keeping fee," usually the equivalent of about $8/gallon.

Some folks sell raw milk as "fish food," since that's a fairly unregulated market. Some sell it as pet food.

I've been reading in multiple magazines, though, about how amazing raw milk is for the soil. It makes the rain absorb more readily, the grass green up more pleasantly. Overall, it's a perfect garden booster.

Maybe I should market our milk as a "garden supplement," and charge $8 a gallon. Who knows? Maybe someone has a yard large enough to need a gallon a week.

There's been other excitement in the last day (the bulb syringe did not occupy all of my time). Isaiah and Jadon helped me round up about 12 escaped sheep and goats. They were happily grazing in our recovering field, but Isaiah is a professional, and, with a teeny bit of help, he rounded them all back into the pen.

Two cows, a sheep, and a goat got out yesterday morning while Phil and I pushed a round bale into the pen. Phil kept his head, grabbed some poly wire, and strung a line so the animals wouldn't escape. He decreased the size of the enclosure until there was no where for them to go but back in.

We've learned a lot in the last year. But two escapes in a day: how unusual!

The bucks were in rut. They repeatedly mounted one of the sheep, which made me really mad. Other people keep their sheep and goats together: why are my bucks so against nature as to mount a different species?! Gross! (While it is possible that the sheep would be impregnated, it is not, apparently, likely, as one species has 54 chromosomes and the other has 60.) I briefly considered getting a rifle and putting an end to those miserable creatures, but, with Phil away, I wasn't sure how to hold the animals' heads still, nor, honestly, how to shoot the rifle. It's been a long time.