Fox Grape Farm

Planning

2012-01-19T06:53:00.000-08:00

Ethan found this little snake sunning himself on our rock pile the other day....

Not too much else going on. Well, actually, there's a lot of planning for this year going on, just not much to photograph. The tomatoes and eggplants have sprouted, I'm just starting the peppers now. We got our seeds from Seed Saver's Exchange and are talking about garden plans. We're trying to arrange to keep a bull (who knew it was so hard to find a trailer for rent?) for a short time to get the girls bred for this year. We tried AI on Isla, with no apparent success, which was really disappointing because I had my heart set on Bruno from Holt Creek Jerseys, but we are thinking that for her first calf it will be easier to use an actual bull. We'll try AI next year.

Also, we are wanting to do another batch of meat chickens, in case anyone would like to pre-order, and we're getting together a list of people that want to get pigs from us next spring. Since we had the last few good freezes, the last of the grass is brown, the garden is ugly and the landscape is boring. Last year, this was the time when a bunch of people came out to see the farm and it was so heartbreaking to have to show it to them when everything was dead. And they were people who have beautiful gardens and keep everything beautifully landscaped. It was like, here are are ugly molting chickens, here's the field where the garden froze back, here's the compost pile, and look! You can really see all the blackberries and cactus now because everything else is dead....
Very discouraging. If they could have come out just a few months later, it would have been so different! January is always the time I look at the pastures and feel like we're doing something wrong. But this year we are going to take this time to do some soil correcting. Next week we're going to throw some lime over the pastures (100lbs per acre). We are planning to wait a bit until the grass is green and growing to apply the mag-po-sul as recommended, but the lime should help a lot. And I'm dying to see how the grass will grow this next season since we fed hay along the grazing lines last year and we're finally doing the soil correcting.

I had an idea for how to get winter forages to grow on the pastures for next year. We have a hard time getting winter forages to grow, not having a tractor or equipment to drill winter rye. Previously it had consisted of me buying seed, scattering it and having nothing to show for it except some very weak rye seedlings here and there that eventually died from cold or drought. Looking at the chicken tractors, where a patch of oats grows everywhere the feed is spilled, I thought I should just seed behind the chicken coops, because maybe it wasn't fertile enough. But no. Finally I've learned that the seeds really need to be buried to germinate well, and the reason they grew behind the chickens was because the chickens had scratched them into the dirt.
Anyway, this year when we got the piglets we had them in the garden for a short time in a little movable pen made from a hog panel until they outgrew it and we slaughtered Fred, freeing up the permanent fence pig paddock where they can be trained to electric wire. Everywhere the pigs spent time there is a lush, green patch of oats and wheat growing very happily. They had rooted it up enough and rooted seeds under so they could grow. So, my plan is to move the pigs along the lines in small paddocks to give them the opportunity to have the same effect. Either it will ruin the pastures or everything will end up looking like the little green patches in the garden....

2012-01-12T12:07:00.001-08:00

We've been getting the most beautiful eggs lately. The Araucauna layers have started laying their beautiful green eggs, and we've even gotten a few turkey eggs (the beautiful speckled one at the top).

The new California White layers are still too young to lay, but I am hoping they will be laying well for Easter, because everyone like the white eggs for dyeing.

The only other exciting things around here have been that we put a weaning ring on Butch, our steer from Matilda and put him out a few weeks ago. He was supposed to be in his own paddock, but he quickly escaped and is in with Matilda and the rest of the herd now. It was fine for a while, but he figured a way around the weaning ring, so we haven't had any milk. There's just no way we can catch him right now, either, short of one of those nifty stun-rifle things they use for tagging wildlife.

The problem should be short-lived, because this weekend we are hoping to bring Dennis Stolzfoos's Devon bull from Full Circle Farm here, and we will be keeping him in our only permanent-fence paddock with Matilda, Geranium, Chestnut and Isla and a bale of hay, so Butch's milk-drinking spree is soon to be at an end.
What do most people do for weaning calves? I'm hoping it will be easier once we have more calves and they can keep each other company, but I could be really, really wrong about that.

Some winter garden musings

2012-01-09T13:12:00.000-08:00

Oops.
I didn't try to make this the year of the monster turnip, and yet that's what it's become. I guess it's better than last year when everything froze before we got more than a few radishes. They got so large so fast, and once that had begun they were too intimidating to eat. I tried giving them away, but alas. This one was all corky inside.

We did get a handful of luscious golden peas before the last cold snap, which killed everything--sigh. I think I'm just a better summer gardener. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that yet.

This is merely to remind myself how lovely the Japanese Red Mustard was before it got frozen. It's still alive and is slowly growing back, but it looks like compost. I guess I'm feeling pessimistic today. The tomato seedlings for the summer garden are just starting to sprout, so I don't really have any right to complain.

New Piggies

2011-12-05T18:30:00.001-08:00

I've been rather distracted lately with holidays and such. Last week we butchered Fred, and he turned out to be 280 lbs hanging weight, which means he was probably around 400 or more lbs live weight. He was huge! We've gotten about a gallon of leaf lard already (leaf lard is the highest-quality lard from the fat inside the pig), and I have a big batch of headcheese simmering on the stove. We have so much food right now. I still have the blood to make blood cake with, Ethan also got a rabbit on Sunday, the Americana pullets have started laying their pretty green eggs, Matilda has been making extra milk and the children have been so excited about pulling up the massive turnips we've been getting out of the garden, so the kitchen has been exceptionally busy.

Anyway, another distraction is our newest addition. We got two new little piglets last week!
These are pigs to keep. They are gilts, and we are hoping for them to have lots of piglets.
They are Gloucester Old Spots, which Ethan was not really excited about when I first told him (he doesn't like "cute" animals, and it didn't help that the Craigslist ad had a link to a Countryside and Small Stock Journal aritcle--a publication he disdains). But he cheered up about it when we met the people and found out they grow their own open-pollinated corn to feed the pigs and let them out to graze and stuff.

Another good thing about them is that they are extremely friendly already. They are bucket-trained and like being scratched, although they still squeal frightfully if you try to pick them up. We are still working on names.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T05:55:00.001-08:00

There's so much to be thankful for...
Happy Thanksgiving!

Maggot Morning

2011-11-23T18:06:00.001-08:00

I don't have any pictures to share for this post, and trust me, that's a good thing.

So, if you recall, a few posts ago I was pickling turnip greens for the animals in my grandfather's ancient ceramic crock. It was the first time I've used it, and I definitely did something wrong (very wrong).

Several days ago we woke up and the house smelled a little funky. I thought it was maybe the compost needed taken out. My friend called and wanted to visit in half an hour, so I was desperately trying to cook breakfast, feed and water guinea pigs, over-fed cat and the new baby chicks; clean my neglected house and deal with the laundry crisis when I noticed it looked like we had spilled rice on the floor.

Except we've been out of rice, and it was moving.

Yes, it was Maggot Morning.

And not only that but our recent ants-inside-the-house problem had escalated to the point that the ants were in the process of devouring the maggots as they crawled in unison towards the dining room window. I'm still not sure if this was the best part about the situation or the worst part. On one hand, our house had become a thriving ecosystem with a food web and anything that was helping to get rid of the maggots was great, but on the other hand, we were just flooded with unwelcome invertebrates.

I am an entomologist's daughter, but this was too much.

While sweeping up maggots and crying (not too much, really), I noticed more and more were coming out of the crock. Darn it! I covered the thing with a towel and secured it down to keep this from happening! I lifted the towel and discovered something worse than maggots.
Anyway, long gross story. The crock is clean. The maggots AND ants are gone, the pickling experiment has been buried. I think I needed a better weight, and maybe finer grained salt.
AND...my friend called while I was scrubbing the floor to say she wouldn't come after all.
Whew!!

The Littlest Milkmaid

2011-11-16T08:04:00.001-08:00

Rose always likes to help me with the milking. Sometimes she actually helps to milk, but usually she stands by my side and rubs Matilda's round belly, and laughs when we get whacked by Matilda's tail.

She always insists that I save a little for her in the milking pail to drink warm and fresh and very sweet.

Fresh milk is the best!

2011-11-15T08:23:00.001-08:00

The big news around here is that we now have guinea pigs. We didn't want guinea pigs. In fact the last thing we need is another animal, but alas.

Ages ago, our friend and neighbor Ron got a breeding pair of guinea pigs, despite his wife's misgivings about the whole thing. He wanted them to trim the grass in the back yard. A few months later and he now has more than 30 guinea pigs, most of them expecting, and no more grass. He's been trying to give some to us for ages, and I've always deflected it with, "Oh, I'll have to talk to Ethan about it."

Last week he showed up with two guinea pigs. Mirin was so excited. I kept saying, "Well, I just hope they'll survive," hoping that would deter him, but Gail, his wife, countered that by saying, "Oh no, don't worry, these are 100% guaranteed. If any die we will replace them indefinitely."
That gives you an idea of the guinea pig problem down the street.

They are cute. Even Ethan, who was not really happy to see the guinea pigs at first, was carrying them around in his shirt pocket and trying out names for them.
As far as we can tell, they're both girls, I just hope we're right about that. Otherwise they might start giving the neighborhood squirrels and rats some competition.

First Turnips

2011-11-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

The turnips I had planted back in September are now ready to pull. This year I read about planting turnips and discovered they need a shocking amount of space between the plants, like 6-12."
All this time I had thought my turnips were pathetically tiny because the soil was so poor, but it was probably because I just planted them in a big blob and didn't bother to thin them. I was very surprised to find big turnips in my garden this year.

The Scarlet Ohno Revival turnips I had gotten seeds for from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange were pink inside. They remind me of choggia beets.

Since we have quite so many greens right now, I decided to ferment the turnip greens for the animals. I got out this amazing crock I inherited from my grandfather, who used it to make kraut. It's probably almost a hundred years old, and I've never used it before. It sat in our garage with tools in it for more than a decade. I had no idea what it was, but now I shudder to think that I might of cracked it in my careless ignorance. Rose was happy to help salt and mash the greens to make a brine. I used the sea 90 livestock salt.

Mirin even started to help, and things were getting pretty crowded at the end.

I put a plate on top to weigh the greens down. We'll see how it turns out!!

The Spirit Train

2011-11-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

For a long time now I have been wanting to photograph the place we get molasses for the animals. The atmosphere has such a magical, abandoned and supernatural feeling to it.

You have to drive for a long way down 441 from Gainesville. There is an ugly parking lot beside the feed store, which looks out on a ruin. An old railroad track that ends abruptly a few feet away runs in front of a rusting relic of forgotten times. In the background you can see the stairs that now lead to nowhere. It strongly reminds me of scenes from Henry's Quest, a post-apocalyptic children's adventure story by Graham Oakley.

After you arrange to get the molasses at the feed store, they call the man who owns the molasses works to meet you across the street where the molasses is stored.
He is striking in appearance, too. He almost looks like a drizzle of molasses, being very long and lean, and reminds me curiously of Kamajii, the boiler man from Spirited away.

The molasses works is a monster of metal tanks, pipes and valves. Yellow sulfur butterflies flutter in circling swarms and dot pools of rotting molasses where they are mud-puddling.

Another abandoned railroad runs weed-choked to one side, going somewhere. Far down the track (too far to capture in any of the pictures) sits an old train car, stopped in the middle of it's last journey. Enormous blooming Bidens bushes spill over the tracks.

My children, too, notice that things are more than they seem here. They always try to walk to the old train, but never are able to get there.

In the car on the way home, we always create fanciful stories of the Spirit Train, which comes to life at midnight and travels on the old, forgotten railroads to fantastic places.

Rabbits

2011-11-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

The baby rabbits have really grown, and as far as I can tell they are all females. They are so cute in real life, but were really hard to photograph. Either they turned out with evil red eyes:

Or like this:

I did get a few nice pictures of them. Here's the friendliest one, munching on some barley grass I had sprouted for them as a treat.

And here's Lily with her favorite one. They're just alike.

They're growing, and soon it will be time to wean them. Just like with most babies, they grow up so fast. But at least with rabbits you know there will be lots more.

Stinkhorns

2011-11-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

We've been finding the most interesting stinkhorns around.

Ethan said they look like Anime penis monsters, and they really do. This one below seems like it must be related to the famous Phallus impudicus.

The old summer garden

2011-11-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

We keep the garden by halves, so that each season the land gets a rest.
The summer half of the garden has been interesting this year.
Even after the goats and cows trampled and munched their way through it, it became a wild tangle. Roguish hybrid cucumbers, sunflowers, tomatoes, melons, dent corn and amaranth seeded themselves rampantly. The dent corn even tasseled and bore little ears. The zinnias became monstrous.

At it's peak, my children would get lost in the overgrown grass and weeds.

The Roselle is flowering its strange and lovely flowers.

Massive Spanish needles have taken over in places, each a humming and vibrant ecosystem, alive with many different kinds of bees, flies and butterflies and things that eat them. I saw at least 5 different types of bees nectaring one day, and not a single one like our honey bees. Just one of these bidens bushes is at least 10 feet across.

It's a jungle out there.

Heading Out

2011-11-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

I think we make a ridiculous spectacle heading out to the farm--striding around in clunky mud boots, more clod-hopperish than the trim versions which have somehow found their way into popular fashion, while we stuff our screaming and flailing children in the car among an odd assortment of very full baskets.

For some odd reason our children have that reaction to going out to the farm. Once they are there they have a blast building fires and forts, swinging, running, climbing, squirting each other with the hose, making bows and arrows, picking flowers and vegetables, making mud pies and digging holes and they scream just as loudly when we have to go home and go to bed. It is completely baffling, but that's how it is.

The other day while Ethan was dragging Rosie off of her tricycle before she "ran away" and Mirin out of a tree, I saw the baskets on the driveway and thought they looked amusing. Milking basket, water jars, extra milking jar and seeds for the garden, the egg basket, knitting and a story to read on the way (The Wolves of Willowby Chase at the moment).

There's something interesting about all the baskets in a row like luggage, ready for something. Ready for adventure, I suppose.

2011-10-31T12:45:00.000-07:00

Do you mind if this is another garden tour?

Things are looking so much better now that the cooler weather has blessed us.

(These are the Picotee cosmos blooming in the turnip patch)

There's more than Tatsoi growing out there now, thank goodness! Even Matilda was getting a little tired of it. You can vaguely see the yellow flowers of the bolting Extra Dwarf Pak Choy in the distance (I do wish the photo quality was better) and this year I've been realizing that pretty much the only difference between Baker Creek's Bok Pak Choy and Extra Dwarf Pak Choy seems to be that the Extra Dwarf stuff just bolts and becomes inedible much, much sooner. Ethan is very pleased. He has always been scornful of the Extra Dwarf Pak Choy.

Although a bit frosted, the pumpkins are still alive and flowering. Some of them have even set some fruit, although I've been much too busy to poke around and see if they are keeping them.

The peas, the peas! Despite the best efforts of the ants and what must be now a very tasty pea-sprout fed rabbit(s), they are starting to climb. Ethan and Mr. McGregor (the .22) have been vigilant, but we've seen no signs of the culprit(s). A good rabbit dinner(s) might make up for it. Please forgive the s's in parenthesis, but it's like Will Cuppy says about mice, you can never have just one.

See, it's all looking slightly more cheerful, except maybe the pumpkins. They might become a bed for lettuce and beets, anyway, we'll have to see.

Pomegranates

2011-10-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

These are the pomegranates I started from seed (yes, from seed) way back in January!!
I just re-potted them, and they are starting to look like something finally!
Apparently starting pomegranates from seed is sort of hit-or-miss as far as how good the fruit will taste, but my dad had a great pomegranate he had started from seed planted in their yard until it was killed by a fungus. They were super easy, and I've got a bunch of them, so who cares if only a few of them are edible? I'm sure someone around here will like them, even if it is only the pigs, and I can't wait to have loads of fruit trees growing everywhere. I think this coming spring I'm going to attempt tons of fig cuttings, and maybe more pomegranates.

(I just had to show some scrap of growing success after the previous depressing post about the winter garden)

The fall/winter garden

2011-10-21T06:14:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of the abysmal fall/winter garden taken in September. It looks slightly better now. See how there's nothing actually growing in it?? That's continuing to be a bit of a problem.

I started off this season feeling lost. I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do, except start brassicas to plant on September 1st. I think I was still burned out from the summer season.

It was an extremely hot and dry summer, and none of the brassica starts really took off. In fact, they mostly withered and died. They would sprout right away, and then languish and dwindle, despite being watered properly (not too much, not too little), given a little boost of kelp emulsion after they were turning yellow, moved into the shade, moved into the sun and generally babied. They just weren't happy.

I soaked and then direct-seeded the peas, thinking it would be just like the string bean success of the summer, but alas, no. In the photo you can see the long row of peas only because of all the notermelons I used to weigh down the weed guard paper and keep it from blowing away. They mostly rotted or were eaten by ants. Freakishly, only one part of the row grew, although I can detect nothing different about that particular spot.

I think it was just too brutally hot for them. Anyway, things are looking slightly better now. Most of the fall pumpkins I had planted in August were attacked by creepy little flying aphids that made them wither up. Oh, and squash bugs. Strangely, nothing could be seen of the stem borer moths that were so common in the spring. They were an easy pest to deal with if I was diligent about stalking up and down the rows of squash daily, picking off the little brown eggs.

The little flying aphids, however, were not easy. They would fly smugly away in a little cloud when I swooped down on them with soapy water. Eventually I abandoned the pumpkins to slowly die, which most of them did. It does look like we might get a few, if the weather doesn't get much colder. All I want is one pumpkin for Thanksgiving dinner. If we get just one, it will all be worth it.

The other failures included direct-seeding all the Asian greens and only having eight rows of mustard come up (short rows, luckily. Even so, we and the cows are getting tired of it already), and a very desperate struggle with the weedguard paper. They make it look so easy on their website, but it's like wrestling an alligator. An alligator who gives you paper cuts. For some possibly supernatural reason it always becomes windy when I decide to work with it in the garden. I could be thinning the turnips and there won't be a breath of wind until I get the weedguard paper out, and then it just won't stop. Maybe it offends the wind gods or something.

Actually, half the battle with the fall/winter garden was troubleshooting the weedguard paper. The other half was failing to keep anything except mustard and weeds alive. (not to mention the situation with Alachua County Feed and Seed talking me into buying a "cover crop" for my garden that has now become a hideous and inextinguishable nuisance. I still don't know what the plant is called, but at least it fixes nitrogen, although with the cassia and the crotalaria, I'm not sure we really needed another nitrogen-fixing pest.)

So, next fall/winter season, if I am still gardening and haven't given up in despair, here are the following notes to myself:
-Start Asian greens first, in pots (which is what I eventually did this year), and transplant September 1st.

--Start peas in pots and transplant September 1st (yes, there are peas growing out there right now, and only because I bought more seeds and started them in pots, which will probably sound ridiculous to people who are used to gardening in much more fertile places. Interestingly, they are the same height as the unfortunate peas who survived the first direct-seeding, although planted a month later)

--THEN start cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kale, etc.

--The best way to deal with the weedguard is to cut it to the length of the bed, soak it with water, lay it out and cover it with old hay or mulch to weigh it down, and then it can be planted through. This saves the trouble of trying to find where all the little starts were planted under the paper or struggling to mulch around the starts.

Anyway, I hope to post a better picture soon.

2011-10-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

It's kind of gruesome, but this is Mirin and Rose's notermelon baby they made. (It was actually cute in real life, but in the picture it looks like a zombie). The kids started with a notermelon that Mirin had hollowed out to make one of his drinking gourds for me (very refreshing to drink from one when you are planting the fall garden in the hot late summer sun). They found a little one and carved the face with a butter knife they found in the milking basket, and stuck it all together with wet sand. The yellow cap is a funnel that was lying around.
Since we just didn't manage to grow our own Halloween pumpkins this year, we are planning to have notermelon luminaries lining the driveway. Not that anyone comes trick-or-treating in our neighborhood any way, but we're hoping the sheer number of notermelon jack 'o lanterns and the dug-out-of-the-compost-real-pig-skull candle holder will discourage pumpkin smashers this year.

Fred E. Pig

2011-10-11T19:19:00.001-07:00

This is Fred Pig. He was the runty one of the last batch of pigs. Being slightly smaller than everyone, he got pushed out of the way by his seven companions and was still way too small to eat last spring when it was cool enough to slaughter. We kept him for us and let him grow all summer, and with none of his other companions around to push him away, he has grown enormous. He's just huge.

He's a good pig. He's happy and healthy. When we come out to do the chores he runs alongside in his paddock by the driveway. A few days after it rains he becomes a black pig. He's got a wallow in the woods somewhere. As it dries up he gets pinker and pinker. We'll come out and he'll have only a pink butt, where he didn't quite fit in all the way, or just his sides will be muddy. I love watching him leap over logs and squeeze through the trees, making the "woof-woof" sound that pigs make when they're excited (strangely, I've never heard a pig say oink). He's amazing agile for an animal his size.

It's been so nice to have a pig on the farm this whole time. Usually we would have gotten new piglets by now, but we really need to make some changes and improvements to our pig set-up. Fred and his friends were in a large wooded paddock the whole time, and they did a great job of clearing out the overly-dense underbrush. It used to be so thick you couldn't see the large trees, but now you can see them clearly (and they look kind of relieved. It's not good for large trees to have so much underbrush beneath them). I'd like to give the land a rest. I wonder what will grow there next year in the space left from all the little laurel oaks. I wonder if we'll get some new wildflowers, like after a burn.

We need to finish the rest of the pig paddocks before we get another pig, but I so hope someday to have a sow and have our own little piglets. Having babies on the farm is just so much fun. There's so much to look forward to every day, to see how they've grown. (The baby rabbits are hopping out of the nest box now, they are so cute!).

2011-10-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

Mirin got a real bow and anrrows for his birthday this year.

He's been so excited about it. Ethan used to teach archery as a summer camp counselor before we got married, so he's been teaching him. Out at the Farm, Mirin sets up a firing line and a wild watermelon (we call them Notermelons, because they are not watermelons--they are bland like cucumbers and very seedy--we feed them to the animals). He's actually a pretty good shot (better than I am). He's very careful about how the arrows are handled and about finding them all when he's done. Luckily he only has six and they are brightly colored, because the grass is at it's longest right now.

Strangely, having a real bow has set off an even more obsessive phase of making bows and arrows out of sticks and all kinds of things. I don't have a picture of it, but two days ago he found a hacksaw and cut and trimmed a long piece of oakleaf hydrangea and made a long bow that shoots shockingly well for being strung with cotton twine. He also fashioned arrows out of palm fronds. He also had a little crossbow he made with a rocket balloon.

Baby Bunnies

2011-10-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

The big news around here is that Lily finally had a surviving litter of babies, and they are pretty much the cutest things ever, especially now that they have fur and their eyes are open. (They resembled naked mole rats at first). While the photo is not the best (they are looking a little demonic with the glowing red eyes) I assure you that in real life they are unbelievably cute and it's all I can do to keep myself from picking them up and snuggling them every day.

So, the story about the rabbits is that they were given to us. We originally got two females and a male, Lily, Magnolia and Peter. I honestly don't know anything about rabbits at all. I really need to buy a book about it or something. Our neighbor has a really nice rabbit set-up in his backyard, where all the waste from the rabbits goes into an earthworm bin. Occasionally when I catch him walking by in the afternoons I can ask him questions about it.

Lily has had four litters before this that didn't survive, and a lot of that had to do with the nest box we were given. It was just a square of wood, with no bottom. It might have been totally great for in town, which is where they came from, but it just didn't work out in the wilderness of Fox Grape Farm.

The first time, I messed things up because our neighbor told us we should pick up the babies so they'll be used to being handled. That freaked Lily out and she stopped taking care of the babies. The next litter she over night ate all of the straw I had put in for her to make a nest with and had the babies on the wire floor, and they died. The third litter I put cardboard down on the bottom, then some straw, and she ate the straw and the cardboard and had the babies on the wire and they died. The fourth litter (and I was feeling pretty awful about the whole thing by this time) I put extra layers of cardboard down, and straw, and she made a nest in it, had the babies and they got eaten by ants.

I was in despair after this, so I left her alone for awhile. I finally realized it was time to spring for a new nest box, so I did, and it's made such a big difference. This time, right around when she was due I bought some bag balm and smeared it on every possible place that ants could get into the cage. And so, a year and a half after getting rabbits, we have our first surviving litter!

2011-09-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

The Roselle is blooming! I've been drying bunches of it.
It's the first year the Roselle has survived long enough to produce anything. And it really has survived. I haven't watered it at all since the rest of the summer garden died back, I think in late July. And then when the animals were in I had put up a strand of non-zappy electric netting fence to keep everyone off the Roselle and just eating the weedy old garden. But guess where we found Miss May's head stuck every single day they were in there?

Every day we would come out and hear a miserable "Maaaaah!" and see May stuck, once again, in the netting around the Roselle, surrounded by luscious green things to eat on the outside of the netting, but determined only to entirely devour the forbidden plants. (She's lucky it wasn't electrified!)

One day she peed for nearly 5 minutes after we had struggled to free her little empty head from the layers of fence, I guess she hadn't been able to all day while she was stuck. You'd think she would have learned, but no. Weeks later we put the animals back in just for one day because of a crazy fencing problem we were having, and sure enough, May was stuck again. She managed to strip a bunch of the plants, but they came back and are blooming, along with the unscathed ones.

Dent Corn

2011-09-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

This was the dent corn harvest. It's not the loveliest corn. I think it needed to be in larger blocks, away from the sprinklers and needed more calcium...and is it boron that is important for the kernals? I can't remember. This year we grew Blue Jade, Strawberry Popcorn (the cute little red ears at the top right), Oaxacan Green Dent, Daymon Morgan's Kentucky Butcher corn....and I think that was it. Memories of the summer garden are fading fast. And then there's the massive Attack Zucchini on the left. They look like jewels in the light. I was hoping to grind them and make corn bread, etc, but unfortunately a scourge of weevils came into our house on some brown top millet and cow pea seeds I had bought from Alachua County Feed and Seed. (We call it Alachua County Toxic Exposure) I was shocked that weevils could survive the atmosphere of ACTE, where stacks of pesticides are kept handy by the register, but that probably means they're Super Weevils and are immune to everything.

The Fortress

2011-09-10T05:14:00.000-07:00

Mirin and Rose spontaneously made a hobbit hole in the mulch pile the other day. They've been playing in it ever since.

They even used fence posts and made a roof. They later piled more mulch on top.

It was a little snug, but a respectable shelter nonetheless, especially for a 6 and 3 year old to design and build themselves. I agree with Ethan that it was a better shelter than anything we saw built at the Earth Skills gathering at Finca Mycol.

Toadstools and Fairy Rings

2011-09-08T06:28:00.000-07:00

The rains have brought the fairy rings dancing all over the pastures! I really want to re-name the farm Fairy Ring Farm, but Ethan thinks it's cheesy. I've never quite liked Fox Grape Farm. It was just the only name we could agree on. Generally I liked to think of magical-type names and Ethan liked good and sensible (boring) names. Fox Grape Farm reminds me of the story of the fox and the grapes, but the fox never got the grapes, and I am definitely in this to get the grapes.

It reminds me, I MUST set-up the garden oyster mushroom kit I had bought from Fungi Perfecti ages ago before it croaks. Some day (when I have more time) I want to learn how to grow all sorts of mushrooms.
( Rose also thought they looked like boobies).

More Cucumbers, More Melons

2011-09-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

I promise that I'm running out of vegetable pictures. I just think they're so pretty, I can't help posting them.

This is some of the Blue Jade corn. It's a little dwarf corn that only gets about knee-high, and the cobs are only about four inches tall, but they're so cute and pretty....and they also were decently sweet and tasty--better than the neglected Golden Bantam, that's for sure.

And more melons! I'm convinced you just can't have too many melons.

I wish I could have painted this. Maybe next year.

Mid-summer Harvest

2011-09-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

Again, these pictures were taken months ago (maybe in November I can post the photos I just took of our baby winter garden!). That was a very good watermelon, I remember. In the foreground is a Silverline melon, next to a Collective Farm Woman Melon. Behind that is a single Ice Cream melon, with lots of the Golden Jenny melons. Mmmm....I miss the melons. I need to find a better way to plant them. Every year the weeds take over and I lose melons because I can't find them.

This was one of the pumpkin harvests. Lots of little lemon squash still, although these were too old to really eat. The Winter Luxury Pie pumpkins were heavenly. I still have one, although it's looking a bit old. The Black Futsu pumpkins were a bit disappointing. They were so tiny, and I guess they kind of tasted like hazelnuts, but not enough to be worth it. I think they didn't like Florida, either. The salmon pink warty pumpkins are the gorgeous Galeux Des Eysines ( I hope I spelled it right). They are one of my favorite pumpkins. I made the "Squash Cooked in a Light Broth" recipe with them from this book for when we were studying the Mayans for home school.

Sweet Corn

2011-09-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

We did get sweet corn again this year, mostly the Country Gentleman. It's shoepeg corn, so the kernels are not arranged in rows. It was nice and sweet. The Golden Bantam corn, unfortunately, I picked too late and it was chewy and not so good.

Summer Tomatoes

2011-09-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

These were the tomatoes from the last big tomato harvest, probably in June. Tomatoes are kind of a pain to grow--they must be started so early and coddled through the cold of the late winter and early spring, and then all sorts of things like to eat them, but I think it's worth it. They are so lovely. I was dreaming of huge, beautiful harvest of lots of different kinds and colors of heirloom tomatoes ever since we started growing things out at the farm.

I had planted Matt's Wild Cherry again this year. I do like it, but next year I'd like to try a different red cherry tomato. Matt's are so small, they are hard to pick. No one wanted to help me pick them, because it's pretty tedious. The Beam's Yellow Pear tomatoes are a different story, however. Everyone liked picking those.

This weekend we are putting in our winter garden. The summer garden seems so far away now, and I have even forgotten exactly what kinds of tomatoes these all are. I have the names of all the brassicas and sweet peas we are planting in my thoughts instead.

Mirin and May

2011-09-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

As ornery as she may be, Mirin has decided that May is his goat. (She is tied to the tree in the photo because back when we were keeping Paisley she would rip through the electric fencing and run along to eat all the food in the milking stand before Paisley or I could get there, the little devil). While she's certainly not the brains of the operation (that would be Ellie), she is a dear little goat and still doesn't mind being picked up and snuggled. Mirin is hoping to be in charge of milking her after her first kid(s).

Geranium's Surprise July Baby

2011-09-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

I promise I would have posted much, much sooner, except that Ethan had all the photos on his phone, and it apparently takes two months to remember to put them on the computer (ahem).

When we bought Ms. Geranium, she was supposedly bred to calve in April. However, she had been transported first from Vermont to Wisconsin, and then after a few months was transported to Florida (That's a lot of travelling for a mama cow). When I wrote to her original owner, he was worried she had miscarried during her travels. I had no idea if she was pregnant or not, since she is a rather wide cow to begin with, and I don't know how to palpate to see if they are pregnant (I honestly don't think Geranium would have stood for that, anyway).

April rolled around, and the baby failed to appear. We kept on expecting through May, because there is a 20-day window in which a mama cow could calve. Into June, however, we had lost hope and were talking about having her bred in the fall. Then, suddenly, very close to the 4th of July, a new baby magically appeared. Ethan was the first one to see him. It was one of those very rare days when I was not out at the farm (of course), so I missed it.

He was small, but has grown fast. We began calling him Sebastian, but after getting to know him better, Ethan now refers to him as "Meat-head." He had to carry him (twice) out to pasture because the little booger wouldn't just follow the herd (or his mom). And he was peed on, so I can't really blame him.

Catching up: Easter

2011-06-29T03:11:00.000-07:00

For Easter this year we made our own dyes. Yellow was turmeric, red was beets, blue was red cabbage and purple was mulberry juice. We also tried coffee, but that only turned them brown, making our efforts to save four dozen white eggs a little pointless, so we didn't use it very much. For green we tried nettle infusion, but it was a little muddy. I made some nice greens with the red cabbage and turmeric, too. I've never liked soaking the eggs in food coloring, but the artistic side of me loves the bright colors, so we've always done it that way. I didn't think natural dyes would be as pretty or colorful, but I was astounded at how lovely the eggs turned out. They were not as vivid as the commercial dyes, but they were more suited to Easter, being very soft and subtle and pastel.

The blue was an amazing robin's egg blue or a perfect spring sky blue, and the mulberries were a beautiful violet. You can tell the two eggs Mirin dyed at a friend's house with regular food coloring. The colors are very bright, but have a sort of chemical look to them next to the other eggs. I have to say, these lovely naturally-dyed eggs were hard to find. They easily blended into nature. The Easter bunny (ahem) had a great time finding flowers and fallen leaves that matched the egg colors perfectly.

After we were done dyeing all the eggs I soaked strips of white muslin in the dye for a maypole. They turned out so beautiful. I couldn't believe how intensely bright they turned out.

They've faded a bit in the months I've kept them. I crocheted a little mini rug out of them, since we will probably want to dye new ones next year. Maybe someday I will have a big rug of them if I keep adding to it.

Ms. Matilda

2011-06-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

New cows!!

We have a new cow. Her name is Matilda. It's kind of my fault that we got her. I was just feeling so sad that we won't have much milk this year. Neither Ellie nor Geranium were pregnant (Geranium still LOOKS like she could be pregnant), and I just peeked at Craig's list to see if there were any Jersey cows for sale, and there were tons and tons. Matilda was the best one we found, and we're so glad to welcome her and her calf, who is a steer. I managed to convince Ethan because he had for months now been talking about finding a beef steer. She is a really nice cow, and her milk is really good. I didn't actually know there were nice cows out there until I met Ms. Matilda. Geranium is so evil-tempered (even without horns) and Isla is well-behaved only if there are oats involved.

Catching up--the cucumbers and beans

2011-06-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

This was late in the evening, so the lighting wasn't great. It was just such a pretty collection of colors. I love the patty pan squash, they are so tasty and so pretty. I stuffed the squash blossoms with basil, garlic and ricotta cheese and battered them with an eggy batter and fried them.

This was our first beans, tomatillos and eggplant.

Do you see how many beans we got?? They were so pretty. One thing I didn't realize was that Tanya's Pink Pod and Red Swan beans are the same color. I was thinking of the Borlotti beans I grew last year when I ordered them. In the distance are the Suyo long cucumbers. They have such an interesting shape.

I wish I had gotten more pictures of the watermelons. We are still getting watermelons off the vines, but they are declining. I grew three different kinds this year: Yellow Moon and Stars (has yellow flesh), Strawberry (red inside--it's a Florida variety), and White Wonder, which has been my favorite. It has very crisp, white flesh inside and is really lovely. The rind is very thin, which must be why you never see any white watermelons in the stores. I made a beautiful watermelon salad with all three colors, and we are currently making three-toned watermelon Popsicles in the freezer!

I don't have any photos, but we also got a bunch of Golden Jenny melons, which look like little cantaloupes. They are orange inside, and very fragrant and sweet. We also got a bunch of Silverline melons, which are so pretty and silver-striped with sweet, white flesh. The Ice Cream or Green Machine melons were my favorite. They are greenish yellow on the outside when ripe, and not very fragrant, so it was hard for me to tell if they were ready or not. But the inside is sweet, green and crispy and strangely like the texture of ice cream. The Collective Farm Woman melons from Baker's Creek just got ripe. We've gotten only three so far. They are supposed to be an early melon, but have been the next to last to get ripe. They're from the Ukraine, I think, so maybe Florida just doesn't agree with them or something. They were very tasty. They looked like any old cantaloupe from the store, but were green and orange inside and very good, although the sweet part was mostly in the center. There are still the Delice De La Table melons, one of which rotted, tragically. I need to find a better way to keep the weeds down so I can actually find the melons. I'm thinking weed guard paper next year.

I've just been marveling about how amazing it is to be able to pick out unusual seeds from all over the world with varieties I had never seen or heard of and to grow them and get to taste them. I've been so enjoying my garden, almost to the point of obsession. When people ask about how my garden is going, I just can't help going on and on about it, and then I realize I'm boring everyone and manage to come to a stopping place.

Sunflowers

2011-06-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

I planted the Seed Saver's Exchange sunflower collection this year. I love the variation in the different kinds of sunflowers. We've had bursting bouquets on our table since they started blooming. (The ugly metal-roofed thing in the back is the old cow shelter from the winter--we never moved it out).

Here is the left side of the garden, just before the pole beans.

And this is the corn, pumpkins and cosmos. It's been a very colorful garden this year.

The Summer Garden Season

2011-06-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

This is the last harvest I photographed. The pumpkins were finally coming in--those are the Thelma Sander's Sweet Potato pumpkins and a Winter Luxury Pie pumpkin. They are both so delicious. Since then we've also gotten some massive Blue Hubbard pumpkins and several very nice Galeux D'Eysines, though I haven't taken pictures of them. The tomatoes are still getting ripe, but the pumpkins are mostly over now.

The Okra was just in, with all four kinds this year. Hill County Red, Burgundy, Jade and Silver Queen. I liked all the varieties, but Ethan only likes the Jade kind. It all tastes about the same, but he just likes it to be green.

I love the State Fair zinnias. The are huge and gorgeous, and they last forever in a vase. I am definitely growing these next year.

Catching up

2011-06-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

Has it really been a month and a half since I've posted?? Where does the time go?! Since May, lots has happened. It's gotten really, really hot (and dry). This year the summer rains seem to have ceased to exist, unfortunately.

Cloud had her little lamb. He was adorable, while he lasted. We are giving the sheep to our friend Dan in a month or so. They have been such a pain. The lamb is not like the baby goats. He did not recognize his mother apart from Big Dumpling or the dog (unbelievably dumb), which meant that when the stupid dog would get out to go play on the other side of the fence, he would, too. He and the dog were missing one day, and we were sure we had lost him, but then we found them a quarter of a mile away, near the road, and brought them back. Only a week after that, they were missing again, and this time we just couldn't find them. The dog came back, but the lamb didn't. He was so tiny he just slipped right through the 3-strand electric fencing, despite the 7,000 volts. Sad, but then the sheep have been giving us problems all year--like pink eye, and then poor Big Dumpling hasn't been the same since she went to the other farm. I got the Pat Colby lick from Countryside Naturals this time, instead of the usual Fertrell mineral mix, because I think they need more copper. The goats have been so much easier to deal with, shockingly.

And the next bit is that the garden has been fabulous this year. I've never had so much food. Ethan has been complaining a bit about how much he's been expected to eat (he's a meat-and-potatoes-only kind of guy). This was the first, first little harvest of squash blossoms and summer squash and a couple of cucumbers.

The early summer garden 2011

2011-05-04T06:18:00.000-07:00

It's early summer and the garden is starting to take off. Just yesterday we ate our first tender little zucchinis, and every day the plants seem to stretch and grow. Here's a little tour of our best garden yet, beginning with the Dark Opal basil I started from seed. I love the beautiful colors of the leaves. We are also growing Lettuce Leaf basil, Spicy Bush basil, Lemon basil, Holy basil and Sweet Genovese basil. I started them just after the tomatoes in January.

Here is a Tashkent marigold. The basil and marigolds are planted between the double row of tomatoes. Next year I might plant them between each plant, because the tomatoes are starting to shade them out.

This is a little patch of Oaxacan Green Dent corn, from Seed Saver's Exchange, growing between the squash plants. I separated the squash plants with rows of corn in hopes that it will give me some time to find squash bugs before they are all over the place. Supposedly it takes squash bugs awhile to get around, so if the squash is isolated it can help control them. They were a major problem the first year. Last year it was stem borer moths. This year I've been keeping a close watch and picking off any squash bug or stem borer eggs I find, and I've already found lots. We even found an adult male stem borer moth on the Cocozelle Zucchini.

A squash flower. I've been picking the extra males and battering and frying them. They are so good!

The yellow crookneck looks like it will be prolific this year. Already it has a lot of female blossoms.

Here is the red amaranth between the squash.

I love the way the moon and stars melons have dappled leaves. They are so pretty.

Here is a Golden Jenny melon. No female flowers yet, but it has a lot of male blossoms. The cucumbers seem to be the first along this row to have female flowers (I planted the melons, watermelons and cucumbers in a long row together, to make it easier to rotate these similar plants). All the melons are doing well. I am so hoping to get a taste of the Delice de la Table melons this year!

The bush beans are becoming a mini forest. I have seen a few blossoms. I can't wait for fresh beans! The pole beans are really coming along, too, although I have no photos of them. The bean pole idea this year seems to have worked well--they are all climbing easily. Last year we used Ethan's idea (failure) of a single top string with strands of twine hanging down for the beans to grow on. What actually happened was that the wind blew all the strands of twine into a single enormous knot that would have Alexander the Great cringing and the poor bean vines groveled among the grasses, didn't make beans and died. So it's been two years since we've had any decent amount of our own beans.

We actually have peppers this year so far. I had wanted to keep them in pots so they could survive the winter, but they were just not very happy. So they are all safely in the ground now, and seeming to enjoy it. We even have a few little peppers just starting to grow.

May

2011-04-20T05:11:00.000-07:00

This picture with May and Nougat turned out a lot cuter than the photos of Geranium's oozing horn, so I thought I would just say how big our babies are! Nougat was the first baby born on the farm, and now she is bred to kid in July, and little May, born May 1st of last year, has grown big enough to have her own collar now. She looks so grown up! We are still waiting on this year's babies to be born (any day now we might have pictures of little lambs).

Cow with Fly Strike and Infection after De-horning

2011-04-08T06:25:00.001-07:00

I apologize if this post is disgusting. The only reason I am posting about it is because when I looked up "Cows fly strike de-horning" and "Cows infection after de-horning" barely anything came up that was useful. There was certainly nothing about how to treat the situation without antibiotics and pyrethrin.

This was certainly a situation we had created. Although it perhaps violates some laws of Devons to de-horn them (in all the pictures they always have horns), it really had to be done. It wasn't just the way Geranium would run with them pointed four inches from your back when you had a bucket, or the way that she charged at me one day, or how she savaged the hay bale with them. Mostly it was because her attitude with them was just awful. There was just no way I could have milked her every day by myself when Ethan was out of town.

We consulted a vet to make sure it was not going to be too stressful this time of year and during her pregnancy and had her come out for the procedure. We know a guy who just puts them in the head gate and saws the horns off with a wood saw, but this wasn't something we were comfortable with. So the vet came out and even numbed her so it wouldn't hurt. The first one was fairly traumatic for her, and the second one bled quite a lot, but the vet said it was fine. She said not to put anything on it and that it should heal in about two weeks.

It was healing well, and I didn't feel I needed to do anything to help it along until a week later when we got a torrential rain. That afternoon when I went out to do the chores Geranium didn't come running over as enthusiastically as usual. When she got about 10 feet away I smelled an awful smell. When she turned her head I saw the maggots all crawling around and my heart just sunk, because this was what we had been afraid of. It was the beginning of a very disgusting week. We had lost a chicken to fly strike a couple of years ago, and I was so haunted by the experience I looked up everything I could to find out about it so it would never happen again. The result was that I was fairly well-informed about what to do. I didn't have a phone to call the vet or anything, so I immediately got some saline mixed up and waited until Ethan arrived and we could call the vet. The vet didn't answer the phone, so we went out and squirted every last maggot we possibly could out of her head with the saline and a drencher (really, really gross, by the way, especially since she kept shaking her head and spraying us with maggots). Then we called the vet's emergency number and talked to a different vet who had barely even heard of fly strike and had to look it up. She said not to worry, they were just eating necrotic tissue and that we had already done everything the vet could recommend. The only other thing they would do is spray her head down with pyrethrin.

Day 2: I had looked up pyrethrin and was not happy with what I read about it. When we went out the second day, there were some very large maggots still inside the hole of her horn that we flushed out. I think they were the little ones that we had missed and had grown horribly large in just a few hours (their eggs can hatch in under 8 hours in the right conditions and they grow unbelievably fast). I smeared on an ointment I had made from zinc oxide, coconut oil, rosemary essential oil and grapefruit essential oil. I have had luck with this ointment repelling flies from other wounds--particularly udder wounds that had little gnats eating at it that kept it from healing. I thought it would perhaps be more effective than the pyrethrin anyway, since it was oil based and wouldn't wash off easily in the rain, which had started this whole situation. The rosemary oil I added because rosemary was used to keep flies from meat, and the grapefruit was because it is very strong smelling. The maggots secret an enzyme that breaks down the proteins and creates a horrible smell that draws more and more flies in to lay eggs, so covering that up is important.

Day 3: There were no maggots in the affected wound on this day, although I found only a few very large ones on the other side, but no new tiny ones (which are much harder to get off). I put the zinc ointment on both sides this time. The side that had gotten the most of the fly strike now had very thick, smelly yellow mucus or pus pouring out of it. We flushed it again with saline and then called the vet, who strongly recommended antibiotics at this point. Geranium was still eating and acting fine, and I was worried about the antibiotics after reading Pat Colby's section about it where the vet killed her entire goat herd with them. I spoke to my friend of Ochwilla Hill Farm and she told me that her vet would never give antibiotics to a cow at that stage of pregnancy, because it could damage the calf. So we had to find an alternative.

Day 4: No maggots at all this time, but the one side was looking worse than ever. When I looked inside her sinus, all I could see was the thick yellow stuff. This day I added goldenseal tincture to the saline and we flushed it out very well, tipping her head to the side to let it drain out. Then I packed both the horns with Manuka honey and bound it up to keep it all in, smearing the outside with the zinc ointment (the smell was still very bad).

Day 5: The bandage stayed on, and when we removed it the next day it looked significantly better. The honey seemed to have drawn all the infection out, because a lot of yellow stuff poured out when I took off the bandage, but inside her head was clear and I could see it was beginning to heal and close up. I flushed it with goldenseal and saline again, packed new honey in and bound it up. The nasty infected smell was gone, and it just smelled like a wound. I gave her a big dose of fermented cod liver oil and extra raw apple cider vinegar in her water.

Day 6: She managed to rip the bandage off this day, but it was almost for the better, because it dried out the wound nicely. There was still some yellow stuff, but when I flushed it out again with the saline and goldenseal the water ran out her nose for the first time (I think it had been too clogged before). I packed it with honey but didn't bandage it. We gave her another dose of cod liver oil.

Day 7: Both the horns seemed to be healing very well. There was only the tiniest bit of yellow stuff on the one horn. This was the last day we flushed it out. I put the honey on it again.

After this it has gotten better and better. On the 7th evening it rained again, but that was almost good because it cleaned the area up. There was still mucus on both sides, but on the one side it was clear and on the other side a much clearer yellow.

Thank goodness for the herbs and the healing honey.

Piggies

2011-03-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

This is a late picture of the pigs from this year. Four of them have already been harvested, and only the four pink ones remain. I wish I had gotten the picture up sooner. The little pink pigs have really been growing quickly since the big pigs are gone. I didn't like having two different sizes/ages of pigs. I think the little ones got shorted on food too much.

Spring and Sprouts

2011-03-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

It's already March and we're getting ready for the summer garden. These are the seeds I started back in January. This year we had switched to an out-door set up to let more light in. Ethan built a cold-frame on the south side of the house, and we ran an extension cord out for a heat lamp. It was too cold at first, but I insulated it better with another layer of plastic and nearly everything we planted grew.

As you can see by the crazy tomato rain forest on the left, the tomatoes are doing very well so far. I've had to re-pot them twice! Every time I give them more room they just get larger. I hope the warm weather is here soon, I can't wait to plant them. Some have flowers already.

I just wish I knew what I had done differently this year. It was the same seeds (a year older this time), same starting soil, same pots. The only thing that was different was the cold frame, which was excessively draughty at first.

American Milking Devons

2010-12-29T07:16:00.001-08:00

After Honey died we were on the look-out for a new milking cow, but it was a hopeless kind of a search because nothing was for sale around here and it had taken us so long to find Honey in the first place. We had really wanted American Milking Devons (Honey had been bred to a Devon bull), so I looked around for any Devon cows for sale and found some listings. Most of the cows had already been sold, but one desperate-looking listing said "make an offer," and when I wrote to them they said they still had the cows for sale. They were located up in Wisconsin, which required us to find a shipper. They suggested Uship, which is a site which connects shippers and customers. The first offer we had on the shipping was too high, so I asked the people in Wisconsin if they could wait for us to find a better offer. They took a long time to reply and eventually said they wanted to get rid of the cows as soon as possible and that there were other people interested in them. So it seemed we might not get them after all. Then, later that same day, we got another offer that was very affordable and we went ahead and accepted the cows and mailed a check. It was a very tense several days while the people with the cows fumbled around with getting the cows checked at the vet and struggled to cash our cashier's check, for some reason we still don't entirely understand. At last the cows were on their way--thanks the the shipper Rolf--who really had to do most of the dealing with those people. And it still didn't quite seem real. Then at last they were there--on our farm, and we have the sort of cows we have wanted to get for so long. They are just beautiful--Geranium (who is bred for April) and her baby. They are the most beautiful color, and very stocky, with a very pleasing cow-shape. We are so happy!

The Muscovies

2010-12-29T06:55:00.000-08:00

We've had the Muscovy ducks for over a year now, but I have yet to say anything about them.

One reason is that they are extremely hard to photograph, as they never hold still enough. Most of the pictures I took were deleted because they showed either brown and white duck-shaped blurs, or the least-favorable end of a duck.

We got them from the same place we get our feeder pigs each year. When we drove up the first time to get our first batch of pigs, ducks were clumped all over the lawn, and strings of little ducklings would pop out from behind shrubberies and corners of buildings and other surprising places. The owner of the place immediately tried to press us into buying some ducks. He had had a buyer from South Florida turn around and decide not to buy the birds once they were all raised up. He said he had already separated the males and females, but the males kept sneaking over to the females' side at night and great numbers of ducklings kept pouring out from every nook and cranny. We declined to buy any ducks at the time, but took note

of the cockroach-like ability they seemed to have to reproduce.

A year later, when we thought we were better set up for more poultry, we bought a mama duck and three babies. They grew up and laid beautiful creamy eggs all year. We recently added four more females to our flock (one of the ducklings had grown up to be a large drake).

They have not begun laying for us yet, but we anticipate a good number of duck eggs (and hopefully ducklings) in the Spring. They are extremely well-adapted ducks, being the same sort that puddle about in retention ponds. They have been kept completely free-ranging, with out being shut-up at all during the night. They are very beautif

ul ducks, and keep distinctly separate from the white Pekings we have not yet eaten yet. They like to huddle together and do their weird mechanical-

duck dance with each other.

We don't have a pond, but they have a trough of water to bathe and splash in. They actually prefer the cow's drinking water, unfortunately, and since their clipped wings have grown in they delight in flying over into other paddocks and causing trouble. A favorite pastime of theirs is to fly just over the dog, who remains barking helplessly on the ground, and then fly back and perch on a post and sit like a duck-shaped carving and listen gleefully to the tortured barking.

Losing a milk cow

2010-12-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

I recently told a friend about losing our cow Honey, and she responded with, "Well, most farmers I know are very in touch with life and death and know when to let things go and when things are supposed to die. I suppose you learned a lesson from it."

This comment made me realize that before we had a family cow I would not have understood the incredible impact of such an event and what it would mean for a family to loose their milk cow. Cows are such a distant and abstract animal for most modern urban people, who will always express sorrow if someone looses their cat or dog (who don't even support the family with food--in fact require feeding and vet bills). To say that we lost a cow, to them, must be like loosing a piece of machinery.

To us, loosing Honey was a staggering set-back, because we are so small and just beginning our herd. To us she was family, food, fertility and the hopes of our own herd one day. I begin to contemplate the value of the cow--which was the original stock of the stock market--and I believe the old words for cow express this so well--"Chattle"--meaning wealth--and even before that "Kind" from which the words "Kindred" and "Kindness" come from.

Not only was she our source for richness--milk, cream, butter, and cheese for our children to grow on, but also she produced food for the pigs, the chickens and the turkeys, and her manure fed the garden and we were hoping for a calf next year. And suddenly it was gone, and everyone is deprived. The farm seems a much poorer place without our cow, and our herd is much diminished.

Thankfully, we have goats milk still, and we could obtain milk for ourselves from other places--although at great cost or diminished quality, but I can still sense the tragedy of what it means to lose your cow--a long time ago or in other places it might mean not surviving the winter, or being very hungry at least. I think the most valuable lesson we have learned from this is what an incredible gift of richness the cow is.

A great Change

2010-12-26T08:19:00.000-08:00

As a piece of sad news which afflicted us a few weeks ago in November, our milking cow Honey was injured when we were transporting her back from the farm where she was being bred to an American Milking Devon bull. She was down for several days, and I could tell that her leg was swollen. I used a tuning fork and pressed it against her bones to check for fractures, and as far as I could tell it was a soft-tissue injury. I used comfrey and Arnica both topically and homeopathic ally, as well as massage and applications of ice. After about a week of nursing her as she lay unable to stand up, she showed great improvement and was beginning to try to move around again and was making efforts to stand up. Then one day we came out to check on her and do the chores, and she had died. We think perhaps she had a blood clot, as she was showing improvement and died very suddenly.

Then a few days later our little goat Chocolate died. This was a surprise because she hadn't been particularly ill--but it was also not quite so surprising because she was the kid that Ellie would not nurse, and she was weak at birth and could not stand up. As she was growing she was never as healthy as her twin.

The other kid would play and jump and was sleek and fat, but poor little Chocolate was always sickly and bloated and would stand around looking listless. I gave her cod liver oil and kelp and citrus and special treats from the garden, but she continued to look miserable. I often would massage her rumen, which was always bloated and wormed her regularly.

Then, three days after Honey died, we came out to do the chores and little Chocolate was no where to be seen. We found her stretched out on the hay, as if she had been laying down to sleep and didn't wake up.

In my favorite goat book by Pat Colby, Natural Goat Care, she says, "Unthrifty kids should not be raised. Any kid that does not stand up unaided after about twenty minutes is suspect--unless there is a reason for its debility....A kid that is weak for no very good reason should be allowed to die quietly or be dispatched, nature will have her reasons."

We are sad, but we know this was how it was supposed to be.

Radishes

2010-11-30T07:50:00.001-08:00

I knew I needed to make a separate post for the radishes. They just do so well here, it's hard to resist planting a lot of them, and they pickle so nicely.

This year I am please to have no fewer than nine types of radishes planted: Daikon, cherry belle, French breakfast, black Spanish, He

lios, plum purple, munchner bier, Misato rose and German giant.

I also added Rat's tail, Chinese red meat and green Luobo radishes.

I like that the radishes are so quick to be ready to pull. And the spicyness goes away when they are salted and fermented.

Usually I quarter and brine the radishes, but this time I grated them with some turnip and carrot--you can see they grat

ed up into a very lovely pickle.

I made three kinds--one plain old "Ed-Chi" (instead of Kim-Chi), named for Ed Sherwood who loves plain, salted and grated radish pickles, one with caraway seeds and one with garlic and ginger.

I just love how incredibly colorful they are when you pull them up out of the ground--they look like bright splashes of paint or rubies and jewels--buried treasure.

The Winter Garden of 2010

2010-11-30T07:38:00.000-08:00

This year we began the winter garden without a donkey but with more experience. We had some piles of compost stored away. I opened a barrel we had composted a pig's head and offal in last year, kind of afraid of what I might find. Inside there was some very fine, pleasant-smelling compost and a pig's skull, which is already being gnawed on by the squirrels.

This year I decided to plant a lot of what grew well last year--radishes, turnips, parsnips and greens, and not fuss too much over the things that hate Florida's sandy soils--carrots and beets, namely. I am very pleased to be growing a lot of interesting Asian greens--Tatsoi, Tainong Emperor Heading Mustard, Pak Choy, Japanese Red Mustard, and Komatsuna.

I also have the necessary patch of collard greens and curly mustard, lots of turnips, including some interesting red turnips, which seem to be doing okay. A rabbit has destroyed my crop of snap peas this year. The lettuce, strangely, has had a hard time of it. The Arugula is making up for it, but it is still a bit sad, since I had invested in the Seed Saver's Exchange incredible heirloom lettuce combination. Shockingly, the spinach is actually growing and looking healthy this year, instead of pining away and slowly suffering as it did last year. The golden beets have once again been a huge disappointment, but the bull's blood and Choggia beets are making up for it (really, I can't understand people who don't like beets!).

Fall flowers

2010-11-30T07:22:00.000-08:00

The fall flowers were so beautiful this year. The Agalinis (false foxglove) was taller and more beautiful than ever before. It is the host plant of the Buckeye butterfly, and we had swarms of them drifting about, showing off their brown eye spots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junonia_coenia

The scratch daisy was rioting everywhere. It really is a beautiful wild flower. It made the whole orchard and winter garden look like a galaxy with thousands of little yellow stars. When the setting sun shone on everything in the evenings they were almost blinding as I walked by with buckets of soaked oats and corn for the chickens.

Here is a lovely little bouquet Mirin picked for me. The larger yellow flowers are crotalaria. It is a poisonous legume which was widely planted around the beginning of the 20th century because it fixes nitrogen and has nemotacidal properties. Because it has a cumulative heart toxin and is deadly to grazing livestock everyone tries to kill it. We try to pull it out of the pastures, but it comes back every year.

I think it is a beautiful plant, and our animals do eat it, and we have never lost one yet to crotalaria. It made a very nice cut flower.

Wild grapes

2010-11-30T06:35:00.000-08:00

I have been seriously slacking off recently with updating Fox Grape Farm. We've been so busy, and since no one actually reads it, the motivation was hard to come up with--so the next few posts are all old photos I didn't get around to posting until now.

Here is a wild harvest--wild muscadine grapes, fox grapes and lactarius mushrooms--yum!

New piglets

2010-08-30T11:34:00.001-07:00

We have some new piglets. They are from the same farm we have always gotten them from, but they are certainly different this time. They are lean and have funny long noses, more like wild pigs. They were extremely difficult to photograph because they kept fidgeting and changing places.

At the moment they are in a permanent, smaller hog pen while they get used to the electric fencing, but in a week or so we hope to have them out in movable pastures. We certainly learned our lesson last year when we put the pigs directly into electric fencing and we ended up having a piglet escape and never come back.

More mushrooms...

2010-08-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

We found even more delicious mushrooms yesterday. These were just around three or four oak trees. There were lots more, but we didn't want to be greedy. We found some boletes, lots of lactarius and more russelas.

We had the other mushrooms for dinner the other night. They were wonderful. The boletus we had found had a very strong but pleasant mushroomy flavor that would be delicious in a gravy or a mushroom soup. We are so lucky to have all these wonderful fruits of the forest.

I wonder what sorts of minerals you get from eating wild mushrooms.

Here is Mirin, very proud of his harvest (he did most of the collecting, actually. He is quite a mushroom enthusiast.)

Wild mushrooms

2010-08-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

The rain has had all the mushrooms peeking out. Around our oak trees we've found many good edible mushrooms. This is only one of many harvests. Here are some Lactarius, various russela mushrooms and a bolete. We weren't sure about the russelas and the bolete, although it did not have orange pores and it didn't stain blue, so we took them to James Kimborough, a renoun mushroom expert who also happens to live just a couple streets away. They are indeed edible. The Lactarius are particularly good, I think. Almost addictive, really. Store-bought mushrooms (even the fancy ones) can't compare in my opinion. Ahhh....how nice it is to live in a place where people are generally frightened of mushrooms. The human competition is virtually non-existent.

We will be gently cooking these in butter for dinner.

Making Butter

2010-08-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

I am certainly quite a beginner at making butter. The more I read about it the more little things I find that make a big difference. But I thought I would share what we have been up to these past months at least. Since Isla was weaned the milk has been amazingly creamy and wonderful, and we've been getting about 2 gallons a day. Dr. Weston Price found that the butter made in June had the most fat soluble activators, so this is likely the best time of year for butter-making. When the fridge starts to get full of milk I skim the cream from several gallons (2 gallons gives 1 quart of cream usually). Then we let the extra milk clabber and we mix it in with the oats for the chickens. It takes overnight for the cream to settle at the top of the jar.

After skimming I add a culture.

I had been using the clabber culture I had, but found it gave a very cheesy flavor, so the last batch of butter I just let ripen for several hours on the counter and I found the taste much better. I have been wondering if the flora danica culture would be nice for cultured butter as it is supposed to impart a buttery flavor to things.

When the cream has ripened, it is time for churning. I had been churning it in the food processor as the recipe in Nourishing Traditions calls for, but I think it is too fast as the butter would get a very hard, greasy texture. The last batch I made with egg beaters and the texture was much better. Surprisingly, cultured cream churns much faster at room temperature than cold, uncultured cream. The first batch I’d made I had chilled the cultured cream thinking it wouldn’t churn if it was warm and it took forever. The next batch took me by surprise by churning in under a minute. When I looked it up in my book Cheese and Cheese-making, Butter and Milk by James Long and John Benson (it was originally published in 1896!) it says, “If cream is churned while it is still sweet it is frequently longer before it is converted into butter, it produces less butter, and the flavor is less full and nutty.”

When the cream separates I strained the butter through a sieve, saving the buttermilk. I’ve found this buttermilk makes the best soaked oat porridge. In the cheese and butter book they say to add cold water before straining to help wash out the buttermilk. I'll have to try that.

When the cream separates I strained the butter through a sieve, saving the buttermilk. I’ve found this buttermilk makes the best soaked oat porridge..

And now the butter must be washed. The more buttermilk that stays behind in the butter the less the keeping qualities for the butter. This is when it would be salted, too, but have been making unsalted butter so far.

After the butter is made into a nice ball and as much of the water pressed out as possible, I either mould it in a cheese mould or roll it into balls, which I wrap in parchment paper and store in the freezer.

Tomatoes

2010-06-20T08:35:00.001-07:00

I know these are not the loveliest tomatoes--they have quite a bit of cat-facing. Some of them split, because it decided to rain like crazy right as they were getting ripe. But they are our tomatoes and they taste quite good.

Yard-long beans and sweet corn

2010-06-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

The crazy yard-long beans are ready. Last night we ate our first sweet corn, and although it wasn't as big as store corn, it was very sweet. We also got another silverline melon. This has been such a better year for the garden than last year. Last year we got lots of nice squash and huge pumpkins, but this year everything is sweet-tasting--and there are homegrown tomatoes, too! Last night I had to make an emergency tomato salad, because they are piling up already. It's nearly time for tomato sauce.

The little blueish ear of corn is the dwarf Blue Jade corn. I think we were supposed to wait longer to pick it, but it was very tasty anyway.

Blackberry Ice Cream

2010-06-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

We made blackberry ice cream yesterday and it turned out very nice. It's not so hard to make your own ice cream, particularly if you have an electric ice cream maker--although it kind of takes the fun out of working for the treat.

The recipe was:

2 cups of berries

2 egg yolks

2 cups of cream

1 tablespoon arrowroot flour

1/2 cup of honey

We doubled the recipe and it ended up making about 3 quarts. So far it has seemed to store well and has not turned to a frozen rock in the freezer.

First the berries must be mashed. My recipe said to put them through a food processor, which really mashed them up and made the ice cream a pretty purple color, though if I was to make it again I would either strain out the seeds or just mash by hand with a potato masher.

Then the eggs must be separated. Put the yolks into a mixing bowl and beat them up a bit. I save the whites to make meringues. When I make this again I'll add an extra yolk because I think it would make it turn out a little better.

Then add the cream to the eggs and mix them together well.

Next measure the honey and arrowroot and add it to the bowl, along with the mashed blackberries. The honey flavor did turn out rather strongly. The recipe had called for maple syrup, but we didn't have any, so perhaps it would have been a better choice of sweetener, if you don't like the flavor of honey.

Mix everything very well, pour into an ice cream mixer. I think every mixer is different, but for ours you surround the ice cream with crushed ice and salt.

Tomatoes

2010-06-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I have to brag about the tomatoes. It's only because last year was such a dismal year for tomatoes, and mine all suffered and died tragically (and I was SO looking forward to tomatoes!).

The little cherries are Snowberries and Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes. The orange one in front is a Dr. Wyche's orange, the three striped ones are Hillbilly Flame, the one in the back is a Japanese Black Trifele and the pinkish ones are German Strawberries--I think.

Also pictured is a golden-brown Poona Kheera cucumber, three little Richmond Green Apples up above, a yellow Silverline melon (yes, the melons are sweet this year!), and a sweet yellow stuffing pepper in the front.

Rabbits

2010-06-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

A neighbor/friend gave us three meat rabbits, including their cages and everything. We couldn't believe our luck with getting them (Thanks Katie!!). So far they just kind of sit around in their cages and eat.

Summer pickles

2010-06-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Here are some pickles I've attempted so far this summer. The top ones are cucumber pickles. First are two pints of dill relish, which I have not tried because they are still fermenting. The large one is dill slices and the small jar on the right is an experiment with sweet pickles. The slices turned out a bit salty. I have not yet had a success with cucumber pickles, for some reason.

The jars below contain watermelon pickles, except lacto-fermented. The thing I thought was a citron was actually a green watermelon, but I sliced it up and pickled it anyway. I'm still sweeping the seeds off the kitchen floor, where they all showered down when I sliced the thing open.

I could find no recipes online for lacto-fermented watermelon-rind style pickles, so I just made it up. Most canned watermelon pickles have watermelon rinds, lemon, cinnamon, cloves, vinegar, sugar and maraschino cherry juice. I adapted the recipe to green watermelon, lemon juice, cinnamon and cloves, rapadura, whey and sea salt. We tasted them yesterday, and they were good.

Blackberries

2010-06-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Here are the blackberries I picked yesterday evening (about 30 minutes worth of picking--there are just so many this year!) with a couple jars of preserves. Today we are attempting blackberry ice cream. We have the eggs and cream for it already.

2010-06-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

We butchered a bunch of roosters on Monday. However, Steve is still with us, after being exiled for awhile in the hospital pen while his comb and wing healed (he was attacked by something a while ago--probably a raccoon).

Here he is pictured as he is transfered to the Salatin-style coop full of 20 young Barred Rock pullets. He was happy for the change, to say the least.

He is such a handsome little rooster. His comb is huge and has a very interesting shape. I really love the Silver Spangled Hamburgs, they are just good chickens. All of Steve's babies have also proven to be very clever and vigorous.

Milk!

2010-06-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

Isla is finally weaned, and 5 1/2 months of age. This is seriously long-termed nursed for baby cows. We had wanted to wean her earlier, only Ethan was out of town every week for a month and she just jumped out of the fences we had up. We finally put up top boards and barbed wire to keep her in. She's a huge calf. This is the look calves give you when they're finally weaned.

So now we have milk again! We've gone without milk for about two months. It's been hard. We actually had to buy milk, despite having a milk cow and milk goat who are both lactating. All my cultures were starving.

Between yesterday and the day before we got four gallons of rich, creamy milk--not the watery stuff Honey was giving before (they know to save the cream for the baby). The cream is in the hind milk, and as you milk it into the pail it has a rich yellowness to it. I think I will make some butter, once we are done guzzling quarts of milk to make up for not having any. I have some Fil Mjolk culturing in a cool place, and kefir on the counter. I will try some yogurt today, if I have time. How beautiful milk is!

Berrying time

2010-06-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

Our blackberries are ripe! We've spent most of our free time this week picking and picking. We've gotten two and a half gallons so far. There's jam cooking down on our stove and I'm thinking of trying a blackberry chutney ferment or something. And blackberry mead, of course.

The children and I thought of a nice picking rhyme:

Knick knack, berry black

sharp and curving thorn,

Let us pick and let us pass

And let not our clothes be torn.

How our garden grows

2010-06-05T06:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of the garden. I didn't include our bean pole failure, however. It looks weedy, but that's because we're trying a natural farming method where you just ignore the weeds. This is where the melons and cucumbers are growing, propped off the ground by old pallets.

Here is a little homegrown bouquet with the day's harvest. We have cucumbers, Roma beans and squash. Luckily it is a here and there harvest still, just meeting our daily needs with a little leftover for pickling.

Here was from yesterday--rabbit food, baby corn, squash and cucumbers--and a citron. The citrons are taking over the garden. We didn't even plant them, they just showed up. I'm thinking of making some lacto-fermented watermelon rind-style pickles.

These are the Tlacolula pink tomatoes--not pink yet, obviously. The tomatoes are all big and green, and we are just waiting for them to start to ripen.

A red amaranth. I planted it near the cucumbers to give them something to grow on.

The flowers I planted actually grew and bloomed this year! I am so please to see how pretty they make the garden.

Here are Picotee cosmos. I grew them in the winter garden and loved how pretty they are.

This is a "Memories of Mona" cosmos. I really love this color.

Our corn is so tall this year!!!! We are so amazed/ surprised. The tallest sweet corn I've ever grown in Florida was only two feet high, with little ears only an inch long with maybe 2 or 3 kernels per ear. We planted this corn in a spot where the goat shelter used to be. All winter long they sat in their shelter, eating hay and pooping.

Our first summer harvest 2010

2010-05-25T09:58:00.001-07:00

Today we got milky oats for milky oat tincture, 2 Ronde de Nice squashes, a peach, tomatillos, a Benning's Green Tint squash, a green tomato that I accidentally picked early, a cucumber--presumably one of the Parisian Pickling cucumbers, and an assortment of lovely beans: green Romas, curly green Sultan's Crescents, Tanya's Pink Pod, Royalty Purple Pod, Beurre de Rocquencourt, Yellow Pencil Pod, and Dragon's Tongue--yellow striped with purple. They are so beautiful. I love my garden. Where else can you get that variety?

The garden is better than ever this year. Our corn is actually higher than 2 ft, which is the highest corn I'd ever grown in Florida until now. The squash, unfortunately, was planted in some new ground that isn't very fertile yet, so it's on the edge of death at any given moment. I don't mind--we had a good squash year last year, and despite that we already have 2 round zucchini.

This year looks to be a good tomato year (I'm crossing my fingers). The whole tomato/eggplant/pepper thing just seemed to work out this year. I started them earlier, bought organic starting soil and had a gro-light. They are loaded with green tomatoes of all shapes, and we are just dying for them to start turning color.

We caught a wild rabbit!

2010-05-25T09:40:00.001-07:00

For a couple weeks now we've been seeing a baby rabbit in the garden. One of us would startle it and it would dash and hide in the tall oats, rye and barley cover crop. Yesterday it ran straight towards Ethan and he caught it with his bare hands! So THIS rabbit isn't in the garden anymore, at least. It was so cute. I've never seen a wild baby rabbit this up close before.

New babies!!!

2010-05-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

The babies are here! This one we called Chocolate. She looks like a little Ellie. We are so proud that Ellie had twins this time. We've been feeding her kelp and dolomite and good minerals, along with all the forage she's getting--and it made a difference! She'd only ever had one kid before.

Ethan wanted to show off that the babies were girls. We are very happy to have two more future milkers!

We let Ellie eat her afterbirth so she can get back the good things in it.

Here are the babies getting their colostrum. It is very important that they get colostrum as soon as possible after birth.

Here is how we found them--Chocolate had just been born and was still all wet.

Here is little Chocolate again. She is the friendliest.

Farm kids and ruminations on herd life

2010-03-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

I so love that my children get to spend time out with the goats and the animals and the outdoors. I hope that it will give them a deeper understanding and appreciation of the world and of life.

There is something about sitting out with the sheep, goats and cows that makes me feel more human. I love sitting by them watching them eat and forage or chew cud. They come and nibble on me, smell me. I'm their leader, I lead them to plants they like and hold high branches down for them to browse. They belong to me, but I also feel a sense of belonging to them. They are my source of food, of life, of survival. I have never felt so safe, so welcome, or so communal as I have in the middle of my herd. I watch them and see their interactions, their personalities, and how they are reassured by my presence. They bleat and call after me when I go. They accept me in a way that I have never felt around other humans. At the same time, I can tell what is different about me, what sets me apart, and makes me feel glad to be a human.

Spring and and Easter spread

2010-03-29T19:00:00.001-07:00

Some of the winter garden survived. We still have lettuce, collards, carrots and parsnips. I also have been collecting wild sheep's sorrel. I've been reading Masanuoba Fukuoka (whew, I hope I spelled that right) and was inspired by his writings about the seven herbs of spring and the seven herbs of autumn. I think that if I could pick seven herbs of spring for North Florida, I think I would pick sorrel, wild garlic, cleavers, chickweed, smilax, wild mustard and betony, except that leaves out lyre leaf sage, poke, violets, wild lettuce, oxalis and spiderwort.

I gathered these greens for our dinner one night, and it struck me as being Eastery in the old sense--the eggs and rabbit food sort of way.

The blueberries are blooming! At least the earliest varieties. We have several different varieties which bloom and fruit at different times.

Bees!

2010-03-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we attended a beekeeping workshop with the Urban Homesteading project. Neil Lorenzini taught the class, right next to his beehive, which is located in a nice old Gainesville neighborhood. They whole time the bees were just calmly going about their business, ignoring us. We built a top-bar hive, which looks like a wooden cradle with thin pieces of wood as frames. Popsicle sticks are glued in a groove on each frame to help guide the bees, who draw their own comb. This helps with diseases because the bees draw smaller size comb.

This weekend we got our bees, and they are happily buzzing about, visiting the blossoming cherry and plum trees. Something about having bees makes me feel settled down out there somehow.

http://anarchyapiaries.org/

Isla

2010-03-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

Isla has really grown up. Here is a photo of her nursing beside Honey.

Isn't she a HUGE baby? I couldn't believe how big she is. I hope she becomes more friendly before we have to milk her.

The Summer Garden 2010

2010-03-29T18:42:00.001-07:00

Ages ago, back in January, I started my eggplants, tomatoes and peppers. This year I didn't try mixing my own potting soil and I had a heat lamp and a cold frame and the seedlings actually survived and grew!

This past weekend we planted our summer garden. I saw among the starts that survived and were planted:

Dr. Wyche's yellow tomatoes, Roman candle tomatoes, Amish paste tomatoes, cherokee purple tomatoes, Tlacolula pink tomatoes, yellow pears, Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes, German Strawberry tomatoes, Matt's wild cherries, black cherry tomatoes, white wonder tomatoes, snowberry cherry tomatoes, purple calabash tomatoes, fish peppers, ancho peppers, sweet yellow stuffing peppers, chocolate peppers, fehrozen paprika peppers, Ashe county pimento peppers, louisiana long green eggplants, Listada di gandia eggplant, and Rosa bianca eggplants.

I am so hoping our melons do better this year. I am particularly looking forward to the Delice de la table, the early silverline, prescott fond blanc and the Charantais melons. We are experimenting with 3 different ways of growing and trellising the cucumbers and melons this year. It really is a relief not to be gardening for other people this summer because I don't feel so pressured to succeed. Whatever we grow we'll eat, and hopefully there will be lots and lots!

Our dog Belle

2010-03-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

After we sold Java (the donkey who wasn't very happy with us. We didn't have time to pay her enough attention and the treats were not forthcoming enough. We had expectations of her being a guard animal, not a pet, but luckily she was bought by someone who LOVES donkeys, and I'm sure she will be infinitely happier there) we had no one to guard the goats, but as chance would have it our mail-lady raises goats and Great Pyrenees dogs.

So we went to her farm and picked out a puppy, who was named Princess (Rosie still insists that we call her this) but we renamed her Belle, after Belle and Sebastian.

When we first had her in with the other animals there were mixed reactions. Honey wanted to kill her and the goats got together in a little clique and flapped their lips at her. Nougat and Ellie were even doing head slides. They didn't approve at all. The sheep warmed up to her first, probably because she looks like a sheep (big, white and fuzzy). Everyone has mostly gotten used to her, except Honey, who stares at her disapprovingly as she chews her cud and Ellie, who picks on her.

Soon after Isla was born she and Belle became fast friends. They are always charging around after each other. It is so funny to watch because Belle is playing like a dog and Isla is playing like a calf and they are not quite sure what the other one is doing. We just hope that Isla stops trying to mount Belle when she gets bigger, since she is already larger than the dog (that's how calves play). They also lick and groom each other when Honey is being milked. Honey would NOT approve. When Honey is away and Isla is lying down chewing her cud Belle stands over her like she is protecting her. It's very sweet.

I'm not a dog person but I love Belle. She is polite and doesn't jump up on people and she is a great guard dog. Even the tiniest little sparrows aren't allowed to land in her paddock, and if a crow or large bird flies over she runs after it barking her head off.

The Calf is born!

2010-02-05T10:19:00.000-08:00

Honey had her baby!!

It's already been about 3 weeks since the baby was born. We were glad Honey waited until the weather warmed up a bit. It was a little girl calf. She was about the size of Nougat when she was first born--a huge baby. Honey did fine, though, and knew exactly what to do.

The calf is light brown with a few white spots. She is fuzzy and soft with funny licks of hair. She has a little white splotch on her side that looks like the letter "I" so we called her Isla (pronounced eye-la), a name meaning island or stream of water, since she is a Jersey cow. She is very, very playful but shy of us. She's been playing with Belle, our new Great Pyrenees dog, who we have yet to photograph and do a post on.

Honey was kind of a pain at first, but now she has settled into the routine of milking and punctually moos at me from the gate when she knows it's time for her evening milking/treat.

We've been milking twice a day and getting about 2 gallons a day. We've got our kefir grains working on a half-gallon right now, and my Fil Mjolk (Swedish buttermilk) culture is doing great. We also made clabber, which is where you just let the raw milk sit out in a warm place (above the stove) and it sours naturally with it's own good bacteria and enzymes. Most people who drank milk a hundred years or so ago in this country drank clabber. It was only recently that we drink sweet (unfermented) milk. The reason the baking powder brand is "Clabber Girl" is because people used to quick-leavened breads by using clabber or sour milk and baking soda.

The clabber turned out to taste somewhere between the kefir and buttermilk. It was very good. My children drank the whole quart in one day. When you let it clabber when it is fresh and at a warm temperature it gets nice and sour. Older milk will taste bitter.

The beauty of anatomy: A home pig processing

2010-01-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

If you are squeamish or sensitive or strongly vegan or vegetarian, then this will not be a good post to read, as it celebrates the beauty of various fresh organs and tissues and the wonderful food value of pigs.

Processing animals takes skill and is hard work. I wanted to share this, not to freak out malnourished-hysterical-vegan-animal-rights people, but rather as an appreciation for the good food on our plate and for everyone who has forgotten this very basic human skill.

Contrary to what I had always thought before, processing animals is not tragic, disgusting or horrible. At least it doesn't have to be. Our pigs live happy outdoor lives with plenty of grass, fresh air, space and sunshine. Processing days, in my mind, are heavy with the sweet, smoky smell of the fire. There is an unusual sense of community and purpose. Something very deeply human comes forth. Here is the story:

(This day that I recorded we managed to do two pigs in a day with three people, which we were quite proud of. )

First we prepare a fire and fill our scalding tub with water and pine needles (our scalding tub is an old 1929 cast iron bathtub salvaged from one of the old chert "Tom Petty houses" in Gainesville that were demolished by Ethan's friend's brother earlier this year). The pine needles are traditional and help to loosen the hair. When the scald water is hot enough, we kill the animal with a .22. Usually this is very quick and the animal does not suffer. We give them a bucket of feed and a few moments later the animal is down. The other pigs never care at all and seem to be glad there is more food left for them (this here is the most unsettling part of the whole thing).

Then we drag the carcass over to the scalding tub and cut slits in the tendons on the backs of the legs. These tendons are very strong and will not break. Hooks are fitted into the slits and with the help of a block and tackle we hoist the animal up.

We cut the jugular vein and collect the blood in a bowl to be mixed with marjoram, pepper, garlic, salt and cracked barley. You can put a little vinegar in to keep it from coagulating. We set it aside for making blood sausage (blutwurst) and blood cake.

Then we dip the carcass in the scald tub to loosen the hair. We know we got a good scald when the hair is easy to pull out. Then we hoist the carcass up again and tie it off securely. With large, sharp knives we scrape the hair and first layer of skin off. It is sort of like shaving. This is the most tedious and time-consuming part, reminding me that traditional people had good attention spans. In a processing facility pig carcasses are skinned. We don't skin them because we want to salvage as much of the good delicious fat as possible. If you don't get all the hair off you will have hairy bacon.

I always think of the "Ballybay" song: "Children on the stairs, and children in the bier/ and another ten or twelve over sittin' by the fire/ she fed them on potatoes and a soup she made with nettles/ and lots of hairy bacon that she boiled in the kettle..."

Once the scraping is all done, it's time for the tricky part. We sharpen our knives well and I make a very careful incision along the belly and, as our book Home Processing of Livestock and Game (our copy is blood stained) says, "Cut deeply around the bung and tie it off." This is difficult, because if you cut too deeply or at the wrong angle it will cut open the intestines. It is always best if the intestines stay intact until later.

The first thing I see when I make the cut is the beautiful crystal-white bloom of the subcutaneous fat. Underneath there is a layering of muscle--the abdominal muscles I suppose, and more fat beyond this to cushion the organs. When you get to the abdominal cavity a fluid runs out. The beautiful veined blue ruffles of the intestines start to bulge out.

Now I begin dissecting the tissue from around the pelvis. With the male pigs you really have to watch out for the urethra, because if it is nicked it will leak stinky urine everywhere, which will have a poor effect on the pork.
Using a saw I cut through the pelvis. This is always the most anxious part. I am never sure if I am cutting quite right, but it always works out and the bones spring apart and I pull the end of the colon and the tied-off bung through the pelvis. Then I gently cut around the spine, breaking all the little ropes of connective tissue as I go, and keeping an eye out for the plump and delicate kidneys hiding in their glorious igloos of fat. Here are the kidneys with the fat removed:

The organs begin to all come out in a great mass, their beauty revealed: The delicate curves and pinkish ruffles of the small intestines attached by scalloping tissue in a tentacled mass, the large blue-green bulging colon...

The smooth and slippery brown-lobed liver on my right with the green aqueous mass of the gallbladder riding like a glassy spot on one flat lobe;

On my left there is the spleen, a hidden purple-mottled sea creature, like some long, flat primitive aquatic life form, lying in wait between the smooth white bulge of the deep purple-veined stomach and the intestines. Attached along the bottom length of the spleen is a clear expanse of tissue, all white-webbed, and when it is held up and stretched out it glistens in the sunlight like a fine and gossamer spiderweb of lace. The most beautiful part, I think.

Now I encounter the diaphragm, which guards the chest cavity. Cutting carefully I detach it from the ribs. Just when I think I've finished with it there will be another piece holding everything back. Digging deep into the chest cavity I cut away the esophagus and bring forth the treasure of the heart, wrapped carefully in the membranous pericardium, attached inseparably to the red-marbled lungs. The lungs are the same color as the surface of Mars and have an unearthly lightness to them. It is like lifting a porous volcanic rock: The expected weight makes you try harder than you need to.

At last the organs all fall away from the empty carcass, and I pick out the ones to wash and save. You can eat the whole pig, really, but my family only prefers the heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, and a few intestines for blood sausage. We could eat the chitlins and stomach if we wanted to. We also save the lungs, but only for the cat. If anyone knows a good recipe for the lungs, please share it.

Now there remains removing the head and front trotters. The head has lots of good stuff--brains, ears, jowls, cheeks, snout and tongue. Headcheese is a good use for the head, in which the entire head is washed and boiled for a long time. Little pieces of meat are scraped off and minced, and the broth becomes a gelatious aspic. Likewise Brawn can be made, which is very similar, except that the trotters are included.

At last the carcass is washed down and ready to be taken to the butcher. I stay behind and cut sections of small intestine, which I wash thoroughly, turn inside out with a spoon and soak in vinegar before stuffing with the blood and barley mixture for blood sausage. At home we boil the sausage and bake it in the oven. The skin turns crusty and black. It is a very rich and delicious dish.
After all the work and clean up were done and the organs were washed and bagged and put on ice, we sat down to a delicious meal of pig's heart and slices of the diaphragm grilled with Vindaloo seasoning and sea salt. In the frying pan is leaf lard, cracklings, corn fry bread and sliced cheeks and jowls. We also had radish pickles, eggs baked in clay and a Seminole pumpkin. Yum!

The very best part about the processing is the amazing amount of really nourishing and delicious food that we have afterwards. Our house smells beautifully from the lard cooking down and stock simmering on the stove. We can look forward to fried kidneys, dried salted pig's liver, liver pate, blood sausage, blood cake, rolled spleen cooked in broth, stuffed trotters, and pea soup with pig's ears, as well as real risen lard-fried doughnuts and other lovely things cooked in lard, bacon and sausage. Here is a photo of cavity fat to be cooked down into leaf lard. Leaf lard is more saturated than regular lard and is preferred for tender, flaky pastry.

I hope that I have done well to express the awe and reverence that processing pigs has given me for the cycles of life and death and the beauty and mystery of the organs. It means so much to me to have had the experience of holding a fresh liver, or to see delicate layers of connective tissue or to feel the slippery fluid around the hyaline cartilage of the joints. I feel a deeper connection and understanding of my own physical body.
To end, I must express our appreciation for our pigs, whose sacrifice has given us so much to be thankful for.

Cabbages and a Turkey Egg

2010-01-06T07:00:00.001-08:00

We harvested our first savoy cabbage the other day, the same day that we found the first turkey egg from Shahrazad (this is the name we've decided on for our female turkey, Sulaymon the Magnificent's mate). It is a very large, creamy colored egg with light brown speckles. They say that the first year turkey hens rarely hatch their own eggs, but we are going to let her give it a try. She made a sweet little nest out of grass (not pictured).

Welcome Honey-Cow

2010-01-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

A week ago we got our first cow! She is a Jersey named Honey and is due to calve today. We are hoping she can hang on until the weather is not so chilly. She is very sweet, although the first time I touched her udder she kicked me. She will be 7 years old this year. She was a rescued Jersey from a dairy and has been milked before. We are so happy and thankful that she has come live at our farm.
"We have a cow!" we keep telling each other, not quite believing it. The family we bought her from is moving, and was very sad not to be able to take her with them. She was in with goats at her old home, so has been calmly ignoring our goats, who are just a little bit freaked out at the shock of being around a cow for the first time. It's only a matter of time, though before they are crowding around her.

As our friend Miles put it, Fox Grape Farm is soon to be a place of "milk and Honey."
We are a little nervous about milking a cow for the first time, but are looking forward to the milk, yogurt, cream, butter, clabber, buttermilk, cheese, kefir and whey. Oh, yes, and also the manure!

Turnips

2009-11-29T14:16:00.000-08:00

No, these are not more radishes! At last the Purple Globe turnips are ready, along with the Seven Top Southern Prize leaf turnips. I hope all the good fertile compost and much love has made them nice and sweet. Say what you will, but I like the taste of turnips. They are not starchy like potatoes, but I like the mellow brassica flavor. These will be boiled with butter and salt for dinner. The greens will be boiled with bacon and a splash of vinegar to serve. These are the first, but there are more to follow. Mmmm....I can taste the saurruben already.

Aren't we sick of radishes yet?

2009-11-29T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here is a new batch of radish pickles to be put up. It is so easy and they are so tasty I wanted to share the process.

First we harvest and clean the radishes. I throw the tops to the pigs because they love them so much and I am not really fond of radish greens. Then we trim the top and bottom and slice them in pretty shapes. Rosie likes to help me out with washing them.

Here are some radish rose pickles I'm trying. Salt is supposed to open them up, so I figure they will bloom in the salty brine. Or they'll stay closed and just be really tasty.

Next I wash the jars and add any seasonings: garlic, ginger, mustard, pepper, dill, etc. Then I pack in the radishes and add a tablespoon of fine sea salt on top. I've been liking to add a round slice of onion on the top, to keep the radishes in the brine, prevent molds while they are fermenting and for flavor.

Then I pour over well water to almost the top of the jar. Leave an inch or so for air space. Then I leave them in a warm place--on top of my stove in the cold weather. In warmer weather I leave them on the counter. They start bubbling and eventually become nice and sour--takes 3 days to more than a week, depending on if it is warm or cold.

Our Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

First we must say how thankful we are for having the opportunity to grow food for ourselves, our family and our friends.

We are also very thankful for our Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys, who are continuing to feed us and are very delicious (don't worry, we still have Sulaymon. And he has a girlfriend now--names anyone?).

We are sorry the turkeys were so enormous this year that they were just not affordable. We had no idea they would be so big. I thought their feathers would account for more of their size. They were about 4olbs live weight, and pretty difficult to handle. I could hardly move the carcasses around to clean them. The one my inlaws roasted was 26lbs dressed out. They didn't even fit in our turkey cone and our beloved featherman plucker was no match for the monsters. We mostly hand plucked them, which was suprisingly not a pain. Turkeys must have less feathers than chickens.

Our plan for next year is to get a few different kinds of turkeys to give some different weights. We would like people to preorder, and mark if they'd like a small turkey, medium turkey or gianormous turkey. It was the best turkey we've ever eaten, very tender and moist despite the size.
This pumpkin pictured is one of our Forbes Family Favorite squashes, left to grow into a pumpkin. It was the pumpkin pie this thanksgiving. It was a very tasty squash, not unlike white sweet potato in that it was very sweet and sort of mealy. It wasn't stringy at all. It made a lovely smooth pumpkin pie. I saved the seeds, of course, to be planted next summer.

A little tour of the winter garden

2009-11-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

The winter garden is really taking off with the cool weather. The peas have pods, although none have made it home so far, they are so tasty and easy to just snip off and eat. The golden peas are just starting to produce and are very lovely. The beets, too, are looking more and more cheerful.

Winter gardens are all roots and greens it seems. In the above photo you can see the Harris Model Parsnips and the Egyptian Walking Onions, planted with cilantro and parsley, the carrot beds and some of the arugula to the left, past the pea trellis. I must say I wasn't counting on the arugula to be quite so large. And we have already been eating salads from it as much as we can. The trick with arugula salad is goat cheese, walnuts and a simple balsamic dressing.

Here is the Japanese Giant Red Mustard. It is almost as colorful as the cosmos. We had some in stir fry already. It went very well with the Extra Dwarf Pak Choy.

Here the cabbage is starting to make heads. This is the savoy cabbage:

The lettuce was slow to start, but is looking very nice now. I think it was just too warm this fall until now. This lettuce below is from a mixture of lettuce, but we are also growing Yugoslavian Butterhead, which I like a lot.

The fruits of labor

2009-11-11T13:16:00.001-08:00

This is what we took home the other day--a big pumpkin, lush bowlfuls of lettuce, arugula and Extra Dwarf Pak Choy (my favorite--the bowl above the pumpkin), eggs and a rainbow of radishes. I'm making a big batch of pickles this afternoon.
A humble harvest compared to more established farms, but I love the feeling of getting food from the land, and it is a vision of abundance that gets me up in the morning to work another day.

Ducklings

2009-11-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas ducks have arrived! They are so cute. I've never raised ducks before. We do have four Muscovy ducks, but they came with a mama who did all the work for us. Lifting them out of the box I was surprised at how woolly and light they are. They have such funny little bills and feet. They don't just peck at the food, they gobble it and then pump their little necks up and down to swallow.

Their mannerisms are hilarious. We've been watching them for the entertainment factor (it beats TV). When we first got them they kept tripping over their feet and waddling funny and falling over on their backs and wiggling their feet in the air.

It is interesting to see the difference in mannerisms in poultry: Baby chickens have a busy way of cluster together peeping and scratching and the turkeys are solemn and polite, but the ducks are like little Charlie Chaplins with webbed feet.

They are very messy and are always dabbling in the waterer. The water runs down their big bills and wets the down around their necks so they look like a cross between a duck and a turken.

Radishes

2009-11-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

Radishes! Our second harvest. I love the variety. From left to right they are Munchener Bier, Black Spanish, Misato Rose, one little Cherry Belle, Plum Purple, Jaune D'or Ovale, and a daikon.

I plan to pickle them this afternoon. The last pickles were great they are almost all gone already.

It was an easy recipe--a sliced onion, sliced radishes, 1 tablespoon of seasalt and water.

The Winter garden 2009

2009-10-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Donkey doo. I love it. It is the basis of all things green and lovely in our garden. Donkeys set out special place to poop, so there are nice manure piles in every paddock. It makes it easy to pick up and compost.

Here you can see the garden is finally doing something. The trellises have five different kinds of peas planted--golden peas, sutton's harbinger, green arrow, purple podded and little marvel, though they are still small. They are waiting for the cool weather to take off. The mass of green on the far right are carrot beds over planted with radishes. The miserable-looking plants in the foreground are the beets. They have not thrived. I was very please to go to another farm and see their beets suffering as well. I think beets don't really like Florida. I even limed them like you are supposed to when I planted the seeds. The beds to the far far left are newly seeded. Over all we have radishes, parsnips, beets, carrots, turnips, collards, kale, bok choy, pak choy, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, spinach, swiss chard, daikons, onions, elephant garlic and peas planted. A very nice garden I am starting to be proud of.

Here are some radish pickles I made the other day. The one on the left is sliced radish roots in a brine with onion. They are plum purple radishes, cherry belle, french breakfast, munchen beir and mitsatastu rose radishes. The greenish one on the right is a salted mixture of chopped radish leaves and grated daikon. Yum! I was so excited about winter pickles!

Prickly Pear Season

2009-10-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Our easiest crop! The cactus is finally doing something nice, as you can see, although even the fruits are rather unfriendly. You have to carefully peel or scrape all the little spines off the outside before they are edible, or risk having tiny spines stuck in the back of your throat--no fun.

The scary thing about the cactus out at the farm is that we could see it on google earth. Yes, it really is so bad that it is visible from space.

Rose is already an expert at de-spining prickly pears.

Pumpkin patch

2009-10-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

It's just past Halloween and here's the rogue pumpkin patch in the old pig pen. This squash is one that spontaneously grew from the seeds of one we had tossed to the pigs. It is some weird hybrid of the many squashes we grew this past summer. From looking at the fruits I'm thinking it is a Ronde de Nice crossed with a Thelma Sander's Sweet Potato pumpkin.

Who knows, it could be a Seminole pumpkin/Cocozelle Italian zucchini cross. Anyway, the fruit are apple green with light streaks and have a graceful ribbed and slightly pointed shape. Very lovely and striking fruit. The leaves have silver splashes. The taste is also superb, very sweet when raw and fine-textured almost buttery when cooked. We've been really enjoying them, but I am now trying to keep some to save the seeds.

I am going to try to plant them next summer and de-hybridize them by roguing the off-type plants. After generations they can be open pollinated again, and with luck we could create our own plant breed. The Forbes Family Favorite squash perhaps???

It's nearly Thanksgiving...

2009-10-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

And the turkeys are getting big. We discoverd one female, at least, so we will keep her and Sulaymon of course. They are such funny creatures. their heads are so wierd and wrinkly and their snoods grow and shrink according to mood. Also we've noticed that their heads change color. If they are resting their heads are white. If they get excited they blush to red. When they are flirting and dancing and raking their wings gallently they turn various shades of blue with the most beautiful periwinkle purple around the eyes.

I have to agree with Ben Franklin--the turkey would have been a much nicer national bird. They are red, white and blue, after all:

"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

"With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country . . .

"I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

They remind me of a dignified bunch of old-fashioned and stuffy men with sparse long beards and high collars. They have a clumsy dignity about them. They are also very funny. Whenever there is a loud noise they all gobble in unison.

The golden path to the chickens

2009-09-23T17:02:00.001-07:00

Here are some photos I wanted to share of the beautiful crotalaria growing up beside the path to the old "Chickshaw" coop with the baby chicks in it. I hadn't been this way for a little while because all the animals are on the other side of the garden.

Walking between the sweet-smelling yellow plumes of flowers is like walking through a living veil. Other lovely little flowers like daisy fleabane (Erigeron strigosa, if I've spelled it correctly) and goldenrod and false foxglove are tucked away preciously in the perfect places as though they were planted with thought to their different colors.

A word on crotalaria: It is supposed to be a deadly poisonous plant (one of Ethan's ex-coworkers was afraid to walk through a field of it in case the toxins "seeped into his skin"). Ethan's grandfather, who was a soil scientist, said it was planted as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop. It isn't native, but there are so many insects that are attracted to it, it must have naturalized.
We haven't really seen the poisonous side of it yet. The sheep and goats are eating a lot of it and they seem fine. I've noticed they intentionally graze on it even though they are out free-ranging on 40 acres with other tasty grasses and legumes available, but they just like it for some reason. I've decided to trust their tastes. I was really worried when they were eating black cherry leaves, but it's still their favorite plant and they have survived a whole year so far (they even eat the dried brown leaves off the ground).

Beautiful Autumn

2009-09-22T17:34:00.001-07:00

It is so beautiful out at the farm right now. The goldenrod and crotalaria are like a golden haze in the fields between the trees. The lovely black cherry trees are changing to fall colors and look like graceful aspens. The photos don't do it justice. They have missed the vibrancy of the yellows and the bright, clear blue of the sky. And the air has a beautiful dry aromatic quality and everywhere it smells sweetly from the flowers. I have been so enjoying the days working out here.

Surrounded on all sides by oaks it reminds me of some secret realm of faery. If anyone would like to come hang out with us sometime to enjoy the autumn wilderness, we are there most days except Mondays. Drop us a line, we'd love to have some company, only you must wear long pants and good shoes because it is very spiny.

The Sheep

2009-09-20T17:41:00.001-07:00

We've had the sheep for a while now, but I wanted to post some photos of them because when I tell people we have hair sheep they are mystified. When Ethan suggested we get hair sheep rather than wool sheep (before I knew better) I imagined a very ugly animal. This is not the case--they are very lovely. They are perhaps a little stupid, but very docile and easy to handle (underfoot most of the time). They like it when I scratch their backs. The nice thing is that they need no shearing or tail docking. They are still lambs but will be ready to breed next March.

baby chicks out

2009-09-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

The baby chicks are out! They are in the old chickshaw coop. They are cowering in the corner because they are so terrified of the camera. They seem very happy to be in such a large place now.

Donkey

2009-09-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

Here's our new donkey, named Java, but for some reason I always want to call her Mocha. She's Karen and Ed Sherwood's old donkey. Apparently she liked to nurse on the milk cows so they had to sell her, which was just when we were looking for a donkey.

I realized we needed a guard animal one day when we got out there and there were three dogs and a goat running about on the driveway in. The guy who owned them came and got them saying, "The goat's the best dog of all of them." He also mentioned it was the only goat he had left after the coyotes ate all the others.

This was the second time a neighbor has told me about coyotes eating all their goats. There was even an old coyote burrow on the property. After what we went through with the chickens I just couldn't bear the thought of getting out there with my children and finding Ellie or Nougat devoured by a pack of coyotes. So we HAD to get a guard animal.

After looking around online I noticed donkeys were cheaper than Pyrenees dogs, and Karen just happened to be selling Java, so it all worked out.

We are very pleased with all the manure, which she makes little piles of and it is easy to collect and compost. She is very docile and loves the children. The other day she followed Mirin all over the place because he had a handful of alfalfa. We are wondering if we can train her and use her for draft. It would be nice to have a donkey to lug the feed out to the chickens.

It took her awhile to warm up to the goats. Today is the first day she is out with them. Before she has always tried to kick or bite them. Hopefully they are all there tommorrow.

New Chickies

2009-09-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

This is little late in coming--but we were swamped a month ago when they were hatching out.

Our own little chickens have hatched. They are all mixed-up mutt chickens, and are very pretty as a result. We figure the white-ish ones are the Auracauna rooster's babies and the black-ish ones are Steve McQueen's. Most are black, so obviously the Auracauna rooster can barely get a sperm in edgewise, but he still managed a few. There are two very lovely silvery ones that look like a Barred Rock/Silver Spangled Hamberg cross. One of the silvery ones looked like a little bald eagle when it was newly hatched.

We got to watch them hatch. Right before the eggs hatched we could hear the babies peeping. A few of the eggs started to hatch but didn't make it out for some reason. We have 14 new babies now. They are already fairly grown up and look like little birds rather than fluffy little chicks.

They are terrified of the camera, if you can't tell from the way they are fleeing to the edges of their little chicken tractor coop. Maybe it's Steve's genes, but this batch of chicks seems unusually flighty. They are terrified of everything for about 10 seconds--including their food, until they realize it isn't going to eat THEM.

So now we know what "clean" means

2009-09-13T08:58:00.001-07:00

Not that we didn't before--but here's what happened:

We went to look at a Jersey cow. It was unreasonably cheap, but when we got there we saw why. The poor cow was in a dusty lot being fed some poor-looking hay and "total mixed ration." She was very thin and bony and had pus oozing from the back quarter of her udder from mastitis. I felt so sorry for her--particularly about the mastitis (I've had it before myself). She needed to be wormed and milked and fed properly, but the guy told us "It's just too much trouble for a glass of milk. I'd rather just go down to the corner store."

The people who were selling her also wanted to show off their pigs to us once we had told them we had pigs as well. So we followed them to our house to look at their pigs. In the front of their house they had an incinerator going that was burning what smelled like plastic, and probably worse. Behind that was a small, squalid and dirty pen holding an enormous hog--nearly as long as our car. A smaller mother hog was there too, as well as some medium-sized pigs about as large as our pigs are now who had gashes on them from the big boar (named "Fat boy") and running about underfoot were some weak and dirty little piglets which had the same painful look on their pitiful little faces that you see in photographs of suffering children from the third world. You are never supposed to have all those pigs in together--the little ones can be crushed and don't get enough to eat. The man was obviously very proud of these pigs.

I came away from that place feeling contaminated and totally creeped out. Looking around our farm I have a new appreciation for it. I realize at last that my perfectionist judgmentalism is uncalled for.

Not that our farm is really dirty anywhere, but there are half-finished projects laying around, black bags of leaves we scavenged for mulch, some broken toys from the children. I am constantly and vigilantly picking up little bits of trash we track in--such as kombucha bottle tops, string from feed bags, pieces of wire and rope, etc. I had pangs of guilt when we had to wait for a weekend to move our pigs to a new pasture because it was getting muddy around their waterer, or when the baby chickies needed to be moved out, but again we had to wait for a weekend when Ethan could help. Even having the chickens in one spot for a week seemed like it was asking too much of the grass and the birds. There is always the doubt, "Are we really doing this the best way or the right way?"
But it seems so petty now, having seen the squallor that is possible. I have renewed pride and pleasure in the beauty of our farm and the health of our animals.

The Chicken Dilemma

2009-09-05T14:02:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately I don't have any photos today, but I wanted to at least post an update.

We have been hard at work with some big changes and laying the foundations for autumn plans.

Our egg chickens were attacked over a couple weeks by hawks which dined very well those weeks and knocked out all but 16 chickens. Our dear chicken Henny Penny, the oldest and favorite chicken, was the first to be eaten. We tried the plastic owl, visual diversions, moving the coop, brush shelters. The poor chickens would be found dead underneath the coop, or under brush. Obviously nothing was working. Finally I switched our turkeys, who were getting a little large for their broiler coop anyway, to our old "Hell-on-Little-Wheels" coop and moved the poor chickens to the broiler coop which is very protected and has a solar-electric charger with electrified wires on the outside, just in case the raccoons or coyotes get any ideas.

I was initially against this move at all costs because the chickens are now confined, which means less grazing, less freedom, and I was worried the quality of our eggs would go down and the chickens would be stressed. But now that we have been using this production model rather than the "Chickshaw" coop, I see the many benefits, some of which are a great relief to our sore backs. I think we are going to continue to keep our chickens this way and even build some more.

The benefits are:

1. We only drive out once a day and so save time, money and fuel. We are able to stay out longer because I don't have to run back to town to put the baby down for a nap or start dinner, and as a result have been getting a lot done.

2. No more worrying about the Learning Disabled chickens that couldn't remember how to get in the coop and became raccoon and owl bait.

3. No more struggling with the useless ElectroNet that sags and doesn't work. Seriously, there was a photo in Mother Earth News showing an idyllic little homestead with a moveable chicken coop surrounded by ElectroNet--we counted only 11 chickens inside the fence and 8 running around outside, which is about how well it worked for us, too. At the end there they found they could pile up on a corner to ground it out and just walk over (they all had clipped wings--a big pain).

4. Chickens get moved DAILY rather than weekly. This means they get fresh grass every morning and this helps to spread out their manure better and lets them really work the soil. The old coop could only be moved with great effort or by both of us, but this coop is a breeze to move. I can move it while nursing Rosie in the backpack. As far as diet, I think they are getting more bugs and green grass this way.

5. They were far more stressed out as total wild-free range birds because of the enormous number of hawks here with voracious chicken-eating habits. To daily see one or more of your coop mates messily devoured before your eyes each morning is not the idyllic free-range chicken scene we normally picture. I am less stressed because they are safe, and they seem much more relaxed.

So we are back to moving the strongest-man contest coop over tall grass and cactus with the bizarre poultry menagerie inside (ducks, chicken, turkeys), but at least our chickens are safe.

turkeys

2009-07-19T10:43:00.001-07:00

We have been raising Broad-Breasted Bronze turkeys. Our big tom, Suleymon the Magnificent, is a Standard Bronze turkey. They will mostly be for thanksgiving, but since Suleymon has been sort of a family pet since before the farm we are hoping to keep some females as his companions. He has mostly been hanging out with chickens and now ducks and there is no telling what kinds of bad habits he is learning.

Rainbow eggs

2009-07-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

When we started our laying flock we selected mostly sturdy dual-purpose traditional breeds that lay a beautiful variety of colors. They include Barred Rocks, White Rocks, Americanas, Auracanas, Black Stars (a hybrid) and Cuckoo Marans. Over time some of the less-than-smart chickens have been weeded out—so gone are the Silver Spangled Hambergs and the Buff Orpingtons (some of the dumbest chickens ever in our opinion). Our rooster, a Silver-spangled Hamburg (see photo), is named Steve McQueen. Nobody can catch him.

We collect eggs daily and arrange them in beautiful rainbows. Some days there are only perfectly uniform brown eggs and we are disappointed.

We have just bought an incubator and hope to hatch our own eggs to add to our laying flock. We are excited because this lets us choose the chickens that have proven to thrive and survive in our specific conditions. We are also looking forward to having baby chicks again. They grow up into annoying adolescents too fast!

Sheep and Goats

2009-07-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

We currently have four goats and two sheep. We have two milking goats, Ellie and Nougat, but only Ellie is milking now. They will be bred this fall and spring for next year. Our hair sheep are both young females that we bought this spring. We will breed them next spring to start our herd. They were very wild when we first got them but have become very docile and will do pretty much anything for a handful of oats.

Our goats get oats soaked with raw apple cider vinegar, flax seeds, diatomaceous earth, kelp and Sea-90 free choice. They are taken out to graze every day in a moveable electric fence. They are seldom in one spot for more than 2 days. The first day they eat the grass and the second day they browse the trees.