Gut Flora Revolution

We have begun the GAPS diet this week. Since Mirin was very young he has had mood behavior issues that are directly related to things he eats.  Last fall he had some cake at a friend's wedding, and was miserable for weeks afterwards.  We tried to do this for him when he was very young, but it was impossible not having all of our extended family on board.  Also, back then I was going on just the GAPS book, and there's so much more to it now!

We finally decided it was something we had to try again, and we have everyone on board this time.  That means he can't run next door after refusing a nourishing meal and eat six pieces of toast with jelly like last time.  Really this is something we ALL need.  Ethan and I are of the generation where you got antibiotics for any sort of sniffles--and we were both in daycare and sick constantly with multiple ear infections.  We've both had countless rounds of antibiotics during our life.

(GAPS is a diet that helps to kill off unhealthy bacteria, yeasts and parasites by depriving them of the foods they thrive on, while taking in very nutrient dense foods, digestive enzymes and strong soil-based probiotics.  If you have digestive problems, allergies, immune problems, absorption problems or mental health problems, you should totally look into it!!)

The first day, I had made a delicious and rich pork stew with onion, tomatoes and carrots.  Right after breakfast, everyone's reaction was pretty much the same:

No one was happy, except Ethan, who was at work and didn't hear all the screaming.  Mirin took refuge in Calvin and Hobbes, although there was a little whining about not having chocolate frosted sugar bombs or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I myself felt the same way--horrible.  It was only one meal, but I felt like I would die if I didn't have my customary glass of milk.  The rest of that morning felt otherworldly.  I was not myself.  I didn't realize I couldn't make it through ONE meal without these foods!

After lunch my stomach began to really hurt, and I laid down with Clothilde during her nap, with the same feeling that I might die if I didn't go eat a spoonful of honey or a cracker or something sweet or starchy.  It felt like a collapse of civilization, really uncomfortable and unhappy.  I was amazed at how much it affected my emotions.

After I got up, I felt so much better, but not quite myself.  That night, too, I felt so relaxed going to bed that I thought there must be something wrong with me.  But yesterday I woke up and felt incredibly peaceful, grounded and happy.  Of course my kids were at the point where they felt like they would die if they didn't have the foods they are used to, so there was still lots of screaming, but I was shocked at how calm I felt.  I guess I had always gone through my days with horrible near-panic-attack anxiety, and never realized it before.

This morning I feel even better, although really fundamentally different.  I've spent years trying to get to this place of calm and peacefulness through emotional/spiritual work, and all I needed was a change in diet!

The children are better today, even.  So far so good, it has been so worth all the change.

Nesting

Yesterday morning I heard a strange tapping on the front window.  When I opened the curtains, Penny was standing on the windowsill peeking in.  Later, we discovered her sitting in the egg basket that Ethan left on the front porch.  She looked very comfy.

She made herself a little nest and when she got up, there was a fresh brown egg, already in the egg basket!

Two Gardens

Peek-a-boo!
I do hope this becomes more of a habit.
I thought I might write a little about the gardens--my winter garden, and my dreams for the summer garden--

Thanks to our friend Danny, we found a wonderful source of horse manure.  It's a horse-boarding place, there's tons and tons of it, and they are so happy for us to haul it away.  We also found some huge pieces of cardboard, so garden construction is underway.

Here it is-- the whole side of the garden--15 beds and all, not counting the corn and pumpkins.

This past week I was worrying I may have been over ambitious this year.  But we only have five more beds to build--two more loads of manure to haul away.

Last summer's garden was a smallish garden.  It only took up a quarter of the space, and I built three permaculture beds around the corn patch.  Everything did so well, but I ran out of room.  It changed my gardening philosophy in that I only planted a few plants of each thing and nurtured them along.  It was so shockingly productive that way.  Before I had been planting dozens of plants in hopes I'd get a handful of something out of them, but it was too big and there were too many to really care for them all.

This year I am only planting a few plants of each thing, but I really want to give everything the space it needs.  So that's why the garden is so big this year.

We had such a busy late summer/fall last year, that the winter garden was not really well done.  I actually ended up buying starts this year instead of trying my own starts.  I finally did get some nice kale to grow.

We have potatoes starting to peek out, and some of the carrots did sprout at last.

The onion patch is doing well this year.  I did two different kinds of beds with them, and it turns out the most back-breaking one to build did the very best.  Oh well.

I'm even getting a tiny bit of cabbage.  We also have a revolutionary hoop-house for cold protection.  I'll admit, this is the first year the winter garden didn't just freeze and get eaten by rabbits.  It's been kind of shocking, really.

Now that so many things have gone to seed, there's not too much growing there now, except the borage.  She is certainly queen of the garden at the moment, and I enjoy her beauty every day.  I even made an herb cream cheese spread from the leaves.

Younger Buckthorne is doing quite well.  He was jumping about playfully yesterday.  Firefly is due today, and May tomorrow, so there just might be a new baby goat at some point today.

Spring and a new start perhaps

It's been so long now since I have written here.
It has been on my mind so often to write about such-and-such, but I never seem to be able to find the time these days!  But I have carved out a little today, so here are a few random pictures--

Last year we had a good year.  Nothing has changed extremely.  The garden was so lovely and productive last year with all the rain.  We got a buck for the goats, and the babies are being born now!  The first one was born on Thursday.  I thought it would be Firefly, because she was supposed to be first, but it was Cricket's baby.  It was a little boy--the first boy goat born on our farm.

There was a calf born in February.  We've called him Sampson.

The rye we seeded on some of the pastures and in the garden turned out quite nice.  It has made such a difference for everyone to have some good green stuff during the winter.

Clothilde has grown up quite a lot now. 

This spring our table is decorated with spring flowers and an Ostara tree.  We had lots of fun blowing the eggs and painting them on the Equinox.

This was from warmer days--Clothilde helps to feed the animals!  She loves all of them, and isn't afraid.

This was the buck.  We were reading Washington Irving, as per family tradition in the fall, and called him "Young Buckthorne."  He was, after all, a young man of great expectations.

He was a good buck, got all the girls bred, was friendly and gentle, and towards the end of his stay was not even terribly stinky.  The drawback was that he was very funny looking.  His mama was a La Mancha and his father was a Kinder (Nubian and African Pygmy).  My friend Denise lent him to us for free.  His dad had gotten in with the does and so he was sort of an accident, but we weren't picky at all this year.  She said his mama made the most milk of all the goats, but he did have wattles and weird little Shrek ears.

Spring is in full bloom out at the farm.  It is so beautiful out there these days.

I hope that I will be able to write more this year.  But look what happened last time I shut the office door, leaving Ethan with the children, and tried to order the Freedom Ranger chicks for this year without a certain someone chewing on the electrical cords or ravaging the sewing table, or other certain someones asking innumerable questions:

In case you don't recognize this, it is a $1,000 fine for "Cruelty and Neglect" of my children they tell me!  I thought that was pretty steep for 15 minutes alone.

Pumpkin Time!

The Summer garden has reached the point where things have mostly been harvested and plants are getting the crispy-and-brown-around-the-edges look.  The black cherry trees have begun to show yellow spotted leaves and the pastures are rank with bahia grass gone to seed.

Even in the very hot, humid weather these days I have felt a cool, dry breeze blow by that reminds me that the light is waning and Autumn will be here.

It was time to harvest the pumpkins last week.  We got a Potimarron (little orange one), a Burgess Buttercup (dark green, second from left in top row), a small Strawberry Crown, but mostly we got pumpkins from a volunteer pumpkin vine.  They are some sort of blue pumpkin, and they are very sweet-flavored.  I am wondering if it is a Triamble-Australian Butter Pumpkin cross, or perhaps a Strawberry Crown-Burgess cross?  I planted so many different kinds last year, we will never know.  

The next day, Mirin and Rose came out.  I had saved the largest pumpkins for them to pick, and they ran excitedly through the rows of fading sweet corn to pull them out.

Clothilde also thought the pumpkins were amusing.  She loves to climb. 

I love Cinderella pumpkins (or were these Rouge Vif D'etamps?), and my only Amish Pie pumpkin we got this year.  The vine is still setting more fruit, but I'm afraid the stem borer moths will likely get them before we do.

I can't wait until cooler weather makes baking pies a joy!  We always read Carl Sandburg's The Huckabuck Family:  And How They Raised Popcorn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back before we open a pumpkin for pie.

A few other things we pulled out:
The last of the sweet corn, cow peas, long beans; a huge, hidden cucumber, eggplant, a massive marrow we had missed, some okra, a few yellow squash, some ailing tomatoes and Tulsi, or Holy Basil for tea.  We are finding it very refreshing during these very hot late summer days.

The cassava and sweet potatoes are still going, along with the okra and cow peas, but we are turning more and more to our lacto-fermented pickles for our vegetables these days.

I am looking at meal planning again.  During peak gardening season, the meals plan themselves!  This week I have been trying to be very creative with different forms of squash, corn and beans.  I feel like this year I have really started to understand how to cook from a garden rather than the store.  It is such a different thing to do.

The winter garden starts will be planted next week (I am attempting to plant by the moon, to see if it does anything special like they say).  I am still busy building beds and obtaining moldy hay, cardboard and horse manure.  Soon it will be time to dig up the sweet potatoes and cassava, pick Roselle and put the Summer garden to bed.

A wistful wave hello and a garden update

It has really been a long time since I've written here--so long that I'm not even sure what my last post was about!
Sooooooo much has been happening, I'm afraid I won't ever be able to catch up.  Things have been going so well, but not necessarily documented and written about.  I have kept up my hand-written journal, but I have found it so hard to be on the computer this year.  The reason:  Clothilde.

She is so sweet, and so cute and so wonderful, but in short she is also a total maniac.  I mean, look at her--she is all ready to ride off down the street on her tricycle.  She never stops moving and getting into things.  Our house, long accustomed to older children, has been desperately child-proofed.  One long week of rainy days, I moved 50 lb feed bags into stacks in all the doorways.  It makes getting around the house a real pain, and isn't very sightly.  It doesn't even stop her.  It only took about a week before she could climb up and over them, but it slows her down enough for me to catch up.  At 10 months old, she is already able to hop on two feet, climb things (yes, climb) and take steps by herself.  She will be walking--nay, running, far too soon for her old and slightly decrepit-feeling mama.

So that is my excuse.  Back to my post!
This year the garden has been fabulous.  Not the winter garden, that is pictured above.  I pulled it all out and re-planted it with potatoes.  The summer garden is the wonder garden.  It was going to be my super-simple, super-tiny garden.  Oh well!
The Permaculture beds I learned about from Susanna at Salamander Springs farm have been wonderful this year.  I worked on them all winter long, and so planting in the spring was a breeze, even with "Clonan the Destroyer," which has been Clothilde's popular nickname around here lately.

In march, the garden started out looking like this.  I had seeded rye and fertilized it with the fertilizer from Midwestern Bio-ag.  It turned amazingly green and lush.  We need to get our winter pastures seeded down like that!
I think this also helped control weeds.  Someone recently told me that the rye has allelopathic roots and secretes phytochemicals that keep other seeds from germinating.  The roots on it were incredible.  I just smushed it all under cardboard, compost and hay when it was around time to plant.

Here it is, all mulched and seeded!

Most of the garden started off like this, in pots, but I did direct-seed beans and corn, of course.  I do have a rabbit problem out there, and when I direct seed things, often they will get nipped off.  Giving them a start until they have a few true leaves seems to make them not as tasty.

Here was the side view with the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.

This was the first year the potatoes did something other than die.  We actually got some really nice ones out of this plot.  It was such a nice surprise.

This is about what the garden looks like now!  Jungly, but different from all my other gardens in that there isn't a weed to be seen!  I did have an army of army worms come through and try to eat everything, but I hand picked them into soapy water and eventually they gave up.

Here is a side view with the tomatoes.  The tomatoes are huge.  They are as tall as I am this year.  I unfortunately don't have a picture of the Dudley farm corn I had planted.  It is about 10 feet tall.
For a month and a half we have been consistently eating out of the garden.  We got so many sweet peppers, it was hard to keep up with them.  We just got our first taste of sweet corn, the cow peas are ready to pick and it looks like the summer squash is getting a second wind.  Soon there will be pumpkins to pull out (some are already very large, lurking in the corn patch).  The long beans have really been producing, and I have come to really appreciate the Malabar spinach.  The other day Rose was helping me in the garden.  We were harvesting long beans and she turned to me and said, "Mama, your garden is just like a grocery store!"

It is so wonderful to have the opportunity to have a big garden.  There is a completely different way of meal-planning and cooking when you are cooking from a garden.  I love the seeming dance or parade of vegetables that weave in and out in abundance, and I feel so connected to this little spot.

Peeking In

I'm just peeking in here.  I feel bad I haven't posted in so long, but my hands have been full--specifically full of Clothilde.  She really can't stand it when I'm on the computer.  In fact, she screams her face off if it looks like I might be working on the computer.  I've tried setting her up with new toys, but they become unbearably boring the instant she hears the keyboard clicking.  In fact, the only reason I'm touching a computer right now is because she's deeply asleep--and even then sometimes she can sense it.  At least my email is down to only two not-spam messages a week, so it's do-able.  I keep wanting to head over to Bliss Beyond Naptime to watch Kathy's inspiring videos on simplifying and carving out mama-time, but it's just not possible--it's definitely a Catch 22.

But we are doing well--if perhaps kind of chaotically--these days.  We've necessarily had to scale back our plans and projects for this year.  I've started going out to the farm again and I've been busy putting in the tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and ground cherries.  I've also started melons, watermelons, cucumbers, gourds, squash and pumpkins.  Next I'll be putting in the corn, beans, cow peas, okra, sweet potatoes and lima beans.  This year I've got a snap bean that my great-uncle sent me that he has kept going for years.  He got it originally from my great-grandfather who was from Italy, so I am very excited to grow this bean.

We have a new batch of the Freedom Ranger meat chickens going.  I love these birds.  They are always so healthy and vigorous (and eventually, tasty).  Raising them is so easy--unlike the poor Cornish X Rocks that only seem to want to eat themselves to death.  I'm looking forward to having chicken again.  All we've got in the freezer are stew hens, and even after being boiled all day for broth they are tough.  There's hardly any meat on them anyway.

The cows and goats are all doing well (as far as I know).  We had to dry off Geranium for the same reasons we did last time.  She just doesn't make much milk and she's very antsy.  She is very disappointed.  I wish we could have gotten a film of her coming down to be milked, because she looked like a rodeo bull.  She is so wide, but she would still toss her head around and kick up her hind feet and buck all the way down to the milking paddock because she was so excited about it.  Chestnut, who was originally called "Chestnut-case" has really settled down and makes a lot of milk.  She has become very sweet, in stark contrast to Matilda, who has never gotten over Mairie getting milked, too.  She looks like such a psychotic animal because she kind of hunches over a bit and pokes her horns out at the other cows.  Her posture is very dictatorial and dogmatically in charge.  I wonder if there's a homeopathic we could give her to help her relax.

We also dried off May.  She was just being too ornery.  Ethan's back couldn't handle carrying her into the milking paddock every day, since she absolutely refused to go in for him (she was always fine for me, but the goats really just don't like Ethan.  He doesn't know how to tame them), so we have no more goat's milk until next year.

Just keeping up with the milk we are getting now has been like a part-time job.  I have to churn butter and skim cream every other day, but it is nice to have our raw cultured butter and all the milk and cream we want.  I can't really complain, because churning butter mostly involves pressing a button on my standing mixer, so it's not like I'm actually doing anything.

This year we have already gotten all the fertilizer spread--thanks to our wonderful neighbor Bernard.  He has a tractor and a spreader, so we just paid him to do it.  Yay!  Last year it was such a huge job to spread all that--and even seeding the rye this fall was huge because I was doing it all by hand.  It is really a lot of work to sow or fertilize even just 8 acres.  There's still lime to put on, and we are hoping to order more fertilizer to have the whole grazing area done.  We would have so much more good forage.  The animals would love it and it would save us so much in hay.

Anyway, so much still to do always, one thing at a time.

First Piglets

Here's Bee, the magical escaping pig (she literally ripped apart a hog panel--have you seen how sturdy those things are?) and her five sweet little piglets.  They look a bit like little dalmatians, because they turned out so spotty.  Our other Glouchesershire Old Spots are not at all as spotted.

We were worried about the piglets, as we've had a cold snap just after they were born, but they've been fine.  Bee is a wonderful mama, and they curl up with her and nurse.  There is one male, which we were hoping for--we named him Trespassers William.  For those of you who don't read children's books, it's an A. A Milne reference (for those of you who don't read, he's the guy that actually wrote Winnie the Pooh back when it was a book and not a Disney cartoon).

This isn't Trespassers William, it's one of the girls.  He's got a black eye patch over one eye.
They are the cutest thing out there right now, since the calves and baby goats have grown up, and Belle got sprayed by a skunk.  Little Clothilde and I have spent such a long time watching them play and play fight and run about and fight over where they get to nurse.

Spring

The last post was not a happy one--truly that week was just awful.  Not only did we lose Mairie, but a Glouchestershire Old Spot sow we had just bought busted out over a hog panel and through another fence and escaped.  She was due to have piglets in just a couple weeks.  We were hoping to have a boar from her.  She isn't related to our other gilts, Star and Black-ear, and we've been trying and trying to figure out how we are going to breed them.  They are so huge, moving them somewhere to another boar isn't really an option.

Anyway, the sow--named Bee at the other farm--was expensive, and I felt awful about losing her and her piglets and Mairie.

But the post I had been working on that very day that Mairie took ill (from eating horse chestnut--or also called red buckeye) was actually a positive one.  I had been looking at my winter garden (pictured above) and realizing it was the best winter garden I've ever had.  It was so small, simple and manageable.  That's my mantra this year.  I have also realized I need to way lower my expectations of the garden so it's more fun.  I get so upset when things get eaten/frozen/trampled/dug up by dog, it's silly.

Back then, there were all kinds of new spring things popping up.  Some of them have frozen again, since we've had a cold snap.  Here are cleavers--also called Poke's Little Sister.  We used some cleavers tincture just a few months ago to help get rid of a cough and cold yuckiness that just wouldn't go away.

Here were vibernum flowers, like little stars, among the red oak leaves in the yard.

The plums were blooming.  Now they have all leafed out.

Late frosts happen.  Bad things happen.  Things die and escape. But good things happen, too.  Babies are born, flowers bloom, seeds sprout. 

 And guess what?  We found the sow again.  We caught her easily and two weeks ago she had five piglets (one is a boy!) and they are busy growing and rooting.

And another good thing--we found an alternative feed company to the horrific Countryside Organics.  And they have the agri-dynamics products we've always wanted to try, and they're nice.  And helpful.

Aesculus pavia.
Did you know this plant is highly toxic to cattle?
Yesterday something very tragic happened because we didn't know it was poisonous.

The cows were on one of the far-off lines with a bale of hay, when they busted out again (I swear they haven't for a long time, only we're weaning the babies!).  They got through the latest cow-proofing on the barn and ate all the barley--only about a bag's worth between them, so it didn't seem unusual that Mairie was not interested in eating her milking ration that day.  The next day--yesterday--I finally came out again to take some pictures of my winter garden and help Ethan milk four (yes four!!) cows, when we discovered that Mairie wouldn't stand up.  We thought at first it was bloat, but it wasn't.  I noticed her leg muscles were twitching and she was groaning a little.  Tetanus?  Low magnesium? Snake bite?
No, she could open her mouth, they've had their lick and kelp the whole time, and we couldn't find any sort of injury or bite on her.  Her eyes were not like they would be from a snake bite, either.  Even as she lay on the ground, groaning a bit, her coat looked sleek and coppery.  Her eyes and nose were clear.  She had been so healthy until this moment.
She finally stood up and walked very stiffly towards the water.  I offered her hay, which she didn't want.
She slumped over again and was groaning, and her leg muscles were twitching again.
We couldn't figure out what was wrong with her.  I called my friend Karen, where we got Mairie from, and asked her.  She had never heard of anything like it.  She called someone she knew to ask, and they said it sounded like Mairie had eaten a neurotoxic plant.

We gave her some probi, which is the only thing we could think to do.  At home, I looked up poison plants of Florida and found out about horse chestnut.  It usually is only a problem in the early springtime, because it is one of the first plants to leaf out.  It explained her groaning, leg twitches and lack of appetite and everything, particularly the strange way she was walking--not really limping or staggering, just like her legs were stiff.  And, I realized, there's a bunch of it on that line.  I had no idea it was so toxic.  For simple stomached animals like humans, it causes vomiting and severe gastric distress, but for ruminants, the toxins are converted in the rumen into a highly soluble neurotoxin.  Just a small amount can be fatal, and there is no antidote.  Mairie died this morning, and there was nothing we could do to save her.

It's amazing, with farming, how everything can seem so fine--and then suddenly something awful happens.
We are just thankful that our other cows didn't eat it, too.  We could have lost our whole herd in such a stupid way.