Farm kids and ruminations on herd life

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

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.