A Thousand Words

Words. Use words, not pictures.

The rituals, the routines are not set yet, of course, but the routine since the calf has been born has been to put mom and babe up at night to escape possibly marauding bear. Calf is all legs but coordinated now and I swear she’s gaining ten pounds a day -- I pick her up every day but I don’t think I’ll make it to 600# cow stage and still be able to pick her up. Cows are like deer in that momma will PUT baby somewhere and baby will NOT move, and gosh darn they are hard to find when they are like that. So I put momma to finding baby and now she’s getting the routine and sees me coming and, at least today, she didn’t make anything hard. And the mornings, turning out, have always been easy.

So of course we will soon change the routine. Not too soon though. I’m beginning to milk her with the calf around. We are on opposite sides and the cow licks the calf then licks me -- I’m just another calf to her. She’s a slow milker, she’s got a ton of milk, and I think we’re going to rehabilitate the shoeing stock to a milking stanchion just because her milk is so slow I think I’ll need something like that to hold her still long enough to get her milked out.

On the way home today, with manure, I saw a rainbow. That’s several this season already. They seem to always have a foot planted here, on this farm. It hasn’t been a wet year but it isn’t too dry either, plus we’ve gotten several showers and rains up on the mountain that they haven’t gotten lower. Tonight’s pot of gold at home was the salad from the garden.

In the garden the family has been very busy and hard at work. One day, 100 pounds of potatoes were planted. That’s a kind of late start for them and the seed potatoes were all sprouty. We cut them a bit big and planted them rather close and made eight rows a little further apart than in the past. Then ten rows each of Hickory King and Bloody Butcher corn was planted. When these are up (potatoes and corn), each row will be hilled and then we’ll start adding manure to mulch the middle and then before long it will be a forest anyway. I hope that we’ll find plenty of, oh, that succulent tasty weed that I especially like that we usually find in the corn but that I can’t think of the name of right now.

There’s still room in the rectangle garden and we’re debating what we’ll plant there. One option would be to wait until the hard corn is about to tassel and to plant the rest with sweet corn (I’m partial to Country Gentleman myself) enough to preserve for winter eating. Another would be to plant mangles or turnips or some such as livestock feed for the winter. Squash or pumpkins or melons are also possibilities. And there’s probably others we haven’t discussed yet. Our plowing and harrowing this year, and stewardship of that piece for many years, really showed in working in it.

The other garden is almost completely jungle free! We have a large patch of Jerusalem artichokes that looks jungle-y but that’s pretty much it. The pump needs its piece of leather replaced again so it will work.

Well, I’m out of words for the time being. It isn’t a thousand but you know what I mean.

Harrowing

So this is the harrow; the spike harrow to be exact. We'd gotten a larger one some years ago and used its spikes (just railroad spikes) and other hardware to make this slightly smaller one for one horse to pull. It isn't that it is difficult to pull but smaller is easier to maneuver and we don't have acres and acres we're trying to do.

This is the first pass. The ground is rough from the plowing but as that's been several weeks ago, there are also things sprouting and re-rooting. The harrow's job is to even things out a bit, break up clods, things like that. It doesn't have to do it all in one pass and in fact cannot. This is not a machine that plows, disks and lays out your seed bed. Time is your friend with this modus operandi. I mean, what else are you going to be doing with a couple of perfect May mornings? And if you did actually have something else to do, it couldn't possibly be better than harnessing the horse and walking behind him for awhile, taking in that wonder rich smell of the good earth.

This is the second pass the first day. You can see there are still some clumps of perennials that are well rooted. A pass with a shovel took those out. And everything, all over, is getting more even.
This is the rest period place. Although he didn't blow much at all in doing the harrowing. Still, he gets to blow and cool off and rest.

This is the second pass on the second day. We didn't get any photos that really showed the consistency of the soil but it is good and rich although you can still tell the parts of it that have had more manure over the years and the parts that have had less. Our gardens have been worked twenty years and that is really what permaculture is about if you ask me.

And this? This is what we found when we quit harrowing the second day! We're now a three cow family! And then we went swimming. And those are only a few of the pleasures of life on the farm.

Addendum: or What I forgot to say when I got in a hurry:

I finished harrowing and walked the horse up to the house and took his harness off. Donkey didn't follow us right away to the field and so I left the gate open and looked around for the cow. I saw old cow down near the bottom. I took the horse path around the side of the knoll to get a view of more of the back bottom. When I caught a glimpse of new cow, she was facing away from me with her head in the grass like she was grazing but I could see afterbirth hanging. I hurried a bit knowing she was probably licking a baby but still thinking of all the other possibilities -- maybe she'd had it and it was stashed and she was grazing, maybe she hadn't had it yet, etc. When I got close enough to see that it was lying on the ground, flat out on the ground, not moving at all, with her licking it, I thought oh gawd it is dead over and over until I got close enough to see its eye and then I thought that eye is NOT dead! and all the while I was watching how she would react to me coming up to her this soon after birth, and if old cow was going to intrude too, and if either one of them was going to feel threatened by me. Old cow stayed back for a good while, new cow was a little concerned about my presence but not much. All the other animals gave the goings on a wide birth until introductions the following day.

Once again I will say that the hardest thing about midwifery is not interfering. Yet it is also the most important thing. Make sure nothing goes wrong but don't cause anything to go wrong yourself.

sneak a peak

baby cherries

rhubarb (the earliest spring "fruit" around these parts) and music garlic and way in the back some volunteer weed potatoes that will be left until we need the bed and then eaten.

various salad greens, ready to eat

pea bed

baby plants (these are peppers)

medium plants

seeds (in this case broccoli)

Hope in an Udder

We negotiated for the new cow, when?, in October or November, and finally brought her on the place in February. She had been bred in August, supposedly due in June but not vet checked and so the whole time I'm doing what I do, preparing for the worst, what if she is not bred, looking at her and wondering wondering and planning various contingencies. Well, today . . .

Today I believe we just might be freshening soon!

political interlude

"The current crisis facing the euro is the biggest test Europe has faced in decades. It is an existential test and it must be overcome ... if the euro fails, then Europe fails," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Finally, a leader says something honest. Or more honest than anything any other leader of anything has said. No surprise she's from the least socialist country in the EU, while the "bailout" went to the most.

And it is more than an existential test; it is an existential crisis and the truth of the matter is that the existence has shifted, changed, never to go back, so all the looking for "the recovery" and "getting back to the way it was" are whistling past the graveyard, covering the ears and singing "lalalala". The currency almost has no option but to break what with all the printing going on.

So the questions to ask yourself are these: what will I eat, where will I live, how will I keep warm?

Husband and I were out yesterday. I couldn't believe the building going on, with empty building right beside, but it was the new cars on the lot that got me. "I can't believe they still make new cars," I said. "We could go twenty to forty years without a single new car being made."

"And imagine all the jobs there would be," husband chimed in. "Mechanics and machine shops."

"And people to paint and upholster," I said.

And in real estate, four or five families could live in a McMansion and again, people could be employed gainfully, doing something real, making those monstrosities into functional and efficient living spaces. And every yard, and every median, could grow some food.

It isn't a grim thing, this existential crisis.

Homesteading

Well, first these little guys came in.

Then we finally worked out a day to do the plowing. Above is where we began and below is the handiwork about 2/3 finished. Of course it is also the handiwork of years adding to that soil and working it and growing in it.

And then this was a supper -- pan blackened chicken. Not our own chicken but delicious nonetheless. Must do it outside to do it right.

Soon the rectangle garden will be harrowed and then planted. Perhaps this will be the year we'll actually harrow it in the fall and plant a cover crop and all? I never actually feel badly about it as the weeds make the cover crop but it might be nice to deal with fewer weeds?

All this took place in the past week and here it is Mother's Day before I get it posted and I just have to say that I am so glad to be in this place, with these people, to grow these roots and these wings.

Greece: coming to an economy near you. Soon.

While I am on a rather more political bent than homesteading one, I have this word to say: Greece. You think you are owed a pension? Greece. You think you contributed to Social Security? Greece. You think that government job of your is secure (and it is the only sector with job growth)? Greece.

I am attentive to the tendency to protest instead of, say, grow food, or produce something that might help that GDP. I am attentive to the fact that Greece is the most socialist country in the EU, and Spain next, and that's the order in which they will fall. I am attentive that our rate of debt is about as bad as theirs (and that when people decide to be personally financially responsible in this country, it is seen as "holding back" the "recovery").

oil spill

So, do you get the idea that this BP spill is a really really big thing? Affecting food and environment for years and years? But swallow that it is the result of getting more and more fringe oil to feed the oil addiction. If you go places, you caused it. There will not be a leader willing to say it evidently, but life must get smaller and we need to not mourn that but find the joy in that. We need to seek stability and contentment rather than growth and change and happiness and the thrill of the week.