Open Gates

My daughters and I finally opened up the "January Field" today. We're a little late. And it has been a rough winter. All of our old animals know the January field. The new cow and her calf, however, didn't.

We had to stretch a little hot wire but first we called the animals over and opened the gate. Old cow said, "Yes," and went straight for it and buried her head in the standing mostly dead but green at the bottom grass. Donkey came and guarded the threshold until Duke made it that far. Duke moves more slowly but once he figured out why we were hollering for him, he was on his lumbering way. Donkey followed him through the gate. The calf had been hanging out behind the now open gate. She pushed it as though she was pushing it shut. New cow didn't move from where she'd been all along.

I first got in the field behind the calf and asked the calf to come out. She came around the gate but would not go through. I went to get her mom thinking the two of them together might go. I've been around cows before enough to know that when going over a threshhold, well, I've seen them all balk and balk and balk until finally one goes and then they all go like they are water flowing. These two just balked. Uh huh, no way Jose, I'm not going over there. Nothing is in their way and there is grass on the other side and also all of their field-mates are on the other side too but no.

Eventually the calf did come, at least partly because old cow is as much mother to her as new cow. Calf, by the way, is just as big as the other two now.

And to be honest, new cow probably didn't cross the threshold as much because she was born and raised on a dairy farm. Until she came here, she'd always had the same herd, always on the same farm. She's done really well but she isn't as wily as old cow who's been a homesteader all along.

As the girls and I were stretching that bit of fence and we were talking about how stupid those cows were to be doing that, I said to them, "You know girls, we can be exactly that way. We get used to an obstacle being in our way, we get used to one way of how to do things, and we'll stand at an open gate with a whole field of grass on the other side exactly like that."

We stood there a moment, taking it in and wondering what open gates we just might not be seeing.

in no particular order

Things that made me smile today

blue and black bunnies

this is Snowflake in her summer plummage -- and doesn't she have great "Chicken Run" legs going on?

my boy and his summer dapples

this image took my breath away

girls on the side of the hill

because I'm contrary -- and I loved such a tight shot including at least three types of flies and a drop of blood

the state of her dehorn repair -- and ain't she just the cutest thing!
and this image likewise continues to take my breath away

Contrary Adventures

We took off to Shangri-la today, mostly with the idea of gathering in some apples to begin processing for the year. It is such a pleasant place that we wanted to make several trips of it rather than one big one, which also happens to make processing more manageable too. I didn't take the camera in part because being the photographer always changes my experience of the adventure and today I just wanted to be there.

So of course there were some wonderful photo ops. One was daughter up a tree. The trees are probably a hundred years old and so some of them have limbs the size of my body and are sturdy and easy to climb. There she sat, way up in the tree, legs akimbo hanging down below the branch, braided hair snaking across her back, sunshine streaming through the tree hanging heavy with apples.

Another was the service trees. I have not known these trees. When we were picking blueberries, Mrs. Grullo talked about "sarvice berries" and how in old times they were plentiful and you didn't see them anymore and no one knew what to do with them anyway. Husband, who knows everything (and *that*, mind you, is both an infuriating trait and a handy one), said that the trees were plentiful up the mountain. You will have noticed that the tree is spelled "service" but pronounced "sarvice", so when I spell it "service", it still isn't pronounced that way. It reminds me of "pennyroyal" which is properly pronounced "PEN-a-rile".

Anyway, again it was the sun shining through those trees, making the berries (deep and bright red, in clusters held closely to the branch) glow like they were their own light source. I don't know that I could have captured either frame the way I saw it, so maybe words are just fine.

Here are some frames I did capture on a morning walkabout the other day.

tomatoes

Yes, some are hanging rotten and some are rotten on the ground but a great many of them have been eaten and some preserved and you never get everything and if you really seriously try to, you will make yourself crazy. Eat, enjoy, preserve, have fun.

winter squash, acorn and butternut

The squash have done extraordinarily well this year. So did the melons but I don't think the shot I got of one rotting in the garden made the cut for the blog. But we've had more delicious melons than we've been able to eat.

onion bed for fall green onions

ahhh

My very favorite shot, my very favorite scene. Look how big and pretty she is. The cow has never had a baby be allowed to nurse for so long (we just take her off at night, milk in the morning, turn them out together during the day) and she is content with it too. I love the sun beams. I love the fog that means we've had water this year.

Queen

And I love this shot of her in all her regal-ness with the shadows of her daughter and her new concubine with her. The smaller ones get put up at night and she sunbathes in the morning until they are let out then they all sunbathe together. Except for those mornings she chooses to taunt the dog.

weeds

I love the fall flowers. These are jewel weed, joe pye weed, and iron weed. The lobelia is in full bloom, and I saw my first cardinal flower the other day (cardinal flower being the red version of lobelia).

poke

When we went to Shangri-la, we girls painted ourselves with poke berry juice just for fun. Poke isn't much good for much (except mulch) at this stage, but it sure makes good eating when it is younger so you have to let some go and enjoy its rank beauty!

sunflowers

Well, duh. I adore these giants. What you can sorta see beside the sunflower are the hills/ridges where the potatoes are. They've long since died back and we've seeded turnips over them! We generally only dig potatoes as we need them.

hickory king

What sustains us.

map of life

and the way things are, have been, will be.

Dehorning

I’m probably ready to write about this. I’ve put it off to make sure things turned out alright. I put it off because it was disturbing. I put it off because I have cognitive dissonance, misgivings, mixed feelings, and conflict about it.

Some animals come with horns. We solved this with the goats long ago and far away by leaving them alone. We like horns on goats. People will tell you all kinds of tales about how very dangerous they are, how they will hurt you and each other with them and it is all cr*p. We’ve had goats going on forever (more than 15 years anyway) and all that were born here and most that came here had horns. The only real danger for goats with horns is field wire fencing – if they can get their heads through it in one direction and get stuck. Thus we don’t have field fencing where the goats are concerned. On the positive side, horns are handy dandy handles. Horns enhance self-protection some in that they allow a predator to be picked up and tossed, but dehorned goats and horned goats butt (or as my kids call it, buck) exactly the same. They coexist in a herd perfectly. We’ve never had a horn injury to man or beast (although I have seen a dog tossed). I wouldn’t turn down a dehorned goat but I wouldn’t dehorn one either. There is very little difference between a horned goat and a dehorned one, so why put them through it. Besides, horns are good looking.

Dairy cows have horns – at least to my knowledge they don’t come in polled varieties. Both my cows had been dehorned long before they came here. When old cow had her baby, I think she was polled because her daddy was Angus – at least at seven months I don’t remember her having horns but that was a long time ago. When new calf had her baby, in just a day or two you could feel the horn buds. I mistakenly thought someone around here would have a dehorning iron I could borrow but everyone I asked had polled cattle. I thought I’d arranged for the vet to do it but, well, the kybosh was put on that and my feelings were hurt and that’s enough said about it.

And so I was left with the ability to use dehorning paste. Pretty much everything I read and everyone I talked said not to do that. I didn’t have a choice at that point. I put in my order. I read a description from someone who had experience using dehorning paste who put it on the buds then wrapped the head in duck tape. That sounded better that trying to tie her up with no contact with mom for seven hours which is what the directions said.

The calf was exactly eight weeks old the day I put the paste on and wrapped her head in blue duck tape. I felt scared doing it, hoping to put on enough but not too much, hoping the tape would hold, every fear that is there the first time one does something new like this, something that hurts, something you can’t take back, something you are absolutely on your own with. She didn’t react at all to us applying it, or wrapping her head in tape.

In a few minutes, however, she was definitely uncomfortable. Not hugely uncomfortable, not unbearably uncomfortable, but uncomfortable. She scratched at her horns. She lay down and got up and was generally restless. She nursed and butted her mother’s belly. At about the two or three hour mark, one side bled for a few minutes, not badly but enough to scare me until it stopped. But at that point you know there is nothing you can do.

The vet said that dehorning cattle was the most brutal thing he did as a vet. He does it by burning the horn buds off. Takes about 20 seconds. You can’t tranquilize cows (it kills them) and local anesthetic takes 20 minutes just to inject and is pretty traumatic in itself – better just to get the 20 second procedure over with. He recommended against using the paste but I swear it is the same thing, just less intense burning for longer.

The process exhausted the calf and she laid down in the shade and slept it off. By the seven hour point, she had her duck tape hat off and resumed her life seemingly no worse for the wear except for these two places burned into her scalp/skull. They were not raw but closed and didn’t seem to bother her. For two or three days I sprayed them with Scarlex even though I don’t think there was any real reason too except it made me feel better – the flies weren’t bothering it, no weepage, no sign of anything amiss. By the second day she’d completely forgiven me.

It is now a month post de-horning and the scabs are almost off and except that she won’t have horns, I don’t think you’ll be able to tell it ever happened.

Now, why did I dehorn my calf and not my goats? Well, if I had my way, I wouldn’t dehorn my cows either. As soon as I mentioned that possibility to the vet (and the student he had with him that day), he flustered something about a little pain for the calf prevented people from getting gored. That’s the same sort of thing that people say about goats too. Horns might be dangerous, but they aren’t nearly so dangerous as cows, and without horns people think they can forget that a cow can kill you anyway, that she doesn’t really need horns to kill you. That she chooses not to kill you is her grace to you. That you treat her with love and respect is her due, and if you don’t, she ought to hurt you.

But I might want to sell that calf someday as a homestead hand milker. I think there might be a market coming for that sort of thing. And people are afraid of horns. And her market value would likely be hurt by intact horns. And so I put her, and me, through dehorning.

If I decided to dehorn anything, I would not hesitate to use the dehorning paste again, with caution, and I would probably use it when the calf was younger, and the duck tape thing works. But I’d have to come to a decision new again about whether or not to dehorn at all.

and then the stars align and the dam breaks

it being about movement

So in living on and “managing” a farm one knows, that is one is aware for the longest time before one takes any action at all, that the goat herd sire needs to be traded off, a new one procured, the cows need to be bred, and all the rest. And things accumulate – you get a phone number for someone who owns a Jersey bull locally and post it on your refrigerator, the person who you usually get the new herd sires from has one ready for you, things like that.

Then suddenly something totally unrelated happens. In this case it was the death of a friend. Now, remember, I said this death was totally unrelated, and it was. Totally. This guy was not a part of any of this, but the new herd sire came to his funeral with his old mom and came home with his new dad. At the same time the Jersey guy contacted us. Turns out he has some goats too and is interested in our old herd sire. Old billy exchanged for transportation and exposure to bull for three+ months for old cow. Also updated vaccinations on all bovines since old cow will be visiting that bull and his herd.

At the same time, the peaches are ripe and the very last of the blackberries are fermenting in the back of the fridge (alcoholic jelly is some of the best) and, well, more stuff that I can even think about in the garden that all needs to be eaten first and preserved second.

Which, one of the huge lessons of homesteading is never preserve first and eat second. Always eat first. Always always always. If you do not eat it fresh, it will not be valuable to you preserved. Plus there is that if you grew it, you deserve it at its very best, which is fresh. Eat first.

Another lesson is this: the monoculture agribusiness model is always inferior. The cow guy was amazed at how good our cows look, much better than his he said, and ours are just out there, cowing around. The baby goat (new herd sire) got here in pretty pitiful shape (pot bellied, shaggy coated, bad feet, small). The strongest, most direct evidence, however, is the paddocks of newly planted grass at the work barn. Plowed, disked, fertilized and seeded following exactly the agribusiness model, every speck of that planted grass is now dead and the only things growing there are spiny amaranth and jimson weed. The field next to it, however, is green. It doesn’t have much food value, true, but it does have some, and at least the ground is covered. I know why people plant agribusiness fescue but I pretty much never think it is a good idea. Meanwhile, on this farm, the baby goat is already looking better in less than a week, and he hasn’t even been turned loose yet which is when he will really thrive.

When new cow came here, she came from a small dairy where she had access to plenty of grass and was fed while being milked. And she was skinny. When we picked her up, my boss asked if she wasn’t thin but the truth is, that’s how dairy animals often look. And when she got here, she looked so much smaller than old cow. She doesn’t look smaller anymore. I think it has to do with the fact that here she has a broader choice of what to eat, and a less stressful, more cowful life. In other words, a real homestead, free, life is flat out better for animals, pastures, mankind. We look better, are healthier, happier, last longer.

Now, concerning movement. I follow, for years at a time, people who I find to be good examples as well as horrible warnings. The guy who died, for example, was a horrible warning of how not to turn out to be. The difference between the good examples and the horrible warnings is movement. The horrible warnings do the same things over and over. Oh, most times they think they are doing different things, but when you look at their lives it is like they burn supper on the stove one day and burn it in the oven the next day. It is the same thing with a different color hair. They have the same epiphanies over and over, essentially go around the same circle again and again.

The good examples have a direction. They move not randomly but with purpose. The movement may be somewhat butterfly-ish in that the purposefulness may not be immediately evident but monarchs do wind up on milkweed and cabbage moths do inevitably find some plant in the cole-ish family. People will say of the good examples, they are exactly the same people they were when I met them years ago and yet, a look at their lives reveals that they have moved, have refined, have advanced, are flat out further along. They don’t flounder a whole lot. They build. Good examples don’t hide, don’t bully, don’t perform for the audience.

They do, however, fry fresh peach pies, which is what I’m going off to do right now.

bawlin' cow blues

And two mammas equals twice the bawling too.

Ok, just the honest to goodness facts is that we're slow a lot of times. We read the books, sure, and talk to the agri-farmers, and we know the theories, but when it comes right smack dab down to it, we feel our way along. We change all the time, but slowly and always in a direction.

So it should come as no surprise that the we've just left the calf on the cow and milked away up until now. And then, finally, I decided its time. We've discussed it way before now, brainstormed through it, come up with ideas, but in the end it comes down to someone deciding that the time has come.

So tonight, for the first time ever, the calf is in the pen by herself and her two mammas are in the field. There are things I'm concerned with . . . mostly that the mammas don't decide to get out. That the real mamma always drinks when she's put in the pen so I want to make sure she knows how to drink from the stream. Well, I know she KNOWS because she was turned out there for months without a trough to drink from, but anyway, her water intake is still a concern. They can actually see each other, mammas and calf, so I don't think anyone will get in any big panic. And it is just until in the morning.

Two mammas, you ask? The three of them are funny. The calf drinks from real mamma but hangs with auntie mamma. Auntie mamma wants to be her real mamma. Hopefully we've found a bull to "expose" auntie mamma to, a Jersey since I'd love to perpetuate her terrific genes. Of course, that is slow to work itself out . . .

And tomorrow will be our first morning milking.

Did I forget to mention daughter belly skiing through the grass behind the calf? Scared me to death. I had just given them the instruction "Don't let go," but then when I saw that I was saying, "Now would be a good time to let go!" What did she say? "It was FUN!"

Yes.

Are you fierce enough to milk unabated while a calf with a tongue rough as a cat's but 20 times bigger and backed by that much more weight and strength too repeatedly licks that little (tiny actually, and insignificant) love handle at the small of your back?

the heart of life

We're back in milk and it feels good. She's a very different cow. She has a LOT of milk but lets down very slowly.

There is nothing bad, but everything is different. It has reminded me of the times I've run across people who know already exactly how everything is going to be. The funniest ones were going to raise chicory for their goats to browse on, and when goats proved too difficult for their pansy rears, they got a cow and failed at that too.

Not that there is anything wrong with failure. If you aren't failing at something, you aren't trying at very much. But success just isn't all that difficult either, so if you aren't succeeding at something, you aren't trying at very much either. By any measure, we've failed at most things we've tried in one way or the other. But we've always kept at it, and that is a good measure of success.

The other day a tree blew down across our road, about half-way between the house and the road. Luckily one vehicle was out already because moving it took several days -- although if no vehicle had been on the other side of it, I'm sure we would have worked a bit earlier and more diligently to get it moved. My point, at any rate, is that to most people a downed tree would be nothing but a liability, especially across their road. But to us, it was only a very mild inconvenience and in the end an asset as it becomes the beginning of next winter's firewood. That is because when you shift your perspective, everything looks different. Scratch that, everything IS different.The down tree was a heavy sugar maple. Cutting it into pieces with a bow saw proved an exercise in how many ways one can get a saw bound, and a lesson in levers. There is still one big piece down there that wasn't in the road so we didn't haul it yet, and a bunch of smaller pieces to be worked into lengths there and brought up on the cart. It was fun to hook and work the horse. Then we went on down to the garden and harrowed a bit.

The kids and I came back up to milk because right now it takes the whole crew (at least three people, preferably four). She's getting the routine but we've still got the calf running around loose, and, well, it can get complicated. Luckily our children know what chores are.

Chores, for those of you who might not know, are work that really does have to be done, no excuses, no make work, nothing decorative, no complaining, period, even if you are on your deathbed. Some chores, like doing the dishes or hoeing, can be put off for a day or two but you'll pay for it. Others, like tending to day old chicks, must be done on time or the chicks will die. Milking you get to slide and hour or two but otherwise, it simply has to be done. I think a lot of adults don't understand the nature of chores as they've never dealt with them -- they think it is an imposition instead of a centering, a grounding, a basis for all of life and living. Busywork is the basis of schooling -- it would be my posit that meaningful work is the basis of unschooling.

For the time being we've converted the old shoeing stock into a milking stanchion, and two of us milk her from opposite sides at the same time. She isn't fixed in the stand yet by a head stock so she can leave when she wants too and yet we're still getting lots of milk only milking once a day and not yet having taken the calf off at all. We have tentative plans for an eventual milking area but until this cow, I never would have made plans to be able to have a milker on each side. I may never have another cow that requires it, but one never knows these things.(see that rope-like thing on the bottom of her belly going to her udder? That's a vein! I think that is the coolest. Her teats are really small, her udder huge, those are a daughter's hands, and a cat catching milk from the quarter that had a little mastitis and so it being milked to the cats and not in a bucket.)

(pps I actually have not forgotten the dish rags folks, this is just my normal slowness)

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.

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!

Noon Today

Canoeing through the pine understory and snow?

Not much foraging happening today but lots of huddling in corners. They'll appreciate the hot water they'll get to drink.

Old cow, who has detected that I took hay to the horse, on the moove.

New cow in her temporary pen.

There Is Never a Good Time

or When It’s Easy, That’s When It’s Supposed to Happen

Now, it may seem as though the above titles are diametric opposites, but they are mystically the same thing.

The first one became known to us when we decided to have our first child. That’s when it first occurred that there would never be a good time, when everything was smooth and everything was ready and nothing seemed in the way. We figured if we waited until it seemed like the perfect time to have a kid, we’d never do it.

So we had four.

The second one I remember saying to a fiend about a desire I have to assist a large animal vet. I still believe there just might come a time when it becomes possible (easy) for me to do this. Because while I definitely decided that I have no desire to actually BE a veterinarian, I would still like to know everything a vet knows (if only to discard most of it as allopathic hogwash).

It seems like I’ve been cow shopping forever. I’ve had out feelers, been telling everyone I know for at least a couple of years. We finally found what seemed a suitable and affordable cow back in November, but she was one hundred miles away. And then everything that could get in the way of it did. There were reasons we couldn’t borrow this trailer or that one, then when we were going to rent one, the truck we were going to use blew its engine, then there was snow and cold and more snow and more cold and all that goes in to handling that. Then we found her a ride and were waiting to coordinate it with this horse owner and that horse trainer and the cow folks when suddenly it became easy.

Suddenly as in tomorrow! A sick horse needed to go to the university large animal hospital for some tests and coming home we could pick up the cow. Tomorrow. My first reaction was, oh goodness, there is no way. But then I thought, why not? There is never going to be a good time, a time when we feel like we have everything all ready and all lined up for her, and this trip was just so easy so it must be supposed to happen. See how those things do too go together? And so very suddenly we were on the road at 7 am, and back at the barn, well, I don’t know what time it was but it was dark. She spent the night in the brood mare stall, the horse who was living there generously offering it over to us for the night. She freaked out a few horses as she made her way down the barn aisle but none too badly. She brought in sightseers (horse people) from far and wide to get a glimpse of this cow in a horse barn. Even the vet got a look at her the next morning. I milked her for the first time (and it was also the first time she’d ever been hand milked ever), there, in that stall, untied, with an audience.

Then we brought her home. My horse barn boss, who was doing the hauling, knew vaguely where we lived but had never been out here before. She said she has more respect now for how far out we live! And the day the cow came home, the weather was the worst, cold, raining and blowing hard, and it had rained so much that the bridge was flowing with water which I don’t think I’ve ever seen it quite do that before. But the cow got off the trailer at the road and crossed that flooded bridge and came on up here. She’d evidently never seen chickens before and missed going in her temporary pen the first time because of them. But after a quick trip around the pasture and some quick herd introductions, she made it in the pen on the second try. She has settled in, so far, so good.

Of course, nothing is all the way easy, thus that weather, and thus her really small teats which are quite the challenge to milk by hand. And she isn’t giving a whole lot of milk just now but she is due to freshen in a few months. So there is still stuff to work out. But there always is.

I’m not doing too well with photos lately so none yet, but there will eventually be some.

Just Because

Because she is beautiful

Because they are cute.

And just because.

And a note about the baby goats because of the earlier post against intervention. They are two of triplets. Their mom is eleven years old, rather ancient for a goat. And at the beginning of December, she looked to be near her due date -- she was HUGE, basketball bag, the works. You know our goats are rather au naturel and so the billy just runs with them and we have an idea of when they were bred but not an exact date. Which is real good as far as not making unnecessary inventions is concerned.

Far more than just her hugeness though, she started acting different. Uncomfortable. I'd never really seen her act like that before. She sat a lot -- sat like a dog. One day it seemed as though she couldn't really walk and I was truly afraid a kid was stuck sideways in her pelvis. One day she sat in one spot for 12 hours. I actually worried and fretted some. A lot. I considered what interventions could be made.

BUT she wasn't sick and so I just made sure she was eating and drinking and peeing and pooping and left her alone. And sure enough, the day after Christmas, she popped out three beautiful babies who are all doing well and being very capricious.

early winter wildflowers

There have been lately these moments, visuals for the most part, unconnected, like a wildflower bouquet.

*There was coming home, after dark, and there on a small tree branch beside the bridge a screech owl sitting there and staring at me. I nearly drove into the creek before I thought to hit the brake and put it in reverse to go back and talk to him/her. And so we sat there together for a few minutes blinking at each other, trying to understand.

*There was the day that the sky was variegated shades of grey, low slung, but unraveled in places and each and every hole in the clouds was filled with a different shade of intense blue.

*There was the tufted bird in a stall eeeeeeking like a bat almost, high pitched, before it flitted away.

*There was the day the whole sky surrounded us in a cloud, all day, and even when it "cleared" you could only see maybe 300 feet.

*There was the small, maybe four or five foot tall sapling at the edge of the forest that still had its leaves, maybe 10 of them in all, with the tip top three bright red, the middle four yellow, and the bottom three fading green . . . and all so bright in a forest of muted by winter to greys and browns that it looked like a hunter had hung a flag to find his way but instead it was mother nature who had hung her flag and would take it away in a few days to fool any who would find their way by going backward.

*There is that grey and brown that is the winter palette, more colorful in its own way than all the contrived color in the world.

*There is the shag carpet of leaves in the forest now, and loud and raucous they are when you walk through them, and nice when they are in the forest but less welcome when they blow onto the porch and get tracked through the house.

*There is "yoga tree" visible again . . . a big oak twisted thirty feet from the ground and bent over in a perpetual bow during the big spring winds but hidden by the leaves when they grew and I missed it all summer even knowing it was hiding there.

*There is the goat who comes on the porch nightly to ask for her supper . . . and gets it, and we watch her bag to see when she may kid.

This week we marked a milestone: we dried the cow up. Well, we didn't have much to do with it but rather decided to stop milking for so little milk. We've at least found a cow we like if we can manage to arrange transportation for her (she's about 100 miles away).

Jesus was a farmer

Someone mentioned that they might know of a cow for sale, a heifer so I’d have to be training her to be hand milked, but a full blooded Jersey and expecting a Jersey calf too. I sure would like to have a look at her.

And then my husband asked a question, something like “if you had two what would you do with them,” and I misunderstood what he meant because I answered that I’d make sure I could get the new one in milk and then I’d beef our old one (after her due date although I’m very sure she is not with calf -- I’m totally willing to be surprised however). No, what he was asking, he said, was what if I bought this new cow and she had a calf and then my old cow had a calf too?

I’d feel very wealthy, I said.

In school I remember learning about different number bases, like ours is base ten but you can have base eight or base twelve. I had a knack for being able to do this, to throw a switch in my mind and think mathematically in a different base. It was just a trick as far as I was concerned and I didn’t much understand why other people struggled with it.

I also took two years of Spanish in school. I didn’t learn all that much but I did learn that I could only really understand the stuff when something in my brain switched. With the language I couldn’t make it switch like I could with the math but still to this day although I don’t speak Spanish at all really, I can very often understand what is being said (in a general way).

That switch thing is one of the things I think is happening now. The paradigm is changing, is in the middle of a switch, and no one knows the language of the new paradigm. A lot of us are making good guesses I think, but all of us are making mistakes to go with it, dragging along parts of the old paradigm that we can’t even imagine not being there. Take the Lynn Miller essay that I referenced in the last post. I think Mr. Miller is brilliant but later in that essay he tells about a new endeavor he has taken on in order to help farmers keep their insurance paid (among other things). I happen to think that this particular idea is asinine and that the new paradigm is unlikely to have insurances to pay, and particularly not what we know as health insurance because third party health insurance is one of the reasons people are so dang unhealthy today.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about insurance, or health, or even SFJ. What I want to highlight is the new paradigm, and our blindness to spots of it. Ah, but who knows where my own blind spots are?

I'm sure a new paradigm will have to incorporate that wealth is not money but is production, and that everyone will have useful things to do. I think those refusing to do this will be hungry. I think health by way of a decent (not a restricted) diet and lots of work will largely replace what we've come to know as "health care". "Education" as we know it will be a welcome victim. Energy is the biggest change and is what will lead the change in everything else. I think people will resist these until they are dead. They will refuse to learn the language. They are covering their ears even now and singing "lalalala" to themselves.

I think having two cows in milk, one to sell, a couple calves to raise for future milkers and beef, thus being able to also fatten pigs with the extra milk, not to mention butter and lard and all the other things that come from such adventures, I think all of that is real wealth. I still don't think the current cow is pregnant. But I would be very tickled to be wrong.

One more point: I think there is a real difference in having a blind spot and a refusal to speak the new language. As far as I can tell, our government is in massive refusal mode. But then our government *follows* her people by and large -- our government had a reserve of food when people thought that was important but when people started mortgaging their houses for a vacation, the government wondered what it was doing with these stockpiles and got rid of them. I know people who KNOW what is happening (as surely Obama must) but who insist that there is no higher calling that having a good time now, blast the future or some poor chap starving somewhere -- I have to have my tea and oranges from China now.

I think of the line in the song, "and when he knew for certain/only drowning men could see him/he said all men shall be sailors then/until the sea shall free them."

A Ground Hog's Day and Winter Local

It started out sunny with shadows, Ground Hog's Day, then the temps dropped, a lot, and the snow came. At least the ground was warm so the roads were ok until I got the barn fed and myself home.

At home it would seem our cow is in estrus. Which would mean that she isn't pregnant. Which I'd like to point you to Leslie at Pocket's of the Future's recent blog post about crazy crazy cow times. Really, you should follow her blog -- it is one of a very few farm blogs that I really read because she has something to say. And she happens to be not that far up the road from me. So, if you know of a cow confirmed pregnant (they can do this via palpation or ultrasound) or in milk (with or without calf), reasonable, ummm, could you let me know? Our cow will be hamburger sooner rather than later it looks like. We've become accustomed to a milk economy, and want pigs this year too, and do not want to do without.

At least the little goat looks primed to drop in the not too distant future, and we will be milking her to supplement us.

Ah, but what I'd meant to write about was way back in the previous cold time in January. You see, we generally "store" our potatoes in the ground, un-dug, and dig them as we need them, except we try to get them out by March because they do start sprouting. When it was predicted to be lows down to zero and less, we knew some would be lost to freezing (some but not that many usually, depending on how deep they've grown, and this year the potatoes were not laying on top of the ground) so we went to dig as many as we felt like it. That ended up being

these. Those are two five gallon buckets full and the muck tub not full. These sit (significantly lowered) in our kitchen to this day. This is how potatoes really look -- all shapes, sizes and dirty.

Now, it is easy to talk about local food when the salads are in, or the tomatoes and corn are flowing, but what about in the dead of winter?

The single easiest answer is the potato. Significant quantities of potatoes can be grown in small, scatted plots (no need for vast expanses of arable ground or any expensive carbon emitting equipment), the various varieties provide for short and long season options, you can save your own seed potatoes, and they are supremely nutritious (and balanced nutritionally) to boot. We eat them baked, roasted, as french fries, mashed, boiled, in stuff, around stuff, and every sort of way. There is no end to variety in the potato.

Other answers include cabbage and all its hardy relatives (kale and collard especially). This is your winter green and it makes a wonderful raw winter salad. And winter squashes which give you your orange veggies.

To enjoy fresh during the winter, you either need to be on a first name basis with your local produce stand proprietors (and ours recently had fresh sausage and salt middlin's available too!), or know how to store them yourself. Potatoes stay well in the ground around here, although you'll have some freeze and mice damage. You'll have some damage no matter how you store them by the way. If you dig yours, they need to be kept dark and cool and damp. Cabbage can be holed in the ground or stored in a root cellar, cool and damp. Squash, on the other hand, need to be warm and dry.

Our main grain we grow is corn, and we eat plenty of corn bread year round. It takes many forms -- pones and cakes and gems and tortillas and hominy and masa. Beans form a home grown staple -- canned green beans, canned green shelled shelly beans, dried beans, shucky beans. These are all grown in the summer and harvested and processed adn stored for later use. Corn mostly just has to be dry, like the dried and the shucky beans, and then the only challenge is to keep the bugs out. And of course, anything else that you grew and harvested and processed and stored is appropriate for winter too. Our wealth of July blueberries is being much enjoyed in our oatmeal, on our pancakes, and in cobblers and pies. We dried them and froze them. We dried a lot of fruit. And don't forget our stash of jam! All sorts of other things can be successfully stored fresh (unprocessed) too -- primarily other root veggies like carrots and turnips, but even fruit like apples and maybe pears.

If you don't grow and store these things yourself, they are still what ought to be eaten in the winter. They are healthy, whole, local, and delicious.

But also remember that the occasional banana won't kill you or the planet.

For comrades and lovers

Click link in title
We are feeding square bale hay this winter. We are feeding other people’s waste hay and I am thankful for it. We store it on pallets and under tarps near one corner of the field. We feed it by taking a bale out, throwing it over the fence, then breaking it open and distributing it in at least four piles at least 20 feet apart so all the various animals can eat in relative peace. Although everyone except the horse plays musical piles. The horse stands there and eats until he is through.
If you know animals though, you know they don’t actually eat every scrap of hay (well, unless they are starving, and even then there is some waste especially when feeding outdoors). So we feed it in different locations every day. By the end of the winter, this will provide a good mulch for the whole field and will prevent a build-up of hay (and a worn out by hooves muddy mess) in one spot.

No surprise, all the easy places have been fed in already, so we are walking the hay further and further afield. No surprise, the animals all know what we are doing when we make our way to the hay, and wait for us patiently to throw it over the fence to them. That is the end of their patience. They are ready to eat and so tear into the bale.

When I am throwing the hay, I cross the fence and pick up the bale and start walking up the hill. The cow generally just gets out of the way and follows, but the queen nanny goat gets directly in front of me but generally sideways to me and tries to continue eating.

And here is what I do: I lift the bale a bit and set it on her back. Then I do my best to follow her. She carries it for me while I balance it on her back, and when we get close to a good spot, I drop it and she resumes eating.

This, I will tell you, is much easier than carrying the bale up the hill by myself while trying to push her out of the way or maneuver around her. It is a bit of a challenge, and I have to jog up the hill to keep up with her, but it is kinda fun too. At least it nearly always makes me laugh.

That little goat is my own labor saving device.

Sacred Sights

First of all, my
STUDIES OF DONKEY.

And the donkey himself. The equines got their feet done today so he had his halter on.
The cow. If I'd had someone with me to take the photo, I would have had one with the two of us lying there together. She's still full of piss and vinegar but she's also that docile too. Turned a lot like me I think.
The horse.
And the gang eating hay near sunset.

Hope ya'll had a Happy Yule, a Merry Christmas, and are looking forward to 2009. I think it shall be a watershed year.

Morning Chores in Snow

This is the first time in my memory that we’ve had significant snow in November. And it is significant. We woke up to several inches and it was still snowing.

I went to milk after fortifying myself with coffee and donning multiple layers for warmth. Visibility was maybe 100 feet, up to 200 sometimes. Then the wind would blow and the snow on the trees, and especially on the pines, would say “Geronimo!” and the air would look like a fog.

I always milk first and feed the horse second, but both things happen in the same little shed and most usually the horse is waiting in the shed even before I milk and I bark “Back!” to him and used to he backed out (he is trained to voice commands) but now he turns around to get out and the shed is just barely big enough for him to manage to turn himself around in. But he comes out and he and donkey wait just outside the shed while I milk and the cow eats.

Milking is a meditation, really. My consciousness becomes a speck while my body continues to sit on the stool and my hands continue to squeeze the milk into the bucket and I am not my body and I am not separate from the cow or from the bucket. This morning I was in such a state when the speck of consciousness became aware that something was eating my hat! The horse was a bit impatient maybe, or maybe he just thought the giant pompom on my hat was funny. My consciousness was immediately aware of my body being on a stool stuck between a 700# cow and an 1800# horse who pretend they don’t particularly like each other. “Back!” I said, and he took a step or two back and I laughed at him and at the beauty of the morning.

Then I took the milk to the house when a wind came and blinded me under the trees and I just stood there while white came down all around me and into the collar of my coat. The children were already sledding, laughing. I took the feed back down to the horse, gave the donkey his obligatory handful, and waited while the horse eats. Donkey took his usual aromatherapy from the empty bucket while I scratched his withers and admired his snowy, spiky mane and the curls on his thick coat. I turned to check the horse over and found a place that needed my attention, just an itchy spot on the side of his hock, and while I was bent over attending to this I felt something quite heavy come up against my behind. It was donkey’s behind. After his withers get scratched, he has a spot on his rump that is his real favorite spot and he can be quite insistent that I attend to it. While I did this, the goats came up waiting to clean up any grain the horse may drop. They were fluffed out to twice their real size.

When the horse was finished I went to get a bale of hay and throw it to them in piles in the field, and then I found my way back to the house and to a breakfast of eggs and toast by the fire.