Girls Gone Hillbilly

Alecto is at my house! We stayed up and drank sake last night! We're going milking now!

all the best bloggers come here!

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.

milking from the POV of a stranger and the story of Anastasia

We entertained unexpected guests last week, unexpected to me at least. Let us just say that the newness of their eyes looking upon our doings gave me the gift of some fresh perspective.

We'd been sitting in the kitchen for some time, sharing some food and tea. The boys were in the living room immersed in their common interest and the rest of us were just trying to pass the time politely if a little stiffly. But finally it came time to milk. There is no getting past that.

"Ok, let's milk," I said to the gang. "You all come on and watch," I encouraged her and her daughter. And then I saw with what fluency we did so. Four of us go milking together, and each of us has a job, and each of us knows what the other jobs are and how to fill in if need be. We check what is going on with each other in undetectable ways, silently, with looks or code words or body language. I go in the field to get the cows and the other people are posted where they will be needed. Then everything moves over to the milking stand. And then we milk.

The most interesting thing about milking is the conversations we can have. Mostly it is silence; everyone sort of in his or her own thoughts, but we'll also talk about stuff. I couldn't really tell you what, but I do know it is this sort of time when things really get shared, when the temperature gets taken, when you have some real idea of what is really going on inside others. Real intimacy. It is quantity time plus having constructive endeavors wherein we rely upon each other.

And then, rather suddenly, milking is over and one child takes the milk and the rest of us fall into places for putting the animals up for the night, and the milk disappears into the house and the animals are put up and given hay and water, and that flows into getting the goats and feeding the horse, and then the milking stuff gets washed.

My point is, I guess, that my kids know how to do all this stuff, and that we also know how to work together to get it done, and that such knowledge is an unusual, even a remarkable thing. And yet even this visitor, who watched us do this, quizzed us about the whole homeschooling thing.

It isn't that I mind. The quizzings don't, by and large, come from a place of suspicion but of honest curiosity. And honest concern too when people find out we don't do formal music or algebra or anything else. What about holes? The conventionally schooling don't always know to put it in so few words, but almost always one of their concerns (once you get past socialization) is what if they (our kids) don't learn all the stuff everyone else does.

Of course, my first external, verbalized response to that is that everyone else doesn't learn it either! I mean, really, how many people do you know who don't know who Odysseus is, or where Japan is, or how to solve a quadratic equation? I was surprised at how many people I knew who didn't know these things, people who have been to college or sent kids to college.

My first internal, never verbalized, response is, 'Did you notice that your kid doesn't know how to milk a cow? Now that's a hole?' But I don't say that, of course. I'm comfortable that our kids could raise a garden, care for animals, manage to get food from both those things, build a passable shelter, and stay warm in the winter without much infrastructure, if it came to that. May it never come to that.

But this time, this time when asked about holes, I had a story to tell. The kids recently saw a nondescript animated version of the story of Anastasia. It wasn't well done in any sense of the word. And yet.

And yet it started a discussion that, yes, indeed, there had been a real Anastasia, and when I was a child myself, there were still old women in the world claiming to have been her. It led to discussions of Russian history, intermarriage in the Courts, and hemophilia. And so many other things (how did people live, what views did they have of their world, why was Rasputin loved . . . and hated?).

One of the things that occurs to me when I think about this is how our children gain perspective with facts. What I remember most about school, all school, was regurgitating facts for tests without having any real perspective about it or what it all meant. And I had very involved parents. But I had, basically, no perspective and I rather hope that my kids do.

And since perspective is the place where you look from, I'm thinking the place of milking and gardening provides a really useful view.

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!"

Shangri-La

This is where I live. This is opposed to some things that are going on around me that I find very difficult. Still, it doesn’t change where I live.

First, of course, there is the garden because the garden is always first.


This selection of beans made up into 13 quarts canned.


This is purslane. That bowl is a really really large bowl and that is just a couple plants of purslane filling it up. As much as we’ve transplanted it out of the corn field, these were still growing there.

And that is certainly not all that is growing in and coming out of the garden but it is what I have recent photos of.

We actually still have blueberries from last year’s stash but they aren’t loose marbles anymore and loose marbles of blueberries are much easier to eat on pancakes and the like so we finally went over to Mrs. Grullo’s to pick some more. Besides, I couldn’t go a year without going over the mountain to see her delightful self. So we put in four gallons of blueberries and headed to Shangri-La. In Shangri-La there are first of all spirits, and second of all apples. Not quite ripe yet (at least not the apples) but soon. I got a big bag of cooking apples the other day, and another half a bag joined them today.




Then there are elderberries. Again, not quite ripe. Yet.

There was also a big stand of spearmint that we harvested a good amount of. Younger son said, “Hey, that smells like tea!” “Hey,” we said, “it is! Pick a bag full and we’ll have tea this winter!” Then there is the pond. We did not take any fish today but they are there.

On the way back out we found a stand of bergamot. And we noted that this would be another place to come check out the blackberries although of course their time is past for this year.


Abundance. Paradise. It isn’t a neat and tidy thing.

back in the garden

Baby pickles are so cute, and it only takes them a day or maybe two to be ready to eat. Also, cucumber hunting is one of my favorite garden pursuits.

sweet corn and sweet peppers

Peas. Snap peas. Oregon sugar snaps I think. And yes, that is a poke plant in there too.

The spinach and lettuce may be gone but the chard is coming on strong.

A patch of purslane, mostly transplanted from the rectangle garden into this bed. We have bought purslane seeds before but the wild grows better. We just watch out when hoeing and transplant some of it out. Delicious raw or cooked and the highest green vegetable source of Omega 3's.

onions drying

One day's harvest of cucumbers of eating size, and the first crook neck. We had one volunteer plant each of crook neck, patty pan, and an Italian summer squash (has a long goose neck) and they are bearing now.

And the hopefully first musk melon. It would seem to be a very good year for melons.

Many days, probably actually most days, we spend some family time in the garden. Everyone can work now so a lot can get done in a short time as long as there is some organization. So the garden looks better and may well be more productive than ever.

We're still working in the rectangle garden. The potatoes were hoed and hilled and are just now blooming. The corn is knee high which is exactly where it needs to be, but most of the corn needs to be hoed and hilled. We have a few good rows of October beans in there, and some space still fallow too.

Another Cat's Tale

He left around seven years ago. That was the year I started mowing for a neighbor and maybe he followed me down there or maybe he wandered on his own, I don't know. What I remember is that periodically that year she told me to come get my cat. She may have begun calling me the previous year and telling me that, I don't know, or the winter before at least. Maybe that's even why I began mowing for her, I don't quite remember how that got started exactly.

I told her to quit feeding my cat and he would come home. I went to mow one day and she came out fussing that the cat that she called Midnight (he has a different name at our house) was still about. In fact he was standing on her porch in front of a big bowl of spaghetti she'd sat out for him. "He's not gonna come home if you feed him like that," I said.

Not that I minded so much. We have plenty of cats. And he'd just shown up, the way a lot of them do. Husband came home one day with him, having found him somewhere. He looked just like a cat we'd petted at a park in town recently and we named him the same thing we'd called that cat. (If I were Alecto, I would tell you about all the memories and feelings and (non-traumatic but still a bit bitter) flashbacks of that day in the park . . . but you know, the cat is more important.) I mean, he was a very good, even very exceptional cat, but who could blame him for going to the lasagna meals instead of more meager scraps.

All these years, I've known he was still down there. I knew that at some point they started keeping him inside most of the time, but he was still let out at least sometimes and I would see him, hunting. For some years he would visit us in the garden -- he could hear when we were there from her house -- but eventually he stopped visiting. And then, even if I saw him out, he would actively avoid me and just go home. I appreciated his caution. He had a good thing going and he didn't want to mess it up.

We've never been all that close with the neighbors. We know them all, but we don't break bread together. I think it is a good idea to keep most everything at arms length anyway, and all the more so with her.

Those neighbors recently moved away. I'll spare you the details there. We knew about the situation because well, that's how it is. People know stuff, especially bad stuff. They took their dog. They didn't take the cat. They didn't call to say they weren't taking the cat I suppose because then they would have had to explain why they were moving. They didn't even call to tell me to come get my damn cat the way she used to when she was feeding it, and now it would have no one to feed it. Her embarrassment was bigger than her concern for the cat, but you know, I guess I understand that too. Especially because I'd look after the cat anyway and maybe she knew that about me.

After they'd gone, I saw him around so I knew he was there. The first time I called to him, he ran back to his old home. He wasn't fat anymore but he wasn't skinny. The guy across the road with the dogs said he came over there and ate regularly. I knew eventually he'd get lonely.

And sure enough, the whole gang of us were in the garden one evening and MEOW! I mean, really loud and long MEOW! Loud, long, repeated MEOW. We meowed back and at first we were just wondering which of our cats it was who'd decided to come to the garden. The big grey tabby often hunts in front and meets us in the garden to get petted? Some of them just like to come to flop. But this continued and before long the youngest child went off to see who this was. He came back reporting that it looked like one of our other cats but wasn't fuzzy. All the rest of us said his name and all went off to claim him.

He was a bit stand-offish at first. Hesitant. Unsure. His rug had been pulled out from under him but he could feel the love. It was the other cats he was much less sure about. But he seems to have decided that he can put up with us. All of us.

Except for a few things. Like yesterday we killed some long overdue roosters. The other cats are used to this routine -- they lick the blood and run off with the heads and know the offal will be put off in the woods for them. On the way back to the house with the now empty offal bowl, husband ran into this new old cat and offered him the bowl to lick. He sniffed this rather stinky offering and looked at husband and almost clearly said, "You've got to be kidding. Where's the lasagna?"

A little later, he did learn to slurp from a stream of milk squirted directly from the cow to his head. That might make up for the lack of lasagna and plethora of cats he must put up with in his new old home.

the first cat's tale

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)