Monday, May 30, 2011

Summer loving (Not)

Will any son of Adam or daughter of Eve please kill the White Witch already?  We are almost into June and we have had only one day over 70 degrees.  Yesterday, we spied a formation of geese who I am sure were headed south for the winter.  Our garden is looking pretty sorry notwithstanding the pig manure, weekend spent rototiller and the futile efforts to start seedlings in our basement beginning in February.

The lettuce that we sowed directly into the ground appear to be a bonsai variety.  Will we be able to develop a niche market of miniature and stunted vegetables?  If you like baby vegetables, you'll love our line of The Emperor's New Vegetables.
Lame lettuce over two months old
Our pasture appears to be doing well.  Our three lambs, Lovey, Ginger and Gary, are enjoying the spring grass but it alone is too rich for them.  They have had serious diarrhea which we cured by feeding them alfalfa.  At $15 a bale, raising sheep has not turned out as inexpensive as we had hoped.  The sheep were supposed to eat our grass so we did not have to mow it.  Turns out, the sheep are only interested in certain sections of the pasture.  The pasture looks uneven with patches of flowering grass in some spots and other areas that are closely cropped.  If the sheep do not do a better job of subsisting solely on grass and grounds keeping, we will be forced to eat them in the fall.
All lambs surveyed preferred to eat store bought alfalfa over free grass.
Freeloaders

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Chicken Chivalry is Dead

I'm struggling with (not) imposing human morality on the chickens.  I do not like our rooster; he has no sense of chivalry.  Thomas is all of the male characters in Thelma & Louise, absent Harvey Keitel.  But boys will be boys; I must forgive him his Henry VIII ways.  Of course, the other boys we beheaded (perhaps from Tudor inspiration?) and ate for dinner.

Then came the attack.

Thomas can be a real cock.
Four of our hens are a few weeks younger than the rest.  As Sleeping Beauty was endowed by the good fairies with grace, charm, intelligence, beauty and kindness, so have these hens been endowed.  They are lovely of face and feather, kind to one another, never peck or belittle another bird and, in sum, are the essence of sweet, modest, maidenly chicken-ness.  While all the hens are delightful, these four in particular have a certain grace rare among even their chicken sisters.  Last Friday, Thomas, sidled up to one of these Evangelinas.  I could just see him offering her some candy, asking if she wanted to look at a puppy in his van.  Then when I turn my head, I hear a shrieking mmmmkwaaaak!  I spin my head to see Thomas running her down, she yelling "no, no, no" the whole time (or so I interpreted) Thomas flew up on top of her, pinned her down by the head and took advantage.  This was a completely nonconsensual act!  While normally opposed to capital punishment, it may be in order for Thomas.  At a minimum, I'm Martin Luthering  Antioch's rules for appropriate dating behavior on the coop door.  Antioch's Sexual Offense Policy

By the way, still no eggs.

"Pigs, they tend to wiggle while they walk." -Pavement

It was a snowy day in February when we acquired our two little piggies.  We drove all the way to the Key Peninsula to retrieve them.  The family that bred them had the parents on site along with several other piglets and sows from the previous year.  The boar must have been 700 pounds and the mama sow not far behind that.  They were the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

The piglets were kept apart from the adult pigs.  There were three red and two pinks.  The lady who bred the pigs got into the pen with her son in order to try to catch the pigs.  The pen was filled with muck and the smell of poop was powerful.  I thought to myself, "How could these people have such a dirty and dung filled pen?  It might be alright for other people's pigs to live that way but not mine."  Boy was I wrong about that.

The mother and son cornered a piglet but it escaped.  At one point, the son dove for the pig linebacker style, landing violently in the mud.  Eventually, the pigs were caught and dropped into a dog carrier where they proceed to squeal bloody murder the entire hour ride home.  By the time we released them into their pen, they had crapped themselves big time and laying in their filth.

This was our introduction to pig rearing.

Eventually, we grew to love Lenny and Squiggy.  We fed them all of our kitchen scraps including chicken bones and rancid coconut milk.  We rotated their pen every week or so and the pigs rooted up our vegetable patch and manured it.  They saved us a lot of work breaking up the sod.  Not only that, the plants grown in the former pen areas are markedly bigger than those grown in non-pigged areas.



It has been amazing to see how these beasts have grown.  They were twenty-five pounds when we got them and by the time they are slaughtered, they should be well over two-hundred.  Lenny is longer and the boss pig but Squiggy is wider and stockier.  I know that you shouldn't have a favorite pig but Squiggy is by far the better pig.  He has a kind disposition that is quite charming.  It's not that I have serious animus towards Lenny, it's just that Lenny, has on occasion tried to mount Squiggy, who happens to be his brother.
Lenny, would be pig f-er.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Schlepping

I once spent a summer in Berkeley, California landscaping and doing menial construction work.  The man who owned the properties had various piles of detritus that requirred relocation.  At one point, I recall that we moved the same pile from spot A to spot B than later back to spot A.   At the time, I was chafted at his lack of poor organization.  Now I find to my chagrin doing the same on our farm.

Owning a small farm means lots of schlepping.  Schlepping of animals and their feed and water; schlepping of bedding and moving of waste into compost.  When you think about it - most of our day to day activities involve schleping whether it is farm related or otherwise. 

Firewood, it doesn't grow on trees.
Speaking of schlepping, today, I moved a pile of hemlock branches that was sitting on the edge of the garden. I will buck this pile (and the other two piles located randomly about) into useable pieces when I can find a moment.

Schlepping carries a negative connotation.  I truly enjoy working on the farm it so maybe I should rephrase.  Sometimes life is about the journey itself, indeed, it is always worth stopping to smell the roses.
Note: Tractor is life-size.  These are jurassic roses over 50' tall.

My next posting will be comprised entirely of trite and overwrought cliches.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Welcome to our blog.

We are a family of four who recently moved to our dream property.  The house was built in 1937.  It has its faults, such as a lack of insulation, knob and tube wiring, galvanized plumbing and really poor well water.  Despite these warts, what drew us was the fact that the house is the two and half open acres abutting a nature reserve, which is a rarity in my humble opinion.  More importantly, we get full sunlight during the three days the sun is out a year in the Pacific Northwest.

Our goal in moving was to produce as much of our own food as possible.  I admit it's pretty trendy these days, kinda like blogging.  The new ethos of the suburban middle class is trending toward self-sufficiency with young couples trying their hand at farming influenced by the horrors associated with factory meat raising, rising food costs and a desire to feed our children with naturally raised food.  It all sounds pretty groovy but we are not proselytizing.  For our family, smallholding is a welcome distraction from the rigors of our jobs and provides us with a source of ingredients for our other passion of eating well.

This blog serves as our diary for all of the adventures and misadventures in super-small time farming.  There will be at least two contributors, one of us an excellent writer the other not so much.