State of the Farm, Late Spring 2017

Nettles in the weeds

The long, horrible, wet "spring" of 2017 is finally giving way to some warmer and drier weather. I read in the paper that this past wet season (the period of time between October 1st and May 1st) has broken the all-time record for precipitation in western Washington - a record set just last year. Even with my week long break to Arizona, back at the beginning of April, I was going slowly crazy from sun deprivation and from the constant rain. I hate the mud, and still dealing with it in May has been dispiriting. 

More important than my mood, however, is that fact we haven't been able to get much work done around the place. Anything that needs dry weather - setting new fence posts in cement, planting trees, tilling the garden - has had to wait. Then when the weather is good, we all feel a sudden urgency to do everything at once. Luckily, I have found a new farm hand. He comes recommended by a neighbor farmer, and he lives very nearby. Although only 17, he has proved a hard worker and can handle a shovel with the best of them. Hereinafter referred to as "Farmboy." Today he planted three trees and made a temporary pen for the cow. 

The other day I walked the pasture and was disappointed with the state of it. In a normal year, the grass ought to be well over knee high by now. But what with the cool weather, the lack of lumens, and the number of animals on it, the back pasture's grass is only ankle height. This is despite the fact that I kept the cow and the pony in the sacrifice area for much longer than usual. We went through twice the normal amount of hay last year, due to that and due to the multiple prolonged cold spells and feet of snow. I have been moving the animals around, trying to maximize use of all the grass growing areas one the property. I bring the goats out into the front yard to graze anytime I am home and it isn't raining, but that's only half an hour here and there, and I don't think it takes much pressure off the pasture. The pony and the cow have been in the orchard for a couple of weeks, which was great until I noticed that the cow is eating the smaller trees. I didn't want to put the cow back into the main pasture with the goats both because of the grass situation and because she has become a terrible bully since her horns grew and she has actually injured one of my goats. Have I mentioned that I hate cows? 

There is one area where the grass is doing well - a boggy area about 60 x 200 feet behind the blackberries and adjacent to the small pasture. We have never made use of this area because it is wet, and also because there is a lot of debris and metal and concrete pieces in the ground left over from when the previous owners demolished their dairy barn. The grass growing there is lush, bright green, and shoulder height - but it is Canary grass. Canary grass is a non-native species that flourishes in our cool, wet climate. It has mixed reputation - most people (and certainly the noxious weed board) consider it an invasive nuisance that crowds out better forage species. Canary grass hay is the lowest, cheapest variety of hay, and lots of people won't use its at all. Other people, however, especially people with low,wet pastures, actually plant Canary grass on purpose. In general, the literature tends to say that it is tolerable forage, although most other species of pasture grass are preferable, and most animals will ignore it if better forage is available. 

Myself, I wouldn't buy any hay that had much Canary grass in it, no matter how cheap. I will, however, try to encourage my animals to eat it when it is abundant and other forage is not. To that end, I had Farmboy use T-posts and cattle panels to make an enclosure 32x32 feet. That will keep the cow busy for a few days and when she runs out we can just pound two more posts and move the cattle panels to close in another, similarly sized area. This will keep the cow fed and away from my goats. For a little while. 

The trees that Farmboy planted today were two lovely little Asian pear trees that Homero gave me for mother's day, and last year's Christmas tree, which has been sitting in it's pot on the porch since New Year's. I am not very fond of Asian pears for eating, myself, but both Homero and the girls love them, and I like them because they can be pressed for cider like apples (and unlike European pears). 

Other new developments: we bought six turkey chicks from a neighbor farmer, and Haku immediately killed two of them so now we have four turkey chicks. We also bought six golden sex-link pullets from another local farmer who said she just got over-enthusiastic at the farm store and realized, after raising them for a few weeks, that she didn't actually need thirty of them. It's nice to find pullets instead of chicks, that doesn't happen too often. Now we need to make repairs to the chicken coop. 

I'm not putting in a garden this year, expect for a handful of snap peas. It was too cold and wet to plant anything until last week, anyway. 

Overall, things are fairly copacetic around here. The baby goats are growing like weeds. I have plenty of milk and cheese season is in full swing. It's a gorgeous sunny afternoon and I think I will grab a book and go let the goats out. 

Petrichor (Scent and Weakness)

They say it is finally going to rain this weekend. Actually, they said the rain would start last night - and a little bit of rain did fall; I'm not saying it didn't. The porch was wet this morning when I woke up, but there weren't any puddles.

There was just enough rain to make the earth send up a heavenly smell.  Petrichor, I hear that smell is called, the smell of rain after a prolonged dry spell, and there is no other smell like it. Once, when my children were small, we were driving across southeastern Washington to my cousin's wedding in Idaho. We were in amongst great green-gold hills covered in tall grass, with hardly a tree in sight. It was midsummer, and there had been no rain for weeks. But now, in the early evening, about an hour before sunset, a great circular blue-black cloud covered a full quadrant of the sky; whirling, dark and angry like a bruise. It was so amazing we stopped to take pictures of it. Then we got back in the car and tried to outrun it, for it looked fearsome.

We didn't outrun it: there was a short, fierce burst of hard warm rain, maybe fifteen minutes, and then it stopped and the sky cleared in time for sunset. The sunset was beautiful, pink and orange on the golden-green hills, and so we stopped at an overlook to get out of the car and watch the sun go down. When we opened the car door, we stepped out into a world of scent such as I have never even imagined. We were in the middle of thousands of acres of grasslands, which had just been drenched with the first rain in ages. It was as if the whole earth opened her lungs and exhaled sweet, blessed relief in our faces. I almost swooned with the beauty of that smell. If, on the day I die, I am granted a foretaste of paradise, it will be that smell that wafts me to the afterworld.

Today, my own fields gave up a similar, much fainter scent, just enough to make me smile with the memory.

If the forecast is right, it will rain much harder tonight, and probably continue through the weekend. I hope so - we certainly need the rain. All the leaves are turning early. We need it here, but much more they need rain in Eastern Washington, where the forest fires rage on unabated. This year has been unlike any other to date, with fires larger and more intense than we have seen in living memory. My  mom lost her cabin in Tonasket, and as of today I hear that some 500 primary residences have been burned, and of course three brave firefighters have lost their lives. We are all praying for rain.

Here on the farm, however, impending rain means work. A few days ago, Homero went to pick up a load of hay given to us my some good neighbors. They had baled the standing hay on their new property, only to discover that it wasn't of a quality that their horses could eat. Knowing we had goats, they offered it to us free for the collecting. We thanked them, I brought over some gratitude-cheese, and Homero collected the hay. There were two pick-up loads, each about twenty-five or twenty-eight bales. The first fit into our small barn, but the second had nowhere to go, so it stayed on the back of the truck until today, when the imminent rain made it important to get it under cover of one kind or another.

I suggested putting the hay in the field shelter. It sits in the sacrifice area and normally the ponies use it as shelter, but right now the ponies are in the main field with the goats. If we use that hay first, I reasoned, we might use it up before we have to move the ponies into the sacrifice area in November. Besides, there's nowhere else to put it.

One problem is that the field shelter is fairly rudimentary and has a dirt floor, with a small gap running around the perimeter. The bottom layer of hay would get wet if we put it on the ground. If we had four or five pallets, we could make a platform to keep the hay off the ground, but we don't. What we did have, it occurred to me, it a big old pile of hog-fuel, left by my brother-in-law recently. He has a tree-service company and once in a while, if he happens to have a job nearby that leaves him with a load of chips, he will come by and dump it, much to our benefit. I told Homero I thought that if we spread a four-inch layer of hog fuel down first, the hay would probably stay pretty dry.

So Homero started up his new Case loader  (Homero's New Toy (the Craigslist Chronicles)) and I ran for the wheelbarrow. He shoveled hog fuel over the fence into the wheelbarrow, and I trundled it over into the field shelter and dumped it. We repeated this four or five times, and then I kicked it all around a bit and called it good. Homero drove the truck over to the fence line with the hay on it. I thought climbing up onto the back of the truck and tossing bales over the fence would probably be easier than dragging those bales into the field shelter and stacking them, so I told Homero that I'd throw and he'd drag.

"I don't want you to slip," he said. "I'll toss them."

"I'm not going to slip," I said. "What are you talking about?"

"Okay," he said. "Go ahead."

I know I've alluded, several times in the past, to the fact that I am a gimp. Specifically, I have an inherited connective tissue disorder (Ehler's-Danlose syndrome) that leaves me prone to sprains, dislocations, and minor injuries of all sorts. For most of my life, I wasn't aware of this, and simply assumed I was accident-prone and/or ridiculously clumsy. Many people with EDS have it much worse than I do - my specific sitiuation is quite minor compared to what it could be, and I'm grateful for that. However, it is not negligible. Many of my joints are loose and cannot handle the kind of use that I feel they ought to be able to handle.

In this particular case, I wanted to stand on top of a fairly wobbly pile of hay bales, pick them up one by one (they weigh approximately forty to fifty pounds each) and heave them horizontally over a five foot fence. The first time I tried to do this, the bale of hay fell short of the fence, down into the gap between the truck and the fence. I swore. Homero looked at me with a kind of exasperated patience. The next three or four bales went over the fence and Homero picked them up and moved them into the field shelter. Bales five and six fell into the gap again. I swore again.

"Amor," he said, "why don't you let me get this?"

"I want to help," I said angrily, and tried to throw another bale. It fell short.

"Get down from there," he said, "I'm afraid you're going to fall."

"Okay, we can switch," I said. On that last throw, I had felt my knee slip out of position with an ominous pop. It slipped right back in, but on other occasions it has come completely dislocated and if that happened and Homero had to take me to the emergency room, not only would he be proved right but the hay would get wet, too.

We switched places and Homero started tossing bales easily and gracefully over the fence. One by one, I slipped my girly little soft marshmallow hands under the orange twine and lugged them into the field shelter. This part wasn't easy, either. The bales were heavy and spiky, and the twine dug into my palms. It must have looked terribly awkward. I must have looked pathetic, because Homero shortly called out to me.

"Amor, please let me do this by myself."

"I want to help!" I yelled again, sweaty and angry and frustrated with my stupid, fat, weak, defective body.

"Amor, please." he said. "You are wonderful in the kitchen, you are a great cook. This, I can do."

"A good COOK?" I was aghast.

"Yes amor, and you make cheese. I can't make cheese."

"Seriously?"

"Si, amor. Why don't you go in the house and bring me a beer. Please?"

So this is what it has come to. The little Mujercita is sent into the house to fetch beer while her husband does the real work. I came back with two beers and leaned on the fence and watched Homero carry the bales - one handed! - into the field shelter and stack them. I tried to look on the bright side.

"That was a good idea I had, to spread the hog fuel in the shelter, huh?" I said.

"Yes," Homero answered, "it was."

Earlier in the day, Homero had trimmed the goat's hooves. His hands are so much stronger than mine, he can close the shears through the horniest, toughest hoof wall, which I can't do. But, I reflected, I was the one who taught him how to trim; that the plantar surface has to be even and flat; that you have to trim the bulb of the heel, that you can cut right down until there's no gap, even if you have to cut way up the sides and it looks scary.

Homero is a good milker, but he wouldn't know if one of the does were in the early stages of mastitis. I doubt he would feel the slight warmth, that he would notice the hesitant flow, or feel the tiny flakes in the milk and tiny bumps in the udder. He doesn't know what they need in terms of nutrition, what minerals to buy or how much grain to give. He doesn't know what to do - or might not notice - if they develop diarrhea. He doesn't know the signs of parasites or how to treat them.

I'm the one who can walk the pastures and evaluate the health of them - I know the names of all the weeds and what each one signifies about the health of the earth beneath. I know what each one is good for; I know that Tansy is a vermifuge in moderation but poison in excess. I know the goats eat thistles, but only when they are in bud, as they were two weeks ago. I know that blackberry will increase their milk supply, and that cherry and plum leaves are nutritious in all seasons but this one - the dangerous season of wilt, when the leaves wither but before they are completely dry. Only now are they poisonous.

And Homero is right; I do know how to make cheese. Also I know how to make lacto-fermented pickles and sauerkraut and kim chee.  I can make applesauce and jam and dilly-beans. I AM a good cook and I not only that but I have a good working knowledge of nutrition and what my children need to grow and be healthy. I can dry herbs, and I can make them into teas for various ailments. I know how to treat stomach aches and tooth aches and even heart aches. I may not remember everything from my nursing days but I know when a child needs to go to the emergency room and when it can wait until the clinic opens on monday.

I can read stories out loud and do all the voices. I know dozens of lullabies. I am a first-class kisser of boo-boos, even if my kids are too old now for boo-boos. I know how to lay down a fretful child and give her a good dream to go to sleep on, a dream of riding ponies across the wild hills or a dream of swimming with blue dolphins in warm Caribbean waters. When my daughters come to me with womanly problems I will have womanly answers for them, or at least I can have womanly conversations, if there are no answers. I have over the decades tended a small circle of woman-friends who will be aunties and confidants to them; teachers and secret-keepers and surrogate mothers, as I will be to their daughters.

So my muscles aren't what they should be. My body isn't what it should be. My heart is what it should be, mostly. My family is what it should be, mostly. My soul is what it should be, mostly. This place and this time; here, now; all is as it should be. Praise be.

State of the Farm Summer Solstice (Drought 2015)

There are still almost two weeks until solstice, but with the weather we've been having, it feels very much like summer. In fact, it feels like midsummer - late July or even early August. It is as though the calendar were turned ahead a month.

The blackberry blossoms opened two weeks ago; now they are nearing the end of bloom time and there are hard little green berries on the terminal buds. White clover is in full bloom, and a few red clover blossoms are opening here and there. Full-summer flowers like oxeye daisy, lupine, and tansy are starting to bloom.

Record breaking heat - high eighties - for several days in a row has brought on the berries early. Strawberry season is in full swing and the commercial raspberries will open for U-pick in another week or so. Lack of rain combined with high temperatures has made the berries smaller than usual, but with an unusually concentrated sweetness.

Drought is a major concern this year - the winter was much warmer than usual and snowpack in the north cascades is one-third normal or less. When I look across the valley to the north at the Canadian Cascades, I see deep blue peaks with only flecks of white here and there - which is how the mountains typically look in September. The grass is already starting to dry up, and all of the neighbors are haying. This year I saw people haying in May, which I have never seen before.
We have only bought one truckload so far - 25 bales - but I would like to buy more than usual at early-season prices because I think we will be feeding hay very early this year as the grass disappears.

Though there will be fewer animals to feed over the winter this year. The cow is nearing the end of days. We will be scheduling a butcher date for early fall. I think she is about as big as she is going to get. We have started feeding her alfalfa pellets and bread from there Gleaner's Pantry in hopes of fattening hear up a bit more. I am frankly shocked at how much grass one stunted dairy calf can eat. The big pasture looks terribly skimpy, because the cow has been vacuuming up all the grass all by herself. In years past, I have had the same number of goats plus two ponies on this pasture and it was more lush. This year, the ponies have stayed in the sacrifice area and we stake them out to graze in the front yard. As far as I can tell, one dairy cow equals two ponies and then some. I only hope she tastes good. People who know have told me that Jerseys make good eating, but not to be alarmed at the yellow fat. 

Today I boosted Paloma up into the hayloft to look for eggs. She found a nest with twenty-two eggs in it. We floated them in the stock tank and they all sank, so it's time to make some quiches and freeze them. And egg salad for sandwiches for the last week of school lunches. And maybe some goat-milk ice cream for these hot days. 

Ordinarily, I don't put Demeter on the alter until midsummer (Lammas), but the grass heads are turning golden and my shoulders are all sunburnt and the tomatoes are in flower and the roses are in bloom. It seemed churlish to stick to an artificial calendar rather than honor the actual fact of the season which has clearly arrived. And it may be a brief season this year, so there's no sense in wasting time. Welcome, generous lady! Welcome, abundance! Welcome, Summer!

No More Hay

We are out of hay. We still have a need for hay - it will be another month before it dries out enough that I can put the animals out on the pasture. At least. This year I tried to keep the heavy hooves off the pasture all winter long - the horses went into the sacrifice area in late October or early November and they haven't been out since (except for a few sunny winter days that I brought them out onto the front lawn). Since we were in Mexico last year and the horses were boarded out, the pasture got a nice little rest. There were only three goats on 2.5 acres - well within the carrying capacity of the land. I wanted to extend that rest and generally start treating my pasture better.

My husband kind of messed up my pasture plans by insisting on a cow against my better judgement (Imaginary Cows). A calf is not as heavy as a horse, but a good deal heavier than a goat, and plenty heavy enough to damage wet pasture. Even so, keeping the two horses off the pasture all winter ought to go a long way towards resting the land.

But it also means we use more hay. Even in the dead of winter, around here there is always green grass to be found, except for a few weeks when the ground is actually frozen hard. Animals out on the pasture will graze. In the sacrifice area, we have to feed 100% hay all winter long, and it adds up.

The best time to buy hay, of course, is during haying time. If you are willing and able to jump in your truck and go pick up bales right behind the baler, you can often get first cut local hay for as low as $3 a bale. Better quality for $4. But this year we had no truck during haying season. An elderly farmer friend of ours saved some twenty five bales for me at cutting time prices until I could find a vehicle, but he is no longer able to help toss hay, being something over 77 years old. My husband was gone (for some reason, I can't remember why now) and I had to do it myself. Now, a healthy 40 year old woman ought to be able to toss 25 bales of hay and then stack them in her own barn without too much trouble. Each bale weighed between forty and fifty pounds. It's hard work, but it ought to be doable.

I, however, am a gimp. At that time, I had very recently blown my anterior cruciate ligament (collateral ligament?) and was barely able to walk. Rowan was pressed into service and between the two of us we managed to collect, transport, and stack the hay but it was one big bitch to do it. I took a lot of ibuprofen that night. That twenty-five bales had to feed two horses and four goats - three of them pregnant. It lasted until early January, if I remember right. About three months.

When we were nearly out of hay, I searched Craigslist and found a source of local, well-priced hay. Sadly, a small local dairy is going out of business and selling off the barn full of hay - having already sold off the calves. Homero and I went out and brought back another twenty bales. We figured that if twenty-five bales had lasted us three months, another twenty ought to last the rest of the way until spring.

But no. As it turned out this year, we had terrible, bone-chilling cold snaps and heavy snow and ice that lasted for weeks. I just read that this february is either the coldest on record in Bellingham or the fourth coldest, depending on how you measure (average daily lows or average daily highs). Also, the hay we bought - while green and good smelling - was for some reason very light. Each bale only weighed in the neighborhood of thirty pounds. I guess it was quite a bit dryer than the hay we bought earlier in the season. The animals went through it at an amazing speed - and today, we are out.

Forty-five bales in nearly five months isn't really so bad. It's only a little over two bales a week. And a total of $250. That does not, of course, amount to what it costs to feed the animals over the winter. Oh no! We also have to buy grain for the pregnant goats, chicken food for the chickens, and alfalfa pellets for the poor half-paralyzed calf that can't eat regular hay very well (for an explanation, see Rosie Pony Update (And Notes on the Cow)). If I figure the same rate of feed - two bales a week - we only need another dozen bales to get us through to the time I can put the animals on pasture.

However, I am once again without a vehicle. Sigh. We have one working vehicle and Homero took it to work. Tomorrow I can get some hay. Today I'm tiding them over with greens from the Gleaner's Pantry and stale bread. For one day, it won't kill anybody.

Neighbors And Hay (Stacking: Not as Simple as You Thought)

It's high hay season. Hay season is somewhat late this year due to unseasonable cold and rain in June. Good weather in mid July set everyone to haying, and we laid in the year's supply and enjoyed the beautiful sights and smells of hay season (Poor Man's Hay Elevator, Hay Season Again).

I had thoughts of haying our small front pasture - the half acre that used to be lawn when the last owners took care of it (The Lawn Chronicles) but which under our policy of benign neglect had reverted to a very nice mixed-species pasture. Several of my neighbors have haying equipment, but I haven't had much luck in approaching them. On one side there is the J. family, with whom we have a long history of marginal relations, for which I take full responsibility. If anyone is so inclined, they can search the sidebar and find a rich and amusing saga of escaped chickens and badly-behaved dogs wreaking havoc on a sweet little old lady's garden. We are utterly and completely at fault for the state of affairs that makes it impossible for me to ask Mr. J. to hay our small field.

The neighbors across the highway, the K. family, have about a hundred acres and haying for them is a deadly serious affair that provides some not-inconsequential share of their income. Their equipment is very large and I doubt their tractor and rake could even turn around in our piddly little field. I'd feel ridiculous asking them.

The other neighbors I know who do their own haying are Mr. and Mrs. B., who I know from church and who I am sure I have mentioned here before as really nice people and wonderful neighbors. Mrs. B. is the lady who just recently brought me fifty pint sized canning jars - just because she likes to see members of the younger generation who still can. When I dropped by their house to thank them for the jars (with a few of those same jars filled with jam and pickles, of course), I asked if Mr. B. might be willing to let us hire him to hay our small field.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I can't. So many people ask me, and I just have to say no to everybody. If I said yes to anyone, I'd have to say yes to everyone."

"I understand," I said. "Of course."

I gave up. The small field would just have to do whatever it did. The grass grew taller, grew top-heavy with seeds, and then laid down flat after a summer downpour. I wrote a blogpost about grass. I doubt that Mrs. B. reads my blog, so it must be a coincidence that she showed up here the next day, and asked me, "is this the field you wanted hayed?"

"Well yes," I said, "but isn't it a little late? I mean, the rain laid it down flat."

"Oh that doesn't matter," she said. "The mower will cut it just the same. Mr. B. will be here in ten minutes. There isn't any trash in the way is there?"

Quickly I pulled up the extension cords that ran from Homero's shop to the house (a hard job, with the grass grown over them). Mr. B. came by and mowed the grass, and told me if the weather held he'd be back to rake and bale in a few days. "There's not much here," he said, "so don't worry either way."

The weather held - we've had a beautiful few days with nary a cloud in the sky and the mercury hovering near eighty.This afternoon, as I was sitting outside reading a magazine and watching the goats browse on the blackberries, Mr. B. came up the road and turned into the field with the baler attached to the tractor. I waved, and he waved, and he ran over the field and in twenty minutes there were seventeen lovely bales of hay sitting on the grass.

"Do you know how to stack these?" Mr. B. asked me.

"Um," I said, "probably not the right way..."

And in fact I did not. As Mr. B. showed me, there is a right way to stack hay to avoid mold. A bale of hay is a three-dimensional rectangle, and therefore has four long sides and two short ones. If you look at each of the four long sides, you will see that three of them have folded over grass, and only one of them has the cut ends of the grass showing. Stack your hay, Mr. B. told me, with that cut side up. That will allow the natural moisture in the bale to escape. Any other side up will trap the moisture inside the bale and it may rot.

There's so much to learn.

Mr. B., of course, would not accept any money for his time and trouble. I didn't expect that he would, but asking "what do we owe you?" is part of the neighborly ritual. As is the ritual response "Oh don't mention it." I can't, obviously, leave it at that. Last year Mr. B. asked to borrow our apple press, and I leant it to him rather reluctantly - but when he returned it he had serviced it and repaired a few little things that it needed. Today after he refused my offer of payment I said "well, when apple season comes around, just come and get the press whenever you like. No need to call ahead."

That doesn't feel like quite enough. I ran the numbers in my head and the hay off the field is worth approximately $100. It represents one fifth of our yearly hay expenditure. Mr. B. said it was no big deal to him, but it's a big deal to us - quite apart from the monetary value, it just gives me such a good feeling to see baled hay from my own land. I never thought I'd see that - we certainly can't invest in our own haying equipment, nor would it be worth it to do so. But just knowing that push comes to shove, we actually produce enough hay here to keep a couple of goats alive through the winter - well, that's very good to know.

Tomorrow I will put together a thank you basket for Mrs. B. She has been by recently to buy eggs so I know she could use some - a couple dozen eggs, a half-pound of cheese, a big bunch of peppermint, and maybe a jar of applesauce.

Good neighbors are worth more than gold. I have to figure out a way to be a good neighbor to them.

Hay Season Again

Our third hay season in Whatcom County. I love hay season. Fresh hay curing in the sun is my absolute favorite smell in the world - better than freshly turned earth after a rain, better than perfectly ripe strawberries, better than healthy pony. The only smell that rivals fresh hay is newborn baby-head.

I've been taking pictures of the hay in the fields around here. Here are a few of them:

Poor Man's Hay Elevator

I am so annoyed with blogger. If I didn't have three full years invested here, I would probably quit. It won't let me upload a video, which it used to do. I can't create links anymore; photos show up only as strings of text. Anyway. In lieu of a video, here is a photo of Homero using our new pulley system to get hay into the hayloft.


Our hayloft isn't very high off the ground - about 9 feet - nor very big - it only holds about thirty bales of hay - but it's still very hard to get the hay up there. In the past, Homero just threw the hay up there, but his back isn't quite what it used to be, and these particular bales are very heavy. So we needed a new option. This is what we came up with. Still pretty hard work (look at the sweat rolling down Homero's face) but at least possible.

Now we have hay for the winter. In addition to the thirty bales in the loft, there are seventy bales in the mama barn. In order to get that many in there we had to remove everything else, including the milking stand. So now I am milking in the open air, but I don't mind. It's actually nicer - the mama barn gets extremely hot in the summertime.

Hay Hay Hay (Good Neighbors)!

I have some very very good neighbors. At the church potluck the other evening, Mrs. B. asked me if we'd be needing any hay this year. I said, "we sure do! But our pickup truck is out of commission at the moment. I'll have to figure something out and let you know."

Next morning, her husband calls me and says he's got the hay all loaded up on his trailer and he and his neighbor Mr. M. can be at my place in fifteen minutes if my husband were home to help them unload. Mr. B. and Mr. M. are both retired gentlemen of an age I wouldn't like to guess at, but at least as old as my parents. They, along with Homero, unloaded and stacked seventy-two standard sized bales of very nice local grass hay in about an hour. By the end, the two gentlemen were a bit sweaty and winded, but so was Homero.

It was great to listen to them talking about their younger days. "When I was twenty, I used to do this all day long," said Mr. M. "And milk the cows before and after." Mr. B. told a story about haying with a teenage boy some time ago who complained he couldn't lift the bales high enough - when Mr. B. picked up a bale and tossed it up where it needed to go, the teenager suddenly discovered the resources to match the old man. After we finished, I poured everyone some coffee and we all sat on the hay wagon and talked for a while.

I love the people I've met through church - it's wonderful to have access to people who are real farmers, people who have been farming and ranching in this area for many decades and know just about all there is to know. There aren't a whole lot of real old farmers left around here, and in ten or twenty years there might not be any. I am so happy and feel so privileged to have met these folks, and any chance I get I discreetly pump them for stories and memories.

Not to mention, they are flat out some of the nicest people I've ever met. Last fall, Mr. M. brought me some wild ducks he had shot because he heard me talking about how much my husband loves duck. He taught me to butcher them, too. His wife is one of the warmest, most welcoming ladies at church. There are other great old farming families too - The other Mr. and Mrs. B. who live up the road and raise beef cattle, for example. My greatest hope in life is to eventually become one of them!

Grass and Raptors

The neighbors are haying their 100 acre field. It smells like heaven around here... is there a better smell than fresh hay curing in the sun?

Apparently, there is, although I can't smell it. I've never seen so many raptors in my life. Dozens of hawks, vultures, and eagles have been swooping over the field for the last few days, drawn by all the little grass creatures that met their doom when the combine ran over them. I feel sorry for the rabbits, mice and snakes, but I do love to watch the birds.

I have seen several juvenile bald eagles, which is pretty cool.

Is it High Summer Already?

How the seasons fly by when you live according to their rhythms. I can't believe it's hay season already.

We've had an unusually long stretch of warm, dry weather, and everybody is haying. I love seeing the bales out on the fields, especially the big round ones (but not the ones covered in white plastic that look like giant marshmallows). I love it when the big tractors rumble down the state highway at twelve miles an hour. I love watching the hawks and the ravens follow the hayers, scrambling for all the little animals as they run away looking for a new place to live. Most of all, I love the wonderful wonderful smell of fresh hay. 

But there's no denying haying is hard work. I was on the computer perusing craigslist at about quarter to eight this evening, when I saw an ad for local first cutting horse hay at $3 a bale off the field. That's a real good price for horse hay when you know for certain it hasn't got wet. I called the number, thinking to make an appointment for the next couple of days, but the guy said "we're out here now." They were only a half mile away, and the truck was empty, so off we went.

Thunderstorms are forecast for tonight, so these guys were working like mules to get the hay off the field and under cover. I'm sure they worked till the last light went out of the sky about fifteen minutes ago. I know we did. 

Homero managed to stuff twenty bales into the truck and we made two trips. We got it all up into the hayloft before it started to sprinkle, barely. First I had to scrape the hayloft clean of all the chicken shit and various debris that has accumulated up there. That wasn't fun. I tried and tried, but I never did find a way to keep the chickens out of the hayloft last year. Maybe I will this year.

The children sure enjoyed the whole endeavor, as did the baby goats. Nothing is as much fun to climb on as a whole big stack of hay. We're all worn out. Most likely the baby goats, too. 

 my sister suggested a caption for this picture: "you might be a redneck if..."

Goats on Parade

The goats are in the littlest pasture now (It's contrary to the worm plan, but the vet said they shouldn't be in with the ponies until Poppy is one month old. They stress her out and she'll get ulcers. Really.). There isn't enough browse in there to keep them fully fed, so I have to let them out for an hour or two every day to munch on the abundant blackberries and various weeds growing in my yard. 

The lawnmower has been broken since approximately April so the grass is all over waist high. I'm thinking maybe I can get my neighbor to come and hay it. That lawnmower is the worst piece of junk in the world. It's a Murray; I recommend that you buy anything else. My poor husband spends about one tenth of all his free time fixing the lawnmower. I want to get a new one (some other brand, duh) but Homero keeps saying "we've replaced almost every single part. It's all new inside! It'll work now." Ten minutes later....  In the meantime, the goats are enjoying.

Of course I can't just let the goats out and go inside the house. I need to follow them around with a long stick to beat them off the fruit trees, away from the garden, and off the road. It sounds simple but when you have eight goats it really isn't. I have to run back and forth, yelling and waving my stick or throwing rocks, and even so, they have eaten half the garden and killed three fruit trees between this year and last. They are faster and more nimble than I am, by an embarrassingly large margin. 

Still, I like being out with the goats. In fact, I love it. It makes me happy to see all my animals - children included - enjoying themselves and being natural out in the world. 

Eyeball Drama

Yesterday I got something in my eye.  You know how sometimes, when you have something in your eye, it will move around, get comfortable for a while and you think it's gone, only to have it resurface and hurt even worse a few minutes or hours later? Well that was going on ALL DAY. And ALL EVENING. I kept my face in a bowl of warm water, blinking, for a half an hour with no results. By bedtime, I was ready to just pop my thumb behind my eyeball and say goodbye to left peripheral vision for the rest of my life. 

Homero applied a weird Mexican home remedy (holding my eyelid open and blowing hard into my eye) that actually worked pretty good. For a while. I kept waking up all night long with my eye gooped shut. This morning I looked bad enough that Homero was worried for his reputation. I slept for shit and my eye was four times it's normal size. 

Same thing today; it would feel okay for a while, I'd start to think it might be gone, then suddenly I'm being stabbed in the eyeball again. Finally I decided to take drastic measures. I got in the bathtub and pried my eye open with one hand while I held my face under the faucet. After several minutes of this, I thought it felt better. Then I found this thing:

That's hay. Another thing I did yesterday is move sixteen bales of hay into the barn. You can damn well bet that next time I do that, I'll be wearing safety goggles. 

Farm Finanaces

We are just about all out of hay. There might be a week's worth left in the hayloft, from the grass we cut and raked off the smallest field back in July or August. God, I remember doing that, it was so hot. I must have raked and pitched up fourteen pickup loads worth, and my arms and back hurt for a week. And about half of it spoiled in a sudden summer downpour.  We still had to pick it up, though, so it didn't kill the grass underneath. 

I thought the hay would last longer. We've gone through 36 bought bales as well as the farm hay. We started feeding hay exclusively around the middle or end of November. That makes no sense. That's six bales a week, or just about a bale a day. How can that be? I haven't been feeding them that much! 

Oh wait I remember, some of the hay I bought was no good for food, it was slightly moldy and we used it for bedding. But even so. That was only three or four bales, which doesn't change the equation very much. Six goats, a pony, and three alpacas. The goat's eat the lion's share (the lion's share of hay, ha ha). The pony appears to eat very little but gets hugely fat anyway (probably pregnant). And for a long time I was overfeeding the alpacas. I was giving them a flake apiece every day, but as it turns out they only need a a third as much. Now that I know that I can conserve a little.

So for the winter so far - the winter which is only half over - I've spent about $200 on hay, and lord knows how much in chicken food, pig food, alpaca food, goat food, and alfalfa pellets. Five different kinds of food, about two 50# bags/month, at an averaged cost of $16/bag... That's $160/month. Sounds about right, but sheesh. I haven't seen an egg in over a month! Those are going to be some pretty pricey eggs by the time they start laying in spring. 

The pig is getting close to slaughter weight, a little bigger than the last one, so figure he'll get us about 120 pounds of meat, maybe 140. And I expect to have two or three meat kids this year, but they won't be ready to eat until next fall. And of course, milk season is coming up. All the milk and cheese we can eat. And the trade network will kick in by May, so free veggies and fruits all spring and summer. I don't know, maybe it all evens out. 

Is there an accountant in the house?

First Frost

The night before last was the first frost; not a very hard frost, but then last night was harder. I feel so bad for the baby goats, I've been separating them at night in the new field shelter, which has a gap running all the way around on the bottom. I'll need to insulate it somehow, probably with straw bales. Valentine was all fluffed up in the morning. The Nubian twins have short, sleek hair and can't fluff. But they are fat enough to be insulated.

The frost also means we have to start using our hay. I hadn't been giving anybody any hay, because everyone was looking so fat - especially the goats - on pure pasture. But after the frost, the grass loses most of it's nutritional value, even if it looks as green as ever. Also I'll be moving all the goats to the new enclosure for the winter, which doesn't have very much browse, so they'll need more hay. I think I'll most likely go through a bale in three days. I have seventeen bales, plus the loose hay we put up from the small field, so I'm hoping that will take us through December. Maybe not.

Hay is so expensive. Next year, I'm going to use the whole front field as hay and just not have any lawn. I've never been a big lawn fan anyway. If you want it to look nice it takes so much work and so many chemicals. Then you have to mow it and mow it, using gasoline and spewing pollutants. For what? A smooth green expanse of poison. (Of course, I never used chemicals on our lawn, which is why it was yellow instead of green - field of pure dandelions. But you get the point.) I'd rather make the space productive and use it as animal feed. We ought to get twenty bales off it, easily. That saves me about $120, well, minus whatever I pay the neighbor to bale it.

It is still gorgeous outside. I'm going out to enjoy it.

To-Do List Update

                                 The Alpaca Catch Pen

We had a few really hot days last week; I mean record hot, over 90 degrees. I thought that maybe the hay that got rained on would dry out enough to be useful, at least as bedding, but no. The top half of each cigar-shaped roll was light and dry, the bottom half heavy, soggy, and stinky. So I worked for three hours in the heat with a pitchfork and filled up the pickup bed four times, ferrying it over to the compost pile. The compost pile is considerably larger now. Looks like I got the job done just a little bit late; under each roll, there were some ominous blackened spots and pale, sickly looking weeds were poking up. Well, to give myself credit, my husband did say he would do it while I was out of town, and then he didn't. I did it when I got back. 

And gave myself a little bitty dose of heatstroke doing it, too. I think I drank too much plain water while I was working. A few hours later, as the sun was going down, I started to feel very shaky and sick. I thought I was going to throw up, and my knees really wouldn't hold me up. I had to go to bed. Some of the farm work is really a bit too hard for me in my current physical condition. But that condition is changing, slowly. I was looking down at my arms the other day and noticing that I now have muscle-y  forearms from milking goats twice a day. Just what I've always wanted. 

Homero did do another farm chore from the list. He built the alpaca catch pen. It looks nice, too. A five bar fence across the back, between the two barns, and a five bar gate across the whole front, so it's relatively easy to herd the alpacas into it. Now we can put fly powder on them (the poor things are so covered in flies they look like children dying of famine on TV), and, eventually, shear them. 

We haven't solved the eggs-under-the-barn problem yet, but I did discover a clutch of twelve eggs in the hayloft that were not too far along to be usable, at least in an application that disguised them thoroughly. I chose lemon curd. That's sieved.

Lemon Curd:

4 large eggs

1 and 1/3 c. sugar

1 c. lemon and/or lime juice

1 3/4 c. butter (3 and a half sticks. I know.)

Whisk together first three ingredients in a large saucepan and heat over medium low. Add butter all at once and whisk. It will look horrible and you'll think you did something wrong, but you didn't. Keep whisking, for about 45 minutes, until curd is thick enough to heavily coat a spoon and it begins to bubble around the edges. Then pour into a bowl, cover with clingwrap pressed right against the curd, and chill. This is insanely good on fresh blueberries.

Rain, Rain

Half the hay was still in the small field, raked up but not stored yet, when it started to pour. And I mean, pour down buckets. Two days of rain. Aargh! It's eighty and sunny again today, but the hay is spoiled for anything but bedding.

Haying and Playing

                                                          The Princess and the Pig

                                     The Good Dog (Doesn't Eat Chickens)

The small field is about a quarter acre, I'd guess. And the grass had not been cut once this year until the neighbor did it for us the other day with his big tractor mower. The hay looked beautiful after drying for a couple of days in this lovely eighty-plus degree heat, but how to store it? The equipment needed to actually bale the hay is very expensive (and I'm not even sure what it's called. A Baler, I'd guess, but before you bale it, there's some other machine that goes over the cut grass and leaves it in long lines. It spins. A thresher? No. I dunno.)

Finally I decided to just rake it with a leaf rake. The field is small, after all.

It took me four hours and my arms feel like hamburger. There's a trick to it, though, that makes it easier. Don't try to rake long rows:  You can just keep raking in a long "vertical" row and the grass will sort of snowball all by itself, rolling itself into a nice tight cigar that is easy to later pick up with a pitchfork.

And throw in the back of the pickup truck and take to the barn, but there it stops. It isn't easy to get the hay up into the loft of the barn, no way, no how.

We raked all the hay, but only got a little less than half of it stored. We were just plumb tuckered by then. Homero fixed the pig pen today too, and raised the rails so the goats can't jump in. They tried, but they can't. They just crash and look hilarious.

Ha Ha!