State of the Farm (Spring Equinox)

grey spring

I know, I'm a few days late on the equinox. That's okay, I feel like I'm a few days late on everything these days. I have been working a lot more than usual at my non-farm job (medical interpreter). Today, I was out of the house by 5:45 and didn't get home until just now, about a quarter to five in the afternoon. That's not typical - on an average day I'll spend four or five hours outside the house, but even that much really cuts into my farm-and-house work time.

I suppose, to be honest, what it really cuts into is my free time. Reading, cruising the internet, blogging, leisurely baths.... all those things are luxuries, of course, to a mom with a job and a farm. Before I worked outside the home, I used to do my housework at a nice slow pace. I might sit down with a cookbook, read for awhile until something piqued my interest, then go shopping for ingredients and spend the afternoon cooking. Now I boil up some noodles or fry a bunch of eggs at short-order speed, trying to fit dinner in between after-school activities, homework help, evening chores, and bedtime.

Homero has been picking top an awful lot of slack, lately. He does the morning chores almost every day, including milking. We are giving an awful lot of milk to Haku simply because I don't have time to make cheese. He's getting fat, though it doesn't seem to slow him down any, more's the pity. We finally had to strip the playroom of carpet entirely, because he had pulled it all up and ripped it to shreds. It's down to the bare plywood now, and I am just waiting to see how he manages to destroy that.

I don't think I'm going to get a garden in at all this year. We did plant a couple of hazelnut trees and I'm going to plant a couple more apple trees, but as far as a vegetable garden, I just don't think it's going to happen. Partly this is because of another giant time-suck - the Gleaner's Pantry. I adore the Gleaner's, it brings in hundreds of dollars worth of organic produce a month, but in exchange it demands about 20 hours of work a month, broken up into three or four several-hour-long chunks. That isn't counting all the work I do at home to prepare for such an influx - cleaning out the fridge before I go - nor what I do to preserve it afterwards, whether it be canning, freezing, juicing, our whatnot. And I know I just said how much work Gleaner's is, but truth be told its a hell of a lot less work than actually gardening. When I have unlimited, varied, organic produce spilling out of my refrigerator, it's difficult to work up the motivation to pick up a shovel.

Another reason not to put in a garden this year is that we will be spending a big part of the summer in Oaxaca. This will be our first trip to Mexico since we came back from our year with Abuelita, in 2013. (New to Mexican Life) The children are super excited to see their cousins again. There's not much point planting vegetables in April and May when you'll be out of town for all of July.

It's still far too wet to start planting, in any case. This has been the wettest year to date in Washington state history  (As rain falls, so does Seattle's record for wettest wet season ...) and that's really saying something. We have used some twenty-five yards of mulch and chips this year, just to keep the poor animal's heads above the mud. The grass is growing pretty well, due to warm temperatures, but the ground is still too saturated to let the horses out on pasture. The pasture got pretty torn up last fall when our pig learned to get out of his pen, and I want to give it a good long rest. I've reseeded the areas the pig plowed up, and I need to give the seed time to germinate and get a good head start before I loose the ravenous beasts. That means we are still feeding hay, though less of it, as the goats have some browse and the ponies can be staked out in the orchard on days when it isn't raining.

Poor Rosie pony's horrible eye problem is back, and it's worse than ever. Her eye is so swollen and ugly that I'm ashamed to post a picture of it. I've been washing it with warm salt water and putting antibiotic ointment in it for the past several days, but I don't see much difference. She is clearly suffering, and besides her eye, she is looking thin and rundown. Maybe she needs a different wormer than the one I've been using - pretty haphazardly, I must admit. But as the single most superfluous  animal on the farm, I don't get much of a vet budget for Rosie. She is getting on in years, and soon I will have to start thinking about when it might be time to send her on to the great green pasture in the sky. Not yet, but soon.

We had a chicken attrition situation over the winter, as is often the case. In fact, the chickens and turkeys were disappearing at such a clip late last fall that I invited a couple of local boys to lay out in the field with .22 rifles and wait for the coyotes to show up. The coyotes never did show up, but when the boys were scoping out the perimeter, they said we had both canine and feline tracks in the mud along the fence line and suggested we probably had a bobcat as well as coyotes preying on our poultry.

The chickens are locked in the coop, now, though I hate to do that to them. This time of year it is always wet in the coop, and the chickens really ought to be out scratching for spring bugs and eating the worms who are lying about all over the place, trying not to drown. There are five hens left, but only three of them are laying. Two of the three eggs that I gather each day are distinctive - the tiny egg is laid by the one banty hen; the white egg is laid by the lone leghorn - but the third egg could be anybody's, so I don't know which hens are the slackers.

Five chicks are in a big wooden box in the shed, under a heat lamp. I brought them home last week. They are leghorns. I had never raised that breed before (most commercial layers are leghorns) because I thought I wanted a dual purpose hen, one that was heavy enough to eat when she ran out of eggs. But time and experience taught me that actually, I am not interested in a free-range old layer hen as a culinary item. It's nasty. And then I acquired a couple of leghorns - I disremember how - and was very impressed with them. They are small, streamlined birds. They are bright white (we named them Pearl and Shell) and are good flyers, which keeps them a bit safer from predators. They will never go broody, which means they lay more eggs per year. They are regular egg machines - each hen laying one large white egg a day, with only the very occasional day off. I liked them so much I decided to buy all leghorn chicks this year. Five isn't very many, but assuming that at least three of them live to laying age (you never know with chicks) they will provide more than enough eggs for us.

Let's see, what else. Oh. Out of Flopsy's four babies (The (Finally) Four) we only have one left. On the day they kidded, I gave two bucklings away to a neighbor farmer lady who enjoys bottle babies. I do not enjoy bottle babies. We kept two babies on Flopsy - a beautiful buckling and a fabulously gorgeous spotted doeling. But there was soon a problem. Both babies only wanted to nurse off one side. Flops had mastitis and now has lopsided teats - one normal teat and one small one that gives about half as much milk. Oddly, they both wanted only the small one. I guess the big one was difficult to latch onto. Since the buckling was bigger and stronger, he drained all the milk from the small teat and the little girl didn't get any. I couldn't seem to teach her to use the big teat. After a few days, I went out in the morning and found the little girl flat out and cold. That happens if they don't get enough milk - they just lie down and give up the ghost.

I tried to revive her in a warm water bath and get her to take a bottle, but after a frustrating 24 hours I knew I wasn't up for it. I called the same neighbor and told her she could keep there baby girl if she wanted to try and save her. My saintly neighbor told me to bring her on over. She worked patiently over the next day and succeeded in getting her to take a bottle. Then - this is so cute, I wish I had a picture - my neighbor's pigmy doe kidded with a single kid. And our little baby Nubian girl went straight for the teat. She hadn't forgotten hoe to nurse. So now, this valiant pigmy Nigerian is nursing her own kid, plus a Nubian kid, who has to practically lay down in the dirt to get to the teat.

My neighbor insists on giving us the doeling back when she is old enough to be weaned. She says that keeping the two bucklings is payment enough for the trouble of caring for the doe. I told her not to make up her mind just yet. Assuming that little Ziggy (as her children named her) lives and thrives, she ought to be worth a fair amount of money. I said she should feel free to sell her, but so far, she continues to say she will give her back to us. If so, then we will have two new does from this season, Ziggy and Christmas. That will make up for the two I plan on retiring - Iris and Flopsy.

The farm goes on. 2016 is a new year, our eighth here on this windy wet hill, I think. I'm not quite so "new to farm life" as once I was. We are settling into a good groove. I know now, more or less, how many animals the land will support, and what sort of animals are most useful and profitable to us. I continue to learn about husbandry, both of the land and the animals - and, I suppose, of my children and of my marriage and of my very own soul. I really do love to feel the slow deepening of knowledge and experience that comes from knowing a single place - or a single person - intimately, and living with a single place - or a single person - intimately, in all of its seasons, in all of its moods, in all of its slow splendor. This land, this place, this time, these people, these animals, this carefully tended ecosystem - here we all are, surviving. Hopefully thriving. Caring for each other as best we can.






















 

What Wrong With this Avocado?

Don't you just love it when you cut open an absolutely perfect avocado? Avocados are always a bit of a gamble - many a good looking fruit turns out to be an ugly grey mess when opened. This one was gorgeous - perfectly ripe, smooth green deliciousness through and through. 

So why was it at the Gleaner's Pantry? Somebody looked at the avocado and decided it wasn't good enough to sell, so it went in the trash. Can you tell what the flaw was?  My best guess is that it's a little curved. It isn't totally symmetrical. What a rediculous requirement! 

Now multiply that avocado by 10. That's how many avocados I brought home today. Not all of them will be perfect, but many of them will be edible. 

And I was only one of thirty or so people at Leaner's today. There were avocados enough for all of us. In fact there were so many avocados that a whole crate of them were left over. 

And that's just one day this week, at one of several organizations devoted to salvaging food, in one small city. The actual number of avocados discarded this week in my town is incalculable. It must number in the thousands. 

Let's not even try to imagine the 

Tomatoes

Bell peppers

Bananas

Oranges

Apples

Onions

Lemons

Limes

Mangoes

Potatoes

Melons

Pomegranates

Plums

Carrots

Jalapeños

Eggplants

Radishes

Cucumbers

Zucchini

Discarded every day! I haven't even started on the mountains of greens. Lettuces of all varieties, kale both curly and flat. Fresh herbs, cabbages, escarole....

Oh my fingers are getting tired

Eggs and milk with a sell-by date of tomorrow

Prepared salads, wraps, sandwiches, deli meat.....

BREAD! OH MY GOD SO MUCH BREAD

cookies pies scones croissants tortillas sliced sandwich bread rye ciabatta organic whole wheat gluten free cornbread cupcakes sheet cakes 

Pasta flour sugar spices

Good lord there's only so much I can take home and eat, people! Help me out here! Start a gleaner's pantry in your own town, for the love of Pete. 

Here's what I did with a very small percentage of the food I got from Gleaner's today. With the exception of store bought pie crusts and milk from my own goats, everything here came from Gleaner's. 

Two quiches and a great big green salad for dinner. One quiche is asparagus and red pepper; the other zucchini and black olive. The salad has avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, and goat cheese.  

Well, That Was Fast

It only took me a day and a half to kill the kefir grains I was given. I have no idea what I did wrong - I only added a half cup of my own milk and then left them overnight at room temperature. The next day I opened the container and the liquid smelled great- tangy and fizzy. So I decided to strain some off and drink it. But when I poured the kefir through the strainer, nothing was left behind but a little bit of smooshy niblets, like cottage cheese. Less than a teaspoon. Even so I tried to save them by putting them back into fresh milk but no go. That evening they were totally dissolved. 

I don't get it. The only thing I can think of is that the milk I added was too cold. It was straight out of the fridge, but it was only about a quarter of the volume of the kefir in the jar, I didn't think it would make such a difference. 

That's the only idea I got. Sorry, unique kefir SCOBY!!  I didn't mean to kill you. 

What's Growing in my Kitchen (the Fermentation Files)?

There's a new bookstore in town, and when I went in to check it out, I found this irresistible book:

Much more than a recipe book - in fact, I don't think there any actual "recipes" in it at all - this book is a wonderful compendium of stories, anecdotes, instructions, and musings on all types of fermentation. Parts of it are scholarly and full of references to the newest scientific research on gut biota, and parts of it are full of poetic or mystical ramblings. I am thoroughly enjoying it, and it has inspired me to start a whole bunch of new projects. 

I have been dabbling in fermentation for ages, of course. Longtime readers of this blog will remember some of my experiments with pickles, kim chee, hard cider, and sourdough. Even cheesemaking is one of the fermentation arts, although I had never thought of it that way before. 

 New To Farm Life: The Fermentation Files (Daikon Kim chee and ... 

Brewing Up a Storm (Drinking and Driving)

Kim Chee Situation (Food Storage Update)

I miss baking. We get so much free bread from the Gleaner's Pantry that there has been no actual need for me to bake. My wonderful sourdough starter died over the year we lived in Oaxaca. I parted it out to friends, but none of them kept it going. I have been without sourdough since. 

Inspired by the book, I put out a call over Facebook for sourdough and Kefir grains. Within hours, a couple of local farmer ladies had answered me. This sourdough was brought to my friend G. by her aunt in Alaska. The aunt claims that it is from a strain that has been kept alive since the 1890's. It seems that most people who have family starters all claim that they have been nurtured since pioneer days; who knows? It's possible. 

This particular sourdough did not seem very lively. It took me a week to nudge it back to life. For a little while I thought it was completely dead. I had fed it with wheat flour, warm water, and dribbles of honey without much result. A slow bubble here and there. Then I remembered that when you first start a sourdough you are supposed to use rye flour - so I ransacked the cupboard to see if I had any. I did! Three years old, but apparently still potent because after I added a half cup of it to the mason jar, it perked right up and started bubbling vigorously. Today I baked my first loaf of bread, and it is delicious! 

Kefir is a weird thing. Most people who buy it in liquid form at the store probably think it is some sort of yogurt, but it is not. You cannot use kefir to make more kefir, as you can with yogurt; you need
a Kefir SCOBY (symbiotic community of bacteria and yeast), and you need to keep the SCOBY alive by providing it with fresh milk every day or two. That milk will become kefir as the SCOBY digests it.

There are lots of SCOBYs, by the way - a vinegar "mother" is a SCOBY, as is kombucha. the Kefir SCOBY looks sort of like cauliflower. The photo above shows the one given to me by M., another nearby farmer lady. She tells me it came from a woman on Lummi Island, who says she brought it with her 30 years ago when she moved here from the east coast. And one of the really cool things about this Kefir SCOBY is that is adapted to goat's milk, having been grown only in goats milk for at least the last several years.

Although I like knowing the age and history of my ferments, it feels like a bit of added pressure to keep them alive. What if I kill the 1890 Skilly Dough? What if this ancient and unique kefir SCOBY dies an ignominious death in the back of my crowded refrigerator? Well, presumably there are lots of other kitchen witches like me keeping their own little SCOBYs alive. Long may they prosper!

The (Finally) Four

It was a tough morning for me. I didn't get much sleep - I kept dreaming that I was going out to the barn to check on Flopsy. When I did wake up and go out to check, there were still no babies. I stumbled through my morning chores - milk, feed, get the girls ready for school - and seriously contemplated going straight back to bed, but it's monday, and that's Gleaner's Pantry day.

I didn't go to Gleaner's Saturday, or at all last week. The cupboards were bare, so I dragged myself out there. I really don't know how I got through three hours of carrying boxes, sorting food, and making small talk. By the time I got home, about 12:30, I was ready to collapse.

Homero helped me put the food away and then went to check on Flopsy. He came back pretty quickly and said, "I think it's about time; she is in the barn, panting."

"Ok," I said, "just let me finish my coffee, and then let's go out together."

It was probably ten minutes later that we headed out to the barn. It was a beautiful sunny day - warm and bright. Nice day for baby goats to be born, I thought.

There were two babies on the ground when we got inside the barn. Flops was chuckling and licking them, but they were still all slimy and hadn't yet even tried to stand up. Clearly they had been born just a minute before. A beautiful little black and white spotty one, and a bigger, brown and white spotted one. I picked up the little things, getting slime all over my shirt, and brought them into the mama barn, which is warmer and drier. Homero came after me, leading Flopsy.

Homero hung around for a few minutes, and then went back to work. For the next 30 or 40 minutes, I watched the babies struggle to stand up and nurse. The smaller spotty one was a doeling, and the big brown one was a buckling. Considering how large Flopsy was, I was surprised that she had only had twins. But relieved, as well. With an udder damaged by a long-ago case of mastitis, Flopsy wouldn't be able to raise triplets. I had in fact made  arrangements with a farmer friend to take an extra baby off our hands, should there be one. I don't care for bottle babies.

I was just starting to think that Flopsy was taking a long time to pass the afterbirth, when she commenced to paw at the straw and to push.I took a look at her rear end, and whoops! There was another bubble. There were three after all. I waited several more minutes, but Flopsy didn't seem to be making any progress, and it had, after all, been three-quarters of an hour since the twins were born. I decided I'd better see what was up.

After running back to the house for soap and hot water, I went exploring with my right hand. There was an unbroken bag of waters, but the baby was far away down in the uterus. Having just seen the vet, a few days ago, working elbow deep to turn Iris' baby, I knew that I could go in as deep as I needed to to figure out what was happening. But with that bulgy bag of waters in the way, I couldn't feel anything. And I didn't have a pocketknife on me. I never do - I seldom need one, but on the few occasions that I do, I always berate myself. It's a simple thing to do, carry a small pocketknife.

My fingernails are pretty long, though, and with a little work I was able to tear the bag open. After the waters spilled out, I could reach in far enough to feel the baby (Flopsy was being enormously cooperative - I didn't even have her on the stanchion). What I felt was a butt. I had a breech.

Baby goats can in fact come out hind end first - in fact, as long as the feet are extended, hind-end first is considered a normal presentation. All I had to do was find the feet and bring them forward. This time, it was very easy. I don't know if that's because Flopsy is a big, roomy doe, with an enormous uterus that had already expelled two babies, or if I was more relaxed about exploring as far as necessary, after seeing the kind of treatment a doe can take and still be just fine afterwards. In any case, it only took me about forty seconds to find the feet and bring them forwards, flexing the legs and knee and ankle.

Once the feet were in position, the baby was born very quickly. Another big buck. He was fairly exhausted, but Flopsy set to work licking him off and he lifted his head and snorted. I ran back to the house to wash my hands and grab another clean towel. I stopped b y the shop to tell Homero that there were three after all, and he came with me to see the third baby.

But I was wrong, There weren't three. A fourth baby was snorting and snuffling on the hay by the time we got back. Quads! We've never had quads on the farm before. The last baby, was another buckling, a handsome black boy with white ears.

I called my farmer friend and asked her if she wanted TWO bottle babies. She did, and she came right over with a bottle of colostrum from her freezer and her two adorable little boys. Sometime a little later in the spring, she's going to bring over her rototiller for us to use, in trade.

Now I'm ready for a well earned hot bath.

The Goat That Won't Kid

Yesterday was the first clear day we've had in ages. It's been raining so constantly that I had almost forgotten how to see colors - the world has been nothing but various shades of grey since last October. I read that this has in fact been the wettest winter in Washington State history - more than 28" since December first. 

I brought the goats out to graze during our short respite yesterday (today it is raining again). See the black goat on the left? The one who looks rather like a hot air balloon or like a giant beanbag chair? That's Flopsy, and she is pregnant. 

She is sooo pregnant. She is so pregnant it hurts to look at her. Her udder is tight, her ligaments are loose (see below - I can just about close my hand around her tailbone), but she just won't kid. 

She has been like this for about a week. Every day I am certain there will be kids on the ground in the morning and every day there are not. 

She just keeps getting bigger. I am a little worried - I think she is probably carrying triplets. She has thrown triplets at least twice before. Triples aren't usually a problem for a Nubian mama, but Flopsy has a problem. 

Several years ago she had mastitis, a serious infection. Even with the best treatment I could provide, she lost most of the function in one side of her udder. She's lopsided. Since then, she has successfully raised twins, but not triplets. 

I was hoping, after Iris lost her baby last week, that Flopsy would kid quickly, and in the event that she had triplets, I might be able to get one of them onto Iris. That is unlikely, now. Enough time has passed that autos would not accept a newborn kid. 

Lots of people love bottle babies, but I am not one of them. Call me lazy, but my days of 2 am feedings are OVER. If Flopsy has triplets I'll give one of them away to a friend who enjoys that sort of thing. 

Gotta go - it's just about time to go out I barn again and look for signs of incipient kids. 

A Rough Day for Iris (and Me)

I got up early this morning to go to a work appointment, only to find when I got there that the client had cancelled only minutes before. Barely awake, I executed a  U-turn and headed for the nearest coffee shop.

On the way home, as I was drinking my coffee, a crown popped off of one of my molars. Although it didn't hurt, it seriously freaked me out. Instead of a tooth, I suddenly had a small squishy gap where a tooth should be, with a small steel spike sticking up. I was so horrified, I almost swallowed the crown. Almost. Luckily, I was able to pop it back on - after I pulled over, of course, and after rotating it through a few revolutions and trying all the possible angles.

I drove straight to the dentist who had placed it, just last year (I broke that tooth cracking Dungeness crab with my teeth. Please don't ever do that. Crab-crackers were invented for a reason). I asked the receptionist at the dentist's office if there was a guarantee on the crown, seeing as I had had it for only a little over a year and further seeing as how I have no dental insurance. She told me that there was, and that if neither the crown nor the remnant of my tooth were damaged, then it could be replaced for free. However, she had no openings that day and the best they could do was tomorrow morning.

Sadly I drove home, trying not to test the strength of the crown by probing it with my tongue. When I got home, about ten thirty, Homero was waiting outside and flagged me down.

"Iris is giving birth, but I don't think it is going too well," he said. "Come and see."

Passing through the house to quickly wash my hands and get some soap and warm water and a towel, I raced out (through the driving rain) to the barn. We got Iris into the mama barn by main force, as she did not want to get up or walk.

Iris is my oldest goat, my first goat. She has had many babies and is now about nine years old. Last year she didn't get pregnant, and I had figured her mothering life might be over, but then she did catch this year. Once in the mama barn, she laid down on her side and started pushing hard, grunting and curling her lip. We tried to get her up on the stanchion, but no go, so I laid down in the straw behind her, soaped up my hand, and went exploring.

There was no sign of any residual "goo" which told me that her water had broken some time ago. She was dry and tight. There were two hooves right inside the vulva, both front hooves, and in normal right-side-up position. Further back, alongside and below the legs, was a head.

I needed to find out if the head and the legs belonged to the same kid. It didn't seem like it, because in a normal presentation the head should be above (dorsal to) the hooves. Feeling for the jaw, I found the mouth and inserted my fingers to feel for teeth. There were sharp little teeth on the upper (dorsal) side. Goats only have front teeth in their lower jaw, not in the upper. So feeling these teeth told me that the head was upside down.

What I needed to do was follow either the head and neck, or the front legs, down to a body and try to figure out where they all came together - or not. If there were two kids, I would need to push the head back into the uterus, and then find the head belonging to the legs and bring it around. Or, of course, the opposite - push the feet back and then find the other feet belonging to the head.

This might sound easy in theory, but in practice it is not. It's not easy even if you have an upright goat and are not laying on your side in the straw without very good light. I went in as far as I could, but I was unable to ascertain for certain whether there were two kids or one. The head did not budge when I pushed on it, nor did the feet come forward with gentle traction. Without having a clear picture of what was going on, I wasn't going to pull any harder than a 2 on a scale of ten.

I though we had twins - one with legs forward and head back, the other with head forward and legs back. Knowing there was nothing more I could do, I called the vet and told them I was coming in.
Getting Iris into the van was a challenge, but Homero and I did it, and then he stayed with the children while I drove as fast as I could (through the driving rain) to the vet. Not very fast at all, as I spent the entire twelve miles behind first a tractor and then behind one kind of semi-truck or another. I am not a patient driver at the best of times, and least off all with a beloved goat in the worst kind of distress in the back.

Once Iris was at the vet's and up on a stanchion (lifted by three people), the doctor gave her an epidural and went in to try to figure it out. It wasn't obvious to him either. It took a good ten minutes to first figure it out and then straighten it out. I was wrong; there were no twins. There was only a single baby, who had her neck wrapped around her own front legs like a corkscrew, so that her head was upside down underneath her own knees. It is an impossible presentation. The baby cannot come out that way, and pushing the head or pulling the legs is not going to help. The doctor had to twist the head and bring it around up over the legs, into a normal presentation, so the baby could be born. That was a pretty violent procedure requiring a lot of force, and Iris was in great pain - epidural or no.

She was dead, of course. It appeared she had been dead for some time, perhaps two or three hours. The vet said that with the poor presentation, Iris had probably been in low-grade labor for several hours. Without the head providing the correct pressure on the cervix, the labor didn't progress, and after the baby died (whenever that happened) the baby couldn't help by wriggling or changing position. If I hadn't taken her in, Iris would most likely have died eventually as well.

Poor Iris. She got a shot of painkillers, a shot of penicillin, and a ride home with a full udder and no baby. She is fairly torn up. I'll give her a full course of penicillin injections, and I have painkillers for three more days. She is also now officially retired - no more babies for Iris. I asked if any of this could be attributed too her age, and the vet said not definitively, but older dams do have a harder time kidding in general. Iris has earned her retirement at least twice over   (How Much is a Good Goat Worth?) - we will have this last season of milk from her, and then she can spend future breeding seasons with the ponies in the horse pasture.

The baby was a doe. A fine, big, brown doeling.

When I came home from the vet, covered in poop and blood and slime, aching for a bath, I found one of my kids already in there, and they had already used up all the hot water.

Also, there's no wine in the house.

State of the Farm: Early Spring 2016

It seems absurd to call today, February 12, "spring," but the signs are unmistakeable. Crocuses are up; pussy willows are grey, and I even saw a dandelion in bloom.

The rhubarb plant on the north side of the house is starting to put out crimson and green growth. 

Looking back over the blog, it seems that most years I have posted about an early spring. I am of two minds about this - since I only moved here ten years ago, it is entirely possible that I am just ignorant about the local climate (although I moved here from Seattle, exactly 100 miles south in a straight line).

 In support of this position, when I was talking with members of my local church this week about the early spring, a discussion was sparked about the timing of spring among several members who are each over 70 years old and who have a collective experience of living in this climate of some 200 years. Thier collective judgement was that we often get a couple of beautiful weeks in February, followed by a harsh March. 

Science, however, bolsters my

Point of view. Spring has indeed been coming earlier in the last couple of decades over a use swath of the globe.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/early-warning-signs-of-global-10.html#.Vr6A2kU77CR

All that aside, I have been enjoying the few sunny, unseasonably warm days interspersed among the approximately 726 consecutive days of rain.

Today was such a day. 

The Mercury got up to about 57, perfect shirtsleeve weather. I enjoyed an hour or two out with the goats and a good book. 

Kidding season is weird this year. "Christmas" was born Christmas ever, to Polly, who seems to be given to

Going into heat very early in the season. Two years in a row she has gotten pregnant in July, which is quite odd for a

milk goat. Christmas is now a handsome six week old doeling, well able to keep up with the herd. She is the first kid I have chosen to be part of the new generation of milk does. 

The other two does, Iris and Flopsy, are both gravid. Poor Flopsy is so pregnant it hurts to look at her. Every evening I lock her in the mama barn and every morning I go out expecting babies, but so far

No dice. 

We sold our buck. Haboob is a very nice buck who has reliably impregnanted our does for three years now, but the time has come for a new buck. 

I am

Still having major

Computer difficulties - right now I am

Typing on my phone and it is so annoying that I am

Going to stop this post right now. I have a lot of things I would like to write about (the orchard, the garden, the dog$ but I have already been qoeking in this silly

Post for two

Hours and I

Am

Completely

Done 

Good Imbolc (Repost)

Welcome February 2nd, a day of many names in many traditions!

In what is probably the very oldest and most universal tradition of all - the solar calendar - February 2nd is one of the cross-quarter days, meaning a day that is exactly halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Believe it or not, ancient astronomers knew the dates of the solticses and equinoxes more than six thousand years ago. Today is halfway between the winter soltice and the spring equinox, and in the Northern hemisphere used to be marked as the first day of Spring. Indeed, only a few days ago, I noticed that the pussy willows were grey. One of my neighbors has a large pussy-willow, and I had to stop and ask her if I might take a few sprigs for my altar. I have them in water, and I'm hoping they will root and I can plant them on my property. It should work - willows are notoriously easy.

Other unmistakable signs of early spring I have noticed are robins (I saw a whole field covered in them the other day, driving home)...

witch-hazel in bloom at my sister's house...

...and the plaintive cry of the killdeer, looking for a nesting site. Killdeer are handsome shore birds who breed in sandy or gravelly uplands within a few miles of the beach - which perfectly describes my property. Their piercing cries in the evening and their swift, low, straight flights across the twilit ground are hallmarks of February and sure signs of the coming nesting season.

In the Celtic, or Pre-Christian European tradition, the first cross-quarter of the year was known as Imbolc, the beginning of the season of "emerging." It marked the time that the first sprouts began to emerge from seeds and bulbs, and especially the time that sheep and goats begin to drop their lambs and kids and to produce milk. It is the time that the world begins to emerge from the long sleep of winter. It is the season of waking. In modern celtic tradition Imbolc is observed with white candles on the altar to celebrate the return of the light to the world.

It is fitting, therefore, that when Ireland became Catholic, February second was commemorated as St Brigid's day. Brigid of Kildare was a real person, a contemporary of St Patrick, but the woman was named for an old Celtic Goddess, Brigid. Brigid the Goddess has always been associated with fertility, and more specifically with lactation and the fruits of the breast. In olden days she was the maiden, the young feminine divine, the nubile virgin ready to be made fruitful by the divine male. Her name, in fact, is the derivation of our word "bride."

In more modern Irish Catholic tradition, St. Brigid is the protectress of dairymaids, of cattle and kids, and the one who blesses the making of butter and cheese. Pregnant women and dairy farmers pray to her to this day, and many people believe that "Brigid" is one of the oldest, original names of the Divine Mother and venerate her as the Creatrix. She wears the youngest of the triple faces of the Great Goddess.

February 2nd is still a sacred day in the Roman Catholic church calendar, known as Candlemas. Indeed I was rather surprised when I asked my Lutheran pastor about Candlemas and learned that she knew nothing about it, at least by that name. Today marks the day that Jesus was presented in the temple, the day that Mary's period of ritual uncleanness after giving birth was over (forty days) and she was permitted and required to present her firstborn son to the priesthood. Since I am a very fledgling Christian I cannot provide gospel verses, but I bet Christians among you can find them. The event of Jesus' presentation to the world - his Christening, if you will - is very appropriate to the old theme of the holiday, the theme of beginnings, of emergence. Christ emerged from his mother's womb and was born to the world of men on this day.

Of course it is inconceivable that such an ancient and deeply rooted holy day as a cross-quarter would be ignored by the Catholic church; no doubt it was consciously appropriated. That doesn't matter to me at all. I am perfectly happy to celebrate Imbolc, Brigid, and the Newborn Babe all at once. I am delighted to have pussy willows and white candles on my alter, along with a few of the first eggs of spring and soon, the first crocuses and perhaps soon, a small vial of the first milk. In a month or so, I will have the cross of the risen Christ.

Right now, my favorite goat, Iris, is within days of giving birth. I see no conflict between the rites of Spring on my farm and the sacred rituals of the Chruch calendar. It may seem strange to others, but it is not strange to me that Iris reminds me of Mary, heavy with child or newly delivered. Mary was, as I am - as Iris is - a female animal, channeling life through her body, guiding a spirit into flesh. We are all of us examples of the ongoing process of creation, most joyfully evident in this season of Imbolc.

Thus is the world renewed, year after year.

This picture above is my favorite icon of the pregnant Mary. It is painted on the ceiling of a church in Huatulco, Mexico, and is advertised as the largest vision of Mary in Mexico - which is saying something. Having been there, I can tell you biggest or not, it is big. And beautiful. In fact I think this is my favorite church among all those I have visited in Mexico, land of a thousand gorgeous churches. This pregnant Mary (see the small blue fetus, floating upside down in her mid-section?) is so serene, so calm. May the spirit of Mary, of Brigid, of Iris enfold you this season, and may you take great delight in the awakening and the emergence of new growth this early spring season!

Draft

Salsa Ranchera a la Gleaner's Pantry

Canning in January! This is salsa ranchera. Recipe as follows: put 6 or 8 pint jars and lids to sterilize in boiling water. On a cast iron griddle or in a cast iron pan (dry), put three to four pounds of tomatoes (whole), two onions, quartered, six cloves of peeled garlic, and as many hot chiles of whatever type you like (split and seeded). You will have to work in batches. Turn vegetables as they blacken slightly in spots. Chiles will release fumes as they toast - remove them as soon as they get little toasty spots and open a window! Onions should be well blackened in spots. Remove all vegetables to blender (again with the batches). 

Heat a tablespoon or so neutral oil in a big sauce pan, and sauté a teaspoon of cumin seed, a few cloves and a few allspice berries. Purée vegetables in batches and add to saucepan (it will spatter at first). Add salt to taste. As soon as sauce simmers, add juice of two or three limes. Then place in sterilized jars and process in boiling water until sealed approximately 10-15 minutes. Use sauce later to simmer eggs, or chicken pieces.

Haku and Christmas (Baby Love)

Haku has been allowed to kiss and lick the baby goat since the day she was born - Christmas Eve, hence her name. We are hoping that doing this will teach him that the baby is a member of the family to be protected, not a prey animal to be chased and eaten.

We have been taking Haku with us to do the animal chores every day, twice a day. Once we learned that it is only the sheep that drives him mad and removed her to the horse pasture, the situation improved greatly. Haku ignores the goats almost completely, and even the chickens only distract him momentarily from the delights of roaming around leashless and free. Now the main issue is getting him to come back to us when we are done with chores! We are working on it.

Christmas is shaping up to be a lovely little doeling. We've decided to keep her. I need a new doe - Iris is old and Flopsy is only half a milker, having lost a teat to mastitis years ago. Since we are keeping her, I decided not to bother disbudding her. Her mom, Polly, has horns and they have never been a problem except once or twice when she got stuck in the fence. I fully expect Christmas to get stuck once or twice too before she learns not to stick her head through. That's okay - not only will we save her major trauma by not dehorning, but in the long run she will be better able to defend herself.

Please enjoy this darling video, and try to ignore my annoying baby-talk.

Choices

Today I chose the slippery beam. Apparently both choices are equally awful. Walked back to the house this time with a cold muddy bum. 

My Mud Nightmare Has Come to Pass

Just went out to do the afternoon feeding, with Haku tied to me via a long leash around my waist. That's my new plan for desensitizing him to the livestock - take him with me every day and make him walk among the animals. It's about 4 o'clock, dim, very cold, and very muddy.

It's been very muddy for weeks. The mud is worse than average this year, because we raised a pig this year. Pigs always root up, dig, and generally soften up the ground wherever they are, and this pig spent a lot of time in the barnyard. Homero laid a couple of wide 2x8 beams across the worst of the yard, and that helped for a while. But now the mud has come up over the beams, and while you can still see where they are, they aren't much help anymore. They're slippery, see.

I have to choose between trying to walk on a slippery beam with a 90 lb. dog tied to my waist - a dog that is tugging manfully - or walking in the mud. I chose the mud. I have good boots. They go up to my knees.

One of my good boots got stuck. Really stuck. I pulled and pulled - I let Haku pull and pull to help me - but no dice. That boot was in almost to the top and it wasn't coming out. After a few minutes of thinking and not coming up with any plans, I gave in to the inevitable.

I slipped my foot out of the boot and set it down in the mud. It sank in right up to my shins - just as cold, squishy, and awful as I had known it would be. Without my foot inside, it was easy to grasp the empty boot and pull it up. Now I had a new dilemma. Should I put my gross muddy foot back inside my boot, or should I carry the boot and keep the inside clean, and walk back to the house half barefoot?

I really didn't want to get the inside of my boot as muddy as the outside. Then I'd have to clean it out with the hose, and it would be wet for days. So I started off towards the house - about 50 yards - squish, squish, squish.

It froze last night. Not hard enough to lock up the mud, obviously, but enough to make the ground very uncomfortable on a bare foot. When I hit the sharp, frozen gravel, I decided to put my boot back on. Now I have one leg wet and filthy to the knee, and two muddy boots - one on the inside as well as the outside.

Haku, as usual, has four legs muddy to the hocks. He doesn't care.

A Goat Named Christmas

On Christmas Eve morning, when Homero went out to feed the animals, he found a baby goat curled up, asleep in the hay. He wasn't sure which of the three does was the mama, so he picked up the baby and put her in the mama barn, chose the mama goat that most resembled the baby (Polly), and came back in to get me. 

When I entered the mama barn a few minutes later, the baby was nursing on Polly, so clearly Homero chose correctly. Polly must have given birth the evening before. The baby was dry and fluffy, nursing like a pro, and Polly looked great. 

I HAVE been checking the mama goat's udders when I go out, because I know that they were probably bred quite early, since we just let the buck run with them year round. Last year (or was it the year before?) we lost two babies because they were born in the middle of a deep freeze in the middle of the night. 

This time we (and the goats of course ) were luckier - it's been very wet but not cold. The barn has plenty of dry straw, and now that we put them in the mama barn, they ought to do just fine. Until I let them out, a few days from now, anyway. I can't imagine how that tiny baby can traverse the lake of deep mud between the door of the barn and the grass of the pasture. I need to get some chips down, pronto. 

A search for another baby - dead or alive - and any sign of placenta turned up negative. It seems this baby was a singleton. And it's a she. She's a doeling.  We named her Christmas. We're going to keep her. It's about time I added a new doe to the herd. It seems that Iris most likely did not get pregnant again this year. That makes two years in a row and I think it is unlikely she will produce again. Flopsy is also getting on, and she only has one teat. Polly is my best goat, and I think a doeling from her would make a good replacement for Iris or Flopsy. 

If, that is, we can raise her to maturity without being killed by Haku. I'm terrified about him killing baby goats. He doesn't bother the adult goats - only the sheep - but the adult goats don't prance and gambol and run around enticingly, which the baby goats most certainly will. Also the babies are perfectly prey sized for Haku. 

In an attempt to avoid that horrible fate, I brought the baby inside and let Haku lick her all over. I even brought Haku out to the mama barn and let him lick the baby all over right in front of her mama. Polly did not like that at all. She was very protective, keeping herself between Haku and the baby, and lowering her horns menacingly. But Haku behaved himself and was very gentle with the baby. 

I'd be perfectly happy if Christmas were the only baby we get this year. I don't need more goats and I don't need more milk than Polly can provide. It's always nice to have a couple of babies to sell, or to eat, so it wouldn't be awful if there were more babies, but they'd be surplus. The only thing I will need to do next year is find a different buck. Hopefully I can find someone in the same position as me who wants to trade bucks straight across. 

Dog Drama (Faith and Canines)

The farm, like the earth itself, is practically in hibernation right now. I can hardly remember a time when we have had fewer animals. The cow and the pig have both been butchered. The turkeys are gone as well, having been butchered and sold for Thanksgiving. The freezer is full of meat, and the only live animals I have left are the perennials - ponies, goats, and chickens.

The weather has been unrelenting. Except for one quick, two day freeze that brought a half-inch dusting of snow, it's been all mud. The chores are so miserable that I have allowed the unthinkable: chores once a day instead of twice. In my defense, the days are very short - there are barely eight hours of daylight, and that of a dubious, dark grey quality. We feed once, at about 11 am, double rations for everybody. As the animals are all huddled in the barn against the chill and the damp, they are not expending very much energy.

I always take Haku (the new shepherd) with us to do chores - he needs the exercise, but it is a giant pain in the ass. He cannot be trusted off leash, nor can he come into the main paddock with me, even on leash. The mere sight of the sheep sends him into a berserker rage and at 90 pounds, he is quite capable of pulling me off balance and sending me ass-first into the mud. So I put him in the adjacent pasture while I do chores, and he leaps frenetically at the fence and barks himself hoarse while I trudge through the mud.

"Shut up, Haku," I scream, with an armload of hay, the wind whipping half of it out of my arms and into my eyes.

"Shut UP, Haku," I scream, as I dig my naked hands into the ordure and pry the chicken's feed pan loose and carry it over to the hose for cleaning.

"Haku, for the love of all that's holy, SHUT UP!" I yell, as I duck back into the mama barn to scoop up chicken food. After a moment, I realize there is silence - and it is not relief I feel, but dread. I pop out of the barn, and see Haku dragging the sheep around the lower pasture by the scruff of her neck. I don't know how he got from one pasture to the other, but it hardly matters at the moment.

"HAKU!" I scream, and start to run after them. The mudboots I have put on are too small, and I am running with my toes curled under. It hurts.

"HAKU!" I keep screaming. The dog cheerfully ignores me. Even dragging the sheep, he easily outmaneuvers me. Occasionally, the sheep will break free and run for a bit, and Haku seems to enjoy it when she does, for it gives him a chance to chase her around again. The dog and sheep make large circles; I make smaller circles inside their orbit, lunging and stumbling and screaming ineffectually. I wasn't exactly checking my watch, but it felt like a good ten minutes before I managed to step on Haku's leash as he dashed by me and bring him to a jerking halt.

I was so angry at him. This is not the first - nor the second, nor the third - time he has attacked the sheep. He has never actually injured her, I think because her wool is so thick he can drag her around with a mouthful of wool without piercing her skin, but the poor thing is seriously traumatized. Haku has been punished each time, but it makes no impression. I'm going to risk the collective opprobrium of the internet by admitting that when I finally managed to drag Haku off of the poor sheep, I growled at him, flipped him on his back, twisted his ruff savagely, and whacked him across the snout with my bare hand, hard enough to hurt. "NO!" I yelled into his face. "NO!"

I dragged him out of the pasture and tied him to the fence by his leash while I finished my chores. The sheep was cowering in the far corner of the barn, but when I tried to approach her to check her for injuries she nimbly stepped around me and took off. That is, to me, enough evidence that she isn't seriously injured. As the late, great James Herriot said, if you can't catch your patient there probably isn't too much to worry about.

For those of you who might wonder, Haku is enrolled in a professional training course and we take him once a week. We also have a friend who is a professional trainer and she comes quite often to help us. Haku is a challenging dog, to say the least. He is an absolute sweetheart with the family - loving and docile and playful and trustworthy. He is also fine with visitors and people in general - but with animals, be they livestock or other dogs, he is a holy terror.

We are committed to Haku - we knew when we adopted him that he had been given up twice by other families and that we were, practically speaking, his last chance. If we were to take him back to the shelter, he would be deemed unadoptable, and we all know what that means. We will never ever do that - Haku is ours forever, even if he succeeds in his lifelong ambition to kill the sheep. We were warned that he was released the last time for killing chickens. When we decided that we were in love, that we had to adopt him, Homero said (privately) "He can kill all the chickens, I don't care."

Our last dog - my first dog - Ivory , was also challenging as a puppy. There were times I felt I had made a mistake, that she would never be a proverbial "good dog." We had to hang tough for - I'm going to say three years, until she calmed down and became a relaxed family dog, instead of a crazy whirlwind of destruction. She used to lunge at the fence and bark whenever the neighbor came home. The poor girl was only trying to get into her own house, and Ivory made it a trial every day for years. She also used to steal all my daughter's stuffed animals, sneak them out through the dog door, and then tear a small hole in them and run around the backyard, shaking them violently, until all the stuffing came out. She did this over and over until he whole backyard looked like a ski resort.

As it turned out, Ivory did become a "good dog" She lived with us for fourteen years - years which spanned the birth of my children and the growth of my family from a city-dwelling duo to a country farming family of five. She learned to be a farm dog, to herd goats, to chase rabbits through the blackberry bushes, to hunt and kill rats. She accompanied our family to Oaxaca, Mexico, and she provided us her whole life long with affection and protection. She was a real true member of the family, and even now, almost a year after her death from a nasty cancer, I cry every time I remember her. I have ugly tears rolling down my cheeks right now.

Ivory

It is only because of Ivory that Haku has any grace with us. It is only because of Ivory that I have faith, that I have trust that Haku will one day be a member of our family in the same way she was. I know there will never be another Ivory - no matter how much Haku resembles her. He can't replace Ivory - no dog ever could - but Ivory taught me the worth of a good dog, and gave me the will to keep trying. Now that I know what a dog can be, I have to believe that Haku can be that too. I know that if we can stick it out for another year or two, and persevere with the training, that the payoff will be beyond our wildest dreams. We'll have a loving companion for another fourteen years, God willing. In a very real sense, Haku is alive today because of Ivory.

I'm not sure there can be a better memorial for a good dog.

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