The Yeoman Farmer

How Thick is Your Bubble?

2012-01-26T14:44:00.001-05:00

I've read quite a bit of the advance press for Charles Murray's new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and am looking forward to reading it. I plan to blog about it once I do, as I think his central premise is important and on-target.

For an excellent overview by Murray, I recommend this recent WSJ article.

Murray has also put up a fun quiz, where you can estimate your own degree of cultural isolation or engagement with the broader American culture. My results (and a link to the quiz) are below.

How Thick Is Your Bubble?

Guest

Score » 10 out of 20 (50% )
Result

On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 9 and 12.

In other words, even if you're part of the new upper class, you've had a lot of exposure to the rest of America.

Quiz School

Take this quiz & get your score

How Thick Is Your Bubble? » Fun Trivia Maker

Q: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

2012-01-25T22:41:00.000-05:00

A: To stir up a whole lot of trouble.

Last summer, we had a wonderful surprise: one of our hens made a nest in one of the darkest corners of the barn, and three weeks later emerged with a nice brood of chicks. They were loads of fun to watch. Mother hen would take the chicks out every morning, and aggressively forage all across the property with them. At night, they would huddle up under her feathers to sleep. This went on for several weeks, and then suddenly...she was done. Just like that, she vanished back into the general population and left the juvenile chicks on their own.

After a few days of disorientation, the brood began thriving on its own. They continued to stick together as a distinct unit, and were easy to identify because many were of mixed breeds. (That crazy variety of colors was itself quite fun.) While the other chickens were content to stick around the barn and eat their layer ration, the half-dozen or so "hen brooded" juveniles continued foraging far and wide. They were impossible to contain, and sometimes we even had trouble getting them to roost inside the barn at night (we lost a couple of them to predators as a result).

As winter took hold full force, the "wild brood" began foraging still wider and discovered the corn field across the street from our farm. Commercial harvesting equipment tends to drop a fair amount of loose corn and even full cobs on the ground. Only the half-wild chickens ever foraged widely enough to discover this treasure trove...and, once they did, they started going over a number of times per day.

As the road that separates our farm from the corn field is a major feeder, with a speed limit of 45 MPH, it was only a matter of time before chickens started falling victim to traffic. We began finding dead chickens along the road, and as weeks went by the number of intrepid foragers dwindled to just three.

Then, yesterday morning, the issue suddenly became much larger than cleaning up dead chickens. Apparently (I was not home, and no member of our family witnessed the incident), one member of the foraging pack attempted to cross the road in front of a contractor's work truck. Whether the guy tried to slow down, or whether he may have even been trying to hit the chicken, we don't know. But, apparently, one way or another, the chicken ended up dead.

Contractor Dude then stopped his truck, stormed down our driveway, and banged on the back door of the house. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer was upstairs trying to keep a sleeping Yeoman Farm Baby asleep, so Homeschooled Farm Boy answered the door. Contractor Dude demanded to see one of the parents. When HFB explained that the parents were indisposed, Contractor Dude snarled that our chicken had smashed the front of his truck and caused all kinds of damage, and that unless one of the parents called him right away and paid for it he was "going to get the police out here." CD left a business card, and stormed off.

HFB was obviously flustered by this confrontation, and immediately called my cell phone. I assured him that I or his mother would take care of things when I got home, and that he shouldn't worry.

Although I questioned how a four pound chicken could do any significant damage to a pickup truck (I hit a flying pheasant once at 55 MPH, and it simply dented my hood), I figured anything might be possible. And with the rates that some auto body shops charge, we might get hit with a significant bill. So, as I drove home, I called our insurance agent to discuss our coverage and potential liability.

The agent assured me that in the event one of our animals inflicted damages on a person (i.e. dog bite) or property (stampeding goats?), our homeowners policy would cover it. But, he went on, under Michigan law we would almost certainly not have to pay anything in this particular case. Our state has an oddball set of "no fault" insurance rules, which means that every driver is responsible for collecting from his own insurance company --- regardless of who was at fault in an accident. Even if the other driver is 100% responsible for an accident, you can't collect a thing from him (other than a portion of the damages not covered by insurance). In the case of a collision with an animal, there's not even a provision to collect damages not covered by insurance. It doesn't matter if the animal in question is a deer, or if it belongs to someone who let it get out on the road. The only damages the driver can collect are from his own insurance company. If he isn't carrying comprehensive coverage, he's out of luck.

When Mrs. Yeoman Farmer called Contractor Dude to (1) express her regret that the truck had been damaged and (2) to explain that we were not legally responsible for those damages, CD cut her off. He launched into an accusatory tirade, claiming that our chicken did $1800 worth of damage to his truck. It'd apparently busted both the grille and the radiator (?!?), and he'd had to miss a meeting because of it. He said he wanted us to cover his insurance deductible, "or I'll have to get the police involved."

Mrs. Yeoman Farmer tried to explain that this was a civil matter and not a criminal case, and that therefore the police would not touch it, but he again angrily cut her off and and said he'd hired a lawyer to sue us for the $250 insurance deductible.

Whether that's true or not we don't know; Michigan law is pretty clear cut in saying he's not even entitled to that $250 (unless, as a representative from our insurance company joked, our chicken had been driving a car when causing the accident). I can't imagine a lawyer taking such a case. Just to be sure, I spoke with an attorney friend from our parish today; he confirmed that the guy would never prevail against us in court.

Contractor Dude made a few more threats, and then hung up on Mrs. Yeoman Farmer. She and I discussed the situation, and quickly came to the same conclusion: this guy is a bully, plain and simple. He's trying to brow-beat or scare us into coughing up some money, and thinks he can intimidate us enough to pay out quickly and wash our hands of him. (Why else would he mention bringing the police into a civil matter?)

Assuming we've read his motivations correctly, he's picked the wrong family. MYF and I genuinely feel bad that one of our animals seems to have been involved in this. (Though, since we have yet to see the damaged truck or the dead chicken --- which he says he hauled off to the police station as "evidence" --- we can only say "seems." And we're certainly not admitting any kind of blame or guilt.) If the guy had simply knocked on our door and explained the situation matter-of-factly to HFB rather than trying to threaten and intimidate, and had had a civil conversation when MYF called him, we might have agreed to pay out the $250 regardless of what Michigan law says. Assuming that one of our animals really had been the cause of someone else's loss (and we're not admitting it was), then compensating the other party would be the right thing to do.

But instead, we're feeling bullied --- and will fight any additional attempt that Contractor Dude makes to extort compensation from us. It's now about the Principle of The Thing, which is not letting our family get intimidated by this guy. If he again sets foot on our property, we will gently but firmly ask him to leave. If he refuses, and again attempts to intimidate us, we will be the ones calling the police. Unlike damages to a truck, trespassing on private property is a criminal matter.

Should a court, for some reason, order us to cover CD's deductible, we will honor and obey it. But nothing short of a formal legal judgment will cause us to pay out in this case.

It's a real shame that it's come to this. Almost everyone else we've met around here has been very nice and neighborly, and we've felt genuinely welcome in this community. I have no idea what's gotten into this guy, but I take solace in reminding myself that there are so few locals who are like him.

And, yes, we will be putting up a nice tight fence along the road as soon as spring gets here.

Not Strong Enough

2012-01-22T21:47:00.000-05:00

We gave it the old college try with the goat kids born early Saturday morning, but in the end they just weren't strong enough.

It was an easy call with the smaller of the two. It was really scrawny, and couldn't even hold its head up to eat. We made it comfortable, and then I euthanized it.

We had higher hopes for the larger of the two. She made numerous attempts to stand up, and was clearly acting hungry. We warmed up a cup or so of milk from one of the other goats, and I fed it to the kid with a medicine dropper. She sucked it down with gusto, and I wondered if she might just have enough fighting spirit to make it.

Alas, spirit wasn't enough. There was something wrong with her legs, and we could not get her to stand up for more than a couple of seconds. This is even after having gotten her good and dry, and fed, and letting her take a good nap. Her legs kept buckling, every time we tried to get her to stand.

I suppose we could've kept bottle feeding her indefinitely, hoping her legs would eventually strengthen. But there was another problem: her mother goat was so pathetic and runty, her udder was barely discernible. The Yeoman Farm Children didn't see how the mother could ever support this kid. Which means the doe is a good candidate for a cull, but that's another story.

The more immediate issue was the kid that couldn't stand. Given the extremely long odds against her ever living a normal life, it didn't seem that we had a lot of options. She had a comfortable afternoon in a box by the heater in my office. Then, unpleasant as it was, I knew we really had to put her down.

I realize that there are any number of ways to kill a little goat kid quickly and without pain. Still, my preference is a pistol shot to the forehead. It's extremely fast and sure, and with a relatively small caliber doesn't amount to overkill. I won't go into details, other than to assure you that the kid's death was indeed instantaneous.

Farming has such great joys. And it also has days like yesterday. It's all of one piece, and it really isn't possible to have the former without the latter. But I wouldn't trade this life for anything.

What Would YOU Do?

2012-01-21T10:53:00.000-05:00

We're facing a tough dilemma this morning. While out in the barn at about 6:30am, feeding the various animals, I stumbled over a couple of little newborn goat kids. They were still wet, and were barely moving, but were definitely alive. As it was about 25 degrees in the barn (and near zero outside), my first thought was getting these poor things warmed up.

I found a cardboard box, put some loose hay in it, and made the two kids comfortable in front of the fire. They bleated and cried at first, which is a good thing, and then they got quiet and went to sleep.

Once Homeschooled Farm Girl awakened, she went out to the barn and identified the mother goat. It's a small little runt of a doe, and I believe this is her first delivery. I had HFG move the doe to a separating pen, because that's the only way we'll have any hope of putting these kids on her.

My plan is to get the kids warmed up, get some milk into their stomachs, and see if they can stand on their own legs. If not (and one of them is so small, I have serious doubts), they're going to have to be put down. If we can get them strong enough to stand and walk today, we'll try to get the doe to take them and bond with them in the separating pen. But if not...

All of this is a super-duper long shot. I don't expect either of these kids to make it, and maybe I should've just put them down when I found them half-frozen in the barn. But here's the thing: they're here. They're alive. They're our responsibility. And by our way of thinking, we have an obligation to give these two of God's tiniest creatures a fair shot at survival.

We've seen this "movie" a number of times, and know how it ends 99% of the time: the kids don't get strong enough to stand, or the runt doe doesn't take them, or we bottle feed them to maturity only to discover they're so structurally unhealthy that there was a reason the doe rejected them. But I think we owe the Filmmaker enough to at least sit through the opening credits.

It's not the happiest part about having a farm or raising livestock. But, really, what else could we do?

A Modest Proposal

2012-01-20T16:45:00.000-05:00

The next time you buy or rent a DVD, check the "special features." Along with the Director's commentary and deleted scenes, it's often possible to select an alternate language to hear the movie in. Spanish. French. Portuguese. Italian. Whatever. It must not be too terribly difficult or disc-space-consuming to include an alternate audio track, because so many DVD movies now include that feature.

So, here's my question and proposal: Why not include the cleaned-up version of the dialogue that is used for television broadcasts of the same movie? It could be another language option, alongside Spanish and French or whatever else. And for any movie that's been cleaned-up with dubbing for television, that audio already exists. It shouldn't be hard to do. Yet, in all the movies we've rented from Netflix, I've never seen a disc that offers this option.

I'm not talking about the "bad scenes" that are cut for television; I know some Christian groups have tried to produce and sell or rent versions of movies that cut these objectionable scenes, and have been sued. That's not so critical for me; if I know there's a bad scene in a movie, I can skip through it, mute it, or make my kids face away. But I can't press the mute button every time Bruce Willis says the F-word. Sure, "melon farmer" is a silly substitute. But I'd rather my kids hear that than the original words.

What prompted this thought was recently renting Rain Man. It's a wonderful movie, with absolutely superb acting from Tom Cruise and (especially) Dustin Hoffman. In fact, it's hard for me to think of a movie with a better-acted lead than what Hoffman did in Rain Man. And the story itself, with Cruise growing to appreciate his brother for who he is, is powerful and moving. I really wanted to have the whole family watch it.

But it was rated R, and because I hadn't seen it in many years I couldn't remember exactly why. I knew there was at least one sex scene, but if that was the only problem...well, I could skip through that. But I had to know where it was, so I sat down to preview the movie by myself.

I found the sex scene, and it was pretty mild. Really mild, in fact, by Hollywood standards. The much larger problem was Tom Cruise's mouth: the profanity never stopped flowing. The longer I watched, the more dismayed I grew. I loved the story and Hoffman's acting as much as I remembered, but I knew I couldn't share this film with the Yeoman Farm Children. If it'd just been that one sex scene, I easily could've skipped it. But the foul language was far too pervasive.

And you know what's most frustrating? How completely unnecessary the rough language is. Yes, it fits Cruise's character as a rough and profane guy who thinks only about himself. But an actor as good as Cruise could sell that role without dropping F-bombs.

In a similar vein, the first time I saw Coming to America was on an airplane. I was delighted. What a wonderful romantic comedy, I thought. And Eddie Murphy played such a refreshingly clean role! And then I rented it at home, and saw everything that'd been cut out. The language and short clips they'd cut weren't just crude. They were totally unnecessary for the story --- I'd loved it just as I'd seen it. The rough language and innuendo ruined it for me.

So, getting back to my proposal, why not offer cleaned-up dialogue as an alternate DVD audio track? If the film producers think it's important not to exclude potential customers whose primary language is not English, why not show the same attention and concern to those of us who'd like to watch a movie with our kids and without all the four letter words?

Farewell, Drake

2012-01-19T17:36:00.001-05:00

We had a notable passing last night: our ancient Muscovy drake finally succumbed to old age. "Drake" is of course the word for a male duck, and for lack of creativity we simply called him that as his proper name.

Drake was special because he was among the first birds we ever got. Muscovies are weird ducks; unlike pretty much every other breed, they are not descended from Mallards. They're a South American tree bird, and can fly. They also tend to be good mothers, and are highly self-sufficient.

Soon after moving to Illinois, we got word from a friend that another farmer was looking to get rid of all her Muscovies. Being new to the whole farming thing, we were willing to try nearly anything. The idea was to experiment with a variety of livestock before settling on something. So, we gladly took the dozen or so Muscovies off this person's hands. This must've been nearly ten years ago.

I liked the Muscovies, but was pretty much alone in that opinion. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer found their odd rituals and noises to be a little strange, and she especially disliked how ugly these birds could be. Especially the males. I agreed that they weren't exactly beautiful, but sort of endearing in their own way. Still, I assured MYF that we'd focus on more conventional duck breeds going forward.

As the years passed, the Muscovies gradually died off one by one. They never did prove themselves to be very good mothers, and I don't think we ever got more than a handful of ducklings to survive to adulthood. By the time we moved to Michigan four years ago, we were down to just a couple of Muscovies...including Drake. They stuck to themselves, and did not even interact with the other ducks.

The last females died of something or other, and then it was just Drake. He seemed kind of lonely, being the only Muscovy, and still didn't interact with any other birds. He simply kept to himself, minded his own business, and carried on.

I didn't have the heart to butcher him. Not only would the meat have been terribly tough, but it just didn't seem right. No, he wasn't a pet. But he was a fixture. One of our first birds, and easily the oldest on the property. The grand old man. A survivor. One who'd made the big interstate trip in our Noah's Ark On Wheels. One who, even in his old age, the other male birds stayed out of the way of and showed respect to. Who could butcher a creature like that?

In recent months, it was clear that Drake was slowing down. Then, last night, Big Little Brother came to my office and said he was worried, because Drake could hardly walk. I asked him to bring Drake inside, and I held the bird in my arms. He'd definitely lost weight. I set him down, and he indeed could barely walk.

I thanked BLB for being so attentive, then cuddled Drake a little and talked to him as I carried him back to the barn for what I knew might be the last time. I told him what a good Drake he'd been, and that we'd appreciated having him on our farm for so long.

When I opened the barn this morning, I immediately looked for Drake. There was no sign of him with the other birds, so I looked all over the barn as I did my chores. At last, I found the spot where he'd finally run out of gas --- in the sheep area, not far from the door where he used to go out to play in the rain puddles.

No, I didn't shed any tears. And we didn't give him a special burial. But I did think about him a lot today, and I will miss him. It's the odd creatures like Drake which make a small farm so much fun.

Lots of Hot Water

2012-01-18T13:20:00.002-05:00

I'm not much of a tea drinker, and never had much interest in tea kettles. After all, who needs a special implement just to heat up water? Why not simply use a saucepan and lid? Even Mrs. Yeoman Farmer, who does make large quantities of herbal and medicinal teas for herself and the Yeoman Farm Children, has tended to agree. Besides, given that she usually makes tea in huge (2 qt) jars...the typical tea kettle doesn't produce enough hot water anyway.

Sometime earlier this winter, MYF started thinking: we have a woodstove burning pretty much around the clock. We use a lot of hot water, not just for tea and warming up the baby's milk, but also for cooking. It's time-and-energy consuming, and a hassle, to heat up a saucepan of water every time we need it. Why not take advantage of that constantly-burning woodstove, and keep a kettle of water on it all the time? We could have hot water on demand, basically for free.

The only problem is that the typical tea kettle is so small, we'd be emptying it too frequently. And then MYF found the solution while browsing a Lehman's catalog. Behold, super-sized tea kettles!

They come in 5 qt, 7 qt, and 9 qt...and the picture doesn't really do justice to how big they are. We bought a 5 qt, and it is giant. I can't imagine how big the 9 qt is. Most remarkable is how beautiful the kettle is, and because it's made of stainless steel it is extremely solid. And, at less than twenty bucks, surprisingly inexpensive. I highly recommend it.

One of the most amusing things about this kettle, though, isn't its size. It's the whistle. I hate the typical shrill scream of most tea kettles. So, imagine our surprise and delight the first time we brought this one to full boil and discovered...its whistle sounds like a freight train! Truly appropriate for the thing's massive proportions, and actually kind of fun to listen to.

We basically never run out of hot water anymore. And now that plenty of hot water is available any time, it's become more convenient to make my coffee using a French press. I prefer coffee made that way, and the high mineral content of our water tends to ruin conventional drip coffee makers, but the hassle of heating up a quart of water at a time meant I didn't use the French press very often. Now I use it every time.

Not to digress too much, but I really like my French press. The thing has a beautiful and elegant simplicity to it. And using it couldn't be easier: put 1/2 cup of coarsely ground coffee in the bottom, add about a quart of near-boiling water (to within an inch or so of the top), stir with a wooden spoon, and fit the lid / pushrod / circular mesh filter assembly to the top.

Let it steep for at least four minutes, and then plunge the pushrod / filter all the way down to trap the grounds. The result is a wonderfully rich cup of coffee, with all the oils and flavors still in it.

Perfect for a cold Michigan afternoon by the woodstove of an old farm house. Or anywhere else you might find yourself today.

Tax Day

2012-01-17T16:53:00.000-05:00

This morning, I dropped a couple of checks in the mail: one to the U.S. Treasury and one to the State of Michigan. Like most people who are self-employed, I make quarterly payments for the year's estimated taxes; the deadline for 4Q 2011 is today.

If you're an employee, your federal and state taxes are automatically deducted from each paycheck. You never see the money. Oh, sure, you'll see the line item on the pay stub for the deducted taxes...if you look for it. But if you're like I was when I was an employee, you probably have your check directly deposited into a bank account and never bother looking at the paper pay stub. You confirm that $X shows up in your account, and you think of $X as the amount you "get paid." Seldom, if ever, do you think about the amount you never saw.

Then, after you file your taxes in March or April, chances are good that you'll receive a sizable refund check for the amount of tax that you overpaid during the course of the year. Ever stop to think about that? You're giving the government an interest-free loan from every paycheck. Then you get this big check, which you then probably think of as "bonus" that you can use for something special.

The bigger the "bonus," the happier you probably are. It should be the opposite: the bigger the refund check, the more troubled you should be at the size of the interest-free loan you provided. But, human psychology being what it is, the government knows that's not how you'll react. You never saw the tax deductions all year. You never thought about what you never saw. Now you get a chunk of it, all at once, in a lump sum, courtesy of the U.S. Treasury. Isn't that great?

Contrast that with the experience of the self-employed. You deliver a project for a client, and get a check at some indeterminate time in the future. You deposit this money in a bank account, where you see it and control it all quarter. You spend some of it. You think about what else you'd like to spend it on. And then, at the end of the quarter, you must sit down and write a check relinquishing a portion of those funds to the United States Treasury. It was yours. You held it in your hands. You thought about what you could do with it. And then you turned it over to the government.

When you're making these quarterly payments, you try to make each one as small as legally possible --- and are happy when you sit down in April to do your taxes and discover you owe additional money to the government. That means you didn't overpay, and didn't provide an interest-free loan. But even if you have an unexpectedly large number of deductions in a particular year, and overpaid Uncle Sam, you don't even think about requesting a refund check. Instead, you apply the overpayment to the next year's tax bill. It becomes part of your first quarter estimated tax payment.

Why do I raise this topic? I love being self-employed, and the independence that goes with it. But it's remarkable how much the experience has changed my perspective on taxes and government spending. The more of these quarterly payments I've made, the more personally I've come to view government spending. The dollars government spends seem much more like my dollars now, in a way they did not when my paychecks were getting directly deposited with deductions automatically taken.

The local freeway resurfacing? The aircraft carrier? Ethanol subsidies? Payouts to failed solar panel manufacturers? Subsidies to buyers of electric cars? The person in line ahead of me at the grocery store, who pays for a cartload of junk food with an EBT card before whipping out a wad of cash to pay for their beer? Whether I approve of any of these particular expenditures or not, they represent dollars that used to be in our family's bank account. And I remember writing the check which turned them over for the government to use in these ways. That is much more real to me now than it was before, and much more real than I think it is to those who never see the deducted dollars at all.

For the record, I don't think our family is overtaxed. I happen to agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. I'm happy to see the government provide a strong national defense, build and maintain roads, and fulfil the rest of its core functions. But the experience of writing quarterly checks has made me much more attentive to "everything else" the government spends money on --- and has led me to question those priorities to a much greater degree.

Try a thought experiment: imagine that, starting this year, every working American received every penny of his or her paychecks. And then had to sit down once a month and write a check to "United States Treasury" for the same amount that is currently being deducted. And a second check to their state or local tax authority.

I'm guessing we'd see much more vocal pushback against government spending at all levels. And maybe even a political revolution that restores truly limited government.

Which is why automatic tax withholding will never be eliminated. But we can still dream, right?

Still Here

2012-01-16T11:19:00.001-05:00

I apologize for the long break from posting, and wanted to let you all know that I'm still here and do intend to keep this blog updated more frequently going forward. I had an extraordinarily busy November and December with work, which is unusual for a non-election year. I had a number of things concerning the farm that I really wanted to post about, but was simply too absorbed with delivering results to clients.

As many of you know, we are not "professional" farmers. My primary occupation is public opinion research; I design and analyze opinion surveys. My background is in political science, and election years are particularly busy times for me. Much of my work, in even-numbered years, involves voter targeting and turnout modeling for Republican candidates across the country. In odd-numbered years, most of my work is related to public policy and is done on behalf of industries or corporations. This fall and winter, I've had an unusually large number of such projects. Client confidentiality limits what I can say about the particulars, but the studies I've worked on have been quite interesting. What I enjoy most about this profession is getting to learn "what people think and why they think it" about a wide variety of issues. But it's easy to get absorbed in these projects, and my farm duties, and to neglect the blog.

Some other reasons for my slow posting in recent months is that, quite honestly, I would second guess myself as to whether my readers would really be interested in the particular thing I was thinking about sharing. Or I would have trouble getting a picture of the thing I wanted to discuss, and decide to wait until I could get one. Or, if I'd already put up posts in the past discussing the same thing, I would tell myself that readers would get bored with my repetition. Or...or...or...

For the writer, any excuse for procrastination can turn into a good one. And then the thing never gets written. (Exhibit A is my new novel's manuscript, the edits to which still need to be made.) So, going forward, my range of topics may grow wider. Many posts may have nothing whatsoever to do with farming. But the blog will always remain true to its original mission: to give the perspective of one Yeoman Farmer on the connection between farming, faith, family, and citizenship. Some posts may relate only tangentially to these topics...but whatever the topic may be, you will be getting The Yeoman Farmer's perspective on it.

My goal, going forward, is to post at least something every day. It may be brief. It may sometimes seem "off topic." It may not interest you. Feel free to skip. But there will be something, so please do stop by if you feel so inclined.

Thanks to all of you for your patience, and your loyalty in reading this blog.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

2011-12-02T08:21:00.000-05:00

Twice now, within the last week, the following has happened: I went out to the barn early in the morning, flipped on the lights, and a little black mouse has begun running all up and down the chicken area until it can disappear under cover. I then looked over at the eight (or however many...I can't even keep count of them anymore) barn cats, all of whom are camped out around the old table where Big Little Brother feeds them cheap cat food twice a day. And they look back, bored.

Sheesh, I think. Eight of you guys, and not one can be bothered to nab this mouse?

Seriously, maybe we need to feed them less. Or let Wilbur the dog start sleeping in the barn, so he can give these felines some lessons in mousing.

Our Dog, the Cat

2011-10-20T08:37:00.000-04:00

It's been cold, rainy, windy and generally nasty around here for the last several days, which has given very little to smile about. But who can't smile at a dog who's caught more mice in the last week than our barn cats have?

Wilbur has a great nose, and is a great digger. He unearthed and dispatched several moles this summer, and in the last few days has come up with two field mice. Just like a cat, he walks around with the mouse squirming in his mouth. Then he puts it down, watches it flop and stumble around, and plays with it until I approach. Then he picks the squirming, dog-spit-covered rodent back up, retreats a safe distance, and does the whole thing again. Eventually, he finishes the mouse off.

Now, if we could just get him to do his digging somewhere other than Mrs. Yeoman Farmer's garden...

On Wheels

2011-10-09T19:34:00.000-04:00

Homeschooling families are often asked "What do you do about sports?" It seems that this is the question we are asked second-most to all others. (Number One, of course, is "How are your kids learning to socialize with others?")

We've consciously decided to avoid the typical team sports that involve shuttling kids all over creation to attend practices, games, and tournaments. Sure, baseball, hockey, football and soccer have value and can be quite healthy. But the schedules can consume enormous amounts of time that could be better spent with family; we've seen this happen to a number of our friends.

Just living on a farm, our kids get plenty of exercise. But they also participate in a relatively unusual sport. What this is, and how it came to be, is the focus of a fun article I just had published on MercatorNet. It begins like this:

If it’s true that an addict is the last to recognize his own addiction, that may be especially so when the compulsion is ostensibly healthy. But rock bottom is rock bottom, and mine came on November 20, 1999 — appropriately enough, near the lowest geographic point in North America, on one of the country’s most isolated roads.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

And for those who have been asking about my plans for a second novel, I do have a story in the works. The general plotline is inspired by the events recounted in this MercatorNet piece. I've finished a complete first draft, and the editor (and other initial readers) have sent me suggested changes. I am in the process of incorporating those edits now; I am hoping to have a final version for publication sometime next year.

In related news, my first novel, Passport, is now available in e-book format through the Amazon Kindle Store(for just $2.99). Also, Amazon has temporarily reduced the price for the print edition to $13.45; it can be found by clicking on the image below.

Protecting us from Ourselves

2011-10-05T12:37:00.001-04:00

Hey, readers in Wisconsin: your state government is on the case, protecting you from any stupid decisions you might want to make about what you put into your own body. You know, like ... raw milk.

N.B. this is a crackdown extending even to those who've organized their farm to sell ownership sales to those interested in obtaining raw milk. Selling shares has been an effective traditional means of circumventing prohibitions on raw milk sales. If I own a share in the cow, the milk from the cow is mine and I'm free to drink it. I'm not buying or selling the milk. Just drinking what came from this cow that I'm a part owner of.

It would be one thing if the state wanted to protect ignorant consumers who might accidentally grab unpasteurized milk from the shelf at the grocery store. But these farm share owners, by the nature of the trouble they've gone to, have demonstrated themselves to be about as highly aware of the risks and benefits of raw milk as it's possible to be.

Raw milk has some pathogens which are potentially harmful if the milk isn't handled correctly? Yeah, yeah. I know that. But I'm an adult, a thinking and reasoning subject, who has decided that this product's benefits far outweigh any of those potential harms. And that this product is far superior to the chalk water that the dairy industry wants me to be stuck with.

Let's hope that at some point, government at all levels will get out of our way and let us make nutritional decisions like the free adults we are.

Happy Endings

2011-10-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

Living on a farm has its share disappointments ... but the unexpected joys often greatly outweigh them. As we prepare for Fall, I wanted to share two happy follow-ups to stories detailed earlier this year.

First, remember the chicks that our Barred Rock mother hen hatched out in a dark corner of the barn? Of the eight original hatchlings, only one died along the way. We gave one to a friend, leaving six. When mother hen first let the chicks spread their wings and go their own way, I was admittedly a bit nervous. The chicks didn't seem to have a clue as to what they should do without her leadership. I found myself going out to check on them several times a day, just to make sure they hadn't done something stupid.

Happily, twelve weeks after hatching, all six have survived and are now large juveniles. They've continued to be a distinct community within our larger flock, roosting together on the fence that separates the kidding pen from the rest of the goats. Interestingly, it was the same pen in which their mother hatched them. It'll be interesting to see how much longer they stick together; even during the day, they never tend to be far from each other as they forage across the property. Perhaps thanks to the upbringing their mother gave them, they seem to range much more widely and proactively than the other chickens. Here they were this morning (the sixth one is just out of the picture):

But, by far, the biggest and happiest success story is Puddles the Goat Kid. Rejected by her mother and nearly dead when we found her in the barn during a storm in March, longtime blog readers will recall how we revived her, bottle-fed her back to life, and then transitioned her to House Goat and finally Barn Goat. Well, Puddles is now a strong and healthy six-and-a-half month old member of the herd:

But she hasn't forgotten her beginnings. Whenever I call her name, she immediately responds by standing up, nickering in a particular way, and running to greet me. She's not the kind of annoying pet goat that follows humans everywhere. She's definitely bonded with the other goats, and knows she's a goat. But she also knows she's the one and only ... Puddles!

What Have We Been Doing?

2011-09-28T12:14:00.000-04:00

I apologize for the infrequent posting of late. Things have been busy here, but I owe you all an update. There's never a dull moment on a farm.

First off, can you believe this is Post Number Six Hundred? Many thanks to all of you who've been following us and our farming adventures all these years. Sometimes I get the sense that I've said everything that can be said, and that I don't have anything really new to talk about. Do my readers really want yet another post about pastured poultry pens? Or fences the goats have (again) broken through? But as long as you all are game for continuing to hear about our farm, I'll keep writing.

We've had a pretty bad year with turkeys. We started with about 20, and it's looking like we'll harvest no more than seven. Especially given how expensive the baby turkeys are, it's a pretty poor return on investment. We got 15 "surplus" heritage turkeys and 5 giant whites from a mail order hatchery this spring. The "surplus" deal is pretty good, as long as you're not picky; the hatchery sends a variety of heritage breed turkey hatchlings, basically leftovers not needed to fill orders from people who want a specific breed. It's actually a pretty good way to experience several different breeds, and it definitely makes things more fun. We got the giant whites, boring as they are, because it's always nice to have a few really big birds in the freezer.

Anyway, the poults did fairly well in the brooder, but turkeys are notorious for spending the first several weeks of their lives thinking up ways to die. We moved them out to a pastured poultry pen for several more weeks, and lost a few more. By the time I turned them loose in the fenced goat area by the barn, we were down to five heritage turkeys (all Black Spanish) and four giant whites. I secured them each night in the barn, but a predator still managed to pick off one of the heritage birds. Another of them flew into the kennel and became a chew toy (and meal) for one of our dogs. Then, last week, one of the giant whites developed a serious leg problem; I butchered her on Monday, to make sure we got those 11# of meat before she got any worse.

Here are some of the ones we have left (note the significant size difference between the breeds):

So...are turkeys worth it? We never seem to get a good return on our money, no matter which hatchery we use. But I'll continue raising them, for a couple of reasons. First, there is absolutely nothing like roasting up your own turkey and serving it on Thanksgiving. We've been supplying the turkey for many years now, no matter where we've spent the big day, and it makes the feast special in a way that nothing else can. Even the year we were a thousand miles from home, in the process of adopting Yeoman Farm Baby, we took a turkey with us and the family we shared Thanksgiving with cooked it. Second, a turkey is a great size for serving when we have several visitors (or a large family) over for dinner. With both heritage turkeys and giant whites in the freezer, we can pick just the right size bird for the number of visitors. It's easy to roast, and there's never any shortage of meat.

For day-to-day meals, though, we've found that Cornish Cross broiler chickens are a far more practical size. One of them provides plenty of meat for our family, with some left over for lunches or soup. In the winter, we tend to roast them whole all afternoon in the Crock Pot --- but whenever the weather allows, we prefer to grill them outdoors.

We raised 25 broilers earlier this year, but lost over half of them along the way to predators or other "stupid stuff" like them piling up and suffocating each other during a thunderstorm. We also lost almost all of the replacement egg laying pullets we started at the same time. Faced with an aging and dwindling laying flock, and very few broilers in the freezer, I decided in early August that we should raise another batch before the weather turned cold.

I'm really glad we did. We got 25 more Buff Orpington pullet chicks, and we haven't lost more than one or two. By early next year, our egg production should kick into high gear. Likewise, almost all of the 50 cornish cross broilers have survived, and they're rapidly approaching optimal butchering size. Get a load of the size difference between the two breeds (all the birds in this pen are exactly the same age); this is why it makes so much sense to use Cornish Crosses, and not the males of an egg laying breed, as a primary meat bird:

We've spread the 70-75 surviving birds between three of our movable pastured poultry pens. Each pen is 4'x8', and I'm running all three of them along the edge of our hay field where harvesting hay is difficult. We try to move the pens every day; this supplies fresh greens for the birds' diet (a healthy supplement to the high protein feed which is their main source of calories), gets the birds off their manure, and ensures an even distribution of fertilizer along the field. It's a beautiful system. But here's what it looks like when we don't get around to moving the pen for an extra day:

Toward the right is what the weeds/grass look like after just one day. Toward the left is what happens if something keeps me from getting the pen moved. Note also how we've staggered these two pens as they're moving down the field.

Sometimes, I deliberately keep a pen in one place for extra time, to ensure the birds totally wipe out whatever is growing there. This pen, for example, is down in the impossible-to-cut corner of the hay field, where the grass is so long I can't even get a mower in there. The organic chicken tractor is taking those high weeds down and making sure they doesn't grow back for a long time:

The only problem with having 50 broiler chickens survive is that ... you have to butcher 50 broiler chickens. I try not to do more than five per day, or I tend to go crazy. And since I can't butcher every day, by the time I get to the last broilers they tend to be extremely large. To make sure I don't get too far behind the curve this time, I started butchering a couple of birds this week (along with that turkey with the leg problem), even though they're not optimal size yet.

But you know what? They were still a pretty good size for our family. We got a complete (and absolutely delicious) dinner of grilled chicken out of one of them last night, with a thigh left over for my lunch today. Which I will go in and enjoy momentarily.

But first, lest I leave you with the impression that our whole farm is livestock, I must tip my hat to Mrs. Yeoman Farmer (and the Yeoman Farm Children) for a smashingly successful year of gardening. I tried to capture as much of it as I could with one photo: the 400 row feet of potatoes at the top (which I am going to be enlisted to start digging soon), tomatoes and kale on the right (we cooked up some kale with our chicken last night...amazing), and squashes going a LONG way out of the picture to the far right. On the left is our bee hive, from which I will try to harvest honey this weekend. At the very bottom is a grape vine, clinging to the fence which separates the garden from the hay field (and the deer which run up and down it all year...except during hunting season.) In the background is my office; yes, I get this wonderful view every day as I do my work.

Here's a better shot of the squashes. We're going to be putting up a ton of these "winter keepers" in the pantry:

That's all for now! Thanks again to all who've been following us. I'm looking forward to sharing the next six hundred posts with you!

Just a Couple More

2011-09-11T19:13:00.000-04:00

If you're like me, you're probably "Nine-Elevened Out" and overwhelmed by the number of remembrances that commentators have been offering up in recent days. The History Channel in particular has been wall-to-wall with 9/11 for some time. (If you watch just one program, make sure you catch their "102 Minutes that Changed the World." It is phenomenal.) But if you'll indulge me, I'd like to offer just a couple of quick memories of my own.

By way of background, we'd just moved to our first farm, in Illinois, from California, a month and a half before 9/11. We were still figuring everything out, and hadn't even ordered our first batch of chickens. Our house was a couple of miles outside a town of 420 people, and about 7 miles from a town of 4,500. We'd met a handful of people, but still didn't have many friends. We'd decided not to hook up satellite TV, and were so far from the nearest broadcast tower that we couldn't even get signals from the antenna. We had dial-up internet, which was pretty slow.

I'd been in Washington, DC, on business the previous two days, speaking at a conference. I'd flown back to Chicago the afternoon of September 10th, and driven two hours home in my vintage Italian project car as the sun set over the prairie. Everything seemed perfect. Only after getting home did I discover I'd left my sports jacket on the plane. I called United Airlines, asked them to look for it, and went to bed late.

Tuesday morning I slept in, and it was lazy. Mrs Yeoman Farmer and the kids had gone to town for something, and I enjoyed having the house to myself. Sometime in mid-morning, I got around to signing onto AOL for the first time, to check email. I was puzzled by the welcome page, which said something about America under attack and the World Trade Center no longer being there. It seemed so outlandish, I dismissed it as some kind of speculative "what if" scenario. But after a little more browsing, I figured out what'd really happened. And was shocked to the core.

And I'd never so badly wished I had a TV. I switched on the radio, and tried to get some news, but even that reception was pretty bad. I then called Dish Network, and arranged to have satellite service hooked up. Something told me we were really going to want it in the coming days and weeks.

When MYF and the kids got home, we called one of the few friends we had in the town of 4,500 (a family from our parish). We asked if we could come over and watch TV, and they said "absolutely." We sped into town, and spent a couple of hours glued to the footage while our kids played with theirs. Particularly striking was the reaction the husband of this family had to the events. He was an auto mechanic, and about as strong a guy as you'll meet. He'd come home from work for lunch, and watched the news with us as he ate. As he was preparing to go back to work, even he had tears in his eyes.

Anyway, I'll cut right to the biggest thing that struck me about being in a rural community that day. The town of 420 had a Catholic church so small that it didn't have its own priest. The pastor from the larger town drove out twice a week to say Mass: once on Sunday, and once on Tuesday evening. I'd attended that Tuesday evening Mass pretty much every week, and there were usually about four or five other people in attendance. But on Tuesday the 11th, I counted fifty-five people in that little white frame building. It looked almost like a Sunday morning. Somehow, as the events of that day unfolded, a lot of people were getting the same idea: I need to get to church. I need to come together with other people. I need to pray. It was nowhere so pronounced as in that little town on that night. The sense of "togetherness" in that building was palpable.

Then, after Mass, as we began driving home, I spotted something strange: a long line of cars at the one gas station along the highway that cut through the town. There were so many cars, they were backed up for a long distance around the block. It looked like pure panic-buying of gasoline, but I couldn't help thinking if maybe all these people knew something I didn't. Would gas soon become scarce? Would prices go through the roof? I decided it'd be better to be safe than to be without gas, so I got in line and waited a half hour or whatever until I could top off my tank. All the employees were working to get people through quickly, but I had a chance to chat with one of them as our gas was pumping. "You could probably raise your prices and make a fortune," I commented. "Supply and demand, and all."

"Oh," she replied, almost taken aback, "we would never do that. We're just going to pump until there's nobody left or we run out of gas."

As I drove home, I reflected on how strikingly different this place was from Los Angeles. How much the community had come together. How much people seemed to be looking out for each other. And how very glad I was to be living here.

in the closet, I gave the pockets a closer inspection. And found that, in addition to my business cards, I'd also left my boarding ticket there. The date was printed right in the middle, and jumped off the paper at me: September 10, 2001.

I stopped and shook my head. September 10th seemed like an entirely different country, in an entirely different world. Everything, it seemed, had changed. And I was deeply grateful I'd be getting to spend the post-9/11 world in a rural community like the one we'd found.

Out of the Nest (Updated)

2011-08-19T10:35:00.001-04:00

About five weeks ago, we returned from vacation to a surprise gift: a barred rock hen had hatched out eight chicks in a dark corner of the barn. We've enjoyed watching them grow, and the mother hen did an outstanding job leading them all over the property foraging for bugs and seeds. It's truly entertainment that can't be purchased, and is part of what makes living on a farm so much fun.

There were a couple of nights that she tried to bed down with the chicks outside, but I forced her to take the brood into the barn each time. Last summer, we lost a couple of mother hens and well over a dozen chicks to predators; I didn't want a repeat experience this year. To my relief, after a couple of "corrections," mother hen stopped even trying to stay out for the night. All these weeks, only one of the eight chicks died. We loaned one other to a friend, leaving six to roam with Henny Penny.

In the last week or so, the chicks have gotten so big that they've been unable to squeeze through chain link fences. They're fully feathered, and looking like juvenile birds rather than chicks. Because of their size, they've sometimes gotten trapped behind a gate that their mother could fly over. But, up until yesterday, the whole little family managed to reconnect and forage together after each separation.

Then, overnight, something happened. When I came out at about 6:30am, the six chicks were outside, foraging for spilled grain near the duck pens...but mother hen was nowhere in sight. I doubt a predator got her; anything that takes out a big chicken usually takes out any little ones that are with it.

I think that something inside the hen's hormonal system just "clicked," and told her it was time to rejoin the flock's general population. But she looks so much like the other barred rocks, and we have so many of them, I can't be certain.

And I can't be certain that all six of the chicks will continue to thrive. Little birds have a way of flying into water tanks and drowning. Or getting lost in high weeds. Or bedding down in the wrong place and getting picked off by a predator. But I like to think that Mother Hen knew what she was doing, and has turned them loose because her instincts confirmed that the little ones were ready.

I'll keep an eye out for them, but something tells me that they're going to do just fine. They've had the best education a chicken can get.

Update: I went out at 9:30 tonight, to make sure the chicks weren't trying to bed down outside or in some other dangerous place (yes, we've seen young chicks try to roost on the edge of a water trough). Much to my relief, all six of them were back in the general area where they'd been hatched and where their mother had spent each night. Best of all, five of the six had figured out how to roost on top of a cattle panel that separates the main goat area from the kidding pen. Number Six was down on the floor in the kidding pen, back in the corner where they'd been hatched.

Interestingly, mother hen was nowhere to be found. She's definitely taken her hands off the bike and is letting the little ones pedal away on their own. And, so far, the six of them are sticking together and doing just great.

Kudos to mother hen for a masterful job brooding these guys. Mission accomplished!

Just in Time

2011-08-04T08:25:00.000-04:00

We recently had to take a yearling ram to the butcher, after his horn grew into (and gouged out) his right eye. It was a disgusting mess, but we'd intended to butcher him this fall anyway. Fortunately, the butcher was able to take him right away and spare the poor creature a long weekend of agony from the flies. We got the 39# of meat back yesterday afternoon, and will look forward to feasting on it.

Anyway, the yearling ram's situation spurred me to check our two mature breeding rams. Both have had problems with horns growing too close to their faces, and in the past we've had to cut horns short on both of them. Those horns are now growing back, and are getting to the length where they could cause problems. Ram #1 (Dilemma) was just fine; his horns are clearing his face with plenty to spare.

Ram #2 (who, I hate to admit, we have never gotten around to naming) was not so lucky. He's black, and his horns are black, so from a distance it'd been tough to see where the horns ended and the wool began. But once I caught him and ran my fingers along the horn, it was clear we had trouble. The horn was growing straight into the back of his jaw, on both sides. Left untreated, this was a death sentence.

My options were limited. The horns were already tight against the jaw, so he wouldn't last until the fall shearing date (when Lisa, our shearer, would be up from Indiana and able to help me cut the horns off). The nearest large animal vet is a long ways away, and would probably charge a lot. Dr. Patterson, the older dog-and-cat vet who looks at farm animals if you bring them to his office, wasn't an option; this was definitely an on-farm job.

I called Lisa and described the situation. It turned out that she needed to come to Michigan in the next week or so anyway, and would be just an hour or so from our farm. She agreed to make a detour, and to bring what we needed to remove the ram's horns.

Am I ever grateful she was able to get here so quickly. We did the job on Tuesday afternoon (there is a description of the procedure and some photos in this old post), and we were just in time. The horns were already scraping part of the ram's face raw, and the flies were having a field day laying their eggs in his flesh. Worse, the flies were migrating and laying eggs all over his neck and upper head. The more wool Lisa trimmed, the more pockets of maggots we found. She decided it'd be best to sacrifice his beautiful fleece and just shear him now, to make sure we uncovered everything.

With his wool out of the way, we easily found and sprayed every pocket of larvae. She then treated the open wounds with salve, and of course bandaged the horns we'd cut. The ram wasn't happy, and I know he won't thank us, but I think he will make a full recovery and be just fine.

This incident illustrates something else: the value of having a backup breeding animal. Early on, we tended to keep just one mature male for breeding and to castrate the young rams. Then we discovered that unexpected incidents can come out of the blue and take an animal's life --- leaving you and the flock in a tough situation. This is why we keep two mature rams; had we not discovered this horn problem until too late, and lost Ram #2, we'd still have Dilemma to ensure we have lambs next spring.

Finally, I just want to say again how deeply grateful I am that Lisa was available and willing to come see us on such short notice. I'm not sure what I would've done otherwise. Thanks!

Welcome to the Conspiracy!

2011-08-03T18:51:00.000-04:00

No, not the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. The unpasteurized dairy conspiracy! That's what the founder of a raw milk cooperative buyers club in California has been charged with. According to NaturalNews.com:

A multi-agency SWAT-style armed raid was conducted this morning by helmet-wearing, gun-carrying enforcement agents from the LA County Sheriff's Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).

Rawesome Foods, a private buying club offering wholesome, natural raw milk and raw cheese products (among other wholesome foods) is founded by James Stewart, a pioneer in bringing wholesome raw foods directly to consumers through a buying club. James was followed from his private residence by law enforcement, and when he entered his store, the raid was launched.

InfoWars has more about the story, and the conspiracy charges. They also have a video of the raid.

Do I ever feel safer knowing that these dangerous conspirators have been taken off the streets. Good thing the Supreme Court recently ordered the State of California to release 46,000 felons early from prison; that'll ensure there's room to incarcerate Mr. Stewart and his henchmen.

Seriously, isn't California supposed to be the world capital of "Keep Your Laws Off My Body"? How about starting by keeping your laws off of what I want to put into my body?

After all, California was one of the first states to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. I'm all in favor of such measures, but tell me: Is raw milk any more dangerous, or any less medically beneficial, than cannabis?

Garden Helper

2011-07-23T14:38:00.000-04:00

We have a fairly simple division of labor on our farm: I manage the animals, and Mrs Yeoman Farmer manages the plants. MYF is usually very insistent that members of my "team" not intrude on and mess with her garden, and with good reason. Ever seen what happens when a dog discovers how nice it is to dig in freshly-tilled soil? Or when a flock of birds discovers bushes full of beautiful ripe tomatoes? We therefore built a tight fence around the garden, and patrol it diligently.

Then, this morning, MYF observed that our new mother hen was managing to squeeze through a tiny gap near the gate --- and her chicks were easily following her. MYF was about to shoo the hen out, but then she thought more about it. There are no more seeds that could be scratched out or uncovered. There is no fruit yet. The green tomatoes are probably unappealing. The potatoes are safely buried underground. Why not let Henny Penny take her brood on a bug-hunting safari?

So we did. She seems especially interested in the potato portion of the garden, which has lots of little insects hopping all over it.

I'm not sure we want to release the rest of the flock into the garden; some plants would be sure to get trampled. But for now, it's an awful lot of fun watching Henny Penny and her brood do "organic pest control" for us.

Emergency Butchering

2011-07-21T17:03:00.000-04:00

Strange things happen when you're away from a farm for nine or ten days.

We have twin yearling sheep, born late last spring. Neither was of butchering size last fall, so we decided to keep the female as a breeder and to butcher the male this coming fall. The female is as strong and healthy as can be, but the male recently developed a problem: his right horn began growing toward his face.

When we left on vacation early this month, the horn still seemed to have plenty of clearance; it was something to keep tabs on, but it didn't seem to require immediate action to cut off.

Imagine my dismay when we got home, settled back in, and I got my first good look at him. And discovered that the horn was not just pressing against his face --- it was growing straight into his right EYE.

I immediately grabbed some bolt cutters and lopped off the end of his horn, but the damage had unfortunately been done. His eye looked irreparably injured. He didn't like it, but I did my best to clean the eye socket up with hydrogen peroxide.

We kept close tabs on him in the ensuing days. Despite the mangled eye, he seemed to be getting around just fine. He came in and out, and grazed with the rest of the flock. We continued to plan to butcher him this fall.

Then, especially with the arrival of the recent heat wave, we began having second thoughts. He started going AWOL, hanging out by himself on the ridge (and down by the swampy area) on the far end of the pasture a lot. Last night, he didn't come in at all. I spent a lot of time searching the pasture with a spotlight, but couldn't find him anywhere. I worried that the heat had become too much for him, or that he'd gotten dangerously dehydrated, or that a predator had overtaken him. Surviving 95F and humidity is tough enough for us humans; imagine if you're wearing a wool coat and battling an eye injury on top of it!

This morning, I found him hunkered down along the fence by the swampy area. His coat was a mess, but he jumped to his feet as he saw me approach. When he began trotting away along the ridge, I grew even happier. Being spry enough to run away is a very, very good thing. He ran all the way up the hill to the barn, which really got me feeling optimistic.

And then, once I'd cornered him in the barn and grabbed him, I realized we had a problem. A big one. With the heat, flies had evidently been swarming all over his injury. All around the socket, I could see the quivering of tiny larvae. It turned my stomach, and I knew we had to do something.

Given that the heat would only be making the situation more miserable, and that trying to clean out the injured socket would probably bring only temporary relief, and that we'd been planning to butcher him anyway, and that he was now of a nice butchering size...it was fairly evident what course of action we should take.

The problem is that the local slaughterhouse where we take our animals only does sheep on certain days of the week. I figured I'd have to wait until next Monday or Tuesday to get him in, and a quick call over there confirmed that. I certainly didn't want to try butchering him myself in 95 degree weather (just imagine the flies!), but I wasn't sure he'd survive the weekend. And even if he did, he'd be miserable.

I described the situation to the woman who'd answered the phone, and she quickly put the shop owner (Jack) on the line. "How quickly can you get him over here?" Jack asked. They were done slaughtering for the week, but he was just finishing up a cow and said he'd have time to squeeze my sheep in today...if I could get him right over.

This is why I love patronizing Mom and Pop businesses.

Homeschooled Farm Boy and I put a tarp down in the back of our minivan, loaded up the injured animal, and set off for the butcher. Once there, Jack met us around back and helped unload him into a holding pen. We thanked him repeatedly for getting the sheep in on such short notice, and then drove home.

It's unfortunate we weren't able to get the sheep through to this fall, but I really don't think he would've put on much more weight between now and then. I'm just very grateful that we identified the seriousness of the injury before it got to be too late, that the sheep will not have to endure the heat and flies this weekend ... and that we were able to add 40-50 pounds of excellent meat to our freezer.

New Arrivals

2011-07-17T19:42:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the slow posting of late; our family just returned a few days ago from a big vacation in my home town of Seattle. It's remarkable we were all able to get away from the farm for so many days in the middle of summer, but the trip was a big one and we'd been planning it for nearly a year. What made it possible was finding a friend we could trust to come take care of our animals (including milking three goats) twice a day.

It never ceases to amaze me how much can change on a farm in just nine days. The growth in the garden was dramatic, especially the potatoes. (And the weeds!) But what really struck me was how much larger the ducklings, goslings, and turkey poults are, and how much more feathered they had become. The goslings are still smaller than the mature geese, of course, but are nearly as well feathered:

I'm going to be turning the female ducklings loose in the next couple of days. We'll keep the drakes in these moveable pens until they reach butchering size in a few weeks.

The biggest surprise, however, was in the deepest and darkest corner of the barn. Back in the kidding pen, a Barred Rock hen had made a nest...and hatched out eight little chicks!

She's been taking them for walks, and I managed to get a little video. Her deep, reassuring clucks --- and the chicks' eager little peeps --- are priceless:

I could watch them for hours. And it's so blisteringly hot here, I'm not sure I want to do anything more strenuous than watch the poultry grow.

Something You Knew Already

2011-06-24T08:05:00.000-04:00

This story won't come as any surprise to followers of this blog, but it's always encouraging when the "hard" sciences provide evidence to back up what we know:

Scientists have confirmed what every urbanite has long suspected – life in the city is more stressful.

Researchers have shown that the parts of the brain dealing with stress and emotion are affected by living among the crowds.

The findings help shed light on why those who are born and raised in urban areas are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and schizophrenia than those brought up in the countryside.

The team of international scientists behind the finding are unsure why city life is so bad for the nerves.

However, past studies have shown that exposure to green space reduces stress, boosts health and makes us less vulnerable to depression. The findings come from the brain scans of 32 healthy volunteers from urban and rural areas.

Go read the whole thing.

To be fair, we've found that life in the country isn't exactly stress-free, either. Livestock and gardens produce stresses of their own. Whenever you're trying to cultivate or nurture living things, life is unpredictable and can lead to worries or difficulties: A surprise late frost wipes out your seedlings. A surprise early frost destroys the tomatoes you were going to can for a winter's worth of sauce. The barn cat finds a way to go hunting in your poultry brooder, and feeds five baby turkeys to her kittens. (Five baby turkeys that, I might add, every hatchery is now sold out of for the year).

But would I trade these stresses for those of a city? Not on your life. I visit Chicago, DC, and NYC frequently enough on business; I certainly enjoy the change of pace, and appreciate the resources that cities can provide, but you can see in the faces of passersby the toll that day-to-day urban stress wrecks. I'm always more than happy to return home to the quiet of my farm.

I'd a million times rather deal with the stresses of livestock and a garden than with the stresses of city life. Worrying about the garden getting enough rain, or whether enough broilers will survive to maturity, is entirely different from worrying about whether your packed commuter train will get you to work on time. Because when you've worked through and solved the "rural stress," you get to enjoy the wholesome and delicious fruits of your labors. But when you've survived the "urban stress," all you've done is successfully gotten to work in a high rise in a concrete jungle.

I'll take the literal jungle of my pasture over that any day of the week.

Gosling Initiation

2011-06-08T09:18:00.001-04:00

We've been raising a batch of ducklings and goslings in the brooder for the last two weeks, and are preparing to move them to a pasture pen (as soon as I can butcher the last four broilers that are in it...hopefully this afternoon).

Given our past success with gosling adoption, I decided to take six of the new ones out to our flock of mature geese. As I approached, they backed away warily. Then, the instant I set the box of goslings down and released the little ones, the entire mature flock began honking at the top of their lungs. The goslings sprinted toward the big birds, the big birds gathered around the little ones, lowered their necks, and continued honking. And honking. And honking.

I went to the house and got a camera. They were still honking when I returned, initiating the little ones into the Fraternity of Goose. I managed to get this brief video:

A half hour later, they've quieted down. But it looks like we may have pulled off another successful gosling adoption. Given how much grass is out there, it's good to have all the more beaks at work now on the ground.

Puddles Grows Up

2011-06-08T09:00:00.000-04:00

I've been swamped with work (and trying to stay ahead of the grass which never seems to stop growing), but wanted to give a quick update. Puddles the Goat Kid is now nearly three months old, and thriving:

Her broken leg has completely healed, thanks to an outrageous amount of duct tape. I still bottle feed her a couple of times a day, which provides a good use for the milk that we can't use (because goats stepped in it during milking, etc.). She bleats and comes running when I call her. But otherwise, she's integrating well into the rest of the herd, and spends all her days with them in the pasture. Given where she started from, 95% dead on the floor of a frozen barn in mid-March, and then with a broken leg, her current condition qualifies as pretty much miraculous.

Sadly, I can't say the same thing for Ellipsis the Lamb. We gave it everything we could for her, but she was not able to integrate with the flock (no bummer lamb we've had ever has been able to do it). She was more a pet than anything else, and I bottle fed her several times a day, but something wasn't right in her little system. I'm not sure if it's because she was eating too much stuff other than milk at too young an age. Or what. But a few weeks ago, we found her dead out in the pasture. She'd been looking a little bloated earlier that day, but had seemed to be getting around okay. And then, just as suddenly, she wasn't.

It was very sad, particularly since she was the last of Dot's line and we'd really wanted to keep her. But such is farm life, especially when livestock are involved. You give everything you have, as a good shepherd and steward. Sometimes they thrive. Sometimes they don't. It's a great mystery, and I certainly don't claim to understand it. We just keep plugging away, and keep doing everything we can for our little flock.

Civic Pride

2011-06-02T10:56:00.000-04:00

It's well known that Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I much prefer country and small town life to that in even a medium sized city. But cities have their place, and can be valuable for the resources they provide and their opportunities to connect with others.

Some time back, a national magazine put our state's second largest metro area on its list of "America's Dying Cities." But rather than taking the designation laying down, the people of Grand Rapids responded by putting together what may be the most remarkable production of community and civic pride we've ever seen:

Videos don't embed well on my blog, because of the narrow text template. This link will let you watch it on YouTube. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure you watch it. It is truly amazing.

An NPR story supplies more of the backstory of the video, and is definitely worth reading.

Much has been written in recent years about the decline in American "social capital." Technological changes, such as television, have led to the dissolution of traditional means (such as civic organizations) by which people used to connect with one another. That may be true, but productions such as this one demonstrate that it doesn't always have to be. Perhaps particularly in smaller cities such as Grand Rapids, there is still a thriving base of social capital; productions like this one couldn't be made without it.

And as closely as I watched it, I found no one in the video who was "bowling alone."

My Idea of Civil Disobedience!

2011-05-17T07:48:00.000-04:00

Remember that Amish farmer who the FDA has been treating like some kind of drug lord? His customers are fighting back:

Four weeks after the government moved to shut down Amish farmer Dan Allgyer for selling fresh, unpasteurized milk across state lines, angry moms who made up much of his customer base rallied on the Capitol’s grounds Monday to demand that Congress rein in the food police.

The moms milked a cow just across the street from the Senate and served up gallons of fresh milk, playfully daring one another to drink what, if sold across state lines, would be considered contraband product.

What a terrific protest idea! If we still lived in the DC area, I would've shown up and joined them with one of our goats.

The video these moms put together is terrific:

And, as one of them points out, just look at those kids and how healthy they are!

When All Else Fails

2011-05-12T07:27:00.000-04:00

Try duct tape!

Seriously, that's the lesson you learn pretty quickly on a farm. We bought a large bulk pack of it at Sam's Club some time back, and I'm glad to never have a shortage.

It proved itself particularly handy a little over a week ago. About two weeks ago, Puddles the Goat Kid somehow managed to break her left rear leg, down close to the foot. I tried splinting and bandaging it, but the whole thing came off in fairly short order. She didn't seem to be in a lot of pain, and was getting around well on three legs, but I didn't want to leave the leg untreated.

So, a week ago Tuesday, I took her to the vet to have it done "right." I figure we've spent enough time and effort (and milk) bottle-feeding her, we might as well invest a little more in getting her leg correctly set. Puddles was a huge hit in the waiting room, and got lots of attention from those with dogs and cats. It took a long time for the vet to get to her, but he splinted and bandaged her leg beautifully. I left his office confident that Puddles would heal nicely, and that our $60 was well spent.

And then, last Wednesday afternoon, the splint was off. Yes, the whole thing had simply slid off her leg. I took her and it back to the vet on Thursday, waited for a long time with lots of dog-and-cat people, and he re-splinted her leg but with more bandages and tape. And only charged me $10.

And, by 6pm, the whole thing had slid right back off her leg.

Rather than spend my Friday morning back at the vet's office, I recruited one of the Yeoman Farm Children to help me splint Puddles's leg myself. I'd watched the vet enough times now to understand the general principles --- and watched Puddles lose the splint enough times to know I had to do something different as well.

And that something was DUCT TAPE. I splinted and bandaged the leg much as the vet had (fortunately, her leg was already starting to fuse, so it wasn't necessary to align the bone). Then, I basically mummified the entire thing with duct tape --- and didn't stop at her knee. I kept wrapping her, all the way up to mid-thigh. "Just try slipping this thing off!" I told her, as she limped across the floor of my office.

Guess what? Nearly one full week later, the splint is still in place! This isn't the greatest photo, but it was a dark corner of the barn and she was a perpetual motion machine (every time I knelt to take a picture, she'd rush toward me). But this gives some idea of what her leg looks like:

And Puddles is doing much better. She's actually trying to rear up and place weight on both of her rear legs. I'll keep it on her for the next week or so, to make sure it's healed, but I'm very optimistic.

And now an even bigger believer in the power of duct tape.

TYF Had a Little Lamb

2011-05-02T08:32:00.000-04:00

To farm is to embrace a lifestyle of great joys...and great sorrows. And, more often than not, the joys and sorrows are intertwined and inseparable from one another.

Recent posts have detailed the great sorrow our family experienced with the decline and death of our sheep flock's matriarch, Dot. But wrapped up in that sorrow (in fact, arguably, the cause of it) was a great joy: Dot's lamb, which we named Ellipsis.

The little Dot-Dot-Dot has not only survived. She has thrived. And she's clearly adopted me as her surrogate parent. She lives with the other sheep in the barn, and plays with the other lambs, but when I appear she drops everything and runs to me. Because she knows what I've got.

Even after the feeding is over, she finds ways to squeeze through fences and gates to tag along as I take care of the other chores. Sometimes she'll even follow me all over the property. I don't really mind, as it's some consolation after losing Dot. And I know she'll grow out of it.

Most amusing was Saturday evening. We had some friends over, and had planned to grill a big platter of lamb chops. Ellipsis spotted me as I fired up the grill, and broke out of the barn. She followed me all the way to the house, just like the dog did. And then, once I had the platter of chops, she and the dog followed me all the way back down to the grill.

As I put the chops on the grill, I assured her that this would never be her fate. She gets to stay with us as a breeder for the rest of her life.

Which, we hope, is as long and happy and productive as her mother's.

Criminals

2011-04-29T12:16:00.000-04:00

There are dangerous criminals among us. But you'll be relieved to know that the federal government is on the case, and busy getting them off the streets:

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.

The product in question: unpasteurized milk.

It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

But this line from the story jumped out the most:

“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” said Tamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA, whose investigators have been looking into Rainbow Acres for months, and who finally last week filed a 10-page complaint in federal court in Pennsylvania seeking an order to stop the farm from shipping across state lines any more raw milk or dairy products made from it.

What????? Raw milk should never be consumed? Kind of makes you wonder how the human race survived, drinking that toxic "udder brew," for so many millennia. In fact, I poured about a cup and a half of that poison onto my cereal this morning. I'm surprised I feel so healthy and vibrant, and that I haven't collapsed under E. coli-induced convulsions. Even more remarkably, I've been poisoning myself in this way for weeks now --- ever since our goats freshened --- and in fact feel healthier than ever. No doubt the other ten million raw milk drinkers in this country (and the countless other millions around the world) would agree.

To paraphrase something Ronald Reagan once said about his political opponents: The trouble with our friends at the FDA is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

And, I would add, that they have so much power to prosecute and crush the small farmers who dare supply a healthy product to the willing consumers who seek it.

End of the Road

2011-04-22T09:42:00.000-04:00

Poor Dot.

Despite all our efforts, and the best work of our vet, she never got her appetite back. She was still alive this morning, and I gave her an injection of antibiotic. Drenched her with lots of apple cider vinegar and warm water. Wiped the mucus from her nose. Expressed as much of the junk from her udder as I could. Told her what a good sheep she was. But she was clearly just barely hanging on.

The most interesting part of the last few days was watching the bond re-establish between Dot and her lamb. Although Dot had "officially" rejected the lamb, she grew too tired to drive the lamb away any longer. The two of them slept together, and the lamb tagged along everywhere Dot went. I was providing the nutrition, but Dot was still clearly her mother figure and companion.

Then, just a few minutes ago, Homeschooled Farm Boy was in the barn milking. He came to my office saying that Dot had gone down and wasn't moving. I ran to the barn, but she was already gone. The saddest part was the little lamb, still standing by her, trying to figure out what was going on.

I just wish I could've been there when it happened.

I know we did all we could for her. But it looks like I'm going to be spending this miserable, cold, rainy Good Friday afternoon out in the pasture digging a grave. We'll have to pick a good spot. Maybe near Scooter and Tabasco, close to the route the sheep use going in and out from their paddock to the pasture.

If there's any bright spot in all of this, it's that the lamb is healthy and that Dot will have a final legacy. No matter what her physical conformation to breed norms, we're keeping her as a breeder. And now we need to name her!

I'm leaning heavily toward "Ellipsis." Dot. Dot. Dot. Trailing off, into a new beginning.

A Happier Birthday

2011-04-21T14:17:00.000-04:00

Things were not looking good for our flock's matriarch, Dot, last night, on the eve of her twelfth birthday.

I went out to milk her one last time for the evening, hoping to relieve the pressure on the rock-hard left side of her udder. Because I wanted to save some money on milk replacer, I decided to put a pan under her and catch as much milk as I could.

Even though I used lots of hot compresses to loosen up her udder, Dot still hated being handled. I'm glad we had a stanchion to lock her into, because she fought every time I squeezed her udder. Eventually, I decided to call it a night and give her a break. There wasn't much coming out, it was late, and she seemed like she'd had enough.

I put her back in the pen with her lamb, then took the milk into the house to refrigerate. And then I realized something was seriously wrong with Dot. Instead of milk, her udder had been expressing a watery substance heavily tinged in dirty red blood. I knew it meant some kind of infection, probably mastitis, and that we were now in over our heads. Still, Mrs. Yeoman Farmer had a couple of herbal remedies to try: homeopathic pokeweed tablets, and a jar of pokeweed oil rub.

I gave Dot a tablet, then rubbed and massaged her udder with the oil. She didn't like it, and I had to block her against the wall, but I knew I had to persist. Gave her another tablet, then rubbed more oil into her. Then did it a third time, and called it a night.

The treatment didn't clear up the infection, but at least Dot was alive in the morning. She still had no appetite, but wanted to be let out of the separating pen. She led me straight to the main sheep area, so I let her rejoin the flock. Within a few minutes, she'd led her lamb outside to the sunshine.

Given the seriousness of Dot's infection, I knew she needed more attention than I could provide. We don't have a large animal vet in the area who does house calls, but there's a veterinary clinic that will see farm animals case-by-case if they're brought in. Judging from how confused and amused the young receptionist was when I walked in and explained why I was there, they don't get many sheep.

The clinic owner, Dr. Patterson, is an older vet, who retired from farm calls several years ago. I waited with Dot in the van until he was able to come see her. I explained what'd been going on, and showed him what I'd milked out of Dot's udder the night before, and he immediately diagnosed a serious mastitis infection. He gave her an injection of B-complex vitamins, and 10cc of antibiotics. He sent the rest of the bottle home with me, and said she should get another 10cc every day --- and that I should continue trying to milk that "junk" out of her udder.

After we'd taken care of that, Dr. Patterson smiled, relaxed, and lit a cigarette. We stood there in the sunshine talking...and for just a moment, the parking lot full of dog and cat owners' cars seemed to disappear. I could see in his eyes how much he missed seeing and treating livestock, even if he no longer had the energy and wherewithal to put 40,000 miles on a car going to visit farms.

"I think we might just be able to save this old girl," he said with a grin, rubbing Dot's back.

I paid him, then drove the old birthday girl back home. She rejoined the rest of the flock, and at first seemed mildly better than in the morning. But she wouldn't touch the hay I put down, and didn't even sniff at the grain I offered her. As the rest of the flock barged in and went crazy getting to the hay, the contrast with Dot's condition couldn't have been more stark. That's what Dot's supposed to be doing, I thought.

I drenched Dot with a couple hundred more CCs of apple cider vinegar and warm water, and included some cod liver oil, before going back to work. An hour or so later, she was out in the sunshine with her lamb --- but still not at all interested in food. I helped her to her feet, and led her to the hay, but she wouldn't even look at it. Or the grain I offered.

She needed liquids and nutrition really badly, so I tried offering her the lamb's milk bottle. She wouldn't even suck. But then I got an idea: Dot, you're getting some food in your stomach one way or the other. I went in, warmed up some goat milk, and returned with it and my drenching syringe. I managed to get 3 full syringes of 50cc each straight down her throat. I also put her against the barn wall and, despite her protestations, expressed as much "junk" out of her udder as I could.

Will she make it? I honestly have no idea. It all depends on whether her appetite returns, and how soon. In the meantime, we're treasuring every additional day of her reign as matriarch of the flock.

The Leader of the Band is Tired...

2011-04-20T23:05:00.000-04:00

...and her eyes are growing old.

Poor Dot.

She turns twelve tomorrow, and it's not looking like it's going to be a very happy one. I'm not sure what "twelve" translates into in people years, but it's a lot. Certainly far beyond the age when anyone should be having a baby and then getting pregnant with twins just two months later. She's just plain burned out, and I fear we may have entered a tailspin from which we cannot extract her.

Dot has "leader sheep" genetics, and it's always shown. The flock takes its cue from her, and if we can get her headed in the right direction they will almost always follow her. When the flock is spooked, or nervous, they will all bunch up in a pack behind her. For instance, when we drive them into the barn on shearing day, it's remarkable the way she stands out in front while the rest of the flock cowers at her tail. Even this morning, when I led her to a private pen, the whole flock began bellowing in protest as she exited the main sheep area.

I'm beginning to suspect that Dot rejected her lamb because her body is telling her she doesn't have the resources to care for the little one. But that's led to a problem: her big udder is now completely engorged, and it can't be comfortable. I've begun trying to milk her out, to relieve the pressure, but the udder is like a rock. It's hard to get anything flowing. I've even begun putting the lamb back on her, to see if she'll have any more success. As a measure of how lethargic Dot has become, she doesn't even protest or try to butt the lamb away. As the lamb suckles, I stroke Dot's drooping neck and tell her what a good sheep she is.

I've never seen her like this. She won't rise to her feet without help. Once on her feet, she does little but hang her head. She sniffs at her hay, but doesn't eat. She won't even eat grain, and she's always loved grain. She did nibble down some kelp meal. On our breeder's advice, I've tried giving her some warm milk. She won't drink it from a pan, so I've resorted to feeding her from the bottle before I feed the lamb.

My jeans and sweatshirt are filthy from all the time I've spent on my knees, trying to assist her and extract milk. I smell like lanolin and cruddy hay. But I don't care. I just wish there was more I could do to help.

She has a small fever, but it's not really bad. The biggest issue right now, beyond the engorged udder, is her appetite. We're trying to get anything we can "down the hatch" and into her system: kelp meal, dolomite powder, and vitamin C. I put the powders into an old film canister, tip her head back, pry her mouth open, and toss the minerals down. I then "drench" her three or four times with a 50cc syringe filled with apple cider vinegar, warm water, and cod liver oil.

On a farm, animals come and go. You learn quickly not to get attached to them, and mostly we've succeeded. But there are exceptions. Big ones. Especially the dogs, and certain of the barn cats; it's really hard to lose them, because they're companion animals. The livestock are not companions, but Dot has always been in a category of her own. Not only is she the leader, and the oldest, but she was in our very first group of four sheep. Nearly every adult in our flock can trace its genetics back to her.

It's going to be very hard to let her go, and I just wish we had more time to get used to the idea. So...I'd best be getting out to the barn and seeing if I can get some more milk out of her udder before bed. And see if we can get her just one more birthday on our farm after this one.

Lamb Concern (Updated)

2011-04-17T14:25:00.002-04:00

After the amazement of Dot's delivery last night, the reality of the situation is setting in --- and it's not looking great.

First off, the male (black) lamb is much smaller than his (white) sister. As noted yesterday, I thought the male had been born dead. But he did manage to get up and walk...and, multiple times, get through the fence into the chicken area. So did the white lamb.

This happened, in large part, because Dot wasn't very much interested in either lamb. She didn't call to them, or urge them to nurse, or anything else. It didn't seem like she was rejecting them (we've seen that and know what it looks like), but more like she was just plain tired. She seemed content to simply lay on the floor and chew her cud, while the lambs wandered off. I turned off the lights, hoping that with darkness they'd be less adventure-prone.

Didn't help. I had to search all over for them this morning, and neither was near Dot. But at least, I thought, they're strong enough to walk. I had Homeschooled Farm Girl help me move Dot and both twins into the now-empty goat kidding pen. I figured that would help the three of them bond more effectively, especially since we had to be gone for much of the day and couldn't keep close tabs on them.

I tried to get the little black lamb to nurse. He definitely seemed interested, but once the teat was in his mouth he would just sit there. No suckle. He got a little bit, but then Dot started moving. The bigger lamb was much more active, and much better at suckling. She took quite a bit.

After doing some other chores, and helping to get the kids ready for church, I made another stop in the barn to help get the lambs tanked up. The little black one was just so small and weak, he wouldn't even suckle. We had to leave, so I didn't have the chance to do more for him. I will try to get something into him with a dropper this evening, but it wouldn't surprise me if we lose him.

Big sister, by contrast, again nursed well --- at least when I held Dot in place. But Dot was starting to act irritated at both of them, almost like she wanted to reject them. It became a huge struggle to keep Dot from walking away when I put either of them on a teat. I'm hoping they work it out today while we're gone, but I'm mentally preparing myself to bottle feed them all the way. Especially since, in an email exchange with our breeder, we learned that these old ewes often don't produce nearly as much milk as they did when younger.

I'll close this "downer" update with something more amusing: while I was out of the barn this morning, and Dot was busy eating hay, both lambs somehow found their way into the corner of the pen, where a barn cat has been raising three little kittens. When I came back, the mother cat was away, but all five babies were curled up together in a big inter-species pile! One of those priceless scenes I really wish I'd had a camera to capture. The kittens even cried when I took the lambs away. Maybe they'll be back there when we return home this morning...

Or maybe the barn cat will adopt the little black lamb! That would solve everything. And put us in a record book somewhere.

UPDATE:
We got home, to a mixed scene. The black lamb, unfortunately (but not unexpectedly), had expired sometime during the day. The white lamb was doing well, but Dot did seem to have rejected her. I managed to hold Dot steady long enough for the lamb to get a good meal; one advantage of Dot's advanced age is that she no longer has the strength to fight me and escape the way she used to. Her udder seemed quite large and full, so milk production doesn't seem to be a problem.

I'm not crazy about going out to hold Dot for nursing several times a day, and we may end up bottle feeding eventually. But for now, the lamb needs the colostrum. And we'll do whatever's necessary to help her along.

Totally Unexpected

2011-04-16T20:59:00.000-04:00

She turns twelve next week. She had an oddball out-of-season lamb out in the pasture last September. Who ever would've thought that Dot, the grande damme of our flock, would've come into season just two months later? And then, today, drop these beautiful twins:

The white one is a female, and the black one is a male. At first the black one appeared to be stillborn, but when I tried picking him up he started moving a little. Fortunately, our shearer (Lisa) was here and had just finished shearing the flock. She picked up the little lamb, held him upside down, and then swung him in a manner that cleared his airway. The white one was in much better shape, and was already lifting her head to get up, but Lisa swing her in the same way just to make sure.

When Lisa arrived this afternoon, Dot had just begun going into labor. It was a shock, as we didn't even know she was pregnant. Her frame is large, and her udder is always big, and she's been moving stiffly for a while now; I hadn't been able to put two and two together. But there it was, a "bloody show" hanging out of her rear end.

It wouldn't have surprised me at all if she'd been miscarrying; I really didn't expect a mature lamb...let alone two.

One thing Lisa found surprising was how interested Dot was in eating hay during the labor. An ewe's appetite usually shuts down. But Dot seemed to take the whole thing in stride...which I suppose makes sense, given the number of times she's done this. But it was still amusing watching the way she ate, totally oblivious to the bloody show hanging out of her rear. And then the ease with which the two lambs slid out, and how nonchalant she seemed. She sniffed the lambs, then went to get more hay, then licked them a little, then went for more hay. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

We put both lambs together, and surrounded them with scraps from Dot's own fleece. We also closed up the barn, as it's quite cold and blustery outside.

I'll check on them again before we go to bed tonight, but I'm not really worried. They're in good hands (or hooves, as it were).

Best. Sheep. Ever.

Head Count

2011-04-07T22:17:00.000-04:00

It was chaos in the sheep area when I went out to close it up for the night. Of the eight lambs we've had born so far, six are almost entirely black and a seventh is mostly black. Only one is mostly white. All the black lambs are about the same age and size. The challenge is trying to get an accurate head count while all these little guys are swarming and weaving in and out among the various adults.

Over and over I counted, and I kept coming up with seven. I could've sworn we'd had eight lambs born so far, but it's becoming a blur. Maybe it was only seven. Or was it eight? As I secured the barn, I began composing an update to the previous blog post in my head. It was going to start out, "Okay. So, I can't add."

But what if I was wrong about being wrong? What if it really was eight? Why was I only coming up with seven? I stopped, stepped away from the chaos, and calmly reviewed what I knew to be true. Conundrum, Bianca and Maybelle each had a single. Three. Licorice had triplets. Six. And we had twins born today. Eight. Eight. But I can only find seven lambs!

I jogged into the house and retrieved my big pistol grip spotlight. (As noted last summer, this is a truly essential tool when living in the country.) I ran back to the fenced-in area outside the sheep area, and swept the spotlight across the whole thing.

And, within seconds, I spotted him. Number Eight. He was pure black, and had curled up in an old rubber feed bowl for the night. I never would've seen him with just the light coming from the barn. As I lit him up, he lifted his head and looked at me, but didn't make a sound. It took just a few more seconds to run to him, lift him into my arms, and carry him back around to barn's main entrance (I'd of course already secured the sheep door from the inside).

And that was that. The parable of the Lost Sheep, come to life. Lots to think about and contemplate; even if I might sometimes lose count and get confused from time to time, the Good Shepherd never will. And that Good Shepherd is infinitely more concerned about my welfare and security, and is prepared to go much farther to bring me back to safety, than I ever could for a member of my own little flock.

Seven and Eight

2011-04-07T16:30:00.000-04:00

Our seventh and eighth lambs arrived earlier today, courtesy of one of Maybelle's daughters:

Both are males, and both are doing nicely so far.

I don't think we ever settled on a name for this mother ewe. By tradition, she needed "belle" as part of her name, but we never came agreement beyond that. It's her second lambing, and she's looking to be as prolific as her mother.

Five ewes have delivered, meaning our lambing percentage is at 160% so far this year; 150% is the standard we like to shoot for, so we're doing well. Two more ewes have yet to deliver, not counting Dot (who turns twelve on April 21st of this year). We're not counting on the old girl to lamb this year...but who knows?

Lambing Continues

2011-04-06T10:23:00.000-04:00

In April on our farm, every morning is like Christmas morning; you're never quite sure what new gift will be waiting when you open up the barn doors.

Today, Bianca surprised us with a beautiful little ram lamb:

I say "surprised," because she lambed fairly late last year. (We kept both of those 2010 lambs of hers over the winter, because neither was of butchering size last fall.) And she's certainly starting to get up there in age. But the new lamb is healthy, and Bianca is going strong. So, power to her.

As noted in the update to yesterday's post, it turns out we had a set of triplets and a singleton born on Tuesday, rather than two sets of twins.

Maybelle seems to be enjoying her first singleton after eight straight sets of twins. He already has a very beautiful fleece.

Maybelle is quite milky, but the continuous sets of twins have kept us from trying to milk her. Homeschooled Farm Girl is talking about giving it a try this year; it'll be interesting if we can get her into the stanchion, and get enough milk to make cheese.

Licorice's triplets (two males, one female) are doing great. I deliberately left the photo below "widely cropped," to give a better sense of how crazy the scene can get in our barn. Licorice has three lambs. There's a Buff Orpington hen off to the left. Conundrum and her lamb are in the background, along with a goose. Three more geese are up near Licorice.

This place is a madhouse. But lots and lots of fun. And will get even more fun later today, when the chicks arrive. But that's a separate post.

Lambs in Full Force (Updated)

2011-04-05T08:43:00.002-04:00

It was chilly this morning, but beautiful and sunny. Great morning to go out to the barn and discover that TWO ewes had delivered a total of FOUR lambs overnight, and all were healthy.

Licorice's lambs were driest, so she apparently had delivered her two males first:

Maybelle, who is usually the first ewe to deliver, slipped to third place this year with this beautiful boy and girl:

Will be interesting to see if we get any more born today. At least one more of the ewes is looking enormous and ready to go any time.

BTW, as an aside, Puddles the Goat Kid has now made a complete transition to the barn. She's been sleeping there every night, and hasn't been inside my office in a few days. She even seems to be playing well with the other goat kids. Simply unbelievable the progress she's made; this is by far one of the most rewarding parts of raising livestock.

UPDATE: Later in the day, the parentage of the lambs became more clear. It turns out that Licorice had in fact had triplets, and Maybelle had a singleton. With the chaos in the sheep area, one of Licorice's triplets was following Maybelle around. But in the afternoon, they'd sorted themselves out correctly.

This is the first time in her nine lambings that Maybelle has not twinned. It's also the first time she's delivered in April rather than March. As Homeschooled Farm Girl pointed out, "She is getting old, Daddy." For the record: this is Licorice's sixth lambing, and her third set of triplets.

Taking the Fight to the Enemy

2011-04-01T09:50:00.000-04:00

All I can say is: It's about time.

Reversing roles, farmers sue Monsanto over GMO seeds

Genetically modified seed giant Monsanto is notorious for suing farmers in defense of its patent claims. But now, a group of dozens of organic farmers and food activists have, with the help of the not-for-profit law center The Public Patent Foundation, sued Monsanto in a case that could forever alter the way genetically modified crops are grown in this country.

[. . .]

GMO crops have another interesting quality -- you can "use" a patented gene without even knowing it. When you download and share music and movies on peer-to-peer networks or plagiarize blog posts or books, let's face it -- you know what you're doing. But if you're a farmer, GMO seeds can literally blow in to your fields on the breeze or just the pollen from GMO crops can blow in (or buzz in via bees) and contaminate your organic or "conventional" fields. And if that happens, Monsanto or Syngenta or Bayer CropLife maintain the right to sue you as if you had illegally bought their seed and knowingly planted it.

In an appropriately Orwellian twist, the companies even call such accidental contamination by their products "patent infringement." And, in the face of a government more than willing to allow companies to "defend" their "intellectual property" in this way, organic farmers and others have now stepped up and said, in short, "Hell no!"

[. . .]

If the suit is successful, not only will it limit Monsanto's ability to sue farmers, the company will have far greater responsibility for how and where its biotech seeds are planted. The regulatory free ride will be over. While that won’t eliminate GMO crops, it will at least give organic farmers a hope of avoiding contamination.

You can read the full story here.

Here Come the Lambs

2011-03-30T22:46:00.000-04:00

The calendar has said "spring" for over a week, but it's only barely felt like it outside here in Michigan.

This new happy arrival got the lambing season started right:

He's big, beautiful, and doing extremely well. As is his mother (Conundrum). It's definitely starting to feel more like spring here on our farm.

It's Hard Work Learning to Be A Goat

2011-03-29T16:24:00.000-04:00

You'd be exhausted, too, when they let you back into the Yeoman Farmer's office building after spending a long day in the barn, figuring out where you fit in the caprine hierarchy.

Shhhhhh. Don't tell Puddles that when it warms up next week, she's going to have to start spending her nights in the barn, too.

Our Gallivanting Goat

2011-03-27T22:49:00.000-04:00

As promised in the previous post, I've been looking for a chance to get video of the goat kid's new dexterity.

Turns out, I didn't have to wait for morning. When I took her in for the night, she started gallivanting across the living room. The lighting was very poor, and she was hard to capture on camera, but I did manage to get some footage. This won't win any awards for video quality, but it gives a sense for the remarkable progress she's made:

While in the house, I went upstairs to see if the Yeoman Farm Children were in bed. Wouldn't you know it...the goat kid began climbing the stairs after me! I couldn't get it on video, but it was amazing to watch. She got about halfway up, and then climbed back down. And ran across the living room again at full tilt.

It's definitely time to move her to the barn, before she dismantles everything in the house.

Demoted Back to Goat

2011-03-27T21:49:00.000-04:00

Puddles the Goat Kid has begun her transition back to barn life in earnest. As much as I've enjoyed having an office pet, the arrangement just isn't sustainable over the long run. She's already starting to hop onto the couch every time I sit there, and then she proceeds to climb all over me and the arm of the couch. Needless to say, it's getting annoying.

She wasn't happy about it, but we left her in the barn pretty much all day today --- from 8:30am to about 7:30pm. It wasn't terribly warm outside today, but the barn was in the low thirties. Which was warm enough. We put her in the kidding pen with her own mother and the mother of the kid that died early Saturday; we didn't expect her to bond with or begin nursing from either one of them, but the idea was to get her accustomed to being around other goats --- and out of the way of the mature bucks in the main goat area. She seems to have curled up in the corner for most of the day, but it's a start.

The best news of the day was this morning. She'd spent the night in her box by the fire, in the house. When I let her out, she trotted all around the living room as usual. And then, for the first time, she did something we never expected her to be able to do: the "Goat Kid Gallivant." Anyone who's raised goats knows what I'm talking about: it's when a kid puts his/her head down and makes an energetic, half-hop / half-run trip across an open area, springing into the air with every step. It's like they have so much energy (and dexterity), simply running isn't enough. We never thought her legs would work well enough to gallivant like the other kids all do.

In the meantime, we'll probably let her sleep inside one more time tonight; the temps are expected to plunge again, and I don't want to stress her little body too much. I'll have my camera ready tomorrow when I let her out of the box. If I can catch her gallivanting again, I'll post the video to YouTube.

One Up, One Down

2011-03-25T23:06:00.000-04:00

Sadly, the goat born late last night didn't survive his first full day. Despite making it through the night, and being up on his feet and nursing this morning, it seems the barn proved too cold for him. We left all the doors closed today, and the lights on, but I guess that wasn't enough. When Homeschooled Farm Girl came out to the barn this evening to milk, she found that the kid had expired in that fresh dry straw bed I'd made for him.

Here he was, this morning:

Lesson learned: We definitely need to invest in a blow dryer. I've been trying to avoid spending the money on a new one, but it's looking like we should bite the bullet and pick up a cheap dryer the next time we're at Wal Mart. Getting the kid totally warmed up and completely dry might have given him a better shot at survival.

But we also have good news to report in the goat department: Puddles continues to thrive beyond all expectation. She's hanging out in my office pretty much all day, and this afternoon achieved a major milestone: she managed to climb/jump onto my couch. She'd been trying for some time now, but had never been able (especially with the slick floor). Today, she put all the pieces together and jumped up to join me as I read a book. And now that she has it all figured out, she makes the jump perfectly nearly every time. I suppose it's only a matter of time before she figures out how to work the remote for the TV.

She enjoys sleeping on the couch, too:

Fear not, we will begin transitioning her to the barn tomorrow. We'd been hoping that the newborn goat kid could be her companion, and that his presence would make her transition to "goat life" easier. There are five other kids in the barn, but they're all significantly bigger and more agile than she. So, we'll keep a close eye on her tomorrow.

Goats Keep Coming

2011-03-24T23:36:00.001-04:00

Just a quick post, because it's late.

The temperature plunged here over the last couple of days, and is expected to stay cold through the weekend at least. Thermometer says 23F right now. Which means, of course, that we found yet another cold, wet, newborn kid in the barn when we went to close it up for the night!

The two oldest Yeoman Farm Children helped me towel the thing off, and move him (yes, it's a "him") and the mother goat into the kidding pen. The YFCs made sure the doe's teats were clear, and got him to nurse a bit. He's still not perfectly dry (note to self: we really need to get a blow dryer), but I brought down a huge armload of fresh straw and made a nice dry bed in the corner. It's the least drafty part of the building, and I think he's comfortable in it. Also, we left the lights on for the night; that should make it warmer, and easier for the two of them to find each other if need be.

We'll see what we find out there in the morning.

In the meantime, "Puddles" (I love that name, but it won't stand long term; all goats here get flower names), the formerly Mostly Dead Kid, continues to thrive. Against all odds, she's putting on weight and really getting around nicely. We were going to transition her to the barn this week, but then the cold snap hit. For now, she's sleeping in the house at night and hanging out in my office most of the day. Even the dogs seem to be accepting her as another member of the pack. Go figure.

The warning that one commenter gave about not treating goats as house pets is a good one, and I am concerned about how this goat will ultimately turn out temperament-wise. We've had "too friendly" goats before, and they are indeed a hassle. The one consolation is that she's a female, so will never have the nasty male goat smell. And she may end up easier to handle and get into a stanchion for milking.

But who knows. At this point, I'm just glad she's survived.

UPDATE: We awakened this morning to temps in the low teens outside and ~36F in the barn. And the new goat kid was up on his feet, walking around, seemingly fine! I'll try to get some photos posted later today.

Our Pet Goat

2011-03-19T10:51:00.000-04:00

The goat kid we revived from "mostly dead" continues to thrive...but, unfortunately, only in the house.

We did our best to reintroduce her to Thistle, the mother goat. The Yeoman Farm Children put Thistle in the stanchion, got some milk flowing from her teats, and tried to get the kid to suckle. She just stood there and let the nipple fall from her mouth. They tried again. And again. And again. No luck.

The YFCs milked Thistle out, and then returned her to the kidding pen. We tried leaving the kid out in the pen with her, hoping something might click, but she just sat there all afternoon. And Thistle didn't express the slightest interest in this "thing" sharing the pen with her.

So...the kid (who remains nameless, BTW) came back into the house. Where she sleeps in a box in front of the fire, and gladly takes milk when given to her from a dropper. She's put on noticeable weight. Her tendons are doing a lot better, and she's walking steadily all over the living room and kitchen when we let her out of the box. She doesn't gallop around like a typical kid, but she's making remarkable progress and I think her prognosis is excellent.

Except for the whole "bonding with other goats instead of humans" thing. I'm honestly not sure how we're going to work this, or how long she's going to be a "house goat." It's okay for now, but goats are notorious climbers. It's only a matter of time before she'll be climbing out of her box, messing all over the floor, climbing the stairs, and climbing onto the dining room table.

We took her out to my office last night, while we watched college basketball. The office has a vinyl floor, so it didn't matter if she piddled (and she did). Her footing was a bit unsteady, because vinyl is slick, but she got the hang of it soon enough. Before long, she was wandering all over my office like any other house pet. It was kind of fun, actually.

Wilbur was all over her, trying to figure out what this new little creature was. For her safety, we thought it best to move Wilbur outside (which was fine with him).

What happens next? We're not really sure. This is uncharted territory. She's a very nice goat kid. I'm just not sure how long we can continue keeping her as a house pet.

Stay tuned. There's never a dull moment on a farm.

Back from the Dead

2011-03-17T10:12:00.000-04:00

One of our favorite scenes in The Princess Bride is when Miracle Max declares that the hero is only "mostly dead" and then proceeds to revive him.

Something similar happened on our farm Tuesday evening. It'll likely never make it into a movie, but I wanted to share it with you.

I went to the barn late that afternoon, to give hay to the sheep and goats. While in the goat area, I spotted a newborn goat kid laying on its side along a wall. It was wet, dirty, and not moving at all. I couldn't even detect its chest rising and falling to take breaths. By all appearances, it had been stillborn or had perished soon after delivery. After identifying which doe had given birth to it, my intention was to go in the house and inform the Yeoman Farm Children that they now had a goat to milk every day.

But I got an inspiration, and decided that first I should give the dead kid a nudge with my boot. Amazingly, it stirred slightly in reaction. It didn't even try to get up, and my first thought was that it was too far gone to save. The barn was cold, and this thing had been abandoned. It was 95% dead, so the humane thing would be to finish it off and forget about it.

Or so my first thought went. As I continued thinking, I wondered if the kid's problem was simply cold. And if we could get it dried off and warmed up, and get some warm milk into its belly, its condition might improve. After all, I had no evidence yet that it had some terrible health issues. I figured we owed the kid a chance, and there was no harm in taking it to the house.

So I did. I dried it off, and laid it on some plastic in front of the woodburner in the living room. The kid whined a little, and stirred a little, but otherwise simply remained sprawled on its side in front of the fire.

And there she stayed. For hours. I turned her over once or twice, but she still gave very little response. That evening, Mrs. Yeoman Farmer suggested we do more to help the kid. We gave her an injection of Bovi Sera, as we did the other kids. Then we sent one of the Yeoman Farm Children out to the barn to milk some colostrum out of the mother goat. In the meantime, we gave a subcutaneous injection of 6cc of Lactated Ringer's with 5% dextrose into each of the kid's shoulders. This is an interesting product, and is commonly used for tiny dehydrated animals. I was glad that MYF had thought to lay in a supply of it.

We let the kid's body absorb the fluids while we ate dinner, then gave her more injections after we'd eaten. Her crying and struggling against the needle were encouraging. We then tried holding her and feeding her some colostrum from a dropper. She struggled a little against the first bit, and then started sucking on the dropper with a vengeance. We put dropper after dropper into her, even though we had to hold her head up so she could take it in.

We tucked her into a box full of old rags, in front of the woodburner, and made her comfortable for the night. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer was up in the middle of the night, and gave her more colostrum. The kid got so much energy, she actually began drinking it straight from the pan.

When I came down in the morning, I was surprised to see her standing up in her box on her own. I fed her more colostrum, and tried setting her on the floor. She wasn't terribly stable, and had some difficulty walking, but it was more progress than I expected.

As Wednesday progressed, so did the goat kid. Her urine began to flow, and she also began producing some stool. We took her out of the box several times, and let her stretch her legs. She began tottering around the living room, exploring. She didn't walk nearly as well as a normal goat kid, but a hundred times better than the one I had to put down recently.

Mrs. Yeoman Farmer hit the books, and began researching what could be wrong with the kid's legs. She came across something called "Bent Leg Syndrome" or some such, and it's caused by weak tendons. These are in turn caused by a mineral or nutritional deficiency in utero, but can be remedied by feeding cod liver oil. Later in the day Wednesday, we began adding cod liver oil to the colostrum, and to our surprise the kid gobbled the stuff down like normal. Her urine flow and stool production continued, and she was spending more time on her feet. Before bed last night, I found her a bigger box.

This morning, she was wanting to stand on her own even more than yesterday. I let her totter around the living room, and her gait was markedly improved. Not good enough to keep up with a normal goat kid, but better.

We're going to attempt to put her in the kidding pen with her mother today, once the temperatures warm up a bit. We really don't want the kid to continue bonding with us, and we hope it's not to late to put her back onto her mother. In our experience, bottle-raised kids (and lambs) never learn to fit in with the rest of the herd or flock.

But we've been very much encouraged by her progress so far. And very thankful that there is indeed such a big difference between "mostly dead" and "all dead."

What Are You Prepared to DO?

2011-02-27T21:26:00.000-05:00

That's one of my favorite lines, delivered by the Sean Connery character in a pivotal scene from The Untouchables. It's a question that every aspiring farmer ought to ask him or herself, especially before taking the responsibility for livestock --- and one that I didn't really ask myself until much later, only when I had to.

To paraphrase: "You said you wanted to get goats. Do you really want to get them? You see what I'm saying? What are you prepared to do? [...] You must be prepared to go all the way."

This morning, I had to make a gut-wrenching decision that no person with a heart wants to make: whether a struggling goat kid can really be brought to a position where he can thrive...or only, at best, be consigned to a lifetime of miserable survival at the margins. And if the judgment is the latter...well, what are you prepared to DO then?

As you may have gathered from the text and photo in yesterday's post, one of the twin goat kids Queen Anne's Lace gave birth to was very iffy. He was certainly in better shape than some kids we've had born, and we did get him put on a teat to suckle (some kids won't even do that), but he still had one very big problem: he could barely stand, and couldn't take two steps without his front legs buckling and falling to his knees. When we put him on a teat to nurse, he sprawled his rear legs behind him. One of us had to hold Mother Goat, while the other one held the goat kid on his feet.

We made sure he got a good meal last night. We owed him that, if he was to have any shot at gaining strength. But this morning, it became more clear that it wasn't an issue of strength. There was something seriously wrong with his front legs, and milk wasn't going to cure that. He hadn't gotten up all night, even though we left the lights on and the other five kids in the pen were romping around with each other; at 7am, he was still exactly where we'd left him at 10pm.

Homeschooled Farm Girl helped me put him back on a teat, but he still couldn't keep himself erect. We stood him up, and he kept toppling forward. Critically, even his mother seemed to know there was something seriously wrong with him: she would stand still for his twin brother to nurse, but grew increasingly agitated and tried to run away every time we reconnected the lame one to a teat. She's a big powerful goat, and holding her still long enough for him to nurse (and, remember, someone still had to hold the kid because he couldn't stand) was becoming nearly impossible.

We even rearranged our schedule this morning, coming home after church instead of straight to my father-in-law's house, to give the kid another shot at nursing. Same story, same rejection, and same big problem with his legs.

Now we had a decision to make. Spend the next several months picking him up and bottle feeding him in the hopes that his legs eventually change, or put him down now. If he'd been healthy, and simply a bummer kid (rejected by the mother), the decision would be easy. We wouldn't have been happy, but we would've bottle fed him.

But we've tried to bottle feed bummers with serious health issues before, and they've never ended up healthy. One of them was never able to drink water from a bucket. We literally had to bottle feed him water several times a day until he was old enough to butcher at 7 or 8 months. Another was so scrawny and sickly, even as an adult, he was constantly beaten up by the others and didn't even have enough meat to justify butchering him. (I eventually simply put him down and we threw the body away.)

The children and Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I had a quick conference. Our consensus was that we should give thanks for the five healthy goat kids born this last week, and not prolong the misery of a kid with legs so bad he can't even stand.

But actually pulling the trigger on a cute, innocent, defenseless newborn is quite different from coming to a decision in theory. Especially when the goat kid begins crying as he's taken out of the kidding pen and into the snowy yard. This is where you have to ask yourself, as a farmer or aspiring farmer, "What are you prepared to DO?"

I love my farm. And I love my animals. And this morning that meant putting a .380 hollow point round into a goat kid's head. I wasn't prepared to do that kind of thing when we first got livestock, and I managed to avoid thinking about it until I had no choice. And it's something that on occasion in the past I may have allowed myself to dodge or delay because the little critter was just so sweet and cute, even though I knew in my head that the most humane thing would be to put the animal down immediately.

It doesn't get any easier the more times you do it. It just gets a little less hard. But if I wasn't prepared to DO it, I think I'd have to get out of the livestock business altogether.

He went very quickly. And we are truly grateful for the five healthy kids and all the milk their mothers will be providing for our family this year.

Goat Kids Galore

2011-02-26T19:14:00.000-05:00

We were out for much of the day, and on our return discovered...

two more goat kids!

This time it was Queen Anne's Lace, our oldest doe, doing the honors. Both are males. We got them moved from the mucky main goat area (pictured above) and into the kidding pen, which is now getting pretty crowded --- three does and six kids. We also put down an additional bale of fresh straw, just for good measure.

Homeschooled Farm Girl did everything she could to get the weaker of the two kids (the one laying down in the photo above) to nurse, but he's having trouble even standing up. We're not really sure he's going to make it, but we'll do what we can. His twin brother, by contrast, is up and walking around great. And yesterday's triplets are all doing well. Stay tuned!

Triple Goat Treat!

2011-02-25T20:13:00.000-05:00

Today marked a first: in all our years of raising goats, we finally had a set of triplets born to us! We've had several sets of triplets from our Icelandic sheep, but our goats have never done anything more than twin.

I discovered the birth while out in the barn this afternoon taking care of chores. One little kid was wandering around the goat area, and my first thought was that Hollyhock's recent arrival had escaped from the kidding pen and couldn't rejoin her mother. But a closer look showed this kid was a newborn, wet from the birth and with some umbilical cord still dangling. Then I spotted the two other kids, swarming the mother goat. Homeschooled Farm Girl helped inspect all the mature does, and we confirmed only one had recently delivered.

What's amusing how crazy the genetics are getting: one of the three is quite dark, one is white, and the other is in-between. HFG tells me we have two males and one female.

Wilbur decided to do a close inspection of his new little charge. Until Mother Goat butted him away.

We moved Mom and her triplets to the kidding pen, with Hollyhock and her kid. I administered shots of Bovi Sera to all, and to the mother. And now the four kids are having a grand time getting to know each other.

Hardy Little Kid

2011-02-23T08:16:00.000-05:00

We had bitterly cold weather last night; the thermometer read -5F this morning when I got up, which is close to the coldest I recall from this winter. Yesterday was +5, I believe.

Yet, despite the intense cold, the goat kid born two days ago continues to thrive. It helps that the lower portion of the barn has remained closed day and night, and I've been leaving the lights on 24 hours per day. The inside temperature was 26F when I went out this morning; it felt quite warm after walking across the driveway at -5F, but 26 degrees is still objectively very cold. Especially for a two day old baby animal.

The hardiness of these animals is remarkable. The kid had hunkered down in a cozy portion of the pen, next to Mom, and was just fine when she stood up to greet me.

Light in the Blizzard

2011-02-21T20:34:00.001-05:00

After getting taunted by 50+ degree weather toward the end of last week, winter came howling back in yesterday with a vengance. We got several inches of snow dumped on us, and I spent a good chunk of this morning shoveling out the driveway yet again. Now the winds are picking up, and I've decided I'm officially Sick of February.

Then, when I went to the barn to take care of evening chores, I heard an instantly-recognizable high pitched cry coming from the goat area. I looked, and discovered that Hollyhock had given birth to a beautiful (if sort of dirty) little female kid.

Homeschooled Farm Girl and I moved Holyhock and the kid to the kidding pen, ensured they had fresh water and plenty of hay, and some fresh straw. We also made sure the teats were clear, and that the kid got latched on. After losing a kid last year because the mother goat's teats were clogged (and we didn't discover it until the kid was too weak to be saved), this is something we're definitely checking now after every kidding and lambing.

I also gave mother and kid injections of Bovi Sera, which will help boost their immunity and help recover more quickly from the birth. Especially given the nasty weather that is forcing its way through every crack in the drafty old barn's walls, we want to make sure the two of them get every advantage possible.

Here's looking forward to a healthy kid, and lots of goat milk soon! We've sure missed it.

Awesome Birds

2011-02-09T11:30:00.000-05:00

We have had geese almost from the beginning of our great farming adventure, and even named our place in Illinois "Rolling Goose Farm." These awesome birds have been on my mind recently, and I wanted to say a word or two about them --- especially for those who might be thinking ahead to the coming growing season. Assuming this crazy deep freeze we've been in literally all year ever thaws.

Every small farm ought to have some chickens. They're the easiest birds to raise, and provide both eggs and meat. And you can put them in a tractor pen to till/fertilize garden beds before planting and after harvest.

After chickens, though, I'd recommend geese. They're on my mind because we cooked one up the weekend before last, for some dinner guests, and I'm still thinking about how good it was. I'd gone out and butchered a young gander on Saturday, and then we roasted it fresh on Sunday. It weighed about ten pounds, dressed out, and even (barely) fit into the largest cast iron dutch oven. It was the perfect size to provide an all-you-can-eat meal for two average sized families (four adults and six kids), with enough left over to make a big pot of soup for a couple of dinners during the week. When you serve a goose up like this, it's almost guaranteed to make a memorable impression for a guest --- for the simple reason that most Americans have never experienced it. And certainly not a fresh, young, domestic goose (as opposed to an old Canada goose that's flown back and forth to South America five times and is as tough as shoe leather).

Geese may sound exotic to Americans, as they originally did to us, but they're very simple to prepare. I smear a light layer of olive oil all over it, then sprinkle the whole bird with salt, pepper, garlic, and basil. In then goes into a roasting pan or dutch oven, and I toss in a chopped onion. Put a little water in the bottom of the pan, and it's ready to go in the oven (covered) at 350F. If it's a large roasting pan, I'll wait about an hour and then add diced potatoes all around the bird, stirring in the wonderful rich "goose grease" that's melted so far. If the goose is in a smaller roasting pan or dutch oven, I begin the potatoes in our Crock Pot much earlier, with some olive oil and basic seasonings. Once a nice amount of fat has melted off the goose, I pour it into the Crock Pot and mix thoroughly with the potatoes. (I baste the goose with the remaining grease.)

Unless you've experienced it, it's difficult to describe just how delicious this melted goose fat is. It can even be saved and used as a bread spread, or in any number of other ways. When I'm putting the soup on at the end of the night, I make sure I scrape every drop out of the roasting pan and into the soup pot with a spatula. The richness it adds to the soup will kick your eyes wide open the first time you try it.

And the birds are neither difficult nor expensive to raise. Yes, goslings cost quite a bit to buy. Ten bucks each from our local feed store, but they can be had for less if you shop around. Cackle Hatchery, for example, offers sixteen White Embden goslings for $117, which works out to $7.35 before shipping. It's the same price for Gray Toulouse goslings, which is the other meat breed we recommend.

That appears to be quite a bit more than a broad breasted turkey poult, which yields much more meat than a goose. But once the birds are out of the brooder, the advantage tips the other direction. The turkey has been bred to require lots of high protein supplemental feed. The goose, by contrast, will do quite well on nothing but grass (we do let them have some supplemental grain, especially after the grass dies, to fatten them up a little). And while the turkeys are stupid and need plenty of supervision, geese are highly self-reliant. The gaggle can even fight off predators up to the size of foxes and small dogs. Geese can be left out in a pasture for long periods of time, and will be happy as long as they have grass, shade, and water. Our mature geese adopt the young goslings within minutes of release from the brooder, and quickly incorporate them into the flock. They're also very cold hardy; we've never had one freeze to death, even when the temp in their outbuilding has plunged below zero.

They're best butchered and eaten in their first year; we've heard they can get tough with age, so we haven't even tried eating the mature geese. I imagine they'd still make very good stock and soup, but they're so fun to watch and so easy to keep (and just eat grass for so much of the year), we've preferred to just let them live.

The one big hassle with geese is plucking them. There's a reason geese are so cold hardy: they have a ton of small, downy, impenetrable feathers all up and down their front. Even when we had an excellent mechanical plucker, the geese took longer than any other bird to get all the feathers off of. And getting the very last feathers off, for a perfectly clean-looking carcass, is extremely difficult no matter what equipment you're using. Plunging the dead goose into a big pot of scalding water makes the job easier, but it's still much harder than plucking a chicken or turkey. Waterfowl have oily feathers designed to repel water ("like water off a duck's back"), so it takes some work to get the scalding water all the way down to the skin. I find it helps to dry pluck some feathers, to open up the chest and belly a little, before plunging the bird into the water.

Which brings us to marketing your geese. Our family doesn't care if there are a few small downy feathers on the bird; they disappear once it's in the oven, anyhow. If you're planning to sell the geese, however, make sure your customers understand this and feel the same way. Most will be quite understanding --- they will be overjoyed just finding someone with fresh, natural, farm-raised goose for sale. But you don't want confusion or questions about why the bird isn't perfect-looking. And you really don't want to have to go over the bird with a pair of tweezers, extracting every last tiny little feather you can find.

How much can you get for a goose? We've charged $5/pound, dressed weight, or $50 for the typical bird (they can grow larger if you feed them more grain, but you have to pay for that grain), and customers don't blink. In most states, you'll have to sell directly from your farm to the consumer. No restaurants, supermarkets, or shipping across state lines. Otherwise, you'll need to have the birds butchered at a USDA facility, and there are very few of those that will touch waterfowl. Which is why geese are so hard to find at the supermarket or even in restaurants. And why word of mouth that you have geese for sale will spread among those who really appreciate these delicious birds, and are willing to pay for a special holiday dinner centerpiece. Most of our calls have come from Europeans, among whom goose is a much more common holiday tradition. A simple posting on sites like Eat Wild or Local Harvest will get you plenty of calls. And, using the costs above, selling just three geese more than pays for 16 goslings. There are feed costs, of course, but the other 13 goslings are essentially yours for free.

We're no longer actively marketing our geese; we've been too busy, and for the time being are satisfied keeping them for ourselves and serving them to dinner guests. But whether you're looking for a nice product to pay some of your farm bills, or just a delicious centerpiece neither you nor your guests will forget, geese are an excellent bird to try.

Child-Friendly?

2011-02-03T12:52:00.000-05:00

I got an interesting note from a good friend this morning. They've recently moved to the country, themselves, and like us have been eating in a more "crunchy" manner. Their children don't have the allergy problems that ours do, but they've noticed that their kids have been much healthier on a more natural diet. What they apparently hadn't realized is just how unusual (even radical) people like us can appear in the eyes of other parents.

He writes:

On a separate topic, we're watching a friend's child for the next few days. The mother asked if we could feed her more child-friendly food. We weren't quite sure what she meant, as we had watched the daughter before and fed her what our kids ate. So we asked the mom, and she said nevermind; she would just send some food along. So, when the daughter was dropped off at our house, we saw what her mom brought. She packed 2 1-gallon bags of Fruit Loops and 2 boxes of macaroni and cheese. Oh, now we understand.

While we probably don't eat as healthily as your family does, we were somewhat pleased that we probably do eat reasonably healthy foods, or at least avoid the truly over-processed foods most of the time. At the same time, we also felt a little disturbed that our friends lived on fruit loops. Probably ranks up there with Twinkies on the processed food spectrum.

I can only really add one thing to this: sometimes it's heartening to get a good reminder that, even though our approach to nutrition may not be perfect, we sure have come a long way and are at least getting the big "child-friendly" picture a lot more right than we did before.

Speaking of Industrial Agriculture

2011-01-31T14:55:00.000-05:00

Speaking of industrial agriculture, can you name the following product?

As far as I know, it is the only product which is so undesirable and so uneconomical, and would do so poorly in the open market, that the U.S. government must:

Massively subsidize its production;
Protect it from foreign imports (which are produced much more cheaply and efficiently) through high tariffs; and
Mandate its use by consumers.

What is it?

Food, Inc.

2011-01-31T11:45:00.001-05:00

Last night, Mrs. Yeoman Farmer and I finally made the time to sit down and watch Food, Inc. It's an outstanding documentary film about modern industrial agriculture, where it came from, the strategies it uses to sustain itself, and what the rest of us can do to supply alternatives. If you haven't seen it already, I highly recommend you do so. Put it in your Netflix queue, rent it at your local video store, or buy it from Amazon. Just watch it.

The film is at its best in discussing corn, and how elements of corn (and/or soybeans) have found their way into nearly every corner of the supermarket. I would've liked more detail about the ways in which federal agriculture policy subsidizes corn production, but the bottom line is that corn comes to the market below its real cost. Chemical and food companies have found countless ways to break this artificially cheap commodity apart into component pieces and reassemble them into the dizzying array of ingredients you see listed on package labels --- and these "processed to death," calorie-laden products end up cheaper than more wholesome alternatives. Ever wondered why a package of Twinkies is less expensive than a bunch of carrots? Even though the former is among the most highly engineered and chemical-intensive products in the supermarket and the latter is just several roots yanked out of the ground and rinsed off?

The sections about confinement agriculture, feedlots, and factory meat processing are eye-opening. The narrative was especially powerful in drawing a line between the inhumane ways in which animals are treated to the dehumanizing ways in which agricultural workers are treated. Everything --- animal and human--- is simply another element of industrial production.

One of the film's bigger "lightbulb moments" for me was the degree to which the fast food industry has shaped the way food is produced for all markets. McDonald's, Burger King, and the rest are enormous customers who want their products to taste exactly the same every time. They thus have enormous power to dictate the standardization of beef, pork, chicken, and potato production. And because those products need to be cheap enough for the Dollar Menu, growers need all kinds of "efficiencies" (i.e. feedlots and other animal concentration camps) to reduce their own costs.

The sections showing Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia are by far the best in the film. Salatin's books (in particular You Can Farm and Pastured Poultry Profits) greatly inspired us as we were starting out, and it was even more inspiring to see his farm in living color. Salatin has put together a real, workable model of how wholesome food can be produced profitably. It's no wonder that people drive a hundred miles to fill their freezers with Salatin's meat. Although we are not attempting to run a pastured poultry enterprise, his production techniques have provided our family with outstanding chicken, turkey, duck, and goose.

I could've done without the long section with a grieving mother who is now a "food safety activist" seeking to enact legislation named after her son, who died from a e coli infected meat. Although I certainly empathize with her grief, and cannot imagine the pain she has had to endure, I really don't think additional regulations and inspections of mammoth industrial food facilities are the answer; as the film itself shows later, the very agencies charged with creating and enforcing regulations are frequently headed and staffed by former executives and lobbyists from the industrial food companies themselves. In political science, we call this revolving door phenomenon "regulatory capture." In the case of industrial agriculture, it results because the only people with enough experience and expertise to understand the industry are those with extensive ties to the industry itself.

The film's biggest shortcoming, in my mind, is that it doesn't do enough to connect the dots between "food safety legislation" and regulatory capture. My sense is that the former is useless --- or even counterproductive --- unless something is first done about the latter. And given the complexity of the industry, I'm not sure anything can be done about it. The result is a regulatory environment designed by and for the protection of agricultural conglomerates, but too byzantine and expensive for small producers to understand or abide by. The entirely foreseen and intended outcome is even less competition from farmers like Joel Salatin. Want to be able to sell your meat to local restaurants, which would provide a very nice and stable customer base for any farmer? You'll need to have your animals butchered at a USDA-inspected slaughterhouse. Good luck finding one of those anywhere near your farm. And, by the time you transport your animals there and go back to pick up the meat, good luck turning a profit. And don't even think about starting your own small dairy or cheesemaking operation until you're ready to spend a fortune building something that abides by state regulations. Then, have fun with the inspectors showing up to pick through your property whenever they feel like it. I realize that some of these measures are essential for large producers, but there ought to be more exemptions for small entrepreneurs.

The bottom line, though, is that this is a very important documentary. I apologize that it took me over two years to see and review it here. If you haven't yet seen it, I highly recommend that you do so.

Don't Call the Cops

2011-01-21T14:22:00.001-05:00

They won't come. Not for a long time, anyway. Unless it's a real emergency. And even then...who knows?

That's essentially what's happened here in our county. While most people are aware of the dramatic police and firefighter layoffs in big cities like Camden, NJ, there is a somewhat different --- and more interesting --- dynamic at work here in our little corner of Michigan.

Like most counties in our state, the territory is divided up into large townships of about 30-35 square miles. Within these, there are pockets of incorporated municipalities which are administratively separate from the surrounding township. Our particular rural township has about 2,400 rural residents, and there are about 2,300 people living in its one incorporated municipality.

Most of the incorporated municipalities, including the one we live just outside of, have a small police force. (They seem to spend much of their time camped out with a radar gun at the municipal line, where the speed limit suddenly drops from 45 to 25.) However, that police force will not respond to crimes on our property; their responsibility ends at the municipal border. We and all other rural residents are under the jurisdiction of the County Sheriff, whose services are paid for by our property taxes.

Last summer, the County announced that they would need to slash the Sheriff's budget by $2.2 million for 2011, and that they would no longer have the resources (i.e. deputies) for routine patrols or response to non-emergency rural calls. If we wanted more police coverage than that, we would need to approve a special millage on the November ballot. The money raised would be used to contract with the county sheriff or a local municipality for police coverage, or to form a new rural police force.

The assessment would've been about $150 per residence and $250 per business. Of course, Mrs. Yeoman Farmer and I voted in favor. We tend to oppose most millage proposals, but police coverage should be a no-brainer. Public safety is one of the few truly essential and appropriate functions that government provides. I simply assumed it would pass, and didn't even bother checking the election results for several weeks.

As it turns out, the millage in fact failed. Miserably. Each of the thirteen townships voted separately, and the measure only (barely) passed in one. It came close (49%) in one other township. Five other townships were in the low forties. None of the remaining seven townships, including ours, could muster a "Yes" vote in excess of 37%.

Interestingly, the one township which passed the millage has chosen not to contract with the County Sheriff for services. They are instead going to hire a local municipality's police force to cover them.

Mrs. Yeoman Farmer and I have been scratching our heads and trying to understand the election outcome. MYF's working theory is it's similar to the "boy who cried wolf" one too many times not getting taken seriously. She reasons that voters have gotten sick of being told the sky would fall down if they didn't approve an additional property tax hike, and finally decided to stop listening. That's a plausible explanation, especially given that our property taxes are supposed to be covering police protection in the first place --- and that, according to some locals we've spoken to, the county commission has proven itself less than trustworthy on some occasions. No doubt, some voters thought the County was playing "chicken" with us, and would blink if we didn't.

The County didn't blink. The first week of January, they in fact cut the Sheriff Department's staff from 223 to 187 employees. That leaves exactly two deputies on duty at any given time to respond to calls in the entire 440 square miles they are responsible for.

What does that mean, exactly? We're starting to find out. Earlier this month, when a student took a loaded handgun into a rural middle school, it took deputies 20 minutes to get there.

Fortunately, our townships are not high crime areas. But many of us are concerned that could now change. If you're a burglar, what better place to ply your trade than one where, even if you're surprised by a homeowner, it takes the cops 20 minutes to show up?

Of course, burglars know that most of us here in the country are fairly well-armed. Few would be stupid enough to break in when a rural resident is at home. Our family is especially fortunate in this regard; because we homeschool, and because I work on the property, someone is nearly always here. We're also on a fairly well-traveled blacktop road that's not far from a municipality, so lots of eyes would be upon someone carting property out of our house. But that's not true of most other rural homes; many sit empty all day, and are on isolated lanes. What better target than a house where it'll take a deputy several days to come out and even file a police report of your burglary? Just imagine how contaminated the crime scene will be by then!

Already, there is talk of putting another police millage on a future ballot; it'll be interesting to see if, as residents experience the reality of life with reduced sheriff coverage, support for a special assessment increases.

In the meantime, what's especially heartening is the grassroots response in some townships. People aren't just sitting back and waiting for the criminals to strike, or for government to act on our behalf. In the true American civic spirit, they're forming voluntary associations to address the problem themselves. Residents of one township, for example, have been extremely aggressive in forming a neighborhood watch. Signs like these:

have popped up all over the rural roads. The churches, including the Catholic church in that township, have been especially active as centers of coordination. Down in the church basement, there's a big stack of these signs that the Knights of Columbus and others have been working to distribute.

It reminds me a lot of something that happened when we lived in Illinois, and someone in our rural county began setting fire to barns on isolated properties. As the size of territory was too large for police to keep an eye on, a group of locals began organizing active patrols of roads with likely targets. I myself started taking a different route into town, just so I could drive past and keep an eye on more isolated structures. Anyway, after just a couple of weeks, one of the local patrols caught the arsonist fleeing the scene of a fire. They held him until the cops could arrive.

I'm sure hoping it doesn't come to that here in Michigan. But we're all ready to step up for our community if it does.

Got Rice?

2011-01-14T12:48:00.000-05:00

One consequence of having kids with food allergies, and who can eat basically only one grain, is that we take a hit when the price of that grain spikes. Given the role of rice as a worldwide staple for so much of the planet's population, supply disruptions or crop failures in one part of the world can ripple through to impact the prices of grain we buy from California. For that reason, we try to maintain a prudent supply of bulk rice at our house, packed and stored securely to keep out moisture and rodents, as a hedge against price fluctuations. If the cost jumps temporarily, as it did during a panic in early 2008, we're not over a barrel. We have some flexibility to wait the market out.

We've been concerned for some time now about the reckless behavior of the Federal Reserve, and its massive printing of money through "quantitative easing," and the impact this could have on commodity prices. Oil is now over $90 per barrel, and we're all seeing the effects at the gas pump. Agricultural commodities have been rising significantly as well; you can see that for yourself by checking prices at the Chicago Board of Trade. But here's a more personal anecdote: a month or two back, the woman who manages the local grain elevator told me that so many farmers around here have tried to cash in on soaring commodity prices, by bringing loads of corn and soybeans to the local elevator, the elevator ran out of capacity. They actually had to turn farmers away, or send them on to other elevators. But it was obviously a problem for everybody.

Anyway, Bloomberg reports that agricultural commodities, including rice, likely won't be coming down in price any time soon:

While gold “may go down for awhile,” the metal is “going to go over $2,000 in this decade,” [Jim] Rogers [chairman of Rogers Holdings], who owns gold, silver and rice, said today during a presentation to business executives in Chicago. Gold touched a record $1,432.50 an ounce in New York on Dec. 7. The price closed today at $1,387.

“I’d rather own rice,” Rogers said. “I’d rather own something that’s more depressed than gold.”

Agricultural commodities are “going to boom” as demand increases in developing markets, primarily in Asia, he said. All commodities will be supported by the weakening dollar, which is losing value because Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is “printing money” by buying Treasuries in an effort to shore up the U.S. economy, Rogers said.

“Paper money is made of cotton, and I’m long cotton, by the way,” Rogers said. “One reason I’m long cotton is because Dr. Bernanke is out there running the printing presses as fast as he can.”

Rogers said he doesn’t own shares in U.S. companies and is short U.S. long-term treasury bonds. The Chinese renminbi may provide “almost sure profits over the next five to 10 years,” he said.

“In the future, it’s the stock broker who’s going to be driving the cabs,” Rogers said. “The smart stock brokers will learn to drive tractors, and drive them for the farmers, because the farmers will have the money.”

Needless to say, I'm grateful that Mrs. Yeoman Farmer laid in a good supply of rice at last year's prices. We may try to get some more at our next co-op order. If there is some grain or other commodity that your family depends on, I'd recommend you think about investing in a good supply of it now while the prices are relatively reasonable. It wouldn't surprise me if coffee prices, for example, increase significantly; coffee is produced almost exclusively overseas, and its prices can therefore be influenced by currency valuations. I personally can't live without coffee, and for that reason have invested in a prudent supply from Sam's Club. For most of us, this kind of practical move makes a lot more sense than trying to buy a commodity contract on the Chicago Board of Trade. There's really no downside, other than the lost opportunity to invest the money in something else. Commodity prices certainly aren't going to be decreasing. And we're eventually going to consume these stored products anyway.

And for those of you who don't yet have your own farm: note well the final portion of the Bloomberg excerpt above.

Why So Unusual?

2011-01-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'm sure we've all been following news about the recent events in Arizona. Saturday's shootings were especially personal for me because Gabrielle Giffords is my parents' representative in Congress, and my folks live a short distance from the Safeway where everything happened. My mother learned about the shooting when a concerned friend called, frantic, wanting to make sure she was okay. As it turned out, my mom had gone grocery shopping that very morning at a Safeway not far from the one in question.

In the days since, I've read a great deal of material about the shootings. I've been particularly moved by what's come out about the victims themselves (especially Judge John Roll), and by the heroism of those who stopped the perpetrator from firing more rounds. I've also been appalled by attempts to ascribe the attacks to some sort of "climate" generated by those on the Right, especially after details about the shooter became known. Even though his victim was an elected official, he was clearly not motivated by ideology or partisanship.

I've noticed, however, that one question has gone largely unanswered: why is it that ideologically-motivated attacks on American elected officials are so exceedingly rare? In a sense, this is the "dog that didn't bark" of American public life. That dog didn't even bark in the current instance.

It took an article-length article to organize my thoughts. The good folks at MercatorNet have published the piece here. It begins like this:

In the hours following the horrific shooting at Gabrielle Giffords’ “Congress on Your Corner” event in Arizona, the rush to explain the perpetrator’s motivations began. Giffords had recently survived a hotly-contested re-election challenge from a Tea Party-backed candidate who was her ideological mirror image. In the absence of hard information about the shooter, it might be natural to wonder if he had been discouraged at the election outcome or otherwise inspired by the Tea Party’s anti-Washington rhetoric. Indeed, many on the political left ─ including the local county sheriff ─ speculated aloud in just that manner.

Although the investigation is ongoing, the principal suspect is actually a registered independent who was so disconnected from politics that he didn’t bother to vote in the 2010 congressional election. By all accounts, Jared Lee Loughner appears to be an isolated, deeply mentally ill young man suffering from multiple psychoses.

As analysts continue to debate the reasons for the Arizona events, a potentially far more interesting question has remained largely unasked: Why are violent attacks on American elected officials so exceedingly rare?

But please do read the whole thing. And comment if you feel so inclined.

Grinding Grain

2010-12-29T10:12:00.000-05:00

My recent post about homemade cereal inspired a reader comment/question about how we grind our grain. I responded to that question in the same comment thread, but I believe the issue deserves its own post.

If you want to get started grinding your own grain, there are several good options. The biggest thing to keep in mind is this: just as with any other tool, your level of investment in a grain mill should correspond to the volume and level of use you're expecting. But get the right tool for what you want to do.

If you already own a KitchenAid stand mixer, one easy way to get started is to add a grain grinding attachment to it. They can be bought new for under a hundred bucks at Amazon,and I used one on my own mixer for some time. They're good for small quantities of grain, and produce nice flour, but the hopper is not large at all. It's a good accessory for producing a few cups of flour or cracked grain here and there, but I wouldn't recommend it for large scale or everyday family use.

We got our first real grain mill in the late 1990s, when we were learning to take more control of our food supply. (Actually, my very first attempt at grinding wheat involved a blender --- and it was a total disaster. Unless you're simply cracking a cup or two of grain for chickens and have no other options, do not attempt this. It's like trying to drive a nail with the handle of a screwdriver.) The German-made mill we got is still popular and widely available, and goes by various names. "Family Grain Mill" seems to be among the more common. It looks like this:

and a basic set-up for grain can be had for as little as $130. Or perhaps even less. I haven't priced them lately, but this mill's wide availability makes it easy to comparison shop online.

We were happy with the Family Grain Mill, and used it for many years. It was a good, well-built tool that produced reasonably fine flour on the first pass through the mill. It can be adjustable from very coarse to fine. It also has several optional attachments available, for rolling oats or grinding meat or any number of other things.

Another nice thing about this mill: you can get started with a hand crank, and upgrade later to a motorized base if you want. The hand crank is not hard to use, especially for smaller batches or coarser settings, but will give you a good workout on the finest settings. It's also nice to have in case the power goes out, or you're trying to live a more off-the-grid lifestyle (or preparing for TEOTWAWKI, but that's beyond the scope of this blog).

Our biggest problem with the hand crank was securing the clamp tightly enough so the base didn't come loose while we were really cranking hard on it. Also, some of our countertops weren't designed so anything could be clamped to them. We had to find a clamping spot that would be both comfortable to stand in and allow the use of one's dominant hand --- and still allow clearance for the turning crank arm. An old table you don't care about scuffing up with clamp marks usually ends up being the best option.

As we began using the mill more and more regularly, we upgraded to the motorized base. We still had the hand crank for emergencies, but never used it again. The motor was absolutely wonderful. We used this mill for many years, even replacing the burrs a couple of times.

Eventually, however, we outgrew it. Two problems developed: the limited size of the grain hopper, and the mill's inability to produce truly fine rice flour (fine enough for soaking and fermenting into flatbread batter) on the first pass. With a second pass, we could get sufficient fineness --- but that involved standing with the mill and making sure all the flour went down the chute.

With the Yeoman Farm Children now needing large quantities of rice flour on a daily basis, we went shopping for a more appropriate tool. We found it in the L'Equip 760200 NutriMill Grain Mill:

In a word, this thing ROCKS. The hopper has a 20 cup capacity, which we will never outgrow. It's just as adjustable as our other mill, but produces ultra-fine flour on the first pass. It has never jammed or failed us in any way, and we have used it a lot for several years now. For the money (and you can get them for less than $250 - which is actually similar to the motorized Family Grain Mill), it is very hard to beat this mill. Its only drawbacks --- neither of which matter to us --- are the unavailability of other attachments and that it is electric-only.

Depending on your budget, it's still possible that none of the options in this post will work for you. There are cheaper hand crank grain mills out there, and we did experiment with one of them in the chicken coop because we had a large quantity of uncracked corn that we needed to do something with; that mill allowed us to crack the corn enough for the chickens to eat. The problem with some of these is that the long handles and large clamps make them hard to install and use in a kitchen. And I can't vouch for the fineness of the flour they can produce.

Another option, as always, is eBay. It wouldn't surprise me if many lightly-used grain mills of all kinds end up there after people have experimented with producing their own flour and then grown tired of the experiment.

As for us, we're sticking with the NutriMill. It's definitely an investment, but one of the best that our family has made.

Greener Cereal

2010-12-27T15:34:00.000-05:00

What do you do for breakfast? Me, I've always enjoyed raisin bran cereal. I have it nearly every day. When I was a kid, I often even had a bowl as a bedtime snack. (Heck, I still do that on occasion.)

Cereal is not such an easy matter for the Yeoman Farm Children, however. With their Celiac disease, most grains are off limits. Rice is pretty much the only grain they can eat, and we practically buy it by the truckload from our food co-op. Plus, given all the additives and other ingredients that go into commercial cereal (even rice-based cereal), the YFCs' other food allergies mean they've never been able to just sit down and pour themselves bowls of anything off-the-shelf for breakfast.

Each morning, we must grind a few cups of organic long grain brown rice in a grain mill, add it to some water in a pot, bring it to a boil, and simmer it for about 20 minutes (stirring constantly) on the stovetop. It then must sit and "set up" for some time before it can be dished into bowls. Think "very slowly cooked Cream of Wheat," except made from scratch with rice flour.

The YFCs are now old enough to be able to take turns cooking cereal themselves, but when they were younger Mrs Yeoman Farmer had to do it every morning. To this day, we still talk about the time we had some friends visiting overnight; they slid bowls of off-the-shelf cereal in front of their kids, who proceeded to finish eating by the time MYF was still grinding our rice into flour.

Anyway, as much as we tell them how incredibly healthy their diets are, the YFCs have naturally long wondered what it would be like to "eat normally." This Christmas, after having done extensive research, Homeschooled Farm Girl found a way to give her brothers the gift of eating breakfast like typical kids for a day: at the natural food store, she discovered a certain brand of puffed rice cereal that had no problematic ingredients. She bought it, wrapped it up, and put it under the tree for her siblings.

Needless to say, they were very excited. And this morning, thoroughly enjoying having been liberated from cooking their cream-of-rice, they poured themselves their first bowls of the stuff. They added some of our goat milk yogurt, grabbed some spoons, and sat down to try eating breakfast like other kids do.

The verdict? To my surprise, they quickly decided that commercial cereal is terribly overrated. "I don't like the texture," Homeschooled Farm Boy said. HFG, taking no offense that her gift hadn't gone over so well, heartily agreed. Big Little Brother wasn't crazy about it, either. They ate as much as they could, but the three of them left quite a bit for the chickens.

It was a very thoughtful gift on HFG's part, and her brothers did appreciate the effort she put into finding a commercial cereal they could try. I don't think the three of them quite realize it yet, but they actually ended up getting a gift that no amount of money or research could buy: a real-life lesson that the grass really isn't greener on other people's lawns (or breakfast tables, as it were). And that when it comes to food, they're pretty darn lucky they get to eat the way they do.

Cold Days

2010-12-20T14:46:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure the temperature has been above freezing at all so far this month. There may have been one day when we hit a scalding 37F, but that's been about it. We've had several days in the teens, and some with wind chills in the single digits (or below zero). We got quite a dumping of snow last weekend (December 12), with a driving wind to make it even more miserable. It hit us so hard and so fast, we were not able to go to Mass (or anywhere else) that Sunday. These rural roads are a pretty low priority for the County snowplows, and our 4x4 truck only holds four people. The Yeoman Farm Family judged it best to lay low and stoke the fire.

We're still below freezing today, but the sun is shining and we're in the upper twenties. I opened the sheep and goats' barn doors for the first time in a long while, to let them have some fresh air and space to roam around. Their coats are plenty warm enough to be out even in much colder weather, but we keep the barn doors closed to keep their water tanks from freezing solid. The downstairs portion of the barn has just a seven foot ceiling, meaning the animal body heat can't easily escape upwards. With the doors closed, we can keep the downstairs portion of the barn in the low thirties even on days and nights when it's much colder outside. Only when we get stiff winds does enough cold air force its way in that the water tanks begin icing over.

We had one type of livestock which unfortunately did not fare as well during last weekend's mini-blizzard: our bees. We got our first "starter" hive this year, and they'd established a strong colony by the fall. We didn't remove any of their honey, choosing to let them have it all to ensure they had enough for the winter. We were looking forward to starting off the spring with a strong and vibrant colony that would split / swarm into a second hive we'd already prepared. Sadly, the blizzard literally swamped them. Wet snow drifted into the hive's main entrance and froze into a nasty ice pack, blocking much of their air flow. Then, when the bees emerged from their smaller upper entrance hole to take cleansing flights, many seem to have gotten disoriented upon returning and finding the main entrance blocked. When I came out to check on them, I discovered dozens of dead bees littered all over the snow in front of the entrance. With their numbers (and body heat) thus decimated, it looks like the rest of the hive froze to death inside.

I feel awful about what happened, and will do a full post-mortem on what was going on inside the hive, but in many ways this is not unlike the mistakes we've made in getting started with other livestock. We lost our first two lambs, for example, because we weren't ready for them and they were born in the pasture on a frigid night. The only real mistake is not learning from this kind of experience. (The rest of the lambs were all born safely, inside a building.)

One huge lesson learned about bees: next fall, I'm putting the hive(s) at least a foot or two off the ground, on pallets or cinder blocks. Another lesson learned: get some insulating foam fitted tightly around the outside of the hive before cold weather sets in. And go out there to check on the colony every day or two when it does get cold.

As for us humans, our family has been enjoying pot after pot of hearty soups and stews, made from the lamb and goat necks in our freezer. When the temperatures get and stay this cold, it's hard to think of a nicer way to warm oneself from the inside out.

I'll close with a lighter anecdote about the cold. If you've been following the NFL at all, you know that the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis collapsed from all the snow (same storm system that went on to hit us in Michigan and kill our bees). They haven't been able to repair it, so tonight's game between the Vikings and Bears will be played outdoors at the Golden Gophers' stadium. Upon hearing this news and reflecting on it, Homeschooled Farm Boy's face lit up in a smile. "You know what that means?" he said. "The cheerleaders will have to dress modestly!"

Yes, indeed. There are some good things about the cold.

Sportsman's Guide

2010-12-12T11:27:00.001-05:00

Mrs. Yeoman Farmer and I have found a new supplier that we like a lot and have begun telling our friends about: Sportsman’s Guide. They are an online discount seller of outdoor goods, and their primary focus seems to be hunters and fishermen (note their name), but they carry an enormous variety of related products that just about anyone --- especially those of us who live in the country --- will find useful. And they have some of the best prices we’ve seen.

We’re big believers in buying things in bulk whenever possible. Not just to save money, but also to make sure we always have a supply on hand of things we need. There’s nothing worse than discovering you’re out of something, having to make a special trip to the store, and paying more than you need to.

In particular, I like to buy ammunition in bulk; prices for a 20 or 50 round box at Wal-Mart or the local gun shop can be pretty steep, especially compared to buying by the case. Ammo doesn’t go bad if it’s stored in a dry place, and I know I’ll eventually go through it. And given the unpredictability of supply in certain calibers, I like the peace of mind of knowing I’m immune to production disruptions. I’ve had good experiences buying bulk ammo from various online dealers, but in the last few months I’ve found Sportsman’s Guide tends to have the best prices, most consistent availability, and widest variety of calibers of pretty much anyone else out there. And their Ammo page on the website is easy to navigate.

Sportsman’s Guide has a “Buyers Club” that you’ll be asked to join when you place your first order. This is definitely worth the $30 cost. You not only get discounted prices on pretty much every product, but you’ll get extra savings and free shipping on your first order. Then, as a Club member, you’ll get frequent email offers for “$10 off your next order of $99 or more” or “free shipping on your next order of $99 or more.” Within two orders, my club membership had easily paid for itself. (The free shipping offers, in particular, were a nice opportunity to stock up on bulk ammo. That stuff can get HEAVY.)

The most interesting part of club membership has been the catalogs we get in the mail. We get at least one (and sometimes more) per week. I didn’t pay much attention to these, as I usually just go on their website and order when there’s something I need. I figured they send all these catalogs because so many of their customers are rural and therefore don’t have high speed internet.

But then Mrs. Yeoman Farmer noticed one of these catalogs laying on the dining room table, and began browsing it. She was soon perusing these things every time Yeoman Farm Baby had her pinned for a feeding. And she discovered something: Sportsman’s Guide carries all kinds of cool military and outdoor surplus stuff, that we’ve never seen elsewhere, at great prices. She ordered boots for her and the kids for something like $30 per pair. She got herself a heavy wool cape at a good price. Heavy wool military coats and hats and sweaters. They sometimes don’t have exactly the right size, but kids grow quickly and we just order an extra size up.

Our biggest frustration with boots in particular, from places like Wal-Mart, is how quickly the kids destroy them. And yet we’ve hesitated to buy the kids the really nice Muck Boots, like MYF and I wear around the farm, because they are so expensive. Military surplus boots are looking like they may be a good compromise: Just $30, and built to survive a march across Austria. As I hold these things in my hands and lace them up, I seriously doubt any kid could wear them out even if he wanted to. (I will post an update if Homeschooled Farm Boy or Big Little Brother manage to succeed, however.)

Anyway, this is not to discourage you from supporting local retailers or merchants. MYF and I are big believers in localism --- but sometimes local merchants don’t have what we need, or don’t have what we need at a reasonable price. We’ve been very happy with Sportsman’s Guide, and would encourage you to check them out.

How Open?

2010-12-09T11:57:00.000-05:00

It's now been over a year since we've adopted Yeoman Farm Baby, and I've been wanting to share a few thoughts about the experience. Above all, we remain deeply grateful to the birthmother who entrusted him to us. It takes an enormous amount of love for a mother to recognize that her baby needs to be raised in a home and family that she is unable to provide...and then to actually go through with releasing her child into that more appropriate situation. We've had three biological children of our own, and understand the depth of attachment a mother establishes with her baby during a pregnancy. We cannot imagine how difficult it would be to have to sever that tie.

By way of quick recap: about a year and a half ago, we were contacted by a friend of a friend of the birthmother. She was still relatively early in the pregnancy, and deciding whether to put the baby up for adoption or raise him herself. Her friends and family were helping assemble potential adoptive parents, to give her a sense of the kind of life that other families may be able to offer her child. The go-between approached us because, for various reasons, she (the go-between) thought our family might be a good fit. We thought so, too, and after prayerful discernment decided to offer ourselves as candidates. To our great joy, the birthmother agreed that our family was just the kind of home she wanted her child to be adopted into.

One of the early questions that we and the birthmother needed to agree about was the degree of openness we would have in the adoption. Options can range from completely closed (no identifying information is exchanged, and there is zero contact after the adoptive parents assume custody), to completely open --- to the point of the birthmother actually visiting and playing some ancillary role in the child's life.

In my own personal experience as an infant adoptee, I was grateful that my own adoptive arrangement was completely closed. I could imagine the confusion and divided loyalties that would've been introduced had my birthmother been lurking just off stage and making regular contact with me. I know it would've undermined our family's sense of unity, and caused me to question where I really belonged. When I grew old enough to understand, my parents explained very matter-of-factly that some children join families biologically (like my younger brother), while others join families through adoption (like my sister and I did). But once we're together, we're together. Everyone is a full and equal member of the same family. Had I been getting visits from my birthmother, I know that mixed signal would've confused me.

To this day, I have not had a desire to meet my birth family. I have one mother and one father, and they are really my parents. I neither need nor want any different ones. That said, however, I have a natural curiosity about the birth family, and the circumstances surrounding my origins. The agency through which I was adopted provided a basic two-page overview of the family's social and health circumstances, but nothing about the reasons why my birthmother thought it best I be raised by another family. I'd like to know more about that, and I'd like to be able to tell her in a letter how grateful I am that I was raised by the family that did raise me. It's truly the best thing that ever happened to me. I want to thank her for that, and to let her know that my life has been happy and successful as a result of that self-sacrificing choice she made for me.

These are some of the personal considerations I brought with me, in trying to decide with Mrs Yeoman Farmer what kind of arrangement we wanted for our own adopted son. We wanted to be able to tell him, as he grew older and asked questions, the sort of person his birthmother was. That we'd met her, and gotten to know her. How much she loved him, but why her situation wasn't right for him. If he wanted to know what she looked like, we wanted to be able to show him. If, as an adult, he wanted to meet her or even just send her a letter, we wanted to know how to reach her. But we wanted to ensure our privacy and that he wouldn't get confused by ongoing contact from her in his youth.

We decided, with the birthmother, on a "semi-open" arrangement. We would not exchange last names, and she would never know exactly where in Michigan we live (not even the town or metro area). We did provide her with a very long family profile letter, and many photos, to help her be as comfortable as possible about where her baby would be growing up. We visited with her before the baby's birth, and met her family, in her city. We agreed to take custody of the baby upon his release from the hospital, and invited her to visit us/him while we remained in her metro area. In conjunction with her, we agreed to email update letters and photographs every three months for the baby's first year and every six months for his second year; we will decide together what to do after that.

This has proven to be a good arrangement for all of us. The birthmother has been able to know how well her baby is thriving, and to see how happy he his --- and to see how much happiness he has brought to our whole family. She's been able to hear about his growth, his doctor's visits, and all his milestones. We've been able to tell her how much we appreciate having him here with us, and how much we love him. She's also sent us some notes of her own, which we have been able to keep and tell YFB about when he gets older.

But the most surprising benefit is that the process has forced us to sit down and think about and document all of YFB's milestones. Yes, to be honest, I sometimes feel some resentment when the "due date" for an update is approaching and we have to take time away from normal family activities to write it up and organize the photos we'll be sending. "He's ours. This is our family. This is our time. This is our life," the voice in my head complains. But now that we've been doing this for 12+ months, I've come to realize something: we have a more complete written record of YFB's first year, all in one place, than we do for any of our biological kids. And we have more photographs of him than most families ever have of their youngest child. (MYF is the youngest in her family, and has almost no pictures from her youth.) Because we've wanted to show how much YFB is part of our whole family, we've also ended up taking a lot more pictures of our other kids --- especially #3 --- than we would have otherwise, or than we did before YFB's arrival.

I realize that these kinds of "semi-open" arrangements don't always work out the way people would like. There may be less detailed contact than the birthmother would've wanted. There may be more contact --- or more intrusive contact --- than the adoptive family would've wanted or expected. Some adoptive families opt for an international adoption, in part to avoid all of these issues.

In our case, cooperation and understanding on both sides have helped us come to a solution that's worked well for everyone. In reflecting on YFB's first year, I wanted to share this with you; I know some of you may be considering adopting, or be in a position to advise a birthmother who is putting her baby up for adoption. I offer our family's experience as an example of what can be done to help make a difficult situation as optimal as possible for all.

Weathergirl

2010-12-07T11:02:00.002-05:00

Homeschooled Farm Girl, describing how bitterly cold it is here in MI this week:

"If you tried to butcher a goose, Daddy, the blood would probably all freeze before it could get out."

Yeah.

Good reason to stay inside by the fire and leave the butchering for another day.

Sunday Morning Excitement

2010-11-28T13:42:00.000-05:00

Our weekly “day of rest” got off to an interesting start this morning. While heading to the barn at about 7:45am, I heard an unusual commotion in the distance. About 50 yards down the road to the west, I spotted a man and woman who’d parked their pickup truck near the edge of our hay field. They were thrashing around in the brush with sticks or rods, and shouting.

Given how few people are usually even up and moving around here on a Sunday morning, let alone one as cold as today, my initial assumption was that they were hunters in hot pursuit of something they’d wounded. It is, after all, still firearm deer season in Lower Michigan. But why would a hunter with a firearm not use that firearm to finish off the deer? They were acting more like they were after a pheasant or a wild turkey, but I don’t think either of those are in season.

As I continued watching, now both curious and a little nervous, something truly odd happened: a large dark object began inching up a scrawny tree, like a flag being hoisted up a flagpole. The larger of the two people was shouting and swinging a stick at this “flag,” but to no avail.

Realizing that this “flag” must in fact be some sort of varmint, I ran inside and grabbed my twelve gauge shotgun. Once back outside, I shouted and waved at the pair (who were now both swinging sticks at the varmint), and jogged across the hayfield toward them with the shotgun.

“It’s a coon!” the man called out to me.

“Great!” I called back, jogging nearer. “I’ve got a shotgun!”

The couple, who I assume were husband and wife, explained that they were out early delivering Sunday newspapers when the coon had run across the road in front of them. They’d stopped and given chase with makeshift clubs, knowing that a small child lives in the next house down from us.

“And we have kids and livestock,” I added. “I appreciate it, because we’ve lost lots of chickens this last year. I hate these things.”

I loaded the shotgun with buckshot, disengaged the safety, and prepared to line it up with the coon. The thing was about ten feet off the ground, which was most of the way to the top of the scrawny tree. And the sucker was huge. Wouldn’t have surprised me if it’d feasted on several of our chickens and ducks.

“Wait,” the man said, as I drew the shotgun to my shoulder. “Do you want the pelt?”

“I just want it dead,” I replied. “Why? Do you want it?” I’ve never tanned hides, and had no interest in getting started today.

“Yeah,” the two of them told me. “Can you shoot it in the head?”

I told them I’d do my best, but a twelve gauge is a twelve gauge. And I wasn’t going back inside for my .380 pistol with the laser sight. A buckshot shell contains nine large pieces of metal, which will spray when launched, but the odds were better than using birdshot. I aimed high, and the fairly close range meant the nine pieces of shot would remain pretty much together on impact. With one squeeze of the trigger, the big coon tumbled from the tree like a bag of wet cement.

The man kicked the coon over. When it didn’t move, he picked it up by a hind leg and announced, “Huge hole in the head!” Indeed, it looked like half its skull had been blown off --- but the rest of the body was untouched. In all honesty, it was a much better shot than I’d been expecting to make, given the coon’s vertical (head upward) orientation on the tree trunk. The man handed the coon to his wife, who tossed it into the back of their pickup.

They thanked me for letting them keep the coon for its hide, and for dispatching the coon before it could hurt the little boy who lives next door. I told them how much I appreciated their stopping and making so much of an effort chasing the thing down, and giving me the chance to take it out.

They seemed like a nice couple, and pure “country folks” without any pretentions, who really wanted to do the right thing. Which is what I like so much about living out here: no matter what we might do for a living, or what kind of vehicle we might drive, or what kind of property or livestock we might have, we’re all pretty much of one mind about a lot of things.

Like what you do when you catch a big fat coon crossing the road.

Rest

2010-11-26T11:53:00.000-05:00

As mentioned one of this blog's earliest posts, our family has grown to have a great appreciation for the custom of Sunday rest. Unless some kind of true necessity arises, such as unavoidable professional work or bringing in hay before the rain ruins the crop, we spend Sundays going to church and hanging out with family or close friends. We try not to even shop on Sundays, apart from last-minute dinner necessities that may arise.

I was initially skeptical --- and resistant --- about this new approach to Sunday, but Mrs. Yeoman Farmer insisted we give it a try. For that I am grateful; it's really changed our family for the better. I can't imagine trading our current Sundays for the ones we used to spend.

Especially when I'm forced by circumstances to revisit those "bad old" Sundays, as I was a couple of weeks ago. Two Sundays before Thanksgiving, we planned to spend the day visiting MYF's brother and his family in the Detroit suburbs. We hadn't seen them in awhile, and the timing was also good for delivering the Thanksgiving turkey.

The day didn't go as planned. Oh, we made it to church just fine that morning. We came home and got ready to go to Detroit just fine. We got onto the freeway just fine. But less than a mile down I-96, I heard the unmistakable sound of one of our minivan's tires blowing out and rubber flapping on pavement.

I managed to steer onto the shoulder, and got out to inspect the damage. The right rear tire was basically shredded, so I prepared to fix it. Keep in mind the weather was cold and overcast, and cars were whizzing by a few feet away. Mrs Yeoman Farmer was in the car with all four kids, plus our new dog (Pepper), who we can't yet leave alone at home for extended periods. We also had the frozen turkey in a cooler, of course.

On a Dodge Caravan, the spare tire is under the chassis and must be lowered by turning a bolt inside the vehicle. I'd done this once before, so was familiar with the mechanism. However, unlike that other time, on this particular day the tire refused to lower itself. The bolt turned fine. The cable of the winch system played out just fine. But the tire itself remained stuck to the bottom of the van. I pried at it with the minimal tools available. It wouldn't budge, no matter what I tried.

Thank God for AAA. They got us a tow truck within about 20 minutes, and the driver (a really nice, younger guy) had fortunately seen this exact problem before. After a couple of minutes of fiddling and prying with his crowbar, the spare tire dropped free. He filled it to maximum capacity with air, lifted the van with his hydraulic jack, removed the old wheel with his impact driver, and had the spare installed in no time flat. He even gave us a jump start, because we'd run our four-way flashers so long the battery no longer had enough power to turn the motor over.

We thanked him, and were again on our way toward Detroit. This was my first time driving with one of those lousy temporary "donut" spare tires, and it was as bad as I imagined. Even fully inflated, it wasn't safe to drive more than about 55-60 MPH on the freeway. The handling was terrible. We stayed in the right lane, and let everybody else buzz past us.

We arrived very late, but all in once piece. I dropped everyone else off at my in-laws', then headed up to the local Sam's Club in search of a new set of tires. There was no way I was driving 70 miles home that night, in the dark and in the cold, on that temporary thing, with the whole family in the car and no spare to fall back on. Given that we'd put over 70,000 miles on this set of tires, I figured it was just a matter of time before the rest of them started going. This was definitely the day to get a whole new set.

Unfortunately, the Sam's Club just up the street didn't have a tire center. The tire store in the same shopping center was closed on Sundays. As was the Belle Tire a few miles down Grand River. My brother in law suggested I try the Sears Auto Center at the local shopping mall; they did in fact turn out to be open. But because they were pretty much the only place open that day, everybody and his brother had come to get their cars worked on. (With the cold snap that morning, they apparently were doing a booming business installing new batteries.) They did have a set of tires in my size, but said it'd be 90 minutes to get them installed. I had no choice but to get my car in line and wait.

And wait. And wait. They did have a football game on in the waiting room, which was nice. But I'd a thousand times rather have been hanging out with my in-laws, watching the game at their place with them. The game dragged on, and then the late game came on. Sears ran into problem after problem with my tires; first, they turned out not to have the cheaper tires in the right size for our vehicle and had to get my permission to spend lots more installing a more expensive set. Given that I was basically stuck, I told them to go ahead and do it. Then, as they were pulling the old tires, one of the mounting studs snapped off. They had to find me again, ask if I wanted to pay for a new one, and then search around to see if they had the part.

Once it became clear my van would be unavailable for a lot more than 90 minutes, and I'd lost interest in football, I decided to take a stroll through the Twelve Oaks Mall for a change of scenery. All I can say is: I am never going to willingly set foot in another suburban shopping mall again. Especially not on a Sunday. The place was jammed, and already decked out with Christmas decorations in mid-November. Kids were getting their photos taken with Santa. But the worst part was the cacophonous noise, and the impossibility of escaping from it. That, and the utter frivolity and idiocy of so much of what was for sale. Not just the skanky lingere stores. Or the "clothing" aimed at teenagers. So much of what the stores were peddling were frivolous trinkets, and junk I couldn't imagine letting my kids waste their money on.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and retreated to the relative peace and quiet of the Sears Auto Center waiting room as fast as I could. Our van didn't get finished until nearly 6pm, so I had plenty of time to be alone with my thoughts. I was grateful for several things: that we homeschool, and our kids aren't asking to dress the way most kids at the mall were dressing. That we live so far away from suburban shopping malls, and don't need to visit them for anything but emergencies. That we've rejected the frivolity and consumerism on such blatant display at these places. And, above all, that Sundays have become such a welcome refuge for our family from all this noise and chaos. When I was single, and living in the Detroit suburbs myself, I used to regularly patronize this very same mall on many Sundays...and used to think nothing of it. In fact, I used to enjoy getting out and going there. Now, as I sat in Auto Center Purgatory, I couldn't imagine any more foreign place than a suburban shopping mall to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Once the van was ready, I hurried back to rejoin the family for what remained of our Sunday refuge from the world. Dinner was just being served as I arrived, and it was absolutely wonderful. Not just the food, but especially the company. I was sorry to have missed so much of the day, but grateful to at least be spending the main meal together. And especially grateful to Mrs. Yeoman Farmer for her insistence that we live the custom of Sunday Rest the way we have. Catching a glimpse of what life is like without that rest was a powerful confirmation of its value.

And I must add one more thing for which I'm grateful: the AAA dispatcher, the tow truck driver, those folks at Sears Auto Center, and all the others who must work on Sundays to ensure that families like ours can still get the essential services we might need. I sincerely hope that all of them are able to get some other day of rest with their families during the week.

Gratitude

2010-11-26T09:51:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday, wherever you are. We spent the day with Mrs. Yeoman Farmer's brother and his family, in the Detroit suburbs. They grilled one of our turkeys, which we'd taken over a couple of weekends ago. It was fantastic, as was the rest of the feast they put together.

The best part, by far, was spending a relaxing day hanging out with family. But in so enjoying our time together with them, it was hard not to think back on the contrast with the way we spent last year's Thanksgiving day. It was the only TG we've spent away from family in a long time, but it was also one of the most memorable and one that we may be especially grateful for for many years.

Last November, we were literally a thousand miles away from home. Yeoman Farm Baby had just been born, and we'd been staying in an extended stay type of hotel in that city with him and all the kids. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer had continued homeschooling the older ones, which after so many days in small and unfamiliar surroundings was getting old fast. It was all we could do to get them out to run around at various parks and playgrounds every afternoon. We were eager and anxious to get home, but we were legally not allowed to leave the state with him before we got formal written permission from both YFB's state of birth and our state of residence. Given the impending Thanksgiving holiday, lots of staff at the courts and other bureaus were out on vacation. Our legal process ground to a crawl, and we (only half jokingly) began to wonder if we'd make it home by Christmas.

And then came the invitation we'll never forget. MYF had managed to meet several other Catholic homeschooling families in the area; she's a natural extrovert, and seems capable of making friends no matter where she goes or how long she's staying in a place. Once everyone realized we were going to be stuck so far from home thru at least the first of December, we got not one but two different invitations for Thanksgiving dinners. One was very far away, but the other was just a few miles from our hotel. We accepted the more local invitation, and had an absolutely wonderful afternoon and evening together with that family --- and their extended family.

Particularly moving was the effort our hostess made to accommodate the YFCs' food allergies. She basically ended up cooking two Thanksgiving dinners: one that our kids could eat, and the other for everyone else to eat. We did contribute one of our turkeys, and tried to help with food preparation and cleanup as much as we could, but having a newborn made that complicated. Their generosity was incredibly moving; they'd only known us for a short while, but went to unbelievable lengths to welcome us into their home and family while we were so far from our own.

We've stayed in touch with our host family, and even some members of their extended family, in the year since. I want them, and all of you, to know how grateful we remain for the time when we were strangers and were welcomed. We have lots of other things that we're grateful for this Thanksgiving, of course, and I'll try to mention some of them in upcoming posts. But that particular incident from last year has been on my mind, and I wanted to make sure I shared it first.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Pumpkins Galore!

2010-11-13T18:07:00.000-05:00

We thought we were doing well collecting five free pumpkins recently from a local farmer after Halloween.

Today, we hit the absolute pumpkin trove: a much larger farm stand, about seven miles up the road. They do an enormous volume of business each year, on a family owned parcel of land, but we don't drive that direction very often. This morning, I noticed a sign in front of their stand: "Pumpkins. $10 per pickup load." I took a closer look, and realized they had more than two full hay wagons loaded with pumpkins that never found a home before Halloween.

On my way home that afternoon with the kids, we stopped and chatted with the lady. I explained that our pickup truck died a few years back, but that I'd like to take the equivalent number of pumpkins home in our minivan. I gave her ten bucks, and packed as many pumpkins as I could around the kids and my groceries. She said that wasn't even half a pickup truckload, and that I should feel free to come back later to get as many more as I could carry.

We got home, unloaded the first load, and tossed a great many to the sheep and chickens. They were quickly all over their new treats.

I went back out, van empty of kids and groceries, determined to maximize my next load. Here's what I got in the back:

And here's what I got in the passenger compartment:

I could've loaded more, but didn't want to over-do it.

She told me they nearly always have way too many pumpkins, and mark them down like this the day after Halloween every year. You can guess who will be first in line next year, with his minivan emptied of all interior seats.

Our animals are going to be feasting for a long time.

Turkeys Were Here

2010-11-12T14:17:00.000-05:00

No, it's not graffiti. But the turkeys left their mark on the hay field as clearly as if they'd used spray paint. Green spray paint:

This year, we kept the turkeys in three portable pasture pens that we moved in a staggered formation along the edge of the hay field. Each pen is four feet wide and eight feet long. In their staggered formation, the three pens therefore took up the first twelve feet of the hay field. Because that portion of the field is bordered by fence, mowing and raking it into hay is a tricky proposition anyway. It seemed like a good place to let the turkeys clean up some overgrown grass. And since we have plenty of hay stored up in the barn, we didn't mind seeing the harvest reduced by a few bales.

We moved the three pens each day, allowing the birds to feast on fresh alfalfa and grass (in addition to their 21% protein grain ration). As the pens were dragged forward, the turkeys would also scramble to snap up all the crickets and other bugs being disturbed by the moving grass, further supplementing the protein in their diet. Moving the pens got the turkeys off their droppings, and ensured their fertilizer would be spread fairly evenly.

The photo above is from a spot where the turkeys were over the summer. Each day, they consumed a huge amount of the grass that their pen had been covering. Judging by how well the "replacement" grass has been coming up, and how green it is, the turkeys left behind some serious fertilizer and is doing some serious work. It'll be interesting to see how well that portion of the hay field yields next year. Maybe we won't lose any bales after all.

Where are the turkeys now? Here, where the final two are meeting their end this afternoon (note the rooster cleaning up spilled grain from the previous day):

I've been butchering like crazy over the last few weeks; note the large pile of feathers on the right. That's the fence post where every turkey hung upside down from twine tied to its feet, to bleed out, before getting dry-plucked. That took about 75% of the feathers off. I then took each bird into the barn, dunked it in scalding water to loosen the remaining feathers, and hung the bird from a nail in the rafters so I could finish plucking. I found that if I did no more than two or three in a day, it wasn't too burdensome. Hefting around big turkeys can become a real pain in the back if you save all the butchering for a single day.

We had so many poults survive the brooder, and the freezer is getting so full, we've decided to overwinter two toms and several hens. Those birds are now in the barn at night, hanging out with the chickens and ducks and geese. They can go out and range in the pasture during the day if they like, but they've preferred to lie low for now. Given how well some of our Buff Orpingtons managed to hatch out and brood their own chicks this past year, I think we'll try collecting turkey eggs and giving them to the chicken hens to manage (assuming the turkey hens don't do the job themselves --- it's just that we've never had any luck in this department in the past). But if the Buffs succeed, we'll be able to save at least seven bucks for every poult we don't have to purchase from a hatchery next spring.

In the meantime, we're going to enjoy roasting up the turkeys in our freezer. A heritage breed hen makes a nice Sunday dinner for our family, with enough left over for a second meal and some soup. The toms are a good size to break out when entertaining guests.

And, needless to say, we're very much looking forward to our Thanksgiving feast later this month.

Pepper Makes It Better

2010-11-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

After Scooter's tragic demise a couple of months ago, we've been left without a traditional herding-breed of dog. I've lost track of the number of times I've wished I had him around to help, and not just with the sheep. Scooter had an uncanny ability to know exactly where I wanted animals of all kinds (including chickens and ducks and geese) to be, and how to position himself to optimize the chances they'd either get there or stay there. Remarkable that a dog who could be so dumb in so many other ways (including trying to cross an unlighted road in the dead of night with a car coming) had such sharp instincts with the livestock.

Wilbur the puppy has continued to settle in, and he's growing like a weed. We like him, boundless energy and chewing tendencies and all, but I doubt he'll ever be more than a guardian and companion.

We'd been waiting for my professional work to slow down, so we could renew our search for a dog with herding genetics. One litter of shepherd puppies came into the local animal shelter, but were snapped up before we could take one. Then, last Friday, the intrepid Mrs. Yeoman Farmer spotted a new listing on the shelter's website: a beautiful-looking, four year old Australian Shepherd mix female. She'd been a stray, but was totally housebroken and even leash trained. and despite being labeled a "mix," she looked almost purebred.

MYF drove to the shelter during Yeoman Farm Baby's next nap, and liked the dog so much she put down a deposit to hold her. The Yeoman Farm Children and I went in on Saturday, and instantly knew this dog was a keeper. She has a wonderful, calm disposition. She was really good with the kids. And she even got along with Wilbur (we took him with us to the shelter, to test their interaction).

We took her home that day, and she's working out extremely well. She really is housebroken. After a couple of days of stand-offish adjustment, she and Wilbur have even begun playing and rough-housing together in my office.

The only problem was a name. The shelter had named her "Carly," but that just wasn't going to work for us. Every time I called her, or even referred to her, I knew I'd think of Carly Simon screaming "You're so vain!" And MYF had similar associations with the name. After considerable deliberation and negotiation, the whole family managed to settle on "Pepper" as an alternative.

We take her on the leash with us all over the farm, particularly when doing things with livestock. But especially since she was a stray in the past, we don't want to let her walk freely until we've had a solid adjustment period and she's positive that this is where she belongs. Back in Illinois, we had one shelter stray wander off and disappear because we let her free too early.

It's unclear so far whether and how well Pepper's herding instincts will eventually kick in; she's mostly intimidated by the livestock, and will not enter the barn unless she's carried through the door. We're hopeful that this will be temporary. But even if she never matches Scooter's abilities, we're none the worse for the deal: she's an absolutely wonderful companion with me in my office. I'll take that.

The only other odd thing about her: she doesn't like cameras. At all. The shelter had the hardest time getting a good picture of her for the website. I tried snapping a few pictures, but she turned and ducked her head every time she saw the camera.

Finally, I had Homeschooled Farm Girl hug Pepper tight and make her face the camera. So...this may be the best photo you get of her for awhile.

No Showcase

2010-11-09T08:43:00.005-05:00

We bought our farm here in Michigan three years ago this month. No one is quite sure how old the house is, as it was built before the county kept reliable records. The best guess is it dates from the 1880s, but it's had considerable work (and additions) done over the years. The cornerstone in the big red barn reads 1913, so we're pretty sure that's when that building was erected.

The previous owners had it for about ten years, and were selling so they could retire and move closer to family in Arkansas. We met them a couple of times, and thought they were very nice people, but didn't really know that much about them. The husband had some kind of a job in town, and the wife was a professional artist. The detached 25' x 30' building that is now my office had been her studio. Neither she nor her husband did any kind of farming here. Apart from five house cats, they had no animals. Apart from lots of flowers in the front yard, they didn't cultivate a garden. Their kids were grown. The upstairs of the big red barn was little more than a basketball court, and the downstairs was little more than storage. The only fence was a white rail composite thing that gives visual separation from the lawn to the pasture --- but is far too porous to serve as a barrier to any kind of animal.

When the wife wasn't working in her studio, she seemed to have spent her time painting everything in the house that didn't move. Exhibit A: the basement has a poured concrete floor, but she painted it to look like it was made of flagstones. Exhibit B: she painted quotations from her favorite author all over the trim at the top of walls in various rooms. Exhibit C: she painted the fuel oil barrel in the basement to look like a wine cask.

I could go on, but you get the point. She did all kinds of things to the house that were kind of cool, very artistic, but that few other people would ever consider spending time doing.

We've stayed in touch with the previous owners, chiefly through Christmas cards, and also with an occasional call to ask about the myriad quirks present in a house this old and the way it was built / added onto. But given that they now live several states away, we haven't actually seen them since buying the house.

That almost changed this summer. Almost. I was working in my office, and Mrs. Yeoman Farmer was inside tending children, when we saw a car pull into the driveway and stop. It pulled a little closer. It backed up. Pulled closer again. Backed up. Stopped. Waited. Waited. Waited. But just as I was preparing to go out and ask if the driver was lost (it happens a lot around here), the car pulled out and drove away.

We wouldn't have given the incident a second thought, until a letter arrived a few days later. MYF had already read it, and handed it to me with a bemused grin. "We got a letter from [Artistic Previous Owner Lady] today," she explained. "Just read it."

I did, but quickly grew so infuriated that I almost didn't make it to the end. I won't quote verbatim, but the take-away is this: she'd been in town visiting friends, and had tried to stop by to see us. But she'd taken one look at how terribly we'd neglected the property, and it'd pulled her up short. The longer she'd looked at what a horrific wasteland we'd turned the place into, the more she decided she just couldn't bear staying. She'd driven off before getting out, because she wanted to remember the property the way it had been in all its glory. This property was such a special place, she said, and they and previous owners had done so much to make it special. She hoped that someday we could get it together and preserve this special place.

"How. Dare. She," I seethed.

Mrs. Yeoman Farmer simply laughed and asked if I wanted to read the response she'd already written. Being the queen of graciousness and tact, MYF's letter led off by telling the previous owner how beautiful we thought her flowers and manicured yard had been, how much we like the house, and how much we wish she would have stopped by and spoken to us. Because if she had done so, we would have explained why the property no longer looks the way it used to. Instead of spending our limited resources cultivating flowers and decorative shrubs, and putting up beautifully-painted bird feeders, we have:

Fenced the entire pasture, including subdividing it for sheep and goats (this project took basically an entire summer, and cost many hundreds of dollars in fencing material);
Built three livestock areas in the barn's basement and subdivided outdoor paddocks;
Built pasture pens for poultry, and raised many dozens of chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys;
Harvested and stored well over a thousand bales of hay in the upstairs portion of the barn. (This was made possible in part by spending over $2,000 one year on fertilizer, which was necessary because no one had bothered fertilizing the hay field for the last ten years and the yields were dropping crazily low);
Grown our flock of sheep and herd of dairy goats significantly;
Replaced all the windows in the house with brand new, energy efficient ones;
Done the same with all the windows in the office building;
Dramatically increased the amount of insulation in the attic (to our shock, there was basically zero up there when we moved in);
Been saving money to replace the roof (which we ended up doing later this fall);
Planted and fenced an enormous garden, which we have admittedly have not had time to properly weed and cultivate this year, because we have also...
Adopted a baby, who is the light of our life, but who requires all the attention any baby requires. While homeschooling three other children, including a high school sophomore. Which is much more draining for a woman in 40s than for a woman in her 20s.

MYF's letter concluded by encouraging Previous Owner to stop by the next time she was in town. And that if she could give us a few weeks' notice, we'd make sure we spiffed up the front yard before her arrival.

I told MYF that her letter was perfect, and was again grateful to be married to the Queen of Graciousness and Tact. We puzzled over why Previous Owner would send such a nasty note, because she'd struck us as a very nice lady.

Whatever the reason, the incident reminded us of something we'd read someplace. There are two basic types of rural properties with acreage: (1) The Working Farm and (2) The Country Showcase. The previous owner had gussied our property up into a Country Showcase worthy of a glossy magazine, and in her head it still was. But many years ago, it'd been one of the biggest working farms in this township --- and we could still see and appreciate its possibilities to become one again. With a lot of sweat and time, we'd invested our resources into making it the Working Farm that our family needed.

Working farms aren't always pretty, but they're productive. And in our minds, that gives them a beauty all their own. I'd a thousand times rather gaze out on two dozen Icelandic sheep grazing behind a utilitarian metal fence than look at an empty field bordered by a pretty white porous rail fence.

We know of a few Country Showcases in the area which are also working farms, but they tend to be special cases. One of them is the family with the produce stand I discussed in the most recent post; their place is beautiful to look at, and also extremely productive. But that's possible for them because the wife works full time at a professional job, while the husband tends the garden full time (he's the world's greatest green thumb). They have no children to tend to, so the farm can get all of their attention. The other "working country showcase" properties tend to belong to breeders of expensive purebred horses (or people who stable such horses on behalf of city people), where image is an important component of their business. They tend to look something like this (note the McMansion, pretty white fence, immaculate horse barn, and perfectly trimmed pastures):

Which is not what our yard looks like. But we really couldn't care less. It works for us, and that's what matters.

UPDATE: Mrs. Yeoman Farmer pointed out that the FRONT view of this particular house is even more of a beautiful showcase. I managed to get a picture of it this morning.

The house across the street from it is also pretty amazing:

By way of a postscript, a few weeks after sending the letter to Previous Owner, we got an extremely contrite note back from her. She apologized for jumping to conclusions about us, said she was very sorry she didn't stop and visit, and assured us she would do so the next time she was in town. And then she said something revealing: her friends in the area had been telling her we'd been "letting the property go," so when she'd stopped by to look at it her first glance only reinforced that preexisting supposition. She apologized for not getting the whole story directly from us.

We appreciated that explanation, but then couldn't help wondering: What have the neighbors been saying about us? Not like we care, but still...it'd be nice if the locals would get to know us rather than talking about us behind our backs.

No matter. Gossip is a part of life everywhere, maybe especially so in small towns. We'll just keep on loving our Working Farm as much as ever.

Post Halloween Pumpkins

2010-11-05T11:04:00.000-04:00

Until I had a farm and livestock, I never really thought about the degree to which pumpkins go under-utilized in this country. Pumpkins are ubiquitous in October, but chiefly as decorations. Not just the ones that are carved into Jack-O-Lanterns, but the ones that are put out intact on porches and storefronts to sit like giant orange balls. I used to think these kinds of displays were a nice artistic contribution to the fall/harvest mood. Now I see them and think, "Look at all those great pumpkins, going to waste."

New York City never lets itself be outdone in anything. So I guess it didn't surprise me when I was recently visiting there on a business trip and saw this:

over and over again, as I walked down 34th Street. Dozens of pumpkins and other fall squashes, filling every one of the large rectangular planter beds that separate the sidewalk from the roadway. There I was, in the shadow of the Empire State Building, dressed in a jacket and tie, unable to think of anything but how many weeks my sheep and goats and poultry would be able to feast on all of these "decorations."

Will these things be left out until they rot? Will the sanitation department eventually throw them into a trash truck with the rest of the city's garbage? Or will an enterprising farmer be allowed to take them home to feed to his animals? He'd need a dump truck to carry all of them; there were many many more planters filled with pumpkins all along 34th Street. I wish I knew who in NYC government to contact with these questions, because I'm genuinely curious as to the fate of all this good livestock fodder.

Back here in rural Michigan, the answers are much easier to find. A mile or two from us, there's a farmer who grows an enormous garden and sells produce from a roadside stand. The Yeoman Farm Children and I stop by there nearly every day in the summer, riding our tandem bicycle, and chat with them as we load up our rack pack with summer squash, zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, and everything else our own garden may be lagging in production of. They do not have any livestock on their farm, but they know we do. Not wanting anything to go to waste, they came out and told us we should take all of their unsold pumpkins remaining after Halloween. For free. Ditto --- during the summer --- any tomatoes or other produce that are too blemished to sell. We should come on over with buckets and help ourselves.

We were naturally very grateful for this offer, and this morning I was finally able to swing by their place. They had several enormous pumpkins left, and I loaded all of them into the back of our minivan. They're wonderful pumpkins, totally intact, but admittedly not very attractively shaped for carving or display.

But who cares? Certainly not our sheep. Dot (our leader ewe) saw me unloading these treasures from the van, and was the first of the flock to make a beeline for the gate. Note the geese, preparing to swoop in and poach some of the treat.

Within minutes, the whole flock had followed Dot's lead. I think the first pumpkin vanished in under five minutes.

I've packed the rest of them into the barn, and will smash one per day until they're all gone. Too bad there were only five.

Next time I go to NYC in the fall, maybe I'll take a dump truck instead of an airplane.

Trimmed Again

2010-10-16T22:58:00.000-04:00

Fall sheep shearing was last weekend; I intended to post this sooner, but the professional work requests have kept on coming. Not complaining at all...much like our bees need to pack their honey supers as much as they can while the flowers are in bloom, those of us who work in politics and opinion research must do the same in even numbered years (up until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, anyhow).

For the shepherd of a fine wool flock like Icelandics, a good shearer is beyond price. It's easy to get someone to fleece a bunch of meat-breed sheep whose wool is good for little other than insulation or tennis balls. It's another matter to find someone who can pull a fleece off in a single piece and in a manner that maximizes its value for processing. Our "sheep shearing lady," Lisa, is such a person. She's been coming to our farm since we had just four animals (in late 2002), and from her home base in Indiana covers a wide territory. Now that we're in Michigan, she coordinates our spring and fall shearing dates with those of other clients up here. Last Sunday was our day.

Lisa does much more than cut the fleece from the sheep neatly. She helps us inspect and evaluate each animal as she works with it; she's seen and held orders of magnitude more sheep than we ever will, and is alert to potential health issues that we may not have noticed. A couple of quick examples: I'm well aware of two telltale signs of worm infestation. Last weekend, Lisa pointed out several more that we should be on the lookout for (not currently present in our flock, but that she's seen elsewhere). Also, during last fall's shearing, she identified a ram lamb with a hernia; she advised us not only not to keep him for breeding, but to butcher him before any other lamb --- before the hernia could develop into a life-threatening condition. She also helps us identify the lambs whose body types and conformations would make them the best breeders.

I could go on, but you get the idea. For the adults and lambs we're keeping as breeders, Lisa also trims their hooves and helps us de-worm them. In addition, she gives every animal a drench of about 20-30 cc's of apple cider vinegar cut 50-50 with water. She also trims the hooves of all our dairy goats.

This time, we had a special additional task: removing the horns of one of our breeding rams. I can't believe we still haven't named this particular ram; we kept him as a backup breeder in case anything happened to Dilemma, but we never got around to naming him. He's now over a year and a half old, and had developed a stunning set of horns. But there was a big problem: as frequently happens, the curve of the horn was starting to press against his face. If we let it go much longer, the growing horns would either crush his skull or prevent him from eating. Either way, we'd lose him.

So, just as we had to do with Dilemma this spring, we used a pair of halters to secure the ram between two rings in the barn doorway. At first he lunged and jumped and struggled to free himself. But once he calmed down, the procedure went off very quickly and without incident.

We used a metal cable to saw back and forth through the horn, and this time used a heavier material than we did with Dilemma. The friction of the sawing action creates so much heat, the blood flow through the horn is largely cauterized immediately. We applied bandages, and secured them with duct tape, to stanch the rest of the bleeding.

There are no nerve endings in the horns, so the sawing itself didn't cause the ram any pain; his only discomfort came from being tied up and having the smell the burning horns being sawed off. As you can see, within minutes he was back outside and feeding with the rest of the flock (and note how nice Dilemma is looking - he's the one right in the middle, facing the camera).

We sold Dilemma's horns to a knife maker, who wanted to use them to make knife handles. I'm trying to locate a buyer for these horns now as well; if anyone is interested, please email me. We'd like to get $25 for the pair. That includes shipping to anywhere in the USA.

The Stinker Slips Away

2010-10-07T21:51:00.000-04:00

We've had our share of tangles with skunks over the years, and I must say something: I've never smelled anything worse than what they let loose. I'm sure there's something even more putrid out there, but I haven't yet encountered it. They are nasty little creatures, nothing at all like the cutsie children's book characters. Or Pepe Le Pew (who, for the record, is high on my list of most annoying cartoon characters. Right behind Tweetie Bird. But don't get me started.)

Our first skunk was in Illinois, just a few months after we'd moved to the country. I spotted it entering the chicken house, where I had our first batch of 25 pullet chicks in a very vulnerable area. The thing could've wiped out the whole brood, easy. I ran into the house for my shotgun, and kept hoping it'd come back out. Instead, it wandered into a corner where it was trapped. I shot it once, but not with a direct enough hit to kill. It filled the air with its stink bomb, which I had to approach so I could line up a second shot. I smelled so bad, Mrs Yeoman Famer made me sleep in a separate room. I think I ended up burning the clothes I'd been wearing. And the smell was in my hair for days.

Our next skunk came some time later, still in Illinois. I had a large batch of goslings I was brooding in an outbuilding. They were young and quite vulnerable. I was about to call it a night, and was taking one last look at them, when I noticed some kind of dark shape moving aggressively inside their pen. The goslings were in panic, running every which way. In the fading light, I managed to spot the white stripe down the animal's back and tail...and again sprinted for my shotgun. (I can't repeat often enough what an essential farm tool a good twelve gauge pump is.) This time, I took the thing out with a single shot. Unfortunately took a gosling or two out with it, and the skunk had already managed to kill a gosling or two, but the rest of the brood was safe. Covered with skunk stench, released as pieces of shot tore the animal open, but safe.

Here in Michigan, we've had a skunk visit our property occasionally. At 9pm or so, when coming in from my office, there have been several nights where the smell of skunk has hung heavy in the air. I imagine it released the scent when a dog or cat had startled it. Regardless, no matter how much I searched the yard and under the porch with a flashlight, I never managed to actually spot the skunk itself.

Until last night. I awakened at 2am, and couldn't get back to sleep. There was a certain project from work that I couldn't get off my mind, and couldn't shake a gnawing anxiety that I may have done a particular thing wrong and allowed a particular error to get into my data. At 3:30, unable to get back to sleep, I decided I might as well go out to my office and check the data.

I got dressed, went downstairs, got my spotlight, and switched on the back porch light. The instant I stepped onto the porch, I spotted the skunk. There was absolutely no missing the white stripe and angular body. He was running up the slope toward our barn, about 50 feet from where I was standing. I shone the spotlight on him, and he looked back. And then ran faster.

I sprinted back upstairs, retrieved the shotgun, and hoped I'd get back down before he disappeared. Fortunately, he was now up against the barn and moving slowly toward the six foot drop-off that our firewood pile is currently stacked in. But I had a special challenge with him that I wouldn't have had with a raccoon or possum: get too close, and even a perfect shot means I get covered with skunk stench. So I kept my distance, and tried to position myself for the best possible shot.

Where he was right then, a shot would've blown holes in the barn door. As he moved toward the woodpile, he crossed in front of a window. Didn't want to blow the window out --- killing a skunk isn't worth all that. Then he was on the woodpile, and dropping six feet or so from it to the ground. That would've been a perfect time to have blasted him, except my nice huge metal pot was sitting there on the ground, from butchering chickens earlier in the day. Didn't want to blow holes in that.

He continued moving, and was about to disappear into the high weeds along the barn, and I knew I was running out of time. The big problem now was my spotlight. I had a clear shot, but couldn't fire a twelve gauge one-handed while holding a spotlight in my other hand. I tried putting the spotlight between my legs, but couldn't keep the beam focused. (Note to self: You REALLY need to get an aftermarket tactical light to mount to this shotgun.) Figuring this was my only chance, I lined him up as best I could...and pulled the trigger. And waited for the smoke to clear.

And soon realized he was still moving. And definitely disappearing unhurt into the high weeds. Not wanting to get close, I swung wide around the barn and tried to see if he'd emerge, but there was no sign of him. Never saw him come back out, on either side. My light now getting dim, I decided I should count my blessings: even with the noisy report of the shotgun, the skunk didn't let loose with a stink bomb. And hopefully I scared him enough to stay away for awhile. And he stayed outside; the barn had been closed up securely enough to protect our livestock.

Out in my office, I quickly put my mind at ease about the project; everything was fine. I headed back to the house, scanning the barnyard one last time as the last of my battery power faded, but the skunk was nowhere to be seen. I plugged the light in for a recharge, and then headed upstairs to catch a few hours of recharging for my own body.

And dreamed about someday finally actually getting to take that skunk down once and for all.

The Concentration Camp Isn't Really that Bad

2010-10-07T11:56:00.001-04:00

In an interesting followup to this summer's story about massive egg recalls, the NY Times takes a look inside some of the more modern egg plants and the methods they're employing to manage manure. The conveyor belt system sounds fascinating, and I imagine it saves an enormous amount of labor. It also seems to keep the facility much cleaner.

But this is the quote that struck me:

“We’ve had to completely change the way we look at things,” said Mr. Krouse, who is also chairman of the United Egg Producers, an industry association. “Thirty years ago, farms had flies and farms had mice, everything was exposed to everything else. They just all happily lived together. You can’t work that way anymore.”

Don't get me wrong: I'm not a fan of flies or mice or any other vermin. What bothers me is the industrial scale of these operations, and the necessarily attendant obsessiveness with making them "sanitary." If you're going to have 381,000 hens living under one roof in a concentration camp eggery, you can't have everything exposed to everything else. You must compartmentalize, and obsess about sanitation. Otherwise, you quickly lose control.

But the problem with emphasizing the sanitation strikes me as possibly designed to convince the public that "that makes it okay" to produce eggs in this way. Sure, we have 381,000 hens under one roof. Yeah, they're crammed into little cages. No, they don't ever see the light of day. But we have some really great manure removal systems, and the eggs are really really clean. And the hens get vaccinated against all the diseases you'd expect them to catch while living in this kind of environment. So, eat up! Nothing to see here.

As for the Yeoman farm family, we'll take the "messy" eggs laid by hens happily living together with the ducks and the geese and the sheep and the goats. The eggs that sometimes get manure on them, and that we have to wash. The eggs laid by hens that keep the barn mouse-free because any time one appears, they gang tackle it and use it as supplemental protein for their diet. As they do with the flies and the crickets and even frogs.

You can get away with that kind of "messiness" when you're farming on a small scale. On a human scale. Producing outstanding food for humans who appreciate it.

Thanks for Your Service

2010-10-06T14:02:00.000-04:00

Now that my professional work has gotten caught up, I've been turning my attention to getting long-postponed farm projects caught up as well.

My number one priority: the old laying hens.

We color-code our breeds, so it's easier to tell how old the birds are. Once hens are mature, it's nearly impossible to distinguish a yearling from a three year old. Hens have a productive laying life of about two years, and drop off dramatically in the third year. Our approach is to raise a batch of one breed in the spring of Year 1, which will start laying in the fall of that year. When then start a different colored breed in the spring of Year 2. In Year 3, we either try another new breed or go back to what we had in Year 1. Either way, in the fall of Year 3, we butcher the hens from Year 1.

If we repeat the Year 1 breed in Year 3, as we did this time with Barred Rocks, we must race against the clock to butcher the old hens before they become indistinguishable from the new pullets. The key features are the size of the comb and wattle on their heads. Also, younger birds tend to have yellow feet but older birds' feet tend to get white with age. And once you pick up an older hen, it's often obvious from the weight and fattiness of the belly that this bird has been around for awhile.

My work was so busy in recent months, I put the butchering off way too long. The pullets' combs are starting to grow out, and I'm worrying that I may kill some of them by mistake. With the nice weather yesterday, I knew I had to get caught up. Homeschooled Farm Girl helped me chase down and catch six older hens, and then assisted me as we butchered them. Five are destined for the freezer, and we started a stock pot immediately with the sixth. Overnight, it turned into some of the richest and most delicious chicken soup imaginable. I had some for lunch today, and it'll be the centerpiece of tomorrow's dinner.

This morning, I managed to pluck an additional four hens off their roosts. Guess how I'm going to be spending my sunny Wednesday afternoon?

There may be a few more older hens to butcher after today, but I'll need to wait until tonight (when they again come home to roost) to get a good look. In the meatime, we appreciate all the wonderful eggs our Barred Rocks gave us. And we'll appreciate the chicken soup just as much.

Surprises never Cease

2010-10-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

First we had Dot's surprise, out-of-season lamb. We're still hopeful that she'll get big enough and wooly enough before winter sets in. Thus far, she's been doing great.

This new situation, however, was perhaps even less expected:
Yes, that's Lucy Goosie. And she's made a nest. In October. Out in the middle of the pasture.

I wasn't even aware she was laying eggs, but she'd been quietly collecting them out there. She now has about a half dozen. A few days ago, she went broody and will only come off the nest for quick breaks.

I don't want to move the nest into the barn; she'd almost certainly abandon the eggs if I did. I'm not even sure the goslings are developing, given the cold weather we've had. And even if they hatch, what are their odds of survival in late October or early November?

I can be certain of this: if I trash the nest, they'll die for sure. If I don't trash the nest, we may get some surprise goslings. The thing I'm most concerned about is Lucy Goosie's safety out there in the middle of the night. In Illinois, we lost a few broody geese to coyotes. Fortunately, there aren't any of those around here. Foxes, raccoons and possums are a concern, but an adult goose defending a nest is a pretty tough fighter.

I'd lay my bets on Lucy, if it came to that. And her nest is near enough to the house, I'd be able to hear her alarm honk and come to her assistance.

Still, it's tough to shake the feeling that this isn't going to end well. But we'll see. Around here, we never seem to run out of surprises.

Fall Frame of Mind

2010-09-29T09:58:00.000-04:00

Autumn has definitely arrived here in mid-Michigan. Leaves are beginning to turn. We've just had a few days in a row of dreary and overcast skies, drizzle, and temperatures that haven't climbed out of the mid-fifties. On Monday I brought in some firewood, cleared the cobwebs out of our wood burner, and within a few minutes our family room was glowing with the kind of warmth that only a fire can produce. Unsurprisingly, the Yeoman Farm Children have begun camping out on the carpet in front of it to do their school work. Little Big Brother in particular likes to set up shop there, first thing after I fire it up in the morning, before his siblings come downstairs.

The arrival of fall has also led to a change of menu: soups and stews are back. I found a couple of lamb necks in the freezer, added a couple of chicken feet from this summer's crop of broilers, and let the whole thing soak for a couple of hours with an onion and carrot in a large pot of water with some apple cider vinegar. I then brought the thing to a boil and let it simmer all night. Around mid-day, I de-boned the meat and then added seasonings and a lot of sliced carrots and potatoes (a food processor makes quick work of these). That pot simmered all afternoon, and proved an extremely popular dinner. We had a couple of quarts left over for lunches, but it otherwise disappeared the first night. I made another pot yesterday, and it was again a popular dinner centerpiece.

I'll probably make lamb stew later in the week. My soups and stews are all basically simple variations on the same theme. With stew, I'll lightly marinate some lamb stew meat or shanks in the crock pot with a little apple cider vinegar and an onion for a few hours. I'll then add a bit of water, and let the crock pot run on low all night. By morning, the meat falls off the bone and is simmering in a wonderfully thick sauce. After removing the bones, I'll fill the crock pot with sliced carrots, potatoes, onions, seasonings, and the cooked stew meat. It then cooks on low the rest of the day. By afternoon, the whole house is filled with an incredible aroma...and by dinner, everyone is more than ready to dig in. We're usually lucky if there's a serving or two left over.

With eleven or so lambs going to the butcher in a couple of months, and a whole bunch of laying hens still needing to be butchered, we're trying to clear out as much of last year's meat as we can. I have a feeling we're going to be keeping the crock pot and soup pot full for a while.

The Takedown

2010-09-27T07:56:00.000-04:00

Late yesterday evening, I secured the barn and began walking back toward the house to call it a night. Remember that post over the summer, where I talked about what an important farm tool a pistol-grip spotlight is? I take that thing with me every time I go out at night, and am more or less constantly scanning the trees and fields as I walk. Last night, it proved itself especially useful. As I approached the house, I used the spotlight to illuminate the tall bushes near the back porch. Suddenly, a pair of eyes lit up in the middle of one of those bushes, about eight feet off the ground.

The eyes weren't moving, and my first thought was that they belonged to a cat. After all, when you have as many barn cats running around as we do, that's what these things usually end up being. And this animal's fur even appeared to be the same color as one of our cats. But as I drew closer, something about it didn't seem quite right. The head wasn't the right shape. And it wasn't sitting like a cat.

It looked like a possum. But since its tail was hidden in the bushes, and branches covered a fair amount of its body, I wanted to be sure before I did anything rash. I summoned Mrs. Yeoman Farmer, lit the animal up with the spotlight, and asked MYF if she thought it was a cat. "No way," she replied. We agreed it was definitely a possum. And I figured it was stalking the barn cats which congregate on the back porch at night.

MYF held the spotlight on the possum, to "freeze" it, while I dashed upstairs to retrieve what may be the most essential of farm tools: a 12-gauge Mossberg pump action shotgun. Back on the porch, I racked a shell of 00 Buck into the chamber, disengaged the safety, and lined the little predator up in my sights from about 25 feet away. One squeeze of the trigger, and he fell through the branches. He was still gripping the branch with that long muscular tail, and at first I wasn't sure I'd landed a lethal blow. But before I had to waste a second shot, he dropped to the lawn with a thud --- and it was clear from the wound that he wasn't "playing possum."

Just another night, living in the country, and marveling at the way all these different tools can work together for the safety of our property. And grateful that I'd remembered to give the spotlight a full charge the night before. And invested in a bulk case of 00 Buckshot, so we'd never have to worry about having some close at hand when we needed it.

Just Another Week

2010-09-22T17:49:00.000-04:00

The light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to come into sight, as the busiest season for my professional work winds down. I appreciate your forbearance with the slow posting, and I look forward to posting more frequently going forward this fall.

In between the craziness with work, here is a sampling of what it's been like living on a farm for the past week or so:

Dot's lamb is thriving, and managing to keep up with her mother all around the pasture. It's a big pasture, and they occasionally lose sight of each other; we can tell because the lamb begins a piercing high pitched bleat. Dot usually comes and finds her soon thereafter. It's been a real joy watching Dot mother another lamb; it wouldn't surprise me if this is the last time she gets to do it.

That said, Dot's instincts sometimes conflict with our own. The first couple of nights with her lamb, she attempted to bed down in the wooded ridge on the far end of the pasture. I'm sure she was seeking privacy and shelter, but the lamb would've been easy pickings for any number of predators --- from raccoons to owls. When I did my head count at the barn the first evening, Dot was noticeably absent. Having gotten to know her pretty well over these years, I had a good idea as to where she'd be hiding out. I grabbed the spotlight and crossed the pasture to the ridge; sure enough, that's where she'd bedded down. Much to Dot's chagrin, I grabbed the lamb and began jogging across the pasture to the barn. The lamb bleated, and Dot came running. It was actually kind of amusing listening to her continual protest "Meeah" sounds as we jogged.

Dot tried the same trick the next night, and I again didn't catch on until it was pitch dark. The third night, I dispatched the Yeoman Farm Children to the ridge just before dusk, and they did the honors. In the meantime, I spotted an older lamb which had gotten its horns stuck in the pasture fence farther down the ridge. I freed it, and it ran across the pasture to rejoin the rest of the flock. In the days since, Dot has begun coming into the barn on her own with the rest of the flock at dusk.

We've been taking Wilbur the puppy along whenever we do chores or work with the livestock. When we went to retrieve Dot and her lamb, for example, I took Wilbur with me on a leash. He's no help with herding yet, but I want him to experience as many different aspects of farm life as possible. For the more routine tasks, he's beginning to follow me even without a leash. Each morning, he accompanies me as I let the sheep out, fill water tanks, feed chickens, get hay for goats, and feed turkeys. And then he does it again in the evening. Puppies have such boundless energy, it's nice giving him a chance to work some of it off.

Wilbur hangs out in my office with me much of the rest of the day, and he's about 70% of the way toward being housebroken. He hits the paper most of the time, but the biggest frustration is getting him to relieve himself outside. Often after running around the farm with me, he'll wait until he's returned to my office to relieve himself on the paper.

We had a litter of kittens born in the barn over the weekend. They were very much unwanted and unplanned (we didn't get the cat fixed in time), but the cat fortunately only had two of them. Unfortunately, though, the mother cat has been doing a poor job caring for them. I was inclined to let nature take its course, but Cat Girl is having none of it. She and her brothers have taken it upon themselves to bottle feed the things. As of this morning, the prognosis for one kitten wasn't good. But Cat Girl is working hard to save the other one.

Speaking of the Yeoman Farm Children, Yeoman Farm Baby contracted the chicken pox a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't a big deal, and Mrs. Yeoman Farmer treated it effectively with homeopathic remedies. YFB got over it toward the end of last week. Now, you guessed it, the others have begun coming down with it. Homeschooled Farm Boy wasn't feeling well last night, and began breaking out with pox this morning. Little Big Brother began breaking out this afternoon. We figure Homeschooled Farm Girl isn't far behind.

Pears have begin falling off our tree in the front yard, and I've enjoyed tossing the blemished ones over the fence. The sheep see them, and the word spreads quickly through the whole flock. Within minutes, they're all happily munching as many as I can throw. Then the geese come honking in to join the feast. It's better than television. Really.

On a sad note, we lost one of our oldest roosters this afternoon. Sardine had been the Alpha Rooster for a long time, but got deposed in a cockfight earlier this year. He went into exile, sleeping in a far corner of the barn each night for months. For awhile it looked like he was plotting a Rocky-like comeback, and he did roost with the flock for a time, but in the last few days he'd begun sleeping out in the pasture at night. Annoying me to no end, he would begin crowing at 4am near the house. Always the widest-ranging of the flock, he would regularly cross our road during the day to forage in the neighboring fields. This afternoon, he met the same fate that Scooter met a couple of weeks ago; I found his crumpled body along the side of the road. I won't miss his pre-dawn crowing, but Sardine had been "one of the gang" and a fixture on our farm for years. He's one of the few remaining birds that came with us in the "Noah's Ark on Wheels" from Illinois. So...it's sad to lose him, but I'm glad he had a long and happy life.

Just another week of farm life. What's ahead? Our first harvest of honey from the bee hive. About a dozen old laying hens need butchering. Potatoes need to be dug. And who knows what other surprises we may find in the pasture...

Surprise!

2010-09-17T12:13:00.000-04:00

As I drove past the pasture this morning, I took a look over at the sheep. They were beautifully spread out and grazing, as usual. And then I spotted something that hadn't been there earlier: a tiny black lamb, tagging along behind her mother.

This was a shocker, first, because Icelandics almost never deliver lambs this late in the year. Our previous latest was August, and that's only happened once in the last eight years. Icelandics only tend to come into season in the fall, and deliver all their lambs in the early spring.

It's also a shock because the ewe in question, Dot, is now eleven years old. I honestly wasn't expecting her to lamb this year. She's the leader of the flock, and so we intend to keep her until she dies of natural causes at as ripe of an old age as possible...but we'd pretty much resigned ourselves to her lambing days being over.

On the farm, marvels never cease. Now we just have to think of a good name for our new little addition.

Some Puppy!

2010-09-12T17:34:00.000-04:00

After our recent loss of Tabasco and Scooter, our farm was left without a canine. Dogs are essential to a working farm, whether for protection of the property or for herding livestock. Scooter’s loss, in particular, hit us hard in both departments. Suddenly, we had no dog watching the property while we were away from home. Suddenly, if the sheep or goats got out, we were on our own in trying to round them back up. Suddenly, there was no deterrent to predators which might visit our property by night.

Replacing a dog like Scooter isn’t easy, and I’m not confident we’ll find his equal. But we learned an important lesson with him: it’s best to start with a young puppy. Scooter was only about eight weeks old when we got him, and he was acclimated from that very early age to the whole environment and expectations of our farm. Ideally, we could find a border collie puppy to take his place…and we will continue looking for one. But, in the meantime, we need a dog of some sort to get to work.

Our solution was to scout the local humane society’s animal shelter. Fortunately, about a week ago, we found a promising prospect: a litter of German Shepherd mix puppies was available. They went fast, and we managed to get the last one. His name is Wilbur, and his is indeed…Some Puppy!

I’d almost forgotten how much fun little puppies can be; it’s been nearly four years since we got Scooter. He’s bright, inquisitive, and a quick learner. He enjoys tagging along as I do chores, and is eager to please. Best of all, he’s small enough so the other livestock (even the barn cats) are able to teach him his place and ensure he doesn’t turn predator. He may have some bird or hunting dog in his mongrel mix, but at this early age I think we can break him of any inclination he may have to attack the chickens or ducks.

I’d also forgotten how much trouble little puppies can be, especially before they’re housebroken. And how much they chew on everything. And get into everything. He spends his days in my office with me (and his nights in a crate in my office), and the building is unfortunately starting to smell like it. Hopefully we’ll get him big enough soon to be able to spend his nights in the barn, and by next spring to be patrolling the property at night.

And we’ll make sure we get the front of the property fenced tightly enough so he doesn’t meet the same fate that Scooter did.

One of Those Things You Don't Really Believe Until You See...

2010-09-09T22:17:00.000-04:00

Posting has been slow of late because I've been swamped with professional work. But our family did manage to get down to Amish country in northern Indiana over Labor Day weekend, for the big Midwest Tandem Rally. I'll post more about that event later, but in the meantime had a photo to share.

We'd forgotten a few key items on the trip, so we stopped at a Wal-Mart in Sturgis, Michigan. It's just across the state line from where all the Amish families live.

That's when we discovered just how universal Wal-Mart's customer base is. And the lengths to which Wal-Mart will go to accommodate its customers:

Yes, that's a hitching post. And, yes, those are about a half dozen Amish buggies. And, no, I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd seen it.

I realize many people have divided opinions about Wal-Mart and the merits of shopping there versus supporting local Mom and Pop merchants. For the record, we prefer to support small local merchants, too ... but sometimes Wal-Mart is the best option.

It was interesting to find that even the Amish agree.

Two in Two

2010-09-01T08:22:00.000-04:00

I am going to be sick.

Just two weeks ago, we lost our beloved dog, Tabasco, to lung disease and old age. She was a close companion, which made the loss more difficult, but we were grateful we had a month or so get used to the idea that she was in a fatal decline.

We got no such warning last night. The kids were in bed, and I'd gone out to my office to watch the end of a television program. At about 10:45, I heard Scooter the border collie barking like I'd never heard him bark before. In fact, at first I wasn't even sure it was him. The bark was higher pitched, desperate, and very intense. I grabbed my spotlight and went out to investigate, thinking perhaps he'd gotten in a fight with (or simply cornered) a wild animal. The bark was coming from the direction of the road, and was now so urgent that I broke into a full run down the driveway.

When I reached the road, I found no wild animal. Just Scooter, laying in the middle of the street, struggling --- but failing --- to get up. I ran still faster, to help him, but he'd clearly been injured very badly. He smelled awful, like the stuffing had been knocked out of him. I had to get him out of the road, and I wondered if we could make it to the vet in time.

I'm not sure if my attempt to move him aggravated an internal injury, but he was already going into shock when I tried to pick him up. A passing motorist stopped and carried my light for me as I hauled Scooter to the back porch; I didn't get his name, but his sympathy was greatly appreciated and I wish I could thank him again.

Scooter was limp by the time I laid him on the porch. I ran in to tell Mrs. Yeoman Farmer; she'd heard the yelps, but hadn't known what they were. She was as upset as I was about the whole thing, but we were glad the kids were already asleep.

I returned to Scooter's body, and was surprised I could still feel a heartbeat. His eyes were glazed over, and his body was doing little other than twitching. I didn't know if he could hear me, but I told him over and over what a good boy he was. And kept my hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat. Finally, he made one big sudden twitch...and then I couldn't feel his heart beating anymore.

Not wanting the kids to discover the body in the morning, I hauled Scooter to the pasture where he'd gotten so much joy in giving us so much tremendous service. This morning, I got up early and dug a grave near where we buried Tabasco...but closer to the main path the sheep take to return to their paddock at night. I thought that's where Scooter should rest: right near the place where he did his favorite work.

He was only four years old. He was in the absolute prime and vigor of health. He loved every instant of his life, and the things he got to do here on the farm: bringing sheep in and out from pasture, rounding up the goats when they'd broken through a fence, chasing down errant birds and holding them carefully until I could pick them up, getting big squirts of milk when the Yeoman Farm Children milked the goats, taking romps with me through the woods as I inspected a trap or fence line...I'll never forget the way he'd yelp with joy and practically jump out of his skin when he realized it was time to get to work.

Which is what I need to do right now, actually. Stop typing and get to work, that is. I'm not yelping and jumping out of my skin at the prospect, but these weeks are absolutely jam packed with professional work for me. Which makes it the absolute worst time to have to cope with losing the Best Companion Dog Ever and the Best Farm Dog Ever in rapid succession. I am glad I have lots of work to immerse myself in. I'll try to approach it with the enthusiasm Scooter would have for work on the farm.

But right now, my heart is too heavy and my eyes are too full to do anything but grieve.

Too-Good Eggs?

2010-08-23T11:42:00.000-04:00

With the total number of eggs recalled now growing to over half a billion, I wanted to add a few additional thoughts to my previous post on the topic.

As commenter Bill and Dogs notes (BTW, Bill, it's wonderful having you as a new reader):

I am currently in the city but have purchased a farm on which to retire and raise cattle and chickens. I have been unable to eat eggs since I left the farm and no longer had my own hens. My birds were contented, active and had both commercial and natural foods. ... Store bought eggs are so horrible by comparison that I just don't bother. I will be eating eggs again in a few years.

I'm not a big egg eater myself, but want to underscore Bill's point: Once you begin eating your own eggs, or anyone else's local eggs laid by active and happy hens, it's extremely difficult to again eat eggs laid by "concentration camp" hens. I travel on business from time to time, and simply cannot order egg-based dishes in restaurants. Farm fresh eggs are so good, they've ruined all other eggs for me.

Yesterday morning, I used olive oil and a cast iron skillet to saute a chopped onion and three different kinds of fresh peppers. All were straight from a neighbor's garden (for various reasons, particularly the adoption of Yeoman Farm Baby, we've been unable to stay on top of our own garden this year. But our neighbor's farmstand is as good a substitute as you can get.) To this I added four scrambled eggs, laid the previous morning by our hens. Once the eggs were done, I served them onto a freshly-picked and chopped garden tomato.

To my knowledge, a dish like this cannot be purchased in any restaurant at any price. And after tasting it, no restaurant omelet or grocery store egg will work for me.

380 Million Reasons to Own Your Own Hens

2010-08-19T07:48:00.000-04:00

380,000,000 is the estimated number of eggs now being recalled in response to a salmonella outbreak.

Grocery stores across the state yanked eggs off their shelves after one of the largest U.S. producers recalled 228 million eggs connected to a salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds of people across the nation, including as many as 266 in California.

On Wednesday the Associated Press reported that the recall had expanded to 380 million eggs.

The eggs, produced by Wright County Egg of Galt, Iowa, also were linked to a number of illnesses reported in June and July in Colorado and Minnesota, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The outbreak led to a surge in reports of infection with the bacteria salmonella enteritidis this summer — at least four times the expected number, the agency said in a statement Monday.

Salmonella can cause fever, diarrhea and abdominal pain, and can be fatal to young children and older people. No deaths so far have been reported in connection with the egg recall.

I've posted about egg factories before, and have often extolled the virtues of free-range or cage-free eggs. There isn't much I can add in this regard, other than to say: this is one of those times when we really, really appreciate having our own healthy livestock and knowing exactly where our food is coming from.

A few quick thoughts, however:

First, if you want an eye-opening experience, do a Google search on the phrase "DeCoster Farms," which is the agribusiness conglomerate of which Wright County Egg is part. Pretty remarkable how many different controversies this one company has been involved in. But I guess that's not surprising, when a "farm" (sic) gets so large and disconnected from its customers.

If you can't keep your own laying hens, I'd strongly encourage you to buy your eggs directly from a small farmer who does. Yes, those eggs can be a little more expensive, especially if the farmer is trucking them in to an urban farmers market. But they don't have to be, if you're able to go directly to the source. Around here, there are several farmers selling eggs for $1.50/dozen. The biggest hassle is making an extra stop, not coming up with extra money. But make that extra stop. Have that extra conversation with that extra person. See how their chickens are being kept. And I bet you'll never worry about your eggs making you sick.

And if you think you can't have your own chickens...think again. You'd be amazed at how creative some folks have become at keeping them stealthily in urban or suburban environments. And to my readers back home in Seattle: kudos to your city council for just unanimously voting to allow the keeping of up to eight hens on properties within the city limits! It really is becoming possible to be a yeoman farmer nearly anywhere.

Beyond My Limit

2010-08-15T22:47:00.002-04:00

Today, I did something I never wanted to do...and was certain I would never bring myself to do: personally put my beloved dog out of her suffering. Over the years, I've had to put down injured or sick cats, goats, lambs, and birds. It was never pleasant, but I'd never hesitated. But all that time, dogs remained for me a line I couldn't cross. Especially a companion like Tabasco.

As regular readers know, we'd had Tabasco for nearly four years. We got her as a stray when we lived in Illinois; she showed up at the local rural animal shelter on the same day our Collie was hit by a car. Our vet happened to run the shelter (it was a really small county), and someone there knew we were looking for a new farm dog. Tabasco, it turned out, was a perfect fit. She was on the older side, and wasn't terribly large, but had plenty of spunk and energy. She had a wonderful temperament, was good with our kids, loved retrieving tennis balls, enjoyed riding around in cars, and made herself a fierce defender of our property (she was a determined enough "alpha" to stand up even to our Great Pyrenees...not to mention any intruders who might show up unannounced). She had long legs and a long narrow muzzle, and loved spending hours digging her way into field mouse dens. (Mrs. Yeoman Farmer didn't like it so much when these digs were in the middle of the lawn.)

As Tabasco got older, she increasingly spent her days with me in my office building. She'd go out to relieve herself, but grew less interested in everything else. She slept on my office couch each night, and was my constant companion by day as I worked. I found it particularly heartening when I'd return to the office after a few hours away...and find her curled up on my desk chair. She'd look up with her big eyes, thump her curly tail, and seem to be assuring me that she'd taken good care of my special place.

The first big turning point was last November, when we were gone for several weeks adopting Yeoman Farm Baby. Tabasco developed a hacking cough, bad enough that the family watching our farm mentioned it regularly over the phone. I took her to the vet once we'd returned, and x-rays confirmed a case of pneumonia. We gave her a course of antibiotics, which took care of the worst symptoms, but Tabasco was never the same. She seldom went out at all, or didn't seem interested in much of anything but eating and sleeping and watching me work. At the time, I chalked this up to the cold winter. But even when the spring thaw came, she never again tried to chase a tennis ball or tag along for chores. The kids would take her to the barn at milking time, but that was more about getting free squirts of milk than anything else.

Then came the bloat. As detailed in another post, her bloat got so bad about a month ago that I took her to the vet...who took another x-ray, and delivered the grim diagnosis: tumors all over her lungs. Technically, pulmonary edema, and possibly lung cancer. At her age, there wasn't much of anything we could do. The vet gave some medications to drain her fluid and open her airway, but there was never any question of Tabasco making a recovery. The medication was all about buying time so we could say goodbye.

And I am deeply grateful for that. When we were at the vet last month, he wasn't sure Tabasco would make it through the weekend. The news was such a shock, I broke down right there in the examining room. And then...the medications gave us five more weeks. Tabasco's bloat was dramatically reduced within a matter of days, and for the next three or four more weeks she seemed almost normal. Slow, subdued, uninterested in strenuous activity, urinating all the time --- but stable and able to get around. I treasured every time I walked through my office door and she looked up and thumped her tail. We gave her all the meat scraps and dog treats she would take, and told her over and over what a great great dog she was.

Then came the last week. Suddenly, she had a lot of trouble getting to her feet. Especially on the slick floor of my office. I told her that was okay; I'd help her get up. I wondered if it was a side effect of the steroids, or just her disease running its course. She'd have good days and bad days, but the general trajectory was downward. She went from having trouble getting up, to having trouble walking around. Her joints seemed stiff, and her hind quarters didn't want to follow her front quarters.

Then, a few days ago, she couldn't keep herself in a squatting position long enough to relieve herself. Or a standing position long enough to drink from her bucket. I'd hold her at the bucket so she could drink, but then she'd flop down on the grass. She seemed to like the fresh air, so I'd leave her out. And because she couldn't get to her feet on my office floor, I'd leave her out at night as long as it wasn't raining.

I sensed we'd reached a turning point, and began thinking more seriously about taking her in for the vet to put her down. I was certain I couldn't do it myself. I'm a dog person to the core, and Tabasco was my constant companion. Every fiber of my being revolted at the idea of inflicting harm on her body from my own hand. It'd taken four weeks just to get comfortable with the idea of cradling her in a blanket as I allowed a vet to put her to sleep. Tabasco was a survivor, and a fighter. As long as she was physically able to keep going and seemed to have the spirit to fight, I resolved to let her do it. I prayed she'd die on her own, but knowing her...I knew she wouldn't.

I wondered how I'd know when Tabasco couldn't go on, and I'd have to make The Call. She wasn't well at all yesterday, and I started to think Monday would be It. I began thinking about how I could squeeze a vet visit into my crazily busy schedule. I grilled a big batch of lamb steaks for dinner, and made sure Tabasco got every bone and every scrap. Even though she couldn't move to get anything, she seemed to be having the time of her life as we fed them to her.

Then, this morning when I came to her, I knew it was time. I couldn't make her wait till the vet opened on Monday. As absolutely revolting as it was to think about putting her down myself, a perfectly clear realization came to me: it was even more revolting to think about making her suffer a single additional day like this. And I couldn't make her do it. I cared about her too much. I cared about her so much, I knew in my core that I had to end this. Now.

How did I know? And how did I do it? Some of you may be uncomfortable with the details, but I think they need to be shared. For that reason, the details will be after the jump. Continue reading only if you want to.

(I don't know why the "Jump Break" doesn't work, so I'm inserting the following manual break instead.)

***********************************************

Tabasco's inability to stand on her feet, or to squat to defecate, was the core of the problem. I didn't mind carrying her around, or holding her as she drank. The issue became hygiene, and it was a lot worse than I'd thought. Bottom line: flies started to love her. By Saturday afternoon, they were all over her rear end. Saturday night, I got a look at what they were doing to her: her orifices were crawling with fly larvae. I hosed her down, and that brought some relief. Her spirits, despite everything, seemed to remain high.

Then, this morning, the larvae were back with a vengeance. And she smelled absolutely horrible. And Tabasco's spirit was gone. I sat her on her tail in my lap, put on a latex glove, and used peroxide to clean her up as best I could. But as much as I cleaned, the larvae kept coming. And, despite the early hour, the adult flies were already swooping in to lay more eggs. I knew there was no way whatsoever we could let her go a full additional day in this condition. Not in this heat. Not in this humidity.

It was time.

I went in the house and advised Mrs. Yeoman Farmer as to the situation. She agreed there was really no other option. It'd be cruel in the extreme to make Tabasco linger for another 26 hours while we waited for the vet to open, and we certainly couldn't call a vet to the farm on a Sunday morning to administer an "emergency" euthanasia.

We broke it to the kids, who took it surprisingly well. I think the five weeks of preparation helped a lot with that. Homeschooled Farm Girl got choked up, brought me a fabric flower that she'd been saving, and asked if I would bury it with Tabasco. Despite the huge lump in my own throat, I assured her I would.

I took a shovel to the pasture, and dug the deepest hole I could. When I came back to retrieve Tabasco, Homeschooled Farm Boy asked if he could go with me. I let him carry my (unloaded) pistol, while I cradled Tabasco in a blanket for the trek.

We set Tabasco in the bottom of the hole, and helped her curl up as comfortably as we could. HFB and I both said our last good-byes, and then I covered her head with an old dish towel before delivering the bullet that would end everything.

I'd actually given a lot of though to the type of round I wanted to use. A shotgun slug or .45 pistol or 7.62x54R rifle would be too big. I didn't want to blow her head off. A .22 or .380 might be too small and not do the job the first time. I settled on a 7.62x25 pistol; it's a relatively small but extremely powerful round that would be effective without overkill.

And it indeed was the perfect choice. One pop (which, I confess, I closed my eyes as I delivered), and it was over. No doubt, but no mess. HFB and I quickly covered Tabasco's body with rocks, and then filled the hole the rest of the way with dirt. We tamped it down, and then made our way back to the house with heavy hearts.

Strangely, my heart didn't remain heavy for long. Yes, I felt a sad pang the first time I entered my office and looked for Tabasco's thumping tail greeting that would never come again. But, at the same time, I felt oddly liberated. It was over. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer agreed: it was a relief to finally have resolution to the situation. Finally, we knew how it was going to end. Finally, we could move on.

I'm still surprised I found it within myself to pull that trigger, and I've sensed an odd change within myself today as I've reflected on it. I'm a stronger person now. I've confronted and overcome a challenge I ever even wanted to confront, let alone overcome. The other big challenges in life seem strangely less insurmountable today.

All that said, I have missed Tabasco today. Especially when I was de-boning the meat for lamb stew, and thinking about how much she would enjoy feasting on the scraps...before remembering.

But it's going to be okay. Scooter loved those scraps. And Tabasco...I'm just glad her suffering is over. And I'm grateful God gave me the strength to render that service.