What season is this, anyway?

I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart, and prefer to shop at small retailers closer to home. Someday, I'll post more on that.

For now, suffice it to say that we do some shopping at Wal-Mart. I was at the big Super Wal-Mart in Champaign last night, looking for a variety of items. As I searched for distilled white vinegar, I had to traverse the grocery section. And there I discovered...an entire long aisle dedicated to EASTER CANDY. Yes, you read that right. Easter Candy.

I realize that there isn't a lot of money to be made in Lenten Retail. I wasn't expecting an aisle of fresh fish and tomato soup or anything. But give me a break! This was the day after Ash Wednesday. Easter is still over six weeks away. Are they really expecting us to stock up on chocolate bunnies and jelly beans and keep them on the pantry shelf for six weeks?

And it's not just Wal-Mart. The Meijer across the street was already putting the Easter candy up on Monday of this week, before Lent had even begun. I thought it was a clearence rack with leftover Valentines candy. But closer inspection revealed full priced chocolate bunnies. Sheesh.

Maybe I just don't understand retail, but it seems that something is seriously out of whack with the way this system is set up.

The kids are alright

The newborn goat kids had a great first night, thanks in part to the heat lamp borrowed from the chicken brooder. They were still a little damp with amniotic fluid at bedtime, but cuddled up together under the heat lamp they looked very comfortable. Wish I'd had my camera with me, because the sight was priceless.


This morning, when we came out to do the chores, both of them were fluffy and totally dry --- and, best of all, both were up and nursing. I turned off the heat lamp, but left it out there in case we get another sub-zero snap before the end of winter.


Our children have named the goat kids "Button" and "Marigold". Not sure which is which at this point, but that'll all get sorted out. These goat kids are cross-breeds, so it's not like we'll be registering them. (We couldn't find a Saanen buck in time for breeding season, and we figured Saanen-Toggenburg kids were better than no kids at all.) Some neighbors raise Toggenburgs, and sold us "Eight Bits," the kid buck we ended up using for breeding.


On our farm, only animals that we intend to keep get names. That includes all the female sheep, the breeding rams, the female goats, the breeding buck, and the roosters. (There are too many laying hens to name, and they all look alike anyway, but each of the roosters is quite distinctive.) All the animals that will be butchered get named "Hamburger," "Lamb Chop," or the like. If we get a male goat kid, I'm lobbying for naming him "Chev," short for "Chevon," which is what the French call goat meat.

We're Kidding!

Went out to the barn about an hour ago to do the evening chores, and discovered a newborn kid at the feet of Queen Anne's Lace The Goat!



The other goat (Double Play) was bleating, and was clearly trying to take over some of the motherly duties (licking it off, etc.) as if it was her own.


I called my wife, and she and our children quickly came out to the barn to see. Soon after everyone assembled in the barn, the second kid dropped out.

Together, we moved Double Play out of the kidding stall and into the area where the sheep had been during/after the blizzard. She's been protesting loudly, and has jumped the stall a couple of times already; she clearly wants in on the kidding action.


We spread a deep layer of fresh straw into the kidding stall, and helped the first kid begin nursing. As it's fairly cold out (though not nearly as bad as last week), I set up one of the 250 watt infrared heat lamps we use for brooding chicks and parked both kids under it.

Right now, we've decided to clear everyone out of the barn so Queen Anne's Lace The Goat can finish licking off the kids and get them nursing. At least with the sheep, we've found that leaving a new animal family alone is the best thing we can do. God has given these mother animals very powerful instincts, and the less we interfere in the process the better. I'll check back in a little bit, just to make sure all is progressing and they're not shivering too much.


The best news is that both kids appear to be females. Given what a wonderful dairy animal QAL has been, we're hoping that at least one of these two will grow up to be an excellent milk producer.

Memento homo quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris

Remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

With those words, we began the season of Lent this morning. Today, Ash Wednesday, is a day of fasting and abstaining from meat. Over the next forty days, we will try to increase our spirit of penance not only by giving up things that are bad for us (alcohol, candy), but also things that are good (for me, it's switching from whole bean coffee to the stuff that comes in a can). We also try to do more spiritual and corporal works of mercy, increase our almsgiving (a good use for the beer, candy, and coffee money saved), and, above all, take better care of our spiritual life and family relationships.

It's kind of strange, but I've grown to appreciate Lent a lot more since moving to the farm. Agriculture is all about following the cycles of nature and the seasons; there is a time for planting, a time for harvesting, a time for new life to be born or to hatch, a time for livestock to be butchered---and a time for everything to slow down, regroup, and take a long rest. The goats don't give milk all year. The chickens and ducks don't lay eggs all year. The grape vines go dormant. The vegetable garden goes barren and is covered with snow. All of these things happen so the animals and plants and soil can take a break from "growing on the outside" and rededicate themselves to "growing on the inside."

We humans are no different. We need a season where we step back, put aside some of the things we enjoy, and take some time to "grow on the inside." That's what we'll be doing, starting today, and starting by remembering that we are dust---no different from the dust outside in our vegetable garden, covered with snow. By putting aside the things that aren't so important, we'll hopefully get a better grasp on the things that are important---and in the process learn to rededicate ourselves all the better to those more important things.

For those who are interested in going deeper into a life of prayer this Lent, a book I've found to be extremely helpful is Volume II of In Conversation with God. There is a short chapter, divided into three sub-sections, for each day of Lent and Eastertide. The three sub-sections revolve around the day's central theme, usually drawn from that day's Mass readings. It is written with the lay person in mind, with a practical focus on how we can better live out the faith in the middle of the world. That's why I've found that the books in this series (and there are seven of them, covering the entire year) provide such excellent material for prayer: they're not written for eighteenth century cloistered nuns---they're written for us.

What many people do is spend five minutes slowly reading the first subsection, five minutes turning that material over in their heads, five minutes reading the next subsection, and so on for a half hour.

But there are no hard and fast rules. The important thing is, whatever you do this Lent, I hope you find something that helps you grow on the inside.

Never Comprehending the Race had Long Gone By

I've had that line, from a song by the group Modern English, going through my head for awhile now. It's something I think about whenever I read some kind of rant about contemporary American race relations that implies the country is still stuck in the 1950s. This is something we seem to hear a lot during February, which is Black History Month. It amazes me that so many think that in terms of race relations, 2007 America is essentially indistinguishable from 1957 America.

And speaking of prejudices and preconceptions, a widely-accepted one that I seldom hear questioned is that rural people are filled with racial bigotry. This is something I've been wanting to address for some time.

Although I am white, my wife is black. I admit that when we were first contemplating moving to the country, the notion of "rural bigotry" was an important concern and something we discussed at some length. In the end, we determined that we would rather deal with whatever racial hostility we may encounter in rural Illinois than continue putting up with the urbanization of Los Angeles. Besides, Los Angeles had plenty of racial tension of its own.

So, what happened when we moved here? The community welcomed us with open arms...and that includes the guy around the corner who has an enormous Confederate flag decal filling the rear window of his pickup truck. The first month or so we were here, we got exactly one hostile look (from a woman in the crowd at a farm auction we were attending). But other than that? Absolutely nothing, unless you count curious looks from small children.

What got me thinking and stewing about this was a recent (uncritical) book review in our diocesan newspaper. The book in question is self-published, by a priest from Nigeria doing graduate studies in St. Louis. The review is reproduced verbatim on the book's Amazon page, in case you're curious.

The book claims that racial bigotry and prejudice are widespread in America, including within the Catholic Church. The author details all kinds of slights that he has endured, and derides this country (which, I would point out, he chose to come to and chooses to stay in) for its intolerance toward people with his skin color. And he singles out American Catholics as being no less bigoted than anyone else in this country.

I found myself asking "what country is this guy living in?" and "what decade is this guy living in?" The country he describes is entirely different from the one our family has experienced. We and our children have lived in rural communities, suburbs, and large cities, in a variety of regions, including the old Confederacy. Our first child, much to my wife's chagrin, was born south of Mason-Dixon. Our parishes have ranged from traditional to contemporary. In more than eleven years of marriage, we can count on one hand the number of prejudiced reactions we have experienced—and one of these was from another black. Only one of these incidents occurred in a Catholic church.

I suppose this is ultimately a question of perspective; I don't doubt that the author has encountered hostility in this country, and I don't doubt that he chalks that up to American bigotry. But I suspect (and this is purely supposition - I haven't read his book) that much of that hostility is based as much on cultural differences and misunderstandings as it is on race per se. For example, apparently he once tried to give a dying person the Anointing of the Sick, and the person asked for some other priest to give it instead. Could racism have caused the person's reaction? Sure. But might it also have been based on the priest's heavy accent and manner of interacting with with the dying person? Might the dying person have felt more comfortable with a priest of his own culture? And might the same thing have happened if the priest was from, say, Poland or Romania? I don't know, but I think it's worth considering.

I don't mean to single out one particular book, or to bash one particular author. I'm hoping to make a more general point about the evolution of race relations in this country. As you hear others, in this month of February, deride the USA for its faults of racial justice, please keep our family and our experiences in mind as a counterpoint.

And for those who might be thinking about moving to the country, but have been hesitant because you've been told that rural people are intolerant: it's not necessarily true. Different regions and different communities might have different kinds of people. But at least here in Ford County, Illinois, race has "long gone by" as an issue. The future is open wide, and getting better all the time.

Unbelievable

Tabasco lives!

The crazy dog dissappeared Monday night, as the blizzard was moving in. We hadn't seen her since, and had long ago given her up for dead.

Turns out, she'd somehow managed to climb into an old (non-functioning) station wagon that's parked on the property. I use the car to store empty chicken feed bags. On Monday night, I'd opened that car up to get some bags to burn in the woodstove during the blizzard. Aparently, Tabasco jumped into the car when I had my back turned. I never saw it happen.

Several times over the last few days, I've thought I heard her barking. But it sounded far off, and like it could've been a neighbor's dog. And this was usually at night. I chalked it up to my imagination playing tricks.

Then, this afternoon, I happened to be out in the driveway when she did it again. I couldn't believe my eyes...or ears. I let her out, and she tore all around the property like nothing had happened. She was hungry, and thirsty, and had definitely lost some weight, but was very much alive. I have no idea how she survived for four days in such bitter cold (it was ten below last night). But I've long stopped trying to figure this crazy dog out. I'm just glad she's back.

Awash in Snow!

It's been a dizzying week. The whole family went down hard with the flu last Wednesday (the 7th). For several days, we did little else but eat chicken soup, sleep, and feed the wood stove. Then, early Tuesday morning, that nasty blizzard came through. All day Tuesday, we had sheets of horizontal snow. Hard to tell if the sun came out at all that day; it was like one big gray blur. It was all I could do to pick my way through the waist-high snowdrifts to go back and forth from the house to my office.

The sheep needed special attention. Their pasture shelters are usually fine and comfortable for them, even in heavy snow --- but we now had so much snow, the drifts were cutting the sheep off from those shelters. When I brought them hay in the afternoon, they tried to bound through the drifts to meet me, and most of them sank to their waists (many of the drifts were taller than the sheep.)

With snow still coming down in horizontal sheets, my wife and I decided we had to do something if we didn't want to lose the flock. We don't have a lot of space in the barn for animals, so we had to get creative. Together, we moved the two dairy goats to a small stall in the far corner of the barn. With Queen Anne's Lace The Goat about to kid, we were going to need to move her to this area within the next week anyhow.

We spread fresh straw onto the goats' usual area, opened up the gates leading from the pasture to that area, and then set about trying to move the sheep into the barn.

Unfortunately, they saw us coming out to the pasture through the snowstorm and panicked. Some ran into snowdrifts. Others ran into another part of the pasture. After considerable effort, all with horizontal snow still swirling around us, my wife and I managed to get the sheep all moving in the right direction. Through the gates they went, and into the goat area of the barn. A few minutes later, they were feasting on hay and getting their fill of fresh water. My wife and I went inside to the wood stove to thaw ourselves out.

Wednesday morning, the sun finally came out. The pasture is still full of snowdrifts, so we've left the sheep in the barn for now. It's much easier to keep their water liquid in there, and they don't seem to mind being out of the snow.

Our neighbor came over Wednesday morning with his tractor, which has a snowplow attachment. He plowed all the way to the barn, opening up a path for me to get my 4x4 truck out. I love having neighbors like these. We didn't even have to ask him for help; he was just out plowing his own driveway, and realized we could use some help. Here's a picture of how much snow he moved to open up the barn:

This is a good shot of the snow drifts by an old garage building on our property. This is NOT a pile of plowed snow. It is a drift:

The ducks have a 3-foot high shelter in the vineyard. Over the course of Tuesday, it almost completely filled with snow; I fully expected to lose all of them. Remarkably, however, there was a pocket of open space at the back of the shelter. All of them rode the storm out back there, and are now happily waddling around on top of the snow in the vineyard. Look at the drifts, though:

We don't seem to have lost any animals...except Tabasco. Monday night, when I came in from work, she ran off to romp. That's not unusual, especially after having laid around on my office couch all day. But when she didn't return after dinner, we got worried. We knew the storm was coming in, and she'd be in big trouble if she pulled another of her mysterious disappearences. We whistled and called, and kept looking out the window for her until bedtime. But she never returned. The only way she could've possibly survived is if she'd taken shelter at another farm. But here it is Thursday, and we haven't seen or heard anything. Even Tuesday evening, we were talking about her in the past tense. Very sad, particularly thinking about the poor dog freezing to death alone in the blizzard.

But all the rest of us are okay. Just trying to finish digging out.

Snowed In

The frigid temps have relented just a bit --- or at least the winds have died down. I can handle the cold air temperature; it's the prairie wind that is the real killer. As the temperature rose today, the snow started to come down.

Scooter is still trying to figure the snow out. It's the first significant accumulation he's experienced, and it's that dry fluffy stuff. He's spent the better part of the day romping around in it. Reminds me of when I was a kid.

Speaking of kids, note the blue plastic kiddie wading pool (foreground of photo above) that's basically buried in snow. In the spring/summer/fall, the ducks use that for swimming and bathing.

This is the view looking north from outside my office. Just like being back in their native Iceland for these guys:

The Hardest Thing

Some time back, I blogged that deciding which animals to cull and which to keep was among the hardest things a livestock owner must do.

Actually, I'd forgotten about something that's even harder. I got a reminder of it this morning. (And, no, it's not braving sub-zero wind chills to haul water to sheep.)

One of our barn cats had been missing for over a week. This in itself was not unusual; our cats and the next farm's cats frequently "trade barns." So, I wasn't terribly surprised to find him back in our dairy goat stall when I came out this morning. Except something was wrong: the cat was wailing plaintively, and wasn't getting up.

A closer look revealed that his left hind leg was not only broken in several places, but also very badly mutilated. I picked him up, and he seemed to have lost considerable weight. When I set him back down, he managed to hop around on three legs with surprising agility. But I figured that even if the vet managed to amputate the mutilated leg, and he didn't already have some nasty infection, this cat's prognosis was very dim. There was only one thing I could do for him, and it's the thing I find most difficult about having animals.

It didn't help that he continued wailing the whole time I carried him over to my office building. And then, as I loaded my .22 rifle, he hopped a few times on his three legs. Not so much to get away, it seemed, as to show me that he could still function. But even that didn't last long. He sat down awkwardly, and turned away. I was glad I didn't have to see him looking at me. One well-placed pop, and it was over.

I didn't have a close attachment to this cat, but that didn't make it any easier. I've long gotten over my unease at dispatching chickens and ducks and turkeys; they are livestock, and we know from day one what every bird's ultimate end will be. With the companion animals, it's much harder.

But even harder than that is when the animal is one we have struggled against all odds to save, and maybe that's one reason I didn't call the vet on a Sunday morning and see if he could schedule an emergency amputation. Last summer, one of our lambs managed to contract tetanus. At first, we thought it was just pneumonia. We treated him, and bottle-fed him, and spent a lot of time caring for him. Then his symptoms got worse and worse, his jaws locked up, and he began foaming at the mouth. And then he couldn't get up on his feet. Once we realized it was tetanus, and knew there was no way to alleviate his agony, we knew he had to be dispatched...and that job, naturally, fell to me. It took me a long time to get over that one.

Bottom line of this rambling and depressing post: if you're planning to have your own livestock --- even just barn cats --- make sure you're also preparing yourself to put them down if you have to.

Really, Really Cold

Temps here have dropped through the floor, but that's not the worst of it: the wind is blowing across the open prairie at 25+ MPH, sending the wind chills well below zero. The air temps aren't supposed to get back above 20 until Thursday at the earliest. At least it's bright and sunny outside, but we could sure use some global warming right about now.

Time to hunker down and throw another log on the fire. The wife and kids are out of town visiting grandparents, or they'd be bouncing off walls for sure. My plans: pull up a chair in front of the woodstove and read a J. A. Jance mystery novel I've been wanting to get to. No doubt the dogs will follow me in and sprawl out on the kitchen floor. Can't blame them; it sure beats burrowing into straw in the barn, and they've long ago figured out that I'm a softie for letting dogs in the house. Here are Tessa and Scooter, in my office on a recent cold day.

How cold is it? The weekly Saturday night Bingo game at our parish has already been cancelled. Members of our Knights of Columbus council take turns running those games, and this was my week. I've been planning to blog about Bingo, with some thoughts I've had about these events. Maybe tonight, now that I've suddenly got several more hours than I thought I was going to have, and I'll have the house to myself. But for now, I need to go throw another log on the fire.