Triple Goat Treat!

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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?

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?

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.