Lots of Hot Water

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.