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.

Out of the Nest (Updated)

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

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!

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

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.