Little Farm. Growing.

How Do You Have Fun With Your Grandparents?

2012-02-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

This was the first grade writing prompt my boy was given in school the other day. It came home in a giant pile of papers, and we almost missed it. Which would have been very sad, because we would have missed his answer. Which was. . .

"I play wii with my grandpa. I beat him everytime because he is a handicap."

We laughed. It's okay to laugh. It's a funny sentence.

My boy is very competitive.

He is also a bit too young to understand the important connotational difference between someone having a handicap and someone being a handicap.

Remember when you were too young to worry about being politically correct? When you were able to say something that is true about someone you loved without worrying about the fact that you might say it wrong and sound like a jerk without meaning to?

Wasn't that nice?

My boy meant no disrespect. He knows that his beloved pop is handicapped the same way he knows that Pop is a boy and that Pop loves football and that Pop will always share his BBQ chips and that Pop is terrible at wii.

In my boy's eyes, Pop's handicap is nothing to be sad about, nothing to worry about, and nothing to pretend doesn't exist. It is nothing more than a way for a young boy to gain a slight advantage in a wii tennis match.

Pretty amazing, no?

Homework

2012-01-29T20:33:00.004-07:00

My boy hates most homework. . . really he would rather do just about anything else. My girl, on the other hand, was overjoyed to discover that from last November through April, she has the opportunity to complete one optional book report each month. These reports include writing a summary and doing some sort of creative project to go along with the book. . .she has, so far, created a movie poster for Black Beauty, a diorama of a book called Waggit Again, and her clay model of Waggit's Tale is due this coming Thursday.

When I'm not farming or mothering, I teach future teachers what to do with linguistically diverse kids in their future classrooms. I don't write about this much, and I won't write much about it now, except to say that one of my favorite things about my teaching gig is that I can get on my soapbox about a few things.

Like, for example, homework. I know homework is actually quite popular among most teachers. I personally don't see the point for young kids, at all, but since I realize I am somehow in the minority here, I get to give these future teachers tips on how, if they must assign homework, to at least assign it well.

I get to tell them that making it fun and relevant will mean it's more likely to get done, and that they should give kids multiple nights to do it, so if basketball practice and 4H happen to fall on the same night, homework is not adding stress to that night, and that it's best if the teacher has a consistent system, like always sending homework home on Monday that is always due back on Friday, so that parents don't have to rely on any notoriously unreliable 6 year old reporters to tell them if homework exists that day, and even better, that the whole school should agree on the same consistent system so that if one has both a first and a fourth grader, for example, everyone is on the same sort of homework schedule and please, a million times please, don't ever take recess away from a grade schooler just because she didn't do her homework that day.

It seems so simple, this homework utopia I have created in my head. I actually know of real life schools that are already living in this utopia with me. However, sadly, my kids' school is not yet one of them.

Which means that my fourth grader, who is consistently now spending more than an hour each night on homework, frequently gets upset that she doesn't have enough time to finish before the other things we do in the evening, like go outside and play or go to sports practice or, you know, eat dinner, have to happen. This problem is made worse by the fact that the regular homework is invariably something stupid, like alphabetizing all 20 spelling words and then copying them 3 times. . .when there are only 2 words she doesn't already know how to spell. In these instances, I am likely to say that I think she's spent enough time on her homework and that I will just write a note and tell her teacher it was too much, but that thought understandably mortifies my girl and things get tense and unpleasant at home and so, once again, I say. . .

I don't really see the point.

But that's just me.

My daughter wants all that and more!

If she must have homework, though, I think these optional book projects are by far the best kind. They allow for creativity, promote pleasure reading, etc. I can see a clear academic enrichment benefit from the book reports that just isn't very evident in the standard nightly worksheets. I wish she could do book reports in lieu of spelling worksheets. Alas. The most educational homework is the only optional kind.

So I am 100% behind the book project. But I worried about her choice of a clay model for this most recent project. It just seemed really overly ambitious to have to create a project out of clay, and I was worried that this would take up a ridiculous amount of very precious time and energy.

"How is this different from the diorama? Do you have to use clay?" I asked, over and over again. Because the clay model really is just a diorama, but instead of just using paint and the dogs from your existing doll house set to make your scene, you have to create the dogs and all other scene props from clay, which seems like a lot more work, doesn't it? She stood her ground, and I bought the clay under protest.

As so often happens when she is given the chance to be creative, my sweet, smart, sensible girl came up with a totally manageable approach to this clay model project without any help from me, sat down to do it, and had the entire thing done in 30 minutes. See that, over there? It was not a big deal at all. Her brother even made some roadblocks for his hot wheels cars.

Sigh. There is so much more I have to learn from these kids. It was suddenly so clear to me that had I decided to make a diorama out of clay, I would have added so many unnecessary details and components that I would never have been able to complete the project. I totally would have bitten off more than I could chew, and then halfway through, I would have regretted it and been stuck doing it anyway because there would have been no going back.

Since my girl can handle herself, and since I am pretty sure my sweet, smart, sensible boy's way of not biting off more than he can chew will be to never ever complete any sort of optional project, I am the only one that will have to start applying this new self-awareness in my every day life.

I am ashamed to admit that I am less practical and self-aware than my children. But it's clearly true.

As for the rest of the stupid busywork kind of homework, all I can hope is that my future teachers are actually listening to me. I suspect they are mostly texting. But I do hope.

Again, From the Girly Girl

2012-01-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Favorite Chore

My favorite chore is feeding the chickens for these reasons. The first reason is peace and quiet with the birds chirping and all the fresh air. I feel like I'm in a different world. Also, the second reason I like this chore is the smell of my barn. It has the sweet aroma of fresh straw. And the last and final reason I like it is watching the chickens attack the food. It's very funny to watch the starved chickens attacking the food that you have put in their feeders. My favorite chore is definitely feeding the chickens.

THE END.

Love this kid. Love this farm. Forever and ever. Amen.

Because He Told Me I Could Tell You

2012-01-20T15:38:00.001-07:00

Here is one of my favorite 2012 stories yet. It requires a little background information.

Sometimes here on the farm, when we're all settled down and tucked in and drifting off to dreamland, something will wake us with a flinch and a start and we'll remember something that we didn't do before bed.

We didn't close the chicken pen.

We didn't turn off the irrigation pump.

We forgot to adjust some knob or doohickey that desperately needed adjusting.

Those are mostly summer problems, of course. But in winter, sometimes we forget to plug our cell phones in to charge. That's what happened a few nights ago to poor Matty, who realized about 10 minutes after we were all snuggled up for the night that he had forgotten to plug in his cell phone.

And his cell phone was out in the subaru.

Also, he sleeps in the buff. And when I noticed that his cell phone retrieval plan did not include putting on any sort of clothing, I pointed out that he did, in fact, own a robe and that it was, in fact, only 10 degrees outside.

He just smiled at me and said, "Well sure, but then you couldn't tell all your friends that I went out, naked, into the middle of a cold winter's night to get my phone."

And now I have and you know why I love this guy so much. Never a dull moment!

Winds of Winter (With a Working Video This Time)

2012-01-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

You know The Grapes of Wrath? The Great Dust Bowl? I'm just not sure I had a sense of the reality of that until December 31st, when the wind blew in the New Year AND our neighbors' topsoil. I hadn't seen winds like this out here since the day a couple of years ago that I chased the hoophouse around the field until it finally collapsed. Matt was smart enough to open the front door and get this video footage. It's like hurricane footage from the coasts, high plains style.

On this morning, when the wind was the worst, we had a lot of trouble getting our woodstove lit. First, the wind came down the chimney as we were lighting it and blew it out completely, sending so much smoke into the house that it smelled for two days like we were living in a yurt. And all day, even once it was lit, the wind would shriek down in and blow smoke out through the cracks in our glass door.

It did shred the tarp on the hoophouse and scatter a bunch of shingles off of our garage and into the corral. It sent my mom's grill, at her house in Fort Collins, careening down the ramp on her new deck and into the railing at the bottom, busting both the grill and some of the railing wood.

It was a crazy day.

Because I'm a bit superstitious now, I'm just happy that it happened on December 31 and not January 1. That way, I can honestly tell myself that it has more to say about the mess 2011 was than the year 2012 can be.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

But I am beginning to wonder if Mother Nature doesn't enjoy freaking people out just a little too much.

Van Vs. Van: A Poem

2012-01-10T16:01:00.003-07:00

We recently purchased a Honda Odyssey minivan, used, from my very generous parents. I've had it for 10 days, and I am in love.
It has inspired me to write this poem, which I hope you enjoy.

Dear Scooby van, you lovely jalopy
my ride these past two years
I love you despite
your inexplicably drained batteries
your inability to go faster than 45
your propensity to vapor lock that has left me stranded
on ever so many roads on the hottest summer days
your junkyard jumpseat, only moderately safe for the children
the "love" and "land" on your doors
I have paid my dues with you
and enjoyed the silence of your missing radio
driving you as I have to
teach university classes
drop kids off at school
check out books from the library
(oh and also) deliver vegetables and flowers

You have been only slighty embarrassing to drive for non-farm purposes.
And not at all reliable, for any purpose at all.
And now, I will ever so gladly dump you for
my new love.
Her name might be Ethel.
She is a new-to-me luxurious minivan with

seat warmers
built in DVD player
6 CD changer
leather upholstery
copious cupholders
seating for 8
low mileage

Please, Scooby, don't take it personally.
It's just that in vans, I have come to prefer reliability
and comfort
over personality.
But just in vans.

New Year, New Narrative

2012-01-05T14:34:00.002-07:00

A few weeks ago, when it came time to frost and be-sprinkle our annual Christmas sugar cookies, I had a bunch of extra kids in the house. They were neighbors of ours, and it was cold outside, and decorating cookies seemed the best use of an hour or so. Our house is small. When it contains 5 kids, it's smart to find something that keeps them seated (more or less).

They were very enthusiastic, particularly with the frosting. I found myself saying, over and over again, "Don't put the frosting on too thick. Try to spread it a bit thinner."

This had absolutely no effect, so I tried again.

"You shouldn't really just pile it on there like a mountain. Think low to the cookie, like the grass in the pasture."

I made a few more attempts to get them to change tactics, but nothing really worked. The lovely imagery and accompanying practical message was lost on these kids. The frosting was disappearing fast, and we had a ton of cookies left.

So I gave it up. Why bother? Some things, after all, are better in giant doses, and brightly colored cream cheese frosting at Christmastime is one of those things. Maybe it's overwhelmingly sweet, but who cares? Just eat fewer cookies, right? I changed my tune completely and started saying things like, "That's a great lump on your snowman's head! Are Rudolph's knees a little swollen? Delicious!"

This is my lesson for the new year. Embrace the abundance. Even if it's a little overwhelming. Even if it you're pretty sure it isn't good for you. Even if you'd rather not be eating a cookie at all, regardless of the frosting ratio. Just be happy the cookie is there, in that moment, and try to enjoy what parts of it you can.

You hear that 2012? That's how it's going down. I will be my normal, positive, good-natured, only moderately anxious and spazzy self, thank you very much. Go ahead. Pile it on. I'm going to love it all.

2011 got me down. Way down. For a few months there, it very possibly had me headed into a serious depression. I have had depression (like, the treatable with medication variety) before. It's familiar to me. And it didn't make it easier, exactly, to deal with the grasshoppers and the stress and the strange growing pains of the children and the only barely paying the bills and everything else that happened last year.

Luckily, I know what to do. I've been exercising regularly. I've been drinking green juice and smoothies every day. I've been trying to catch up on some sleep and find quiet time to think. My siblings were here for the holidays and it was so wonderful to see them. I've tried to just say no to dark and gloomy thoughts, and move back toward the light.

And it's all working. The dark fog in my brain has lifted. The problems we're having no longer seem insurmountable. They're just problems to solve, like they've always been, like there always will be.

We have a solid plan that we both feel it is possible to pull off without killing ourselves. We're dialing things back quite a bit on the farm. . .looking for fewer CSA members and limiting ourselves to one farmers market. We're attempting to sell some of our land to help offset last year's losses (know anyone that wants a very reasonably priced 5 acre parcel adjacent to a lovely little CSA farm just west of Gill, Colorado? Send them our way!). We're proud of everything we've built out here, and now it's time to figure out how we run the farm, rather than having the farm run us into the ground. I'm going to blog more, since that will help me see the path, and maybe write other things too.

And when things get crazy and I feel strung out. . .when there's just too much frosting on this cookie? I'm going to just smile big and let it run its course and remember to enjoy the ride.

It's almost time to plant new seeds, and planting new seeds is an expression of so much hope and love and faith that it's sort of impossible not to believe that this year really is going to be a good year. Expect to see a lot more happy here on the farm in 2012. A smaller, richer, sweeter little operation that our family really can manage. More flowers, since I missed them like crazy in 2011. More greens, since I miss them like crazy right now. More patience, more perseverance, more faith.

That is the new story. I promise to be better about writing it all down.

Christmas Eve

2011-12-28T09:24:00.006-07:00

Whenever I take these unscheduled breaks from blogging, I always miss it a lot. Last night, my brother (who is visiting for Christmas and our Dad's birthday, which is today) and my husband let me know that they missed my blogging too. Matty actually said something like, "Yeah, how am I supposed to know what the hell we're doing if you don't write about it every day." Which was flattering and inspiring and more than a little funny. So, this one's for you, baby.

To be clear, we're having the holidays. They are super fun this year. It's all going well.

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were full of basketball practices and cookie baking and gift making and school Christmas parties, which this year brought up some fairly heavy and not entirely welcome questions of faith, the constitution, community norms, and public schools. But that is a story for another day.

It's been a number of years now that we've tried to make as many homemade gifts as possible, which adds quite a bit of chaos to an already full schedule. We started doing it to save money, of course, but it's really become a way for us to keep our loved ones close in our thoughts during the season, and to try to give things that mean something a little deeper than "I saw this at Target and thought you'd like it."

We get (and try to give) plenty of meaningful storebought gifts every year too. But gifts like this painting that the kids made for Matty tend to endure a bit longer in our hearts, you know?

These were the girl's idea for her cousins. They're based on a rather popular actual toy brand, which we used for inspiration, but were really very simple to make at home. We didn't get as many of them made as we would have liked, but she did make one for her brother, and we were able to give one to each of my sister's little ones. I really like the way these turned out, and might make more just because it's fun and it doesn't take all that long.

Usually on Christmas Eve, we're up until the wee hours frantically trying to finish up gifts and wrap everything and eat the Santa cookies and all that, but this year, we were pretty much all set by the time it hit. And this gave us time to start what I hope will be a new tradition with the kids. . .ice skating on the pond Christmas Eve morning. It was fun. There was some cutthroat hockey happening. The fresh air and sunshine and general good cheer was really the perfect way to prepare for getting dressed up all fancy for dinner at mom and dad's house.

Which we then did, and actually remembered to have someone take a family picture. Later, during the lessons and carols at church, they projected the pictures the Sunday school kids had drawn of the various parts of the Christmas story on the back wall of the sanctuary, and our kids were thrilled to see their drawings of Gabriel and Mary, Jesus in the manger, and the Magi as the corresponding verses were read.

After church, we drove through town looking at the luminarias and listening to solemn carols. The town was snow drifted and lovely, and the stars on the drive home were bright and stark. We read stories by the light of our own advent wreath, let the kids choose Santa's cookies, and could not have had fuller or happier hearts. Which was the perfect way to prepare for Christmas morning. Which is another story. For another post.

Here's Something We Don't Talk About Much

2011-12-09T10:46:00.003-07:00

Guts, I mean. There is one picture of real chicken guts below. It's both fascinating and gross. Consider yourself warned.

As planned, we retired our hens last Sunday. It was a bitterly cold and windy day, which made the process less pleasant (if that's possible) than it usually is. And as part of the day, our friend Katie came out to help the girl dissect one of the hens and talk about her various lady hen parts. We're hoping she can use this info for her 4H project this year, but if not, she can certainly use it as an exploration for her possible future career in veterinary medicine. Katie is a fellow farmer and former microbiologist at the poultry lab of the CSU vet school, so she very kindly agreed to come out with a very instructive poster and help us accurately identify all the innards.

I haven't known Katie a long time, but if that's not a real friend, I don't know what is.

Luckily, our chicken was healthy and happy, with organs free of spots and deformities. She was, however, quite egg bound, as though she hadn't laid an egg for weeks and weeks. Because she hadn't. We found all these eggs in the making just hanging out in there, and I thought it was pretty amazing that you could line them all up by size.

In the moment, it didn't occur to me that I should move all the other organs out of the picture to make it more interesting than gross to everyone else, too. My hands were really cold and it was hard to manage the camera and touch the chicken parts at the same time due to my reluctance to get chicken juice on the camera. Hindsight really is 20/20.

Katie did a really good job of forcing our girl to touch all the parts, something she was fairly resistant to at first. "No, really," Katie would say enthusiastically, "Squeeze this. It's a spleen! It's part of the immune system!" And the girl would put a tentative finger on it and smile hesitantly and go back to her note taking.

We did have the hobo fireplace going, which offered a bit of relief during beer breaks. Our friends over at Crabtree Brewery just put some beer in cans for the very first time, and they asked us to take some pictures of ourselves enjoying canned beer during various farm tasks. I'm not sure chicken butchering was exactly what they had in mind, but there's not a whole lot else going on right now. We got a little carried away at one point and propped a severed chicken head up on one of the cans. I won't post that one. But it was funny to everyone that was here on the farm that day.

The dissection project slowed everything down, but the process was simpler than in previous years because our friend Robert also came out with his brand new Whizbang chicken plucker. This was a revelation. It worked so well that I can't imagine ever using the drill plucker we built ourselves again. I mean, it took a 10 minute process down to 1 minute, tops. And he can use the motor on his homemade cider press too.

We haven't known Robert long, but if that's not a good friend, I don't know what is.

At the end of the day, we divided the chickens among everyone who came out and cleaned everything up. That night, the temperatures dropped below zero, and let me tell you how nice it was not to have to worry about waking up to frozen animals on the farm.

It was nice. Very nice.

And Then December Happens

2011-12-05T14:10:00.002-07:00

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Colorado. We've had a few rounds of frigid winter weather, the house is all decorated and cozy, and every night there seems to be a new and exciting holiday themed special on T.V.

November is a calm and quiet month here on the farm. And then December happens, and things get much busier. This weekend, for example, we had the girl's first basketball game, went to see our neighbors perform in their church Christmas pageant, went to church ourselves, and had a chicken retirement party. In between all this was the cooking and cleaning and prep that comes along with having people out on the farm and the unsettling realization that I have to ship packages in one week.

This kind of busy is the kind of busy I love. It really is. It's a cozy, family-friendly, seeing friends sort of busy that feels completely season appropriate. I am determined to really feel all the things I know this season is about. . .you know, peace, and joy, and hope. I am all about those things this Christmas.

Every year since we've moved to the farm, I've wanted to make an advent wreath for the house. This year, I finally pulled it off. I bought a form with fake greens on it at Michaels, cut the fake greens off, and wired real greens and fake berries together to make this.

Matt was going to bring the greens home from the tree nursery, but he forgot, so he stopped at a Wal-mart parking lot on his way home from work and pruned their landscaping to get the raw materials. There's a lot to love about that part of the story, isn't there?

Back before we got all mixed up in this veggie production stuff, when we were just a flower farm, I used to think that making holiday centerpieces and wreaths and such would be a great way to bring in some off-season income. I would like to see the flower farm part of our business grow to be a larger percentage of total business, and this project was a way to explore some of those possibilities. There might be some potential here. I really do enjoy wreath making more than digging parsnips. But that's another story.

Having the wreath in the house has been a lovely way to keep our family focused on what the season is really all about. Each night, we light the candles and talk about hope and peace and faith and gratitude.

It really is a nice sort of busy, December is, and merry. I love it.

Retirement

2011-12-01T08:01:00.005-07:00

This Sunday afternoon, we're planning to "retire" our hens. These girls have given us two years of unreliable, inconsistent service as egg layers and egg eaters, and will end their lives as soup broth for us and for the two other families that are coming out to help us butcher them.

Here they are as tiny chicks, back in January of 2010. You'll notice, of course, someone else who was much tinier back then.

Is it weird that I have baby pictures of my hens? It feels weird, but it's completely logical.

These girls have been an important part of our lives, but I can't say I'll be that sorry to see them go. They've taught us a lot about the logistics of managing a larger flock, which is to say they've taught us that what we really want is a small, personal, family sized flock. I don't want the hassle of selling eggs anymore, which was frankly never all that profitable for us. On the other hand, I love watching the antics of these girls as they roam around and scratch and pick at each other all day. . .and I really, really, can't go back to eggs from the store.

So, against Matt's moderate objections, the kids and I are planning for the new chicks this spring. My goal is to turn our smaller, future flock over to the kids, who are now old enough to manage the feed and water and such. It's been fun to talk to them about what types of birds they can get now that we don't have to worry about size and consistency so much. . .we're thinking a mixed breed flock with brown, white and green egg layers in it, just for fun.

This will be the first time in a long time that we won't have any farm animals to take care of, and I'm very much looking forward to a short break from the cares and worries that these animals present. Come spring, I'm sure I'll be ready to get back into it, but until then, I'm going to find a neighbor who has eggs for sale and enjoy my home grown soup.

Just Call Him Crash

2011-11-30T13:04:00.003-07:00

The kid looks awful in this picture, doesn't he? We used the headband to keep the ice pack on his most recent minor head injury, which he got last night by cracking his head on the corner of his headboard while trying to get away from his sister, a.k.a. the ticklemonster.

He seemed fine, despite the look of this picture. But this morning, he was up at 5:30 a.m., drenched in sweat and asking for a shower. When Matt put him in the shower, he promptly made himself comfortable on the floor of the tub and fell asleep with the water going.

He ate three bowls of cereal, and fell asleep between each.

Of course, I sent him back to bed instead of out to the bus stop, where he slept for two more hours.

I checked him every 10 minutes to make sure he was still breathing, looked up a lot of panic inducing information on children's head injuries, and started planning to call the doctor if he wasn't totally back to normal when he woke up.

Thankfully, when he finally woke up, he had more color in his cheeks, was no longer excited to be in bed, and asked to go ride his bike at the skate park.

So, apparently, crisis averted. Now I just get a lovely day at home with a cuddly boy.

I can't tell you how relieved I am. This kid and my nerves don't mix all that well, but since a large part of my heart depends on his health and well-being, I'm ever so happy he's back on his feet.

Giving Thanks

2011-11-25T20:14:00.005-07:00

Once again, my favorite holiday of the year has come and gone. I really, really love Thanksgiving. I do. Even all the preparations. . .the cleaning and raking leaves and hours spent in the kitchen. . . these give me a lot of time to reflect on our blessings.

The crazy season is over. The restful season has begun.

We still have our farm.

We still love each other.

We get to use our beautiful china set. It has mugs with matching saucers. They are very fancy and I love them.

Our children are healthy and strong and old enough to manage a wheelbarrow.

They are handy with kitchen tools and chicken-like in their willingness to eat the scraps.

A lot of this sort of silliness goes on in our house. It's a happy place to call home.

In keeping with tradition, we cooked for ten times as many guests as we had actual plates on the table. We had one entire pie for each adult and enough leftovers to fill the commercial freezer in the garage. Which helps explain this picture, one I believe should be titled "the aftermath". Food, and Thanksgiving food especially, is my favorite way to love the people I love.

The simple things really are the most essential.

Happy Thanksgiving, all. I'm grateful for your encouragement, your tremendous good humor, and your witty and generous comments.

Forever and ever.

Amen.

Kids Are Dumb

2011-11-17T07:24:00.006-07:00

I know that I frequently post sweet pictures like this of my kids and write about how much I love them and how cool they are and generally gush over them like a loving mother should.

I would like to write a post like that today. It would do me good.

However, today, I was ever so happy to see the two jerks I am raising get on the school bus and leave me in peace for 8 hours.

Yes, I just called them names. They don't read the blog. And honestly, this morning, it's less than they probably deserve.

I spent the morning getting two lippy, rude, disrespectful monsters ready for school. It was a miserable task that somehow included arguments over whether it was fair that they had to do any type of basic chores, whether I would let them wear dirty clothes to school (which included, most happily, an accusation that I just don't do their laundry often enough), and when I was going to bake something they actually liked for breakfast.

And then I turned into Rodney Dangerfield and started shaking my fist and muttering about how I get no respect, no respect at all!

Beyond that, once I had them outside, they had a huge screaming fight with each other, which I tried to referee with no success at all. They just. wouldn't. stop. They both got on the bus crying. I'm sure it was mortifying for them. And it served them right.

What was so serious that it could have caused this sibling war? You see, the boy made these finger puppets at school. And the girl had them in her possession. She insisted, screaming nastily with red-faced angry tears, that he gave them to her to "keep them safe". The boy, screaming nastily with red-faced angry tears insists that "she stole them".

Heaven help me.

Trying desperately not to scream nastily with red-faced angry tears, I confiscated said puppets, told them they were being ridiculous, watched the bus drive away with my two very upset children, and came inside to recover from all the unpleasantness.

Not our best morning, this.

I think today after school will make a perfect time to ban T.V. and teach them how to do their own laundry. Like a loving mother should.

Update: Not 10 minutes after I posted this, the girl called from the principal's office to tell me that she had been chosen as the outstanding student of the day for all of her good deeds and sweetness. Who's the jerk now? Why, it's me, Rodney Dangerfield.

A Bag of Fat

2011-11-15T18:36:00.005-07:00

We took the pigs to the processor yesterday morning, and it was a remarkably squeal-free experience. The trick, we've learned, is using the old horse trailer as the pig hut. Every night since the weather cooled off, the hogs have gone into the trailer, burrowed down into the warm straw, and dreamed their sweet piggy dreams. Loading the pigs this time around required only that sometime before bedtime Sunday night, one of us went out and closed the back of the trailer. It worked like a charm. Much less stressful than this. Or this.

The concern then was that the trailer isn't exactly road legal. The plates are expired, we have no title, and the turn signals didn't work. This made it just a little bit of a nail biter, but I drove behind him on the back roads for safety, and we got there and back just fine.

Five of the six pigs are spoken for, and the other will be our year's supply of pork. Four of our customers asked about lard, which our processor can't make for us. When I asked her about it, though, she did say that it wasn't too hard to render at home. "If you'd like, we can save you the fat," she offered.

So, along with our chops and roasts and bacon and hams, we'll be getting a bag of pork fat for making lard.

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering why in the world anyone would want to make lard, which has had a terrible reputation since the world went crazy about fat. In truth, lard from pastured pigs is full of vitamin D and good fats, like avocados, and is actually good for you.

So, I found this site, and will be boiling up my bag of fat for holiday pie crusts and such at the first opportunity.

It's all very exciting.

Temporary Results

2011-11-08T07:25:00.005-07:00

This is what the kids' shared room has looked like for the past year and a half. Stuffed full of hot wheels cars and art supplies and books, any tiny disorganization would throw it into such chaos that they really could not clean it themselves, and then it overflowed into the hallway and the living room and other common living spaces of the house.

When we bought this house and the kids were tiny people and we put them together in the smallest bedroom we had, we knew we couldn't keep things that way forever. We had big plans, even then, for when the kids outgrew the shared room.

There is room, upstairs, for a master bedroom. There is the cool feature of the slanted old chimney, from some long ago torn out fireplace, to work with. We have always envisioned a big dormer window in the roof and, you know, our own bathroom up there. As you can see, that is no small project. It involves reinforcing floor beams and roof joists. And building a staircase. More than a can of paint, anyway.

We have other plans, too. I'd like to push out the back wall of the house and dig a bigger basement underneath, to add working space to the kitchen/dining room, turn our current bedroom into a library/den, and give us a less creepy place to hang out during the multiple tornado warnings we have here in the spring.

We have a lot of books. Most of them are still in boxes in the barn. It makes me so sad.

I'm perfectly happy that we can't afford to do all that stuff right now. It sounds exhausting. I am content in this moment to focus on smaller projects that make a big difference. Moving the kids was one such project.

This is our former office, now known as the girl's room. She and I are spending a lot of time looking at pictures of bedrooms and talking about paint shades and curtain fabric and though I would have liked to have painted it when we moved her, I'm happy to put that off as well.

The girl is over the moon about this room. Most of her quilts had been stored in closets since we moved out of our old house, so she didn't know she had all these wonderful cozy things to work with. Good thing she had some, too, because hers is the coldest room in the house.

She got the rocking chair that no longer fit in the living room and the bookshelf from the old bedroom. She got privacy, her own desk, and room to do her crafts. She needs a dresser that fits in her closet, and then we will be all set.

The boy stayed in the old room, and had a lot more trepidation about the process. He was worried it would be scary to sleep alone in there. He loves his sister and didn't want her to leave him. It's hard on him that she's growing up sooner than he is, and he doesn't like change very much at all. There were some tears.

However, he was happy to get the special grown up desk. He is under strict orders not to use markers or paint or stickers on that desk. We'll see how well he does. He turned the mail slot features into parking garages for his favorite hot wheels. He likes the space in the middle of the floor to set up train and car tracks that he doesn't have to take down every day. He was the first to close his door and tell us, delighted, that we were not allowed in.

He got the bookshelf I was using in the hallway and the CD player. I was pretty shocked to realize that their book collection filled an entire second bookshelf. No wonder their room was a mess all the time. Since I won't allow him to use the fancy desk for crafts and coloring, he kept the kids table for such projects.

Like Charlie Brown's friend Linus, our boy loves soft, fleecy blankets, and because of that, he has had most of his out of storage and in bed with him since birth. But I did dig up some extras to give him a cozy rocker to read in also.

He wants a midnight blue accent wall with a glow in the dark moon and stars on it. I told him that sounded fine to me.

I really thought that giving the kids their own rooms would make the house less comfortable. I thought the office stuff would crowd the living room too much and that I would wish the computer was still in a room away from the bustle and chaos of our only living area.

In fact, the computer stuff takes up far less room than I thought, and if I want to use a computer away from the noise of the wii or the T.V., our new wifi router makes it possible for me to take my seldom used laptop into the kitchen or our bedroom and get some peace and quiet that way.

The living room is now less crowded, because the kids are no longer allowed to bring their stuff out here. Without the clutter of My Little Ponies and Thomas tracks, the room is much more comfortable. The kids, still enthralled with the newness of it all, have kept their rooms clean and beds made for three days straight now. This might be some kind of record.

These small changes have made everything easier here on the little farm. Thank goodness.

Project: Child Relocation

2011-11-05T15:01:00.005-06:00

Over the past few weeks, we have slowly been cleaning things out and giving things away and reorganizing what is left to prepare for the big job of giving the kids their own rooms.

While the power was out, I reorganized all our bedroom closets and linen drawers.

Last weekend we moved our office into our living room. Mostly.

I thought that all that prep work would help us avoid the house looking like this when we did the final move.

I was so wrong about that.

I mean, I guess it could have been worse, but I'm not sure how.

We can't walk in the living room, but we also are having trouble negotiating the kitchen and the hallway.

The idea, originally, was to paint and decorate these rooms before we moved all the furniture into them. We've scrapped that idea for a number of reasons. It is most important that we get the kids out of each other's hair. We are hoping that will make them more pleasant to live with.

Matt is always thrilled to help out with home projects like this. Disassembling furniture is so obviously one of his favorite tasks.

We're coming down the home stretch. . .I'll post some pictures when we get the rooms all set up.

Wait a Stinkin' Minute. . .

2011-11-03T16:46:00.002-06:00

I was a little panicked earlier today. About a lot of things, because that's who I am these days, but mostly about the fact that at the girl's last 4H meeting we were given two tubs of cookie dough that we are supposed to bake in time for tonight because tonight all the 4H moms are meeting at the leader's house to assemble plates of cookies for sale at the swap meet at the school on Saturday morning.

I forgot to bake the cookies yesterday. Despite all my efforts, I seem to be always doing things last minute. I don't actually like to live this way. Don't be like me.

So I was rushing home thinking I'd get started right away when it occurred to me.

Hey. . .

Wait one stinkin' minute. . .

Who is the 4Her in this family? Is she not capable of baking premixed cookie dough?

Of course she is. She was, in fact, thrilled to have such a project handed to her when she got home from school. She was over the moon and sang the entire time she baked and has now gotten all the cookies baked with a sweet enthusiasm I could not even have begun to muster.

Though the cookie assembly doesn't start until 7:00 which is almost her bedtime, and though I am not 100% sure the kids were invited to the assembly party, I am going to take her with me so she can help.

I don't like how mom-dependent 4H is; however, I realized today that I am an accomplice to that madness.

I am going to stop that now. For my own sake and for that of my sweet girl who loves to do things for herself.

I clearly have my fingers in too many pies.

I do not need anything to aid me to keep my supremacy (this is a super awkward grammatical construction, by the way).

If anything, I need help relinquishing control.

Volunteering

2011-11-02T15:50:00.002-06:00

I have always heard that in volunteering, you get more than you give. Today I am going to tell you a story about how that is true.

I volunteer at the kids' school for a lot of reasons. Mostly, I like to spy on my rugrats. Also, I am not a PTA kind of mom and I feel that classroom volunteering is the least I can do to make up for not ever being a part of that organization. A little bit I do it because it is something moms are supposed to do.

I do in fact get a lot more out of it than I put into it.

First, getting to help kids learn is a tremendous privilege. I miss teaching kids. And it's really fun to be part of the chaos that is first grade writing class. I dig it.

Second, my kids appreciate it. It makes them feel loved and special. I hope they never grow out of that.

Third is what happened today when I went to the boy's class for the first time this year. I could live on what happened today when I went to the boy's class for about 10 years. It's all I need.

Today the boy's teacher asked him to introduce me to the class. He did. She asked him what I did. He said I taught at a school. And then she asked him if he could tell the class anything else about me that would help them get to know me.

"You know, does she have any hobbies? Is she the best at anything? Like cooking, or something?"

And the boy thought for a minute.

And then he batted his beautiful long eyelashes at me, smiled shyly, and said, "Loving me."

And I melted into a big pile of smiles and was no help to anyone at all for the rest of the day.

What a happy day.

A Season For Everything. . .

2011-11-01T10:26:00.004-06:00

There is a season for young girls who have just finished a science unit on bats to decide to be one for Halloween. In this same season, she will insist on drawing the fingers on her bat wings according to her labeled diagram from said science project and swoop around the house declaring that she is "a furry flying mammal!"

There is a season for young boys who want to be professional cyclists to decide to ride for a favorite team on Halloween. In this same season, he will practice his triumphant gestures for when he grows up and "Levi Leipheimer is ready to retire and I can take his place as the winner on Team Radio Shack."

There is a season for mothers to work hard to resist giant bowls of candy like this one. That season is now. It is a tough job, this mothering gig.

In this same season, said mother will give up her home office and move her computer into the living room because her children are growing up too fast and really need their own rooms.

In this same season, said mother will have to clean out everyone's closet and filing cabinets and reorganize her entire tiny home, which is a nice reminder that having a tiny home is a wonderful thing, as there really aren't all that many closets and filing cabinets and such to reorganize.

Cleaning and home improvement season has arrived on the farm. It's my favorite time of year.

Just Like Pioneers, But With Head Lamps and Pizza Joints

2011-10-27T11:14:00.003-06:00

Our power went out yesterday at 8 a.m. It is still not on. The power company estimates that they will have it on by "end of day" today, or "possibly sometime Friday". Thank goodness for mom and dad and their city house and city amenities, where we have come this morning to deliver all the perishable goods in our fridge and access computers and T.V. and hot water for showers.

Here are things we have that make this not so big a deal. We have a woodstove that keeps the whole house plenty warm. We have a coffee percolator that, we discovered, will make coffee on said woodstove before the plastic handle melts. We have a couple of oil lamps. We have musical instruments that we played to entertain ourselves as dusk fell.

We also have pizza joint in town where Matt stopped to get a hot dinner and we have head lamps that allowed for comfortable reading after dark.

So, we're not pioneers. But close.

And you should see how clean my closets are!

A Surprise Snow Day. . .Just For Me

2011-10-26T07:44:00.003-06:00

It's a beautiful snowy morning on the farm today.

The university I teach at, 10 miles west, must have gotten more snow than we did, because they cancelled school this happy, happy day. The fallen branch in this picture is just barely blocking that side of the driveway.

My kids, on the other hand, had to get on the bus. And Matt, well, snow days are busy days for him. My guess is that he's scraping and salting sidewalks at the hospital right now, since that's what the company he works for does in the winter.

Matt had to leave early this morning, so you can see that he managed to get our van out and over the other big fallen branch that is blocking the other side of our driveway. I wasn't going to have the same luck with the subaru, which for all its merits is pretty low to the ground. And in trying to drag the branch out of the way, I actually made things worse, which meant that I couldn't go volunteer at the school as scheduled.

We have some other fallen branches too. So far, we still have power, but chances are good we'll lose it at some point today.

They are calling for up to 4 more inches between now and dinner.

So, to sum up. I had a full day scheduled of volunteering and work. And now I don't.

I love snow!

Today's Confessions

2011-10-25T13:10:00.004-06:00

Tuesdays are my day to be home alone and get that kind of around the house alone stuff done. I go to bed every Monday night with big, big plans. . .

I will clean the whole house! Even under the stove and the fridge! I will wipe the ceiling fans!

I will get the laundry clean AND put away!

I will get all of the accounting and bills done and even file the giant stack of papers!

It will get done before the kids get home so that we can go to the library and go shop for Halloween costumes and still be home in time to cook dinner, which will naturally be both delicious and nutritious!

Today's list had some extras, too, since we're supposed to wake up to 4 inches of snow tomorrow. . .

I will clean up the dog poop in the yard!

I will rake and compost the fallen leaves!

I will can more tomatoes!

You can hear the big confession coming, can't you?

I have done none of these things!

I went for a run and tripped and fell and ripped the toe out of my running shoe!

I spent a good half hour marveling at the way the morning's blue sky was overtaken by the stormy gray of the season's first snow clouds as framed by the burr oak and American plum trees in my windbreak!

I took a picture of Noodle the cat!

I sat in front of the woodstove and drank coffee and read an entire novel that I didn't even like that much!

I checked facebook and ate an egg burrito!

And most importantly, I didn't feel the least bit guilty!

But I do feel very guilty now, so of course I'm going to start that list just as soon as I'm done with this blog post.

Much love,
Little Farm

Lean Times

2011-10-18T09:23:00.004-06:00

I grew up on a steady diet of T.V. sitcoms. My dad is a T.V. guy. The T.V. in my parents' house has been on pretty much since 1980. He likes to laugh at funny stuff, and I don't see anything wrong with that, do you?

What it all means for me, though, is that I have a million random memories of 80 and 90's era T.V. shows knocking around my brain and replaying themselves, vividly, whenever something jogs those memories.

One such scene is when Roseanne Barr and John Goodman are married in the early 90's and sitting at the family table paying bills, and they don't have the money to cover them, and Roseanne tells John Goodman something like, "Well, I "forgot" to sign the check I sent to the power company, I sent the trash check to the phone company and the phone check to the trash company, I paid the water bill so the toilets would flush, and we'll just hope we have some money by the time we sort this mess out."

That's not exact, but you get the idea, right?

Tuesdays are my days to pay bills and do the business accounting. It occured to me half way through to give up and pull a Roseanne, but honestly, it's all complicated enough.

We've been having some hard conversations around here in the wake of another tough season. We're facing another lean winter, and honestly, we can't get much leaner. We've had to start considering some pretty drastic options. . .including, and most emotionally, giving it all up and selling the farm and trying to find something to replace the meaning and inspiration and sense of purpose the farm gives to our lives. There were a couple of weeks there where this looked more like an inevitability than a choice.

It's been a heavy few months here on the farm. God bless our families, who have consistently offered us good advice, encouragement, and emotional and financial support. The last of which we continue to turn down, since it just feels wrong. I don't want to make this work because people feel bad enough to give us money. We're neither a non-profit nor a charity. I want it to work because we have a high quality product that we can sell for a fair amount of profit. You know, a business that runs on its own merits and is strong enough to survive grasshopper plagues and hailstorms and the inevitable bad decision or two.

In order to continue, it looks like I have to go back to work, Matt keeps his full-time job, and we run the place on a smaller scale. You know, as an expensive, all-consuming, totally exhausting hobby. This is not the most exciting way to continue. I do think there has to be a point where we stop believing that the answer to our problems is always just working more. Not that work isn't necessary, or important, or even satisfying. We love working the farm. But it's not appropriate to sacrifice every other part of your life to work, particularly when you are raising young kids.

We're not quite at that point yet, but we're getting close.

We're just still so in love with it all that we're not ready to give it up. So I'm teaching a pretty solid load of classes in the spring and we're starting to plan, cautiously and frugally, for next season.

I knew when we started that it would be hard to pull this off. And it is. So much harder than I thought.

But still I can't walk away. Not yet, anyway.

Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A Girl's Ode to Her Farm. Kind of.

2011-10-13T16:53:00.005-06:00

My girl is much more grown up now than she was in this picture, taken our first summer on the farm. Here, she could barely write a legible sentence. Now, she brings home paragraphs.

This week's folder had a doozy. I wondered for a minute about the ethics of sharing it here without her permission. But, you know, she's 9. She doesn't read the blog. And it will make you giggle, I think. So here it is. Note the lovely descriptions of the flowers and vegetable crops.

My Favorite Place

My favorite place has lots of grasshoppers. It is full of colors. The place has tons of weeds. In the summur (sic) it is hot and sunny in the winter it is cold and gray. And in the fall and spring it is cool and cloudy or sunny. It has a bunch of trees. It has rocks, dirt, gravel, and mud. In the afternoon it is quiet and has lots of misqutoes (sic). We wear dirty and old clothes. Can you guess my favorite place? My favorite place is my farm.

Wow. Who wouldn't love a farm like that? Weeds? Grasshoppers? Dirty old clothes? Sign. Me. Up.

I might have to give her a quick homeschool lesson on matching her descriptive imagery with the sentiment of the thesis, don't you think? Or maybe that's a bit deep for a 9 year old author? I'm not sure.

I am sure that I laughed out loud. And then wondered, horrified, if she read this to her class.

I mean, she's not wrong. The place is a mess this year.

I love that she still loves it too.

Time Marches On

2011-10-04T07:30:00.005-06:00

When we moved to the farm, our children were 3 and 5. The girly girl was just finishing kindergarten. The boy wasn't even in preschool yet.

They looked like this. They could fit nicely into the small shared bedroom in our small little farmhouse without busting it at the seams. They were just so small.

It doesn't really seem like that much time has passed since we transplanted ourselves onto this farm. It's easy to take all the growth for granted until something happens that makes you stop and marvel at it all.

Today, that thing is that their school pictures came home last night.

Hello, fourth grade brilliance. This girl has never met a book she didn't love, but math and science are suddenly her favorite subjects. This year seems to be a year for working out her place in the social hierarchy, and it hasn't been easy for her because she's managed, somehow, not to grow up too fast (thank goodness). Sweetness and responsibility are her best features. She needs braces. Most likely, she will need them twice. We are going to have to give up the office and give her a room of her own, very soon.

She has a friend who meets her for rollerblading at the skate park during her brother's soccer practices in town every week. The fact that this friend is a tall, polite boy from her class makes Matty and I smile to ourselves. There is nothing but two kids who like to rollerblade in that friendship, of course, but it does remind me that middle school is right around the corner for this kiddo, and we probably need to have a plan about friends of the boy variety.

And this boy. . .I mean, look at that first grade smile. His enthusiasm for the things he loves takes up a lot of space in the world. And sometimes I'm sad for him, because that's a wonderful quality in any setting but school, where it consistently seems to get him in trouble. This boy is all energy and focus and passion and wiry muscle. He is speed and noise. He has confidence in his own strengths. He is super goofy. . .our family's clown, for sure.

We keep working to help him try new things, play well with others, follow directions. We hope to be able to do these things without breaking his spirit. Keeping him moving helps a lot.

I alternate between a sort of wistful sadness that the kids are growing up so fast and complete delight in who they are growing up to be. My understanding is that this feeling is motherhood for the next 10-15 years.

Looking at pictures of the farm. . .early pictures of us on the farm compared to more recent pictures. . .makes me feel the same way. Lots of small farmers talk about the ways that the land we grow on actually farms us, that as we plant and tend and harvest our crops, the land also makes things grow in us that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

I can see that in my kids. I can feel it for Matty and I too. It's not any of it easy, parenting or farming or any of the rest of it, but it's all so worth it.

Breaking Into My Own Van (And Other Metaphors)

2011-09-28T20:38:00.010-06:00

Forgive the lack of original pictures here, but it's gone and gotten dark on me. It does that after 8 p.m. now. I forget so easily.

There are two things I'd like to highlight about this picture of our Scooby van. One is that our flower season was so poor this year that I never once had to use Scooby's massiveness to make a delivery. Our deliveries all fit in the back of the Subaru. It's sad.

The second thing, and most important to the following story, is Scooby's front/back construction and old school design.

Do you see how the back of Scooby is separated from the front cab of Scooby, where all the stuff you need to drive Scooby is? It all locks separately too. You use different keys, even, to get into the front and the back. And do you see how there is a metal grate on the wall that separates the two sections to allow air flow? And perhaps you can't see this at all, but Scooby is a manual lock kind of guy. There is no fancy electric system that locks every door with the click of a button in this wonder of a machine from 1989.

One more thing. Scooby is my ride. Not just for farm deliveries, but my overall, general, anywhere I want to go ride. I drive Scooby to soccer practice. I drive Scooby to teach at the university. I drive Scooby to the grocery store. Me and Scooby, we're tight. Because no matter how inappropriate Scooby might be for running over to, say, volunteer at the kids' school, there is no other working vehicle available.

And this is why I drove Scooby in to town early this morning to get my bloodwork done at Open Lab at the hospital (okay, that and we have terrible health insurance, but that's not important now) and then over to the Farm Service Agency and then, because I had a couple hours to kill before I had to teach, to the public library about a mile or so from campus. I had a thermos of coffee and some pumpkin pie to enjoy, and I thought it would be nice to do some research on possible solutions to tricky financial situations (I ended up reading the Ladies' Home Journal instead, but that's also not important now).

When the coffee was gone and the pie reduced to crumbs and the fluffy housekeeping advice had been perused (Save Money by Cooking at Home? Now there's an idea!), I figured I'd head to campus early to write my midterm or something productive.

It was then I realized that Scooby's keys were not with me in the library. They were in Scooby's ignition, right where I left them after I locked the doors to the front of Scooby where everything you need to drive Scooby is. The back of Scooby, which was no help at all, was wide open, so I climbed in to consider my options.

I had to teach in one hour. Matt works 45 minutes away, so he couldn't help me. A locksmith, even if I wanted to pay one, wouldn't get the job finished in that amount of time. I could walk to campus in time to teach, but how would I get home in time for the kids after that? I looked to the sky for some help, and I found some.

Wrapped around Scooby's top beam was an old, rusted piece of barbed wire. It had only one barb, on the very end, and seemed just long enough to work. I unraveled it from the beam, straightened it as best I could, made a loop on the end, and started feeding it through the grate in the wall. I thought maybe I could loop it around the manual lock and pull it up.

On the first attempt I realized that the wire would reach only the passenger side lock.

On the second attempt I realized that I had made the loop too small to fit, so I pulled it all back and adjusted.

On the third attempt I managed to get the loop around the lock, but realized that my angle was too shallow. I had to come from high above the lock, not straight across, to be able to pull it up and successfully unlock it. I pulled it all back and started to feed it back through a higher point in the grate.

And then I heard a siren.

And I peed my pants (just a little), jumped out of my skin (kind of), and tried to duck (I don't know why) all at once when I realized that someone had thought I was breaking into Scooby and had called the cops. I was breaking into Scooby, of course, but since he was mine, I had not thought at all until that moment what the other library patrons must have been thinking of me.

Then I realized that the siren had actually come from the fire station next door. I quickly fed the wire through, looped the lock easily, and pulled it up. I climbed in that passenger side door, scooted myself over, and thanked God and my lucky stars that I wasn't going to be late for class.

Then I realized that being a farmer has made me like that little wire. . .good at solving any number of problems, strong and durable and hard to break, and also agile and flexible and adaptable to all sorts of situations. And maybe,though it seems hard to believe sometimes, maybe even lucky.

Then I wondered a few more things:

Was I reaching too far for that metaphor?

Did God lock Scooby's keys in the car to make me think something good about myself that it is important for me to think right now?

Or was it just that I had to fast for the blood work and so hadn't had any coffee and so I locked the keys in the car totally randomly because of the foggy morning haze in my head and even though it's good to seem myself that way it had nothing to do with God?

Act of God or not, why do I think it's good to compare myself to a rusty piece of barbed wire?

Am I going crazy?

I think we all know the answer to that last.

Much love,
Little Farm

Farm Wife Report, September 25th, 2011

2011-09-25T18:42:00.005-06:00

Today I have made:

A double batch of waffles from scratch.

Two loaves of pumpkin bread.

Two loaves of sandwich bread.

20 (or so. Not done canning yet) pints of pizza sauce. From scratch. You know, where you pick 35 pounds of tomatoes and various amounts of the other things you need and go from there.

One beef pot pie.

One pumpkin pie.

And still in process, a batch of pumpkin scones.

Now you know what will happen when anyone says "I'm hungry" around here this week.

My kitchen is a humid, sweltering place. My feet and lower back are aching.

In other news, the sun is setting and I am still in my pajamas. My stomach is full. I am proud of my work and happy to have gotten it accomplished.

In even more detailed news, my pajamas are covered in pizza sauce splatters.

Much love,
Little Farm

Morning Accounting

2011-09-21T08:41:00.007-06:00

I'm taking a short break from the Lovely Customers Who Bring Us Booze Series because this morning on the farm is all autumn inspiration and beauty, and I feel compelled to try to share it.

It's sunny and bright over the Rockies. . .but the air is a crisp 45 degrees. The barest hint of yellow is peeking out from the canopy of the windbreak trees. Morning dew, sitting in fat droplets on the big moon pumpkins, is just starting to dry off in the cool breeze. Two black kittens sit watchfully on the corral fence while Noodle, their grandmother, stretches lazily into the sunbeams on the porch.

It's quiet here, save for the grunty rootings of pigs and the occasional squawk from the hens. The routine of the school year. . .lunch boxes, soccer, after school meetings, homework. . .and the sneaky early September sunsets create more silence and calm on the farm than I can ever dream will be in the midst of August's chaos and heat. Weeks from now, I know this quiet will sometimes feel lonely. Now though, the solitude is sheer delight and relief.

It's not yet time to stop. . .vegetables need to be watered and harvested, barns need to be cleaned, there is the seemingly endless list of emails to return and piles of food to preserve, and of course, preparations for teaching. I have to fight to keep up with it all when these precious slower moments present themselves, because I am determined to enjoy them while I can.

Morning coffee on the porch, bundled up in a hat and mittens, while my giggling kids wait for the bus.

The four of us snuggling together on the couch, the kids in their soft winter sleepers, reading White Fang before bed.

Pondering what I will do with the beautiful red yarn gifted to me from one of our customers, my friend and knitting mentor, LindaCO. Wondering if I remember how to cast on to my knitting needles.

We badly needed a good season. We did not have one. We have been spending a lot of time with spreadsheets and income/expense reports and budgets and forecasts, none of which seem to have anything encouraging to say for themselves.

The black and white severity of all the printed numbers is just so shallow. The spreadsheets seem inappropriately two dimensional, and though I know we have to rely on them to make the world work, I find myself searching for a way to quantify the glorious quiet of mornings like these, or the riotous cacophony of summer birds in the windbreak, or the creaking of the 70 year old floorboards under our feet, or my kids jumping into mud puddles with wild abandon. I want Excel to create a column, some formula, anything that can make visible all of the meaning and love that this farm gives our lives.

There is no such formula, of course. There is only hope that we can find a way, soon, to translate the love we have for the farm into financial peace and solvency.

In the meantime, there are mornings like this one to cherish.

Lovely Customers Who Bring Us Booze: Part II

2011-09-19T20:10:00.005-06:00

I know I promised this post, oh, say, two weeks ago. I need to get my blogging groove back, I know. But for now, I can't help it.

However, as promised, here is the story of Liz and the Dead Grasshoppers.

Liz is one of our Greeley customers. She hung in there with us last year, and is back this year, still supporting us. She reads the blog, follows us on facebook. . .she is so wonderfully connected to the farm's various social networking outlets that I often picture her, specifically, when I try to visualize you as a group, my virtual audience. We love her for it, even if she does frequently bring up how much she loves my middle school softball skillz. (That's right, skillz with a 'z'. Watch this video, posted by the metropolitan brother, if you missed it last year. You won't be sorry. I might be, but you won't).

A few weeks ago, Liz came to the veggie drop with a wonderful gift for us. A martini shaker, three bottles of booze, and a recipe for a drink called a Dead Grasshopper. "You guys deserve this," she said, "and so do those stinkin' grasshoppers." I laughed and laughed and couldn't wait to mix one up. . .except for I kept on getting a really vivid image of a dead grasshopper floating in the drink.

It has taken me a few weeks to get past it. Every week poor Liz would show up, and I would sheepishly have to tell her that we hadn't tried one yet. I couldn't bring myself to tell her that it was because the very idea of a grasshopper just turns my stomach, leaping as they do into my boots and into my hair and into my mouth on a daily basis.

I didn't mean to be rude. Listen. A dead grasshopper is by far my favorite kind of grasshopper. But I'm not keen to eat one, you know, or even imagine one in my drink.

So this week, I finally got over it and mixed one up. It's good. Thick and creamy. . .definitely its own dessert, I think, very, very sweet. It's reminiscent of the green St. Patrick's Day McDonald's milkshakes I loved as a child, mostly because of the minty green color. Do they still make those milkshakes at McDonald's in March? They were one of the true joys of my childhood, those things.

Anyway, I mixed one up for Liz and delivered it with her vegetables tonight. She liked it too.

You might like it too, so here is the recipe:

1 part milk
1 part creme de cacao
1 part creme de menthe
Put on ice and shake, then add:
1 dash of cinnamon schnapps.

We might just throw this into the drinks-in-front-of-the-woodstove winter routine. It won't replace Vince's Baileys in our coffee, because a Dead Grasshopper is really more of an after dinner drink. Which works out well, actually. . .we are creatures of routine, Matty and I, and if this Dead Grasshopper was a breakfast drink we probably wouldn't drink it at all.

To sum up:

Liz is fabulous.
Dead Grasshoppers are yummy.
I just admitted to the entire blogging world that Matty and I have a winter routine that includes drinking at breakfast.

Love and Good Cheer,
Little Farm

Lovely Customers Who Bring Us Booze: Part I in a Series

2011-09-08T10:00:00.006-06:00

Last year, on this very blog, I told the story of Vince, our friend and customer, who bought us some Bailey's to enjoy by the wood stove when our farm season ended.

He went and did it again a few weeks ago, early this year, since Matty and I have obviously not been very good at hiding the emotional and physical beating this season has been for us.

Stupid grasshoppers, making us look all morose under our carefully cultivated farmers market smiles.

Apparently, we'd get our asses handed to us in a poker tournament. We've got some sort of tell. Which is that when these customers/friends ask us how things are going, we usually tell them the truth.

Vince wrote us another poem:

"Doing the Grasshopper Waltz"

The hop and eat and hop and eat.
Whatever can you do?
You've sprayed organically but still
They keep on coming through.

So you must simply realize
You've done the best you can
And be not afraid to move on to
A slightly different plan.

Which maybe could include some treats
You heretofore might not
Allow yourselves to indulge in
While the weather's still so hot.

Treats that may make your quiet times
Seem even better yet
And help you to embrace the joy
of sunrise or sunset.

So to this end I offer you
Gifts you're sure to use,
Gifts that are guaranteed to help
Chase away the blues.

And if you're plagued by guilt about
Such an indulgence now,
I've labeled them so any blame
You can surely disavow.

This year, instead of "his" and "hers", Vince labeled one bottle "Madzie" and one bottle "Simon".

That Vince sure knows how to help us get our feet back under us, with poetry and Baileys. I marvel all the time at the amazing humans this farm has brought into our lives. . .the diverse, tremendously supportive community of people who do so many nice things for us. I mean, in addition to the very nice thing that they do when they sign up for a CSA share from our farm.

The more the crazy grasshoppers eat, the more love our customers give us. These customers and these insects both bring tears to my eyes, but in different ways and for different reasons.

Thanks, Vince. We think you're swell. And it means a whole lot to us.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II of the Lovely Customers who Bring Us Booze Series. . . Liz and Dead Grasshoppers!

Thoughts on edamame

2011-08-29T14:49:00.002-06:00

This is a very popular little vegetable, this delicious soy appetizer. It is also very easy to grow, which you might think would make it a popular crop here on the farm.

Not so.

Because the grasshoppers LOVE it.

And.

Because it takes for-freaking-ever to harvest.

Actually, the harvest in the field is super quick. We wait until the beans are ready and pull up the whole plant at once by its roots.

Once we get it into the barn, though, we have to strip the beans off the plant to put in the CSA boxes or have in pints for the markets. It's agonizing. It's like 2 hours of diligent work to fill a 4 gallon bucket 2/3 of the way.

We may not be including edamame in next year's repertoire. We're considering putting those rows to an equally popular but less-labor intensive use and just growing more watermelon.

Or maybe not, because we came up with an elegant solution to the problem of time spent stripping edamame plants this season.

Last night we covered our living room floor in old sheets, poured two glasses of the wine Matty picked up at the farmers market last weekend (it's good, that Ten Bears), and stripped edamame while watching Mad Men on Netflix. It was so much better.

I did have to stifle the urge to throw edamame at Betty Draper. I did, at one point, tell Don Draper that he should be ashamed of himself. Because he should. I can't figure out why I love that show so much, since I think the characters are a bunch of jerks. I just can't seem to look away.

I reprimanded Don Draper, but I did not spend any time grumbling about how long the edamame was taking to pick.

That, friends, is progress.

No More Sad Sack Blogging.

2011-08-18T20:36:00.005-06:00

Geez. I'm amending this post and promise to keep that sort of whining to myself from now on.

Apologies for subjecting you all to that.

I'm keeping that video up though. I think that guy is amazing.

So. . .

It's hard to keep on with the work, though, based on a vague faith that it's good to be taught hard lessons by life. It's sometimes nice to see proof that hard work and innovation and strength can make impossible things possible, whether on a farm or in an abandoned ironworks.

Here is some pretty inspiring proof.

The Hail Mary

2011-08-15T22:08:00.006-06:00

A better blogger, or likely any American teenager, could photoshop this picture (from wikimedia commons) to show that the grasshoppers are clobbering Boyles Family Farms and that Lehigh has absolutely nothing to do with it.

They are. Clobbering us.

The grasshoppers. Not Lehigh.

We spray Molt-X.

They eat melons.

We spray again.

They eat the beans.

Our corn husks have holes where grasshoppers have eaten through them to get to our sweet corn.

Grasshoppers landed on my face at least five times today while I was harvesting. I have gotten somewhat used to having them on my arms and legs, even stopping to dump them out of my boots, but I'm not sure I'll ever be comfortable with them in my mouth.

Stinky gross grasshoppers.

It's ugly out there. We're getting creamed.

So we called a bunch of our organic farming friends and begged for their secret grasshopper fighting tricks. And most of them said something along the lines of "farm closer to civilization". Also they said try using Pyganic, which they thought would help but would not be a magic bullet.

Pyganic is an outrageously expensive organic pesticide that we picked up on Saturday. Matt is currently out spraying it on the melons and corn and beans in the dark, past his bedtime, since that is the only time the poor man has to do such things. He read the label and found that it is labeled to work on grasshoppers, but that they recommend spraying before there is an acute infestation.

Well, it's too late for that here on the farm. We bought some anyway.

In the absence of a magic bullet, the Pyganic is our Hail Mary pass.

We've got to keep trying to turn this game around. Not to beat the metaphor to death, but our entire post-season just might depend on it.

Things With Feathers

2011-08-13T17:42:00.004-06:00

Hi everyone! Things seem busy on the farm -- what with the great grasshopper deluge and all. So, I, the metropolitan brother, am crashing the blog for a minute because I remembered that I had this video of Simon and I collecting some eggs back in April. Which in turn reminded me of Emily Dickinson.

Apologies for the way the video looks. The upload from an iphone is...well, I'm learning.

Also - Emily Dickinson. Yes. That old thing.

Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Stupid Grasshoppers

2011-08-05T21:17:00.002-06:00

First, a video about the stupidly outrageous number of grasshoppers we have on the farm, (and also, at the end, my inability to focus becomes very clear).

You may have seen these chewed up irises.

Stupid grasshoppers.

Or these carrot tops.

Stupid grasshoppers.

I took this picture of the half eaten giant cabbage and the stripped asters on Wednesday.

We noticed the first stupid grasshopper on those plants Sunday morning.

They seem to like the corral fence. If I wasn't worried about my pigs and dogs and most of all, kids, I would try to figure out a way to poison that stupid fence.

Stupid grasshoppers.

They are pretty easy to kill. Our field is littered with dead grasshoppers. But more just keep coming. There might be more now than when we started spraying.

Today I noticed them in our field brassicas and our green beans and our edamame. Half our eggplant harvest had to be tossed because it had bite marks in it.

They have eaten all of our seedlings in the greenhouse: no third crop zinnias, no fall brassicas, no celosia.

It's bad. Real bad.

Sigh. At least the sky is still pretty. And there are still rainbows.

Things I Like More Because Of Farming

2011-08-02T09:54:00.008-06:00

1. Cold showers.
I've always been a fan of hot showers. Times gone by, I even took warm showers in the summertime. I just didn't get that hot, because I used to spend a lot more time inside like a reasonable person when it got unbearable. We've had almost 4 weeks now of temps above 90 degrees. It's miserable hot out there, and we've got no choice but to go out and do manual labor in the midst of it. So now I take cold showers before bed, every night.

The best part is when the cold water runs over your head and through your hair and down the back of your neck and your whole body temperature drops about 5 degrees. And then maybe you bend down to wash your feet or something and you feel the heat creep back into your scalp. And you can just stick your head back under the cool water, and repeat this until the heat no longer creeps back into your scalp. Boy. That's an amazing feeling.

2. Drinking

I really didn't used to drink on a regular basis. And now I find that a vodka lemonade or two at the end of the day really does feel like one of the healthiest options available for stress management. I'm just too tired to do yoga before bed. Also, I'm not very flexible and I find yoga difficult and uncomfortable. I know it would be good for me. But I just can't with the yoga.

I can with the vodka, though. I have a drink just about every night now. And on special days, also at lunchtime. Because I can.

3. Wearing long pants

I used to think Matt was crazy to wear long pants every day in the heat of the dog days. I get it now, though. I have joined the ranks of working guys everywhere who know wearing long pants is just good sense. . .less about temperature than about limb and skin protection.

4. Picking my nose

Okay, I don't really like this more, but it has morphed from super disgusting habit in others to the only way I can possibly get myself comfortable. I don't know why this is, but dirt boogers are harder to blow. Ugh. It's almost grosser to write about it than it is to actually have to do it regularly. I'm sorry to be so gross.

I feel like I should go wash my hands now. I do that a lot more than I used to also, since I'm handling food all the time.

I feel better now.

5. Cooking

I didn't do much of this before. Now I can pickled beets and make pizza sauce from scratch and give free advice about what to do with rainbow chard in the kitchen. Since I have started cooking more, not one person in this house has needed an antibiotic prescription. It has been 4 years, and those 4 years included exposure to day care center and preschool germs.

I feel good about that.

Don't worry. I am very careful not to combine numbers 4 and 5. In fact, I try not to combine number 4 with anything at all. I'm a little ashamed of it, actually.

I've always heard that old habits die hard.

In reality, I've found new habits are acquired easily in the right circumstances.

Two Blue Ribbons and A Lot of Pride

2011-08-01T06:44:00.001-06:00

Also, very soon, a trip to the orthodontist. Sigh.

Grasshoppers Are Eating My Farm

2011-07-31T11:02:00.003-06:00

It's a great campy horror film title.

It's also our life right now, despite copious desperate applications of multiple controls.

Here are some examples:

I apologize for the particularly poor photography in these posts, but I don't have time to mess around with it. These are carrots with healthy, thriving greens. The greens on a carrot are, of course, essential to the development of a sweet, edible root.

These are the carrot tops a few days later, after the grasshoppers have devastated them. We harvested pencil thin carrots for our CSA customers. Because that's all they are likely to get. A pencil thin carrot has nowhere near the flavor of its more mature form, but I suppose it is something.

This just in this morning. The grasshoppers have moved into the girl's third grade cabbage. (Look closely, you'll see the swarm). We learned this first thing this morning when we heard her wailing, water bucket in hand. Her disappointed tears were so hard to take. We tried explaining that this is just how it is. . .in farming, no matter how hard you work or how much care you take, there are no guarantees of success.

She did work hard on that cabbage. It may have been the most loved cabbage in the history of the farm.

This doesn't bode well for the cabbages that are just coming in out in the field, either.

These are the irises in my perennial bed. You know, the ones that survived the great piggy rooting of early summer.

As of 10:30 this morning, the grasshoppers had moved into the perennial bed just north of this. Do you see them on the irises here?

Yeah. Me too. I see grasshoppers everywhere. I see them even when my eyes are closed.

They have eaten six rows of lettuce, three rows of carrots, one row of potatoes, and all of the fall brassica and third crop zinnia seedlings in the greenhouse. They are moving fairly methodically, west to east, through our field. They have cost us almost 2 entire weeks of flower sales as they munch through our sunflowers and zinnias.

And in fighting them, we've lost valuable weeding and staking tomato and other field maintenance time.

However.

We proceed as though we believe we can beat them. Because that's all we can do.

Times a' Wastin

2011-07-29T11:14:00.002-06:00

I really have to get back to our big Friday harvest. But I felt the need to be cheered up by something.

This did it for me.

Hot box!

Love,
Little Farm

Gifts

2011-07-27T18:16:00.002-06:00

At the farmers market, Becky, a customer who has become a dear friend, told me she can discern how I am feeling about the farm on any particular day based on subtle tones she picks up from my blog posts. She gave me a punch card to the local coffee house and a hug.

On Monday, out of the blue, a blogging friend of mine sent me a t-shirt she saw at the Tractor Supply. It says "hanging on by the seed of my plants" and I love it both for what it is (a super comfy cotton shirt that relates directly to my life) and for the love and encouragement and friendship it represents. Thanks, Ferreh.

Then I opened a package from my sister Maggie, which revealed two CDs named "The Exhausted Farmer Mix" that I love, love, love. I mean, it has everything. Styx. Gillian Welch. Bowie. Alan Jackson. What's not to love?

I didn't realize I'd been wearing my heart quite so much on my sleeve. In fact, Matty has made a couple of comments about how rosy I've been able to keep my posts. I suppose I haven't been able to sugar-coat it that much, though, or I wouldn't be getting so much sympathy and care from the peanut gallery.

Our truth is that this is a discouraging season. Today I accepted a class to teach for fall. Matt has gone back up to 100% at work. I walk through the plague of grasshoppers in the lettuce and the carrots and the potatoes, or cut through the meager flower crop, or find another hen has disappeared while ranging, and I just feel so beat down by the whole thing.

And then I pick beans, and they are delicious and seemingly endless, and a gentle rain blows in on a cooling breeze, and things feel okay. Not great. But okay. And then these gifts arrive in the mail. And I feel a little better.

These gifts were meant to help me keep on. They were meant to give me faith and strength, to remind me that we are not alone in this mess. And they have done all of these things. I appreciate them so much. From the bottom of my sleeve-perched heart. Truly.

This is the first song on the "Exhausted Farmer Mix". I sang it all the bean-picking day. It suits the mood precisely, right now. Please enjoy. . .and if you have beans of your own, try singing while picking. It makes it less tedious.

Panic! At The. . .Fairgrounds?

2011-07-25T08:24:00.005-06:00

I think I should lead this by saying I mostly knew what I was getting myself into when I signed the girl up for 4H. I was aware that she would be taking on projects that would require help from me. I was, in fact, looking forward to the accountability of it all.

Because it was time for her and I to move from "I'll teach you to sew. Someday. In a galaxy far, far, away." to "You thread a sewing machine like this. And then you put the fabric here. Now make a seam."

And, you know, we've been busy building a farm from scratch the past few years. Following through with these things has dropped pretty low on the list.

4H has, in fact, helped with this, and I have been very happy about that.

Now it is the end of July. And the fair started today. You know, today. Late July. Which is only the busiest freaking time of year ever here on the farm.

We spent all day yesterday basically cramming 4H projects. Yes. One important life lesson that my daughter has learned from 4H is that you must put things off and then frantically work to finish them the day before they are due.

And since every other family in our club was doing the same thing, I think that must be part of the 4H pledge. . ."my hands to greater service, my heart to cramming frantically the day before the fair". I don't have the pledge memorized yet since we're still so new and are almost always late to meetings, but I'm sure I've heard that cramming part in there somewhere.

These projects are more involved than you'd think. It might look, to the casual observer, that for the "cake decorating" category children simply bake and decorate one cake and enter it in the fair. In reality, the fair cake must be the fifth cake the children bake. They have to bake and decorate four others before they even attempt the fair cake. They must document these attempts in a record book. They must track expenses, time spent/tasks completed, community service projects, and presentations to groups. They have to set goals and then evaluate their progress toward those goals. They have to write a one-two page "story" about their project. And then they must participate in interview judging, which in our case, was scheduled today (one of our busiest days of the week, as we harvest and prep and deliver for 30 CSA families every Monday) and took twice as long as it should have.

I have never wanted to be one of those moms who helped their kids win project competitions, and so I worked hard to let the girl do her own work. It was harder than you'd think, not because I care so much (or at all, really) about her getting a ribbon, but because I was the teacher/coach of each project. Having been a teacher for years, I know that there is a very fine line between teaching a child how to do something and doing their work for them. It is not always 100% clear where an adult action falls on the spectrum.

I did end up typing her projects. Not writing them, but typing what she told me to type. I did try to fight the urge to edit her as I went. But I did edit some.

However, I did not frost that cake. She's actually much better and far more patient at cake decorating than I have ever been. I've never been the least bit interested in cake decorating, actually, because once there is a cake and once that cake has frosting I'm only interested in how quickly I can stuff some in my mouth. I did not smooth her edges and I did not make the bees.

I did not sew her seams and I did not stitch her hem, though I did measure and pin it for her.

In the end, she did her projects all by herself. She might not (read this as "likely will not")get any ribbons, but she did learn a lot. Besides the cramming, I mean.

And now she can bake cakes all by herself, which means I can say, "Hey kid, go bake me a cake" and she will happily comply.

I think I don't give my kids enough credit for what they can do. I ask very little of them, in the great global scheme of what a childhood can be. I think that's as it should be for my kids, but this 4H thing has made me realize that I need to give her credit for her skills and her tremendous ability to learn difficult things.

And probably, the girl is ready for some more difficult chores.

I will leave you with another hilarious quote from my boy, who just might be the smartest one in this entire family, when he was asked by a well-meaning 4H clerk whether he was going to join 4H when he turned 8.

"Why would I?" he asked, incredulous, throwing both his hands over his head in a very exasperated manner and wrinkling his nose as though he smelled rotten eggs, "It would just take up a whole bunch of time that I could be playing."

Days Go By

2011-07-21T10:01:00.007-06:00

Since I haven't been blogging much, I thought it would be nice to catch you all up on what we have been doing out here. Every day we get up and tend the pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and greenhouse seedlings. Then we start the irrigation in the field. And then we try to fit in some weeding or pest control or harvesting.

On the farm front, it's not going as well as we had hoped so far this season. So many crops are coming slow, like these 20 rows of tomatoes that need to be staked this weekend, and the peppers, and other things. I don't know why exactly. It could be the aftereffects of hail. It could be that we didn't get them planted soon enough. It could be a million different things.

It makes me feel like we didn't plant enough stuff, but then I look around the field and think, no, we definitely planted a bunch of stuff. We just need it a week or so more until it feels abundant, I think. I hope so, anyway. This year has been one of the more challenging out in the field, which is certainly contributing to my were-rabbit worrying. We have to start getting some vegetables in to move out of that field.

The flowers are late too this year. We had to mow a bunch down because we couldn't get to the weeds in time, and last week the grasshoppers destroyed most of the blooms that were ready. This week though, I think we'll have more than just the kiddie bouquets in the booth. Like I said, it's been challenging in the field this year. The flower operation seems to have suffered the most with the vegetable and meat expansion. . .but there are some really pretty zinnias and snaps out there.

On the home front, the girly girl has been slowly but steadily working on her fair projects. She goes in for her judging interviews on Monday, so we have to get them all wrapped up, and soon! Here, she is working on her skirt. She is going to practice her cakes once or twice more before she makes the real exhibit cake on Sunday. She also got her ears pierced over last weekend, which made her seem so much more grown up.

Yesterday while I mowed the grass, the kids dug a giant hole in the backyard. . .they called it their pond, and they tried to build a system of rivers and twig bridges all around it. A giant ship was also assembled out of pallets and 5 gallon buckets and other farm junk. The other day they used a hammer and nails to build an airplane out of scrap wood. They didn't ask permission to do any of these things. They knew I wouldn't mind. . .and I really don't. They have so much space to express their imaginations and to play their games and to dream out here. . .and so many tools to use to do so. It's my favorite thing about this place.

And with all of this plus the markets and CSA deliveries and Matty back at work full-time, our weeks are full. Wonderfully, overwhelmingly full. There are no quick fixes for the things that are going wrong out there, so the plan is to push and work and fight through until frost, so that whatever happens, we know we've done our level best.

That, finally, may be a realistic expectation for ourselves.

The Curse of The Were-Rabbit

2011-07-20T09:10:00.004-06:00

I am very honored today to be a guest blogger over at my friend Courtney's blog, Life, Cultivated. Courtney and her husband farm in Montana, just had a beautiful new baby girl, and have become dear friends of mine via the internet. Her writing is beautiful. . .give it a read, friends. You'll be so glad you did.

And now back to our regularly scheduled neurotic rambling:

My boy is having some fear issues. He is suddenly and very sincerely afraid of the were-rabbit. Yep. This fairly mild scary character from the Wallace and Grommit movie he's been watching since he was 3 is now the symbol of everything that is frightening to a six-year-old boy in the world.

Actually, it's a great movie. It's one of our favorites, and not just because of all the beautiful claymation vegetables. Please go watch it today.

Because unlike my boy, you probably won't begin to worry that the were-rabbit is hiding in your closet.

Or under your bed.

Or that he'll break through your window while you're trying to fall asleep and your parents are out weeding the broccoli with their head lamps on and can't save you.

The boy has taken to sleeping with us almost every night. . .we finally had to make a compromise with him in which we allow him to fall asleep in our room (and at least one of us promises to stay inside instead of going back out to the field to work) and then we heave him back up into his top bunk bed once he's already asleep.

It's a lot of panic for a fictional claymation hybridized monster. And that's not the only fear we have in the household. My girl is deathly afraid of thunderstorms, which we get almost every afternoon, May through September here on the plains. As a supposedly rational adult, it's so easy for me to find all this anxiety about nothing overly dramatic and thoroughly annoying.

Until I realize that they've probably learned it from watching me.

Living out here on this farm has taught me that I am dramatic and annoying in all my irrational fear and worry as well. More so, even, because I really should know better. Here are just a few of my more ridiculous fears:

1. I am scared of the dark, or more specifically, I am afraid to walk outside into the field by myself when it's dark out. So afraid that it causes my heart to race and tears to well up just thinking about it, and on the rare occasions I have to do it, I have actually whimpered. There is nothing specific that I think will happen out there. We live in a safe place. It's just so scary.

2. Until last year, I was kind of afraid to touch chickens. Live, dead, young, old. . .it didn't matter. I was a chicken farmer that didn't like to handle the poultry. I'm over this one now, mostly. I still always use gloves, but I'm not afraid at all of the birds themselves.

3. I cannot sleep with the bedroom door closed. I have to leave it cracked open, at least. This is because of my fear that someone will try to steal my children in the night and if my door was closed I might sleep through it.

4. I am currently afraid that in revealing myself for the basket case I actually am with this list of lunatic anxieties, I am going to annoy you, my fine blog readers, so badly that you all will abandon me for better, more mature human beings, many of whom have lovely blogs.

The truth, though, is that all of the irrational fears on this list are just my own version of the were-rabbit. They are all just symbolic ways to manifest my real fear, the big worry, the one that has had me up all season at 3 a.m. reading books or folding laundry until the restless anxiety passes.

I am scared that no matter how hard we work, no matter how much we push ourselves, and no matter how well we do (because, believe it or not, we're doing pretty well out here) we will lose the farm. And if we lose the farm, we lose the dream. . .we lose a big part of who we believe ourselves to be.

I'm worried about what that might do to us all.

We're like any young business in that we're essentially in a race to see if we can make enough profit quickly enough that we aren't eaten alive by the costs of the start-up. Compounding this is that we've chosen to farm, a career that is historically so difficult to make profitable that there are swarms of government agencies and farm credit bureaus and subsidies and tax breaks out there which were created just to be sure a brave few would hang in there and try to keep feeding the nation.

Since I am prone to anxiety about all manner of things, I try to tell myself that this worry is overblown and overly dramatic, just like my ridiculous fear of the dark.

But when I look at the big financial picture, I think the reality is that this is the season in which it will become clear whether or not we need to get a new dream for ourselves. And what I want desperately to hear from God, the universe, and everything, when October's soothing cool breezes begin to blow, is the same thing I say to my boy at night.

"Don't worry, the were-rabbit can't hurt you. We're here with you. You're safe. Go to sleep."

Our Engagement Picture. . .

2011-07-14T08:47:00.007-06:00

that the Metropolitan Brother found in an old shoebox and posted on facebook. Zac would have put this up on the blog too, I'm sure, if I was the one making the face. Just to be clear, Matty made this face on purpose. His goofiness has always been one of his more attractive features. And back then, so was his tremendous mane of hair. That's just the kind of gal I am. This was 1997. My goodness, we were young.

The Metropolitan Brother loves Guy with Beer a little more than me, or at least is less comfortable making fun of him in a public forum. I, however, love Guy with Beer with all my heart and am completely comfortable making fun of him in a public forum. And you, dear readers, get to benefit from this. I hope we here at the Little Farm can make you smile today.

I'm smiling today, because yesterday I managed a feat of irrigation without crying or losing my wits. I filled the pond, by myself, while Matt was at work, despite a number of odd things:

1. The main ditch was closed because there was so much rain water in the system.

2. None of the other neighbors scheduled for water took it because of the crazy monsoon downpours we've been having.

3. Because of all the wackiness, I had to reroute the system at the diversion boxes multiple times and didn't even start getting water into the pond until noon.

Despite all this, I was a cool as a refrigerated cucumber.

I told Guy with Beer how proud I was, and he said, "You should be. And I'm happy that I won't get chastised or made fun of on the blog this time around."

That is clearly a bet no one should ever take, is all I'm saying.

Love you, Guy with Beer. Off to weed snapdragons!

Quartering a Whole Chicken

2011-07-08T06:00:00.003-06:00

In high school and college, I worked at a mom and pop chicken rotisserie restaurant. If you ever find yourself on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, pop on over to Incline Village, my hometown, and get a burrito from T's Mesquite Rotisserie. Tell Chuck and Terri (or their son, Jamie, who runs the place now even though he wasn't any older than my kids are when I worked there) I say hi. The food is amazing. If there's a line, which there will be, wait happily. It's worth it.

Anyway, it was a great place to work, despite the fact that the open flame charcoal pit rotisserie was less than two feet from the cash register. It was hot, and all of my t-shirts had tiny burn holes in the back from when the grill would snap and pop sparks out. Yep. I had burn holes in my t-shirt, and I turned out okay. It was during the first Gulf war. We called them SCUD missles. We also used to dance the poodle behind the counter while listening to Freddie Fender. It was the best job in Incline, but I smelled terrible back then. Not just at work, either. When I left for college, my mom, unable to remove the smell of charcoal smoke and chicken grease from my sheets, threw the entire set away. At the end of each night, I was asked to take the leftover whole chickens from the rotisserie and pick all the meat off the skin and bones so that the meat could go in the following day's tacos and burritos. I have, ever since, been 100% comfortable dealing in whole poultry.

I have come to realize, however, that many of our customers have not ever purchased a whole bird before. They prefer parts. I don't blame them (or you, if you're here reading). Thank you all for supporting the farm. But besides raising super clean, juicy, and delicious birds on pasture, I can help you free yourself from chicken pieces that slide off styrofoam packaging and into your dinner.

Local food safety regulations prohibit me from demonstrating this live with my current license. I think. The following videos probably do a better job anyway, seeing as these people are professionals and I have a much more "gosh-this-knife-is-dull" hacking motion to my chicken quartering.

Enjoy learning something new! And then please buy more chickens. . .$12.50 each or, for a limited time, 2 for $20.00! Order ahead or just drop by the market booth.

Also, this, for you boneless skinless breast folks. I do like a good fried chicken strip sometimes too. I get you.

And now I want to listen to some Freddy Fender. This was a favorite chicken picking song of mine. I recommend it for you as well.

Much love,
Little Farm

Summer Fun

2011-07-07T16:42:00.003-06:00

Another long blogging absence. I miss it so. What can I say? We're swamped with hoeing and seeding and harvesting and delivering and all. I'm going to stop apologizing for not having enough time for everything. I'm pretty sure you all understand.

Anyway, I've recently been thinking a lot about the ways that farming has taken over our lives. . .the wonderful ways that is true and the utterly overwhelming ways as well. I lie in bed exhausted but unable to sleep, muscles aching, and contemplate the dirt that has permanently stuck itself into the lines in my hands, and my toenails, and everywhere, really.

I try to remember the last time I applied any sort of make up at all. It might have been Christmas.

I try to remember the last time I didn't look like Charlie Brown's friend Pig Pen. It was likely Mother's Day.

I try to remember the last time I scrubbed the bathroom. Okay. That did happen last week. Not too shabby there.

I wonder how we can find a way to keep this up and also preserve our family time. We need to find some balance. Like, quick. Turns out you can still be a workaholic even if you work at home. And it has similar effects on your kids even if they are home with you while you are working all the time instead of being in day care.

Recently I've also been pondering how long our bodies can keep up this work. My forearms and elbows are starting to really feel the strain from the repetitive lifting of 5 gallon water buckets on a daily basis. I feel old. My joints hurt. 5 gallons of water is surprisingly heavy. And lo and behold, my blogger/farmer friend Courtney (who I've never met in person, but suspect I would get along swimmingly with), wrote about that very thing over at her blog this week.

Turns out, there is such a thing as too much farming. There is also no such thing as "finishing the farm work". So, we're working that out.

One thing we've also been working out is how to make the kids feel like summer is the treat of a time it should be for them, and not just the drudge it can be when your parents make you work inappropriately long hours. Also, we've been seeing some signs of stress and heightened emotion in both of them (clearly, we have not done a great job of hiding our own feelings from them. . .we have vowed to do better), and my sister, an Occupational Therapist, recommended swimming as therapy.

It means I get less farming done. That's true. But we've been making time to take them swimming two or three times a week. And you know something? It works for them and it works for me. I've only recently (as in this year) joined the ranks of mothers who get to sit under a shade umbrella and look at a magazine while their children swim independently.

I like it. I like it a lot.

Look at all that pavement between me and the kids. I get in and play for a while, and then I sit and read Runner's World (a relic from back when I had such a hobby) or Country Living and raise the occasional eyebrow to make sure my little blondies are safe and happy and sharing the snorkel nicely.

My sister is a genius. It is therapy for everyone.

The other thing that happened this weekend was the Greeley Stampede. Some of you may remember that our kids have been put to work for a dollar an hour, and that their first goal was to earn unlimited ride wristbands at the Stampede carnival. And they did, like, weeks ago, earn the $25 each. And then they had to wait for the carnival to happen, and with the waiting came a certain reluctance to continue to be so helpful on the farm.

I think we're over that now. We took them in to the carnival on Sunday night, and for seven hours they raced around that carnival like a couple of giggling loons. They must have gone down the super slide 20 times. They kept asking, amazed, "You mean I can go on this ride as many times as I want?! Really?!"

They woke up the next day asking for more work to do, since our next goal is a family day at Water World in Denver. I'm not sure I'm thrilled that my every request for help is now answered with "Can I get paid?", but I'll take it, I guess, since they are super helpful and labor is tight.

We're having another rough year so far on the farm. We're hopeful that will turn around in a couple of weeks. One thing I've learned, though, is that it doesn't help to let your priorities get all out of whack. And it happens so easily, without you even thinking about it, that work becomes the only thing you do.

But from now on, and forevermore:

Kids first.

Farm second.

Summer fun really is the key to happiness.

What's Yellow and Smells Like a Banana?

2011-06-29T20:51:00.015-06:00

Another guest post from Brother Zac, or I guess in this case -- Uncle Zac.

I am in the process of purging a lot of things that no longer work for me, which means digging through huge piles of paper and throwing out old bank statements, tearing up old hand-written plans that are no longer possible or wanted, and keeping only what remains important. And I have a scanner that I am not afraid to use.

And I find a lot of things like this:

How it works, see, is that every now and then, I get an envelope addressed to Uncle Zac. And in it, usually, are stories (written by Simon and Madzie) about a character called the fart monkey. Above is page one. Below is page two:

(Yes. My niece wished me a "fart birthday.")

Apparently, I have nobody to blame but myself for "Fart Monkey." He's a character I've been given credit for inventing. I don't remember doing so, but if this is true, then I really should have worked on both his name and his intention -- which seems to be just to fart. Occasionally he's a blood-thirsty rat bastard who can be found "coming to get" people or eating them. But mostly -- that monkey farts.

All these papers I've been throwing out lately have made it clear that I have, with varying degrees of success, been a lot of things to a lot of people: a partner, a friend, an employee. There has never been anything more important or reliable -- than being an Uncle. It is the thing I love best about being any of the things that I am. Or have been. Or ever will be.

I don't know how to love these children more than I do. But every time they mail me, I think, "oh, that's how."

So. Fart Monkey. Yes. That's a thing now.

Ain't No Time For Looking Pretty When You Have to Slop the Pigs

2011-06-29T19:46:00.004-06:00

My aunt, last year, got me an apron with a classic picture of some rough looking Dust Bowl era ladies and this as a caption. Ain't no time for looking pretty when you have to slop the pigs. It's so true. The picture here shows my best efforts at property beautification over the past few years. I've turned the front of our corral fence into a perennial bed. . .with a few extra asters and amaranth from our annual operation, of course. I've planted just a few things each year, moved the roses that came with the property over, and generally just had to be very patient with myself, since I tend to ignore the bed.

Until this year, when I have kept it weeded and planted and nice. It has never looked quite so good as this.

Enter the piglets. They are small little guys, and try as I might to keep them happy in their pasture pen while we wait for the pasture crops to come in, they are very curious little rooters.

And today was near 100 degrees and bright and sunny and miserable on the farm. And this little wallow, made by the soaker hoses I so optimistically ran on my lovely perennial/annual beds this morning, must have been irresistible. It is now full of tiny little cloven footprints.

To be fair, I made a wallow in the pig pen, as well. But you know what they say about the mud being muddier on the other side of the fence.

When I came home from getting our A/C recharged in the subaru this morning, all five piglets were happily rooting up and munching on the irises I so painstakingly dug and divided and tended this spring. I had about 25 in that bed. There are maybe 10 left.

They got into the other bed as well, eating about 2/3s of the asters that were just starting to blossom up. Amazingly, they left the girl's third grade cabbage alone. Every third grader in Colorado, maybe America, was given a cabbage start this past year. My girl's looks beautiful, don't you think?

Why wouldn't the pigs have eaten that? I mean, I'm glad they saved us the heartbreak by leaving it be, but there really is just no telling sometimes.

The fact that they rooted around in my perennial beds was nothing compared to the fact that I had to round them up and get them back in the pen. I was alone on the farm. . .no kids. . .no help. All I could think about was the advice my Uncle Frank gave me two years ago when we got our first pigs. "If they ever get out, you just make sure they don't get in the water. If they get into that pond, you'll never get 'em out."

If nothing else, the farm has certainly strengthened my faith. . .in God and in myself. When I saw the pigs were out, I went inside and changed out of my town clothes and started collecting my wits, because I had faith that I would be able to figure out how to catch those pigs and get them back in the pen by myself. I have developed a fair degree of trust in my own abilities. The world feels safer when you believe you can do things that you've never done before, like wrestle five piglets back into their pen.

Me against five piglets. I was ready.

God must have been watching, because just then my neighbor showed up to see if I had any work for him. He's 15, and a good worker, and I said "Why yes, let's start by rounding up those pigs and getting them back to the pen." And 45 minutes later, we had.

The world feels safer when you believe that you can help yourself solve problems, or, failing that, you believe that help will arrive from the mysterious spiritual dispatch in the sky.

Who cares about looking pretty when you get to go catch pigs?

Nine Years

2011-06-23T22:02:00.003-06:00

This girl is growing up quick. She turned nine on Father's Day, which was interesting symmetry.

She's been alive for nine years; therefore, Matt has been a Daddy for nine years.

We have been parents for nine years.

Nine years is hard for me to wrap my head around. It goes so fast. I used to hate moms that said that to me when the kids were tiny, "Cherish these days. . .they go by so fast." They always used to say it at the worst times, like when I was in the grocery store with leaking breasts and two screaming children under 3, both of whom had poop in their pants. You know, the times when you really just wish the kids would just grow up already, and all I would be thinking is, "Not fast enough, sister."

I hated those ladies. And now I am one of those ladies. Ah well. Live and learn.

Having Father's Day and the girl's birthday on the same day made me wistful and nostalgic, so I spent some time in the photo albums. Here are some memories of Matty's early days as a Daddy. Looking at them made me fall in love with him all over again, just as I do every time I see him with the kids. His parenting style is best described as kind, steady, and goofy, which fits our kids perfectly and is the perfect foil to my parenting style, which can best be described as scatterbrained, nervous, and weird.

Case in point, the kids named one of the barn kittens "Back to the. . .back to the beat ya'll", because when they were small, Matt would sing that to them, and he taught them to answer back, in their sweet little toddler voices, "Down with the sound so sweet ya'll".

Those of you who went to college in the 90s know exactly where these lyrics come from, because this song was probably played at every party you went to. Or at least, it was in our little corner of the world.

Kind and goofy. Borderline inappropriate. That's my Guy with Beer.

Is there anything sweeter or more endearing than a man who loves his kids?

No. There's not. Especially if he's your man and he loves your kids.

Here, my boys are watching a parade under a shady tree on a lazy October Saturday morning in 2006.

Here, Daddy was on petting zoo duty at the corn maze. It's funny to me that we used to have to go to petting zoos to allow the children to interact with farm animals. This was in 2005. We had no idea we'd be where we are today.

We were just city people gone out touristin' around the countryside. Funny, no?

Here, Daddy shines as a rock climbing coach for the girl. Pretty soon he'll be coaching our boy right into the Tour de France.

Nine happy years. Goodness gracious.

So Much Good Help

2011-06-21T21:49:00.007-06:00

Something wonderful has happened on the farm this year.

I mean, lots of wonderful things have happened on the farm this year. We live and laugh and spend our lives here. The farm is the home of a (usually) very happy family. But there is one wonderful thing in particular that amazes me every time I think about it. And that is the crew of dedicated, skilled, consistent volunteers we seem to have attracted this year.

Three women, in particular, come every week, more than once, to help seed and weed and scheme. They weed with me, and they seed with me, and when I have to leave the field to cook dinner or spend time with the kiddos, they often just stay out there and keep after it all on their own. They are wonderful people, and I don't have permission from any of them to write about them here, so I will keep things anonymous. Also, I will not post pictures, even though they are all lovely people.

I can't not write about them, though, because they are an incredibly interesting bunch.

Our first volunteer is a woman we call our CSU intern since she is a student at CSU. We call her an intern even though she is unpaid and is also not interning for credit, which technically makes her a volunteer. She might want to have a u-pick farm of her own someday, so she mostly just wants to learn. We mostly teach her to learn from all our millions of mistakes and to not be like us at all, but she is still coming, three afternoons a week, so it seems to be working out so far. She is just about to graduate. She has her whole adult life ahead of her, and it's fun to relive those days of fear and anticipation and excitement and uncertainty through her. It doesn't seem that long ago that Matty and I were in that same position, but actually, it was fairly long ago now. We're getting old and creaky. We can tell by how fast the advil is starting to disappear.

We love our intern. I have found it's fun to ask her to taste random things from the field, like bok choi flowers, just to see how she reacts. She is not always our most willing taster, and she always looks at me carefully to see if I am joking or not. I never am, but I generally have to take the first bite to convince her. I know that I am the weirdo for eating that stuff, and that she is absolutely justified in her reluctance, but it's still fun.

Our second volunteer is a chef-in-training and recently certified butcher who may someday want to open a farm-to-table restaurant and is eager to learn the growing side of food. She comes out after her baking shift three or four days a week to help pull weeds or irrigation tubes or harvest spinach or whatever. Her husband is out of town for the summer, so she usually stays for dinner and a game of softball with the kids, who adore her. It's hard not to adore her, as she always shows up with something delicious that she made in her culinary arts classes (Here's a giant container of hummus for you guys! Here's six fresh baked loaves of bread! Want some pork green chili?), works outrageously hard in the field, and then thanks us for "letting her come work". She and her husband have become good friends of ours. . .practically part of the family, and we are very happy (and lucky) to know them.

And last but absolutely not least is a woman who in the interest of confidentiality I will call "the doughnut lady", since she is exploring the possibility of opening a doughnut business and is currently working on her recipes. She is responsible for the five trays of doughnuts you see in the picture, and we repay her kindness in helping us in the field (and in a million other mental health kind of ways) by sampling and critiquing her fresh homemade doughnuts. She is passionate and hard-working and full of excellent ideas. . .and again, she has become a good friend of ours.

We all had a good laugh the other day when the doughnut lady told the CSU intern that she would have to try some of the doughnuts in the house, and the CSU intern looked at her very carefully to try and discern whether she was joking around or not. Later, I saw the CSU intern carry an armful of doughnuts to the back of her car. . .but all the bok choi flowers seemed to still be in place. Curious, no?

All this on top of the lovely customers who were all so very understanding and supportive about the hail and the tiny little distributions.

Clearly, it's a rough life we lead out here, where interesting people show up, work in the field for a while, and then practically spoon-feed us delicious things they've made from scratch. We're spoiled rotten, is what we are.

I hope we're giving enough back. . .to these wonderful women, and to the world in general. . .to deserve all this. I'm going to work harder to make sure that I am.

Vegetables Are What Food Eats

2011-06-20T20:51:00.003-06:00

Family really is the most important thing, and I am blessed with a large bunch of loveable wise guys for aunts and uncles and cousins. . .on both sides.

This is a t-shirt. My uncle got it for me in the Christmas t-shirt exchange, but I only just received it when my aunts came out in June. My uncle lives in Florida, and he sent it to my aunt's house in Ohio, and it arrived the day after I left there to go to Pennsylvania.

Yes. I'm surprised it got to me at all too. It took a lot of effort on the part of a lot of people. I appreciate it.

I love it. Even though I'm a vegetable farmer. And I probably can't wear it to farmers markets. I think it's awesome. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

That t-shirt is actually a shockingly accurate diagram of how we raise our hams. Especially in the week after our hailstorm, when maybe 95% of our existing greens in the field had to be cleaned and trimmed and fed to the chickens and pigs, I was happy to add that little bit of levity to the otherwise fairly demoralizing task.

"See? It's funny," I pleaded with myself. "It's just like that dumb shirt. That's funny. It's also sustainable. No waste here on the farm. It's why you started raising pigs to begin with. You can feel good about that."

I find that I can convince myself of the funny, or at least the tiny bright side, in just about any situation. It's what keeps me keeping on.

Here, our young piglets are dining on holey, shredded spinach and lettuce leaves, bolted bok choi, and spongy radishes.

Pigs get a bad reputation. They are surprisingly picky eaters. They don't, for example, eat radishes, but they do eat the greens off the radishes. Matt's dad once sent us an article he ran across from a National Geographic in the 1970's about the 234 varieties of vegetation a pig would not eat. Fascinating stuff.

Pasture-raised pigs can struggle with iron deficiency when they're young, so all these greens are the perfect diet for a young hog. It'll keep them all pink and perky.

Greens will keep you all pink and perky, too, if you eat enough of them. Head down to the local farmers market and buy yourself some. Especially you, Uncle John. You especially. Eat some spinach.

Some Things Stay the Same

2011-06-16T21:56:00.004-06:00

We're re-reading Farmer Boy from the Little House series at family story time. It's been a few years since we read it to our kids, and we thought it would have more meaning now, and we were right. The book is a love story about farming, really, and the boy keeps exclaiming, "We're in this part!" whenever the book talks about farmers as a general category of people.

The girl planted pumpkin seeds barefoot the other night, just after we read the chapter about how much Almanzo liked the feeling of the soil between his bare toes in late spring.

We all love this book.

And I thought I'd post an excerpt from one of my favorite sections for you all. Laura Ingalls Wilder is the author, of course. In my version, this is from page 182-184.

"Almanzo, do you know what this is?"
"Half a dollar," Almanzo answered.
"Yes. But do you know what half a dollar is?"
Almanzo didn't know it was anything but half a dollar.
"It's work, son," Father said. "That's what money is; it's hard work.". . .

. . .Father asked, "You know how to raise potatoes, Almanzo?"
"Yes," Almanzo said.
"Say you have a seed potato in the spring, what do you do with it?"
"You cut it up," Almanzo said.
"Go on, son"
"Then you harrow-first, you manure the field, and plow it. Then you harrow, and mark the ground. And plant the potatoes, and plow them, and hoe them. You plow and hoe them twice."
"That's right, son. And then?"
"Then you dig them and put them down cellar."
"Yes. Then you pick them over all winter; you throw out all the little ones and the rotten ones. Come spring, you load them up and haul them here to Malone, and you sell them. And if you get a good price, son, how much do you get to show for all that work? How much do you get for half a bushel of potatoes?"
"Half a dollar," Almanzo said.
"Yes," said Father. "That's what's in this half-dollar, Almanzo. The work that raised half a bushel of potatoes is in it."
Almanzo looked at the round piece of money that Father held up. It looked small, compared with all that work."

Amazing.

A Letter To Our Customers

2011-06-15T22:37:00.004-06:00

This is a picture of the farm at 8:00 a.m. yesterday morning. We took some pretty heavy rain and damaging hail in the bizarre thunderstorm that seemed to develop right overhead rather than blow in from the west, as they normally do. It was quite shocking, actually. . .I mean, when do we ever get hail at 8:00 a.m.?!

The bad news is that the field greens look really ugly, turned in 10 minutes time from lovely dinosaur kale and spinach plants to shredded little scraps of leaves. The good news is that all the broccoli, cabbages, tomato plants, and other young seedlings seem to have survived. They are likely set back, but they are still upright and green, which we are taking as a small consolation. Turns out, we should have gone ahead and harvested the greens young for you all last week. But of course, who knew? Farming in Colorado is like that. . .like Vegas, sometimes, and we lost the bet with nature on this one.

Those of you who have been with us for a few years know what we do now. But for all of you new members, here is what we will promise to do:
We promise not to wallow in discouragement and frustration but to get right back to the business of growing your food. Know what we did after this storm? We took a break and went to the pool for a couple of hours. And then we came home and planted seeds for three hours in the suckery mud. It’s an act of hope and defiance, to plant seeds the same day you get hammered by hail. It felt good.
We promise that this coming Saturday and Monday, we will try to deliver what we can salvage from these shredded greens and radishes. If we can harvest anything, it will look very ugly, but it will still be delicious. The deliveries will be tiny for a few weeks, but we will bring you everything we can.
We promise that we are increasing the numbers of beet, carrot, lettuce, string bean, and other succession plantings so that we can give you more produce when we do have it in an effort to make up for these early weeks. We are ordering frost covers and extra seed to make an earnest effort toward season extension. We will grow as much as we can for as long as we can make it happen.
We promise that we truly appreciate the trust and faith that you have shown us by joining our CSA, and we take our responsibility to you very seriously. We will do everything we can to be sure that you get as much value as possible this season, no matter what wacky storms or other looming catastrophes are in the cards for us this season. Please, have patience. If you want reassurance, come visit. . .I think the sight of the hearty survivor seedlings stretching out in the sunshine might set your mind at ease.

If you have any questions, please call or email. We will harvest as planned Friday morning, and I will send a Farm Friday update that afternoon/evening. It might be just the radishes. But we’ll do our best.

Love always,
Little Farm

Country Johns

2011-06-12T21:01:00.005-06:00

I'm recycling this picture because I love it and because when I think about it (which I have had exactly zero time to do) I really love the metaphor of playing the cards you're dealt in farming. In life, too, but for me, farming is life now. We dealt ourselves the hand we're playing now. And playing it we are. Boy howdy, are we ever playing the hand of the farm this year. We're playing the stinky juices out of this hand.

We've pretty much bet everything on this hand. We'll let you know how it turns out.

Also I haven't taken any pictures of the farm in a long time. I will tomorrow. Really.

We hired five temporary laborers to come to the farm last Friday and we learned some stuff. Most importantly, we learned that in a manual labor situation like that, we wear people out really fast. We tend not to notice the work so much anymore. I remember my first few years of farming, the downing of advil, the sleeping with heating pads,the screaming, tired muscles.

I don't really notice that stuff too much anymore. Then again, I have giant muscled man arms now, so that probably helps.

I hope not too many of our temp labor guys, who were for the most part earnest and hard-working young men, needed a heating pad after they came to our farm. But they probably all did.

In related news, we learned that the first five hours with temp labor is going to be far more productive than the final three.

In other related news, we got 1 million of the 3 million things on our list done and are hoping we can get a few of those guys to come back and help us again this week. It was totally worth it.

We also learned that it costs just the same to get a porta-john for one day as it does to have it for a month. . .including weekly service! So there is a porta-john in our corral now that will be serviced every Wednesday. The kids are so excited about this. They have actually by-passed the available indoor bathroom to go and use the porta-john in the corral. They say things like, "Our porta-potty isn't as disgusting as everyone else's. It smells so nice in there!"

I love the porta-john for my own reasons, most importantly is that it came from a company called "Country Johns" and has a giant sticker with that name printed on the front. I like companies with a sense of humor.

Country Johns. It's really funny. And it means that I didn't have five temp labor guys using the bathroom in my house all day.

Which of course is another reason I love the porta-john. It has always been a little weird that any casual farm visitor or volunteer worker or customer or whoever has had to use the bathroom inside our house. Honestly, it's tiny, our bathroom. It's maxed out with the four people that already use it daily. I don't like sharing it at all with people I don't know that well.

Because of the County John in my corral, I no longer have to ask strangers if they need to use my bathroom.

I no longer have to escort them in there to make sure my children have left a clean bowl and that nobody's dirty undies are on the floor.

I no longer have to make them sign a waiver in case they trip on the muddy boots, piles of dirty laundry, stacks of messy dishes, or the pee-stained beds of my incontinent dogs.

And I no longer have to be consistently embarrassed that people can see that we live like this during the farm season. I no longer feel compelled to explain that no, really, we aren't disgusting people, it's just that you didn't give me enough notice for me to clean up the house. . .

I never would have imagined when we bought this place that a porta-john contract was in my future.

But we somehow drew a "Country Johns" card, so we'll just add it to what's already in our hand and hold it while we see how the game develops.

Six Acres

2011-06-08T06:00:00.005-06:00

I am so sorry about not writing. For those of you who astonish and flatter and boost me up with the fact that you read so many trivial details of our lives on the farm and write supportive, funny, smart comments. . .I want you to know that I miss hearing from you all. Please don't think I take it for granted.

Thank God for that Zac, eh? He's really saving the blog with his plum pie and his nursery rhymes. I have discovered in the past few years that food is the most important way that I express my love for people, my love for the vast, beautiful world, and an essential way that other people make me feel loved. The fact that this seems to be true to some extent for my brother as well makes me feel even more connected to him.

I also miss writing the blog for myself. I have been mourning it, a little, this past week, because writing gives me perspective about the farm and allows me to hold onto to the barest small sliver of my former life as a soccer mom in a medium-sized hip little city. The hobbies and interests from that time in my life seem to have exploded into tiny pieces and scattered in the high plains winds and are now almost completely absent from my life. Except for writing, which has long been my favorite hobby. Until now, at least.

Anyway. This is a rambler. My heart isn't 100% in it tonight. All I can think about is that I have to go feed the chickens and it's getting dark and I can smell the damn thief of a skunk slinking around outside. Matt is out on the tractor, cultivating. I still have to collect and organize the 3000 seeds I have to sow tomorrow. And prepare for the irrigation installation all that will take.

Six acres.

I think I have finally found the tipping point of my life. . .the point at which all of the things I have just barely been keeping in balance for the past few years on the farm (the kids, the marriage, the house, the crops, the customers, the animals, and most relevant here, the blog) go so totally out of whack nutso that I have had to ignore a few of them (most relevant here, the blog, because I am doing my level best to not have it be the kids and the marriage) just to survive each day.

If I'm not careful, six acres will kill the blog. If I'm not careful, six acres might kill me. Four acres was busy and overwhelming. Six acres is utter chaos. Six acres is currently eating us alive. And it's not even all the way planted yet.

Of course, the planting is part of the problem, at the moment, in that I am doing a whole lot of it. As I am planting out first one, now almost two, and by the end of the week three full and two half full beds of 80 100 foot rows each, I wonder just who is going to manage and harvest all these eight giant beds of 80 100 foot rows each.

Is it me? Really? Me and my 6 year old boy and my 8 year old girl and sometimes when he isn't already working a 45 hour a week job my husband? Is that really our plan?

Because me and my 6 year old boy and my 8 year old girl just want to go to the pool every day. And I imagine that my husband would like at least an hour or so to himself each week in which he could drink a beer while not driving the tractor.

We're working on it. . .the work part, actually, we love. It's the never finishing that is hard to take at the end of each day.

I think this will pass. I think we'll get everything safely tucked in the ground and we'll keep up with the cultivation and the markets will go really well and we'll be happy campers here in a few weeks.

Six acres might kill the blog. But it can't, apparently, kill my tendency toward wild, unjustified bouts of optimism.

Why is that?

I think I need help. Farm labor, sure. But maybe also some sort of mental health professional that can help me learn the elusive art of realistic expectations of self.

Do you know of a mental health professional that offers these sorts of services in trade for cucumbers?

No?

Well. . .if you hear of anyone. . .

Love always,
Little Farm

Little Jack Horner

2011-06-07T13:36:00.001-06:00

Brother Zac. Writing for Claire once again. Hi, gang.

This week in my vegetable bucket, there arrived a fair amount of "seasonal fruits." Which means plums, apparently. And as is my fashion lately when I receive a pile of fruit I know I will not possible eat in the space of one week, I do what I think best: I make pie.

In this case, a plum pie. I would love to say it's an "old family recipe," but here's how I make things:

Step One. I take stock of all the ingredients I have. In this case it is plums and cherries. I have a lot of nectarines as well, but they are under-ripe and I've made that mistake before.
Step Two. I type "plum cherry pie" into google. It's like bibliomancy, but digital. And for food.
Step Three. I look at a lot of links on a page that looks like this.
Step Four. I wing it. I mix all these things into a bowl with about a 3/4 cup of flour and a cup of sugar and some nutmeg usually and some cinnamon. I'd use cardamom if some showed up at my house. Probably.
Step Five. I dump it into a pie crust I bought at Trader Joe's and I bake it. You can spend some time perfecting your pie crust, but Trader Joe's, no kidding, is probably going to do it better.

One of the things about baking that everyone has always told me is that baking requires precision. There have to be measurements, the correct time and temperature in your oven. You know, I've not yet found this to be true.

My oven is in need of calibrating. (Yes! I'm someone who knows that!) So I can pretty much cook everything at 520 degrees. Generally, I wait until the oven reaches about 400 and then I turn it off, and then back on again at some point before the alloted time is over. I use a lot of thermometers. Meat thermometers, the oven thermometer that hangs from the rack. I pretty much know who hot all the food I make is, all the time.

That I do this routinely on a weeknight surprises me. That it brings me great joy and a good deal of comfort surprises me even more.

Also, that whole "stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum." Just gross. But if you're going to make a plum pie, the nursery rhyme about that Simpleton Jack Horner...it's gonna get stuck in your head. My apologies for that.

It's Summer, Thus...

2011-06-04T20:08:00.004-06:00

Hi gang, it's me. Claire's brother. The city mouse. Here to contribute a few posts over the summer because as you can tell by the fact that the last post was "10 Things about Memorial Day," it's going to be a busy few months on the little farm.

Plus, you may be wondering how things have gone since a year ago when I climbed out of my cheeseburger hole and decided to start eating more vegetables. Well, I have some things to say about that, so we'll get to that. Also, I've been to the little farm a few times over the past few months and have some videos of Simon picking up the eggs, Madzie sharing some mad knowledge, and my sister feeding the (now dead) pigs.

So. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, you can follow the trip I took a few weeks back on my own travel-blog, "Little Red Vacation." It's a blog, so...start from the bottom.

10 Memorial Day Weekend Things. . .

2011-05-30T21:38:00.009-06:00

1. We felt grateful for freedom and sacrifice. And patriotic and proud.

2. Mom and Dad helped us clean our barn and then bought us dinner, which seemed like it should be the other way around. Every time we clean the barn, I am amazed at how much of the mess is just piles of recycling waiting around to actually be recycled. If you have curbside recycling where you live, take a moment to thank your lucky stars. It's a big deal. HUGE.

3. The field dried out enough by Saturday for us to cultivate with our new S-tines and it went well.

4. We lost still more chickens to whatever animal is eating them. We think it's the skunk, because mornings on the farm have been scented in that particular way. We cannot have this. This aggression will not stand. And that is why. . . .

5. . . .we went out tonight and bought our very first gun, a bolt action .22 rifle, and some wet cat food for baiting traps. I'm going to get my first shooting lesson tomorrow.

6. My friend Laura suggested that the rodent of unusual size in our ditch pond might be a mink. And I think she's right about that.

7. We had a giant, unexpected thunderstorm this afternoon. A real gully washer. We had to stop installing irrigation header lines and take refuge in the clean barn as waves of pea size hail alternated with waves of pounding, soaking rains. Tremendous lightning flashed and frighteningly loud thunder boomed.

8. While we waited in the barn and watched the hail and rain, we drank beer. Because if the season was going to go in the direction it looked like it was, we knew we'd be glad we'd started drinking. Except we didn't really drink the beers. We held our breath and willed the weather to stop and prayed, silently but fervently, that we would not lose our beautiful plants. I told Matt that if we lost our entire early season to hail for a second year in a row, I would happily sell him my half of the farm. Like, cheap.

9. We turned off the breaker to the electric lines that run through the conduit on our bridge when a flash flood brought so much debris and dry weed material down the ditch that we thought the bridge was going to go loose for sure. We dragged giant piles of weeds out of the ditch with hoes and rakes, and just in time, the rest of the weed plug broke free and water flow returned to normal.

10. And while we breathed heaving sighs of relief that everything survived. . .that it was all still intact. . .that the flood didn't overflow the ditch banks at all and that the hail didn't kill the plants, we turned around to see our joyful children leaping off the tires of an old junky trailer and bellyflopping into the giant mud puddles in our corral and knew that all was still right with the world.

All is still right with the world. I am so grateful for it all. Amen.

A New Buffet In Town

2011-05-26T11:37:00.006-06:00

It's us. We're the new buffet in town. We're serving young pasture raised broilers.

Yesterday morning, the corner of one of our pens was dug out just enough that some sly little paws could reach in and drag out some 3 week old chicks. We are 13 birds short in that pen (or somewhere around, since there's only so accurate you can be when counting identical broiler chicks on the move). There is not so much as a feather to be seen anywhere around the pen.

Yesterday afternoon, between 4 and 6 p.m., we saw the following potential diners within 100 yards of our pens.

One fat, happy skunk slinking through the veggie patch and down the ditch in broad daylight at 4:15 p.m. Brazen little stinker, don't you think?

One fat, happy fox, who chased our cat, Noodle, across the bridge about 5:30 p.m. There was no spirit in that chase. No sense of purpose. Noodle got away easily. I am happy about that, but it does point to the fact that the fox was likely just not really all that hungry.

Because he had been eating our chickens.

And also one fat, happy unidentifiable water rodent (of unusual size), likely a muskrat, swimming in the deep end of the ditch. The girl is convinced we have an otter. (Update. I just looked them up. Muskrats are herbivores, so if that's what that gross thing is, it's likely not the culprit. And it wouldn't be hanging out with a fox, that's for sure).

Apparently, the word is out that we are open for business. These critters are telling their friends. I'm having cartoonish nightmares where the skunk, the fox, and the muskrat are all crouched around the outside of the pen, and the skunk is George Clooney and he is reaching in and passing chickens to everyone, and they are all greasy pawed and smiley. In this dream, it is I, not the animals, who is having an existential crisis.

What the cuss, critters? I am about to be Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, all rolled up in one very annoyed farmer. This is the first day of my life that I've ever considered I may need to own a rifle.

Can I just say that we've never had issues with predators getting into broiler pens until this year, when we decided to take the cash that could have paid down 25% of our farm debt and invest it in the infrastructure for a retail food license. There. I said it. I don't feel better.

Cuss. Cuss. Cuss.

And again, CUSS.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Thoughts On Child Labor

2011-05-25T06:40:00.003-06:00

I don't know if I've mentioned this (okay, of course I've mentioned this, but maybe I haven't emphasized it enough), but we've gone all in this season. We've increased the amount of land in cultivation by about 60%. We've taken over the entire 20 acres, so what isn't in production this year will need to be mowed and tended. Starting June 4th, we'll be doing two Saturday farmers markets every week. . .Matt at one, me at the other. Our CSA has grown, grown, grown. We're raising an outrageous number of chickens. We're growing an outrageous number of sunflowers. We're planning an outrageous number of vegetables to go out to local school districts. We're implementing a food safety plan and are going to get a 3rd party audit later this season.

We're in deep this season. Deeper than ever before, which is really saying something. I remember last year during the season waking up every morning and having to convince myself that I could manage the farm at the size it was. "But this is it," I said. "We can't get any bigger than this without hiring some help. This is the limit."

We haven't hired any help. Matt is (probably, maybe) going to drop one day a week at work, and I am not going back to teaching in the fall. So there's that. But it's not enough.

And that's where these hooligans come in. We need them to start working more than they play, and seeing as they are only 6 and 8, we needed to make a plan that would make that happen with a minimal amount of kicking and screaming and whining and complaining. We learned this winter that giving them a salary (most people call it an allowance) for doing things like collecting and washing eggs every day worked pretty well as far as motivation went.

But I'm a little uncomfortable with the kids having so much random cash sitting around. The girl is actually quite good with money. She keeps track of it, always has some when she wants it, and only blows a tiny bit of her stash on candy each week. The boy's dresser drawers, toy box, and pockets are full of dollar bills and nickels. He can never find his money when we go to the store, and when we can, he tends to spend it all on push-ups and airheads and hot wheels cars.

I did recently convince him that he should consider buying his push-ups in boxes at the grocery store rather than spending a dollar each at the feed store counter. He has trouble with that sort of delayed gratification, but he is old enough to understand that 12 for $4 is better than 4 for $4.

We sat down with the kids and talked about Boyles Family Farms being a family business, and that we needed their help, and that we were ready to negotiate an hourly wage. Their little ears perked up, and we went over the terms of payment, which are as follows:

1. Workers must complete tasks with kindness, patience, happiness, and efficiency. Whiners and complainers will be asked to go play and will lose their earning opportunity for the day.

2. Workers must follow directions exactly as they are given. Any changes or improvements to the process have to be approved by the farm managers (a.k.a. Mommy or Daddy).

3. For each hour worked following the the above guidelines, each worker will receive one whole dollar.

4. Wages will be held by the farm managers until an appropriate time and place for spending such wages arises.

We spent a bit of time negotiating what might constitute an appropriate time and place for spending wages, and I like what we've come up with. First, the kids are going to save up for unlimited ride wristbands at the Greeley Stampede carnival because their parents are usually too cheap to buy more than one or two rides worth of tickets. After that, the kids will save for half the cost of admission to Elitch Gardens or Water World in Denver. And after that, they will save for half the cost of ski passes for winter. If they save enough, Matt and I will match them and we will have hours of family fun.

We put this "new deal" into effect last Friday. Each child has already earned half a wristband helping transplant seedlings and move the chickens. If they get grumpy, which happens, and I tell them to go play somewhere off the clock, which has happened, they generally say, "No. No! I want to earn more money."

They are the cheapest and the sweetest labor around. They just might save our season. Also, I think they are getting a fair deal, considering their ages.

The farm will always work better if we can keep it family. I know that's true. And as our family gets older and stronger and smarter about the farm, I can only hope that things will get easier. For now, I enjoy the company, even if the kids aren't making things go all that much faster.

Pasturing the Broilers

2011-05-24T12:31:00.005-06:00

Our first batch of broiler birds had some problems. We were trying to push them through too early to have birds at the early season markets, and as it turns out, our system just doesn't support that very well. The wind and cold were stressful on the birds. They are very small little fryers. So small that we have to charge a bit less for some of them.

But we ate a few of the shrimpy little guys last night, and let me tell you, they're still delicious. Still a little disappointing, but we're not going to let it get us down. Especially since the second batch is just over three weeks old already and looks healthy and happy and normal size. During warmer months, we take the birds out of our brooder and put them in the pasture pens at about two weeks, but since it's still a bit chilly, we let these ones stay in there for three and feather out a bit better.

We had been waiting for nice weather to come along, since you have to try to minimize stress. . .and taking birds out of a nice, protected brooder situation and out into a raging thunderstorm or even cold rain is not the way to do that. This past Sunday morning dawned warm and sunny, so we moved the chicks to pasture.

Raising this many more birds has meant that Matt and his dad have spent plenty of time this past spring building more pasture pens. Before we moved the birds to the field, we had to move the pens out there. Also we had to scrub and sanitize all the feeders and waterers, so while I worked on that project, Matty recruited some other laborers to man the hand truck.

. Once we dragged Little Miss Sunshine into it. . .

. .we also had her sidekick, Joe Cool, on the job. They turned out to be a good crew.

They wobbled all three pens out into the field in the manner shown here, slow and steady, through the corral, over the bridge, and up the road, with only a little help from me.

With the pens in place, we loaded the chicks from the barn into the back of the van, and then sorted them into the pens. Each pen has about 65-70 birds. Once the last pen is finished this week, we will take it down to about 50 birds per pen.

You should have seen these birds go crazy. The pasture of oats, field peas, canola and sudan grass that we're growing for them to eat is not up yet, but they were scratching the tiny weeds right up out of the ground and eating the white roots like they were the finest meal they'd ever had. And when one caught a bug? Chaos. Wild chases. Fighting. They are currently in chick heaven.

Here is what the pens look like now, all lined up on the western edge of the field. We'll start moving them every day to fresh weeds and bugs, and we ought to be able to finish these birds on the rye grass in the pasture mix.

We normally grow the standard Cornish Rock broiler breed, which finishes in 8 short weeks. The fact that these birds have been bred to finish their entire life cycle so quickly makes them prone to all sorts of problems. . .bum legs, heart attacks. . .no matter how well they are raised. These little guys are slow growing reds. . .still a meat breed, but meant to finish in 12 weeks, and supposedly less prone to the health issues of the Cornish Rocks. We're giving them a try to see how they taste, but the truth is, the longer you let a bird scratch around on pasture, the tougher the meat gets, so we're not super optimistic that these will make an acceptable alternative to the regular broilers. But we've become used to the idea that life on the farm is a series of mini science expeiments, and we like science, so we're experimenting.

I hope this batch goes better than the last. We get 225 more chicks (in the back of the van) this week!

Hen Update

2011-05-19T12:35:00.006-06:00

These aren't hens. These are the raspberry plants I weeded the other day. You'll just have to trust me that they are important to the story.

I posted a while ago about the perplexing problem that we were having with the hens. They were off their lay, we didn't know why, and we were trying a number of things like supplementing feed with hay and letting them out to free range. And after all that, two of them took a turn and had to be put into the sick bay. And sadly, we lost one.

This made me nervous, based on my observations of the flock. I mean, I don't believe in the very common animal husbandry practice of giving medicine to healthy animals so that they don't get sick. Especially now that humans have to suffer through at least 3 weeks of a miserable sinus infection before anyone will give them a prescription because we're worried about resistance. But if the animals are sick, I absolutely believe you have to treat them, with medication if necessary, even if your customers might not want the product anymore. There's no reason to let the girls suffer, after all. In order to treat the problem I had to know what it was, so I called the vet hospital at CSU and talked to the poultry improvement people, and they told me to bring her on up there for a necropsy so that we could be sure what was going on.

It turns out she had a stuck egg, which is very common but not treatable (or preventable). I am sad that it turned out that way for her. However, this was in a way good news, because it also means that they did not find any sort of infectious disease that needed to be treated in the entire flock. They suggested that I might treat them just in case; based on the positive results I was seeing with the ranging and some concerns about the lack of research on how long antibiotics might persist in the eggs, I decided against it.

The eggs are safe to eat. The flock is healthy. And all the other hens have responded happily to their newfound freedom and the resulting nutritional boost.

The fewer eggs each day plot has also thickened, in that we have noticed some evidence of egg eating (which chickens sometimes do. . .it's a bad habit that is hard to break once it starts). Upon investigation (interrogation?), it turns out that our kids, who have been collecting and washing the eggs every day to earn their allowance, had discovered that if they found a cracked egg they could drop it on the floor of the pen and give the hens a delightful snack.

It wasn't entirely their fault. We didn't foresee this particular problem, so we never specifically said, "whatever you do, don't feed the eggs to the chickens". We all have it straight now, but it is certainly affecting the number of eggs we collect in a day.

The solution is that starting tomorrow, now that the kids are out of school, they will be collecting eggs every hour on the hour to reduce the chances that the hens will crack them open and eat them. If there is a way to break the habit, that is it. We have about 2 weeks before egg deliveries start, so we're really hoping that we can get this under control by then.

In the meantime, I am very grateful for a healthier flock free ranging around the field, seen here scratching and devouring some kind of weird grub that Matt and I found in our perennial crops that neither of us could identify but both were a bit worried about.

When we saw them, we said, "Uh.Oh. What are these?"

When the hens saw them, they said, "Yeehaw, Daisy, what are these?" And between the grubs and the green weeds I no longer have to worry about their nutrition.

Neither, I hope, do I have to worry about those weird grubs that were in my perennials.

Often, what you think is a problem ends up actually being a solution to a problem you didn't know you had.

Yeehaw, Daisy, you eat those grubs all up, y'hear?

Taking Pigs To The "Processor"

2011-05-18T19:38:00.003-06:00

The title is, of course, a euphemism. Taking animals for processing, as we did with the pigs on Monday and will do with the first batch of chickens tomorrow, means driving them in to certain death and evisceration.

I don't mean to be crass. But it's real. And I think those of us who choose to eat these animals should not take for granted what it means to do so.

Love ribs? Thank a pig for giving you hers.

Or something like that. Our dinnertime grace, which is said each night by our children, often sounds something like this:

"Dear Lord. Thank you that I at least only got in trouble four times today. And thank you for the pork chops from Ruby the pig. Amen."

I love these animals. I will, as we eat the bacon that comes from them, thank French Fry and Ketchup, by name, each time. The actual act of taking the animals to the processor, though, is not an emotional time for me. I don't feel guilty about it. My animals have very happy lives that allow them to express their true animal natures, and from the time they arrive, I consider them food, not pets.

I have such a lack of emotion about the process that I forget that other people sometimes do. One day last year I told a customer that we had taken the pigs in that morning. He asked me whether it was hard to do. And I said right away, laughing, that yes, getting four 280 pound pigs into the back of a 1989 cargo van took some serious feats of strength and clever maneuvering.

And he looked at me strangely.

And I looked back at him, momentarily confused.

And then I realized that he meant was it hard emotionally, and I stopped laughing and said, "Oh! You meant am I too attached to take them? Not really."

And he looked at me strangely, and I changed the subject.

These pictures of the process are courtesy of Dick and Bonnie Boyles, who got up early to help document how we get pigs from the farm to the processor and also helped me remember my fairly complicated cutting order. You see here that we have learned a thing or two since our first disastrous attempt at loading pigs. . .the most important lesson being that you must, absolutely, build a ramp that they cannot get themselves turned around in. If they get themselves facing away from that truck, you're sunk for sure.

One lesson that we can't seem to learn is to forget all hope that this will be an easy process. Every time we load pigs, we get out the eggs and try to lure them calmly up the ramp.

It never works. Pigs are too smart for that crap. Pigs will never follow me up the ramp because I have an egg in my hand, even though they like eggs a lot.

They see right through me. It's creepy.

Do you know of a way to make this process less stressful for all involved? We've spent a lot of time trying to think of a way to make this process less stressful for all involved, but inevitably, we end up like this:

We just have to get all up in their business and push them up that ramp. We have to try to ignore their unsettling, terrified squealing. Often, poop gets on us in places we'd rather not have poop on us.

If you're like me, and you probably are, and you'd rather not get poop anywhere on you, then you take the sidecar position.

It's true that then the photographer might take some very unflattering pictures of you. The sidecar position puts you at a terrible angle for photos.

If you're like me, and you probably are, you'd rather that than have poop on you.

Anyway, getting them into the van is usually the most difficult part. The processor unloads the pigs for you once you get there, and then picking them up, of course, is quite peaceful.

We call it Meat Christmas. And here is a Meat Christmas prayer.

"Dear Lord. Thank you for giving us the internet and critical thinking skills so that we could learn to ethically raise these animals. Thank you for the strength to push these pigs up into our van. Thank you for giving us these tremendous animals to raise for sustenance and good health. And above all, Lord, thank you for this delicious bacon from French Fry the pig. Amen."

The Rundown

2011-05-17T21:28:00.002-06:00

Just to reassure you, in case you thought I've been sitting around eating chocolate and watching T.V. since my last blog post, a million things have happened on the farm between that last post and this one.

There has been no sitting and sadly, no T.V. watching at all.

It's planting time, after all. We have planted a million tiny seedlings from the greenhouse into the field and are seeding more and more trays to fill up the empty greenhouse space. Our grow lights bit the dust and we had to scramble to order more because the plants that germinated in the dark are not very healthy. We took these smiling porkers to the processor. (Look how happy they look in the dawn's early light. They had no idea what was coming). We are almost through moving the perennials out of the old bed (because it's full of perennial weeds) into the new beds (and some into the landscaping). We've weeded the raspberries and the rhubarb and the grapes. I read my finals and posted my final grades and think maybe I am now finished with being a teacher and am officially a full-time farmer. We've installed new sprinklers in the field called "wobblers" (I love that name. Wobblers. It makes me think of Wallace and Grommit, though I can't specifically say why) which solved our major irrigation problem. Spring soccer has officially ended. School is out on Thursday.

We've spent every waking moment outside working. I have sometimes had to finish my chores before or during the process of getting the children ready for school, which makes me really very excited to not have to get them ready for school for a good long time, because doing the chores before I send them to school means exiting the house by 5:45 a.m.

You can't drink coffee while you're doing the chores, because you are mixing fertilizer and stirring up chick bedding and other such nastiness. It's a food safety and personal health issue.

And doing chores that early without coffee? That's just not my bag, food safety and personal health notwithstanding.

Rain tomorrow. More blogging to come.

Elation and Despair and Balance and Science

2011-05-11T10:19:00.000-06:00

Farming is one big (incredibly emotional) science experiment, and since I am more consistent as a blogger than I am as note-scrawler on Excel spreadsheets, our little blog has come to play an important role in the record keeping part of that experiment.

When did the hail knock our plants down last year? Why, May 15th. The equivalent of this coming Saturday.

When did we transplant tomatoes? Early June.

The blog archive is our official business record.

Sometimes using the blog to compare seasons is a fairly benign activity. Un-emotional. Objective. Scientific. Sometimes it's like that.

Just like sometimes there are days (blessedly, most of them) when you wake up feeling happy and content, knowing you are making progress through passionate dedication and good honest labor, toward the dream of being farmers. Full-time farmers. Full-time farmers who can stay on top of everything and still sit down to a home-cooked meal with their kids every night.

It's such a pleasant dream. It's worth a lot of the self-deprivation and lack of social contact and expenditure of savings that it has taken. On days when we wake up feeling happy and content and as though we are making progress, it is easy to believe that this will be our reality before we go broke or keel over dead from the sheer amount of good, honest labor it takes to build it all. And beyond that, when you believe the dream, there is so much joy in the pursuit of it all.

On happy and content days, this checking of the blog is a dangerous game. . .subjective. . .emotional. . .because it starts the doubt.

Why were our pea plants 4 inches tall this time last year when this year they haven't even germinated yet? I mean, yes they were destroyed by hail this time last year. But this year that wouldn't even matter because nothing is up in the field because of the drought. So we're behind despite our best efforts to push things early.

We've got problems. We can't manage it all. We're crazy to try to grow this much. I should get a teaching job. We could probably pay off all the farm debt in just a couple of years if we worked more off the farm. Of course, then we couldn't farm. But we'd probably have more time with the kids. Maybe that would be better.

Doubt. Doubt. Doubt.

Fear. Fear. Fear.

Elation and contentment turn to despair and frustration.

We had a moment of despair and frustration this weekend, when our sprinklers didn't work and it's going to cost $400 to make them work and even the drip will be lucky to run well so far north of our little pump and we live in a dust bowl and there has been almost no rain since October and we can't keep planting stuff if we have no way to water it and the greenhouse trays are starting to turn and Matt hardly saw the kids all weekend because he was working so much. . .

I'm sure you get the idea.

On days of despair and frustration the blog can be a blessing. For example, our field of 8 beds have been plowed, disced, drip tubed, re-bedded, and furrow cultivated. All that is missing are the header lines for the irrigation, and while this is no small task, it's only May 11th.

Last year on May 11th, I had just barely plowed 3 of our 5 beds and was only just forming rows. I could barely even drive the tractor.

At the end of May, we had not yet finished installing the drip tubes. This post, last year, was the first farm slogan that my brother asked for on a t-shirt. "Planning is stupid. So here is a picture of our broilers."

And also this year, I managed to get field cultivation and hand weeding and direct seeding finished in time to take advantage of the season's first (but please, God, not only) soaking rain. We've never before been so well-prepared in that way.

We will have pork and chickens for our first farmers markets.

This year, most of our greens and brassicas are still in the greenhouse, meaning that they are not delayed and are far ahead of last year's crops.

We added 24000 feet of row space to our operation, and we are still ahead of ourselves from last year. Way ahead, really. And we owe much of that to the tremendous effort from Matty's parents, who in the four weeks they've been here have helped us get ready.

I have learned through the years that farming is a constant walk on a tightrope, a thin, trembling cord of difference between elation and despair. We lean one way or the other, struggling all year long, arms flailing, sometimes desperate in the effort to keep our balance and our wits.

The miracle of the fact that we haven't fallen off completely is due to occasional objective scientific analysis of the issues, our lovely and dedicated customers, who make their own sacrifices and lifestyle changes to support us, and love. Love above all, I think.

Today, at least, after this particular analysis, elation has easily stomped out despair. Thank goodness.

Radishes and Other Tuesday Thoughts

2011-05-11T08:24:00.003-06:00

I did many things yesterday, most of them myself. Being alone for long periods of time with no music and nobody to talk to is usually quite nice as it allows my brain to wander. Here are some of the places I wandered to:

1. Do the French really eat French Breakfast Radishes for breakfast? I mean, I like a good radish, but not usually with coffee. Perhaps when the french breakfast radishes I planted today come up, I will try them once at 8 a.m., just to see.

2. If we changed the name of this radish to "Freedom Breakfast Radish", would we sell more at markets? Could we possibly convince people that eating Freedom Breakfast Radishes is an essential part of their patriotic duty?

3. Why are we so hung up on this "freedom" joke? It's so very 2003. Probably it's the versatility of the thing.

4. Who will they get to replace Steve Carrell on The Office? Have they already chosen someone and I just don't know it because I live in a tiny tiny bubble of planting time on the farm right now? Because Will Farrell is a funny guy and all, but it wasn't exactly a perfect fit.

5. If I get the furrow cultivation AND the direct seeding for the week done, will I scare the soaking rain forecasted for Wednesday away? Because often working hard to prepare for something like a rain storm seems to make the rain go away. At least this year. (Update: I did those things, and also weeded the grapes and my perennial beds at the house and planted the daylilies my neighbor gave me from her yard, and the rains still came! We are a very happy muddy little farm.)

6. My grades are due at 5 p.m. tomorrow, and I still haven't read the final exams. I'd rather plant seeds in the mud, honestly, or even move manure to the compost pile, but I should probably get on this.

7. If I won the lottery, I'd buy a few new pairs of work pants and a fancy pair of work boots from the feed store that are made for women instead of men with small feet and a set of prescription sunglasses that is just for working in the field and new tires for the tractor. And a million dollars worth of Starbucks.

8. What am I going to do if my barn cat doesn't come around in time for me to catch her and take her in to get spayed? Damn cats.

9. Should I get cubed pork roasts or ground pork when I take these pigs in on Monday? Hams or sausages? Will my cured meats be done for my first market day on June 4th? Am I going to sell all out of bacon in one week and then have a bunch of annoyed customers all season? Should I tell customers that the name of their pork is French Fry and Ketchup or will that gross them out?

10. I haven't watched T.V. (okay, except a few shows on hulu) for three months. If my father in law fixes the T.V. antenna for us before he leaves us next week, how much time will I waste this summer watching cooking shows on PBS? Do you think any of them will talk about how to prepare French Breakfast Radishes for breakfast?

Image from Wikimedia.

10 Ways to Know It's Spring on the Farm

2011-05-09T17:58:00.008-06:00

1. The cherry blossoms bloom. So will the plums and the apple tree and all sorts of gorgeous woody plants.

2. The farm children still go to school, but they do not learn things there. They watch movies and "do testing" and have field trips and generally get very squirrelly in preparation for their last day of school next week. Also they barely fit into the clothes that they wore on their first day last August.

3. We will inevitably be prepping the field and planting at the same time, because the field prep somehow never gets done in April as planned. There will be a farm planting list miles and miles long. We will alternate between getting caught up and being behind. We will learn to live with that because spring is a time for hope.

4. There will be a few scattered construction projects that we planned to finish over the winter that are still not done. Last year, it was the hoophouse. This year, it's the three new field pens for the outrageous number of chickens we're raising and also the brooder expansion which is for the same reason. These projects will take up the entire barn and will be in your way especially because you have so many trays to seed.

5. Impossibly cute food begins to appear everywhere you look and you still have to call and schedule a date for that cuteness to be butchered.

6. I will remember how to drive Old Reliable, and I will actually long for the days when I didn't know how so I never had to spend 4 to 5 hours a day on a tractor. I'll even remember, only a little too late, after I've only gouged the implement into the driveway a very little bit, that you can't run the hydraulic when the clutch is engaged. I will marvel that I am no longer calling those parts of the tractor the thingy and the doodad.

7. We will consume outrageous numbers of eggs, since they are fast and easy and we always have a lot of them right before our share deliveries start. Quiche, pound cake, fried eggs, breakfast burritos, hard boiled. . .

9. We will start to steal sleep whenever possible. . .at church. . .at friends' homes. . .collapsed into exhausted heaps on the living room floor. It doesn't have to be comfortable. It just has to happen sometimes.

10. The reason for #9 is that you have some memories of springtimes past that sometimes keep you up at night worrying, even though worrying does you no good at all and you know that and it doesn't help you go back to sleep. You try to forget these nightmares, and you stay strong and you work hard and you pray, all the time, that this doesn't happen to you this season. You have faith that it won't, or at least, not as bad as last year. . .and faith helps you keep your wits in an unpredictable world.

Free Range

2011-05-05T21:20:00.004-06:00

About 10 days ago now, our hens went off their lay. I mean, down from 18-24 eggs a day to about 6-9. They also lost some weight, seemed much more picky with each other than usual, and just seemed a little off. There also seem to be more prolapse issues than usual. . .and you can tell that in a hen when they get all poopy on their hind ends. It's gross. Many of them seem to be molting, though the flock molted over the winter as well, and I was pretty sure that we were done with that.

But then again, all these hens are the same variety, so they more or less look the same, so it would have been hard to tell which ones molted back in February and which didn't.

The prolapse we can usually cure by upping the daily ration of oyster shell. So we have, and now we'll see. However, the kids and I may spend our afternoon tomorrow catching the poopy ones, cleaning their rears with baby wipes, and rubbing some Preparation H on their hind ends, just to be sure. I will wear disposable rubber gloves for this job. And that right there is the extent of my knowledge on chicken health problems. If they get poopy, you can use Preparation H. Or salt.

Lots of detail, here on the blog, in case you thought chicken farming was glamorous. It's really not.

We haven't had our hens get sick before. . . we have been very lucky that the system we've developed with our hoophouses and the pastures and such have worked as well as they have. But something is clearly going on. And of course, we are about to try to fill lots and lots of pre-sold egg shares beginning in June. Also, we love our hens. They work hard for us, and they are super entertaining.

I checked out a bunch of books from the library, but couldn't see any symptoms of respiratory disease, which apparently is the most common problem. I asked the feed store people, and they suggested stress. I mean, maybe it's stress. It's been windy and cold this spring. But I just have a feeling that there is a deeper problem. I tried calling vets, despite what I knew would be really high fees, but no one would come out. Because they don't know much about chickens, actually. Turns out, they specialize more in exotics like parakeets. And sometimes I wonder what that says about our culture. Not that there is anything wrong with healthy parakeets, but chickens somehow seem so much more essential, you know? So I called the folks at the NPIP at CSU, the ones who gave us this unfortunate sign last year, who have been very, very kind and helpful.

They can't diagnose the birds without testing them, of course, but after hearing the symptoms, they didn't think it sounded like any serious illness (very reassuring), and they did have a number of suggestions. The most important one being that, even though they've seen our system and didn't think it was a problem, we try free-ranging the birds for a while. We used to free-range our birds anyway, but after losing many, many birds to various predators and getting ever more frustrated with the daily easter egg hunt that was finding the eggs, we came up with the hoophouses. And the hoophouses have worked perfectly for the past 15 months.

The birds have now been back to free-range for two days. It does seem to be helping, since the birds that were being picked on can now find space to hide. I am finding eggs in all sorts of places at all different times of day, which does make me think that the hens that are lower in the pecking order have been holding their eggs a bit, probably because they were being mercilessly chased out of the nests. So that is certainly helping. The other thing that I tried was to give them some hay as a dietary supplement. They are still out on the old pasture, which means that, like our family, they won't have greens for a few more weeks until the crops come in. The hay has also seemed to help, though they are definitely still scratching around for the weed seeds, and it's just warm enough for bugs to start coming out.

And I'm hoping that's all they need. When I'm feeling the very start of a cold, I can often address it by getting more exercise, and some peace and quiet, and by eating more vegetables and fruits. Perhaps that's all the hens need as well. And honestly, they just look so pretty all spread out over our fallow ground, scratching their way around. We'll give them a week or two of this. I imagine it will clear them up.

We're not always about aesthetics on the farm. We build everything with junk. We let things that don't need to be addressed right away, like the peeling paint on our garage, go in order to focus on things like seedling and chicken health. We have to be practical that way.

But this might be a case where the more we improve the aesthetics, the less we have to worry about the animal health. The take home lesson being, of course, that problems, on the farm and in life itself, are usually a symptom of a flawed system. Sometimes you have to make changes in the routine in order to solve the problems, and doing that consistently makes the new, improved system into a new, improved routine.

It's a good lesson. Really it is.

Burning the Ditch

2011-05-03T17:52:00.004-06:00

Our ditch system starts running water this week, and not a week too soon, honestly. The seeds we've planted in the field show no signs of germination, and I think that's because it has been so dry. You would think that things having been so dry would have made it easier for my father-in-law and I to burn the brush out of our irrigation ditch, but it didn't somehow.

Our ditch was really full of dry weeds and other brush. . .enough that there was a really good chance of it clogging up during the pond filling. You see the "after" in the picture. The "before" looked like the ditch that is also in the picture, on the left, the one that is almost completely obscured by weeds.

And filling the pond is always hard enough. I'm not a fan. It seems that something always goes wrong in filling the pond that requires me to be out there by myself with a shovel trying to fight gravity. I submit this story as proof. And this one.

So, last week, in preparation, on the only morning for two weeks that wasn't dangerously windy, my father-in-law (who I call Dad. My own dad, I call Pop. But Dick, I call Dad. It might be confusing, and I'm sorry for that. Mom and Dad Boyles are living with us for five weeks this year (except Mom had to go back to work for a couple of weeks in the middle), in their new RV, and are fun to have and super helpful. Nobody can say we aren't a "real" family farm now.) and I decided to finish burning the pond weeds and up the ditch.

Burning the ditch, as I've said before, is very nervewracking for me. I know that it requires spraying a lot of diesel fuel on the dry weeds and using a lot of matches and that I'm supposed to actually hope that the fire will keep moving on its own. In this, however, I'm far too conservative. So it's good that Dad, like Matt, has no such problem. Our morning burning the ditch was spent with me standing around looking nervous and holding a shovel while Dad was down heaping dry brush on top of the flames with one hand and spraying diesel directly onto the flames with the other.

We joked that I was more of the "safety" than the actual manager of fire.

Things went on like this for about two and a half hours. . .the ditch was surprisingly difficult to burn, Dad was worn out, and I suddenly became determined to get. done. quick.

So I took the sprayer and went nuts on the remaining 30 feet of weeds, sometimes spraying that gas right onto the flames. The bigger the fire, I reminded myself, the sooner I could nap.

Naps are a powerful motivator, aren't they? Naps and the strong desire to no longer be breathing diesel fumes and smoke. Both will get you moving.

We finished by noon and went in for lunch. After that, Dad retired to the RV for his nap, and I hit the couch for mine, and now the ditch is ready for pond filling.

We have now decided to fill the pond on Saturday so Matt will be home to manage it. Which is, absolutely, as it should be. I'll just stand around with a shovel, looking nervous, being the "safety".

Seedling Progress

2011-05-01T15:36:00.003-06:00

Here is the view of the greenhouse from just inside the door. On that middle row are our early flower starts, mostly asters and snaps, but some other things as well. On the left, nearer the heat of the barrels, are our second crops of brassicas and greens. We had to germinate these out in the greenhouse since we were out of room under our grow lights in the cooler. It was nervewracking, but they seem to have popped up just fine.

Here is the view of the greenhouse standing at the other end and facing the door. Our earliest seedling trays are against the roll-up wall, on the left hand side. They are, for the most part, strong and healthy and ready to go out into the field just as soon as we can get them there. Matt is currently finishing up the tractor work in the 8th (and final) bed, after which we can install the drip and then get out on the transplanter. Our irrigation ditches start running this week, so we hope to be ready to fill the pond on Tuesday. My father-in-law and I spent a few exhausting hours burning ditches last week to help that plan along, but that is a story for another post.

Our seedlings this year are in much better shape than those we grew last year. . .stronger, and larger, and healthier in preparation for transplanting. Like this broccoli, for example.

And this rainbow chard. And the three trays of spinach that aren't shown here. It's lovely right now, and all we can do is hope it all stays this way after we get it out of the protection of the greenhouse and into the field elements, which can be harsh and unpredictable.

There are 75 more trays in the grow room right now waiting for warmer days to be moved out into the world. I haven't checked our sow list yet, but I'm probably scheduled to sow 30 or 40 more this week.

The goal for May has to be moving these tiny plants from seed package to grow room to greenhouse to field and into harvest in June as smoothly and regularly as possible.

We are, as of today, all caught up on our planting list.

Whether we will remain so is anyone's guess.

Now Spring Unlocks the Leaves and Grass to Paint the Sombre Fields

2011-04-27T20:40:00.001-06:00

Or in our case, it unlocks the bindweed and the curly dock.

Our neighbor calls curly dock "indian cabbage".

But since that doesn't seem very PC to us, we've started calling it "liberty cabbage".

"Liberty cabbage". It's a little like "freedom fries". But instead of a political joke, it's a farming joke.

Weeding will often make you think you're really funny. Even if you aren't.

Happy growing!

Love,
Little Farm

Reasons I Love Facebook. . .

2011-04-25T21:17:00.008-06:00

There are some reasons to not like facebook. I recognize them. If you are a person who has not yet given in to facebook, or who remain morally outraged by the very idea. . .well, I see where you're coming from.

Me? I really like facebook a lot. Neither my brother or my sister live in the same state as me, but I often know something about what they were thinking on any given day. Thanks, facebook. My cousins, all 200 of them (okay, not quite that many, but enough to feel like that sometimes), are scattered all over the world doing interesting things, and I like knowing what some of those things are. Thanks, facebook. I can post on the business page that I have extra eggs and all of those eggs get sold. Thanks, facebook. Keeping up with family and running a business are two things that facebook does that I love a lot.

Connecting with old friends is also, usually, very nice, but it's sort of incidental to the family and the business for me. I have enjoyed discovering what so many of the people I went to high school with are doing, since I didn't really keep in touch after I left home for college. I'm happy that so many of them seem happy and content and all adult and stuff. It's what I want for all of us.

Facebook has made it possible to reconnect with friends that I had long ago lost touch with and who now also live in Colorado. These are my friends from high school, Mo and Kami. Mo and Kami live in (okay, around) Denver, and we got together last month after Mo had knee surgery.

Mo and I ran cross-country and track together in middle and high school. As a girl, Mo was friendly, sweet, easy to talk to, and game for anything. She and I spent a lot of time on long trail runs through the mountains during our formative years, gossiping and chatting and, occasionally, hashing through the emotional, tear-filled moments that all teenage girls have. Mo's essential nature has not changed at all. She is still friendly and open and easy to talk to. Her kids are a lot like mine. . .energetic, active, attracted to dirt. Mo's still great. We still like each other. I'm glad she lives close.

Kami and I both moved to Tahoe from the midwest at the beginning of fourth grade. She was my first friend in Tahoe. . .my best friend for the remainder of elementary and early middle school. . .and a good friend all the way through. Kami and I had a lot of sleepovers together in elementary school, during which we built many a pillow castle and ate a lot of cheese popcorn. We went skiing together and made up skits at recess and just generally had a lot of really good times. Kami brought her two beautiful and precocious girls to visit the farm last fall, and when it was time for them to go, Kami's daughter took my daughter's face in both her hands and said, very dramatically, "I wish we never had to part." And Kami and I both teared up just a little while we laughed. It was very sweet.

Kami's dad did our fourth grade science project for us, something about batteries, and we won first place. I learned a lot, I think.

And then middle school dances happened, which were so embarrassing for me I had to wear a pillow case on my head (because, somehow, I thought that was less embarrassing). Kami, who has always been and remains much cooler and smarter than me, accomplished something similar but far less lame with the doctor's mask. And that's our friend, Kerry Potter (names have been changed to protect the innocent), in the middle, who I am also happy to be back in touch with on facebook.

Kami and Mo both knew my dad before he had his stroke when I was in seventh grade. And they were both part of the reason why I survived the emotional turmoil of that experience. And I had, sadly, sort of forgotten how much I love them both. And Liz. And Heidi. And all the people from high school that I lost touch with long ago but who facebook has brought back into my life in various ways. I'm happy to know these women as adults. I'm glad we're still friends.

So really, seriously, and sincerely. . .thanks, facebook.

Things God Makes

2011-04-21T06:00:00.002-06:00

Do you see the random PVC/tarp/wood beam mess that is stuck to the corral fence on the right side of the ditch? That is the remains of the chicken hoophouse that the wind demolished last year. It used to be in a little heap on the ground in the corral, but a wind storm over the winter blew it up against the fence and stuck it up in the air just like that.

When Matt came home from work that day, he asked if I had seen "the junk sculpture God made" outside.

The name stuck. We now refer to our old hoophouse "The Sculpture God Made" and let it sit against the fence just as it is. It has become a bit of a landmark in the short weeks it has been on the farm, as in, "Where did I leave that blasted shovel? Oh, it's over by The Scuplture God Made."

Various other windstorms have adjusted it and formed it and moved it around a bit, but it seems to have found its home on the farm. Oddly, I do sometimes find it. . .well, not beautiful, exactly. . .but visually interesting.

I've come to see The Sculpture God Made as an important symbol in our lives. My spiritual life is shallow and flawed, but whenever we are able to create something, even if it's from (or maybe especially if it's from) a bunch of junk, that's when I feel the most hopeful and the most capable, which is exactly the way I think God wants people to feel.

I'm sure we will take it down some day, but I haven't had the heart to yet.

Burning the Ditch

2011-04-20T07:31:00.004-06:00

When we first moved out to the farm, three years ago now, I couldn't figure out why there were so many fires all the time. We live on the plains, and we can see forever, and pretty much everyday I would see huge billows of smoke hanging around my neighborhood.

One day, in those early weeks, as I was driving along the main highway out here, I saw a small, unattended fire burning in the ditch on the side of the road, right next to a wooden telephone pole. My instinct was to call 911. I'm so happy I didn't, because that would have made me look even more ill-suited to life in unincorporated Weld County than I already do.

I quickly learned that it was just a ditch fire, and ditch fires are a common, intentional way of life here on the grasslands. It's something you just take care of, come March or April, like turning the sprinklers on your lawn. Setting fire to various parts of your property is just another spring cleaning task that clears the dead weeds and dry brush out of your irrigation ditch so that the water can flow more smoothly.

It's one thing to get used to driving nonchalantly past a grass fire that your neighbor set, which I can now do. It's another thing entirely to set such a fire burning on your own land. For the past couple of years, Matt and I have known that our weed situation in our ditch was problematic, and that we should do as our neighbors do and burn them down. But the tasks we are most uncomfortable doing are the easiest for us to put off, and then summer would hit and we'd just let it go.

Not this year. Sunday morning, we were prepared. We'd get up early. We'd put some diesel in the sprayer. We'd spray diesel all over those giant weeds and throw lit matches at it and hope to heaven that the wind didn't come up.

We got to most of the pond. It looks much nicer. I only panicked a few times during the process, because the wind did, in fact, come up and it made me very nervous.

We also cleared the little pond that is actually the back up from the culvert that flooded last June. The first year we moved in, this little gulley was bone dry. It hasn't been dry since. I can't explain it. This isn't our ditch, actually, but our neighbor's from across the road. It just flows through our property. I think he's relieved we finally burnt it clear for him, since he clears it with his backhoe every year and that will be much easier now that he can actually see what he is doing.

The kids were really excited to help control the fire, until they realized that it was going to be a three hour project. After about 45 minutes, bored to tears, they scampered off to play. That's right. We let them play with fire and they got bored. What is wrong with them, anyway?

Or perhaps a better question is: What is wrong with us, anyway? We sprayed our yard with diesel and threw matches at it and let our small children help. We may just grow into life on this farm after all.

Hey There, Cupcake

2011-04-18T22:10:00.003-06:00

This may have gotten lost in the bigger news that was the boy's black eye, but these little duckie cupcakes were the girl's first step toward a 4-H cake decorating ribbon at the county fair.

Obviously, we need to work a little on our techniques, but I think they turned out well, don't you?

They're cute.

But actually, they're kind of gross.

That is a frosted cupcake with a (gag) donut hole and half a marshmallow stuck on top, then dipped (choke) in more melted yellow frosting, plus two M&M eyes and (stifled retching noise) an orange starburst beak.

All of those things are perfectly yummy independent of one another. But all together?

Disgusting.

Apparently, when the 4-H manual says that everything on the cake has to be edible, they are really stretching the semantic limits of that word.

I Wish I Was Wrong. . .

2011-04-16T20:42:00.007-06:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the increasingly aggressive outdoor play habits of my children, in which I predicted black eyes and broken arms in 2011.

I knew of which I spoke. My boy, all smiles and reassurances and requests to get back to his game as soon as possible, came inside looking a bit gruesome last night.

"Umm...Mommy? I'm okay, but I had a pwoblem. Just a little one. I'm okay, but I'm bleeding a little bit."

He had been playing on the Wipeout course with one of his little buddies, and when we finally got the story out of them, it went something like this.

My boy crawled into an empty metal 55 gallon drum. His friend put an old tire on top of the rim of the metal drum to make it more like a pirate ship or a karate dojo. Since my boy couldn't climb out of the drum with the tire on top, he tried to climb out between the drum and the tire. . .and the tire, not being privy to the plan, dropped on his head, smashing his eye against the rim of the drum. At which point his friend pulled the tire off the drum, helped my boy out, and the two of them made a pact to be very nonchalant about the whole thing in hopes that nobody would have to stop playing with the dangerous junk (otherwise known as super awesome toys) on the farm.

The eye continued to grow and swell and morph during our cupcake decorating session that evening, and this morning when he woke up, late, his poor eye was swollen nearly shut.

It looked bad. When he asked me how bad it looked, I told him it looked like the Karate Kid's eye when he tried to hide it behind his sunglasses so his mom wouldn't see it at breakfast.

At which point he asked for sunglasses and karate lessons.

He has asked for karate lessons approximately every five minutes since we watched The Karate Kid last weekend.

It looked so bad that I told him he might not be able to play in his soccer game this morning.

He was not having that for a second. "I can play, Mommy. I have to play. I'm tough. Don't worry about it. It barely hurts at all. In fact, it only hurts when I'm not playing soccer. Playing soccer will make it feel much better. And can I have karate lessons? I think I'm tough enough."

So I relented, dosed him up with tylenol, and let him play. This did appear to make him feel better, or at least to forget about his eye, until early in the second half, when the ball drilled him right in his already existing shiner.

The kids stopped in their tracks. Every mother in attendance at that game gasped and covered her mouth, the dads let out a groan, and the entire field stood frozen for a moment as my boy, looking a bit dazed, made his way over to me. Luckily, being the coach, I was right there. He teared up a little but refused to cry, accepted a hug and a kiss and a hand off to Daddy, and after two minutes on the sidelines was requesting to go right back in.

He is tough, this kid.
"See Mommy? Soccer did make my eye feel better. And also. . .

. . .please. . .

. .someday. .

. . tomorrow maybe. .
can I have karate lessons?"

Roll Up the Walls, Why Don't You?

2011-04-14T08:29:00.002-06:00

It's kind of genius, isn't it? That's my Matty.

We roll them up during the day and down at night. It's a great system.

These seedlings are so green and lovely. . .we found a new source for organic seedling fertilizer. This fertilizer is better than last year's for a number of reasons, the most important of these are that 1) it is much cheaper and 2) it smells more like soy sauce than dead fish.

Also it seems to be working much better.

So far, so good!

A Little Accident

2011-04-13T07:13:00.006-06:00

I think I sideswiped one of those little cement posts at the drive-through at the bank the other day. I'm not sure, actually, but I think so. I know I hit something, because of this dent that was not on the van before I went to the bank. And then was definitely there afterward.

It is a fact that I heard a crash and felt a jolt and freaked out the kids as I pulled away from the the bank. But in the moment, it didn't occur to me at all that I might have hit something. I didn't realize I did until about an hour later when I arrived at my parents' house, saw the dent, and spent some time pondering events, that I had most certainly hit something. I thought something else entirely had happened, and I was instantly so convinced of this alternate narrative that I didn't investigate at all until later.

Maybe you're asking yourself. . .how could she not know she hit something?

I asked myself that, anyway, so I'm assuming you are too.

Let's begin with some very deep backstory. As you can see from this picture, taken circa 1984, I was all arms and legs when I was younger. And I didn't grow into those limbs properly until somewhere around my high school graduation. I was a very clumsy child, prone to twisted ankles and sprained knees and all sorts of minor injuries that necessitated emergency room visits.

When I was 13 years old and running middle school cross country, I tripped on a rock during a race and nose dived into the dirt, sticking one of these spindly little arms out to break my fall. My arm hurt pretty badly, but I didn't think it was much to worry about. My friend Katie was having a sleepover that night that I very much wanted to attend. My mother, weary of taking me in for x-rays for what turned out to be minor injuries, agreed with this assessment of the situation.

That week I attended Katie's slumber party, cross country and soccer practice, and played my violin in an orchestra concert with a broken elbow. As you can imagine, it was quite shocking to discover that I needed a full arm cast. That didn't fit with the narrative in my head at all.

How did I go ten days and not know my arm was broken?

I don't know. It just seemed so unlikely at the time. What sort of person breaks their arm in a running race?

Me. I was that sort of person. And this bank incident proves that I still am.

The more recent piece of the backstory is that before I went to the bank that morning, I went to the feed store and picked up five of these blue barrels full of animal feed. This is a new system for us, since we use enough feed to buy in larger quantities but not enough to get bulk feed delivered to the farm. The fine people over at Feeder's Supply found these barrels that hold 350 pounds of feed a piece. They fill them and load them into the van with their machines, and then when we get them home, we push them out of the van with our hands and backs and use our little hand truck to get them into place in the barn.

This was the first day of the barrel system, and as the kind young feed store employee loaded these barrels into the back of Scooby, and as our poor van sank low under the weight, he grew very concerned. "That's an awful lot of weight for this van, ma'am. You've got pretty near a ton in there. You sure you'll be alright?"

After considering my very limited options, I said, "Ummmm, probably. Thanks." And the kind young feed store employee watched us drive out with a very deep expression of worry and concern.

At the first stoplight, one of those 350 pound barrels fell off the pallet with a tremendous jolt and a crashing noise which freaked out the children and rattled me. I mean like adrenaline rush, heart racing sort of rattle. But I needed to go to the bank, so I decided to go for it, overloaded van or not, and then head home. My girl, who is prone to panic, was near tears with worry at this point.

"What are you worried about?" I asked her.

"I'm worried that all the tires might blow up and we won't be able to get home," she said. And I told her that I didn't think that could happen, but I'd call Daddy and see what he thought.

And when I did that, he said, "Well, don't tell her this, but that is a possibility. Or you might break a leaf spring and the axle could snap. Didn't you tie them all down? You're supposed to tie stuff like that down when you haul it so it doesn't fall over."

Ah yes. The hard lessons of inexperience.

The van handled strangely with all that weight in the back, barrels were rolling around and crashing into the sides, and now, I was pretty near panic myself. Though of course, I had to pretend I was totally calm, confident, and in control, because my kids were both about to lose it.

At the bank, I felt hurried. I was in full retreat mode. I just wanted to get back to the safety and peace of our farm, where I can be my crazy spaz self and my family loves me anyway and I don't have to worry that I am going to cause a major car wreck. Or run into things.

This is why, when I felt a jolt and heard a giant crash as I was pulling out of the drive-through at the bank, I didn't for a second think that I might have hit something. I just wanted to go home, and my brain's narrative was that I had gone up on a curb (which I definitely felt the van do) and that one of the barrels had rolled into the side of the van, causing the loud bang and the jolt.

So I just hit the gas and drove away, not suspecting until further evidence presented itself, much later on, that I should have investigated in the moment.

I'm sure my bankers were very impressed. Also, all the other banking customers.

It's not always a strength, this tendency I have to create an alternate reality to substitute for real life. I frequently live too much in my own head, I think; I always have. I've had to think a lot about it since the I had a car crash and didn't realize. I mean, my kids were in the car. It could have been really bad.

And what I've come to believe is that it might make me sort of oblivious to some important things, but it also gives me a certain sort of courage, a bizarre perseverance, and a way to dream my world better, that serves me very well out here on the farm.

On the farm, you have to keep the dream really vividly in your head. How else would anyone continue to believe in such an unlikely enterprise? How else would would you keep on going despite hail and flooding and chick smothers? How else would you order a 25 pound bag of pea seeds and believe that they will be worth the time and effort?

On the farm, being somewhat oblivious to reality is kind of a super power.

Everywhere else, not so much.

So rather than trying to eliminate this odd part of my nature, this weird ability to convince myself that the story in my imagination is really happening, whether it is or not, I think I just need to learn how to be more selective in its application.

Stretching the Limits of Fashion

2011-04-08T16:06:00.004-06:00

You know I let him dress himself, right?

I didn't even realize he'd made himself so, well, plaid until we were down the road a piece.

We're watching Karate Kid tonight, and the kids have been reading a choose-your-own-adventure book called "Master of Karate" all day.

Anyone else notice a theme?

Thank gawd it's Friday.

The Metropolitan Brother Takes A Road Trip

2011-04-07T19:49:00.003-06:00

And is currently writing his own blog called Little Red Vacation.

Read it. Love it. Comment.

I think that he is planning to be on the farm for exactly 45 minutes on or around April 16th.

Stay tuned for the shenanigans that are sure to ensue.

A Working Greenhouse

2011-04-07T14:33:00.003-06:00

All the final touches are done. The wiggle wire has been installed. The barrels are full of water. The min/max thermometer has been monitored for a few nights to be sure the house doesn't freeze. The temperatures inside have stayed about 6 degrees above the overnight outdoor lows. Actually, the bigger problem is that they have soared almost 60 degrees above the daytime outdoor highs.

The high temperature in the greenhouse yesterday was up near 120 degrees.

In the cool of the evenings, if you walk past the water in these barrels, you can feel the heat radiating out and warming the place up. This is the magic of passive solar heat. . .darn near free and very effective.

And since I can't sow the tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and such until these trays of brassicas and greens were out of the grow room, I moved them out this morning. They really do look beautiful. . .all deep green and healthy, starting to put on their real leaves in preparation for transplanting a few weeks from now.

We're planning for three rows of pallets in here this season. It will be a tight fit, but then again, if we don't make it happen this year, when will we?

That is a question with no good answer.

Now, I'm off to fill the grow room with this week's trays!

Fragile Lives

2011-04-06T06:00:00.011-06:00

Spring on the farm means we add three items to our to-do list for every one we cross off. Spring means work (and laundry) begin to pile up. It means baby chicks to tend. Young hogs to fatten. Young plants to shelter and water and grow. Spring soils to work.

There are a lot of tiny growing things on the farm in the springtime, and it takes a lot of focus and patience and consistency to keep them growing healthy and strong. It is very easy to use up all this focus and patience and consistency on the plants and creatures and not have quite enough leftover for our most precious tiny growing things. . .

. . .these jokers, our children.

We try hard not to let this happen. We are not always successful. And this past weekend was one where we let an edge creep into our voices, where we may have been a bit more critical than we needed to be, and where we certainly weren't directing much attention or praise their way.

Home felt like chaos this past weekend. There wasn't enough family time. Things. . .important things. . .like our attention and time, are getting scattered and easily distracted. I often worry that our kids end up slipping through our cracks, and I know that it is an essential part of being their mother that I don't let that happen.

Yesterday morning, when my girl was once again sobbing over the fickle nature of her young friends at school, I felt awful. Of course because I remember the heartbreak that stuff can cause. . .but more because I also knew that we really hadn't been doing our part here to reassure her, to boost her up after a week that tore her down, or to make home feel as safe and loving as it might normally be.

So, at about 10:30 a.m. yesterday, I went down and picked her up from school and brought her home. We ate lunch together. Folded laundry together. She dusted. I swept. I taught her how to use a sewing machine for her 4H project and got her started hemming a pair of pants. It was absolutely what we both needed.

And then her brother came home and they headed out to gather the eggs and walk the dogs, and when I went to check on the baby chicks, I found that we had lost a large number of them to suffocation during the day.

It was devastating. I should have seen it coming. Somehow, when I checked on them yesterday morning, they were all the way out of water. Normally we don't ever let that happen, but I thought Matty took care of it and he thought I took care of it and they ran out. When I brought them fresh water, they made such a tremendous ruckus getting in to drink that many of them managed to completely soak themselves. It is very bad for five day old chicks to get wet, and as I watched them run for the heat lamps, I knew that it might mean we'd lose a few and thought I'd keep tabs on them during the day. The life of a baby chick is fragile, tenuous, easily lost.

And then I came inside and started worrying about what was going on with my girl and had yet another frustrating call from the Farm Service and just lost track of everything else. And some of the chicks died because of that oversight.

All of my little decisions and oversights seem to have very serious consequences. I was down, yesterday. Bummed out. Kicking myself. Feeling inadequate.

Until I realized that really, in a world where there are so many things competing for my time and attention, I kept an important promise to my girl yesterday. I'm very sad about the chicks, but I wouldn't trade those hours she and I had, just the two of us, where I finally stopped putting it off and taught her to use a sewing machine. Where I told her some of my own "bad day at school" stories. Where we got to snuggle up for a little while and read together. I felt better, and so did she, and it was a good choice.

Baby chicks aren't the only fragile lives on our farm. All life is fragile, tenuous, easily lost. You have to keep up with what's most important. The stakes are high. Yesterday reminded me that there are certain critical moments. . .for the animals, for the plants, and most importantly, for the kids. . .when a certain kind of attentive care can make all the difference between life and death (literal or emotional), confidence and self-doubt, love and neglect, smiles and tears.

Often, I'm too distracted to see those moments for what they are until it's too late.

Farming can help me get better at that.

So can mothering.

Trying to do both at once? Well, that's the challenge of the day.

My girl went happily and confidently off to school today. We added heat lamps and fresh bedding and a larger waterer to the brooder last night, and this morning the remaining 200 chicks look warm and active and happy.

All you can do is start again every morning.

Lots of Jobs

2011-04-05T07:20:00.005-06:00

Generally, Matty and I have mixed feelings about our off-farm jobs. We are increasingly frustrated by the limits they place on our farming endeavor, and also increasingly grateful for the relative ease of the paychecks they provide.

Not that we have easy jobs, but more that it's nice that if you just go do the work, you are pretty much guaranteed a certain dollar amount to arrive at a certain time.

That is not the case with farming. Working for yourself is nice. But working for other people also has advantages.

Matty is a landscape horticultualist, and in his current job he manages the nursery side of a commercial landscape company. . .growing or sourcing the trees and shrubs and such they need to install, and also overseeing the weed and pest spraying on the maintenance side of the business. This job, and the jobs that came before, have often come in very handy in one way or another here on our farm. For example, he already knew how to install irrigation pipe when we put in our drip system. He can wade through the information labels on our OMRI sprays quickly and efficiently. He has spent years perfecting his greenhouse and field growing techniques on someone else's dime, which has been incredibly helpful. He spent a couple of years as a research grower for a flower seed company in California, which means he has a pretty good sense of the habits of different flower varieties that we consider growing each year. His career outside the farm has been good for us in a lot of ways.

This year, the company he works for bought a greenhouse, which he has spent the winter building and setting up. That's right. All day at work he built a greenhouse there, and then when he came home, he spent his evenings and weekends building the greenhouse here. Sounds fun, doesn't it? The greenhouse at work has very nearly put him over the edge with stress and pressure, poor guy, but it has made my life on the farm much easier, because when they bought the greenhouse, they also bought a tray seeding machine, and because they are nice people, they've been letting us use it once a week to seed our trays.

I have seeded almost 60 trays in the past couple of weeks, and it has taken a total of about 4 hours. . . maybe less. It's amazingly easy. It's saving us so much time and labor that it feels like cheating.

I always feel that way when we manage to mechanize any part of our operation that we were previously doing by hand. That we're cheating, somehow. Which is just not the case. . .finding ways to mechanize a system is really just a way of getting better at our jobs. But every time, it feels weird.

I never knew these seeding machines existed. I mean, I assumed that there was some sort of mechanized process for seeding trays. . .because not everyone can sit there with half a small cardboard box and a pair of tweezers and coax individual seeds down into trays. That takes forever. I know, because that's how I spent a fair bit of my spring last year. These machines are amazing. Really just magical.

You plug this machine into an air compressor and put the seeds in the metal tray below those needles. You make sure the needles are an appropriate size for the seeds you are sowing. You put the plastic tray with soil down below, and turn on the machine. The needles have a suction that sucks up the seeds, and then as you crank the level toward the tubes, they switch from suction to blown air and the seed falls directly into the cell of the soil tray below. The machine automatically pushes the soil tray through as you go, and then you change seeds and trays and move along with your day.

So, I suppose neither of us are thrilled that we have to keep these off-farm jobs. But I'm learning that nothing is all bad. . and that likely, it won't be perfect when we are both full-time on the farm (see above for statement about unpredictable income). Not just because we'll have to buy our own seeder, either.

Baby Chick Nerves

2011-04-04T09:01:00.003-06:00

I called The Metropolitan Brother on Friday afternoon and said, "Speak to me in a calming voice. I have 225 baby chicks in the back of my van."

And he said what he always does, which is "Please make a t-shirt that says 'I have 225 baby chicks in the back of my van.'"

He's not that concerned about my mental health. But he does want me to wear really oddball clothing.

What happened is this. . .I spoke to the health department inspector, who said that our application looks good, that he'll come out early next week to make sure the freezer is really freezing things, and then we'll be licensed to sell meat at farmers markets. This is the culmination of many months, years really, of research and scheming and planning. . .a giant investment of time and resources, and I am very happy that it looks like it will all turn out as we planned. And relieved to be through the paperwork phase.

But now, we have to get that giant investment of time and resources back out of the farm. And since we know that we're pretty good at raising these birds into yummy dinners without completely overwhelming ourselves (a trick we haven't quite learned with everything else we grow), we've planned to raise very frightening numbers of these birds this year.

We'll have 225 baby chicks in the back of our van every three weeks or so from now through October. Do you want to know how many chickens we raised our entire last season? About 225. Which we've decided should be one batch this year.

We've scheduled the chicks to arrive, we've got our processing dates reserved, we've got our commercial freezer, and we'll soon have our license in hand. What we can't plan or organize in advance or guarantee for ourselves are enough chicken customers to buy all these birds.

Hence the slight panic.

Once I got off the phone, I had a long drive home alone with my thoughts because a) the Scooby van tops out at 48 miles per hour; b) the Scooby van has no radio; and c) there is no cell reception between Fort Collins and Ault.

This left me plenty of time to think about just what we are doing with all these birds. And what I finally came to realize is that we absolutely should be scared to grow the operation as much as we are. . .but that I should also recognize this as the moment when our little farm started to grow into its full potential. That I should think of this batch of chicks, the mild panic attack I'm experiencing on this drive home, everything we're doing right now, as the start of our breakthrough season. The season we stop ever talking about what we'll do if we can't make the farm pay the mortgage. The season we stop wondering if the farm is worth everything we've put into it. The season hundreds of new customers line up to buy these sweet little peepers (in their grown-up, plucked, and dressed form, of course). The season we spread happiness and contentment and love and healthy food across Northern Colorado.

The best season we've ever had.

I wish I could bottle the tremendous optimism of farmers in the springtime. It's intoxicating stuff.

Maybe these chickens will help boost us into full-time farming. But no matter what, I'll always have the sweetness that is watching my kids interact with these tiny little creatures.

"Look Mommy! This one loves me!"

It sure does, kiddo. And so do I.

The Adventures of French Fry and Ketchup

2011-03-31T07:39:00.002-06:00

Ketchup: There she is! Our favorite person! And she's got a feed bucket! Snort! Grunt! Oink!(runs in circles around fairly small pig pen)Gooddaygooddaygoodday!

French Fry: Do you think there are eggs in there? Do ya? Do ya? Or leftover cheerios and milk? Huh? Huh? Do ya? Wait! Snort! Grunt! Oink! I SMELL EGGS! (runs in circles around fairly small pig pen) Terrificterrificterrific!

Pigs, together: (rooting in feed bucket) Snort! Grunt! Oink! Found an egg! So good! Get out of my way! Found another! Snort! Grunt! Oink! This is so good! I was just starving!

Ketchup: After this, (grunt! chew! snort!)I'm gonna wallow in that mud under the water tank for the rest of the day.

French Fry: I thought I'd root around in that old horse manure pile for a while. But first, (chew! oink! grunt!) I'm going to bat my piggy little eyes at our favorite person and see if I can get her to scratch between my ears.

Pigs, together: And after all that. . .dinner!

The Big Trip

2011-03-30T07:43:00.003-06:00

Our trip to Oregon was wonderful. I got to hold my brand new baby nephew and just sit and rock in the hospital glider and chat with my sister and watch our crazy older kids play.

I got to do a lot of other wonderful things too, like spending time with my sister and playing with the gang of four (see below) and generally trying to make myself useful, but holding that sweet little peanut was certainly the highlight.

It's funny how you can love your sister's kids almost as much as you love your own, you know? And I can't get enough of babies, especially now that mine are so big and rowdy.

My kids love my sister's kids just as much as they love me. . .possibly even more, because they're kids and they're way more fun than their stick in the mud mommy.

They might be big and rowdy, but they were very gentle and loving with the baby. I love this picture.

I tried to make sure that the entire gang of four would be gentle and calm at the hospital by taking them out and running them around like a bunch of hooligans any time we weren't at the hospital. It wasn't easy, because it rains a lot in Oregon and because loading four kids in and out of the car three or four times a day takes a special sort of patience, and I don't have a whole lot of that sort of patience, but we made it to the park a couple of times.

Really, the trip was perfect, since we had a couple of days there before the baby came and then a couple of days after. And before he came, we had to exercise the family animals, especially my sister's horse, which my kids were so excited about.

The cousins got to "teach" my kids how to ride old Del, which they were very excited about.

It was the girl's dream come true to ride a real horse in a real saddle, actually, though she does seem unsure about the horse kisses, doesn't she? The boy just liked combing out Del's tail and feeding him treats.

I am happy to be home, but I miss them all already.

Repost: Homesteading

2011-03-27T06:00:00.001-06:00

That's right, homesteading, which is both verb and gerund in the context of the Movement, as in "Those crazies out there have decided to try homesteading," or "Those old hippies are homesteading their way right into an early grave." Modern-day homesteaders aim for self-sufficiency. . .you know, they want to live off the land, so they leave their city lives and buy a farm and try to get back to basics. Quickly peruse their internet literature, and you will find helpful links on how to butcher a goat, how to spin yarn and make your own clothing, how to make yogurt with the milk you get from Old Bessie twice a day. That sort of thing. They are very serious about sticking it to the man by dropping off the consumer planet. And though some of them seem fairly moderate and reasonable, if you read the literature more closely, you do encounter a lot of crazy. I had a roommate once in college who bought reusable fabric maxi-pads in order to keep Aunt Flo from killing Mother Earth. And that's okay. But she would boil them in a stock pot (the same one we used for soup) to clean them, and then water the plants in the yard with her "broth." And it all logically makes sense, but really, it's loony gross. And some of the homesteader bloggers remind me of this.

And dear readers, I am aware that the homesteaders may also sound eerily similar to, well, us. We have, in fact, raised and butchered our own dinner. And we heat our house with wood that people give away and that Matt chops every evening with an axe. And I bake bread for the family every week. And we grow probably 75% of the food we eat ourselves. And all this independence is like crack. . .we want more, all the time, and we care less and less how nuts it makes us look. I'm happy that I don't write a giant check to the propane company every month. I love roasting up a good Boyles Family Farms chicken dinner. I totally covet my neighbor's beautiful solar panels. We are planning our way right off the grid, and we love it. So now all I need is a way to mill my own wheat and to think up a good name for a dairy cow. . .

Seriously, though, it does make you stop and think about all the things we've traded for the privilege of not chopping our own wood or raising our own food, doesn't it? Most of us are like hamsters on a wheel, all the time, trying to make the money it takes to not do these things for ourselves. And we work hard, it's true, here on the farm. But doing that work at home means we don't have to do it for someone like Michael Scott. Or less of it, anyway.

I've got one foot into a world of crazy here, with the homesteaders, but I suspect I may have found my people.

Repost: What, Did They Lose A Basketball Game?

2011-03-26T06:00:00.001-06:00

We made creamed greens for dinner this weekend. They are much more delicious than the name suggests. Also, funnier, because the name suggests that they got shut-out in a high stakes athletic contest. Like they just couldn't compete against the Beefsteak tomato team. Like the greens are still playing Little League, and they are getting CREAMED.

Anyway, they were lovely. Matt and I enjoyed them, as did the girl, and even the boy ate his share, with complaints, on the threat of losing dessert. We had them with fresh-baked homemade rolls and hard-boiled Boyles Family Farms eggs. Matt and I agreed that grilled chicken or pork chops would have made a nice addition to the meal, since we are both huge eaters these days, but even without the meat they made a nice light meal.

Here is the recipe, for anyone interested in upping their green consumption. I based it on the Creamed Spinach recipe from The Joy of Cooking, but any edible greens could be thrown into this mix. It is as follows. And the homemade rolls could certainly be replaced by a Pillsbury tube to save time. And the eggs replaced by an 88 cent dozen from Walmart (88 cents!) to save money. But in saving these things, you would sacrifice both flavor and nutrition, so I certainly don't recommend it. Then again, we're sustainable farmers who sometimes eat fast food, so as Barbara Kingsolver says in her wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, there are no stone tablets in the kitchen.

Creamed Greens

1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 of an onion, diced
1 tbsp. flour
2 bunches of greens (spinach, kale, chard, turnip greens) destemmed and chopped, with stems cut into 1” pieces
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 tsp. sugar, and salt and pepper to taste
Boil the greens in 2 cups of water, covered, for 5-7 minutes. Run through food processor or chop finely. Add butter to a skillet, add diced garlic and onions, and cook until shimmery. Add and mix flour. Slowly stir in broth and sugar. When sauce is hot, add greens and cook for about three minutes.

We're eating our greens, are you?

Repost: You Can Pay Attention, Or You Can Lose Your Fingers

2011-03-25T06:00:00.001-06:00

Back in February, Matt hauled Grandpa Hug’s tractor out here from Ohio, along with the cooler condensers and an old plug transplanter. When I was seven or eight years old, I rode behind my grandpa on that very same tractor—feeding strawberry plugs into the mechanism while he drove through the rows. I remember Grandpa anxiously craning his neck to be sure I was doing it right. I knew I was, and was proud when he eventually stopped checking. “You can pay attention or you can lose your fingers,” he said. That was my training speech. I can’t wait to use it on my own kids.

The kids, especially the boy, couldn’t wait to see the tractor, so we went down to watch him unload it. It’s a 1950s Allis-Chalmers tricycle, with a spring seat above the back two wheels and an exhaust pipe that comes up out of the front of the engine and faces front—so the exhaust has a small period of time to dissipate before the tractor runs the driver right into it. They may as well have the thing pointed the other way.

Anyway, Matt climbed up, with the kids and me watching at safe distance, and started the engine. There was a whir-whir-whir-whir sound that got progressively higher pitched, and then a gunshot boom out the exhaust that made all three of us jump. Flames shot briefly out of the exhaust pipe, and then a thick bellow of black smoke calmly rose through the air. The thing ran, so he gave the kids each a ride. The sunset vaguely glowing behind the Rockies to the west backlit the tractor as it rolled slowly past, and it was hard not to feel hopeful about the whole enterprise.

After that first introduction, we stored the tractor, and Matt spent months at farm equipment stores and auctions to gather the implements for it. We ended up with a ripper, a set of discs, and a chisel plow for making rows. Last week, Matt hooked the implements up and tried them out in our new horse corral. Both the rippers and the disc pulled the front end of the tractor up into the air a tiny bit, but the chisel plow worked fine.

We rented a tractor to do the heavy ripping, and Matt spent all day on Saturday out there ripping and discing the alfalfa up and out of two and a half acres on the southeast side of the property. Sunday, he used the Allis-Chalmers to drag the chisel plow through to make rows. We had two and a half acres ready to plant after 18 hours of work. Last year, without machines, it took us three whole weekends plus to make the rows on a quarter acre. Mechanization is great. We love machines. We are ready to plant.

When my mom asked how the tractor was working for us, Matt just shook his head. “Well, it did everything I asked it to do, but I decided not to ask it to do everything.”

Repost: Building a Hoophouse

2011-03-24T06:00:00.001-06:00

Here is another how-to post, by request. Perhaps I should do a series of such things. . .I could name the series of them "Picky Little Farm Details" posts, or maybe "I Hope To God I'm Not Boring You Half to Death" posts.

Please ignore the shocking nutritional deficiencies evident in this picture. We know the broccoli could use a shot of something. But the shot of something it could use is currently in the mail, on its way to the farm. So we wait. And fret. And tomorrow morning I am making a run to the local pot growers supply shop to get a little fertilizer to tide us over. Stupid hard to find OMRI rated stuff.

But this picture shows you the basic frame of the hoophouse. It is a rectangle, with one brace across the middle and corner braces in each corner. It is made from 2X6s and braced with 2X4s. For this Matty used standard sized lumber. We made our other one 16' long by 10' wide, but it takes a superhuman effort for one person to drag it to fresh ground. Superhuman for Matt. For me it's just impossible. So this new hoophouse is only 12'X10'. You can mess around with length like that, but the width has to be between 10' and 12', because that is the width a 20' piece of 1 and 1/4" PVC will bend. We used 1 and 1/2" PVC on our other house, and it flattened up at the top of the arch. 1 and 1/4" is better. For the smaller house, we used four pieces, and for the bigger house we used five. For both houses, he shortened the PVC about 10" so that it would less of a giant wind sail. And to get rid of the bell end. And that seemed about right. Matt is dictating this part to me. Because I don't know anything about PVC. I know other things. He wanted me to tell you that. Also he wants me to tell you that you might think the PVC will never in a million years bend like that without shattering. But it will.

The PVC is connected here, with these pieces of hardware that I am going to call "croquet wickets". On the outside, these are tightened on to the frame with nuts. Which I am going to call "nuts". Also, below the croquet wicket, he drilled a hole through the PVC and drove a 3" screw into the frame. That's right, screws and nuts and croquet wickets. Whoever makes the best joke in the comments wins.

Here is the outside view. The plastic is greenhouse plastic that can be ordered from Grower's Supply. Matty has it wrapped around a 2X2 a few times, and then the 2X2 is screwed into the frame. You could also use nylon tape or strap, put the plastic between the frame and the strap, and then staple gun it on. If this was a permanent hoophouse, we would have done things more securely. But as Matt said,"I was just trying to cheap it out as much as possible, since that's not really what it's about." If you REALLY want to cheap the thing out, you can get less durable and non-UV rated plastic at Home Depot in the paint department. And those might work, if they are big enough, for a season or two.

This is the top of the hoophouse. To steady the hoops, Matty cut extra PVC, ran twine and wire through and around them, and set them into the gaps between the hoops. The twine and wire run the length of the house, so it keeps the hoops from going all wonky in the wind. Also, whenever possible while building the house, he used prefabricated joist hangers and such to connect pieces. That is way easier than connecting it all yourself. Extra points if you know what a joist hanger is. I myself am going to investigate at first light.

And then here, you can see that for the hoophouse purposes, we just roll the plastic up when it gets too hot during the day and then roll it down to keep the heat in at night, keeping it in place by stacking random pieces of lumber on top of it.

However, when it becomes a turkey house, or even if you just wanted it to be a permanent cold frame, it will need some modifications. It needs a door of some sort on one side (or in a permanent cold frame, a door on both ends would allow for easy ventilation). And to build the door you first have to make a door frame and connect that to the frame of the hoophouse on the bottom. On top, you drill holes in the PVC and then screw the top of the door frame in. You have to drill the holes first or the PVC might crack or shatter when you screwed it. And then you would, of course, be screwed. You make a door frame for the other end of the turkey house too, but that's just for structural integrity. It doesn't need a door.

Then you just build a door that will fit the frame on either or both sides. This is your turkey house, after all. Build as many doors as you'd like.

Instead of greenhouse plastic, we cover the turkey house with chicken wire, and then wrap a tarp around the back end of it. The chicken wire keeps the coyotes out, and the tarp provides shade and wind protection.

We put a sliding latch on the outside of the door, high up, so raccoons couldn't work on figuring it out. We haven't had predator issues in these hoophouses. So far, anyway. My guess is that all the potential predators in the area are just so in awe of our master construction skills that they haven't bothered to try. "I could really use a turkey dinner right about now," they say, "but just looking at that massive fortress they've built wears me right out." Or something like that.

A Trip

2011-03-23T06:00:00.002-06:00

The kids and I are heading to Oregon to visit The Very Professional Sister and her lovely family for a long weekend. She is about to give birth to a brand new bouncy baby boy, and I am heading up to do things like clean her bathroom and fill her freezer with food and provide moral support and love and pain relief, if necessary.

She's about to give birth.

Giving birth is about the realest thing you can do. Anyone that's ever seen someone being born, and especially those of you who have birthed a child of your own. . .well, you all know exactly what I mean.

It's all very real.

And it helps to have a village around to take care of you before and after you accomplish it.

Anyway, I expect to return with a bunch of super cute pictures of the kids with their cousins. I expect to have a nice visit with my sister. I hope it's not too much to expect that the boy will be born while I'm there and I will get to meet him and hold him and tell him that I will be his favorite Auntie on his mother's side.

Why? Because I'm the only one. And that's likely permanent.

I don't expect to blog much. Not at all, actually.

So I'm rescheduling some of my old posts in the hopes that you will remain entertained.

As I read so many of your blogs, I happen to know the crushing disappointment that occurs when you have a spare moment to waste and you head to your regular blogs and there is nothing new to read.

It's a really sad event.

It forces people to go, like, read actual world news, which I am finding scary and depressing these days.

Have a lovely weekend,

love,

Little Farm

French Fry and Ketchup

2011-03-22T18:08:00.003-06:00

Introducing our new hams, French Fry and Ketchup.

Yes, the kids named them. I think it's adorable. Everything about young pigs is pretty adorable, really. I love pigs.

French Fry is the little one.

Matt picked these porkers up after work yesterday and brought them to a meeting we went to with a bunch of other farmers we know. The meeting was at a brewery, so we stayed pretty late, drinking and talking things over with some good people while the piggies nosed around in the back of the van.

Which needs to be disinfected now.

These pigs are a bit larger than we normally get them, probably about 100 pounds a piece. Getting pigs that size (or larger) in and out of the van is a real ordeal. Pigs don't like to go off two foot steps. Their legs are very short, and there was a real danger that once they went down, they would bolt in the wrong direction, sneak under the van, and be running loose in the corral.

The best farm drama seems to always happen late at night when we're wearing head lamps to do things rational people would do in the broad daylight. Just putting on a head lamp makes me nervous these days. I bet my blood pressure rises from just a sideways glance at a head lamp.

I bet we made blood pressures rise throughout our little neighborhood as we wrestled our terrorized, screaming pigs into their pen at 11:00 p.m.

It was a terribly ugly, awkward, freakishly loud ordeal. We're so sorry.

The pigs love me already. I know this is true because they will allow me to scratch their ears with only a few jitters. They only love me because I have been feeding them eggs, but still. I also had to teach them how to drink out of this waterer, since they didn't have one like this at their old farm. Since pigs are incredibly smart, this was easier than it sounds, in that I just had to make sure they saw me pushing down on the nipple and the water coming out. They are both drinking happily out of their new waterer already, rooting around, and making contented little grunts and snorts.

I'm happy the pigs are here. We're planning two batches this year, with these two going to the processor in time to be in our market booths in May/June, assuming we get our retail license. (We've invested a fair bit of time and money under the assumption that we'll get our retail license. I will be very, very relieved when we have the thing in hand. Mostly because I've been the one saying all along that of course we're going to get the license, while Matt has been more likely to wait and see whether we get the license. I hate to be wrong, so I hope I'm not). We're hoping to get a second batch of weaner pigs in May to fill our meat shares as well.

We moved the pig pen into the corral this year. It will be easier to deal with the pigs if they are closer to the water, and we can still plant their annual pasture mix, which will also help rehab the corral soil, if we do it right. Moving that pig pen took me all day on Saturday and wore me clean out, as I had to disassemble and reassemble the hut, drag the panels, and line the wood fence with hog fence.

They're worth it though, for the entertainment and for the delicious meat. Hooray for the hams!

Being Local

2011-03-17T07:28:00.004-06:00

We are members of a non-profit whose goal is to promote local businesses and the local economy in general. Based in Fort Collins, Be Local Northern Colorado is for any unique local business, but focuses especially on local food issues through the Northern Colorado Food Incubator, which is part of Be Local network.

This group has done a lot for our little farm. They are the folks that got that lovely article about the farm written up in the newspaper last year.

And the folks that did the Eat Local radio series on the local public radio station, through which I met my friend Melanie (to whom I owe a phone call, or at least an email. Miss you, Melanie!) and other farmers Dennis and Bailey Stenson, who we really dig.

Saturday, when we were at one of the Winter Farmers Markets that they sponsor pushing our CSA on the unsuspecting shoppers, they showed us this Local Food Producers Guide which they printed and put out around town, but are also going to run in various local foodie publications. Seriously, take a moment and check this thing out. It's pretty amazing.

They do a million other things to help promote all things local, the annual dues are very reasonable, and I am super grateful for all of it, but especially this new food guide, which I think is very cool. They're hard working people helping us find more customers, which allows us to keep on doing the work we love.

They're a pretty amazing crew, and some of them read the blog, and I thought I'd take this public opportunity to tell them how much we appreciate them.

We do, really and truly. Thanks, guys, for making it a little easier to be a farmer in Northern Colorado.

The Seeds Came

2011-03-15T16:02:00.004-06:00

There are so many of them. I mean, you see that bag in the middle? That 25 pound bag? That's just peas.

This giant bag of peas makes me, once again, want to hide in the bathroom all summer. Do you know how long it takes to harvest one row of peas?!?

The math is too complicated for me to figure out if enough hours exist in the week to keep up with this many peas. It's not just simple multiplication, because you have a number of other variable factors like the fact that it wears a lot on hands and knees and that the tedium of picking just one thing hour after hour makes each passing hour a bit less productive than the first.

The equation has a lot of moving targets. But the giant bag of peas also makes me want to go plant them right now and then eat them all up all the time for days and days when they're all grown up and sweet and ready to eat because they are delicious like candy.

I'm torn. But they are my favorite. And the people asked for more of them. Also, the people asked for more broccoli and carrots and lettuce, and this gigantic seed order represents our efforts to give the people what they want.

We love the people. We want them to be happy.

Our entire vegetable season, minus the 25 varieties that are backordered or coming from another supplier, is in these three boxes.

The flower seed order went in yesterday, so it is also on its way.

And I just ordered a crazy ridiculous and did I mention crazy number of Cornish Rock chicks from the feed store, and scheduled the processing dates.

Tonight or tomorrow, our "new-to-us" commercial freezer will be delivered to the farm, and we can finally complete our retail meat license application.

It's all happening, people.

It's all happening and it's very expensive.

Oh, and did I mention I am also the newly minted head coach of the boy's soccer team?

I have indigestion. And a headache. I think I'll go take a nap now while I still can.

All day, I have been alternating between a distinct sense of dread that we are going to drown completely in this season and a wild hopeful excitement that this might be the season that takes us from a struggling little farm to a prosperous one, or at least just a little one, without quite so much struggle.

I am saying my (nervous and pleading) prayers. If you're so inclined, please say a few for us too, won't you?