We went to the feed store yesterday and as soon as she saw us, one of the employees said “oh!!” and went running back to the back of the store to get something. She emerged with a little notecard with the name and number of someone who’s trying to rehome her friend’s turkeys and chicken (singular) while he tries to find a new place to live that’ll let him take them. We said sure, we can do that, so now we have two possibly-Narragannsett turkles hanging out for sixty days or maybe more or maybe forever. Whichever way it works out is fine with us. We’re happy to have some turkeys back in the yard; we love them and their funny little noises.
Recently at the WAYFC meeting, while touring Becky‘s backyard farm and meeting her bunnies and chickens, she mentioned that they weren’t laying much because of the short days, and I commented that I am always surprised at how quickly their laying picks up after the Solstice. There were many murmurs of assent, including someone’s comment that sometimes it’s even the day of Solstice.
Solstice was two days ago. That day we got one chicken egg. Yesterday two.
Today five.
(The blue one and the white one are duck eggs.)
(Yeah, “cheese” is a verb now; why do you ask?)
In late November, I made my first goat cheddar.
It looked awesome, but it had several mishaps. First, the dog got into it while it was sitting curing on the counter (in a place where I didn’t think he could reach it, obviously). I washed and trimmed it and then left it so the bits I had trimmed could continue to cure and get the crust called for in the recipe. Then it got a moldy bit, and so I trimmed that, and waited; then there was another moldy bit — repeat, etc. Eventually it had been over two weeks, and I took it down in preparation for waxing it, and faintly saw a vein of mold running just under the skin. Trying to trim it away would have meant losing most of the cheese. That, plus the prevalence of the mold in general, and the fact that by now it had been air-drying for too long, probably, and had lost too much internal moisture, meant that the whole cheese was pretty much not in great shape.
So we hucked that one, and started a new one!
I started this cheddar on Dec. 4. It also had some mold issues, so I ended up trimming it completely just before waxing. This may have been a huge mistake; we’ll find out in two months.
A while (a long while) back I was asked how the bees are doing — I’ve been pretty silent about them since I got them in April. This was largely motivated by despair. It turned out that the startup costs of keeping hives were too much for me this year, and I didn’t get everything in place in time — they need to have new boxes (honey supers) and new frames added at a certain point, but at that point I was super broke and busy with too much other stuff. Also it was so discouragingly rainy this year; it was hard to find a day that it was warm and dry enough to open up the hives.
So anyway, I didn’t get them any honey supers, and then one day I noticed that one of the hives was totally covered in dead bees, and I don’t know why. The other one was humming along, then suddenly wasn’t: there were basically no bees around it. I figure they swarmed because I didn’t get them enough space. It’s super common for them to swarm. I observed a swarm at someone else’s hive this summer. It was really cool. She was able to get them down from the tree and use it to start a new hive.
So then I had two dead hives, and I felt sad and guilty.
Then either the bees that were left after the swarm rebuilt, or a new colony moved in to the empty house, because there were bees on that one again! Very exciting. But I still didn’t get them a honey super, because I just didn’t have time. So I was left with an already-dead hive, and one that I was figuring wouldn’t last the winter.
Today I went out to the greenhouse to see if my pepper plants were still kicking (they were, and there is tons of fruit still ripening, which is pretty exciting), and as I was examining them I heard the unmistakable buzzing of a whole lot of pissed-off honeybees. I went to see, and found the hive knocked over and frames all over the ground, but quite a lot of bees still living. I have no idea how long they had been there; it can’t have been long, because we’ve had several days in a row where the daytime high temp didn’t get above 40, and I think that would kill them if they were that exposed. Fortunately today is significantly milder, and not raining. I should’ve taken a picture, but I was too busy frantically trying to get the smoker going, find some gloves, and try to get them put back together before dark.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much honey there was. No idea if it’s enough to get them through the winter, though. But given this latest drama, I don’t know if they’ll survive, anyway. There are a lot of ways for a beehive to die! The exposure might’ve killed all the larvae and eggs, even though it didn’t kill the adults. The queen might’ve been crushed or otherwise killed. I don’t know if they’ll be able to get the hive up to temp for tonight. Probably 1/3 of the still-living bees were all over the ground when I left them; I don’t know if they’ll get back home even though they’re very close to it. (They don’t move much when it’s below 55°.) When I put it back together I didn’t get the frames in the right order, which is important because they cluster together at the center of the box and eat what’s there. (In bee class they told me that if there are frames with honey just one frame over, they’ll still starve to death rather than go get it. I suppose it is related to temperature.) I tried to keep the honey ones in the center, but who knows if I did it right?
I’m simultaneously thrilled that they have survived this long, and totally discouraged by all the ways that they still might die because of this latest mishap. I am interested to notice, however, that I am gaining confidence in handling them, and also that I am still totally fascinated by them and a little bit in love with them. Go, little bees, go!
This is what the morning looks like chez nous.
On weekends, Wednesdays, and every other Friday — that is, the days that i don’t have to commute — I milk my goat, whose name is Mama Goat (I’m not very creative). Garth milks on Mondays, and farm/foodie friend Laurie does Tues/Thurs/Fri-when-Garth-is-at-school.
Today my friend Seung in New York asked for some pictures. So this is what my morning (when I’m at home) looks like:
I wasn’t aiming to catch her with her tongue out, but it turns out to be totally representative of life with Mama Goat.
Also note, if you can see her, a little red hen underneath M.G.’s feed bucket, opportunistically waiting for M.G. to spill some feed, which she always does, shoving it aside in search of the Good Stuff.
Catching up — or trying to — on so many things these days. Hundreds of backlogged farm-related blog posts piled up in my RSS reader. Quilt fabric I bought about this time last year, washed, and stuck in the cupboard. (The other day I ironed it. It’s a step!) The Washington Young Farmers Coalition is regrouping for the winter and planning next year, and we had an all-day meeting in Seattle yesterday. And Dropstone is regrouping too, as I mentioned — when we started farming, we said we’ve give it a fair shot for three years and then discuss, and it’s been three years, so we’re starting to discuss. Garth and I had a meeting last night to set the agenda for a “retreat” we’re going to try to take — even if it means “go to the pub for the afternoon” — and here are some of the questions we’re asking ourselves.
- Where do we want to be this time next year?
- In 3 years? In 5 years?
- What do we need to do to get there?
- What can we do in the meantime if we can’t make steps towards that right now?
- What do we each individually want out of the farm?
- What do we each individually want out of our local community?
- If health insurance were not an issue, what would Lauren’s work situation look like?
- If health insurance were not an issue, what would Garth want Lauren’s work situation to look like?
- If Garth could have any job he wanted, what would that look like? (Given that the space shuttle program has been discontinued, “astronaut” is ruled out. Poor Garth.)
- If Lauren could make any employment situation for Garth, what would it be? (For example, “Garth spends two out of every four weeks of the summer mining for gold in the Northwest Territories” is a plan I nixed.)
- What are your favorite things about farming?
- What are your least favorite things?
- What are some things we currently aren’t doing that you would like to do?
- What are some things we are currently doing that you would like to stop doing?
- What are the things that you absolutely do not want to give up?
- What are things we haven’t tried yet that you would like to try?
- What lessons have we learned? How have we improved?
- How do we still need to improve/change?
- What do we still need to learn? Topics/subjects, specific skills, …
- What are your fears?
- What are our assets?
- What are our key relationships?
- Are there any relationships or niches we need to develop? If so, how can we do that?
- Is there anything we can ask for from our current relationships? Anything we need that they can help us with?
- What would be different if we are farming for selling vs homesteading (growing for ourselves)?
Anything else you can think of that we should be asking ourselves? Anything YOU want to know about us or want us to consider?
Just heard via the the Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance that although most farms have pre-sold turkeys, Palouse Pastured Poultry will have unclaimed organic turkey this week at the Broadway Market, Sunday 11am to 3pm, at Broadway and Pine in the Seattle Central Community College space. You will want to get there EARLY if you are still looking for a local organic turkey.
We are in Yakima this weekend for the Tilth Producers Conference. It’s our fifth year attending! So far we have learned about farming with draft horses; ecological weed management via cover cropping, smart tilling, no-till methods, etc.; poultry breeds for small farms; and issues for young and beginning farmers.
There was also a great keynote speech by Dr. Miguel Altieri, which started off totally depressing full of numbers about how completely screwed we all are (things like, if you fill your tank with ethanol or biofuel ONCE, you have just used enough corn to feed one person for one YEAR). Just as I was about to crawl under the table and weep, he started talking about how rural communities of farmers (he called them “peasants,” which I like, etymologically; “peasant” just means “person from the country”) are making changes. Several Latin and South American countries have changed their constitutions to say that they are entitled to food sovereignty. Farmers are getting together in programs like Campesino a Campesino. He showed pictures of undoing damage done by industrial agriculture — erosion sites remedied; forests rebuilt; monocultures returned to their natural diversified states — as well as communities who didn’t cave to pressure from industrial agriculture and who are keeping up old traditions and methodologies (many hundreds of years old, in some cases) for meeting their community’s needs safely and healthily. (That’s not to say nothing ever changes there — I am sure the systems are continually being iterated upon — but they’re not wiping it all out and starting over with different goals in mind.)
Anyway, the pictures and stats of practical change were (thankfully) pretty uplifting and encouraging. It’ll be hard to implement such a thing here in the US. I’m still processing, but one thing I thought was interesting was that he said that in the global South, the pushback is coming from rural communities; in the North, he anticipates that it’ll come from urban communities.
He also cited many books and articles and sites, so now we have some reading to do …
We’re twitting intermittently — as are a few other folks — with hashtag #tilth if you’re interested.
In the interest of having a recent post *not* tagged with “death,” here is a great article about how to pick healthy seedlings.
You should read the whole article so you learn the reasoning, but the takeaways that affect your shopping habits are:
- When you buy seedlings, look at the bottom of the container. If roots are poking out, it’s a no-go. This pertains particularly to annual vegetables. Perennials don’t like being root bound either, but the outcomes are not as extreme.
- In addition to long roots, also look for tell-tale signs of maturity in a vegetable, like flowers or fruits. Tomato plants already bearing tiny tomatoes are not a good thing. Cukes that are flowering are not a good thing.
- Look for the smallest, youngest seedlings you can find. Teeny tiny is good. The more leafed out they are, the longer their roots will be.
- If you’re raising plants from seeds, don’t let the seedlings sit around too long. Get them into the ground when they open their first true leaves. If you can’t plant for some reason, transplant them to deeper containers.
I am extra bad at the last point. I often don’t get stuff into the ground even close to on time. It’s a thing I’m working on …
One morning a few weeks ago, on a day with Garth was in class so I was covering morning chores, I rolled out of the house on my way to milk the goat, and I noticed a pile of white feathers on the dewy ground … no wait, make that several piles, strewn about the yard. Hmmm. As I was milking I realized I wasn’t seeing Little Red Hen anywhere, and I couldn’t recall having seen her in a few days at least. Similarly, the white chicken who had decided to roost in a tree — I had a picture, can’t find it now; it may be on Garth’s phone — was gone, and I suspected those were her white feathers all about the yard.
So, some critter or another figured out this is a great place to get a meal at night, apparently.
Saddest, though, is the fact that no one comes in to eat cat food anymore. There is a cat door into the laundry room, and a dish of cat food in there, and it hasn’t been touched in weeks now. Little H.P. Lovecat has had a tumultuous relationship with us: she started out pretty wild, then got used to us, then got used to the dogs, then became almost a housecat, then decided she belonged to Ruby dog. Then a dog we were sitting chased her up a tree. The next morning she came in her kitty door and tried to come into the house (from the laundry room) to rub about my ankles as usual, and I closed the door and showed her through the glass that the visiting dog was inside. H.P. looked at me, and looked at the visiting dog (who had chased her up a tree), and went out the cat door, and I never saw her in the house again. (I still feel guilty about that.) She was around for a while, and would come hang out with me while I milked, but eventually she stopped speaking to me completely. I think it was when Fry, the new kid, moved in; he barked at her. I am afraid that Ruby forgot that she loved H.P., and that she also barked at her. In any case, she was still coming in to eat, even though she wasn’t speaking to us or really letting herself be seen much.
H.P. and Ruby, before they were BFFs.
But now she’s not. I’m leaving the kibble just in case. My brain is simultaneously containing two true stories: one, she’s obviously dead, because that’s what happens to cats on Bainbridge Island, and what we always expected to happen to her; two, she’s obviously given up on us and moved in with another kind family down the street, and is living it up. They are both true. (Not originally intended as a Schrödinger’s cat reference, but hey, it works, I guess.)
This email already went out to our list subscribers (sign up here) and our Facebook friends and Twitter followers may have seen it too, so apologies for duplicates …
We are really sad to have to tell you that we will not have any turkeys available for sale this year. We had significant predator losses in the last six weeks or so, and when we finally got a head count of who was left, and then looked at the list of turkeys we’d already committed in trade or to friends and family, we realized we had pretty much assigned all of them already.
At this time I know of only one other Bainbridge Island source for turkey: Heyday Farm. They have just a few left available, so contact them soon. There may be sources in Poulsbo, and it is almost certain that some of the Seattle farmers’ markets still have turkey. I’ll post here on the blog as I find new sources, in case you are still looking.
So this is the end of the season for us, anticlimactic and discouraging (emotionally and financially) though it may be. We greatly appreciate everyone’s support this year. When we started farming, we decided to give it three years and then regroup and decide if we want to keep going, and that three years is up, so we’ll be spending some time thinking hard this winter. We’ll keep you informed, whatever we end up doing.
In the meantime, however, we have lots of fresh chicken and duck eggs that you can pick up on the farm. Please get in touch if you’re interested.
Thanks again. Hope everyone’s snugly in place for autumn.
So, yeah. That’s this year. The end.
We are fully stocked on sauerkraut!! Almost twice as much as we made last year. The single purple cabbage in the batch made everything lightly pink-tinged, and the very purple jar is from the layer that was just purple cabbage.
This is incredibly easy to make, by the way.
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