8/30/2010
Each Saturday morning throughout the spring and summer, Dan, Micah and I load ourselves and various necessities into the truck by 5 am and head for the Ellensburg Farmer's Market. Sundays we are loaded and ready to roll to the Roslyn Farmer's Market by 6. I look forward to these days of working together. Driving down our dirt lane at dawn, the air is peacefully still. We see just a line of light on the horizon on Saturdays, and Sundays we see the early birds of conventional wisdom looping slowly through the sky, scanning the fields for breakfast.
I admit that when we decided to farm, I never thought about how our product would make it to market. Since we restored pastures for three years of sowing and preserving seed, planting bare-root tree starts one at a time, and testing soils, the process by which our beef would make it to tables near and far didn’t cross my mind. It was a rude awakening to find that our food supply system is not set up so that small family farms can get their products to people who want to buy them. Instead, it is designed to support big producers who can ship product on a moment’s notice to anywhere in the country. Here are a few roadblocks.
To sell it retail, beef must be USDA inspected. This is a criterion that makes good sense for the health and safety of all. Unfortunately, most meatpacking facilities are integrated with large farms – that means that most packing plants are owned and operated by large beef producers. So how do small producers get their product inspected by a USDA inspector? Well, they have to go to an independent packer, and there are very few in Washington – just two that I know of – that has a USDA inspector on site.
Storage is the next problem. In the not too distant past, rural areas had storage lockers for rent so that local folks could store large quantities of meat and game. These facilities are now a thing of the past. It seems that to stay in business these days you need to own a meatpacking plant that can employ an inspector, with on-site cold storage. Small family operations like ours produce small numbers of animals that can graze in a sustainable way on carefully managed pastures. We have no desire to increase our herd. Our operation can care for each animal as an individual simply because we care about quality. Doubling our production would mean either slowly destroying our pastures or doubling our acreage, which would impede the attention we can now direct to each individual animal.
Originally, we planned to sell our finished animals to distributors who specialize in organic and natural beef and supply co-op groceries and markets like whole foods. We were shocked when distributor after distributor offered us, per pound, less than half of our cost to produce a pound of beef. We tried private butcher shops next. We learned that many of the “neighborhood” butchers are actually chains, and offer even less per pound to producers than meat distributors. These butchers and distributors pay farmers essentially the same per pound for feedlot raised beef and organic or natural beef. They then jack up the prices, often by more than a hundred percent, and are rewarded for the conservation efforts made by farmers.
So we struck out on our own. First, we reached out to friends and neighbors who share our passion for conservation and social justice. These families were our first best customers, bearing with us as we struggled in our first year through iterations of storage and distribution systems, some more successful, or at least attractive, than others. This year, we started selling our beef retail at farmer’s markets. Jonine, the coordinator for the Roslyn market reached out to us first. She was anxious to convince us that we could sell to a thriving community on the East side of the cascades. Eric, from Ellensburg Market, approached us next, encouraging us to market our beef even closer to home. In an odd twist of fate, Ellensburg is the first community where Dan raised beef, as an FFA (future farmers of America) student at Ellensburg High.
What has surprised me most is the tight-knit community of producers, crafts-men and women, and buyers who have embraced us into a warm, supportive network of folks. Many vendors, like Dan and I, are employed at weekday jobs, yet still choose to produce organic and natural foods and products out of a commitment to their values and way of life. Each week we get to know these families better. After just a few weeks, Ron, a cedar woodworker (Mcmillan cedarworks), offered us a place to stay over weekends so that Micah could take a break from his car seat and we could save overhead. Although he barely knew us, he and his wife offered to take us into their home. Eric and Bambi, who farm organically in Ellensburg at Parke Creek Farm, were willing trade beef for boxes of beautiful organic produce. Larry Buhrmaster, a baker from Selah, posts this sticker on each loaf of his bread:
We can produce 5500 loaves per week
It takes 550 loaves to support one worker
We support three now
It could be ten
BUY LOCAL
I now buy all of my bread from Larry, and let me tell you his bagels and brioche loaves are to die for. He bakes a mean chocolate chip cookie, too.
Working together early in the morning forms a sense of purposefulness and togetherness for Dan and me. It also leads to groggy communication from time to time. Here is a conversation we had last week that I am sure gave our friends at neighboring booths a good chuckle.
Dan: (rummaging through my purse) Where it it?
Me: What are you looking for? I need to get you your own purse.
Dan: I know it's in here...
Me: Maybe I can help if I know what you need.
Dan: the hand purifier or whatever you call it. Or at least a baby wipe.
Me: Check the diaper bag.
Dan: Can you keep an eye on things here for just a minute? I have to use the port-a-potty. It will be super fast because I just have to pee.
Me: Sure, no problem. Take your time – don’t forget to wash your hands.
Dan: Wash my hands? Where? You mean in the little sink?
Me: What? That’s not a sink, it’s a urinal!
Dan.: Right. I know that. I was concerned that maybe you didn’t know that. That pretty much is the only place I can think of to wash my hands.
Me: Did you try the soap dispenser?
Dan: What good would that do? We just agreed there is no sink to rinse in. That's why I was looking for the hand stuff in the first place.
Me: What frightens me is that we are having this conversation in August. The soap dispenser is filled with hand sanitizer. Rub your hands together and it dries instantly.
Dan: Oh… I never saw the soap dispenser.
Me: It’s right there on the wall.
Dan: Well it’s because when I go in there, I always turn right. The soap dispenser must be on the left.
Me: What are you talking about? It’s three square feet in there – there’s no place to turn!
Dan: There is -- in front of the little sink!
8/20/2010
When we first moved to 3500 Island Road, we couldn’t figure out why our mailbox was constructed from ¼ inch steel. It was obviously home-made, the seams thick and uneven, the door just roughly the size of the opening. It wasn’t pretty, or even utilitarian. My right arm ached each day as I yanked the door open from my car window and let it drop on it’s enormous hinge with a whine and a thud, then heaved it shut again using both arms, half my body hanging out of the car.
I should mention here that our mailbox is on the road, and a a full 40 acre field (quarter mile) from the house.
I could not send mail from this monstrosity, either, because it didn’t have a flag. Day after day I piled my outgoing notes and bills into the huge rusty box, and each day I would find my incoming mail stacked neatly on top of it. I waited down the lane at the mailbox for the mail carrier one day and asked her why she didn’t pick up my mail. She replied, “I can’t pick it up unless the flag is pointing up.” When I pointed out the mailbox didn’t have a flag, she said, unblinking, “I guess your just gonna’ have to weld one on it.”
We got a new mailbox. The old one sits in Dan’s blacksmith shop to be used as scrap for a potential project yet unimagined: like a prison for birds. Or a cement truck.
This fourth of July I clipped the article below as evidence for why our wise predecessor, Bob, saw fit to weld his mailbox, sans address, out of ¼ inch steel. This article is pure poetry to me – no matter the technological leaps of our age, rural life is still rural life, teenagers are still teenagers.
Posted on Thursday, July 08, 2010
Mailbox, Mini Cooper, fireworks a bad combo
By Mark Morey
Yakima Herald-Republic
YAKIMA -- A destroyed mailbox, a Mini Cooper on fire, two teenagers from Wapato and a trip to Walmart to purchase a blender for mom were all part of a "fireworks incident" on Wednesday night. It took a while to sort out, but Yakima County sheriff's deputies worked their way through the smoke to decide that the two boys had earned misdemeanor citations for malicious
mischief.
Chief of Detectives Stew Graham -- who spends more of his time supervising homicide and rape investigations -- gave the following account of the incident on Thursday: About 11:30 p.m., a resident in the 800 block of Campbell Road called the sheriff's office to report that occupants of a red Mini Cooper had just placed fireworks in his mailbox, causing it to blow up. Wanting to make sure that deputies stayed on the smoking-hot case, the resident expressed a strongsuspicion that the Mini Cooper involved in the mailbox attack was the same Mini Cooper that was burning
to the ground a mile down Campbell Road. Firefighters said they found the vehicle fully involved in flames, but the two boys were fine. Deputies took that opportunity to interview them.
The boys vehemently denied any responsibility for the deadly assault on the innocent mailbox. Instead, they explained that they were on the way to Walmart to buy a blender for one of their mothers. Deputies found this hard to believe, given that the boys appeared to be headed away from the Walmart stores in Yakima. Furthermore, one of the boys explained that it was actually impossible to blow up a mailbox using the artillery shell fireworks that the boys admitted having in the Mini Cooper. He said he knew this because he had unsuccessfully tried -- in the past -- to blow up a mailbox with them.
Beyond that, the boys suggested that red Mini Coopers are more popular in Yakima County than the average deputy might believe, creating the possibility that somebody else driving one of the distinctive vehicles was responsible for the mailbox-related violence. That brings us to the blazing red Mini Cooper. The boys said the seat heaters had malfunctioned. Why would the boys be using seat heaters in the middle of the summer? Graham acknowledged that was a "good question."
The two friends -- ages 17 and 18 -- were released. They were expected to receive citations for second-degree malicious mischief. There was no immediate word on whether they found their way to Walmart to buy the blender.
7/30/2010
Tuesday I spent the better part of two hours chasing White 27, a young Heifer being treated for an infection in her eye. Why was I chasing her? Well, because she jumped a fence, of course.
Over the past four years, we’ve built miles of tall, beautiful fences with the best materials available to ensure the safety of our animals and to prevent our herd getting out and other critters getting in. But these fences are symbolic, really. For those you of you who haven’t been up close and personal with cattle, these animals are huge. Our herd ranges in size from 900 lbs to 1500 lbs, small animals by industry standards. Keep in mind they are made of mostly muscle, the attribute they are raised for. All that muscle on the hoof is a force to be reckoned with. At a rodeo last year, I saw a bull jump an 8-foot fence from standing still. That is, he didn’t take a running start at it, he just hopped on over. So our four and a half footers are nothing to a motivated bovine.
I was close enough to a cow for its breath to fog up my glasses for the first time four years ago, in the west pasture. OK sure I’ve been to a petting zoo, and the state fair – I’m sure that in my childhood I had petted cows, or at least calves, that were safely enclosed behind 6-foot Powder River gates. But it was right here on Heirloom ranch that I was on the same side of the fence with not one, but a herd of these enormous creatures, each easily large enough to crush a Volkswagen. And my husband Dan was expecting me to herd them, or at least help him herd to them, on foot; without any protective covering, like a truck. And I was cowed (no pun intended).
In popular culture, cows certainly aren’t typecast as threatening, outside a stampede. But spitting distance from a herd, that first day I felt intimidated. “Don’t worry about them,” Dan shrugged that first day. To me, his comment amounted to shrugging off walking across a six-lane freeway. I learned quickly that young cows, like young humans, are curious and fun loving. Once they were used to me that first day, each one wanted to get close enough to sniff me with her large, velvety nose, soft and runny.
Back to White 27. The color and number signifies her ear tag: white codes her first weight this season, and her number, 27, within that weight class. She’d gotten a seed lodged in her eye, and Dan segregated her into a pen so that he could treat a developing infection – squirting a solution into her eye several times a day. On Heirloom ranch we herd on foot because it is low stress for the animals and the least disruptive to our growing plants. When one heifer is being treated, separating her from the herd several times a day on foot can take all day. It is preferable (for us, anyway) to leave her in a large pen so that she can be treated quickly and without the stress of being chased and singled out several times a day. That’s our point of view.
But how would White 27 see it? She, like every other cow, wants to be with the herd, where she feels safe and comfortable. Now she was separated from her sisters, temporarily blind in one eye, and two large bi-peds (Dan and our neighbor Jim) would put her in the squeeze shoot every few hours, hold her by her lip, and squirt something in the blind eye she instinctively wanted to protect. All of that amounted to serious motivation.
So she jumped the six-foot fence in her pen. The problem was, she couldn’t find the herd – they were in the southernmost pasture, nearly 80 acres away from her. She wandered to the north, into our driveway, where I first spotted her as I drove in. I walked into the house, got my hat from its hook in the mudroom, and walked back to the drive. I figured I’d walk her to the south gate, and let her find the herd on her own. But she was gone. I scratched my head – where could she have gone in the 10 seconds it took for me to get my hat?
I jogged up the quarter mile lane to close our front gate, and hopefully discourage her from wandering into the road. At the gate I met Bob and Jan, our neighbors to the north, riding their four-wheeler down our lane.
Jan -- You missing something?
Me – Yeah, a young heifer. She was in my drive not a minute ago, but when I turned back, she was gone.
Jan – We spotted her on our place, and we come to check where she came in.
Me – Well Dan’s hauling to Basin City, (a two hour drive), so I’ll come and get her.
They had spotted her in their pasture, and had come to check for holes in the fence. There were none – she had jumped over, responding to the bellows of their young bull.
A note about herding on foot. It works best when you don’t have an angry, half-blind, freaked out heifer separated from her herd and getting really interested in a young bull.
Jan jumped off the four-wheeler, and Bob started searching his 40-acre field for White 27. Their place isn’t exactly flat grassland – there’s a creek that runs through the middle, rises and hollows where she could easily hide, and plenty of thickets of Russian Olive brush, thorny and dozens of trees thick.
On our place, we don’t use four-wheelers. When we are working in a pasture and happen to forget a part, we walk back to the barn to get it. Many a time walking 40 or 80 acres for a bolt or wire stretchers or whatever, I have questioned our no four-wheeler policy: four-wheelers are convenient, but they use petroleum, something we try to avoid using on Heirloom ranch because we are Mennonite (and therefore pacifist). A by-product of this choice is that our animals are not used to the particular noise four-wheelers make, a deep, bad-mufflery sound – a cross between ten Honda crotch-rockets and a broken lawn mower. When Bob found White 27, she bolted for the brush instinctively. And so began the circus.
The first thing we did was to open the gate between Bob and Jan’s pasture and our pasture. The goal was to get White 27 to go through. Bob and Jan were determined to help, and since they use a four-wheeler, it had a large role in the production that followed. I called Dan, who was by now driving back from Basin City, told him what we were doing, and he called intermittently to offer advice. The one time White 27 was close to going through the gate, my cell-phone blared with a call from Dan, spooking her back into the brush. When I answered, Dan asked, “how’s it going?” I answered, “did I mention I am wearing sandals because I came from the grocery store?” I trotted back into the thorns to coax White 27 out. I sang to her. I called her. I spoke to her gently. She calmed down. I walked her down the fence line toward the open gate. Then the death-demon scream of Bob’s four-wheeler roared toward us, and she dove back into the brush.
At some point Jim showed up. “Dan called me,” he said. Familiar with our ways, he’d left his four-wheeler at the road. Jim and I coaxed her up to the gate a dozen times or more, only to be thwarted by the death-demon, the young bull, or neighbors calling each other on cell phones. Eventually White 27 ran to the safety of Bob and Jan’s cows, which were getting pretty riled up themselves. Bob put the whole bunch of them in their corral, his usual feeding routine, and White 27 trotted in with them. It was then that Dan called to say he was on Island road, about 5 minutes away. He pulled in and put her in the livestock trailer hitched to his truck, easy as pie.
Sweaty and exhausted, I answered my ringing phone – an owner and chef from a new restaurant wanted to tour our place, and they were at the gate.
We took them out to the south pasture at the base of Toppenish ridge to visit with our cows. Together the four of us walked through the tall grass in an afternoon breeze, listening to the calls of raptors overhead and our own voices. A few feet from the herd, was stopped and let the heifers approach us, heavy and sleek. In ones and twos, they extended their necks and sniffed us with their large, velvety noses.
After a few minutes we headed back to the house. A small tremor under foot caused us to turn and look back – in a long line, the cows were following us back, sniffing us gently the whole way.
This post is dedicated to my mom. Without her help, I would have been chasing White 27 with my jogging stroller (and Micah). Thanks, mom!
7/3/2010The Chicks are doomed.
We found a weasel not six feet from where the chicks scratch, tranquil and unknowing, in their fully-enclosed, concrete floored, double re-enforced yard. The poor things enjoy their outdoor activities in what looks like a prison yard attached to their summer cottage (ie temporary housing inadequate for winter). The yard has two full layers of wire: stiff, industrial-strength stuff ensconced in fine-mesh chicken wire. It is not really fair to say they are outside, at all – they are exposed to sunlight, yes, but through a roof of the Folsom prison-strength security wire.
Why all the precautions? Well, predators approach from the air (hawks, eagles, and owls) and land (dogs, raccoons, skunks, cats, and now weasels). Until a few weeks ago, though, I felt relatively certain of their safety.
I have actually never seen a weasel. But when Dan mentioned he had found one, of course I was anxious to see it. “Alive,” I asked? “No, but fresh dead. Looks like Tukli (our English Shepherd) got it.” I ran in the house and returned with gloves. Sure enough, the little corpse was still warm. On first site I knew the chicks were doomed. The tiny creature was all teeth, eight inches in length, and the circumphrence of a hotdog. “This thing could totally get in through the fine-mesh wire,” I lamented.
Everything I know about weasels I learned from children’s literature. In The Day no Pigs Would Die, a coming-of-age story about a Shaker boy living in Vermont, there was a chapter about how a weasel could easily best a dog. Based on this information, I assumed they were badger-sized and incapable of breaching the chicken yard. Not that I exactly know the size of a badger…
In the story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a brave and fearless mongoose battles a poisonous snake to protect his boy-owner. This is the reference I chose to share with Dan, my rancher/ecologist husband, a man in possession of both useful farm experience and graduate-level science training.
Me: “It is kind of sad, to lose such a valiant and beautiful creature,” I mused as I turned the little corpse over in my hands.
Dan: (Eyebrows raised) “Hmm?”
Me:“You know, like Rikki Tikki Tavi. A little creature with a cunning but loyal character.”
Dan: (no words, just a dead-pan look for a long beat. Then, “Ricky Tavus Smiley? I didn’t realize his first name was Ricky.”
Me: (cheeks burning). “No, not Tavus Smiley, Rikki Tikki Tavi. You know, the Mongoose who saved his boy… you know… from a Cobra.”
Dan: (Dead-pan look followed by a long pause)
Me: you know, the boy is the son of a British diplomat, or ship-captain or something somewhere… tropical-like… I don’t know, but anyway the little mongoose stands up on his back legs and kills the Cobra – or maybe it was a viper. Was it India? Or maybe South Africa?”
Dan: “A mongoose is a primate.”
Me: “What? No the mongoose I’m talking about is like a weasel. I saw it… in the animated feature....” I gave up all attempts at an explanation at this point. Obviously I couldn’t even remember the details of the story.
Dan: “Mongooses live in Madagascar.”
Me: (considering the weasel in my hands). “Well he’s too small to be Rikki Tikki Tavi, anyway.”
Which brought me to a disturbing logistical question. If a weasel got in the coop, how would it get it’s prey, a plump little chicken, out again? (Our dear friend Chuck cleared up this mystery for me – weasels apparently don’t try to extract their prey once the deed is done. I tried to imagine a whole chicken inside a weasel who would then try to get through the fine-mesh wire, but Chuck assured me this would not present a problem because weasels drink what they need from their prey rather than eat the meat. Sorry if that's TMI)
I felt foiled. Now what? Chickens, like all living creatures, need sunlight for heaven’s sake. “Well at least Tukli got it,” Dan said. “Shows you our system is working so far.”
I am quite proud of the old girl for that. She loves birds, actually. To eat, I mean. As a pup, she spent her first spring seeking out low-lying nests, gobbling up baby birds. No manner of scolding or punishment could dissuade her from this practice. “She’s a dog,” Dan reminded me. Ah, the circle of life. Even now it is not uncommon for Tukli to spend hours each day chasing low-flying hawks, barking with relish for a taste. So when the baby chicks arrived, each roughly the size of a cotton ball, I brought her into their pen each day and let her sniff as I held each one in my hands. “These birds are mine,” I told her, day after day for several months. “MY BIRDS.” I am sure they look delicious walking around in their yard. But when I let them out every day, she leaves them alone and even protects their pen.
But now the temperatures are getting warmer day by day, the mosquitoes persistent. Much of Tukli’s guard-dog (ie owl-chasing) activities are nocturnal. In the daytime, she likes to lie on the cool, shaded cement patio floor, swishing her tail at flies.
When my sister called me last week, I told her about the weasel and my worries for my chicks. “Poor Rikki Tikki Tavi,” She said when I told her Tukli got the weasel.
“Don’t you know? Rickki Tikki Tavi was a Mongoose, not a weasel,” I reported proudly.
“Same thing.”
“Silly! Mongooses are primates.”
“Primates? She said. “Sarah, primates are monkeys.”
“And how do you know what Mongooses look like?” I asked, proud of my new tidbit of farming expertise.
“Ummm… from the animated movie?”
6/23/2010
Wendell Berry, farmer poet, describes farmers as mad, the act of farming an act of madness. After tilling the earth and tending its creatures, I have to agree with him.
Farming is a leap of faith – depending upon the weather is wholly irrational, and depending upon the good will of both human and animal neighbors for survival hardly seems more prudent. Yet all of these things must work together for a farm to succeed.
Farming is also an act of defiance. In our culture, financial gains and material assets are most dearly valued. The logic on a small family farm necessitates gains in deeper time. Our returns cannot be counted in dollars – what is the value of a gallon of water preserved in the aquifer? Returns come to us in a mended eco-system: flocks of quail, fat and scurrying; the spine-tingling call of owls through a few pines late at night; evidence of beaver trails in the reeds; worms in soil that used to be white and alkaline. We do not raise these creatures for profit, but we raise them just the same as we farm holistically. In turn, they participate in the delicate circle of life humans have depended upon for millennia.
Some may say that farming is good for the soul, but in today’s world it is reckless in every respect. The current recession wiped out more than one talented farmer in this valley, neighbors who have cared for this land for decades, men and women who grew up here and in turn raised their own children here. Corporate farms easily absorb the land that was once cared for by families, leaving those of us who remain to question if it’s just a matter of time until we’re next.
How can we compete with meat sold in big-box stores priced under two dollars a pound? Feedlot beef operations pollute groundwater, destroy soils, and speed the ever-expanding use of pesticides and petroleum needed to grow grain. These are the hidden costs of cheap meat, not to mention health risks of growing (hormones, antibiotics, pesticides) and processing (e coli, ammonia, and chlorine) cheap commodity meat.
But compete we must. Or must we?
What if a community of people believes in the value of healthful products raised holistically? What if water, soils, and habitat conservation matter to folks who want healthy meat that has not been injected with growth hormones and fed antibiotic-enhanced grain? A community of folks like that is the only way families like us will be able to stay in business, on small farms.
A few weekends ago, six people as mad as we are came to the Heirloom Ranch from Seattle to discuss the birth of something. A business model? A community?
While they were here, they selected a cow from our herd as their own future: the animal that will provide meat for their families throughout the coming year. By purchasing her, they ensure that our farm will be able to raise another next year. They named their animal Ginger – a star is born!
Perhaps Rodger said it best as he signed our guest book: “We are at the birth of something new – 20 years from now we will look back and see it’s birth and be proud.”
With that, I give you Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer, by Wendell Berry.
I. It is presumptuous and irresponsible to pray for other people. A good man would pray only for himself – that he have as much good as he deserves, that he not receive more good or evil than he deserves, that he bother nobody, that he not be bothered, that he want less. Praying thus for himself, he should prepare to live with the consequences.
II. At night make me one with the darkness. In the morning make me one with the light.
III. If a man finds it necessary to eat garbage, he should resist the temptation to call it a delicacy.
IV. Don’t pray for the rain to stop. Pray for good luck fishing when the river floods.
V. Don’t own so much clutter than you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.
VI. Beware of the machinery of longevity. When a man’s life is over the decent thing is for him to die. The forest does not withhold itself from death. What it gives up it takes back.
VII. Put your hands into the mire. They will learn the kinship of the shaped and the unshapen, the living and the dead.
VIII. When I rise up let me rise up joyful, like a bird. When I fall let me fall without regret, like a leaf.
IX. Sowing the seed, my hand is one with the earth. Wanting the seed to grow, my mind is one with the light. Hoeing the crop, my hands are one with the rain. Having cared for the plants, my mind is one with the air. Hungry and trusting, my mind is one with the earth. Eating the fruit, my body is one with the earth.
X. Let my marriage be brought to the ground. Let my love for this woman enrich the earth. What is its happiness but preparing its place? What is its monument but a rich field?
XI. By the excellence of his work the workman is a neighbor. By selling only what he would not despise to own, the salesman is a neighbor. By selling what is good his character survives his market.
XII. Le me wake in the night and hear it raining and go back to sleep.
XIII. Don’t worry and fret about the crops. After you have done all you can for them, let them stand in the weather on their own. If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed. But the real products of a year’s work are the farmer’s mind and the cropland itself. If he raises a good crop at the cost of belittling himself or diminishing the ground, he has gained nothing. He will have to begin over again the next spring, worse off than before. Let him receive the season’s increment into his mind. Let him work it into the soil. The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer.
Make the human race a better head. Make the world a better piece of ground.
6/1/2010
The week before Easter I participated in a lamentable ritual that so many Americans practice each spring that the evening news runs a cautionary story warning against it: I drove to Big R feed store and bought Easter chicks.
Buying Easter chicks is not advisable and can be even inhumane, the earnest news anchor Terry Chick (that’s really his name) warns each year. Chicks, although cute and fluffy at birth, turn into chickens. Most Americans aren’t prepared to own a chicken, Terry Chick says with a straight face. Leave chicks to the farmers. I live on a farm, actually the Heirloom cattle ranch, and I mistakenly believed this message was not intended for me. Nope, it turns out I am as unprepared as Terry warned.
I blame the whole mess on Spring.
Spring is a season of hope, and I was hoping for new animals for Micah, our young son, to watch and touch and care for. If you’ve spent any time in a farming community, then you know that in the spring every living thing is cute and fluffy and irresistible, and you are thankful even for the early bull thistle that you will curse later, because they are the first hint of sweet green in the otherwise dead pastures. New life will trick you into thinking all living things are sweet – as Basho wrote, “even a mosquito bite, when it is young, is beautiful.” The sweet little calves are born seemingly every day, bucking and playing in nearly every field as you drive down Fort road; there are nests of black birds in trees and barns and on power lines, full of song and squawk and open beaks, and you love their bustling, even though these are the creatures that will eat Russian Olive seeds all summer and poop them out all over your pastures and plant hundreds of spiked Russian Olive starts you will spend entire days pulling up in the fall.
This March, as the early harbingers of hope, tulips, came up in their dead, debris-filled beds in spite of constant wind and intermittent frost, my husband Dan and I had the same conversation we have had for the past four springs.
Me: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we brought on some goats this year? I’ve been wanting a milk cow. Since we’re expanding the herd, how about a few horses?”
Dan: “I could sure use the horses. Herding cows on foot is no way to do business. They’d have to be experienced working horses though, and if they can’t sit still to open a gate, forget it, and horses like that aren’t cheap.”
I could see him considering – dreaming is fine for me, since the first animal I raised was our pup, Tukli. Each animal we add is the first of its kind for me, and at the end of the day I’m in the house with our toddler, Micah, and any new animal we adopt is realistically a new project for him to care for when he gets home from work.
“If you want, I could keep an eye out at the sale for a young short-horn we could breed, then we could have milk and a calf for table each year. Still, there’s the fence to build between our place and Wirta’s, we’ve got to get that up if we are going to pasture calves by May. We’re going to have to buy a trailer and mobile freezer unit this year to get to market….”
And that is the predictable end to this seasonal conversation – there’s not need to say any more. Animals cost money, and this is a working ranch, and on the Heirloom ranch, if an animal isn’t earning, then it isn’t eating.
Micah was just 16 months old in March, and this spring is the first spring he is really taking in. Dan called on our neighbor, Don Lebee, who raises goats as a hobby, and on a Sunday afternoon we went to witness the wonder contained in his kidding pens. The mother goats were docile and kind, the babies clean, soft and white, easy to catch, and forgiving as Micah petted them with his ham-fists. “We share something special,” I thought. “They have kids, we have kids.” Don, who knows a thing or two about the relationship between kids and pasture and feed, offered us a few to take home. I love goats, because they are the funniest animals on the farm in my book. They are smart, and smart-alecs, which I genuinely respect in a farm animal. But Dan said what I knew he would say, “ to enjoy a goat, you need a good fence.” Goats will eat anything, including the harbingers of hope in the beds surrounding the house, and compost, and the entire vegetable patch, and plenty of pasture. They dig, and are known escapists, and only a fine-mesh fence regularly maintained will hold them.
Me: “Could we build a little pen for them out behind the house?” (By we of course I mean Dan).
Dan: “Building the right kind of fence is a great deal more work, and more expensive, that the four strand we use for the cows, and it would have to be kept up because goats dig. And, if I’m going to build a fence, it will be the one between our place and the Wirta’s.”
So that was that.
I don’t remember why we went to the feed store on that fateful day just before Easter. My intention was to innocently take Micah to look at the new chicks, while Dan looked at whatever useful tools or wire or whatever we needed. But they were so cute, and so innocent looking, and so cheap, and they easily fit in one corner of a shoebox. How fast could they grow?
Pretty fast, it turns out.
Let me begin this story again by explaining that although the chicks are now eight weeks old, they still don’t have a coop. That’s my fault, of course, since the chicks were my doing, and when they were each the size of a cotton ball, a coop didn’t seem like such a pressing concern. (“But we don’t have a coop,” was Dan’s feeble protest the day I brought the six fluff-balls home). In case you are thinking of raising chicks, you should know that they grow faster than puppies or toddlers, the two creatures I have helped grow so far.
Here’s a tip the small farmer’s journal didn’t mention – if they don’t have enough space, they will peck each other to death. And the required space expands exponentially each day they grow.
Here’s what else expands exponentially – the amount they eat (and poop). This sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But imagine six cotton balls – how much could they eat, or poop? Not much the first week. But if you doubt what I’m saying, look up the definition of exponential. But I'm getting ahead of myself -- back to the story.
Dan built the new arrivals a small pen in one corner of the greenhouse, complete with a hanging heat-lamp and pine-chips to keep the floor clean and dry. They were snug for a few weeks, until one afternoon I found my six fluff-balls miraculously replaced by six partially bald and bloody adolescent chickens engaged in a poultry-style fight club. It was at this point that I relinquished the entire greenhouse to them.
A note about the greenhouse: it is the center of bustling activity in the spring while we are planning our 3,000 square-foot vegetable garden. A few hundred plants that we start from seed sit on shelves under grow lights, and they are watered, thinned and generally cared for each day until planting in May. Lets just say working in the greenhouse became a bit more complicated (and messy). Throw in a helpful toddler, slick-bottomed rubber boots, and a watering can and you have the makings of great comedy you can't find on tv and a large chiropractor bill.
It’s just temporary, I told Dan. Until we can build them a proper pen. (By we I meant Dan).
The green house was a fine solution, until it started to heat up to over 100 degrees in there during the day.
You can’t just let them run around outside, it turns out – there are the barn cats to think of, but even if we could guarantee that our pets are strict vegetarians, there are the coyotes, skunks and raccoons to think of, not to mention the Owl that lives in the pine right next to the house, and the hawks that circle overhead from dawn to dusk.
It’s May now, and as our local news anchor predicted, they are chickens. They are refugees living in a “temporary” coop Dan built out of an industrial apple crate and attached to an old dog run ensconced in chicken wire. Each morning and evening I throw mash and cracked corn into their sunny yard, with its layers of wire that is vaguely reminiscent of a state penitentiary.
There they cluck and scratch contentedly, and waddle the odd dance, and take dust baths in the shade of the apricot tree. Something tells me their story will be continued...
In the hope that we will have fresh eggs soon, I offer you the following recipe:
heirloom Chorizo quiche with garden kale:
Ingredients:
9-inch pie crust;
1/2 lb. heirloom chorizo;
3/4 cup sweet onion, diced;
10 large leaves fresh kale, chopped; 1/3 lb. grated cotija or mexican blend cheese; 3 eggs; 1 cup milk
Pie crust:
6 Tablespoons cold butter, chopped;
1 1/2 cups flour;
4 Tablespoons cold buttermilk
Cut the butter and flour together until blended into coarse crumbs. Add the cold buttermilk slowly, just until dough holds together. For best results, roll the dough out on a plastic bag -- I like the filmy produce bags the best, cut down one side so that it is a long sheet. This makes for easy transfer of dough to a pie pan -- just put the pie pan face down on the rolled out dough, then flip it all over and peel away the plastic bag. Form an edge by pinching the dough uniformly around the pie plate.
Quiche
Saute the chorizo in a hot pan until cooked through. Drain, leaving a small amount of fat in the pan. Set the meat aside. Saute onions and chard together in the remaining fat until the onions are transluscent. Add chorizo and heat through. Place all of the cheese evenly in the bottom of the unbaked pie crust. Add meat mixture on top of the cheese. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and milk. Pour the mixture over remaining ingredients in pie shell. Bake at 375 F for 35 to 40 minutes, or until firm. Cool for 10 minutes and serve with salad greens.
5/4/2010Many of you may be interested in being a part of "farm life" or just interested in gaining a stronger connection with our farm. The goal of this blog is to share more of the day-t0-day activities and thoughts that go into the operation of our ranch.
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