Back From Oshkosh

Ended up having WiFi issues at Oshkosh at the university dorms. This meant I couldn't provide any blog updates. Check back soon for my wrap-up.

Donkey Power!

I got to spend some time down at Common Sense Farm today watching their new donkey, Ramona, do what she does best! She's their new cultivator, helping to weed the rows of carrots and beans today. Every once in a while she decides to stop—being a donkey and all—but only for a few seconds. Then she is back at it with Othniel leading and his son running the cultivator. She's a smart one, and a great asset to their farm. When she's done doing her work Othniel's boy hops on her back and rides her back to the barn, a happy sight!

Highs & Lows

Yesterday I had planned to take Merlin out for several miles in our small red cart. I had recently touched up the paint, polished the leather harness, and attached a produce bin to the back bumper so we could carry home a haul of fresh onions, carrots, and greens from Stannard Farm Stand, my closest farm market. I was heading down my road when I noticed my left tire was low on air. I stopped to get a better look and saw the rubber had been ground down to the wires! I couldn't use the cart in this shape and headed home, a little sad. I had been telling the ladies at Stannard I would be coming for weeks. But hey, better safe than sorry.

I ended up going for a trail ride instead, which was glorious. Merlin, Gibson, and I explored the mountain and beat the rain home, just. My Sunday afternoon wrapped up with slow-cooked pork and garden peppers over rice and friends mark and Patty invited me over for post-dinner drinks in the hot tub. It was cool enough at dusk to put on a wool sweater, believe it or not. This morning the farm was 45 degrees! I had spent the day farming, carting, riding, eating my own farm-raised foods, and ended the night with jets on my tired back watching shooting stars. That, my friends, is what we call a High Time in the rural life.

But around here Nature always bats last, as the saying goes. I drove home happy as a clam and Gibson and I did our usually night rounds. Before I headed in with some mint tea and a book (reading Bloodroot, Appalachian magical novel) I lit a lantern and together G and I checked on four sleeping shoats, two calm horses, birds in the coop, bunnies making nests for kindling, and a dozen sheep on the hill. All is well. Last check was on the 50 Freedom Ranger chicks I had inside the house, in the mud room brooder under a headlamp. They were all eating and drinking and happy. A great day in farm country, no?

I woke up and 44 of those chicks were gone.

I know. I know. Horrible. No blood, no sign, no struggle. It was (as someone on Facebook said this morning) a chick version of the rapture. Only 6 little sinners were left, totally fine. I scooped them up and took them to a scrappy makeshift brooder. I inspected the brooder after that and discovered the entry point. There was a hole gnawed into the plywood, about the size of a billiard ball. I was so incredibly crestfallen and angry. If there birds were outside you would almost expect a mass die off, but this was in the brooder I have used for years, inside my home. What happened had to be rats, weasels, martens, opossums or something of the sort that came into the room through the dirt floor behind the washer and dryer. My mudroom was the old farmhouses original woodshed, so there is no stone floor, concrete foundation, or other critter-proof walls. I just never expected to loose so many animals in a day. I put some rat poison inside the empty brooder, not my favorite way to take care of pests but this is war. I'll also put in a small, live trap with bait. This, my friends, is what we call a Low Time in the rural life.

The only good news to this - A friend mailed me a hatchery gift card last month. At least I can get more birds. These were late-season replacements for the other adult American Bresse/Austrolorp meat birds I lost to the raccoon. I am not having a great year of the chicken.

Living this life, with animals and so close to my food and nature is amazing, but it is also a constant emotional gut punch. Every day is an adventure, every day a series of tasks and quests that need to be completed. Yesterday included everything from mucking a pig pen to walking over the crest of a mountain ridge on horseback. It is both ends of the spectrum, pig poo and paradise lost. There are always highs and lows, but the point is to love and learn from both. I wouldn't want a farm that never knew a raccoon or sunset ride. There's a balance here. It keeps me steady.

To Make a Farm

Dinner To Go

If you are as busy as I am right now, you don't have a lot of time to cook. Breakfast is coffee and some nuts and dried fruit, lunch is something fast from the garden cooked in one wok and set over rice with some soy sauce and spices. Dinner? What do I look like?! There is no time for dinner. If there was, well, by 6PM I either want to be on horseback or visiting with friends. I don't want to cook. It's either hot or I am tired, (at least this week anyway). So I have started eating dinners in jars. They say necessity is the mother of invention, right? So here is my saving grace:

You slow cook whatever meat you choose. Right now it is pork, since I have that in the freezer, but this would work for lamb, chicken, mutton, and beef roasts too. You get the slow cooker plugged in and fill it up with a hunk of meat and flavor agent of your choosing. My recent combinations are bbq sauce, honey, and pork. But a can of tomato basil soup and rabbit or beef with diced tomatoes and kidney beans would be just fine as well. Mostly it is savory dishes, with a tomato based sauce. Add spices to taste, don't scrimp on salt. Let that slow cook all day while you work in home or office, run errands, raise children, whatever it is you do that isn't in the kitchen. Then come dinner time all you need to prepare is some rice (in a rice cooker, stovetop, or microwave) and fill half a jar with the cooked rice. The hot rice, then topped with the hot stewing meats, is all you really need. But here is the kicker: you chop up some veggies from the garden into dicey pieces and because of their smaller size they are able to be cooked (steamed) by the heat of the rice and meat with the mason jar lid closed. I make these meals in jars and can take them to friends houses for a quick dinner, serve them on game night, or wrap one in a towel and put it in Merlin's saddle bag for dinner with a view. It's delicious, super easy, super healthy, super fast. You can use local meats and veggies from your local farmers or your own backyard in an economical way too. Since local meats can be expensive, you can make one prok shoulder last for ten-fifteen meals! These freeze great, right in the jar, and so you can fill the fridge with ten or so and take them out when hungre strikes. Awesome.

Bon Appétit!

Ticker Tape

Recent Clarity

Right now the farm is in full production. Everything I do is happening at once. There are vegetables in the garden that need weeding and harvesting. There are pigs in the pen, who need twice daily food and water checks. There are sheep and lambs in the field. There are two goats, one that needs to be milked regularly. It's all happening around usual farm chores, writing deadlines, appointments and obligations and I do not dare complain. I am busy but optimistic about this autumn. That breakdown last week, the tears and the reality check were necessary for this recent clarity.

The past few days were eventful here. I handed in the second round of edits on my fifth book. If that is approved I get paid a partial advance, enough to cover August and September's mortgage and truck payments. That is a HUGE weight off my shoulders and will have me singing at Fiddle Camp this August. I was so worried this fall would just be about panic and fear but right now things are looking up. Thanks to encouragement from readers (I am behind on replies to your emails but so grateful for them) and your generosity of spirit, time, and resources this farm is still standing, and dare I say it, looking more productive than it has all year. Getting out of that funk, dealing with priorities cleared out my head. It shook out some confusion and helped me get my act together. In the fray of it I didn't realize how many things were falling apart around me. Hedges needed trimming, the lawn needed mowing, things needed to be groomed, cleaned up, just invigorated again. I got out the hedge trimmers, rake, and spent a few days just cleaning things up and clearing things out. I feel like a lot is on the mend that was careworn.

I got to spend Friday mostly doing this stuff. It was a 14-hour outside workday, starting at 4:30AM but by the time late afternoon rolled around I had this place in magazine shooting shape. At one point I just stopped to look at the day's efforts and before I wrote down the next day's to do list I just forced myself to walk back to the pig pen - a creation of friends and forced will - and just watch shoats scratch their butts on posts and roll in the hay. In meditation, or fascination (probably both), I stared at these guys. What I was looking at was hundreds of meals for friends and me. There's a lot of work between here and there, but if I stay true to the path so many great people I truly adore will be fed from a bit of land and work. Including everyone who helped make that pen happen. To think about all that while a little gilt rubs her nose in the dirt and then flops into a pile of hay in the shade was a nice way to end the work day.

And if that wasn't enough to validate my little turning point, I knew I had less then two hours to be at Skidmore College in Saratoga to help Patty and Steele get ready for the Floral Fete Parade. I was going to end this day riding in a horse cart down a main street in city celebrating 150 years of horses, culture, and history. No. No no no. I do not dare complain.

P.S. Here are some photos the local paper took! You may or may not see pictures of me and Steele Making Out in Congress Park....

Also, here is a totally wordless video of some pigs being pigs.