Henhouse Pottery

Sometimes Silence IS Golden...

2012-01-29T14:42:00.014-07:00

Every three weeks or so, we do a complete muck-out of all of the cow stalls and fill the girl’s “bedrooms” back up with fresh straw. Think of it as cleaning out the cat box on a GRAND scale. Even though we do daily maintenance and clean-up of manure inside their stalls, this time of year the groundwater and mud get carried in to the barn as the cows walk in and out, eventually churning the straw in to a muddy,but (on the bright-side) highly compostable mess. This past weekend marked time to do a barn cleanout, and the day thankfully was sunny even if it wasn’t all that warm.

Despite the back breaking labor of manually moving thousands of pounds of muddy straw and manure, I actually enjoy the days when we work outside for several hours with the animals. They seem to enjoy our company, too, and they are affectionate and interested in everything we are doing.

Which brings me to the dancing turkeys – because it’s that time of year! I caught this little fellow doing his self-conscious mating dance in the center of the barn. I tried to figure out who he was performing for, and then ultimately realized that this was entirely for our benefit. As a sidenote, this turkey is aptly named “Mute,” because he was born with a defective voicebox and has always been completely incapable of making a sound. The hens seem partial to his near-silent gobbles and calls – I guess ultimately proving that sometimes, silence IS golden.

Matt's work schedule was a little lighter this past weekend, and as usual, he volunteered to make butter on Sunday to free up my time to make some felt for some projects I've sketched out over the past couple of weeks. I used churro wool that I got from Ovie Ranch when we picked up our churro lambs last Summer to make felt this time, and it has an interesting, long-fibered texture that I think will be fun to play around with. It also has a lot of natural variegation, which made for a more interesting wool color without dying.

Chow Time...

2012-01-26T18:28:00.001-07:00

When I was out doing chores and feeding this morning, I realized that somedays my love and attention is far less important to my feathered and furry children than the food I provide...

Goober, would you like a little cuddle?

No thanks, Mom. I'm eating.

The Problem with Raising Ducks in the House...

2012-01-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

We had never really considered owning ducks before we rescued Herbie the Duck. He seems awfully lonely since he's the only species we only have ONE of, which probably explains why he believes he is a cow. The poor thing eats with the cows, sleeps with the cows, and herds the girls by biting at their ankles if he thinks they need to be somewhere other than where they want to be (which goes over amazingly well with irritated, uncomfortable pregnant cows, just for your future reference).

Last summer, we decided we needed to get Herbie some same-species friends. The ducklings arrived in early December from Metzer Farms (who I would wholeheartedly recommend, by the way) and it was way too cold to consider raising them outside.

We ordered 25 ducklings, planning that we'd probably lose at least half of the little ducks to mortality, either in shipping or during the first hard month of life. Fortunately, we haven't lost anyone, and the ducks are still growing like weeds. Unfortunately, we now have twice as many ducks as we'd planned. They are probably big enough to live outside now, truthfully, but they are just so delightful that we'd miss them if we moved them now.

They are in that ugly teenage phase that all waterfowl and poultry go through where their downy baby feathers are falling out but haven't yet been replaced by their adult feathers. They are just learning how to quack instead of chirp. They always look so shocked when mid-chirp, a huge quack comes out instead...

We know they can't live in the basement forever, but we're happy for now to enjoy hand-raising our little flock of "too many" ducks inside the house.

Which leads me to the question - what's the strangest animal you've ever raised in your house? (...you know, teenage boys excluded...)

In other news, the pair of full-beaded, custom adult moccasins I've been working on are coming along nicely. I'm about 12 hours in and only about one-fifth complete, but I thought I'd share a sneak peek all the same.

The Pied Piper...

2012-01-24T16:42:00.002-07:00

Prepping to milk in the winter feels a lot like getting ready for a space walk. Insulated pants, boots, a jacket, a coat, a scarf, a hat, gloves to wear and spares in your pocket in case you get wet…all that’s missing is the space helmet. I was like the pied piper this morning, with a little group of turkeys and Herbie the Duck following me around hoping for treats while I was feeding the cows and sheep in my space suit...

Yesterday after work, I finished up the buttermilk cheese I’d started on Sunday night. It turned out dry and crumbly – similar in texture to feta but with less flavor. I was cautious in souring, so the cheese is a little bland but will taste good mixed with herbs or on top of some greens. The next time, I’ll try souring it a bit longer to see if it gives the cheese a sharper flavor. No matter how long I make cheese, there is still that strange Western part of me that has a hard time leaving milk out on the counter for days to culture or sour. When you grow up in the city, you’re taught not to spoil food which doesn’t always work in homesteading food preservation – catching wild yeast, making preserved dairy foods, fermenting wine…all seem counter-intuitive to the ways we’re taught to handle food in the US.

It’s a busy week here...we are expecting a shipment of bull semen this week which will need to be handled immediately and put in to cryo-storage, and we need to have the vet out to vaccinate our full-size calves. We’re in the process of finishing the construction of a stantion to use for doctoring the cows. Now that we are dealing with 7 cows, instead of just 1 or 2, they are all in different stages when it comes to their comfort with being handled and we are within 75 days of our first calf of the year. Our youngest pregnant heifer got an infection in her jaw late last year, and needed antibiotic shots for several weeks. Trying to inject her, even when she was haltered and held by two or more adults, turned in to a rodeo every time. The two beef steers are far waspier than the dairy cows, and we need to be prepared in case they need veterinary care prior to slaughter.

We are regularly incubating 1000 quail eggs each month, and are expecting 500 or so to hatch out this weekend. I used to think winter was our “down time” but it actually seems like we are busier when it’s cold than when it’s warm, since chores take so much longer when the ground is alternately frozen and flooded, there is no irrigation water, and everyone is cold and needs to be supplemented with feed because the forage is limited. Sometime this week, I’ve also really got to fire my kiln…

Although we’ve had our ram, Tchin’dii, in with the ewes since Fall I don’t know if we’ll have Navajo-Churro lambs from our flock this year. He seems interested in the girls but doesn’t seem all that interested in doing anything about it and we’ve yet to catch any of the sheep “doing the deed.” Matt bought me a chalk vest to put on Tchin’dii, but Churros are notoriously wild and afraid of humans, even if they were hand-raised. It hasn’t seemed worth the hassle to tackle him just to put on the vest. I guess that if we end up with lambs this spring, it will definitely be a surprise!

Last night’s self-sufficient dinner was beef enchiladas. I use a recipe from my aunt. It allows us to use the meat from last year’s steer mixed with boiled eggs from our hens and onions from the garden.

Making Butter and Taking It Easy

2012-01-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

Rain on Saturday meant a flooded barnyard. Saturday night the downpour turned to snow, ice, and miserable animals. It was challenging keeping the indoor stalls dry as the cows and sheep moved in and out, tracking in water and mud. Every season brings its own challenges, and nature truly dictates our workload.

We typically spend at least a part of every Sunday making cheese and butter, setting aside the milk we will drink during the week and freezing what we won't use right away to hold us over when we dry the cows up prior to the delivery of spring and summer calves. Matt makes lovely butter. We had enough buttermilk left over that I'm trying out a new recipe for soured buttermilk cheese this week.

I aggravated a pulled muscle in my back working in the barn so I wasn't able to load my kiln this weekend. Instead, I spent a quiet Sunday puttering around with laundry and working on beading a pair of mocassins while sitting against a heating pad. I've learned that I can't stress over having my plans circumvented because of the needs of our animals or the demands created by the unpredictability of the weather; this life certainly trains you to flexibility...

Winter Rain & Frozen Quail

2012-01-20T17:29:00.000-07:00

The weekend’s snow froze and then melted in a drizzly rainstorm Thursday, turning the frozen ground in the barnyard into thick cold black mud. My wellies kept getting stuck three or four inches down when I walked out to milk and feed, pulling off my socks and making me wave my arms wildly to keep my balance while trying to extract my feet, boots and all, from the sucking ooze while dragging a milking cart with wheels that aren’t suited to quicksand. I managed to stay upright, but Little Q wasn’t as lucky when he was helping me last night. He fell flat on his backside in a mud puddle while he was filling water troughs. It's no wonder that we go through washers and dryers and vacuum cleaners at an alarming rate. We tend to bring a lot of the barnyard inside with us, especially this time of year.

The cows don’t mind the mud, but the sheep were practically begging me to feed them indoors so they could keep their long slender legs out of the cold mud while eating breakfast. Evidently, they don't like the wet.

I’ll be glaze-firing my kiln again this coming weekend – filled with tankards, platters, and tea bowls. I need to start making summer ware again – planters and garden lamps. It’s hard sometimes to think that far ahead when the clay is frozen and the space heaters aren’t enough to keep the studio warm. I’ve been beading and felting and preparing churro yarn to weave a rug instead, which is nice to do sitting in front of the fire.

Over the past two years, we've sold live and frozen quail to local falconers. The money we make from the quail helps pay for grain and winter hay for the cows and sheep. It’s definitely more expensive to feed our livestock when the pastures are frozen. We used to buy our feed in 50 pound bags from our local "urban" feed stores, but we had to order in dairy supplement for our girls from Idaho (since there aren’t many dairy farmers in our area) when they are pregnant or in milk to make sure they get enough of the right nutrition. We needed so much that hauling it around in 50 pound bags became a hassle and too much expense. Matt bought some food-grade 55 gallon drums instead this past Fall, and we load them on a trailer and take them down to the Leland Mill in Spanish Fork once a month instead. It makes it easier and more economical to buy 3000 or more pounds of feed at a time.

This week has been heavy with work for Matt, and we had an order for frozen quail for a falconer that needed to be filled last night even though he wasn't home. I’ve never had to kill the quail and prep them for freezing by myself, but I had to “tough up” last night since Matt was working. I got a little chuckle out of the fact that when we were first married, I would put upside-down paper cups over spiders in our apartment so Matt could deal with them when he got home. It was a poignant reminder for me that police wives have to develop some serious strength and independence or the life will eat us alive.

Comfort Food and A Long Drive

2012-01-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

Matt's grandmother passed away last Thursday, so we drove out to Vernal for her funeral yesterday. Vernal, a Utah oilfield town next to Ashley National Forest, is our second home. Little Q was a trooper throughout the seven hours of driving and the graveside service in single-digit weather. Even though the purpose for our trip was sad, the drive to NorthEastern Utah is always a beautiful one. You don't have to drive too far to see an amazingly diverse landscape, even in winter. We drove past the ranch where we picked up our Navajo-Churros last summer on the way to the church for the funeral service.

After a nice week-long interlude of warm weather, we got snow on Sunday and freezing temps that immediately turned the snow to ice. On Monday night, it was so cold the milk was turning to slush in the stainless steel milking bucket while we were milking. There is a quiet consistency to milking cows that is calming in it's daily sameness, like starting and ending the day with meditation.

The clay froze in the pottery studio, and some mice have moved in and decided to chew on one of the platters I'd left in there to dry. It was too cold in the studio to throw over the weekend, so I switched to beadwork and worked on some full-beaded custom adult moccasins instead.

The sheep take the cold in stride - I suppose it helps having an eight inch wool coat. They prefer to sleep outside, laying in the falling snow, rather than hunkering down inside on warm straw like our cows do.

We had late-night comfort food after the long drive home last night - venison chili and Navajo fry bread, one of our self-sufficient winter favorites.

Back In The Swing of Things...

2012-01-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a long time. It's difficult sometimes to work full-time off the farm, manage our livestock, support Matt in his demanding law enforcement career, and still find the time to share with my friends in cyber-space. The past 6 months have also been personally difficult for our family for a number of reasons. My aging mother's health has been poor and we went through some other small tragedies just like everyone does. However, during the recent police death and injuries here in Utah, the friends I met through my blog were some of the first to reach out to me to make sure that Matt & I were ok. This made me realize that this blog is an important part of my support system - as an artist, as an urban farmer, as a law enforcement spouse, and as a mother.

So, let me get you all caught up on what craziness we've been up to.

We purchased three additional cows this past summer. Two of them are full-sized jersey babies that we purchased from a local dairy that was going out of business. We picked them up in the back of Matt's truck (no kidding) and you would not believe the double-takes we received on the ride home, with their little cow faces peering out through the side of the camper shell! Supai and Lulu fit in great with the rest of our mini jersey herd. We were able to successfully AI our three mini jersey cows, and are expecting calves between early April and the end of June.

Since we never do things halfway, we purchased a small flock of Navajo-Churro sheep from a great ranch in Vernal. We will be adding to our little flock this coming Spring. When we picked up the lambs, we were overwhelmed by the hospitality we received - a lovely visit with people with a similar passion for endangered livestock and fiber arts - and a bucket of fresh apricots from their orchard and some ice cold sodas for our drive home! I'm learning Navajo weaving, learning to felt and process wool and spin my own yarn both by hand and on a spinning wheel. Keeping sheep is not what I expected - each member of our little flock has their own personality. They are quiet animals, peaceful and aloof and loving all at the same time.

It doesn't sound like much when I type it out, but there never seem to be enough hours in the day.

It's good to be back...

Baby Turkeys, Hauling Hay, Weasels, and The Waiting Game

2011-06-20T11:55:00.000-06:00

After nearly a month of having three hens sitting on a slew of turkey & chicken eggs, we finally had a hatch out in the barn.

Out of all the eggs the girls had been sitting, only three poults hatched. We decided to see if the hens would mother the poults if we left them in the barn. When I found one of the little babies wandering around the tack shed, well away from the mother turkeys, we decided to bring them in to the house and put them in a brooder. By the time we took the poults away (no small feat), we were down to two babies. We brought the eggs they'd been sitting in to the house and put them in an incubator. Two more turkeys hatched a day or so later.

Later in the week, we discovered the reason we were missing one of the barn poults.

My father-in-law caught a small female weasel in a gopher trap. The next night, Matt and I were out checking on our pregnant heifer, and I heard a commotion in the alleyway of the barn. I looked out in time to see a large male weasel attacking our two largest roosters! Matt and I were able to corner the weasel and Matt killed it. Fortunately, the weasel was only able to pull some of the feathers out of one rooster's head, but didn't get it's teeth in too deep.

Then last night, we went out to feed and one of my adult quail was missing it's head! We set out a weasel trap, but no luck as of this morning. We've never had weasels before, and we have to wonder why so many all of a sudden? Maybe the wet this year has driven them lower in the mountains in to more urban areas.

We took our first cutting of hay, and the (new to us) baler we bought last Fall has worked out nicely. It is a 1969 John Deere that we bought off of the local classifieds. It took a bit of work on Matt's part to get it running perfectly, and it is worth it's weight in gold.

It was a little challenging to cut and bale this year because of the rain and wet, so it took a long time to dry and we had to try to expedite getting the hay off the pasture before a big rainstorm. We had another big rainstorm and cold temperatures yesterday, which is extremely unusual for our part of Utah this time of year. Luckily, we made it under the wire and got over 100 bales of hay between our pasture and our in-laws field dried and safely stored.

Little Q did an amazing job driving the hay wagon while we loaded bales to store in the hay barn.

Our last batch of baby turkeys are growing nicely, and we can already tell which will be toms. This little cutie is already strutting and gobbling, even though he's no larger than a basketball.

Our pregnant heifers due date is next weekend, and she shows all the signs of going in to labor any minute. Her bag is full, she's leaking milk, her back end has loosened up, and she is having contractions. Now we play the waiting game and check her every few hours to make sure that she hasn't started active labor. I think I'm more nervous now than I was when I had Little Q all those years ago.

Junk, a Duck, Bees, and Early Labor?

2011-05-31T15:03:00.000-06:00

We were finally able to get the almost-last unwanted furniture out of our basement and into a dumpster this weekend. When we bought our little old house, it came "fully furnished," really just a fancy way to say that the last 4 people who had lived there had left their unwanted furniture and junk in the home for someone else to deal with. When we moved in we had to store all of our furniture and all but necessities while we went through the whole house room-by-room. Last Memorial Day, we finished sorting out the upstairs; this year, we sorted out the basement and got it emptied to accept the last of our stored furniture. It has been a long, slow process.

Construction also began this weekend on a gorgeous and fancy new greenhouse (more on that later in the week). It rained off and on throughout the whole long weekend. It was actually quite cold on Sunday; it was even uncomfortably cool out on the patio for our morning coffee break.

As part of routine farm chores, we emptied Herbie's stock trough, cleaned and refilled it. He thought he was in heaven, as he LOVES running water.

He wasn't happy until I stepped in to the water with him. He didn't want to play in the water alone, and kept pecking at the top of my muck boots until I started splashing around, too.

The bees gorged on pollen when the sun did manage to shine...this little gal stopped for a rest carrying a heavy load and Matt picked her up. Look at the pollen all over her front legs, in addition to her full pollen baskets! The rain has really set the bees back, and they are having to work extra hard when it is warm to feed all of the brood in their hives.

We are now about 20 days away from calving. Poor Mika is miserable, and tries to handle the pain caused by her ever-growing calf and false labor by pushing her mouth against the edge of the corral panels.

It's difficult for us to watch her be so uncomfortable, and given how agitated she has been lately, we are watching for the signs of early labor.

Coloring on the Walls?...and a Pheasant in the Window

2011-05-26T16:39:00.000-06:00

I signed Little Q up for drawing lessons with another local Utah artist and his first lesson was last evening. She draws beautiful realistic portraits, and is also talented at working with and teaching kids. (Her info is here if you are in my local area (SL/UT County) and want to get your kids in to some wonderful art classes). I love the sign leading to the studio at the rear of her house:

It made me want to go home and color on the walls. Or on a pot. Or on something...

We are going on 10 days of these three persistent turkey hens sitting an ever-growing clutch of turkey eggs. They take turns taking breaks - it is the craziest, most organized, and most devoted thing I've ever seen. They are obviously communicating and cooperating with each other to make sure that the clutch is constantly being handled by one of them, or by all of them. They sleep in a giant pile at night, taking turns with who is warming the actual eggs. We were going to try to candle a few of the eggs to see if they are fertile and growing, but one of the hens is so possessive of the clutch we don't want to put her off of sitting by messing with the nest.

We'll just have to see if their efforts pay off in 14 or so days...

Our pheasants never take shelter, even in extreme cold and snow, so imagine our surprise when we caught this rooster pheasant living the sweet life the other night. We know he's been sneaking in to the small chicken house to sleep at night, but he rarely ventures off the floor. I guess he's discovered something the rest of the pheasants haven't yet figured out - a warm dry house on a cold wet night can be a good thing.

Especially if there's a view.

120 Children...And, Devoted Motherhood

2011-05-24T14:45:00.000-06:00

120 ten-year olds descended on the farm early this morning to meet our animals and learn about raising endangered livestock, urban farming, beekeeping, eating local, and self-sufficiency. We survived, although I was reminded why we only have one child... ok, I'm just kidding. The kids were great and gave me some hope that the upcoming generation does care about preserving diversity in their local food supply and about where and how their food is raised.

For those of you who have never dealt with over 100 children at a time, here were my favorite questions from the morning:

"Can I hug a cow? It's on my bucket list..."
"How come it smells like cow poo?"
"How do eggs get babies in them?"

Seriously, what 10 year-old has a bucket list? I don't even have a bucket list, and I'm 38 years old. And as for the babies questions - I always refer children back to their own mothers. We all know that I did such a great job with "the talk" with Little Q; I'm not about to attempt that with the children of strangers.

It was raining and cold right up until the kids arrived. We were lucky enough to have a little respite that lasted just long enough to get the kids all introduced to the animals and on their way back to the school. We gave the teachers a big jar of comb honey for the kids to taste later in the day.

Doing field trips or making presentations at schools or to church groups about urban farming, beekeeping or self-sufficiency always makes me so much more grateful for this life we have. Not that I ever take it for granted, but preparing handouts and vocalizing how we try to make a difference helps me refocus, especially during the times of year when we work long hours. I also never cease to be amazed by how fascinated children are by beekeeping and honey production.

On to devoted motherhood - for anyone who's keeping track, all three hen turkeys are continuing to take turns and cooperatively sit a pile of turkey eggs that grows larger by the day.

The ruffled-looking hen is a great sitter, and it's interesting to watch her take any of the cracked or broken eggs and remove them from the nest, taking them all of the way up the pature in an instinctual effort to deter predators. She makes an extremely intimidating throat call if you get anywhere near her nest - it's enough to keep me from even considering messing with her, even if just to help. All three hens have to be sitting on at least 50 eggs now; including a couple of chicken eggs they scooped up after free-ranging Ameraucanas and Orloffs laid close to their nest. If the chicken eggs hatch, I wonder if they'll treat the chicks the same as the poults?

And in a completely separate observation, I've noticed that every time I blog about killing any of our animals to eat them, I lose blog followers. Meat quail lost me 1 follower, the annual chicken slaughter lost me 2, and in an all new record, the slaughter of our annual beef steer lost me 3 followers this past month. For one brief shining moment I had 102 followers and I'm back to 99 after posting a photo of Little Q helping to skin our steer. I used to think it was a coincidence, now I'm certain that it's not. This blog is about a lot of things - being a potter, living simply, raising endangered livestock. But, at the end of the day it is largely about a family trying to raise all of their own food in the middle of the suburbs. I hope that everyone else who sticks around realizes that I genuinely try to write about harvesting our meat in the most tasteful way possible.

The Sad Wagon...and Hive Management

2011-05-23T12:38:00.000-06:00

It was a busier weekend than usual, taking me off of the farm in the name of charity. My company entered a team in the Cycle Salt Lake Century bike ride, a hundred-miler that donates proceeds from the ride registrations to a fund that maintains bike trails all over the state of Utah. I coordinated all of the team logistics, and also had the distinction of being the driver of "the sad wagon," the vehicle set to pick up any of the riders who couldn't complete the entire route.

It meant a really early morning and a long drive to the Utah State Fairpark North of us. I had the chance to watch the ride start, mostly because I went the wrong way to stage in case I was called and got stuck in traffic waiting for all of the bikes to leave. I'm glad to say that I didn't get called out to rescue any of our team members.

Saturday was a slightly drier day, with a few (too brief) moments of sunshine, even though it ended up raining again that evening and almost all day Sunday. Our animals took an opportunity to enjoy every possible minute of the warmth, basking like lizards on rocks to soak up what they could every time the sun poked out from behind the rain clouds.

On Sunday afternoon, we had another swarm in a strange place. The rain has made hive management a challenge this Spring and we have hives we know are overcrowded. We weigh the pros and cons of opening up the hives when we know we will swamp them when trying to add supers or do any clean-up. A small swarm staged low to the ground on a Chinese Elm branch that had grown through a chain link fence. We couldn't get the branch out, so we had to scrape the bees off in the pouring rain and put them in a newly set hive. This wasn't actually as easy as it sounds, and made us think that we might need a bee vacuum just for this type of situation in the future.

While we were already suited up and soaking wet, we went ahead and added some supers to some of the hives that were in drier locations.

We are hosting a field trip at the farm for Little Q's elementary school tomorrow - we're going to talk to them about self-sufficiency and urban farming. We're hoping the rain stops for at least a bit so we don't end up with a bunch of soaked school kids!

Clay Animals...and, Have I Mentioned The Rain?!?

2011-05-20T10:44:00.000-06:00

I taught art in Little Q's fourth grade class again yesterday. When we were making and studying pinch pots last month the kids were excited by the photos of Indian fetishes in the reference books I'd brought and wanted to try to make their own clay animal spirits this go-round. After a fun and energetic hour and a half, there were a lot of snakes (ha!) and other extremely creative animal creations in clay. I had made the kids sketch out their ideas before starting to work with the clay and some of the sketches they came up with were wild!

Here are two of my favorites - an owl and a tarantula...check out the spelling of crocodile on the paper these guys are sitting on.

We're working on 6 straight days of rain and snow, and it's hard not to let it impact everything we do. It's not that we aren't used to the wet or cold, it's just that it is well past when we traditionally have sun and milder temperatures and it's delaying all of the pre-summer activities that normally give us some hope of longer days, bright sunshine, and iced tea on the patio.

Matt has been put on alert and has to carry his pager around in his infrequent off-hours in case the flooding gets any worse and forces evacutions. Mudslides and landslides have been closing the roads all over the state and yesterday morning on my way to work, there were signs everywhere announcing that the standing water on the freeway was deep enough it was causing serious accidents. All of this is made more concerning becuase there is still a significant amount of unmelted snow in the mountains that will have to go somewhere when the weather does warm up. Ground water is already at 180% of capacity.

All of our animals are sick of the rain and the mud, with the exception of Herbie. If anything, the rain has made him more playful (if that's possible). He wanders around from puddle to puddle, tugging on the hems of our coats or pecking at the top of our boots, tail wagging, wanting us to follow and play.

Out of the blue, several of our heritage turkey hens have turned broody. Three of them are actually both competitively and cooperatively sitting a huge clutch of eggs inside the barn. They either team-sit or take turns sitting while the others free-range to eat and drink. Yesterday morning, I surprised one that was sleeping on the clutch with her head tucked.

Matt made the mistake of trying to be helpful this morning and a normally gentle and tolerant hen hissed and pecked him hard enough to leave a bruise through his glove. We'll see how this turns out, since we've never successfully had turkeys hatch their own eggs before.

And in other news, have I mentioned the rain?

When Teaching Your Children Life Lessons Goes Awry...

2011-05-18T11:03:00.000-06:00

Because we breed endangered Russian Orloff chickens, we keep several conformant Roosters "on tap," as it were. It's kind of like having a beauty queen with several runners up, just in case the queen can't perform her duties. The rooster we prefer to breed, Bad Vlad, is a good pick because he has a generally lovely temperament and manages to stay out of the vodka long enough to get the kids out of the house and on their own.

The runners up, Jackie Legs and Knucklehead, while lovely, have minor issues that make them second string. Knucklehead is, well, dumb. And Jackie Legs hates buckets. He makes it extremely difficult to feed anyone without having grain spilled (in a big way). I guess this irrational hatred of buckets probably also makes him a little less intelligent than the average chicken, too.

Little Q is afraid of roosters, due to an incident with a formerly tame Ameraucana rooster that was the lone survivor of 2 dog attacks that wiped out his entire flock and his rooster BFF (Frank & Jesse James). The resultant PTSD altered his personality to the point that he has had to live a more solitary life for the past couple of years. He chased Little Q when he was younger and Little Q now cringes every time one of the roosters in general pop approaches him. Or looks at him. Or looks at anyone else.

Last Sunday, I decided that in order to be a good parent, I needed to try to help Little Q overcome his fear of roosters. Bad Vlad, typically predictable, seemed a good fit for the life lesson. "Watch this," I told Little Q, and I approached Vlad slowly. Normally, Vlad is docile enough that he will allow us to pick him up. What I didn't know was that Little Q had picked up one of Vlad's hens, and Vlad took exception to having his girls "messed with." He spurred me, hard and fast, both shocking me and creating an immediate stinging in my knee and lower leg.

Little Q dropped the Ameraucana hen, and Vlad went back to his normal, sweet self.

I realized last night that I probably made things worse with Little Q and his fear of roosters. I'm sure someday when he's farther from the ground, maybe roosters won't be so intimidating...in the meantime, I'm dealing with bizarre bruising and (more importantly) wounded pride. So much for teaching Q about overcoming fear.

We are going on four straight days of rain here in Utah. Yesterday, we had some snow in the lower elevations in addition to the mountains. Doesn't Mother Nature know that its May?!? Our turkeys have had to learn the back stroke to free range.

Steak & Turkey!

2011-05-17T13:23:00.000-06:00

We spent two 12-hour days this past weekend butchering our steer. We had slaughtered him the weekend before, gutted, skinned and hung the meat to age. The temperatures temporarily turned warmer, so we decided to take him down and get him in the freezer after one week.

It's hard to believe that this can create so much work once it quits walking around:

Our reward at the end of a long weekend of boning, cutting, wrapping, labeling and freezing 350 pounds of hamburger, roasts and steaks?

Fresh tenderloin steaks!

This is just a sneak peek of the lovely meat we will be enjoying for months to come. Freezers full of chicken, turkey and beef takes the majority of the pressure off of feeding ourselves for the next year. The best part of all is knowing what is in our food (and more importantly, what ISN'T in our food!); particularly since we didn't take him to a slaughterhouse or meat packing plant, but processed the steer 100% by ourselves.

Our latest batch of baby turkeys is doing well in the poultry hut. It's been rainy and cold since Sunday afternoon, but they are warm and dry and are beginning to take on some breathtaking feathering.

Swarm Capture and A Boy and His Duck

2011-05-13T12:40:00.000-06:00

We had a swarm yesterday. The hive that had split was a small late swarm we caught in a neighborhood across the valley last Fall. We didn't think the colony would make it through the winter because of the size of the cluster and the time of year. Obviously, they fared just fine.

Bees always seem to pick the tallest pine tree in my father-in-law's pasture to stage when swarming and Matt ended up on a ladder 16 feet above the ground handling 10 pounds of bees looking for a new home. He's become a veteran at swarm captures since we've done so many for other people. He's gotten to be fairly fast and efficient when catching and relocating a swarm. The process yesterday was a far cry different from our first swarm capture in our quarter-acre backyard years ago; our neighbor at the time thought we had a fly hatch until we walked out of the house in bee suits!

After dark last night, Matt and I crept up to the newly-set hive he'd put the swarm in earlier in the evening and opened the door to the hive. Matt had blocked the entrance with a small piece of wood, screwed into place until the bees got accustomed to their new home. No one flew away (success!) and we will move this new hive closer to the edge of the hayfield this weekend.

Little Q loves to play with Herbie the Duck, and has even taught him to fetch. Herbie will now go after anything Q has in his hand, even if it means he has to dive underwater to retrieve it.

Oh, the beauty of the classic relationship between boy and duck...

Everything I Need To Know I Learned Hatching Turkeys...

2011-05-10T15:22:00.000-06:00

When it's time to hatch, the first turkey out of the shell is typically the hardest hatch; it takes a long time. There is no one on the outside to encourage them, nothing out there to look forward to except the solitary quiet of the great unknown. It must be scary, breaking through the hard shell and tough membrane of a warm, dark and cozy home, expending great effort pushing away from the known and the safe.

But if you are a turkey, what is the first thing you do after you catch your breath?

You don't sit and dwell on how clever you are, how you must be the smartest, strongest turkey in the world to have overcome great obstacles to learn a wonderful secret. You don't bitterly reflect that you earned this knowledge or strength, and believe that others should have to do things the same hard way that you did.

Instead, you move over to the next guy in line, you stand on your wobbly legs, and you yell your encouragement in to the tiny hole in his little comfy warm place. You let him know he's not alone. You want him to succeed, too.

In so many difficult human endeavors, we tend to hoard the strength and the knowledge we gain when we come through a great struggle or learning experience. We forget to be mentors and teachers and friends. We forget how frightening or frustrating it was for us to go it alone, to be the first one to come through something new or difficult. We forget to get out there and yell our encouragement to others, even if we haven't met them yet.

Sometimes, those we encourage become our most beautiful, and valued, friends.

Plants, Beef Tongue, and Hugging Quail...

2011-05-09T14:50:00.000-06:00

We finally caught a lucky break, weather-wise, this past weekend. Friday & Saturday both turned out to be beautiful, sunny, dry days! Our plant sale went great - we had over 80 visitors to our little farm and sold nearly 500 plants and a lot of seeds. We still have close to 150 plants left for our garden.

I was excited at the prospect of planting some tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins on Sunday, but it started raining early Sunday afternoon and hasn't stopped yet. The little moat that our chickens have dug all of the way around the perimeter of the barn in their quest for good dusting spots and bugs, which normally irritates me as I trip over the ledge (they have an entire pasture to wander, but they have to dig right next to the barn?!?), has kept all of the water from flooding the barn stalls.

Back to the plant sale, we had some wonderful visitors stop by to look at the heirloom plants we had out - everything from a few of the chefs from local resort restaurants to the treasurer for the Slow Food Utah Chapter. Little Q scooped up all the kids that stopped by and made sure they were introduced to the cows, goats, chickens and turkeys. It was a wonderful reminder that we live in a great community where our local (and not so local) neighbors care deeply about supporting small agriculture. In urban farming, it is easy to get caught up in the little things - zoning issues or stray cats or rude neighbors. Sometimes it's good for us to take a fresh look at the bigger community picture.

We had put out full coffee service, juice and dessert bread - Little Q had four cups of coffee before I realized what he was doing...needless to say, he had a lot of energy on Saturday afternoon and I am up for mother of the year.

We slaughtered our beef steer this past weekend, and I can't begin to tell you what a relief it is to have the majority of the hard work of harvesting our meat staples for the year complete. Even as long as we've been raising our own food and slaughtering our own meat, it never gets any easier to take the life of an animal. In hunting, there is sport to it, and a sense that there is some "fairness" in the harvesting; in farming, you hold all the cards and the decision to end a life to provide food is never one we take lightly. Seeing our life through my son's eyes as he fully participates as an older helper for the first time is also a different experience for me as a mother. Little Q helped skin the steer, gut him, and salt his hide to send to the tannery.

A colleague from work came on Saturday afternoon and picked up the tongue, tail, kidneys, liver, sweet breads, and heart, which we set aside for him. He actually made a meal for his family with them for Mother's Day. Even though my mother is English, and I have my grandmother's recipes for kidney pie and beef tongue, preparation of those parts is labor-intensive and they are best eaten fresh. We work hard to make sure that no part of the animals we harvest ever goes to waste.

And speaking Mother's Day dinner, Matt made me a delicious meal on Sunday night - homemade chicken kiev using breasts from some of the meat birds we raised this year. The chicken was melt-in-your-mouth tender and the filling was sinfully fattening and buttery!

Last night, as I was tucking in all of the baby birds that are living in the house right now, I caught one of my little coturnix chicks asleep with her wing around a Texas A&M chick...

Awwwww.......

Bees and Chickens and Plants...(oh my)!

2011-05-05T11:58:00.000-06:00

In Utah, when the snow begins to melt we call it Spring Runoff, and if there is a lot of rain or groundwater combined with the runoff, there is flooding. In 1983, we had a year with snow and water about like this one, where the main state roads were flooded because the creeks and rivers overflowed, filling houses with water, and causing damage and death. We will have to see where the warmer temperatures take us, since the creeks and rivers are already swollen and there is still snow 3/4 of the way down the mountainside.

Despite the mud and snow, flooding, and unpredictable weather, spring is still my favorite time of year.

The bees usually have a big hatch out of baby bees about this time each year. The new workers are inexperienced flyers, and they stop to rest on our shoulders and in the green grass while we work. Within a few weeks, they will be packing loads of pollen so large that they will barely be able to fly. The blossoming fruit trees literally buzz with their activity.

Earlier in the week, Little Q made friends by helping the Orloffs find worms under logs and rocks in the pasture.

And my plants are ready to go in the garden. We are trying our plant sale again on Saturday, if the warm weather holds, to share our surplus starts with our neighbors. There are blossoms starting on the cucumbers and pumpkin plants in the house. I am already dreaming of marinated cucumbers and fresh pumpkin pie.

Apologies To My Mother...And it SNOWED!

2011-05-02T16:04:00.000-06:00

We're at that sickening point of Spring in Utah where every blog post contains the phrase "....and it snowed." We woke early on Saturday morning to 6" of snow and temperatures cold enough it would have killed any of our vegetable plants if we'd dared to set them outside. All of the weather reports indicated that Saturday would be in the 50's with only a chance of showers (I was, of course, naively thinking this meant rain)...that teaches me to trust the weatherman! We rescheduled the farm plant sale for next Saturday morning, and we'll try it again...

Apologies to my mother (and my vegetarian Sister T) for the next portion of my post, which involves harvesting animals raised for meat.
Sunday morning by 10, it was warm enough outside that we no longer needed jackets to work. Most of the snow had melted and turned already-wet dirt to mud. We spent the morning slaughtering our meat chickens for the year, and the afternoon cleaning the meat and putting it away in the freezer. It feels good to have meat in the freezer again, and to be done with slaughtering chickens for the year. It is labor-intensive and becomes less fun as the weather turns hot.

In the past, we've allowed Little Q to participate if he wanted to, but this year we required his participation. The older that he gets, the more we expect him to participate in the work we do to raise and harvest food; from pulling weeds in the vegetable garden to taking a turn with the honey extractor to helping with butchering. He may never use these skills in his adult life, but he will at least know the detailed mechanics of how to raise food and feed himself. He had several "jobs" in the butchering process this time, including his favorite, removing the chicken legs before we put them in the chicken plucker. It is one of my least favorite tasks. I was happy to pass it along to Q and find something else useful to do that doesn't involve that unfortunate cracking sound...it makes my teeth feel all squitchy just thinking about it.

Little Q took his jobs very seriously. He wanted to help with some of the "bigger" tasks this time. I told him that when he is 15, I plan to sit on a lounger and drink iced tea and watch while he does all the work, so he should enjoy being responsible for the small jobs while he still can.

I'll be firing my glaze kiln this week, which means I have some long days of glazing ahead of me. I don't dislike glazing, but I don't love it either. It's monotonous but still requires attention to detail...a rough combination for me!

Sideways Snow & Wild Chickens...

2011-04-29T15:45:00.000-06:00

We had beautiful weather yesterday, which got me all excited for the heirloom plant sale we are having at our farm tomorrow morning. Sadly, this morning was chilly again, and it is now snowing sideways.

Again.

Sigh.

I hope Mother Nature understands that I expect her to get this all out of her system before 9 am tomorrow. Doesn't she know that it is nearly May and we've already "enjoyed" plenty of snow (and rain, and flooding)? Plus, I want to plant my garden. The growing season here is short enough without this nonsense.

To match breed conformance, Spangled Russian Orloff chickens can only have white patches less than 1/2"; but you always get a couple that are very white in each hatch. It always makes me a bit sad that they don't "count" as representative of the breed since I think the whiter birds actually look like ptarmigans. Orloffs, as a rule, are a wilder looking breed already.

These birds are such magnificent egg layers and so cold hardy, we never cull those that don't conform to standard (which would be a waste of a bird with a lovely temperament, in my opinion); we just don't breed them.

Spring Snow and a Self-Sufficient Easter Dinner

2011-04-26T12:07:00.000-06:00

As proof that I didn't plant my late Spring peas too late for Utah, I woke up three days after planting them to find snow falling on my pottery studio and herb garden. I almost didn't mind the cold rain that turned to sideways snow, until we headed out to take care of animals in a flooded pasture in the wee hours this morning. Our animals are sick of the wet ground. They are ready for warm.

And so am I.

Getting back to feeding a family self-sufficiently, it has been a long time since I shared examples of what we eat as a family providing our own food. We started raising the coming Winter's meat this past Fall and Winter - we already have a large number of chickens ready for slaughter, and a beef steer that we'll be killing and butchering within the next couple of weeks. A warm Easter Sunday found us feeling more comfortable about emptying our root cellar and freezer. The sense of thriftiness and urgency to keep as much of our preserved food available as possible is beginning to wane; it has been a long winter for feeding ourselves.

In that vein, we have eaten a lot of poultry over the past year. We only harvested one deer during hunting season, and we've rationed that small amount of red meat. Venison has been our treat. To celebrate Easter, I made country-fried venison steaks with creamy country gravy, mashed potatoes, and cornbread. It was a decadent departure from chicken, turkey, and eggs.

We are out of our frozen vegetables, and have switched over to micro-greens grown in the kitchen. I used to think that we didn't want to "over" diversify, and I'm learning now that diversification and experimentation in growing all year long is the key to ensuring a continuous supply of food. The gorgeous baby spicy mustard greens in the picture below will be large enough to harvest and eat in 7 days. They will keep growing for 3-5 cutting cycles, after which we let them go to seed to start over in this individual pot. We are keeping multiples of these greens and harvest from one pot at a time to keep ourselves in constant greens.

I also used to think that self-sufficiency meant growing and raising food during Spring & Summer, putting food up during the Fall and resting during Winter. We've had the best success when we work and raise and grow year-round using many, many different methods and raising many different kinds of birds and animals.

These lovely tomato plants are ready for our spring garden. When it quits snowing!

Like Water Off a Duck's Back...

2011-04-25T12:54:00.000-06:00

It was a busy Easter weekend at the Henhouse. It started with our newest, much-anticipated miniature jersey cow arriving on a cross-country transport on Friday night.

The irrigation water was also finally turned back in to the pressurized system, which makes life so much easier. Nothing says Spring quite like knowing that our days of hauling culinary water in buckets and draining hoses so they won't freeze is over for at least a few months!

Saturday, the vet came early to check out Baby, our new cow, and check in on our pregnant heifer. Baby got a clean bill of health, but the vet encouraged us to get her on some green grass and keep her quarantined for a while from our other girls, especially since we are expecting. It's hard to believe that we will be having a calf within the next 8 weeks!

We grazed Baby, and then did "normal" farm business hours which somehow managed to extend clear in to Saturday night. We'd sold out of eggs and quail chicks before noon.

I cleaned up my herb garden, planted peas (I know I'm a little late, but I'm still expecting at least one more BIG snowstorm here in Utah), and finished trimming a bunch of stoneware planters in between farm visitors so I could quick dry them in my electric kiln to bisque on Sunday.

Sunday morning, we did farm chores and I finished loading my electric kiln. We had turkey sausage, turkey egg & potato casserole for a late brunch (which was LOVELY), and then spent some time with Little Q and our animals. I've finally used up the last of the potatos from the root cellar, and they were such a good staple all winter long for us. I need to plant more this Spring, to make sure that I have plenty to use as seed potatos, since we planted heritage varieties last year that I could have replanted this year if we'd had a few more.

In celebration of Spring, we filled our large summer stock trough with water for the cows, but Herbie the Duck was convinced it'd been filled just for him. We had trouble getting him out of the water at the end of the day.

We also had a special self-sufficient Easter dinner - more on that later in the week.

Raising Kids in the Arts

2011-04-21T11:14:00.000-06:00

The other night, I went out to my studio to work and I made Little Q come with me. Matt was doing something that involved a respirator, ear plugs and safety glasses - so Q was stuck with me, even though I was definitely the less exciting choice.

Little Q has been keeping me company at my wheel since he was a pup - from the time he could sit up on his own, I'd strap him in a wooden high chair next to my wheel and give him some picture books or a big lump of clay; or both, which resulted in a whole group of children's books I couldn't pass on to anyone. Most of their thick cardboard pages were glued together with slip.

It's a good thing clay is non-toxic, because Little Q has eaten more than his fair share of it over the years. (I'll let you know if we find any surprising resulting super powers!)

Once he was old enough to reach the foot pedal on my electric wheel, I started to teach Little Q to throw. He was 8 in this picture, and he's only gotten better as he's gotten older. He knows all the terminology - wedging, centering, pulling. He knows what a bat is, how to reprocess clay, how cones work to measure kiln temperature and heat work.

The interesting thing I've found about raising a child in a creative environment, where craft and artistic endeavors are part of their daily lives, is that they begin to believe that immersion in the arts is normal for everyone. Little Q genuinely thinks that every family has (or should have) a pottery wheel, and that hanging out with your mother and making clay animals while she throws is a normal evening activity everywhere. When I teach art awareness to Little Q's fourth grade class, he wonders why the other kid's struggle when we work with clay. His hands know the way clay feels, and building with it is second nature to him.

When we go camping as a family, and Q goes exploring, he will yell back to camp - "Mom! I found a big bunch of clay over here!" He's knows exactly what unprocessed clay looks like in nature, and can tell me if he thinks a natural clay body is elastic enough to use to throw without any additions.

All of this also means Little Q sometimes takes clay and pottery for granted; and the other night, he didn't want to sit and create while I worked. And I found myself saying, "You are very lucky. Most other children don't get to play with clay like this. Here's some clay. Be creative, and enjoy it."

I know I can't force him to enjoy the same things that I like, or expect him to be driven by a creative force the way I have been all of my life. But, I won't let him take the opportunity he's got to learn from me and make use of all the creative materials we surround ourselves with for granted, either. I also see so much natural talent in Little Q for creative things, and clay in particular, that I feel a parental responsibility not to let him waste it.

This morning he asked for a pottery wheel of his own for his birthday. Maybe all his time working with clay is making an impact, after all.

Siesta interrumpida...

2011-04-20T17:04:00.000-06:00

We are excitedly awaiting the arrival of another American Miniature Jersey cow that we purchased from another breeder this week. We spent the weekend rearranging stalls and corral panels to make the introduction of our new girl and our "old" girls easier and as stress-less as possible.

I love to be out and about working in the middle of the day, which only happens on the weekends and an odd workday. Around 10 o'clock, everyone has had their breakfast and a morning putter about the place, and it is nap time.

The goats lay down to chew their cud. (Yes, that is a porch swing; and, yes, I know we spoil our animals!)

The turkeys take refuge in shady (or sunny) spots in the pasture (depending on the weather, of course). The chickens and pheasants settle in and dust. The quail make themselves in to big piles of feathers for an afternoon siesta. You can hardly tell where one bird begins and another ends.

The cows usually find a sunny spot to lay. When I was young, I thought cows slept standing up. It is interesting to watch our girls get up and down, especially our pregnant heifer Mika. The bigger she has gotten as her pregnancy has progressed, the more difficulty she seems to have getting herself in to a comfortable laying position - just like any expectant mother that is just weeks away from their due date.

On Sunday, Mika and Sparky laid down to take naps. Mika found a comfy spot, even with her growing belly, and she didn't want to budge.

Sparky's rest, since she's still only 18 months old, was a short one, just like every toddler. Mika, three years old and pregnant, was in the mood for a long rest. Sparky wouldn't let her be. She wanted to play.

Get up!

Poor Mika. At least she can take solace in the knowledge than in a year or so, her calf will probably be bothering a pregnant Sparky instead. Darn kids.

Planting Alfalfa, Buying Friends and Making Pots

2011-04-18T17:05:00.001-06:00

We've been trying to overseed our pasture for weeks. After calling around, I was able to get the very last falcata alfalfa seed from an agricultural seed supplier in Wyoming. We wanted to get it on the field in the hopes that we might get it growing before we start free ranging our mini jerseys. Falcata alfalfa is a yellow-flowered variety that doesn't cause bloat in cows when eaten green. It also requires minimal irrigation, which is a plus with our hot, dry Utah desert summers.

Every weekend for the past month, it's either been snowing or hot and windy (which is fine if we wanted to seed the neighbor's horse pasture). Finally, this past Saturday, we had perfect dry weather with low winds. Sunday, we spent the entire day being teased by the promise of rain to set the seed. Finally, this morning, we woke to full-blown rain. Success!

Yesterday, as we were digging around the barn moving corral panels, we found treasure troves of earthworms. Not only are they a sure sign that our pasture is healthy, but I used handfuls of them to buy friends. All the chickens love them, and Herbie the duck slurps them like spaghetti. (Apologies to my Sister T, who has never, ever liked worms. When we were children living in England, my brother and I would chase her in the rain, throwing worms that we picked up out of the puddles! We were so mean, it's no wonder she still isn't fond of the slimy little guys today).

It was also a productive pottery weekend. I tried out some new things - including decorative plant stakes. I made them out of a smooth stoneware body that is very white when fired. I'm going to glaze the decorated fronts and a portion of the backs, so there is a space to write a plant name in pencil, or so they can just be used as a bright spot to liven up a potted plant.

I also made some more of the little "tea gardens" I experimented with last week. Each one has a hand built platter, with several "tea bowl" style planters that sit on the platter. I will plant them with herb tea plants like chamomile, anise, lavender, rosemary, or peppermint. I worked on some larger sets (which will hold 4 small planters instead of just 2), which involved making larger, more "square" handbuilt platters. I have actually been enjoying handbuilding lately, probably because most of the things I've been making are whimsical and don't require a lot of precision. (Kind of like my personality, really)...

I also made some bottle-style oil lamps to replace the original glass lamps in second-hand wrought iron garden decor from a yard sale. They are a little different from the lamps I normally make, so I'm excited to see how they turn out.

Teaching, Hatching Quail, and Bees in the Rain...

2011-04-14T10:45:00.011-06:00

In the studio this week, I'm working on some traditional planter shapes. The larger sizes have been fun to do, and it's handy having Matt's woodwork share my pottery space because it makes it easier to borrow his drill bits to make the holes in the bottom of the planters for drainage. He actually suggested using the drill bits when I kept ruining pots by making gigantic holes in the bottom of my pots trying to use the same tool I use to make teapot spout holes.

We recently discovered "micro-greens" for winter vegetables to supplement our frozen vegetables, and I would like to have lovely kitchen counter planters that can be used to grow a continuous supply of salad greens attractively, instead of the plastic planters we're currently using.

This year I'm the room parent for Little Q's fourth grade class, so I get to teach "art awareness" once each month. Our school district doesn't have an arts program for elementary school, but the PTA requested that the arts be taught so schools rely on PTA volunteers and room parents to teach art history and applied art in the classroom. It's a nice compromise and a good program, and PTA members & parents who don't want to volunteer their time to teach art and art history can donate art supplies to the classrooms. I have really enjoyed teaching art to kids again. I haven't taught groups of children for a few years since the Pioneer Craft House changed hands and re-tooled their intensive kids' summer pottery programs.

Of course, because it's my comfort zone, everything we've done together in learning about art history and elements of design has had a clay activity. This past week, we did pinch pots. For some of the kids, their experience with me this year has been the first time they have ever touched clay. Q's teacher even joins in the activities, and all of the children are excited when they get their fired work back. I had an opportunity to drag out my "this is about the experience - this should be fun - it doesn't have to be perfect..." speech that I always give new pottery students. I've determined that Little Q's entire class is filled with fledgling Type A personalities, which is a challenge for me because I'm some Type that isn't A.

The pinch pots turned out great & I look forward to firing them. The kids requested a chance to do animal sculpture next time (inspired by the pictures of fetishes they saw in the Pueblo Pottery books I took with me to show them examples of hand-built/pinch pots).

We had two quail hatch-outs this week, and are expecting another one next week. No matter how many times we incubate and hatch, the wonder of the development and the hatching process never loses it's lustre. It's difficult to sell the little quail chicks that we hatch, although I know we can't keep them all.

Last night after dark, our beehives in the pasture were still busy and active. There were girls out on the doorstep collecting rain water and carrying it back in to the hives. Even in the rain and dusk the hive boxes were vibrating with activity.

Spring (Blog) Cleaning and Powering Through Spring Snow

2011-04-12T16:55:00.011-06:00

After reaching my 450th blog post (yay!) in March, I decided that it was time to do a little Spring cleaning on my blog. Not only has an awful lot changed in our lives in the past four years, but I've also recently had to wait five or more minutes for Blogger to load each time I've tried to create a new post while it waded through hundreds of photos and pages of text. So, in the interest of fresh starts and Spring cleaning, I've archived 300+ posts.

There's something very liberating about clearing out old words and making space for new ones.

The past couple of weeks, we've vascilated between sunshine in the pasture and 12 of snow and freezing temperatures. No matter how long we live in Utah, I don't know that I'll ever get used to the extremes in the weather, particularly this time of year. Thankfully, we didn't lose many of the baby chickens or turkeys we've been raising for the past two months due to the cold. We started incubating in January, and it seems odd to be "sick" of chicks before we even reach Easter, but I guess that is part of relying heavily on poultry for so much of our food supply.

After making it through a very cold (but dry-ish) winter, the pheasants have struggled more with the wet damp cold of Spring. This little hen nearly froze to death during a recent storm that started with freezing rain and graduated to freezing snow, but is tame enough to be appreciative when Matt offered to warm her up in his coat.

In my studio, I've been busy working on planters, trying out some new shapes and sizes. I've even dabbled a little in handbuilding (not my strong point), just for fun.

Millcreek Herb Fair & Emptying the Freezer

2011-03-29T12:13:00.000-06:00

We had a great time at the Millcreek Herb Day & Wellness Fair, and had a great opportunity to meet a lot of new people. I had planned to take a picture of our table, but ended up being busy even before we officially "opened," but I was fortunate that another attendee at the fair thought to take a picture of us & was kind enough to email it to me so I could share it with all of you.

The weather turned out rainy and windy, so we didn't bring our seedlings to sell, only honey, beeswax, eggs, raku pottery & beads. We sold out of everything a couple of hours in to the market, so we will have to plan better for the amount of inventory for our next fair.

My raku beads were more popular than I thought they'd be, which was exciting because they are one of my favorite things to make. (I've found that the big sellers are usually the forms or items I enjoy making the least - necessary evils! So this is a nice change...)

Now, I'm back in production mode in pottery, which is a comfortable place to be, and I'm trying to decide which farmer's markets we will be participating in. There are a few options, and I need to decide which days of the week work best for our workload and how many hours each week we can actually devote to the off-site selling part of our farm.

When we are working like we are this time of year, this is the hardest time to stay on top of eating only food we raise. It requires self-discipline not to call for pizza delivery or Chinese takeout at the end of a 20 hour workday (we have pastures to overseed & fertilize, pressurized irrigation to take out of storage and put back in to place, gardens to till and plant, hundreds of birds in different stages of growth, 12 beehives that need to be cleaned up and tended to so their occupants don't swarm, a calf due in June, and normal daily cleaning and maintenance of our animals and their housing. Don't even ask about the cleanliness of our housing!).

Good planning last summer and fall definitely pays off now. It snowed on Sunday and Monday (Spring, indeed!), so we have been able to enjoy some of our comfort food favorites - venison meatloaf with hard boiled quail eggs cooked inside whole (makes a simple dinner in to a treasure hunt!); rotisserie chicken sandwiches on homemade bread using last year's broilers. The new broilers are 5 weeks away from slaughter out by the barn, so we are working to clear the freezer of last year's birds to make space. I haven't had time to "get fancy" with chicken recipes, so everything we eat right now is simple.

We'll be butchering "Hamburger" in a few weeks, too. It has helped having Matt's dad assume the majority of his care, since Little Q & I tend to fall in love easily with anything furry or feathered. The beef will be a welcome addition this year, since there are so many simple, fast-cooking options for beef.

Up To Our Eyeballs...

2011-03-25T13:40:00.000-06:00

We're up to our eyeballs this week.

In these...

And these...

And this (the snow??, not the ducks)...

So here's a funny...

Turkey Eggs, Learning to Weave, and Herb Day Reminder

2011-03-18T13:48:00.000-06:00

Even though there's been a lot of (casual) turkey hanky panky going on (much to my mortification as the parent of a 10 year-old boy), the first two test hatches we did with our heritage turkey eggs were no-go's. But it looks like the third time is the charm!

We candled a batch of turkey eggs we started incubating about 10 days ago, and were excited to see not only the tell-tale veining evident in a fertile egg, but actual moving small turkey blobs! I got all fancy and modified the picture I took to point to the wiggly baby turkey you can see in this egg...

You can also see the red veining leading to the air sac at the other end of the egg if you squint really hard.

Last year I started investigating fiber animals and Matt told me that if I learned to spin wool, he'd buy an alpaca. I know he was (mostly) kidding, because we are stretched pretty thin with all of the species we have right now. However, a friend who keeps Polypei Sheep offered to give us all of his wool from this Spring shearing, so in anticipation, I decided I'd learn to spin so I'd be able to use the gifted wool. I started just after Christmas with a hand spindle and some instructional videos (because I'm a very visual learner so thank the Lord for youtube and all the free educational material on there...). I recently completed my first decent doubly ply yarn. I'm happy to say I'm getting better all the time.

I've never been a knitter or a crochet-er (is that a word?) so I struggled a little to figure out what to do with the yarn I'm now making. Then, I remembered my months on the Navajo Reservation in Utah, when I was doing a pottery internship. The family I lived with were jewelers and potters, not rug makers, but I visited a weaver while I lived on the Reservation. She kept her own Churro sheep, dyed the wool by hand, hand spun all of her own wool and made giant rugs on a Navajo loom. This immediately captivated me in a way that knitting and crocheting do not, because it seemed to me at the time like painting with fiber.

I saved up some money and bought a large Navajo loom (because we never do things half-way here at the Henhouse). I'm deep in the learning process now, hoping to start my first hands-on rug within the next couple weeks. I'll share pictures as I learn.

And, since I probably won't get a chance to blog again before tomorrow's Herb Day & Wellness Fair, hosted by Millcreek Herbs, just a reminder that our farm will be participating from 2-5 pm tomorrow, Saturday, March 19th. (Coincidentally, tomorrow is National Poultry Day!)...

Millcreek Herbs is located at 3191 So. 3300 E. in Salt Lake City. Red Butte Garden, Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, Urban Scrap Boutique, Shirlyn's Natural Foods, and many other wonderful vendors will be participating as well.

We will have fresh eggs & raw honey from the farm for sale, as well as some heirloom seedlings for cucumbers, tomotoes, lettuce, and peppers. All of the seedlings are the early, start-indoors varieties that are slow maturing and need to be grown inside for 4-6 weeks before hardening and moving to your spring garden. We'll also have more information on our heritage turkeys and a sign-up sheet to reserve one (or more) for your family for the holidays.

Happy Friday, and we hope to see you there!

Chain of Generosity (Part 2) and Back to Beekeeping

2011-03-17T14:25:00.012-06:00

Little Q randomly picked the names for the Chain of Generosity from the blog followers tonight.

In the interest of full disclosure, it went something like this:

Me: "Hey, Q, pick three numbers between 1 and 92."
Little Q: "Why?"
Me: "Does it matter? Just pick three numbers."
Little Q: "Why?"
Me (frustrated): "For my blog. I'm going to send stuff to the people that match the numbers you pick."
Little Q: "Why don't you just save us both some time and give the stuff to me?"

Obviously, I won, even if my approach was less advantageous for Little Q & my argument possibly less logical than his...

I'll be contacting the individuals below to get their mailing addresses so I can pass on the giving that Meredith started. I'm not sure yet what I'll be sending, but I promise I'll be creative and try to tailor what I send to the individuals Little Q chose (under protest).

Karen at Gordon Setter Crossing
Kari Weaver Hopkins at Potsapalooza, and
Jay and Staci at Cobble Hill Farm

And, responding to a request for a beekeeping update from Badgerpendous earlier this week, all of the hives at our farm seem to have wintered well. Until the weather dries out a bit and we can do full hive checks, we have to gauge the health of our hives based on the activity we see in and out of the hives on warmer late Spring days.

The hives at the top of our pasture fared particularly well, and when the sun shines it isn't uncommon to have bees bumping in to us while we're working because we are in their flight path and they are already out foraging for late winter and early spring pollen. We'll begin building new frames and adding supers to all of the hives in the next month to help avoid any swarming.

We did a small honey extraction for the upcoming Millcreek Herb Day & Wellness Fair this coming Saturday. It is some of the prettiest honey we've had from our bees so far; it's quite dark, extremely sweet, and the flavor is very full-bodied. We'll be offering small samples at the Fair so people who haven't had raw, uncut honey before get a chance to see why it is so different from commercial honey.

Isn't is lovely?

Visit to the Flynn Artipelago & a New Community Market

2011-03-16T16:50:00.006-06:00

I had the great opportunity today to meet Amber DeBirk, an artist and the owner of Urban Scrap Boutique, at her studio at the Flynn Artipelago in Millcreek, Utah. Amber invited me to her studio for a tour and to look at the space where the brand new Millcreek Community Farmer's Market will be held this summer.

Amber has a studio in the "Flynn Artipelago," a cool, almost-hidden treasure that provides studio, gallery, and retail space for 20 or so established and well-known Utah artisans. What is now known as the Artipelago was built in 1917 by an inventor named Nathaniel Baldwin and originally housed a radio factory. Nathaniel was one of the financial supporters of the Fundamentalist Mormon group (the one that still practices polygamy today), in addition to being a well-known inventor and scientist in his time. Baldwin powered the radio factory and the surrounding neighborhood through a hydroelectric generator which he made out of bicycle wheels and piano wire well into the 1920's. One local legend even tells that Philo Farnsworth built the first television in Baldwin's factory.

Amber's boutique is in Studio 4 at the Artipelago. She is a glass artist, and also teaches fused glass classes and children's art workshops. You can check out some of her amazing work and her upcoming schedule of classes at her website, here.

I grew up just west of Millcreek. I love the area, partly because it is familiar, but also because it has blossomed in to a thriving community very different from what it was when I was growing up there. There are more homes, more people, but also a more diverse culture and more focus on the arts and green spaces. The local community councils are working hard to preserve historic spaces and create walkable communities. One of the loveliest additions in Millcreek is a brand new Community Center and Library that are being built adjacent to the Artipelago studios and their Grotto Gallery.

Millcreek will host a Farmer's Market in the combined space between the Artipelago and the new Community Center this coming Summer. The location is open, the anchor artists are fantastic and well-known, and the local community in general is very interested in supporting the arts in their community & in eating and living green.

Amber is one of the driving forces behind the new Farmer's Market, teaming with the Millcreek Community Council. She is also an eco-friendly artist, who uses recycled glass in creation of her artwork. Her Urban Scrap boutique also features work by other artists who create environmentally friendly and recycled arts. Amber makes pendants, earrings and belt buckles made from old window glass, and night lights and picture frames made from old windows and recycled bottles. I have to admit, when I first walked in her studio and saw all the empty wine bottles, my first thought was - what a fun place to work! After I saw how she'd repurposed old wine bottles by peeking in her display cases, I was amazed!

If you live in the Salt Lake Valley or any of the surrounding areas, like I do, I'd encourage you to take a Saturday to trek over to the Artipelago and wander through the artists' studios and shops. Even better, plan on attending the first Millcreek Community Farmer's Market on July 7th!

The Artipelago is located at 3474 S. 2300 E. The collective artists host a gallery stroll the third Friday of each month beginning at 6 pm.

A Cute Chicken and Market Season!

2011-03-15T12:00:00.002-06:00

We are busy preparing for the Millcreek Herb Day & Wellness Fair this coming Saturday - tending plants, putting together brochures and information about our farm, and bottling honey. The first sale or market of the year is always exciting! I feel fresh energy for what we are doing as I'm planning out our production and sales strategy for the coming summer, and determining which markets we will participate in this year.

We are learning that marketing pottery to galleries or tourist gift shops is very different from selling produce and farm goods directly within our community. People often buy pottery solely because they like how it looks or feels, or because it reminds them of some special person or time. Selling pottery through a middleman like a shop owner has meant we may never meet the people that ultimately own our handiwork. The customers who buy local farm goods from us want to believe that we are committed to raising food in a way that provides them with healthy, good food that is economically and ecologically better for their community. We are establishing genuine relationships with our customers, which we hope will be ongoing and mutually beneficial.

Just like selling pottery, though, there are both sides of the coin. Living a five minute drive from Walmart definitely affects attitudes toward what we sell. We long ago made a decision to forego convenience and thriftiness where food is concerned in order to assure healthfulness; but, if I had a dollar for every time I've been told that we need to make prices for eggs & honey more comprable to Costco, I'd be rich. We don't sell eggs or honey or live turkeys to "make a living," but we also know that the food we raise is healthier & has a better flavor than the foods grown by agri-business. Still, some people vehemently insist that our prices are too high in comparison to a grocery or big box store. When it comes to food, some people get it and some people don't. The ones who don't (and don't care) can't ever be convinced. Fortunately, there are an increasing number of people in our community who care and want to raise their own food or buy more sustainable food options.

On a different note, it's been bothering me all week, and maybe my potter friends can help me out - which of the "old time" potters - Cardew, Leach time frame? - used to sell vegetables at a roadside stand and make people take his pottery with them for free when he was starting out? All week long as I'm preparing for this sale, I keep remembering reading that snippet in a book somewhere, but can't for the life of me remember who it was...(and, obviously, I have nothing better to do than worry about little things like that).

Our Orloff chicks are growing, and of course Matt has a favorite among all the little fluffies. She's an Ameraucana/Orloff cross (that we are playfully calling Amerauloffs) that we bred to see if we can come up with an Ameraucana that lays a brown egg instead of a blue...(see, nothing better to do with our time than think up these little diversions)...

Meet Matt's buddy little "Tuff Enuff."

Chain of Generosity & Signs of Spring

2011-03-14T13:11:00.019-06:00

Meredith at Whynot Pottery is participating in a Chain of Generosity this year, and I was the lucky first recipient in her chain. Meredith, sweetheart that she is, gave me some very "girly" items. I think she feels that she needs to offset the fact that there is very little feminine in my life right now (unless you count all of the time I'm spending with my BFF, the moody pregnant heifer, which I don't).

Meredith makes lovely tiles, and she sent me this beautiful hand-carved floral tile. The colors are very rich; the photograph below doesn't do this tile justice.

She also sent me some gorgeous ceramic earrings and a fun ceramic house pendant. Interestingly enough, the house looks a lot like our 100-year old home.

Thanks so much Meredith! I love everything you sent, and I like the idea of "paying it forward" and keeping it going.

So now it's my turn to give as part of the chain. I am going to have Little Q randomly select 3 peeps (pun intended) from my "flock" of followers later this week. I'll be sending those folks something handmade (& hopefully equally as wonderful as what Meredith sent me). If you want to be included in the chain and are willing to pass something on (doesn't have to be anything big & you don't have to send to as many people as I will), then be sure to begin following my blog prior to this coming Thursday if you aren't already.

I felt certain enough that it might actually be Spring for real this time that we de-winterized the farm this weekend. We took down heat lamps, removed water tank de-icers, put away the heated dog beds we were using for the goats, and boxed everything up and put it away in storage. I even hauled hundreds of pounds of clay out of my laundry room and put it back in my pottery studio, in the hope that it will no longer get below freezing in my studio at night. (All of which means I've now jinxed the entire state of Utah and we should have a gigantic storm and sub-zero temperatures sometime in the next few weeks.)

While we were outside working, I got some photos of our animals enjoying the warm weather and sunshine. They all seemed convinced that it might be spring, too.

This hen pheasant sat in the willow branch habitat Matt put together for her almost all of Sunday. She seemed convinced that we couldn't see her, no matter how many pictures I took.

Pretty Boy, our Bourbon Red breeding Tom, ran himself ragged trying to keep up with the girls that were roaming the pasture all weekend. The sunshine encouraged them farther afield than they normally go, and evidently it is hard work to stay puffed up and looking gorgeous while you hike vigorously back and forth.

Believe it or not, this is also a photo of a turkey...

...enjoying the dirt. A lot.

This Tiger Bronze hen was sitting a clutch of eggs on a straw bale, a sure sign of spring, right?

And my BFF, the moody pregnant heifer?

She was in heaven eating all the green she could find.

The Crazy Bird Lady and Turkeys

2011-03-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

We had our first successful hatch of Russian Orloffs this past week. We've found that our Orloffs are extremely friendly and have tons of personality. Even as chicks, they are social birds, more so than any other breed we've ever raised.

I forget year-to-year how much work raising poultry from chicks is, especially on a large scale! I asked Matt the other day at what point I quit being a farmer, and start being the "crazy bird lady" who has hundreds of chicks in her basement.

I'm now officially the bird equivalent of this lady:

We had 12 inches of snow yesterday followed by 50 degrees, signaling the start of the usual Spring rollercoaster in Utah. Thankfully, the past weekend was beautiful and warm; a hopeful and tantalizing taste of the weather to come. The turkeys, who have free-run of the place all the time, dared to venture from the perimeter of the safe & warm barn to follow us around the pasture and pick at the first peeks of green.

The girls used the warm weather to look for bugs.

The Bourbon Red tom spent his time posing for my camera.

Blood From a Stone...

2011-02-25T05:30:00.001-07:00

This week has been a busy one. One of our turkeys got egg peritonitis and we've had the opportunity for the past two weeks to use injectable antibiotics for the first time ever. Normally, we isolate the sick bird, throw electrolytes and antibitiocs in the drinking water, discard any of the eggs they lay while they are recuperating, and in a couple days everything is back to normal. This time, we very nearly lost our Bourbon Red breeding hen & it took several days just to figure out what was wrong by searching my turkey ailment textbooks and googling pictures of turkey poop. We also had to force feed her baby cereal until she'd start eating again on her own.

I am now an expert on turkey poop, and Matt is an expert on how to do an intramuscular turkey injection. If you are a turkey, and have funny poop, I can now definitively tell if it's worms, bacteria, or a respiratory infection upon closer examination. I'm sure this will be a(nother) great addition to my growing resume of (strange) skills.

Last weekend, our farm was invited to participate in the Millcreek Herb Day & Wellness Fair on March 19th (see side bar of my blog for more details), so we are in the process of planting more herbs and heirloom vegetables than we had originally started for our March seed sale. I've also been frantically throwing garden-themed pottery to include at our table and for a "give away" at the fair. Throwing springtime items had me in a pretty good mood until I woke up to six inches of snow again this morning. My enthusiasm for planting seeds and throwing hummingbird feeders deflated like someone had stuck a pin in my balloon...

I'm also throwing some items for Meredith's Generosity Chain (more on that in my next blog post)...

Earlier in the week, I gave a presentation on beekeeping to the 5th grade students at My Sister T's school. What a fun group of kids! I always start these kinds of presentations by asking if the kids can tell me everything that was wrong with the "B Movie." After we're done with the presentation, the list has grown from - "bees don't really wear clothes or drive cars!" to things like "boy bees don't really even do any work in the hive!" and "bees don't really only have one job for their whole lives!" They had great questions and I left them with some raw comb honey to share. It was also fun for me to see my sister in her new element, teaching a group of kids and having them call her Mrs. instead of T.

Also this week, the state vet was kind enough to send veterinarians from the USU vet lab and the Dept of Agriculture to help us with the blood testing for all of our poultry, so that we can finish our NPIP-certification. I had literally called over 50 vets in our urban area to see if one would be willing to do the bloodwork for us, and couldn't find anyone interested in gathering blood samples and doing onsite Pullorum-Typhoid testing for 60+ birds. Since I'm such a poultry lover, it is always hard for me to understand when others don't find them as fascinating as I do... kudos to the UT Department of Agriculture, who stepped in to help me out! I never cease to be amazed at how helpful they have been as we've set up our little farm.

It was a good learning experience for us, and I can say now with certainty that getting blood out of chickens, turkeys, and pheasants is about as much fun as getting blood from a stone.

Except the stone doesn't get as grumpy as birds do.

We have three Russian Orloff Roosters - all unique (& extremely beautiful) in their own ways. Vlad, he's the responsible one. He almost never gets in to the vodka.

There's Knucklehead, so named because his comb looks just like a fist full of knuckles.

And then there's Jackie Legs, the Grumpy One.

He really, really didn't like us after the vets took his blood. I know, go figure.

He stormed around the rest of the day with his neck all flared out.

Meat, Ethics, and This Life We Live

2011-02-09T11:13:00.010-07:00

Last month, I posted about using our male coturnix quail for meat. An anonymous commenter made a comment that included the word "harm" that got me immediately defensive. Yesterday, a customer that I had sold several quail chicks to wanted me to take back the excess males. When I told him that I would take them back, but that we would eat them since I can't absorb any more males in to my breeding colonies, he was upset and told me he'd rather try to find them "good homes" instead.

Yes, I know, shame on me for allowing anonymous comments, which has gotten me in this same pickle in the past (members of PETA love to do "drive by's" via anonymous comment on blogs such as mine). I've now turned off the anonymous commenting function on Blogger, which makes me more than a little sad. And, shame on me for actually telling a chick customer what the fate of his unwanted birds would be (I guess?).

The nearly off-handed anonymous comment came from someone who later professed to be a long-time reader. I've now frightened this person off of my future blog posts with my knee-jerk reaction to any terminology that suggests that we have anything but the best interests of our many farm animals at heart. I'd like to take a moment to explain to that individual (if they are still hanging around) and to everyone else why I sometimes get defensive.

We are openly carnivorous. We don't buy meat at the store, we raise it in our backyard and it is a labor of love. Matt and I are both educated individuals who understand the ethical implications that come from taking the life of an animal. We both hunt, and we both actively participate in the taking of life on our farm. We literally use every part of the animals we eat, even if it requires that we learn additional skills (rendering fat is not as easy as it looks, nor is tanning hides. I actually took up beading again specifically to put leather to good use...).

We compartmentalize our feelings for our animals in order to allow us to decide which animals will provide us food by giving their lives, which animals provide eggs or milk, and which animals are merely companions (Herbie the duck, anyone?!?). Every animal has a purpose. Regardless of the purpose, everyone is given the best possible life. Clean water, fresh air, open spaces, plenty of the healthiest, most natural feed possible, veterinary care, and humane death when the time comes.

We devote our lives to caring for all of our animals.

In case that doesn't sink in when I say that we devote our lives: Q doesn't play on a soccer league like other kids his age, I don't get manicures at the mall or have coffee with friends, and Matt doesn't go golfing or hang around watching football all weekend long. We traded a modern "life of leisure" that includes convenience foods for an old-fashioned way of living where we coax our own food out of the earth and through intensive stewardship of other living things.

We spend a cumulative minimum of 20 hours per week just doing chores related to our animals, such as moving bedding straw, currying, hauling hay, mucking out stalls, hauling thousands of pounds of feed and manure, dealing with frozen water hoses, getting up at 2 a.m. to make sure everyone's heat lamps and water defrosters are working or changing propane tanks in the barn heater so everyone makes it through a -2 F night comfortably. Stewarding our animals is a full-time job in and of itself.

This is not a hobby. This is our life.

Sometimes, animals that we've allowed ourselves to develop deep relationships with get injured or ill and have to be put down. It's like having to put down your own dog instead of taking it to the vet and walking away while the vet gives it an injection to end it's life "humanely" and then disposes of the body for you. We very often have to make decisions regarding euthanasia without the advice of a vet. Very few vets want to discuss a turkey who's had a stroke with you when you live in the middle of suburbia.

So, when someone uses the word "harm" as it relates to what we do when we harvest a food animal for meat, you can understand that it hits a chord. Whether that is inadvertent or unintentional, it seems to belittle the tremendous amount of sacrifice and hard work that we invest on a daily basis.

I typically try not to be defensive, but when people challenge the ethics or compassion of the life we live, it does hurt. When it happens on a week when it has been especially cold, when our animals have taken a lot of time, when my full-time job away from the farm has also been demanding and required long hours, and I'm just plain exhausted, I'm bound to have an emotional reaction.

I don't like debating the ethics of eating meat on this blog, either. That is not why I share our adventures and my feelings about this life we've chosen. I'm not here to win people over to my way of thinking, nor do I try to influence others to make the same choices we've made. I blog because I want my son to have a record of the things we do, and to provide information about the research we've done and how it really worked as it relates to simplicity and homesteading with others who are trying to do the same things. This blog is also a form of therapy for me, and a way for me to be part of a larger cyber-space community.

I understand that technically what we do when we take the life of an animal can be considered "harm," but I also believe that advocating and breeding endangered livestock is more complex than the simple black and white implied by that idea. Raising your own food is also filled with shades of gray. There is not a clear right or wrong when it comes to what can be perceived as humane treatment of animals, since even vegetarians and vegans may inadvertantly cause "harm," due to a misunderstanding of the far reaching implications of importing non-meat foods year-round from foreign countries. There is a significant environmental impact due to overfarming certain vegetative crops for mass consumption.

The idea that simply stopping the consumption of meat stops "harm," may be true of individual animals, but not of entire species. Breeding animals in order to keep species alive and viable by it's very nature requires culling and animal management. Part of culling is eating that animal so it does not go to waste. To say that you aren't harming animals by not eating them is the same as saying that you do not care if entire species become extinct. In the world, as filled with people as it is now, a failure to manage and steward species in the spirit of leaving them to their own devices is a literal death sentence for entire breeds of livestock.

We spent 14 years building up to this life, working and saving towards the past two years of raising our own food, trading, bartering, and living more simply. This wasn't something that we've walked in to lightly or without consideration. We understand the full implication of taking the lives of the animals we eat.

And sometimes, it weighs heavily on us.

Clay, Snow, Turkey Sausage, and a Slow Duck (In No Particular Order)

2011-02-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

After a weekend that gave a tantalizing glimpse at Spring temperatures, sunshine, and wide swaths of green grass, I woke up this morning to find that my pottery studio looked like this. Again.

Sigh.

I've been working on planters and hummingbird feeders for the past few weeks, getting geared up for a Spring sale. The snow makes it hard to concentrate on forms and vessels for a warmer season; I just keep wanting to throw mugs for hot coffee.

It must be the power of suggestion.

Since I haven't done a blog post in a week or so about eating only our home-raised food, it's about time to share what we've been eating lately.

We finally broke down and got a meat grinder. There is only so much meat we can freeze in little packages that say "to be ground" before we need to do something with them. We made heritage turkey breakfast sausage, in both patties and links. The patties turned out the best, and I've put them in both a casserole, and also served them with fresh scrambled eggs and whole wheat pancakes. They make a good, fast meal, and are low-fat.I actually had to add butter to the pan to get them to fry properly, but they were still juicy inside.

Last week, I had the chance to do another clay activity with Little Q's fourth grade class. I do one each month, highlighting a different design element. Since we are close to Valentine's Day, and we were studying texture, I had the kids make textured stoneware hearts. It turned out to be a fun activity and I made sure the boys had plenty of "manly" textured items to decorate their hearts. I'll share pictures once they are fired.

Taking care of the farm animals this morning, and found Herbie eating some spilled grain, sitting in the snow.

I tell you, that ducks not right.

The Birds & The Bees...Or, Finding New Ways To Be Humiliated

2011-02-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

I've learned that animal husbandry really boils down to managing the reproduction of the animals you steward.

We decide when to put a rooster in with the hens, when to artificially inseminate the heifers. We plan out what eggs we will incubate, when to breed the goats. We are intimately involved in the procreation of our animals, how it affects their health, and whether or not we need offspring to increase our food supply.

Of course, because we are dealing with nature, things are often out of our hands - like when you end up with a rooster who seems completely disinterested in propagating his species, or when all of the hen turkeys decide that you don't have any toms attractive enough to...ahem, spend quality, er...time with.

Which has been a prevalent problem at the farm as of late.

I acquired an incubator large enough to incubate turkey eggs. The hen turkeys are matured and starting to lay eggs. In theory, I understand the ins and outs of breeding turkeys, the genetic issues, the genealogy of my birds.

And none of this does me any good, because nobody wants to have sex.

With quails, ducks, and chickens, it really doesn't matter if the female says no. With turkeys, because they are such a large (and I like to think, courteous) bird, the female has to be willing.

The boys strut, and puff, and chirrup, and overall demonstrate their tremendous attractiveness.

It gets them nowhere. It is a little sad - like watching the guy at the bar with a pornstache and gold chains asking the really pretty girl if it hurt when she fell from heaven.

We discuss all of this in front of my curious, clever, 10-year old son. Little Q takes it all in stride, since we've already had the talk (it still counts, even though it didn't go well).

Then, finally, last Sunday, while my in-laws are over visiting, it finally happens.

And Little Q comes running & yells out - "We have turkey sex, Mom! High five!"

Even after everything I've been through, with inseminating a cow, with explaining the birds and the bees to my kid before I was ready because of some dumb rooster...

I still died just a little bit of embarassment.

I Know, It's Hard To Believe She Really Reads My Blog...

2011-02-03T20:10:00.000-07:00

I am excited to share that I was awarded a "Stylish Blogger Award" by a fellow blogger whose blog I have faithfully followed (and enjoyed) for a couple of years. The wonderful thing about these types of awards is that it gives you a chance to meet "friends of friends" - people the bloggers you follow follow, if you know what I mean.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Karen at Gordon Setter Crossing has never read my blog, since she used the word "stylish." But, I have to say she's been one of my most diligent readers/commentors/defenders over the years. Go visit her and find out why I like her blog so much, and why I love having her as a personal cheerleader.

This Award has 4 Requests:

1) Thank the person who gave you the award, by providing a link to their site. In case you didn't get the point from the link above, Go visit Karen!

2) Share 7 things about yourself, that other bloggers might not know.
3) Give the Award to 15 newly discovered or interesting bloggers.
4) Notify each of those bloggers to present the Award.

Since we all know I love to overshare, I'll try to keep my list of 7 things to those items which will cause minimum embarassment for my family (apologies to my mother) and friends.

* This right here is my favorite blog post that I've written so far over the past 4 years of blogging. I don't know why I think it is so funny but I seriously laugh myself hoarse everytime I go back and read it.
* I have the great privilege of being married to a Police Detective who has been involved in Law Enforcement, either on the road or in a specialty role, for over 12 years. He's made a lot of personal sacrifices to serve our community doing a dangerous job...and he's my hero!

* I wanted to be a farmer since I was about 12 years old. Farming became my dream job after I discovered that they actually expect marine biologists to get in the water.
* I have an irrational fear of sharks. I used to make My Sister T check the pools at motels for rogue sharks when we went on family vacations before I'd get in. True story, and a large part of the reason I ended up as a farmer instead of a marine biologist.
* I have a degree in Mathematics and I used to be an actuary, an auditor, and a tax accountant.

* For those of you who are new to my blog, I once traumatized a boy scout leader by showing off my purple thong underwear.
* I was raised Mormon.

So, on to those I'd like to honor with a blogging award (in no particular order). I read and enjoy all of these folks daily:

1. Cindy, one of the most talented multi-media artists, and one of the most Zen human beings, I've ever "met."
2. Meredith at Whynot Pottery, honestly the kindest and most supportive blogger & potter in the pottery world. She also made one of the most beautiful & unique teapots in my vast collection.
3. Dori, an incredible philosopher, who doesn't realize how deep and wonderful she is...
4. Gary, who keeps me laughing...and I love his beagle, Penny! Plus, Gary's on his THIRD blog, so he must be doing something right. He is also the maker of one of the loveliest teapots in my collection.
5. Linda, whose beautiful observations about the many places she visits, her art, and her daily world, are a lovely read.

6. Rick, at Whitetail Woods, a great outdoors writer who has stuck with me from the beginning (and who I still owe two oil lamps) - I haven't forgotten you, Rick!
7. Jessica (and Glenn), who like us are raising their family more simply. They are also fellow beekeepers, Jessica makes the most AMAZING lip balm, and she (and her young son) are wonderful photographers.

8. Ngaio, a fellow beekeeper on the other side of the world in New Zealand. Although I sometimes hate to read that it is sunny and warm there when it is cold and miserable here, I love to live vicariously through her writings about her life, her garden, and her bees. Ngaio teaches beekeeping classes in her local area, and is an avid advocate of city beekeeping in her country.

9. Meadowlark, who cooks, bakes, cans, knits, sews and generally does all kinds of things I wish I could. I've thought of her often as I've struggled to learn to spin wool into useable yarn.

10. Jim (aka Sofia's Dad), a fellow potter who has a cute little potter-in-training. Their adventures are fun to follow.

11. My Sister T, a courageous soul who in addition to being a full-time mother to an adult son & 2 teenagers, is just embarking on a second career as an elementary school teacher. She's not just my sister, she's a dear friend.

12. Peter, a fellow potter who lives in an old Post Office in New Zealand. What a cool place to live!

13. Kari, a fellow potter who also lives and makes (wonderful) pots in the Mountains.

14. Badgerpendous, a writer, backyard chicken-keeper, and avid gardener.

15. Rob, a potter who makes the most interesting salt and pepper shakers I've ever seen.

Thanks to all of my blogging friends who allow me to share their lives through their writing! Go check them out!

Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without...Or, Julia Finally "Gets" Her Grandmother

2011-02-02T22:05:00.001-07:00

At My Sister T's birthday 15th birthday party (a long time ago, although I can't divulge how long, since I'd like my sister to continue speaking to me), I did something terrible that I still remember to this day. I was eleven, and my only defense is that I was a pre-teen in the consumeristic early 1980's. My sister was taking an exceptionally long time to carefully open a gift, and I blurted out, "Just rip it!! Don't be like Grandma! No one cares if you save the wrapping paper!"

The words were out before I even realized it. Everyone laughed, and I felt clever in the way that only a smart-a little 11-year old can. My tiny, hunch-backed grandmother took the jab with good grace, sitting on the piano bench in our small living room.

My Grandma Lola was raised on an Idaho dirt farm in the middle of the Great Depression. She raised three children in a little house in the middle of Salt Lake's Sugar House District, and she saved and used and overused EVERYTHING. Every scrap of wrapping paper from every gift she'd ever been given had been painstakingly removed from the gift, tape removed, straightened, folded, stored and reused. After my Grandfather died, at a relatively young age, she kept things going by taking in mending, babysitting, and working odd clerical jobs at offices in Downtown Salt Lake. She never drove, and she took the bus or walked everywhere she went, right up until she died at the age of 80. She was the least wasteful person I've ever met.

She grew a garden and fruit trees, and she always took any produce or extra food anyone wanted to give her. She'd stay up in to the early hours of the morning to finish canning or preserving to make sure she never wasted a crumb.

When my Grandma Lola passed away four years later, her old dirt cellar (a creepy, cramped space accessed through a trap door in her sunporch) was still filled with canned goods. She mostly fed herself with what she raised, preserved, and what little she could buy on a tight, fixed income. Her sunporch was filled to overflowing with odds and ends that she knew she could someday use. She never turned down anything she thought she might be able to use, and she was generous in giving away the things she knew others needed. She treasured her books, her favorite clothes, and her few possessions as though they were treasured old friends instead of disposable objects.

My grandmother was the epitome of the life I'm trying to live now, and I wish I go could go back and tell my 11-year old self to learn from my grandmother's thriftiness instead of making fun of it.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling sorry for myself because simplicity is "hard," I remember my grandmother telling me "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." It used to make me mad when she'd tell me that I didn't need something new and that everything I had was already better than anything she'd known as a child. She learned to make do during a time when it wasn't voluntary to try to live the way we are. That was just how things were. Our family has made a voluntary choice to live this way to reduce our consumption and live more authentically; my grandmother did not.

I wish my grandmother was still around, especially when I'm trying to learn something I know she could have taught me - like how make paper out of recycled newspaper, or how to spin yarn out of gifted wool. She'd love my garden, our goats, our chickens...

I think she'd be proud of what we're accomplishing, and I think she'd want to hug my cows (and my kid!).

Better Late Than Never and Turkeys on Parade

2011-02-01T15:52:00.006-07:00

I'm pleased to announce that I finally took the time to put together a website for our farm. If you have time, go check us out at http://sites.google.com/site/tinstarheritagefarm.

This past weekend was warm and all of the animals ventured out of the barn to enjoy the hazy sunshine. Matt, Little Q, and I spent most of the day outside. We let our turkeys free-range, and they've all become fairly tame. It was fun to catch "Turkeys on Parade."

There was one big Tiger Bronze tom out with all his (devoted) girlfriends. I don't blame them - he is good looking!

The other big boys really wanted to show off for us, so we could see how pretty they are.

Beautiful!

A Compelling Reason Not To Eat Duck...

2011-01-31T15:34:00.008-07:00

I'm not a fan of duck meat (lucky Herbie!), but even if I was, I constantly find compelling reasons not to eat our duck.

He can be a little bit naughty, chasing the goats around. It's a good thing that the cons outweigh the pros a bit.

If not, this would seal the deal. It's not just that Herbie is drinking muddy water, it is more that the mud is located...

right...next...to...the...cow...corral.

Enough said.

Hidden Costs, Trading, and...Crepes!

2011-01-20T11:20:00.004-07:00

Leftover fresh cream cheese made lovely filled crepes topped with frozen blackberries (picked this past summer) mixed with some of the honey from our hives. These were made with wheat that we ground in a stone mill.

Last week, we trekked to the roller mill for some wheat. I had talked to the owner of the mill about trading pound-sized bottles of our honey for the wheat, but they wanted to trade the equivalent of $2/lb and then resell at $15/lb. We're all for helping others turn a profit, but since we only charge $6-7/lb (about the going price for uncut, "artisan" honey), it didn't seem fair to those who buy from us locally to send them to the mill where they'd pay more than twice what we charge. It was easier just to pay $15 for a bucket of 45 lbs of wheat. There is another mill a bit farther away that we might call instead; we've learned that when we are trading or bartering for some things, it helps to have more than one local source.

There are a lot of "hidden" start-up costs related to raising your own food - artificial insemination supplies, cold frames for the garden, first aid supplies for livestock, food dehydrators, grain mills, meat grinders...the list can be endless depending on how diverse your food is and how much time you want to spend doing things the "hard way." We had a sizeable list of items we needed at the beginning of last year, the list is smaller this year but still feels unmanageable at times. We're fortunate that Matt is "handy" and can build some of the things we need, such as milking stands/stantions, crib feeders, sprinkler stands and fencing. I'd be terrified to homestead if one of the two of us didn't know how to weld.

Most of the items we've needed we've either purchased second-hand, built, or if we absolutely had no other choice, purchased new (our cryo tank to store frozen bull semen, for example). We've been fortunate that if we get the word out among our friends and associates that we need something, everyone seems to focus in on helping us find it as cheaply as possible (or free!). Sometimes we take something from someone that they want to get rid of, just so we can potentially trade it for something else that we know we will need later on.

We didn't have a grinder when we bought the bucket of wheat, but quickly had three that we collected from family who no longer wanted the grinders they'd purchased back in the 60's and 70's. The models we were given gives us a choice of stone ground grain or metal burr grind, and both electric and hand crank.

Since I'm new to grinding wheat, does anyone have any suggestions for me on methods or recipes that they've found to be successful? I'm also looking for a good whole wheat bread recipe...

Winter Blahhhhs...And More With the Food

2011-01-12T15:23:00.001-07:00

I have about 30 blogs that I read/follow regularly. Even when I am not blogging, I check out those blogs on a daily basis to see what is going on in other parts of the world with my cyber friends. I follow a large variety of blogs - other potters, other homesteaders, other hunters, and some people with whom I have nothing in common but I just find them so darn interesting.

This past week, I have seen all of my blog friends in the U.S. are reporting winter blues and blahs. People in the U.S. are sick of the cold.

All of my friends on the other side of the world are enjoying Spring.

I kind of hate all of my friends on the other side of the world right now.

But I'm sure I'll get over it as I covet their warm weather via their blogs.

Snow & ice on the homestead shortens the period we can work outside from 15 hours per day to about 2 hours. I can't stand more than about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening in 2 degree weather. You know when you can "feel" the difference between -2 and 2 that it is cold and you've been cold for way too long.

My favorite part of winter farm chores is when the turkeys don't recognize us with our heads covered in woolly hats and our faces wrapped in fleecy scarves. They stare and gobble and don't seem to realize that we are the same people that were feeding and caring for them all summer long. If it makes them feel better, I miss the people we were when we were wearing t-shirts and spending all day long with them, too...

This past week we had another cold snap that has taken us down to single digits and negative temps. When it is cold like this, I love warm comfort food, especially after working outside with our animals. Since this is our first winter of raising the majority of our own food, I've learned to get creative with warm, traditional comfort foods this winter while still using ingredients we've raised ourselves.

The staples in our homegrown diet are dairy, eggs, and honey. There are a couple of items that I make weekly, no matter what, in order to give us the versatility to make quick meals after work. Making fresh mozarella, cream cheese, yogurt, butter, and bread (and saving some of the uncooked bread dough - more on that in a minute) is not optional and is something I've learned to fit in on the weekends no matter what else we have going on.

These ingredients open up our options for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners:

*Yogurt with frozen berries or honey for breakfast
*Mozarella slices and deviled eggs for lunch with a salad in the summer and frozen veggies from our garden in winter
*Yogurt topped baked potatoes fetched from the root cellar served with our chicken or deer meat for dinner

The options are endless if we make sure we have some up-front prepared foods to work with during the week. The longer we raise our own food, the easier it is to invest time on the weekend to make "basic" ingredients that we used to buy at the store. I'm pleased to report that I'm getting faster at it, too, so it is beginning to take less time.

It goes against everything we are taught in modern society to leave milk out of the fridge, so I still struggle a little when making cream cheese. In our germ-phobic world, we are taught not to purposely add bacteria to our food and then leave it on the counter. No matter how good the bacteria is, it still feels funny.

Cream cheese is one of my favorite cheeses to make, because I am lazy and there is little upfront work. Most of the time is spent letting the milk sit covered on the counter at room temperature, and then letting the resulting curd drain in butter muslin hooked to my kitchen cabinet over the sink. Cream cheese takes about 48 hours to make (again, most of it letting the milk ripen, mature, and then drain), but a 2-pound batch can be started on a Friday night and is done by Sunday morning.

And let me tell you, you will only accidentally close the cupboard ONCE when you are making cream cheese if you are using this method to drain your cheese! Getting thwacked in the face by two pounds of sloppy wet curd is a good reminder that you are making cheese and that is why you left the cupboard open.

One of my favorite winter dinners is made with cream cheese and takes minimal time so it is a great weeknight dinner when we are working and have limited time to eat a warm meal after heading out to do farm chores & before helping Little Q with homework and getting him to bed.

In the morning before I leave for work, I throw one of our whole chickens in a crockpot and let it cook on low until I get home. We raised about 50 broilers in two batches this past Spring and butchered them in May and in August. I can honestly say that I will never, never, never, ever butcher anything in August in Utah ever again. Did I mention that I will never again butcher anything in the hottest month of the year?

Because I won't.

It was horrible, in case I forgot to tell you.

Anyway, I cut up about 2 cups of chicken breast meat, mix it with 1 c. of the fresh cream cheese, and some frozen herbs from my summer garden (varies between chives, basil, sage, or parsley, depending on my mood). I put a little of the mixture in 4" - 5" squares of thinly rolled bread dough (see, I told you it would come in handy) or dumpling dough, seal and bake.

Delicious, fast, and all of the ingredients were raised/grown by hand with the exception of the flour!

On that point, since it is very difficult to raise enough wheat on a place as small as ours to keep a family in year-round flour, we either have to make the decision to not eat flour (which I'd prefer not to do), or trade/barter with a local roller mill in Utah County. They are willing to trade with us for bottles of our surplus honey, which they'd put in their gift shop at a significant markup. I'd rather sell our surplus honey to our local neighbors and use that money to pay for wheat versus having our local honey only available in our community at twice (or more) of what we sell it for. Sometimes modern "bartering" has to involve money, even if we'd prefer it didn't.

I cleaned the rest of the chicken, strained the broth from the crockpot, and tonight I will use the leftover rice from the quail meal we ate earlier in the week to make a chicken rice soup. I'll add frozen carrots and peas from our Fall garden.

Prayer & Beading

2011-01-11T12:02:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd share some recent beading projects I've completed.

I learned to bead during a pottery internship on the Navajo Reservation outside of Blanding, Utah in my early twenties.

I'm not a "religious" person, per se, but the time I spend beading (...and making pottery...and spinning yarn) are like prayer.

My mind works better when my hands are busy and focused on a precise task.

I love the relaxed distraction and repetitiveness combined with the precision of long practice & attention to detail.

I do some of my best thinking while my hands are working.

It's like therapy with thread.

Apologies to My Mother, Or...Raising Quail for Meat

2011-01-10T13:15:00.014-07:00

WARNING: Because this is a blog that talks about a number of simple living topics, including raising/harvesting your own food, there are sometimes photos of dead animals in my blog posts. Today is one of those days. If this offends you, and you haven't already scrolled down to look at all the pictures before reading the text (Matt, I am talking to you), then I'd advise you back out now. (P.S. You'd be amazed the number of angry emails & comments I get from people who believe that our lifestyle is inhumane. Because we have educated ourselves on commercial food and agri-business, I feel that we have made a conscious and well-informed decision to humanely provide ourselves with food as a family with minimal impact on the environment. All the same, I don't want people to wander in here thinking they are going to find pictures of pottery or cows and instead find pictures of dead birds without a little warning.)

And also, apologies to my squeamish mother who pretends that we only eat tofu over here at the farm.

Since I was on the subject of food yesterday, I figured we'd have another food update today. You know, mostly because it is almost lunch time.

Although we've had chickens for the past ten years, I'd never raised any smaller birds or game birds since last year (with this exception). I started out with Coturnix quail, and we've been breeding and raising the Jumbo Brown variety.

Since discovering what amazing little creatures Coturnix quail are, I'd recommend them to anyone who wants to raise their own meat and egg birds but might be restricted by space or zoning. If you've been interested in raising even some of your own meat, a small colony of coturnix can be kept in a backyard garden or in your mud room in a standard rabbit hutch, and they are prolific egg layers. Our quail lay eggs that are 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a medium chicken egg. They don't take up much space, they aren't costly to feed, they smell better & are easier to keep clean than guinea pigs (my personal litmus test to determine how big of a pain something will be to raise LOL), and they are a great return on your invested time.

One bull will suffice for 10-15 females to create fertile eggs that are predictable hatchers, so if you are raising them for meat, a small digital incubator such as the Brinsea Mini Advance can easily keep a small family in quail meat and eggs. Coturnix hens lay 200-300 eggs per year. Coturnix mature in 8 weeks, and are then actively laying eggs or are large enough to be harvested for meat.

Coturnix are ground birds, so they don't require vertical space. They are easy to hand tame.

And they taste absolutely delicious!

Our favorite way to prepare quail is to breast them out, and then roast the breasts in a small casserole dish over wild rice and with cream soup, gravy, or white sauce over the top of the breasts and rice. Quail meat is dark, with the texture of steak or pheasant.

(And, why yes, I did make that cool plate the food is sitting on, thank you for asking).

It never gets any easier for us to kill birds that we bred, hatched, nurtured, and raised by hand. However, it is part of the cycle of feeding ourselves, and is a necessary part of responsibly managing a domestic bird population. We harvest only our male quail, since there is about a 50-50 male to female ratio at hatch, and only 1 male can be kept with a colony of 10 or more females to prevent fighting among the bulls. Since bull fights can be brutal (they go right for the eyes! EWWW!) when females are present, we typically separate adult males from the females until we can identify which bulls have the traits we want to pass on; i.e., breast size, gentleness, leg strength, overall health, etc. We then put one selected male in with a group of females when we want to breed. All additional males are harvested for food.

Cooking (and Eating) the Old Way

2011-01-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

The most common question that people ask when I (get up the courage to) tell them that our family raises our own food is, "So what do you eat?"

The answer to the question is both simple and complex, and usually sparks follow-up conversations that involve further exclamations of "But you don't LOOK like hippies!" (or my new favorite when Matt told a coworker that I also make pottery - "Are you guys Amish?").

You get the general idea. Even though the simple living movement and living green has become more popular in recent years, those of us that take it to "extremes" by selling our city homes, buying little patches of land and starting farms, making every effort to raise our own food, and trading and bartering for the things we use to live, tend to be viewed a little differently. I think some people expect to see us driving around in a rusty VW bus drinking wheat grass juice.

I had an epiphany while out in the barn taking care of the animals yesterday morning (no small task with how loudly the tom turkeys were trying to out-gobble each other), and thought that it might be fun (for me) to share some of our recipes on my blog in the coming year for anyone who is either curious about how we are making this life work, or for anyone else interested in raising the majority of their own food. The recipes I share will be made with food we provided for ourselves and will be examples of actual foods that we eat regularly.

Years ago, before we were providing at least half of our own food, I began collecting old cookbooks from yard sales and thrift stores - Civil War recipes from the Godeys Lady's Book, Revolutionary War cookbooks, Pioneer recipes and Depression recipes collected orally from the women who cooked endless meals with limited ingredients and still managed to be creative. Even before I fully embraced the idea of raising, hunting, and trading for all of our own food, I was drawn to the sometimes-extinct ingredients, the lack of true scientific measurements, and the unusual variations and combinations of ingredients that you rarely find in our modern, mostly-pre-packaged food supply.

Speaking of old ingredients, when we grew our first heirloom garden this past summer, the seedbooks were addictive! I'd turn down pages, salivating at the white carrots that tasted like sweet corn; eggplants that were more like giant green tomatoes; parsnips the size of an adult human head; and decorative flowering grains that were not only beautiful but edible. I loved to read the history of the vegetables, some of which were smuggled to the U.S. in the waistbands and hat bands of European and Asian immigrants and grown only by a few families until the 1970's when The Seed Saver's Exchange began vigilantly collecting seeds from people all over the country who didn't want "old" vegetables to become extinct.

When we began to branch out in to raising different birds that laid different eggs and had different meat; when we were able to hunt an unusually large amount of rabbits one year; when we slaughtered our first heritage turkey - I found myself poring through those old cookbooks and craving more of them.

If you go back in my blog only a year, I originally felt overwhelmed and limited by raising and growing our own food. Philosophically, I wanted to do it, but I had no idea how I was going to feed a family of three without reverting to the easier way of going to the grocery store or stopping for fast food on the way home after a long day. Thanks to old cookbooks, our family has instead found a world of amazing, "old way" possibilities opening up to us.

That certainly doesn't mean that the food we cook is "fancy" or "complicated" (I'm not that kind of cook), and in fact it is in most cases extremely simple. It does mean that we in some cases have more limited, but more "exotic" food choices on a daily basis. I truly believe that we eat better, even if some of our food choices are limited.

So, in that vein, the first recipe I want to share is an old egg dish (eggs - shocking, I know!) that sounds different but is amazingly delicious!

Matt and I will be assembling a greenhouse that we got at Christmastime over the next couple of months! Growing seedlings in our basement last year was fun and challenging, but having a greenhouse will enable us to grow more in our short growing season by starting earlier. It will also allow me to harvest vegetables and greens year-round by propagating full-size plants. This will help give us even more variety in our diet without having to "cram" during canning/freezing/harvest season like we did last year.

Hard Cooked Egg Au Gratin

6-12 Hard Boiled Eggs, peeled and sliced
1 c. Cheese (handmade farmhouse cheddar is lovely, but any kind of cheese can be used)
2 c. soft bread crumbs*
2 c. country gravy or white/alfredo sauce
salt/pepper to taste
1 c. fresh chopped onion

In a 1.5-2 quart casserole, create a layer with 1 c. of the bread crumbs. Mix the chopped onion in to the gravy. Top bread layer with 1 c. gravy, an even layer of sliced hard boiled egg, another layer of bread crumbs, then the remaining gravy. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle the top with cheese. Bake uncovered at 350 F until the cheese is just browned and the au gratin is warmed through.

This recipe is a wonderful winter meal, served with frozen fall vegetables or squash from your winter garden. Leftovers make a good cold lunch served with slices of the leftover bread used to make the crumbs.

*Note - the bread we use in this recipe is homemade from purchased flour; all other ingredients are items that we raise/grow. There are items such as flour that we have not yet replaced with homegrown alternatives.

The Rooster's Revenge

2011-01-05T09:45:00.001-07:00

Today, a fun old poem, for your enjoyment. This was shared with me by a friend who performs cowboy poetry.

The Rooster's Revenge

Once upon an Easter morning
Little Miss Virginia Meggs
Found a score of highly colored
Somewhat gaudy Easter eggs.

Some were pink and some were yellow
Some were red and some were blue,
Some were nicely striped with purple.
Some were dyed a crimson hue.

In the nest, out in the barnyard
While the old hen stretched her legs,
Generous little Miss Virginia
Placed these pretty Easter eggs.

Came the rooster, crowing loudly;
Strutting as a rooster should,
Joyful in anticipation
Of impending fatherhood.

By the nest he drew up proudly,
There his handiwork to view,
For he knew his mate was setting—
Knew the hatching date was due.

Sad the day and sad the moment!
Sad his terrible surprise!
Joy fled from his heart in horror
At the sight before his eyes.

In the nest home of his lady
Whom he swore was always true,
There were eggs of pink and yellow,
Red and green and brown and blue.

Long the rooster looked in silence,
Then decided bitterly,
Naught remained but to avenge his
Violated Sanctity.

With the boldness of an eagle
Next door did that rooster fly;
Battle-Ruffled were his feathers,
Blood was in his rooster eye.

Rooster mind firm and determined,
Rooster jaw was set and grim,
And the next-door neighbor’s peacock
Got the hell beat out of him.

If Confucius Were A Goat He'd Look Like...

2011-01-04T14:31:00.004-07:00

Before we got goats, I'd read that they enjoyed an occasional sugar cookie treat. We tried animal crackers and mini oatmeal cookies as treats, but quickly discovered that our girls love fortune cookies.

My mother-in-law saves the individually wrapped fortune cookies she gets when she orders Chinese takeout and gives them to us.

Once Ize and Goober hear the distinctive crinkle of plastic in our pockets, you can't get them off of you.

I can only assume that the goats don't care about the fortunes inside their favorite treats. But it's fun for us to read them. On New Year's Day, we gave the goats cookies. (We figure that sugar is the animal equivalent of a little New Year's alcohol and everyone needs to cut loose once in a while. Unless you are one of our wild Russian roosters, in which case you are NEVER allowed near sugar or vodka.)

One fortune read, "Trust your dearest friends and they will lead you to good fortune."

Matt and I smiled at each other as we read it, because our dearest friends (our farm animals) have definitely already led us to great fortune. This life may never make us rich in money, but it makes us rich in experiences and friendships. It was a great way to start a new year.

Looking back this past weekend on all we've accomplished in one year - starting up the family farm we've dreamed of all these years and succesfully providing over 80% of our family's own food - renewed our excitement about what this next year will bring.

And since Ize is awfully Zen and loves fortune cookies I can only guess that if Confucius were a goat, he'd look just like this -

But maybe without the cookie crumbs in his beard.

Herbie the Cow Duck & New Rescues

2010-12-28T16:40:00.007-07:00

We have a few animals that don't seem to know what they are, but none have a more severe case of Mistaken Identity than Herbie the Cow Duck.

You really have to believe you are a cow to eat hay side-by-side with the Jersey you are convinced is your sister.

We had the great fortune to rescue a breeding pair of Naragansett turkeys right before Christmas. They are housed with the goats at night until we can integrate them with the rest of our turkey flock.

If they start bleating, I'll let you know.

Pheasants and Snow

2010-12-27T14:38:00.012-07:00

We had a lovely stretch of warm weather after the terrible cold this past Thanksgiving, but it's winter again with a vengeance with temperatures in the single digits and icy snow everywhere.

I'm torn because I'm not sure which was worse - the warmth and mud or the cold and ice.

I was out shutting down the barn in the midst of a horrible snowstorm yesterday afternoon when I caught one of the pheasants sitting on top of a barrel, his tail covered in snow like he fully expected to be covered in a blanket of snow and was enjoying every minute of it.

Raising gamebirds is completely different from raising domesticated birds, and they seem to revel in weather that sends my chickens or turkeys literally running for cover. The rescue chickens that live next door to the pheasants glance over their shoulders as they run in the henhouse, looking at those pheasants as if to say...stupid birds don't know enough to get in out of the cold!

Bad Vlad and A Merry Christmas

2010-12-23T14:34:00.013-07:00

I keep waiting for the winter "lull" we had last year before our farm was in full swing. Last year at this same time, I was making wine and cheese and spending long, cozy days in front of the fire. (Or, maybe, that's just what I think I was doing at the time...)

Matt reminded me yesterday that there is no such thing as a lull anymore in the lifestyle we've chosen. I was very brave and managed not to cry until after he left the room.

Just kidding.

Kind of.

There is romance to raising our own food and homesteading and living a simple lifestyle. Underneath the romance, there is consistent hard work and daily obligations that accompany having many different types of birds and animals that depend on you for their care and health. The cows don't care if we have the flu, and turkeys don't give you sick days. Or mental health days. Or any other kind of day off, for that matter.

Beyond providing our own food and our animal's food, there is also the work that comes from marketing and selling our surplus in the local community.

All of that said, what we do is truly a labor of love and even on the longest days we wouldn't trade our lives right now for anything.

Not even a condo and a cat. Although, I was fantasizing about that a little when I was cleaning out cow poop late last night in cold, drizzly rain.

Even though we are barely in to winter, we have already started the process of breeding our birds - turkeys, chickens, and quail. Even though we are lucky enough to have three Russian Orloff roosters, we selected only one for breeding to our females - Bad Vlad. (I think I'm very clever naming him Vlad, you know, since he's Russian). We picked him because of his temperment and his attractive Russian accent, plus he stays out of the vodka so it seems like he'll be a good father.

Joking aside, Vlad is one of those rare selfless roosters who is gentle with his girls, and watchful for danger, and always makes sure everyone else eats before he does.

We are also in the midst of ordering seeds from the Seed Saver Exchange to augment our own saved seed supply so we can begin growing heirloom seedlings for sale in March.

We want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas! Our family has been amazingly blessed this past year, and we've met so many wonderful people through farming, farmers markets, pottery shows and sales over the past year, endangered livestock associations such as the ALBC, and through this blog. We value our relationships with each and every one of you, and look forward to spending the next year sharing in your adventures and challenges, just as you've shared in ours.

Have You Hugged Your Turkey Today?

2010-12-13T16:11:00.012-07:00

When we first started keeping chickens, I joined several online forums for backyard and hobby poultry enthusiasts. One of the things I was a bit shocked by was the near-paranoia of some of the posters that wrote that they made their children sanitize their hands any time they touched their chicks or chickens. In order to avoid salmonella outbreaks, they'd instruct their kids never to kiss the chicks or grown birds.

It made me a little paranoid, too.

In the past ten or so years, I've learned that there is far more emotional health benefit to be found in touching, interacting with, (and yes, even kissing and hugging) my birds than there is risk of physical harm or disease outbreak.

Now, that certainly doesn't mean that if you don't regularly have your flocks health tested for disease or if you keep them in crowded or dirty conditions, that there isn't a risk if you allow your children to socialize with your birds.

It does mean that if you follow the rules of keeping a healthy flock, then you should embrace and enjoy the personalities of your birds and forge strong relationships with them. I truly believe that part of the problem with childhood obesity in America is how disconnected we've all become from our food. Appreciating where our food comes from, socializing with the animals that give us one of our dietary staples (eggs), makes the meals we enjoy made from the by-products of our relationships that much more satisfying. Plus, a well-loved bird lays more eggs.

Living our lifestyle, we can't be scared of chicken poop or cow manure, or goat pee. It's just part and parcel of what we do. (Or doo doo, as the case may be - whew, I kill myself sometimes!)...

Plus, what mother would interrupt this kind of moment to ask their child to sanitize their hands?

Herbie, Cow Duck

2010-12-08T15:58:00.013-07:00

I always feel like I owe an apology when I start blogging again after a long absence. The truth is, life raising your own food and running a farm can be demanding (as well as exciting), and it is easy for time to get away from me as the sesasons change. Changing seasons means that our daily farm routine changes, and it takes time to get a rhythm back. In winter, the seasonal foods we eat are sometimes more labor intensive.

Late Fall and Early Winter have made me nostalgic for picking lunch or dinner straight out of the garden, without any fuss and minimal preparation. Hauling water for our animals in freezing temperatures has made me doubly grateful for the warm weather and 7 or 8 months of the year that we have accessible irrigation water and water shares.

Rather than apologize again, now that I have time to blog regularly about our adventures once again, I'm going to get everyone caught up on what's been happening at the Henhouse since late Fall.

Meet Hamburger, our beef steer. Even with 6 tags between the two of us, we only got one mule deer this past hunting season. To supplement our meat for the year, we invested in a beef steer, which we split 50/50 with Matt's parents. It's interesting to see the differences between Hamburger and our American Mini Jersey Milk Cows, Mika & Sparky.

Hamburger has personality, which I'm working hard to take little notice of. (...whispers...) You know, since we'll be eating him in the Spring.

Ize and Goober, our goaty-pies, are doing well. Neither one has been excited by the unseasonably cold weather here in Utah. We thought we had time to plan for the purchase of water de-icers, panel/pad heaters, and catalytic heaters for the barn to get our animals through the sometimes-harsh winters we have in the mountains. Last year we didn't hit single digit temperatures until after January. This year, it was 2 degrees on Thanksgiving morning. We bought all of the winter supplies we'd need, and spent a long weekend installing everything to keep our animals comfortable this Thanksgiving instead of rabbit hunting, like we'd planned.

The goats appreciated our efforts, but enjoyed the sunshine late last week even more.

This is what happens when you work a child too hard in the cold and snow. Little Q is learning that farming in the winter is hard work!

Our pheasants, which we were raising to eat, are just too lovely to butcher. They now live in permanent quarters, as neighbors to our rescue chickens.

Mika, our oldest heifer, appears to have settled after our artificial insemination effort in September. She should be due in June, and we are learning everything we possibly can about calving and processing milk.

Our heritage turkeys are still growing, and they get more lovely every day. We had so many requests from locals to purchase them for their Thanksgiving meals that we are considering raising some to sell next year.

And, we finally bought a baler! It was a great deal off a local Utah website similar to Craigslist.

We're now selling our surplus chicken & quail eggs to a growing local customer-base. It has turned out to be a great opportunity to share some of our philosophies about raising your own food within our local community.

Oh, yes, and the most important update of all...

Herbie thinks he's a cow.

And Lord help you if you tell him different.

In the Wilds...Or, Blogging on Location

2010-10-01T12:03:00.007-06:00

This is the first time in three years that I've been able to take any significant time off of work for the muzzle loader deer hunt. We've been "in the wilds" of the Uintah Mountains for the past day or so, but I haven't abandoned my internet connection (thank God for the oil field workers out here in the middle of nowhere who obviously need satellite access) or reading the blogs of my friends in cyber space.

The aspen leaves have changed color from lime green to fiery hues, and have begun to fall off the trees. Every year, I gather thousands of them, certain I'll do something with them. Every year, I press them in the pages of a book and there they stay. It just seems tragic to let something so beautiful turn in to compost on the forest floor.

I brought my empty five gallon buckets, and as serious as I am about looking for deer and elk (I also have a cow elk muzzle loader tag this year), I'll drag my boys farther in to the mountains this year looking for raw clay in the mountain side. Two years ago, I found a vein of clay so rich in copper it was bright green. It was in an extremely remote location, difficult to get to and at very high altitude. I may talk them in to driving and hiking there again, since my clay stores are getting low.

We've learned that a buck mule deer gives us 3 months worth of meat, and an elk gives us about 5-6 months worth of meat. If we are lucky, we will get at least one deer this year between the two of us, since both Matt & I have tags. Since this is the first year that we are trying to feed our family exclusively on food we have raised, hunted, or grown - hunting this time seems more high pressure than it has in years past. If we don't get anything, we know we will cope, it will just make things easier if we can get something.

Yesterday afternoon, Matt, Little Q and I ventured out for a long explore. The best way to see tons of grouse is to forget your shotgun. Of course, we saw 2 blue grouse and 4 ruft grouse as it was nearing dusk. They didn't even fly out of our way on the trail - a wasted meal! If you've never tasted mountain grouse, they are delicious and some are as large as a broiler chicken. We'll make sure we have our shotgun next time, which should ensure we don't see any more grouse for the rest of our trip!

Clay 'n Blogs...Pot Preview #3

2010-09-28T07:10:00.001-06:00

It's hard to believe that we are finally in the homestretch, racing toward the opening of the Clay 'n Blogs show in North Carolina on October 1st! I really wanted to be there for the opening & for the chance to meet many of the other participating potters (whose blogs I read faithfully), but I need a pregnant cow & a girl has her priorities.

All jesting aside, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the show, and will be there in spirit with my fellow potters. I'm particularly sad that I won't get to meet Meredith at Whynot Pottery (yet), as she's been such a support, a cheerleader, and a good friend in my blogging and my pottery. It's easy to become regionally "silo-ed" as a potter, and allowing myself to be influenced by the ceramics, the writing, and the online relationships I've developed with a great community of fellow artists over the past couple of years has definitely enhanced work and encouraged me to try new things.

Below are pictures of the last two pots I sent in to The Campbell House gallery for the show. To see the other three pots I included in the show, go here and here. To see the piece I have in the online gallery, go here.

Small raku oil lamp made from blended local Utah clays. Sealed to make the piece fully functional, includes small hand-carved, raku fired underplate. 2.5" tall, 2.5" diameter (at base).

Small raku oil lamp made from blended local Utah clays. Sealed to make the piece fully functional, includes small hand-carved, raku fired underplate. 2" tall, 2.5" diameter (at base).

What's Wrong With That Chicken?

2010-09-27T07:15:00.001-06:00

When we rescue birds, we fit them in where it makes the most sense for them in terms of community.

We have five older hens that live together - all from different backgrounds, most from different rescue events. There's Peaches, who was turned in to the shelter after being found in a box on the side of the road. Rosie is a tough old Rhode Island Red hen who is a true "street-chicken" - she's missing a toe! She'll go toe-to-(what's left of a) toe with any rooster, and I've even caught her crowing, standing on top of the feed bin.

There's Red (another giant Rhode Island Red) and Micro (a tiny bantam Barred Rock) who were rescued together, even though they are horribly mismatched in size and temperment. Silkie, a silkie chicken (black bones and purple skin - very cool, look it up!), is tiny, feather-footed, and diligently chases off the sparrows that try to steal the girls' scratch.

Although we have other rescued birds, we call this little group of 5 that live together "the rescues," and they get special treatment. They are a sweet, predictable group of chickens, each healing from various traumas in their past lives, supporting and loving with each other and vicious with outsiders.

These girls are tough, all have obviously had difficult lives, and little phases them anymore or catches their attention.

When we adopted Herbie a few weeks back, I set up a wading pool for him just outside "the rescues."

Herbie enjoyed the water, dipping and swimming, fussing and floating.

And I was surprised as the rescues watched, dumbfounded, as this strange chicken made a spectacle of himself with his splashing, just outside their run. Few things capture their attention the way Herbie has.

"What's wrong with that chicken?"

Garden Visitor...

2010-09-24T07:30:00.000-06:00

Look who I found hiding among my beans, soaking up the last of the Fall sunshine...

Beyond Slow Food

2010-09-23T07:35:00.001-06:00

When we decided we were ready to take the leap to raising, growing, & hunting the majority of our own food, we weren't really certain where to start. I went to the library and checked out several books on permaculture, gardening, saving seeds, canning, raising various animals and birds for meat, and keeping a family cow. There's a whole world of information out there when it comes to feeding a family the "old fashioned" way, and some of it was so overwhelming I nearly threw in the towel.

We've always been proponents of the Slow Food movement. However, I've discovered that switching from purchasing local ingredients and supplementing seasonally from your own garden & with hunted meat to raising all of your own food, requires a complete and drastic shift in your family relationship with food.

Slow food? Here it is more like sluggish food.

Years ago, before we started all of this nonsense, I'd sit down and plan out a weekly menu to determine what I'd buy at the grocery every weekend. Growing, raising, hunting, canning, freezing, and preserving your own food requires creating a yearly menu prior to planting your garden or breeding your animals and birds. You need to know exactly what and how you will be eating six or eight months in advance, so you can ensure you have enough of the right kinds of ingredients. You also need a clear idea of how you will preserve, cook and eat what you are growing or raising, and how often you will make specific dishes.

And you have to make things that everyone will be willing to eat, using fewer ingredients than you had access to before. Remember the canned brandied-clove-apricot debacle? My boys do.

I can no longer fly by the seat of my pants.

Which is actually harder than it sounds, because I've never been a great planner. But, I've learned we just can't do what we do successfully without a plan (and even then it's a little iffy).

This year, I've been keeping records of everything we planted, what we harvested, how many birds we raised for food, how many laying hens produce how many eggs; and breeding records for our cows so we can ensure we time things right next year. We'll make adjustments next year based on what we learn over the next six months. I keep track of every penny we spend on feed, every hour we spend growing & putting up hay, every minute of our water shares & irrigation that we use so we can understand what we are really expending in time and money. We'll make adjustments to make our lifestyle less expensive as we go along.

It's led me, and our little family, to a place where we eat more simply than we ever did before. That doesn't mean we don't eat well, it means that we eat foods that are processed less, crafted more creatively, with fewer and more meaningful ingredients.

It's also led us to be more adventurous in the kinds of dishes and foods that we are willing to try. We learn something new about food and about ourselves nearly every day.

Don't get me wrong - there are days when I miss stopping at McDonald's to pick up hamburgers and fries on the way home from a long day at work. But, so far this year, we've been able to keep our monthly grocery bill less than $100 for a family of three, which includes flour, sugar, dog food and paper products. Combining that with the fact that we feel like we make a little bit of a difference in the world of factory farming and commercial food, we can't turn back.

Entering Fall and Winter, as the leaves turn in the canyons and the weather turns cold & we begin to harvest and preserve the last of our garden, we'll get the opportunity to see how well we really planned. Next stop: hunting.

Urban Myths and Big Spiders

2010-09-22T07:50:00.000-06:00

This blog post is for Meredith at Whynot Pottery, and any other friends out there who are fellow spider-lovers.

I was going to name this post something very clever, and so I googled "name of person who likes spiders" to try to find the scientific label for those who are the opposite of an arachnaphobe. It came back with results that were both bizarre and frightening...evidently there are people in this world who believe that we swallow spiders on accident in our sleep?!?

And that when you are bit by a spider they are really just laying spider eggs beneath your skin?!?

Needless to day, after googling, I've lost all faith in mankind due to the urban myths people will belief out of the irrational fear of a creature smaller than a pencil eraser.

If you happen to be scientific, and know the official thing to call people who like spiders, please do let me know. (No smarty-pantsing on that last sentence, please, as I know there are a great many non-scientific things to call those of us who live in peace and fascination with our eight-legged friends).

Enough of that...

On to the pictures of the lovely garden spider I found in my tomatoes. She spun her web between two of our large Anna Russian heirloom plants, which have trunks on them that would make an elm tree proud. Russians know how to grow and breed some hardy vegetables (and hardy chickens). She was anchored so tightly that she was still in the same spot this morning despite two days of hot temperatures and windstorms with 50 mph winds.

One of the fun things about living on a farm with varied habitats is the large variety of spiders (and other insects) that we attract and have the opportunity to see & photograph.

We were all sad that the children of our jeweled orb weaver from last summer didn't return to our porch this year.

I don't know what tickled me more - that this big, pretty girl stayed very still while I took hundreds of photos of her, or that little Q was fascinated by such a big spider.

Clay 'n Blogs...Pot Preview #2

2010-09-21T07:30:00.000-06:00

The Clay 'n Blogs show is fast approaching, so I thought I'd share two more of the pots I sent along for inclusion. Clay 'n Blogs opens October 1 at The Campbell House in Southern Pines, NC, and showcases the work of a community of 50 blogging potters from around the world. (For more information on the process of putting together this amazing show, check out curator Meredith Heywood's blog.)

Everything I sent this time was raku, a first for me. Typically, I don't show my raku pots, even though raku makes up over 50% of what I sell each year. I had a great online conversation last week with fellow potter and show participant Tracey Broome about the unpredictability of raku. She suggested I do a future post on my raku process and how I am able to get consistent results. (Spoiler: the best way to get consistent results in raku is to keep meticulous records and, more importantly, to CHEAT. In pottery, if you aren't breaking the "rules," you aren't trying.)

If you are interested in purchasing any of the pots shown, you can contact the Arts Council of Moore County at 910-692-2787 or email acmc@mooreart.org, after October 1. I also have one piece for sale exclusively on-line, which can be found at the gallery site here.

Medium raku oil lamp, 3" tall, 3" wide, hand-thrown and hand-carved, made from blended local Utah clays. Lamp has been sealed to make it fully functional, and can be used indoors or outside as a patio lamp. Hand-thrown underplate included.

Medium raku oil lamp, 12" tall (including small glass hurricane), 5" wide, hand-thrown and hand-carved, made from blended local Utah clays. Lamp has been sealed to make it fully functional.

So About Those Cows...Or, Julia Learns New Skill

2010-09-17T20:00:00.001-06:00

We tend to get sidetracked at the Henhouse, but that doesn't mean that we've forgotten that the whole reason we got cows was to make cheese.

Which requires that your cow makes milk.

Which requires that your cow has a baby.

Which requires artificial insemination.

In the past few months, I've learned that there are two kinds of people in the world when it comes to breeding cows. There are those who know how to do AI, and those who don't. And it's really hard if you are a part of that second group to find someone in the first group to teach you how to impregnate a cow without the assistance of a bull.

Matt & I have recently had a crash course in both how hard it is to find someone willing to teach AI to two people who only have 2 little cows in the middle of a suburb; and also in how to hard it is to find information about how to do AI if you decide you want to be "self-taught." Which, for the record, is a very bad idea. In case you were considering it yourself. There are things in this life for which you need an experienced someone to show you the ropes. Feeling around in a cow's rectum for her cervix is just one of those things. (Apologies to my mother for that entire paragraph.)

Cows, go figure, get very irritated when you don't know what you are doing in that general anatomical area.

It started with our fear that we wouldn't recognize when our cows come in to heat. All of my books on cow reproduction talk about how difficult the signs are to spot, how subtle the many symptoms can be. I spent hours investigating how to force a cow in to heat.

Mika, our oldest heifer, had a heat cycle within her first couple of weeks with us.

She yelled and bawled for a full day.

She paced back and forth at the corral fence.

She tried to get friendly with our other cow (leading my nearly 10 year-old to ask me if animals can fall in love with other animals of their same sex. I really want you all to try and picture the look on my face while I fumbled around trying to answer that one & it's many follow-up questions).

Long story short, you'd have to be an idiot not to know when our oldest is in heat. The only thing lacking is a giant neon sign advertising that she's fertile.

We counted out 21 days and began figuring out what we'd need to do AI the next time around. We made calls, literally numbering in the hundreds, to vet techs and AI specialists in our area. Unless we were running a large dairy, it wasn't worth anybody's time to help us out. After a couple of false starts, we found a horse vet, a great old cowboy, who has beef cows of his own. He kindly offered to help.

We raced against the (biological) clock to obtain a cryo tank, semen straws from the bulls we wanted to breed to our girls, a spiral AI gun, breeder gloves, a straw cutter, and instructions for how to do the whole thing. I make this sound easy, but it was actually a painful process that led to all kinds of conversations between Matt & I that I'm relieved had no audience.

Mika's next heat cycle came around, 1 day later than anticipated; we called the vet. He showed up at 8 pm on a Saturday night, and we were missing one of the parts for the AI gun. We were bitterly disappointed, and marked 21 more days out on our calendar.

Wednesday, 4 days earlier than anticipated, Mika went in to heat again. We went out to feed and do evening chores and she was yelling, carrying on, pacing, and trying to um, er..., cause more uncomfortable questions from my young son.

We'd already made sure we had everything we needed this time around, had scheduled the vet for Sunday afternoon, and we'd contacted the manufacturer or our AI gun and had them mail us instructions. We'd done a "dry run" with our equipment.

We left a message for the vet telling him the timetable had changed.

Mika's early, unexpected heat meant we had 12 hours, or until about 11 am the following day to "deliver the package," or have to wait another 21 days.

That night, Matt got called out, and I was left to my own devices to coordinate with the vet, get our equipment set up, and try to follow along with what the vet was doing well enough that I could hopefully do it myself the next time. I hardly slept, I was so nervous.

At midnight, I sent an email to work, saying: "Will be late for work tomorrow , no one is allowed to laugh...My heifer is in heat 4 days early. Need to do AI. I bet this is the most unique email you've ever received regarding why someone is going to be late to work."

I got up early, dropped Little Q off at school, and talked with the vet. He would be coming out between 9 and 9:30. I fed the rest of the animals, drank 4 cups of coffee, and dragged the huge cryo tank out to the barn. I received six or seven emails from people at work with sentiments such as "Mooooooo...." and "Cow are things going?"

I set up a little table and arranged all of our tools. I washed Mika down with soap and water so we wouldn't risk giving her an infection. I called my father-in-law and asked him if he could come over from next door to help hold Mika still while the vet took care of business.

The vet arrived and informed me that I was going to do all of the prep work, and then would be around the backside of the cow with him watching and learning. He had me retrieve the straw, load the AI gun, and watch while he inseminated my cow. He explained what it was supposed to feel like at each step of the process.

That might have been the longest 3 minutes of my life.

Then, he turned to me and said, go ahead and feel around in there and see if you feel what I explained.

And, outnumbered by two old cowboys, I reached right on in. He was right. A cow's cervix feels just like a turkey's neck.

I'm excited I've moved from the first group of people who don't know how AI works to that second group that knows it's not really that hard, as long as you have someone to show you the ropes.

Now comes the waiting game, seeing if this attempt will take. If it does, then I'll be godmother to a bovine baby in about 10 months, and I'll be making some hard-earned cheese from milk from my very own cow in about 11 months.

In the meantime, if you have anything you need inseminated, I'm your gal.

Apologies to my mother.

Countdown to Clay 'n Blogs Show...Pot Preview #1

2010-09-15T22:30:00.002-06:00

A couple of days ago, I shared a few of the pots from my recent firings that I didn't send to The Campbell House for the upcoming Clay 'n Blogs show. Click here to go to that blog post to view the stuff that I decided wasn't good enough to show alongside potters such as Tracey Broome, Jim Gottuso, Ron Philbeck, Zygote Blum, Hollis Engley, Peter Gregory, Jennifer Mecca, Mel Robson, Cindy Shake (who is also an incredible metal artist), or Gary Rith. If you'd like to see the work these potters have in the show's online gallery for sale, go here.

I thought I'd start sharing the pots I did send along for inclusion in the show, so I'll be posting pictures of them one at a time over the next couple of weeks. I sent in 5 pieces, and also have one piece in the online gallery. I'm excited because I feel that the work I sent in is some of the best raku I've done in my 15-year pottery career.

For more information on the process of putting together this amazing show, which brings together the work of 50 blogging potters from all over the world, check out Meredith Heywood's blog. Not only is she curating the show, but it was her idea. She's a talented potter, and a unifying force in the relationships established between the potters blogging, sharing, and showing together in October.

Medium raku oil lamp, 2" tall, 3" wide, with underplate. Made from blended local Utah clays, sealed to make the piece fully functional. Includes the hand-carved, raku fired underplate pictured.

All Creatures Great And Small

2010-09-15T10:25:00.002-06:00

I often wonder if Matt knew he was signing on to become a full-time veterinarian when he married me. But, he does a good job imitating James Herriot.

Let's not even start to talk about the fact that we are learning to do AI on our cows. We have conversations some days that I am sure would frighten an innocent observer. We talk about "bulling" and breeder gloves and spiral gun sheaths and how to feel a cow cervix. Apologies to my mother for that entire last sentence.

Earlier this year, Matt nursed a White-Laced Red Cornish hen through "failure to thrive" that required twice-daily physical therapy on her little legs and forced feed, medication, and water. In June, One of our little California White pullets tunneled her way in with the full-grown roosters and they opened up the back of her head. She had to be medicated and go in rehab for a couple of weeks.

Herbie the duck had only been with us mere days when he decided to eat something he shouldn't have and had a strange reaction that gave him all the symptoms of a mild stroke. Because his prior owners had never had him out of a cage, we have found that he doesn't know how to forage without supervision. He will eat anything, including spiders or pig weed. A dose of antibiotics, electrolytes, and a couple of worried days, and Herbie turned around.

A few weeks ago, our two Egyptian Fayoumi hens, both aggressive foragers, stuck their heads underneath some chicken wire while trying to poach from the pheasant pen. They both tore the back of their necks up to varying, serious degrees on a rough piece of wire. Poor Matt had to play vet for both chickens. One bird required 5 staples to close the gash on the back of her neck; while the other had no skin remaining anywhere on the back of her neck. We thought for sure she wasn't going to make it, but Matt patiently doctored both birds daily, stapling and medicating and wrapping their wounds, and they've lived in rehab/ICU pens in our basement for the last month while they recuperated.

Kudos to Matt, because stapling a wound on a chicken is actually much harder than I just made it sound.

We are fortunate (knock on wood) that this will be first time in 8 months that we haven't had some bird or another in our basement either growing or recuperating.

I almost miss being awakened (or startled while making dinner) by random cackling and clucking coming up the stairs. But not really.

I'm pleased to show you the miracle we found when we checked the most injured Fayoumi this past Sunday night. The skin on her neck had completely regenerated; and although I don't think she'll ever grow feathers on her new skin, it is nothing short of unbelievable that she's still alive, especially considering the amount of infection we battled for about a week.

If you don't have Vetericyn in your family's first aid kit, you should get some. We recently discovered their line of first aid sprays...it will actually kill flesh-eating bacteria and staph, but is gentle and safe enough it can be sprayed in the mouth/throat to treat strep, or in the eyes to treat pink eye. I don't think we could have recuperated our last three injured birds without losing them to infection without it.

Sneak Peek...Or, What's Not Going

2010-09-13T23:00:00.000-06:00

I've had a long time to plan for the Clay 'n Blogs show, and I made a lot of work that I could potentially have included.

The work I ultimately ended up packing and sending in was not the work I originally planned to send along. Since this is a show about not just pottery, but about potters who blog, in the beginning I'd planned to take a form such as the honey pot (which I love to make) and tie it in with a page from my blog about beekeeping. I sell a lot of my honey pots when we sell our honey, and I set aside some particularly lovely ones that I could have included in the show.

Since I'm the only potter from Utah that is participating in the Clay 'n Blogs show, I started thinking a couple of months ago about what makes the pottery I make in Utah any different from what other potters make elsewhere in the Mountain West, or in the rest of the country. And I came back to my favorite things to throw.

Matt, Q, and I love to travel all over Utah. We don't stay in hotels, we camp. Years ago, we found some clay out where we were camping, and now we take empty 5 gallon buckets with us everywhere. We've collected clay from all over Utah; from Red Rocks country to Dinosauraland to our own backyard. One of the (many) amazing things about Utah is that it was home to an unusally large number of dinosaurs and prehistoric sea creatures millions of years ago. That means that not only are we home to numerous oil fields, natural gas, and stores of buried ingredients for fertilizer, we also have immensely mineral-rich clay, all over the state.

The clay that we've gathered and processed and that I've thrown over the years contains huge quantities of trace minerals, and when the clays are blended with commercial clays, covered in a simple glaze and raku-fired, the most amazing and brilliant, naturally-occuring effects result. Every camping trip, every discovery of a new type of clay found in the outdoors, every pot thrown with that clay, and every firing - is just like Christmas. It makes the pottery that I make a surprise, every time. There is nothing predictable about working in clay.

Does that mean that there are lots of failures in what I do? Sure. But that just makes the successes that much sweeter.

So, what I ultimately ended up sending in for Clay 'n Blogs were raku oil lamps, made from clay collected from all over this state that I live in and farm in and love.

I'm sending along a little piece of every mountain range, every wild place I've visited; every incredible experience I've had watching a Uintah sunrise...

Or sitting in the ruins of a ghost town where miners lived in pit houses dug out of the side of a canyon wall a hundred years ago and struggled to make a better life...

Or hiking a now-overgrown Outlaw Trail where Jesse James and others traveled through Utah, smuggling stolen livestock and hiding from the law.

You can feel the essence of real people from the past in those precious, sometimes forgotten and remote mountain places, and I like to think they are as much a part of the pottery I make as I am.

I thought I'd share some of the pieces from the recent firings for the show that I didn't include. As we get closer to the show, I'll post pictures of the pieces I did send along.

If you haven't already, go check out the Clay 'n Blogs site at ACMC. There are fabulous potters, and writers, participating in this landmark show. A special thanks also, to Meredith at Whynot Pottery, for organizing and curating the show!

Oh, Duck!

2010-09-07T17:41:00.000-06:00

Just over a year ago, when we moved to our little place and started a farm, we registered with the Utah Humane Society as a chicken rescue.

In the past 15 months, I'm proud to say that our family has rescued 11 chickens. We've given them veterinary care, and fed them out of our own pockets, and ensured that they are kept safe and happy and that they are well-loved. Even mixed in with our other animals, their care is not inexpensive, but we've kept every one of them - for two reasons:

1) Until recently, I hadn't been able to compile a list of other small farmers that are willing to take roosters or hens that may be past their "laying prime." Taking a rescued chicken is never a guarantee of free eggs. You have to be passionate about poultry to take a troubled bird that may be unhealthy, or which may have been neglected or abused. Some of the birds require special housing or need to be separated from the general population, or require special foods or medication.
2) We quickly grow attached to every bird that has entered our lives. With the exception of an extremely aggressive rooster early on in our rescue careers, we've had nothing but wonderful experiences with the chickens we've taken in.

This past Labor Day Weekend, we had the opportunity for another rescue first.

Last week, the UHS Rescue Coordinator gave my number to a woman with a male duck that she couldn't keep. She purchased him as a duckling and was unprepared, living in a condo, for what adult duck poop really means in a small space. She had a tiny yard and dogs, too, and ducks + dogs = trouble. Ducks don't like dogs.

It's been hard, but we've learned not to judge the people whose animals end up on our little farm.

So, we are now the happy owners of the sweetest little Khaki Campbell drake in world. Little Q named him Herbie, and Q and Herbie have become fast friends.

I made a promise about 18 months ago, you may remember, that if God blessed us with the opportunity to live on our property and have the farm we've always wanted, that we would steward and love any of his creatures that were in need of a home. And even though God took care of us, and then some...so far, every animal we've had the opportunity to adopt has merely felt like MORE blessings heaped on top of what God gave us in the first place.

Welcome home, Herbie.

Goober and The Snort

2010-09-02T20:50:00.002-06:00

We've been looking for a larger, more powerful tiller for a while. We have a small Honda tiller that we love, and we use it to till up the chicken runs, barn stalls, cow corral, garden spaces, and compost piles. All that tilling takes FOREVER with our tiny Honda, and the muscles in your arms spasm for hours afterward from all the shucking and jiving and bopping and bouncing. You know exactly how many rocks are in the ground you just tilled.

You'd think my lunch lady arms would be smaller from all that shaking. I get such a kick out of the old "exercise belts" that were supposed to vibrate the fat away. If this concept really worked, and with all the tilling I've done, I'd should have the thinnest, most toned upper arms on the face of the planet.

We've looked at several new, larger tillers, and were shocked at how much they cost. Some of the "higher end" models were in the same range as a used full-size tractor. Like so many other things we do to make our little farm work more simply and as economically as possible, we started looking for previously-enjoyed tillers.

Yesterday, Matt found an ad on a local Utah classifieds site on-line for a European style "walk-behind" tractor and after some finagling, we were able to buy it.

I was excited because it looks just like the little push tractor used in "The Good Neighbors" series from BBC in the 70's. I wonder sometimes if Matt is sorry he used to agree with me when we'd watch the show together on PBS and I was overly-enthusiastic about how we should do something JUST LIKE THAT someday.

Goober, our crazy little goat, wasn't really sure about our new Snort. She tried to knock it over with her head.

It didn't budge. Go figure.

"Are you my mother?"

Heirloom Tomatoes and Canning...Or, Why I'm Not A Vegetarian

2010-08-26T17:35:00.000-06:00

There are many reasons I'm not a vegetarian. Let me share a sampling of them with you:

1)I don't like any other food that contains enough protein to survive well enough to eat it often enough to keep me alive. I tried that with soybeans back when it was trendy and I was younger and cared about being skinny and that nonsense. Now, I'm just old and tired, and brave enough to admit that I don't like tofu or soymilk, no matter how good they are for me.

2) BBQ ribs. (Drool....)

3) Canning vegetables scares me.

If you are going to raise your own food, especially in a locale where it snows and is miserably cold for at least half the year, you eventually run in to the issue of how to preserve fresh food from the lovely Spring/Summer months so you don't starve to death in the Fall/Winter. There are choices, thank God, for how to preserve said fresh food. Freezing, dehydrating, root cellaring, and my personal demon - canning.

My mother didn't can foods. She and my father both grew up during the depression, and the ability and means to buy fresh foods at the grocery store year-round was a precious right for both of them. They were raised having to be thrifty and eat 5 year old canned goods when times were tough, no matter how horrible said canned goods might be. My mother had no desire to preserve or can anything. Having seven children, my parents had a giant deep-freeze in the basement that they filled with convenience foods. I was raised on frozen lasagna and Mormon "food storage" clean out (wheat chili with TVP? Anyone? Bless my father's heart...as a sidenote, if you can live on TVP, your gut will be impervious to EVERYTHING.)

I'd always wanted to can jam, and my mother-in-law was kind enough to introduce me to the basics of canning. I was hooked. I made gallons and gallons of blackberry jam. I pickled beets. I pickled cabbage. I made brandied clove apricots.

And in my zeal, I learned two very important things.

1) You should never can things that your family won't eat when it's not canned. The pickled beets? Not a hit. And why I thought that people who wouldn't eat fresh cabbage would somehow magically eat it once I'd put it in jars with vinegar for six months, I still don't know.

2) You can't can everything using the same method.

Wait...what!?...

I didn't realize that low acid fruits and vegetables had to be pressure canned. Fortunately, I figured this out before I killed anyone with botulism. My zeal for canning turned in to a cautious fear about doing something horribly wrong and making the people I was trying to feed with summer's bounty very, very sick.

I now have a canning comfort zone.

So far this summer, I've put up rhubarb, which I have newly discovered makes delicious jam and wine (and can also be frozen without much fuss). I'll make my old standby blackberry jam, and I even put up some gooseberries. (Black = divine food of the gods, Green = watery eyes).

When I planted my garden this past Spring, I put in mostly root crops - potatoes, beets, parsnips, carrots - all things I can freeze or put away in my root cellar. I froze my peas, I didn't can them. I'll dry my beans, too. Maybe because I discovered canning so late in life, I can't really seem to enjoy the "adventure" of it. I know it will keep my veggies longer, I just can't take that leap of faith.

It's a good thing we butchered and froze meat chickens, and have a huge supply of fresh and frozen eggs. When our cows come in to milk, I'll make enough cheese and yogurt to last us after the hunted and raised meat runs out.

We won't be vegetarians any time soon. Thank God.

So, on to the heirloom tomoates. They were the only vegetable I planted this year that wasn't a root crop. Summer isn't summer without a sandwich made with soft wheat bread and a fresh picked tomato, sliced and dusted with just a bit of salt. I'd never grown tomatoes from seeds before, and I got obsessed with heirloom vegetables & the self-sufficiency that is part of saving your own seed after reading a book from the library this past winter.

I ordered seeds in December, planted them in my basement in February, and have nurtured and babied my tomato plants for the past 8 months. In May, when they started to exceed 7 feet in height I discovered I'd planted them all so close together that I'd need a machete and a jungle guide to harvest them.

By the 4th of July, when there wasn't a tomato to be found on my behemoth plants, I began to be a bit worried. I'd wanted tomatos, not a tomato plant forest.

I felt a bit of hope when by August 1st, my behemoth plants were covered with hundreds of GIANT green tomatos.

August 20th, in a routine inspection of the tomato jungle, (which normally led to terrible disappointment and searching for green tomato jam recipes) I spotted a tiny bit of pink in a tight thatch of green. I yelled to Matt - he ran over and confirmed that he saw some pink, too.

I tied off to a rope (just kidding) and waded in to pick my first tomato. I reached out, wedged my hand in thick green leaves, and grabbed. My hand was filled with oozing, wet goo. I pulled out what was left of a beautiful pink tomato. Mice had beat me to my first ripe tomato. They'd even pooped on what was left, I noticed, as I contemplated slicing off something of what was left to see how it tasted. (By the way, I didn't).

As the week wore on, they beat me to my second...and my third...and my fourth. Then, those little pains started eating the green tomatos that had even a hint of a pink-yellow blush. Eight months of babying the fruit along, and it was all going to feed rodents.

Matt bought a pack of traps and I contributed some very bad cheese.

I'm happy to report that my heirloom Anna Russian's are the most delicious tomato I've ever eaten. They were worth the wait. And the extra work.

I'll still be making green tomato jam. It's definitely in my canning comfort zone; God bless acidic fruit.

Recipes?

Recalled Eggs and Other Homesteading Musings

2010-08-24T11:35:00.005-06:00

There are times when raising our own food seems like too much work. Last night at 9:30 pm, after filling out Q's large school registration packet and getting him to a (somewhat) earlier bedtime for his second day of school, Matt & I looked at each other. We still had an hour of farm chores ahead of us before we could call it an 18-hour day.

And, this past week, when I had to explain to Little Q that I could either buy him $100 shoes (like all the other kids have), or I could pay the vet to AI Mika (our older mini dairy cow) in the hope that we will have our own fresh milk early next year, I felt a bit like a bad mother.

In that vein, I was pleasantly surprised when I read the news to see that what we are doing is undoubtedly improving our families health.

In the past 9 years, we've never once suffered even a minor illness associated with consuming the fresh eggs from our little chicken flock.

And it is refreshing to walk out to the barn and to our 'rescue' chicken house and see healthy, happy groups of poultry eating fresh food and foraging in our bright green pasture full of alfalfa.

Knowing that we aren't contributing dollars to an "agricultural sweatshop" makes the hours we spend with our animals every day, even when we are exhausted or ill, worth every minute.

Bump Chickens and a Call for Recipes!

2010-08-09T11:05:00.003-06:00

I'm not sure why, but last winter I became semi-obsessed with the idea of raising domesticated quail.

Those semi-obsessions happen a lot around here.

Poor, poor Matt.

You may remember that we raise and steward wild, local Valley Quail on our farm. I enjoy those quail so much I thought it would be interesting to keep a variety of domesticated quail in captivity.

I sold Matt on the idea of raising the quail for meat. He, of course, knew that this was all a lie, and that unless the birds turned out to be something out of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," we'd all have a hard time eating any of the little cuties.

Originally, I was looking in to button quail, but had a hard time finding hatcheries that had them available this past Spring. After some research, I found that Coturnix (or Pharaoh) Quail lay eggs up to 200 days per year and come in to maturity within 8 weeks of hatching. They also are excellent and prolific natural breeders.

After several attempts to buy hatched Coturnix chicks, I finally ordered some hatching eggs instead. Out of 3 dozen eggs, we hatched about 10 chicks. 6 lived to maturity.

Matt and I painstakingly assembled and painted a rabbit hutch during the winter, so the quail could live in our garden.

But these little guys are so darn adorable, we can't bear to be apart from them. They talk and chatter, and are excited to see us.

So they live in our laundry room.

And the hutch has turned in to a place to rehab injured or sick little birds instead. (Isn't it darling?)

And we call our quail the "bump chickens," because they are just little bumps.

As soon as they started mating, I started collecting eggs and put them in the incubator. We'll see if I'm able to hatch any more of these little darlings from our own birds within the next week or so.

Their eggs are beautiful and varied depending on the hen who lays, and are about half the size of a small chicken egg, or one sixth the size of a turkey egg.

It looks like quail eggs are widely used in the South for specific dishes, but I haven't run in to anything regionally here in the Western US related to quail eggs.

So, to my Southern friends in cyber space, I'm looking for quail egg recipes, if anyone happens to have any they can share.

Hanging With The Peeps...Or, You Gotta Have Friends

2010-08-06T17:00:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago, I got a call from the Rescue Coordinator at the Utah Humane Society. Jessica and I have become good friends over the past year, since we registered our little farm as a chicken rescue. She's been a part of nearly every chicken resuce we've done - from Daisy to Tiny, Peaches, Red, and Rosie to our first ever bantams, Micro & Silkie.

This last call came at an awkward time. We'd just decided to adopt a year-old pygmy goat and had purchased a dwarf kid, all in one week. We were expecting both of our cows within days.

And I still couldn't say no.

On the phone, Jessica described the chickens as babies. In the pictures she sent, they looked like leghorn pullets, dirty and awkward and underfed. They weren't anything special, but how could I turn away chickens in need? I asked her to drop them off to me that Friday afternoon.

I was late getting home from work that Friday night and Jessica had already delivered the birds to Matt. He'd let them out of the donated dog carrier they'd arrived in and set them up in a pet gate enclosure on the lawn. The dog carrier was covered in gang grafitti drawn in sloppy black marker.

The chickens were investigating the grass, pecking at everything. The tiny clucks and screeks they made sounded just like a full-sized chicken set on low volume. Matt met me at the studio patio.

"Those aren't baby chickens," he told me. "Those are the tiniest full-grown chickens I've ever seen."

Matt later found out that we had rescued serama chickens - tiny bantams from Malaysia. They are so small that even full-grown, they fit in the palm of your hand. There was one rooster and two hens. They are extremely good fliers, but their size makes them difficult to catch. While we trying to figure out where to put them, they got out of the pet gate enclosure on the lawn and ended up on the studio roof. A comedy of errors ensued (as it always does when we are trying to "catch" loose chickens of any size) but we were finally able to get them back in an enclosure.

We weren't sure where to put them. They were too small to go in with our laying hens, our meat birds, or our rescue chickens. They are one-third the size of our smallest bantam, Silkie. After much discussion, we put them in with the goats. No one seemed to mind, so we buttoned everyone up, together, for the night - Ize, Goober, and three bewildered-looking tiny chickens. They must have thought the goats were giant chickens.

The next morning when we opened the barn, all three seramas were out of the stall. We clipped their wings and put them back. The goats left the stall for the day to wander the pasture and eat weeds. That night, we put the goats and the seramas together again.

The next morning we found this:

Now, every time Ize and Goober are in their stall with the seramas, the birds hop up on the goats. Ize stands as still as a statue, letting the chickens explore her horns, her head, her back. When she lays down to sleep for the night, they stay put, enjoying her company & the warmth of her fur as they sleep, too.

I guess animals know the importance of friendship, too, even when it's horribly mismatched.

Sometimes, the friends that are least like us are the best friends of all.

The Cows Are Here!

2010-07-22T22:14:00.004-06:00

Could they be any cuter?

Or more amazing?

I'm more than a little in love.

It's Like Being Pregnant...Only Better

2010-07-21T13:45:00.011-06:00

After months of research and nearly 8 months of expectant waiting, our big day is finally here.

No, silly, I'm not having another baby. In fact, I'm going to need a nap just to recover from the fleeting thought of starting all over with the diapers and the crying and the up-all-night-with colic fun. I'm getting too old for that nonsense.

Once you have a child that can dress himself, drive an ATV on his own, and help haul hay; well, it's hard to convince yourself that babies are that cute.

You know it's true.

But I digress.

Back in January, after deciding we wanted milk cows and doing extensive investigation in to different breeds, Matt had the opportunity to "meet" some wonderful women who are part of the AMJAR (American Miniatrure Jersey Association & Registry). These women are part of a tight-knit community who have been breeding miniature jerseys in the US for decades. Mini Jerseys are not truly "mini" cows, but are actually the small cows from original breeding stock on the Isle of Jersey. Like everything else in America, when Jersey cows were first brought to the US, they were bred over the generations to be bigger, bigger, bigger. Jerseys, as originally bred in the UK, are small cows - under 38" at the shoulder.

Matt & I fell in love not only with these amazing creatures, but also with the ladies who have been breeding them for years. They are caring, sweet people who took time to talk to us on the phone and email us and answer all of the questions we had about the cows. They gave us suggestions for reference books to read, internet forums to join, and generally made themselves available to us. They accepted us as part of their fold, and seemed excited for us to become part of the passionate group that stewards the Mini Jersey.

Around Christmas, we put down a deposit on one girl who was 1/8th White Park (an amazingly lovely endangered livestock breed) and 7/8ths Mini Jersey. We also fell in love with a baby that is full Mini Jersey and put a deposit on her around Valentines Day.

Breeding cows the first time can be difficult, and after multiple AI attempts for our first girl, we determined that we'd have her shipped to Utah and work with our vet here to breed her. If all goes well (cross your fingers), we'll be enjoying our own milk in about a year.

Our native pure American Miniature Jersey dairy cows will arrive via transport tomorrow morning. And just like when you are about to deliver a baby, you realize that no matter how much time you had to get ready for the new arrival, you are never really prepared. Whether it's 9 months or 10 years, there's never enough time to feel confident that you've done enough to be fully responsible for another sentient being. We're not sure we're really ready.

But we are looking forward to sharing this latest adventure with all of you.

Putting Away Hay & Dreaming Big

2010-07-20T16:23:00.000-06:00

It's a happy accident that we grew our own hay this summer.

And something of a mixed blessing.

Last year at this same time, our acre field was full of weeds, our pressurized irrigation had not yet been installed, and the dirt, which hadn't been worked for 20+ years, wasn't ready to plant. Twelve months ago, when we still had two house payments because we'd taken a giant, scary leap of faith, we didn't even have the money to buy alfalfa seed.

Cut and raked, against the glorious backdrop of our beloved mountains and the barn we struggled to have built, the lovely rows of hay were like a testament to the hundreds of hours of our hard work and the sheer force of our determination.

This past Sunday, in 100+ degree weather, the reality of the facts that we do not own a baler and an acre creates an awful lot of loose hay for three people to put away, hit home. We don't have an excess of covered storage space left in our barn with chickens, turkeys, two goats, and two cows (on the way across the country as I write), so the hay needed to be "stomped" by hand, er, foot, to make it fit. In the arid desert heat, the dry hay was covered with angry wasps, irritated that we'd cut down and dried out their verdant hunting grounds.

Five hours in to the exhausting task, I turned to Matt.

"Are you sorry about all of this work?" I asked him. I felt very conscious of the fact that our goats, Ize and Goober, were all my idea. The cows, although a joint idea, were triggered by my desire to make cheese. And not just cheese, but cheese from our own milk. (We don't do things half way here, usually to our detriment).

"Does this life make you happy?" he replied.

And, in that moment, I was reminded all over again that who you marry makes or breaks you. I was choked up by the sheer force of his love, as he stood there in the sweltering heat covered in wasp stings and dirt, concerned only about my happiness.

There comes a point in homesteading, where you are past the point of no return. A few backyard chickens and a dairy goat are easily liquidated on Craig's List. Fifteen or thirty minutes of animal husbandry a day is easy to fit in to even the busiest life.

A fully functioning farm with multiple species of birds, goats, cows, growing your own hay, and raising a huge garden is another story. A chicken rescue operation, a barn loan and two full hours of caring for animals each and every day, no matter the weather, is something else entirely.

We've hit that point of no return.

And we love every minute of it.

Working toward a shared dream has made both our marriage and our friendship deeper. We've got each other's backs, and we're no longer scared to dream big. We don't say - "We can't," - we say - "Let's get to work and make it happen."

Does this life make me happy?

Oh, yes.

Ebb and Flow

2010-07-07T16:51:00.000-06:00

There's an ebb and flow in farming and homesteading, just as in everything else in life.

There are ups and downs, easy times and times when you are pushed harder than you think you can handle. What you face in trying to raise your own food in a suburb are not things that we raise our children to cope with in our modern world, where we buy our food at a grocery store, eat at restaurants, and spend our days moving to and from heated and cooled home and cars and buildings. I certainly wasn't raised to fight with or partner with nature.

If I'd posted last week, I'd have whined: "A lot of weeds grow on nearly 2 acres. It's hard to put up and store hay without a baler. Chicken mites require trial and error and research to resolve. A chicken that has a stroke requires compassionate euthanasia. Even after trapping and killing 15 gophers this past Spring, my arch-nemesis somehow survived and is still determined to murder my fledgling zucchini plants. A quail with splay leg means splinting tiny bird legs and doing avian physical therapy twice a day with little hope of success. Corn seed sometimes fails to germinate. A pheasant got out and ran across the road. Grasshoppers are running wild."

You can see why I sometimes fall off the face of the earth for a week or more. I'm trying to make sure that my blog doesn't turn in to a diary of perceived failures or a catalog of complaints. The point of this life our little family chose is to continually learn and grow and be positive. That can't happen without challenges.

Needless to say, I've developed an appreciation for Western American homesteaders of a century ago. Although I believe we can still feed our family on what we are growing, raising and hunting - I am reminded (sharply at times) that nature is a variable that cannot be controlled or predicted or manipulated. We have to adapt, develop creativity, learn faster, and sometimes just accept that what happens is beyond our control.

Our efforts to create a large animal and vegetable diversity of food has led us to find that it is easier to focus on one or two types of foods and raise them in quantity versus raising the broad variety that all of us in Modern America have grown accustomed to. Every different species of mammals, birds, fruit and vegetable presents a different set of challenges. The more we diversify on our own all at once, the more our challenges grow exponentially. I can see why our ancestors grew used to two or three foods, excited when they were able to successfully raise, hunt or grow something new.

I'm hoping our challenges now in the pivotal time where we are growing the bulk of our food storage will make our culinary experiences more meaningful. A chocolate cake, which I once viewed as a right, is now considered a precious privilege.

We will be living the next year on chicken, onions, potatoes, honey, deer meat, eggs, and dairy. The raspberries, tomatoes, zucchini, parsnips, beet sugar, sunflower seeds, carrots, and corn will all be a bonus if we can get them to continue to grow and make it to freezing and canning. Oh, yes, and I have plenty of quince. If only I knew what to do with it. There are days where all of that seems iffy, including the chickens, onions, potatoes, honey, eggs, and dairy.

Nature is fierce and fragile, strong and loving and vicious all at the same time. In homesteading, she is our greatest friend and our strongest enemy.

As for all of our current problems - I'm lucky to have a husband who doesn't give up, doesn't let me give up, and who knows that hard work and perseverance can get us through any challenge. Sometime when you don't know what else to do - you push up your sleeves and just do something.

Two people and over twenty hours got us caught up on weeding. Our pasture is full of lush alfalfa and pasture grass. One day of hard labor put the hay in our barn, we found a local broker for diatemaceous earth to rid us of mites, we said goodbye to an old poultry friend in a loving way, we found a sonic gopher deterrant that is keeping the gophers at bay (for now!), and the quail physical therapy was successful. Where plants didn't germinate, we tilled and planted again. The gift of horse manure from a neighbor was needed natural fertilizer that gave our garden a hopeful boost. By some miracle, the pheasant came home.

Oh, and a 10 year old boy with a pasture full of grasshoppers is a chicken, turkey, pheasant and quail's best friend.

And while I'm sure there will be more challenges and we will work through them one at a time, right now I'm enjoying the serene ebb and flow of an uptime, where things seem peaceful and under control. I can sit back and enjoy all of the amazing moments that come from allowing myself to be an adult who still "plays outside."

For a while.

What I Learned This Week...

2010-06-24T22:10:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, on the days when you feel fragile and overwhelmed, and the world is getting you down...

A long nap on a hot summer afternoon in cool shady grass is the best therapy.

Naughty, Naughty Chickens...

2010-06-23T12:45:00.002-06:00

When our neighbor's dogs killed our entire flock of laying hens last Christmas, we decided we'd go a different direction in replacing our chickens. Although we've had many different breeds of chickens over the years, we'd never investigated or owned "heritage" chickens or endangered breeds.

I did a couple of months worth of research. We joined the ALBC. I called and emailed owners and breeders of various endangered breeds. And despite the fact that some chickens may have better merits, produce more eggs, and are generally more "chickeny" - I fell in love with the Russian Orloff.

And while we ultimately got several types of endangered chickens - Sicilian Buttercups, Cuckoo Marans, White Laced Red Cornish, Egyptian Fayoumis (also an interesting breed) - the bulk of our flock and breeding stock are Russian Orloffs.

Their fierce looks, which belie their docile temperment, was a huge selling point. There is something very cool about a chicken that looks like it will bite your fingers off, but is actually content to eat gently from your hand. Orloffs are long-legged, regal looking chickens that produce an unheard of number of eggs per year, even through the winter months.

They don't even really look or act like chickens.

I called a breeder in Indiana to get her perspective on the Orloffs she'd raised for years before I ordered chicks. "I would never trade them for a different breed...but they are very naughty birds," she warned.

I asked her what she meant, and she informed me that Orloffs don't like to be contained and will do anything to escape confinement. I didn't think too much about those comments until last night, when we had our first escapee.

Naughty, naughty chickens.

Pulling Handles, Catching A Swarm, and A Long, Scenic Drive

2010-06-22T21:50:00.000-06:00

I rarely throw mugs or tankards.

Don't get me wrong - I like throwing mugs, I enjoy the finish work involved, and I absolutely love drinking out of a well-made mug. The problem is that over the years, I have discovered that anytime I throw mugs, something bad or distracting; some type of emergency will inevitably occur at the pivotal time when the mugs are at the perfect amount of wet-dryness for attaching and pulling a handle.

Attach and pull the handle too soon and you end up with a mug with a kind of flatty-flat-flat side thingy going on. Wait too long and you get irritating cracking around where the handle connects to the mug. A potter can go nuts trying to fix that crack, smoothing and smoothing, eventually making the crack worse than if it had just been left alone and later filled with a little glaze. Not that I have OCD or anything, even if I do come from a family where the DNA seems to create a tendency toward sorting M&M's by color before eating them. (I have a sister who SWEARS that different color M&M's taste different. I'm still torn on the issue, but have committed to eating as many M&M's as it takes to find out if she's right. I'm all about sacrificing myself for scientific research).

Sunday was a good pottery day for me, so I decided to take my chances and throw some tankards. Sunday night, I covered them with plastic to keep them from drying too fast. They were still just the slightest bit too damp Monday morning, so I wrapped them tightly in plastic and put them aside to trim Monday evening.

By 3 in the afternoon, I thought maybe my superstitions were wrong. Maybe there isn't some kind of a strange pottery-mug curse at the Henhouse. It was all in my imagination!

4:30 pm: My cell phone rings. It is a call from a woman who got my name and number off of the State's swarm capture registry. She excitedly explains that there is a swarm of bees in a small cherry tree in her neighborhood. She is keeping the neighborhood children away from the swarm, and please can we hurry? I feel hopeful that Matt & I can grab our gear, capture the swarm and be home in time to pull handles for those mugs that were by now teetering on the edge of being just dry enough-too dry to trim.

I asked the woman for her address. She lives in Magna.

To explain the significance of this I have to explain Utah geography a little bit. We live in the mouth of a canyon in the Wasatch Mountain Range. Magna sits in the mouth of the canyons in the Oquirrh Mountain Range. While both in the same valley, the mountain ranges sit roughly 80 miles apart.

We've had other swarm calls this Spring and Summer, but most have involved complications. One was in Pleasant Grove, which while closer to our farm, had a wad of bees located roughly 60 feet straight up in a tree with no branches prior to the one on which the bees were situated. There are things that even we will not do for free honey bees, and this includes defying the laws of gravity while handling flying, stinging insects.

Yesterday's swarm, while far away, was in a tiny tree in a park strip where no climbing would be required. Maybe the mugs would still be at that just right for pulling handles stage when we got back from our scenic drive?

The bees were easy to get in to a prepared hive that we took with us, and the residents of the small neighborhood were appreciative of our quick, well-rehearsed swarm capture. Even after all this time and all of our practice, it's still nerve-wracking to move tens of thousands of bees while appearing outwardly calm to an audience of 20 or more strangers who are fascinated by our bee suits, our equipment, and the mechanics of moving pounds and pounds of wildly humming insects.

The bees are settling in nicely in our vegetable garden.

And my mugs?

Still no handles, and they'll probably crack once I do get them pulled. That's okay, though, and I'm sure I'll worry those small cracks until the handles nearly fall off, like I always do.

The continued curse was worth it.

Raising Chickens, Ethics, and the Whizbang

2010-05-29T09:38:00.000-06:00

If you plan to provide food for your family, you have to grow accustomed to the reality of death. The sheer volume of animals that you have to raise to maturity to provide food, whether it is eggs, meat, or milk - inherently implies mortality, out of compassion if nothing else. More than long hours or difficult labor, the reality of death among our farm animals has been the hardest aspect of urban farming and raising our own food that I've had to deal with over the past year.

My mother, now in her late 70's, was obsessed with dying young all through my young life. Her mother passed away at a relatively young age - 50 - so my mother always seemed to be counting down the days until she turned fifty, too. Every birthday was less about celebrating the gift of years she'd been given than mourning the potential loss of years that might occur if she also died young. After she turned 50, instead of cherishing every day she was given beyond when she lost her own mother - she became even more fearful of dying. I'd consider my mother to be a devoutly religious person with a clear belief system that doesn't allow for surprises in the next life. In theory, she knows EXACTLY what is supposed to be waiting for her, so her fear of death seems contradictory to her beliefs.

Although raised by a fearful person, I am on the other end of the scale. I rarely think about death, and have worked hard to take a "joy in the journey," Buddhist approach to this life - and God willing, the next. I don't know that I was unprepared for the death that farming entails, but I wasn't prepared for the magnitude of it.

So far this Spring, I've discovered that death when it comes to animals and food and the circle of life, is never equal. And what seems to make the difference in how we measure our grief or create the value of a being is wholly subjective.

We had to euthanize 12 of our 15 turkey poults due to genetic defects that were causing suffering and death. Calling the vet and explaining to him what was happening was heartbreaking, and I cried when we put them down using the method he explained. They were not purchased to be food and were raised from day one as though they would be pets. Losing them was the loss of future friends.

On the other hand, we raised meat chickens for 10 weeks and then, last weekend, almost emotionlessly killed them and prepared them for use as food. I felt no guilt or remorse as we dispatched them and cleaned them. Don't get me wrong - just like when we hunt, I had the utmost respect for them as animals, and appreciated that we were sacrificing their lives to be our food. It was the purpose that we had designated for them...and it made all the difference in how we felt about them and their deaths. We raised them in a clean, healthy environment with fresh air, sunshine, companionship, and fresh feed. Although they had better lives than chickens kept in battery cage and deprived of basic compassion, there is a responsibility involved with being the ones who decided what their purpose in life would be and when their lives would end.

As an (important) sidenote, Matt built Herrick Kimball's Whizbang chicken plucker, using an old air conditioner motor, a recycled barrel, and the leftover lumber from our barn. It plucks three chickens in 15 seconds and took 98% of the labor out of slaughtering birds. True love is telling a man that you want to see if you can provide all of your own food for a year, just to see if you can do it - and having him say yes. Devotion is when he builds you a chicken plucker so you don't have to pluck all your chickens by hand. And, girls - never marry a man with soft hands.

If you couple slaughtering meat birds on one hand with rescuing chickens that we rehabilitate and spend money to mend and make whole, with the hope that they will live long happy lives with us, the irony is definitely not lost on me. It's easy to understand how our society as a whole moved away from small family farms and toward large factory food production environments. These things that we are grappling with are not unique to us, and are not easy. In a day and age when you can run to Walmart to buy a rotisserie chicken for $7, it's hard to make the conscious decision to buy chicks, raise them to maturity, purposely not grow attached to them, and then butcher them yourself to store in your freezer. I'm sure in the grand scheme of things, each chicken cost us more than $7 in our labor alone. That, of course, is not the point.

I am learning that while the "mechanics" of this life may be easy to pass on to Q, I'm not sure that I'll ever do justice to the emotional and ethical lessons he also needs to learn as part of a life of simplicity.

Because this is complicated, and I'm still learning it myself.

Finding Purpose

2010-05-28T17:55:00.004-06:00

After 20 days of loving incubation, manually turning the eggs three times a day, we hatched out just over 50% of our quail eggs.

They are the literally just about the size of a quarter.

I've finally found a purpose for those little bowls I throw to test glazes.

Evidently, they make comfy beds for tired baby quail.

Deep Cleansing Breaths, Or...Julia Gets on a Soapbox (Yes, Again)

2010-05-19T09:26:00.012-06:00

In the three years I've been blogging, I've rarely had problems with "controversial" comments. Once in a while I've hit a hot button when I blog about jello salad, Mormons, hunting, or beekeeping (still trying to figure out how beekeeping is exploitative, will let you all know when I figure it out). Generally, this is a low-key blog, I'm not a politically charged person, and my observations about the challenges of a small family trying to create a farm & provide all of their own food in the middle of a suburb usually go relatively unnoticed.

Last night, a comment came through in response to a fairly innocent blog post from earlier this week about wild quail babies. The comment, left by an anonymous poster, actually got my blood pressure up. High.

I'm still taking deep cleansing breaths.

This person hit on two things that really irritate me.

1) People who read one blog post out of 300+ and make a judgment based on that one post and then post critical anonymous comments. Don't you have anything better to do? If I have to explain everything about us and what we do in every post, I'd have to give up blogging altogether. Either that, or take up writing as a full-time career in lieu of pottery and farming.

2) People who classify themselves as "environmentalists" or "wildlife rehabbers" or any variation thereof and claim an authority about a subject in order keep others from interacting with what they believe they are protecting. The environment belongs to all of us, not just those who self-righteously claim authority as its protectors. Those of us who are "everyday environmentalists" quietly carry out an awful lot of good work for the environment by changing our own behaviors and lessening our own carbon footprint without feeling the need to tell everyone else what they should do differently.

So, here's the comment and my response:

Anonymous:
If these are wild quail, I would at least post disclaimer that it's not a good idea for people pick up or pet wild birds. We are predators to most, and the experience for them is not cute and fuzzy, contrary to what a lot of people think. If the parent was nearby, he or she was undoubtedly stressed by these actions. As a licensed rehabber, I do my best to educate people on appropriate actions toward wildlife, and I'd hate for others to read this post and think it's okay to interact with wild birds in this way. With many birds, it's also illegal to disturb a nest or young.

My response:
While I agree to an (extremely small) extent to the comments posted by Anonymous, there is background to this story (had Anonymous ever followed my blog in the past of read any of the other 300+ posts). What this person is missing is the fact that we live next door to my in-laws. Between the 2 properties, we create a 4+ acre island in the middle of a badly over-developed suburban area that used to be a thriving mountain habitat. Working with our Division of Wildlife Resources, we raise species that are indigenous to this area, and which used to be prolific. Because of encroaching development and the fact that we are the last agricultural island in the middle of what used to be a beautiful and wild canyon at the mouth of the Wasatch Mountain Range, we raise several different species of birds for release in to the "wild" - i.e., our property. We provide appropriate habitat for these birds, and supplemental feed year-round. We pay for all feed and hatching costs for these species out of our own pocket, we don't receive taxpayer or government dollars for bringing species back in to our area, even though the overall ecology and our neighbors also benefit from this work and our investment of time & money.

The picture you see of my father-in-law holding a chick is part of a two-fold process - we routinely check the birds we propagate to ensure their health and that the population is appropriate, and we routinely check them for health issues due to the fact that they interact with my chickens and turkeys. In order to voluntarily maintain NPIP certification for my flocks, they cannot be exposed to diseased wild birds. The second reason the quail were being handled is because they were stuck in a bad spot, trapped behind a cinder block, and their mother could not get them out. Because of the irresponsible pet ownership of those in the encroaching suburbs around us, we must protect the wild birds we release and steward from a large feral cat population, as well as the same "dogs at large" that killed our entire chicken flock last December. While we don't mind giving up quail to natural predators, such as the Coopers Hawks or Red Foxes that inhabit our area as a result of the quail, we do mind feeding the cats and dogs that our neighbors allow to run wild. We were providing an opportunity for the bull quail and mother, who stood by and calmly watched as we provided assistance, to remove their chicks from a dangerous spot.

Regardless of this backstory, the Anonymous comments also irritate me because some people steward wildlife, but in the process try to discourage others from interacting with them. I'm certainly not saying that anyone should harass wildlife. However, I believe that if we want our current generation of children to love and steward and protect wildlife in the future, they need to interact with and grow to love the animals and birds we want them to later protect. Parents who are fortunate to have wild birds on their property should point out nests, chicks, and mating pairs to their children, and teach them how special these animals are. They should teach them how to landscape to attract these types of birds. Even better, if you notice that your area is devoid of indigenous species, get involved in your state's breed & release program.

Again, as for distressing the parents of these baby quail, we interact with all of the quail on our property to varying degrees, whether they are direct wildlife release or future generations of those we've raised. Yesterday morning as I walked to our aviary to feed "treats" (consisting of organically raised produce fertilized with the compost we create by recycling our green wastes and farm animal wastes) to our chickens and turkeys, I was followed by a group of quail. As soon as the treats had been delivered, they jumped in next to our chickens to share. I'm sure I looked like the Pied Piper, with a trail of quail following along behind as part of my morning feeding ritual. If anything, the quail "harass" us, not the other way around. They are still wild, but accept us as the stewards of their species in a place where they would be extinct without us.

On the surface, it may seem like responsible blogging to post a disclaimer never to handle wild birds, but the bottom line is, I don't agree. We need more people interacting to save wild species, not less.

I welcome comments on my blog that disagree with my point of view, but expect that those who comment will have the courtesy to identify themselves. I would also hope that they would spend enough time reading my blog to understand what we are really about and what we are trying to do before posting a knee-jerk reactive comment to a post meant to share something wonderful with those who have followed us on this journey for years.

I'll be outside with my birds, calming down, if you need me.

Quail Babies

2010-05-15T23:20:00.007-06:00

Even though we've already raised two sets of chicks, nothing ever really feels so much like the true start of Spring as seeing the first wild quail chicks of the year.

Last night, Cheena the Husky, wouldn't leave the long grass alone at the edge of the pasture. She paced back and forth, back and forth, bothered by something small scuttering around, just out of her reach. This morning, out for a morning explore, we were walking past an old overgrown garden bed and Matt spotted the tell-tale little leopard pattern snuggled next to a sun-warmed cinderblock.

Usually we see at least one or two hatches of Valley Quail with their mothers in early Spring, but only from a distance as they run into the cover provided by an overgrown pine tree. These quail babies were not well hidden and we were able to get very close.

Quin's grandfather held one friendly chick for him so he could pet the tiny little topknot.

Quin was understandably enchanted.

So was I.

Sweeter Than Honey

2010-05-11T21:17:00.004-06:00

Over the winter, when our bees only require a small amount of care and monthly checks instead of daily/weekly maintenance to prevent swarming or ensure that we have a viable Queen in every colony, it is easy to forget that they are easily the most labor-intensive creatures on our little farm.

Which is saying a lot, since we are getting close to having over 100 birds, between our rescued chickens, our meat birds, our endangered-breed egg layers, our baby turkeys, and 3 incubators chuck full of quail eggs.

There is wooden ware to assemble, paint, and freight around. Once we had over 10 established hives spread across 5 acres, we discovered we'd kill ourselves if we didn't load supers full of empty frames in a trailer as we traipsed around determining how everyone was doing and if they needed more "space" in their houses.

I'm not saying I couldn't use the miles of walking and lugging required if we didn't use a trailer.

I'm just saying I'd really rather not. I'm lazy like that.

All the same, for all the times I feel like grumbling about wearing my bee suit in the dark at night with bees pinging themselves angrily against my hood, dying to turn me in to a puffy mess, or I complain about drowning in my own sweat in mid-August, lifting 50 pound supers to check the health of a hive, or I whine about beekeeping in soaking rain or snow, getting wet and cold...

I remember that even one of these moments is worth all every moment of labor:

On Mother's Day, some of our girls settled on the tiny apple tree that we planted next to my pottery studio one year ago this month when we moved to our homestead. They weren't collecting pollen. They were gathering the first sweet juice during Spring nectar flow, heads buried deep in the sweet blossoms they'd pollinated earlier in the season.

In this life we've chosen, the payment from the moments we get to share with the creatures we steward, large or small, is far sweeter than the food they provide our family.

Visitors From The Great White North

2010-05-05T20:02:00.004-06:00

This past weekend, we had some visitors from the North.

Evidently, we planted something in our pasture that these Candian Geese couldn't resist.

This week was our first anniversary of being in our new homestead. We moved in May 1st last year. It has been amazing to look back and see what we've accomplished in a year.

A field of weeds, untended buildings and patches of deficient dirt have been turned in to a vibrant, living piece of earth. Our new barn is standing ready for our cows, a newly built aviary houses pullets and rescued chickens. Our turkey poults grow in the basement of our ancient house, waiting to be big enough to join their fowl sisters outside.

In honor of our anniversary, we planted 40 heirloom tomato plants in our new, large vegetable gardens on Sunday. We've spent countless hours over the past year composting and fertilizing and mulching and turning the earth to breathe energy back in to overused and neglected dirt.

The past year of hard work has rewarded us with daily visits from woodpeckers, finches, wild Valley Quail and mule deer. We are happy to welcome all of our visitors.

Although, when our Northern friends stopped by again on Sunday, they seemed as confused as we were by the early May snow.