Just another year...

April 1st marks the one year anniversary of moving to the homestead. Recall, getting the farm was a five year plan. Huh.

Here is what we took on this year:

1. Bought a new house and farm

2. Renovated the barn

3. Fenced the paddocks

4. Built the arena

5. Renovated the barn

6. Sold the old house (one year later, nearly to the day)

In most circles, that would be enough for one year. But wait, there is more:

7. S took on her first major book project

8. S started her second major book project

9. S ran the Center for Science and Math Education

10. S saved the Center for Science and Math Education by keeping it afloat long enough to get some additional funding

11. I was favorably reviewed for tenure and promotion

All of that, and we still managed to increase the chicken flock by 10, get some raised beds built, and start planning for the upcoming garden.

I am sure I am forgetting something, but it has been a very busy year. Let's hope we can settle down to a more reasonable pace!

Next step: Goats!

Sold the house today

We sold the old place today, after nearly a year. I had no idea how much that was weighing on my mind. I feel so...relaxed.

And I am all the way home.

Now, we can start moving in to the new place!!!




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Location:Bellwether

Snow today, mud tomorrow!

I woke up to a few inches of snow on the farm today, and it just kept coming. Until about 1 PM or so. In the end, we got about 5-6 inches, significantly more than the 1-3 inches predicted in the news.

And it is warm today...near 36 during the snow and now upwards of 40+ in brilliant sunshine. Immediately, I think "40 in February!? It must be something out of the ordinary" and then I look at this:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=climate+ogden+utah

and it looks like 40's in February not uncommon. If this keeps up, the snow should be gone by tomorrow. Then, mud!

Smokey escaped the yard today and went on walkabout. I only worry about this because he has a thing for chickens and I am afraid he'll go after our neighbor's ducks. Also, I worry they might shoot him if he does. So I went after him. There is nothing as maddening as a dog that looks at you, right AT you, and then runs away. Grrrr.

Captain eventually got out as well, but he came to find me instead of running after Smokey. I was very proud of him for that. I am also proud of myself for remembering that it does no good to get mad at your dog after you catch him, since that will just make him less likely to come to you next time. So, when he finally did come to me, I praised him and took him home.

And then went out and repaired the fence.

After that adventure, I got a shot of the new addition (see above).

Nearly a year...

...to the day that we first looked at our "farm". Here is a link to the first "Before And Afters" taken in early April of last year:

http://daysreprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/before.html

Ironically, the date of that post is the same day that the sale of our old house should be finalized. Amazing. When I think that just over a year ago we had planned to stay at the old place "forever" and now...here we are.

Some things have stayed the same: we can still walk to the bus stop, we still drive about the same (or slightly less) than we used to. We still knit, and bake, and make our own meals from food we grew ourselves.

Some things have changed. Most notably, I woke up this morning to find that the mother of all our beef meals this year (#6) gave birth to another calf, her 10th in a long career as a range cow. Dale stood in the barn with his binoculars to make sure the afterbirth came out ok and that the calf took its first suck "on the tit", as he says. The cow stood and mooed while the calf stumbled about, just barely two hours old.

It's raining today, and the calf and cow refuse to go in the loafing shed, despite Dale's best efforts to make it accommodating. He says "That cow would sooner fly to the moon then get into that shed". Sounds familiar...

I asked Dale if there was anything I could do to help. He says "Naw. Mostly when we try to help these things out, we just end up causing more trouble." Also sounds familiar.

So, we let her be, stood at a distance, and watched. She knows what to do.

I realize looking back on these posts, and those from S, that I haven't logged what has been going on this first fall and winter on the farm. I am sure I'll regret that later. But we received an offer on the house this week, a good one, and suddenly this block in my head, the piece of me that has been both here and there, just let go. And I realized that this last year has been very hard, and, in a way, I've been grieving for what we left behind. We put so much work into our first house in Utah. Painting and renovating the house until it was just the way we liked it, planting trees that had just started to really grow, harvesting our first few years of gardens, raising our first chickens. We did all of that, the two of us, all by ourselves. And it was a lot of work! To just let that go, no matter what we get in return, is just hard.

But now that it is going, we have our farm. Something both of us have always wanted. In the rain this morning, filling the troughs, watching the horses, seeing Dale's new addition to the herd, seeing all of the very hard work we've already got into this place (in real terms, lots more in one short year than we ever did in eight years at the old place) I realized something very important. I am never moving again. Everything we plant here, every improvement to the land, every time we amend the soil or fix a fence, we'll be doing it so that this place will be a better place in five years, ten years, and twenty years down the line. This is our farm and our home.

And I don't have it in me to leave all that hard work behind again.

So, here we are.

It rained today, in mid february. The temperature is in the 40's. The horses are outside with their blankets on, muddy and happy. The dogs are wet, filthy, and also happy. Because of the rain, I can wait another day to move the manure heap, and I am happy. And I'm finally home.

Bridging the gap

Today was a first for me - I got a comment on a blog post from someone I didn't know! Exciting, even if it was on a blog post written by someone else.

The post was from a vegan woman in Florida named Bea who objected to our killing and eating of Number 16. She raised a couple of important points that I wholeheartedly agree with. First, that "food animals" are a cultural construct (that is, I will eat my cow but not my dog, which is the opposite of some countries), and, second, that we must stop factory farming. I thought this was enough to give us some common ground, even though we disagree on the ultimate fate of well cared for farm animals.

I was reminded of some comments I heard a while back regarding ranchers, farmers, and the environmental movement. It seems that in our effort to save the land, we demonized those who care for the land, arguably, better than the rest of us. Granted, they care for it from the perspective of productivity rather than wilderness protection. But, they benefit more than anyone from having the land and water free of toxic waste. Yet, somehow, even though the environmentalists and the farmers/ranchers could agree on this much, that wasn't enough to band together and stop the coal plant from being built, or the tailings pile from being dumped in the river. Rather, it was more important for each group to be right, to have their values upheld completely. What could have been a powerful partnership led to more division, and, ultimately, the polluters won.

Which brings me back to Bea's comments. Clearly we have differing views on what is compassionate or necessary for the proper care of livestock. But we can both agree that factory farming must stop.

Is it possible to agree to disagree until that goal is reached? And then take up the further task of reconciling our differences?

Maybe if the vegans, vegetarians, and cattle ranchers banded together on this, we could put an end to the sick practices of factory farming. We could make small, family farms viable again and make some progress toward a saner food system.

Then we can argue about whether or not we should be eating animals...

On the Homestead this week - "Days" Reprise

Another reprise from S's blog...reminding me we have been coming at this for a while now...

--

We are getting ready for winter, and reaping the harvest!

15 pounds of peaches (and a lot of sugar!) are being turned, by microbe, into 5 gallons of peach wine. It's an experiment, but it already smells delicious.

We finally invested in a pressure canner, and then practiced using it on tomatoes that didn't need to be pressure-canned, just to be sure we knew what we were doing!
So this weekend, we put up:
4 quarts of tomatoes (it would have been five, but one jar cracked in the canner!)
11 pints of mixed dill pickles
5 half-pints of peach jam---I have finally made a jam that 'jammed'! Rock out!
Several pounds of pesto are in the freezer, frozen in ice-cube trays, then stored in a Ziploc for easy portioning.

We've got another batch of anaheims ready to be roasted. If we could just stop eating them all as soon as we roast them, we might actually get some canned up for winter!


Yesterday, we got the first eggplant. And promptly made Thai curry. Mmmmm.... curry. We are now over 100 pounds of produce! There are more apples still to come, and eggplant, and tomatoes and (maybe) corn. Oh. And lots and lots of carrots and winter squash and more potatoes.

Quinoa for dinner tonight, cornmeal muffins for breakfast Sat/Sun, brown rice last night, whole wheat pizza dough on Saturday. We are gradually adjusting to whole grains. It takes a little getting used to, but eventually, your stomach adjusts to the fiber.

We bought 50 pounds of rolled oats at the IFA, for $16. This sounds like crazy talk, and it might be. But I go through at least one of those big cardboard Quaker oat cans a month in the summer, making granola for John, and two a month in the winter when I'm eating oatmeal. This bag should last us until next year, for about the cost of two cans of oats. It might be crazy---we'll see how it goes. We can always feed it to the horses and the chickens! It's interesting to be eating the same things that I feed my horse... maybe I shouldn't think too hard about that.

Many weeks ago, we bought a 50 pound bag of hard red wheat, and are gradually working our way through it. J (the baker!) tells me that it's very different to work with, but he likes it. It's fun to grind it in the grinder, and you just can't get any fresher than that!

It is not lost on us that we get more and more 'Utah', the longer we live here. ; )

We cleaned out under the grape arbor, and moved a table and chairs out there. It turns out to be a wonderful place to have dinner! But we are now out of wine completely. ; ) I sure hope that merlot-cab blend that's ripening in the basement turns out! We have a Mexican Cerveza to make, as soon as we can get back down to G3 and pick up some yeast. Maybe that will be Thursday evening's project.

The CSA box comes tomorrow. I wonder what will be in it?!

The change in seasons

Just documenting this quickly, so I remember:

Today, the first "big" storm of the season, and the first hard freeze forecast for tonight. We have a few minor issues that need to be dealt with near-term:

1. Clean out the gutters (again!)
2. Put gutters on the hay barn
3. Reseal joint between hay barn and garage
4. Lay more barn mulch on paths to reduce mud
5. Fix leak near furnace vent in roof

All in all, not too bad, considering we got a month's worth of rain in a few hours last night.