Amused

Today had its good moments and its frustrating moments (all of which had to do with lame insurance). Luckily, all the amusing and good moments had to do with happy farm things.

I was woken up around 4 to loud chirping coming from the turkey room. I found that all three of the turkeys had escaped their box and were somewhere in the room. The room is currently filled with baby, turkey, and armour making items so to find three baby turkeys while only using the light of the heat lamp made for an interesting Where's Waldo sort of feel. I found the last one hiding under a spanish book about a hippo who can't find it's peanut butter sandwich.

After work I was able to drive down and pick up a scythe that a gentleman had posted on craigslist and of course we immediately started talking about gardening. Luckily, we both had time to kill so we spent some time talking about different plants we were trying out this year and how last year went with our crops.

I stopped by Jed's work to see if I could drop off food for him but he was out on a call so I ended up dropping off his food and was going to leave when I noticed that there was a bucket near the car. I walked over and it turned out to be the spent grains that his co-worker had used for his beer making. I took this over to the van and dumped the spent grains in the pig bucket to take home. (Yes, I actually carry a pig bucket almost everywhere I go... you never know when you'll find something very numy for the piggies to eat.)

At home I unloaded the pig bucket into the wheelbarrow and I took it out to the pigs. As soon as I started filling up their trough Squeaker jumped into the spent grain and starting eating enthusiastically while biting the snouts of the others if they tried to get near the beer grains. I couldn't help but laugh and wish that I had a camera on me to take a picture of my poor abused piggies. Aaron came out to help and ended up giving Squeaker her full name: Squeaker McSqueakums

When I came back in to the house I checked on the baby turkeys (actually called poults) again and found that one had escaped again. I couldn't figure out where it had gone and was following the faint peeps. I finally heard some scratching and figured that it wasn't in a box somewhere. It turned out that it had somehow jumped into the 25lb bag of chick food and was going through it with all the gusto a tiny chick could muster. It looked a bit disappointed when I placed it back with the others.

It's days like these that I really enjoy living where we live. =) I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Nightly disturbances

We've had something come in at night and kill our chickens, not as much as before, but still enough. Last night (4am) we were woken up by a chicken doing an impersonation of Hamlet's death as it screamed its distress for the last part of the 4th act. Jed and I got up and went out looking for the culprit but were unable to find any signs. The ducks were all talkative about what was going on, the remaining chickens and pigs were sleeping, Al the gander was attentive and protecting the old coop, the sheep and goats were awake and running around (probably because the predator ran away through the pasture) and so looked around, calmed the rest of the animals and then tried to get back to sleep.

We'll have to see about what new safety measure we can take to catch the predator. we've noticed coyote and fox tracks in the stream bed. We'll see if we end up with some new furs or if we just make it as unappealing to come back to our place.

Food Freedom

Nezzeta gave us a great shirt that has the words "Support your local farmer" with a woodcut image on the front. I love that shirt because it helps remind me that with agriculture we've been able to move so far beyond that state in society. Food makes the world go round, and it keeps us moving.

Jed and I recently were introduced to the local Grange, through a purchase of some of our latest sheep. We've attended two meetings and it reminded me of another society that we're in. Most of the members are in their 80's and we're considered the "young crowd" by most of their standards. There were more people last night than at the open house night, but that was mostly because the state president of the CA Grange was attending to discuss writing up a proposal for the food freedom act.

What is this Food Freedom you ask? Well, some towns in Maine have passed propositions to allow for what they are Food Freedoms. This means that you can buy your produce from any local farmer. If I would like to purchase raw milk from a local dairy I would be able to go to a local farmer and just purchase it without them having to go through all the regulations and building code enforcements in order to provide me with that milk. Likewise if I would like to go to one of my neighbors and purchase corn from them, I would be able to go over and just purchase the produce from him. This all sounds like common sense, but it is against the law, locally, state wide, and federally. Because there could be a possibility of contamination or disease we as gardeners would not be able to provide or gift people with our produce. It makes sense in a big picture sort of way, but it also looks ridiculous if you start thinking that we're unable to give friends or family any eggs, fruit, vegetables, or meat because then we would be in violation of our laws.

What can be done? The local Granges are currently recruiting and looking for people who are interested in promoting gardening, farming, and ranching, or even if you're just food sympathetic. We would like to get the word out that we should have control of where we get our food. That we can even *gasp* grow our own food and be able to share with those we love and would like to share our bounty with. As an added plus, if you join the Grange in April then it is a free yearly membership (normally $30) so that you can have a free year to see if you like the organization.

Even if you don't want to join, help out your local farmers, learn how you can start your own garden, raise your own chickens, supplement your produce with things that you helped grow, or just help those that are working towards those goals. Learn about where your food comes from and how it effects your health.

Just do me a favor and for one day look at the food you are eating and think about where it came from, what it took to get it to your plate, and how that is affecting your world.

Joel Salatin

A week or two ago I went to go see a lecture by Joel Salatin at Calpoly, Rosie was unable to make it due to work. For those who are not familiar with Mr. Salatin, he is an advocate for local grown organic food and runs a ranch in Virgina (Polyface farm). To paraphrase Mr. Salatin's philosophy about his livestock raising; Animals are smart and if you raise animals in their natural environment they will be healthy. Rosie and I have been working toward this as much as we are able and with one exception had no illness on our farm and that illness came from taking an animal out of its natural setting by feeding it something other than what its species had been developed to eat. Over all the lecture was good but a little disappointing on a personal level and I will explain why. Rosie and I are already doing everything Mr. Salatin recommends and further our classes on local food production and the people we have inspired to grown their own food is in the realms of "The next step". Frankly I did not want to go to a lecture to be told I am doing stuff right, I wanted to go to a lecture and be inspired to do more and do it better. So it was a good lecture but I was hoping to be more challenged by Mr. Salatin's philosophy.

So what can our loyal readers (all 10 of you) do to learn from Mr. Salatin? Well let me cover his most basic points:

1) Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Say WHAT? Let me explain, no there is no time let me sum up (ten points if you know the reference). If you try and wait until you know everything about home food production and are all set up and ready to do everything perfectly you will never ever get to the starting point. It is better to jump in with both feet and fail epicly than to put off trying for years at a time. As long as you are learning from your mistakes then they are mistakes worth making. Go buy some seed, some dirt and get planting. Success or failure, the effort will start you on your path.

2) Animals (and plants) are smart and want to be happy, and happy animals (and plants) are healthy. Pigs did not evolve to live packed nose to tail in a warehouse. Cows did not evolve to eat corn while up to their knees in filth on a feed lot. Tomatoes did not evolve to be shipped across the country in trucks. Do a little research and see what the natural environment and species is and then raise your plants and animals in as close to their natural environment as possible. The crap food you can buy in the mega-stores is developed for fast growth and easy transport; Flavor, nutrients, texture and toxicity are not a consideration in modern food production. Grow some heritage peas and compare them to a store bought pea, raise a chicken and compare the egg to a store bought egg. Good food is better for you and better for the life producing the food for you.

3) Buy local, buy responsible and live better. Not every one has the opportunity to raise their own live stock and feed their family from their land but if you have to buy then buy local responsibly raised food you will get better food and be healthier for it. Buying food from a local factory farm is no better than buying food from a massive factory farm some where else. Try and buy your food from repsonceable sources that "Respect the pigness of the pig" to quote Mrs. Salatin and you will help make the world a better place.

4) All revolutions start at the ground level. No one else will make the world a better place for you, the responsibility rests solely on your shoulders. As Mahatma Gandhi said "You must be the change you wish to see in the world". Do what you can, when you can and the powers of the world will fall to their knees in fear at your might, eat well, live well and be happy my friends.

And then there are some days...

that remind me that I don't know how to shoot but I'm pretty sure that I'd be good at it after killing all the animals... except the sheep.

I did have a nice relaxing morning. I was able to sleep in and enjoy eating pancakes with strawberry jam. I was able to water the berries and the trees and enjoyed watching Al, the gander take a bath in a bucket of water. I even laughed when he tried to attack a bucket because he confused it for a chicken trying to get to his water.

What changed the day was sitting down and watching Ramses hit Lucy over and over for the fun of it. I went outside to keep him from hurting her any more (anyone interested in another slaughter day?) and to fill up their water when I heard oinking behind me. Digger had convinced Oreo to lift up the corner of the fence and then we had three free range piggies... again. I had to finish giving the goats water and watering the walnut so that I could go fix the pig enclosure.

After fixing the section that they had lifted and reinforcing it I tried to open up another panel just to have the nut get stuck and I had to reinforce that section too. Stanko was running around trying to mate with the chickens and kicked up the box with all the clamps and they were sent sailing into the grass. I had to find them in order to continue with the fence. After that was done I finally found a corner that I could open up. By this time the pigs had finished eating most of the chicken food they had knocked over, had finished eating random things around the backyard, and were inspecting the horse gate to get to the front yard. I forgot to mention that since they had knocked over the chicken food all the bird ran over to eat and were in the process of having a fight with the pigs over the food. The geese were attacking their ears while the pigs kept pushing the chickens and ducks out of the way. All in all they were just making a ton of noise. With the open pig fence and armed with a box of apples I went to catch the piggies. They completely ignored me so I started just throwing apples at them to get their attention. After leading them back into the pen with small portions of apples I placed the box down and let them eat the remaining 20lbs of apples. I was able to close up the clamps on the fence right as they were finishing eating the apples. They walked around testing the fence and I kept pace to make sure that they couldn't get out and to see where the fence needed to be reinforced.

At the moment they are still in, but as a pregnant lady... I could do without all the drama.

Berries are in

Yesterday Jed helped me plant the remaining raspberries in the backyard. I'm really greatful that Jed is able to help me because otherwise I'm totally out of breath and cannot even get enough energy to dig. I had to take multiple breaks while placing the seedlings in the ground. Hopefully the chickens will not dig these up as they did with the poplar trees and the blackberries. I'll have to keep a close eye on them. I like visualizing what the backyard will look like in a few years. I can just imagine the berries covering that whole part of the fence. The trees growing in and providing shade as well as a shield from the surrounding properties. The open land full of crops for humans and animals. =) It's just such a happy visual that I get all excited just thinking about it. If only I can take a nap so that I have more energy.

Outlaw Goats

Tuesday is our normal practice night in San Luis Obispo and so Jed and I were out there having a blast with Gar and the guys. Well, Jed and I have a tendency to talk about home stuff when we're on drives to see what we can do better, what we can organize, or to make to-do lists. This Tuesday we were talking about how much we enjoy the things we do, but to continue on a conversation we had before, we have a tendency not to have that much time since we currently have something like 3.5 full time jobs. Taking care of the animals and plants takes a lot of time and energy. The rewards are breathtaking, but still it is the reward of many hours of labor and much work.

The ironic part of this conversation is that when we got home at 9pm we walked in to hear the phone ringing. Jed picks up says a few words and then says, "We'll be there in 15 minutes." Automatically I think: goats. Our goats were at a friend's house in Atascadero trying to eat down their weeds.

We get back in the car and Jed lets me know that the goats busted the fence, were running around the neighbors property and/or possibly the neighborhood and that the cops were there. We couldn't help but start laughing at the fact that we were driving to go pick up goats at 9pm because they had become outlaws. I was hoping that we'd get cute mugshots that I could bring home and add to the blog, but no such luck.

When we arrived the goats were already corraled into the front so we went and looked at the gate - something we'll have to go back and help fix- (We still need to find out if the goats caused any damage to the neighbors property so that we can fix that too) and made up our minds to bring them home that night as we could not easily fix the gate in the dark. We loaded the now fat goats into the van and brought them back home. They are now trying to beat up the sheep and are complaining about their loss of new bushes and trees that they were eating at Melody and Lucy's.

Waste Stream

A concept talked about by Novella Carpenter is that of the "Waste Stream", the steady stream of garbage that is produced by us as a people. Novella (if I may presume to refer to her by her first name) would access this waste stream in downtown Oakland to feed her pigs, she would dumpster dive to pull day old bread, fish offal, vegetable scraps and what not which she would then take home to her pigs (with much piggy squealing and delight). The Waste Stream diverted to feed animals and thus people.

A second story of the Waste Stream was related to my by a teacher of mine, a former marine about his time in Vietnam. After each meal on the base he was stationed at all the food waste would be scraped into 55 gallon drums and set aside beyond the perimeter of the base. A long line of Vietnamese poor would stand in line for hours to be allowed to fill a bucket with this slop to bring home to their families for their consumption. Without going into the moral and political ramifications of this practice, these people (both soldiers and natives) recognized the wasted energy available in this castoff food. The Waste Stream diverted to feed people directly.

And most recently, a person I know is looking into starting a micro-brewery and one of the issues that had to be addressed was the disposal of the grains after the brewing process. These spent grains can not be placed into the city sewer system as they can have a disastrous effect on a municipal sewer system. This local Waste Stream will now be diverted into compost and feed for our piggies, who already love beer and wold no doubt love a good bucket of proto-beer. Problem solved.

So what is my point?

As a people we are producing more waste than we can deal with, there is an island of garbage in the pacific ocean twice the size of Texas. Land fills are meeting capacity faster than they can be built, garbage scows drift up and down our national waterways packed with tons of waste that has no destination. Though we may not see it (or choose not to see it) we are drowning in our own garbage. We are choking out the very life forms that we need to keep our species alive with the accumulation of our Waste Stream.

The answer?

Frankly I don't know, the problem has become systemic to our society. Waste generation is such an ingrained part of our industry that we don't even really think about it. I am just some geeky guys with a bunch of animals, I am a nobody and alone I can not fix the Waste Stream. But perhaps we can all do a little to make the possibility of our species surviving a good one. Recycle when you can, compost when you are able and watch what you buy. If enough of us take a look at our personal Waste Stream perhaps the human race will stand a chance of moving beyond this pervasive problem.

As John Seymour said "On the self-sufficient homestead the rubbish man should never need call". Not a bad goal to shoot for at all.

New bees

Today I went out to go check on the bees after Jed let me know that the whole bee condo was just humming and that they were zooming around the place. The bees were in fact zooming around and exploring their new digs. They did not appreciate the taste of the chicken food, but you can see them trying out everything to see what the new location was at. It was cute to watch the zoom this way and that; you could practically hear the scream "Righteous!!" I'm looking forward to the pollination plants to come up so that they can have some extra fun. At the moment they have Eucalyptus and mustard going for them.

Bacon

Jed ended up brineing some bacon last Saturday so we were to leave it in the fridge until today and then bake it. He made four different batches with a total of about 32 lbs of bacon in all. Today I pre-heated the oven to 200 degrees and then put two batches of bacon in with a sheet at the bottom to catch all the drippings. It took about 2 hours for the center to be at 150 degrees and I was able to take out the bacon and let it cool down to room temp. I then sliced it and cooked up a couple of pieces to try. The first to be prepared was recipe #2 and it turned out well. The bacon was a little salty for me but Jed liked it. I think next time we'll rinse it out a bit more, place it in cold water with potatoes to take some of the brine out, or just alter the recipe to use less salt.

Digger and Squeaker (not official name)

This is Digger asleep with Squeaker between her two front legs; you can just make out her little snout next to Diggers chest and her little ear near the front foot.

Bee condo and Bees!!

A lovely SCA friend also works with bees. His family owns one of the prominent bee companies in the area. When he heard about the death of my bees he let me know that he was going to get additional bees this Spring and if I would like any. Of course I jumped on the chance and ended up ordering two 3# boxes of Italians.

They arrived last night after a long day of being driven around in the rain and sat in the garage. I was tempted to put up a sign that read "Warning: over 60,000 pissed off females - Do not enter" but I settled with just telling the guys that I had my bees in the garage. As posted yesterday we had freakish weather yesterday with rain and hail, which made me not want to put the bees out just yet. I decided to wait until the morning to see if it was warm enough to put them out there. After waking up and seeing everything outside frozen I decided to leave the in the garage a bit longer.

Jed finished the bee condo today so that we can have it completely separated from the goats. We were debating waiting a little longer to put the girls in but we figured we might as well just go for it. I picked out comb with honey and for new baby bees for the girls and then we took two separate supers in for the girls. We set up the boxes and then I came back to get the boxes with the girls in them. I put on my impromptu pregnant bee suit, which Jed lovingly let me know that I looked very rolly pollie like, and then separated the boxes and carried a box of bees over to the condo at a time. By the time both the boxes were out there I was tired and hot. I tried to pry the sugar jar from the first box but just managed to keep pissing off the bees. Jed was kind enough to go turn on my smoker as I was failing at taking the jar out without making everyone mad. After he brought it out I took the jar out, then the queen, set her up between two frames and then dumped the bees in. They immediately started doing their happy butt dance and slobbering all over the honey frames. I think they liked their new home. After that one was sorted out I tried a new trick with the second box. As much as I enjoyed pissing off my girls I thought I better change things a little to keep me from dropping the sugar jar on the multiple times. I leaned the box slightly so that when I pried the jar up a bit gravity wouldn't just pull it out of my hands. This worked so much better and I was able to get the jar, queen, and girls out in less than 3 minutes, as opposed to the 15+ minutes it took me with the first box.

All in all the girls were in their new homes and ready by the time the rain showed up tonight. I'll check on them in the morning, but I think they'll be happy in their new homes. =) I like happy bees.

Hail and random weather

Well, I get to check on the hops tomorrow and see how they are doing but I'm not sure after the freakish weather today. We had fog, clouds, rain, hail, lighting, and thunder. And it just kept on cycling through them throughout the whole day. Here are some images of the hail in the back yard. Notice how pretty much all the animals are not in the images.. that is because they are all under shelter.

Hops planted!

Jed bought me a present: fuggle hops. =) We planted the rhyzomes last night so that they can start growing. We'll see how many male and female plants we end up with. Hopefully in a year or two we'll be able to start a home beer production.

Gardening jitters

I just need to be out there. I have all these plans for plots and plants and I just can't find enough time in the day to be out there. I guess I'm going to have to see about possibly getting up earlier to be able to dig and plant the things I need to, to stay up later than necessary to go ahead and plant the veggies and fruit, or to stop doing some things after work to get more things done. On the down side, I am just starting my childbirthing classes and other baby related things so it's not like if I can just blow that whole thing off. There are speakers I would like to go see and there are projects I want to help with. Raarrr! I need more minions. I can't wait until this baby can hold a shovel.

Eggs

Can you tell which ones are turkey, duck, and chicken eggs?

Piggy!!

So we need a new name for this little girl, any suggestions?

New Churros! - not cinnamon

So Rosie math kind of struck again, but Jed was there so I blame him. Jim ended up bringing three sheep over for us to choose from, so it was really his fault. In the end I ended up with two Navajo-Churro sheep running around the back yard and we're going to need to sheer them soon. Anyone up for helping us sheer?

Smart chickies

When we first received our batch of chickens I was a little hesitant with the Sumatras. Sure they looked sexy but everything I had read about them had them as loud, flighty, and unable to brood or raise their young. Well, as it turns out it was a little Sumatra that was the first and only one to stay broody and hatch her young. Yesterday I walked out to give her food and water and found two tiny chicks in there with her. She was still sitting on her eggs so it seems as if she's waiting on a few more before she moves. As soon as most if not all are hatched then we're going to go ahead and move her with her young to a secure area so that they can run around and learn how to survive on their own.