Sunday, November 28, 2010

Simply Sunday

Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless. ~Bill Watterson




Friday, November 26, 2010

Friday's Featured Farmer~Stephanie Appleton

We are a homeschooling family of six. We live on a property in West Virginia that is about 100 acres consisting almost entirely of forest and steep hills. We share this property with other family members. Together we raise gardens of vegetables. We gather the wild blackberries that can be found anywhere the sun reaches the ground through the trees. We raise a variety of animals. Name a farm animal. Odds are we have it here.







We work together. We sometimes find time to play together. We cry together, and together we share the blessings that come from living life on the farm.





Today, out of nowhere, my twelve year old said to me, "Funny how people think that way we live is crazy. We really are the luckiest people ever." I certainly did not have that kind of wisdom at twelve.







We lived on my grandparents farm through my elementary years. I enjoyed my years there, but really did not appreciate them fully until much later. After the family farm was sold and we moved, I didn't give much thought to farm life again for a very long time. I had big plans, and they didn't include any chickens or cows. I wanted to travel the world. I was going to be a big executive with a big salary to match. Little did I know how deeply rooted the love of the land and of animals was in me. Nor did I have any concept of the things in life that were truly meaningful to me.





The love of the land wouldn't stay hidden despite my big plans. It seeped out whenever possible. It started in college, and continued in our early years of marriage. Anywhere we lived that had a piece of dirt I could putter in was filled with flowers and sometimes vegetables. If there was no place to plant outside, I got my dirt fix in pots with indoor plants.



It was motherhood that brought those hidden loves of dirt and animals gurgling to the surface again. As my oldest child approached his elementary years, I longed for him and his siblings to have the same experiences and freedom that I had enjoyed as a child. I also realized that it wasn't just about the kids either. I longed for the quieter, simpler life of raising animals and gardens. My parents were also longing for a similar lifestyle.

We moved to this property five years ago with my parents. Since then we have jumped in, and probably tried to do way too much way to fast. I've found that the quieter and simpler life doesn't not mean a restful and easy life. I've learned that the freedom of farm life remembered from childhood does not exist with the adult responsibilities of farm life. Farm life is a lot of work. Sometimes, even after all the hard work, there is disappointment. There is failure. There is frustration.

But there is satisfaction. There is joy, and many rewards.

There is nothing more satisfying than serving a meal to my family that consists entirely of food we've grown ourselves. I love that the kids can go out and run, play and learn in the woods for hours on end. I like the strength of body and mind that we all have earned through our labors. The lessons learned from our experiences here could never be taught in a classroom or through a book. I wouldn't trade this lifestyle for anything. We really are the luckiest people ever.

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Thank  you, Stephanie, for your delightful guest post!

You can follow Stephanie and her farming adventures on her facebook page, Mil-Ton Farms.

You will also enjoy the farm's blog site at Adventures in the 100 Acre Woods.

















Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Friday's Featured Farmer~Claire Weldon




It started with chickens. Chickens, I’ve found, can be a fast and slippery slope into farming. When I was just about to turn 12 my family moved from the suburbs of Cleveland to a more rural area about 40 minutes to the south. Up until this point the largest animal I’d ever dealt with was a German shepherd dog and farming felt like a very foreign concept- relegated to flashing past the car window on long drives or at the two local historical villages. I was introduced to chickens and a whole host of other livestock at a friend’s house and immediately fell in love. After 3 years I managed to talk my parents into building a coop and getting chickens. We were gifted about a dozen assorted hens and a rooster from the same friend who had introduced me to them and the flock rapidly expanded as we bought or were given more hens, raised a batch of chicks every year or two from local hatcheries, and produced our own interesting crosses when some of the hens went broody.
The cow started as a joke. Every year when my mom asked me for a list of things I wanted for birthdays and Christmas I would put in a few never-going-to-happen items, like a giant squid for the pond, a pet camel, or a milk cow. It remained a joke until September 11th, which started my family thinking about if we would be able to feed ourselves if some sort of large-scale terrorist attack or natural disaster shut destroyed the infrastructure of the country. Later month I found a book called The Family Cow (by Dirk von Loon) at a bookstore. I read it and thought to myself that having a cow was something I would really like to do, that it was actually feasible to do, and it would be a wonderful way to be sure we would have milk, butter, and beef. Somehow (and today I am still amazed) my parents agreed with me and in an whirlwind over the next two months we built a barn, fenced a pasture, and had a cow in the backyard just before Thanksgiving. My 16th birthday occurred in the midst of all of these preparations and I still think getting your own milk cow beats out getting a car any day.
My cow is a now 12.5 year old Guernsey named Isabelle. We found her by looking in the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) guide to certified organic farmers- she was at the 2nd farm my dad called enquiring about cows for sale. When we brought her home she was a shy 3 year old in her first lactation and pregnant with her 2nd calf. I was completely and absolutely inexperienced and unprepared when we brought her home, but somehow I lucked out with the world’s most gentle, calm, patient cow that survived all of my blunders and taught me more about cows and myself that I could have ever imagined. She gives me delicious golden milk, births and raises gorgeous calves (and even accepts fosterlings, though grudgingly), and in her old age is so mellow I let her wander around the backyard dragging a short lead rope while I work nearby. I’ve milked her through 4 years of full-time college (and coming home to a cow and chickens and evening chores kept me sane even through the stresses of finals, papers, and projects) and we are still going strong together 9 years later now that I’m out of school and working as a biologist for a county park district.
My family’s farm has grown from a dozen chickens to a flock that ranges from 30-60, the wonderful Isabelle, two steers (Friedrich and Gustav) that are nearing their date with the freezer, 5 hives of bees (Russians and Italians), two gardens, and 15 rented acres down the road where we grow hay. I do all the daily work with the cows and chickens and my parents take care of the gardening and beekeeping. My three brothers all pitch in for major projects- stacking firewood, making hay, putting up fencing, etc. I hope in the next few years to be able to save up to buy my own land and continue farming- the chickens and cows will always be a feature. I would love to experiment with raising geese or ducks or turkeys or pigs and to raise more steers for beef than just a steer or two every few years. I already have lists of heritage breeds that I want to try out. There are many days when I am exhausted from work or slogging through deep mud trying to carry hay and I wonder what life would be like if I was like most people and could just come home at the end of the day and do nothing, but I know that I would not feel complete and content in my life if I wasn’t a farmer. Being outside for every sunrise and sunset, how bright the stars are in winter when I’m heading out to milk the cow, seeing the cow sleeping in a warm bed of hay, the dramatic lives of my chickens, the smell of newly baled hay, eating a meal of my own eggs and milk, I can’t imagine a richer life.

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A big "thank you" to Claire for the wonderful post! If you would like to get to know Claire better, you can follow her blog Pitchforking, follow her on Facebook, and read her very knowledgeable and helpful post on the Keeping A Family Cow Forum.

My apologies for the lateness of this post.  I have been having technical difficulties with my blog and just today found the remedy!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Simply Sunday


He that rises late must trot all day. ~ Benjamin Franklin

(Photo taken this morning as the sun was just peaking over mountain range.)

Friday, November 12, 2010

Friday's Featured Farmer~Blaire in Idaho


It’s a Tuesday morning in late September. The valley is smoky and cool, about 38 degrees. The sun is barely up and streaming through the trees in my backyard, highlighting their fall foliage. My three sons are off to school, the dishwasher is humming and I’ve just skimmed a gallon of cream off of about 4 gallons of milk. I poured a dollop of buttermilk into the cream jars, shook it up and it is now sitting on top of my fridge. I will make it into butter tomorrow, God willing.



I’ve been milking cow/s for about 5 years now but have only recently decided I could start calling myself a “farmer”. Ginger and Ingrid are my girls. I really, really love them. It sometimes seems a rather smallish thing, to milk cows. I don’t always grasp the big picture of what it means to do this job, not just the work but the responsibility. The education of myself, my family, my neighbors and my milk share families is as much a part of being this type of farmer as the actual milking.



It all started rather simply. I only wanted to make yogurt. Seemed harmless enough, I thought. So I buy some culture and read the instructions. In big bold letters in the instructions it says “Do not use Ultra-Pasteurized milk”. My yogurt wouldn’t turn out if I did. So, down the road I go…”Why?” “What is Ultra-Pasteurized milk?” “Why is it different from regular old pasteurized milk?” and then I read “Raw” and it resonated so deep in my being I knew I had more to figure out. I somehow found Ron Schmid’s book “The Untold Story of Milk”. I loved it, but more than that, I “believed” it. I found I could get raw milk at a local CSA and once a week with my jars in tow I would go. I would also buy hunks of butter and cheese curds. The kids loved it. I began dreaming of cows.



We lived rurally at this time but only on 2 ½ acres and most of that space was taken up by our ever expanding horse herd. The “cow dream” was not only about cows but about chickens and larger gardens and storing home grown food through our long Idaho winters. Our dreams were outgrowing our acreage and our neighbors’ sensibilities. Our dreams moved us 10 miles due West to what we called “the 20 acres” during the 2 years it took us to get there. So we sold, and rented and built and dreamed and built fences and gardens and barns and moved and planted trees.



First there was Ginger, my sweet Jersey girl, who I found because of my penchant for talking too much. We’re at 4-H horse camp with our boys and the man camped “next door” was also a talker. Somehow we got on the subject of cows and that I wanted a milker. “I’ve got one Jersey springer in my beef herd” he says. Of course he does! Here comes Ginger, a little rangey and not hugely friendly but she was a Jersey and she did get in our trailer. The next June she had a little black heifer calf, Roxy, and I began my milking career. By that September, I had the bug and heard about another Jersey cow for sale about 50 miles away. I was already headed there when I called my husband and told him what I was up to. “Don’t take the trailer” he says…”Too late”. I return later that day with Ingrid.



Ginger has had another heifer calf who is now a year old. Birdie was born last September. Ingrid had a bull calf this past May. Ginger is bred back to another Brown Swiss bull and is due to calve again next April. Ingy is still not bred as I’d like to wait until December and have a Fall calf. Birdie will need to be bred in the spring. Although it’s not entirely interesting, the breeding of the cows is the most important part. No birth, no lactation. No lactation, no milk. What many people who pick up neat little bottles of milk don’t realize is that milking is not the only job to be done with a dairy herd. The management of the lactation, the breeding, the calving, the worrying, the post calving, more worrying, care of newborn calves, management of cows and calves. It’s all important! I keep my calves on my cows and work out an agreement with the cows. They get milked twice a day for a month or so, then, I start separating the calf at night and milking only in the morning. The calf gets to spend all day with the cow and have all milk he/she wants. It seems to work, most of the time. Cows are fickle and calves are a pain, you just gotta take it day by day and cow by cow.



One of the great joys of farming, of being someone’s “farmer” is the kids. There is a whole new group of kids out there being raised knowing the names of the cows their milk comes from. They pour out of the cars to pet the cats and goats and chickens…to see the farm. Some want to be near the horses and their distinct aroma and presence, some prefer the smaller animals, others just want to run and climb. Initially, I felt apologetic for the drive to our place as we live 12 miles from town. Now I see that it’s a perk. Of course, sometimes they’re in a hurry and sometimes it’s raining and sometimes they’re asleep in their car seats. But when they do get a chance, it sure is a learning experience and it is kid heaven. It’s no wonder so many children’s books are written about farm animals and farm experiences.



So, here I am living the life of a children’s book character. It is not always idyllic and we “cow” girls commiserate often over sick cows, dead calves and yes, spilled milk. Fortunately, the good days outnumber the bad. And the good ones are really, really good.


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Thank you, Blaire, for contributing to this Friday's Featured Farmer series! What a wonderful post!

You can follow Blaire on her Facebook Page.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Simply Sunday




Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. ~Joseph Addison


( Photo of Beau, the Miniature Jersey Bull calf that we are in the process of purchasing. Photo courtesy of Marion Kanour.)

Friday, November 05, 2010

Friday's Featured Farmer~Liz in Texas!




Our journey, ok my journey with cows started many years ago when my hubby brought home a hog-tied calf in the back of his pick up truck. It was a little Hereford cross "Rosie" that eventually went to our freezer. I was so enthralled with her and scared of her! Just a few short years later the horses were dwindling out of our pastures and we found ourselves hip deep in 4-H with the kids raising rabbits, chickens, dairy goats, pigs, ducks and turkeys. Our daughter did the dairy goat project for 4 years and decided to move on to non-livestock projects so she sold her herd. I knew I could not live without the fresh milk so we found a Dexter in milk that was bred back. This Dexter had not been milked before, but through perseverance she taught me how to do it without being a freak and I taught her how to stop windmilling her foot around in the air (at my head). It was not a relationship to last, but it was an education I will never forget! The milk from Dexter proved not to be enough for our family so I started looking for a dairy cow. The looks and the comments we get to this day run the gammut, though I will say the public in general is becoming more savvy to real/whole/fresh food. We did find a cow or 3 and have had every joy and every disappointment that can be imagined along the way. I would not trade it for anything. Thankfully, we continue to learn and continue to be thankful.
This past spring I accepted a transfer with my company and we prepared to move to Florida. We decided at the time to live a slightly different lifestyle--to be a consumer of farm goods rather than a producer of farm goods. Sounded good to me, 5 minutes from the Atlantic and local food/milk! We sold all the livestock, equipment and everything we could in preparation of the move. 6 agonizing months later the house has not sold and I am losing my mind because I don't feel like I belong anywhere. No connection to the farm, the land, the new state, in fact no connection to anything except my work computer, my new ulcer and the airport!
My beloved husband came to the rescue by suggesting I search Craig's List for a few hens "just so we can have our own eggs again". I think he must have been missing the farm-ish life too, though he never complained. When I picked up a bag of chicken feed I also bought a 6-pack of tomato plants and a 4-pack of cilantro (love that the feed store has plants!). Once back home I uncovered one of the garden beds and planted the first of what has now grown to 4 large garden beds being planted with herbs and vegetables. Hmmm, I wondered as I toddled happily about the farm, "I know what will make this a farm again....but how do I tell Dave?" My husband that very night came in and said "you know, what you need is a cow"! I could have cried with happiness!
It is not just "having a cow" that is the key. It is being steeped in the farm, in our nutrition, baking from scratch, having access to real food, being outside, being active, being involved in animal husbandry. A cow does become a friend of sorts, a life giver to the rest of the farm with her milk, cream, butter, yogurt, clabber, whey and fertilizer. And, not being "just a cow" she is personable, funny, sassy, friendly, curious, a good mother, a provider of meat via offspring, and just plain happy to see and interact with her people. It is a truly unique relationship, and it is the whole world of cow ownership that does it for me. I should mention there is one more aspect of cow ownership that has had a huge impact on me: my cow friends that I have met and come to love online. That I ever thought I had to undergo any of this lesson or pain on my own is silly, there is a whole world of beloved friends and compatriots out there that have supported me, loved me, helped me, chided me and made me a better person. They are my balcony people and my heroes!
The weekend I planted those first fall plants has been a month ago now, and I am happy to say we have a spotted jersey named Ginger (due to calve in May), several loaner cows to mow the pastures for us, a few hens, a barn full of hay, a garden all planted, and a new pig on the way. I have a few physical reactions from the stress to get over still, but the symptoms are minimizing. I have "that feeling" when I walk outside and see the cows in the field, and hear her collar bell after dark, that feeling that reinforces in me I am right where I need to be, doing what I need to do to keep my family and myself as healthy and happy as we can be. That feeling that daily brings tears to my eyes because I appreciate it all so much.

Epilogue--if and when we do get to Florida, it will be on enough acreage to support 1 cow, 3 hens and a garden!

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Thank you, Liz, for your wonderful guest post!

You can follow Liz on her blog Lucky Lizard Ranch.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

This & That on Thursday






Sometimes you just have to let all the responsbilities go and take a "mental health day". When you farm, it's hard to get a whole day to just relax making it necessary to take segments of time when you can.

Monday was one of those days for me when I just needed to get away from everything for a while. For a few months, Mike has been helping his dad work sporadically on a hunting cabin on his dad's remote farming property. So, I took some drinks over to the place and the men took a break and we sat around in the cabin talking for a while before they went back to work. When the men went back to work, I took the opportunity to take a walk and get a few photos.

I can see some more "cabin time" in my future!