How Does Your Garden Grow?

Most of my time and energy as a hobby farmer has been devoted to raising various farm animals and sharing my passion for them with local kids and adults through my classes, clubs and camps at Briar Gate Farm.   But I always feel compelled to attempt to grow a few crops along the way, too, as I cherish the idea of eating home-grown vegetables from my own back yard plot.  Problem is, I’m don’t have much of a green thumb so my success is somewhat limited and variable.

Oh, I start out the season with good intentions each year, looking through seed catalogs to get ideas for new varieties to try, drawing diagrams of my 3 raised bed garden plots and shopping at my local nursery to find a good assortment of organic and heirloom seeds and plants to grow.  I turn over my gardens in late fall and add a mix of compost and manure (have I mentioned we have a lot of poop around here?) and then turn everything over again in the early spring as I prepare to plant my cool weather crops.  Some years I actually plan exactly what seeds I’ll plant first, when they will be mature, and then plan a second planting to maximize my space and effort.  So you can see the initial efforts are admirable.

But every year it seems that for all my good planning and intentions, once the seeds get planted I seem to lose my focus or simply get occupied doing everything else that needs to be done around the farm in the spring and summer.  I put a lot of love into the garden initially, but after that, it’s on it’s own.  And because I don’t like to use chemicals but don’t know a lot about organic pest and weed control, my garden becomes a true example of “survival of the fittest.”  Some years the bugs win, some years the weeds win, but occasionally a few of the veggies win.

So, it might surprise you that I have been entering some of my vegetables in the local county fair each year.  I used to think that only expert gardeners and serious farmers entered their goods in local fairs, but once my girls started showing goats at the fairgrounds and I began spending the entire first week of August there, I realized that just about anyone with just about any talent or success could enter.  Everything from amateur baking, photography, various crafting projects, honey, home-made beer, wine and cheese – these are all things that can be entered by anyone at the fair. 

The first year I entered carrots, beans, swiss chard and zucchini and was thrilled when I took home a 2^nd, 3^rd and two 4^th place ribbons.  I also entered several baked goods and won a 1^st place with my pumpkin bread (my cooking skills are something I’m a little more confident and successful with).  The next year I got serious about the timing of my veggies and coordinated planting times and maturity rates to correspond with the vegetable entry date.  Imagine my pride when the veggie judge awarded my yellow beans with the blue ribbon!

But this year, between the late spring, three family vacations, summer camps, goat shows and 5 baby goats being born on the farm, my garden has once again taken the back seat.  I plan to enter a few things in the fair next week, but I don’t have much to choose from.  The bugs won this year in my beet rows, the weeds seemed to succeed over my strawberries and I don’t know what the heck happened to my zucchini plants.  But once again, I have some decent beans and a few nice carrots, so I’ll enter them and see what happens.    Wish me luck!

Life Lesson:  You can’t be the best at everything – just enjoy the ride

Horse Reflections

This morning I was watching the trailer for the new movie, BUCK – a documentary about the legendary horseman, Buck Brannaman.  I’m particularly interested in seeing this movie not only to see a great horseman in action, but because I feel a personal connection to the man.  I was lucky enough to be able to attend one of Buck’s horsemanship clinics several years ago and have incorporated much of what I’ve learned from him and others in the natural horsemanship field into the work I do with horses, kids and adults. 

The basic premise of the natural horsemanship movement is that humans don’t need to dominate, intimidate or strong-arm horses to get them to work with us.  We just need to understand how they learn and behave in their natural, herd environment and then use this knowledge to partner with them to gain their trust and desire to cooperate with us.  By considering their point of view and respecting what they are communicating to us, we can build a strong relationship and they’ll actually enjoy working with us.



Me and Amigo talking to Buck!

 One of the things Buck mentions in his trailer is how horses are mirrors, reflecting back to their handlers elements of the human’s personality, style and sometimes baggage.  I know about this concept and utilize it a great deal in some of my clinics with adults where I combine natural horsemanship and life coaching principals to teach important life lessons.  This is a concept I’ve helped others gain self-awareness from but I haven’t always thought about how it applies to me.  Now part of what Buck’s talking about is how a specific behavior from your horse at a given time may have to do with how you’re feeling or behaving at that moment.  But hearing him mention it this morning got me thinking about what my horses have to say about me in general.  Here are a few of the things I came up with:

·   *   My small herd is a close-knit family that gets along well most of the time, although squabbles do break out now and then.

·   *   Belle, my lone mare, is the leader and she’s usually pretty kind, except for when she’s in heat.  Then she’s pretty moody and snippy.   

·   *   Amigo can be kind of bossy and pushy but he’s basically a good guy.

·   *   Spirit gets into trouble when he’s bored.

·   *   Ringo is pretty agreeable most of the time unless you ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do.

·   *   Chummie is really reliable and trustworthy.

·   *   They all like variety but don’t want to physically work too hard.

·   *   They're all pretty spoiled.

* *   They’re good with kids.

Hmm, it sure sounds like there are some similarities between me and my herd! 

Life Lesson:  Take the time to reflect and you’ll sometimes be surprised what you see.

Cock-a-doodle-doo (sort of)

OK, so you know about the horrible chicken massacre that happened on our farm a few weeks ago.  A raccoon (we’re guessing, due to the carnage left behind) took out 7 of my mature hens and my little bantam rooster.  A sad day for all, and I have to say, not only am I bummed about having to once again buy store-bought eggs, but I also miss hearing the sweet, pint-sized cock-a-doodle-doo of my little Mr. Noodles.  And apparently I’m not the only one in the barnyard who misses his crow.

The other morning, I was out feeding the goats and chickens as usual, when I heard a rooster crow.  Now I wasn’t completely surprised by this as we have a whole chicken yard full of young pullets and as any experienced chicken owner can tell you, just because they came from the pullet bin, it doesn’t mean they’re all girls.  In fact, there’s a roughly 10% error rate in the sexing of young chicks, which means that approximately 1 in 10 pullets will actually turn out to be cockerels, aka roosters.  I already have my suspicions about a couple of the “girls” and I’m guessing one or two will start crowing any day now.

But the odd thing about the crowing I heard the other morning was that it seemed to be coming from the chicken yard where my 5 survivors of the chicken massacre are living, all of whom are mature hens.  At first I thought maybe one of the young chickens was crowing and the sound was echoing off the metal wall of the hay barn making it sound like it was coming from the back yard.  So, I watched and waited and within a few minutes, there it was again.  Only this time, I could see the source of the sound and by golly, it was coming right out of the throat of my 2 year old Sicilian Buttercup HEN!  Yes, I said hen, as in girl.  And I know she’s a hen because as recently as a month ago, she was laying eggs in the dog house we use as a shelter in the young chickens’ yard and being that she’s a flyer, I know she’s the only mature laying hen that had access to the dog house at that time.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw her throw back her head and let out what was clearly, although maybe not completely full-throated, a cock-a-doodle doo.  I have to tell ya, I about jumped out of my skin!  All kinds of things went through my head in rapid succession:  Am I that dense that I haven’t realized for 2 years that she was a he and not a she?  Did my neighbor’s rooster sneak into my hen yard and it just happens to look just like my old hen?  Is it possible to have a trans-gender chicken? 

So, I told my tale to a number of people and had an interesting conversation with my 15 year old daughter about Chaz Bono and his gender re-assignment, and then once my curiosity got the best of me (and my schedule freed up to allow me the time to), I did what I often do when I have a question... I “Googled” it.  I typed in the words, “can a hen become a rooster?” and voila, I had my answer!

According to Answers.com, the explanation is as follows:  “Not a fully functioning, sexually active, egg fertilizing rooster, but they can assume the characteristics of a rooster when the flock has no male to take on the duties of guarding the flock. The Alpha hen can guard, protect and crow (almost) just like a rooster under some circumstances.”

Well, I’ll be darned, I do believe Miss Sicily just misses Mr. Noodles as much as I do.

Life Lesson:  We all grieve and compensate in different ways.

Early Delivery

Two years ago our first kids were born on the farm, Snickers and Milky Way.  Their dam is a Nubian and their sire a Nigerian Dwarf, making them Mini Nubians, a relatively new and experimental dairy goat breed.  The goal of the Mini Nubian breed is to end up with the classic long ears and Roman nose of the Nubian in a smaller, compact size – easier for kids to handle and well, just cuter!  This year we bred Milky Way to a 4^th generation Mini Nubian buck in hopes of making good progress toward the ideal breed characteristics.  The timing of this breeding was tricky because we had a family vacation planned for the first week of June, and then summer camps starting June 13^th, so we were trying to have kids born somewhere after the vacation but before the camps started.   Goats go into heat about every three weeks and their gestation time is 5 months, so last fall we charted Milky’s cycles carefully and when she went into heat mid-January, we rushed her out to the breeder who is about an hour from our farm. 

Now to add further complexity to the situation, the breeder was getting ready to go out of town and gave us a 45 minute window of opportunity to get the job done before he had to leave.  Between the cold temps, the rush to get the deed taken care of, and the fact that this was Milky’s first experience with the breeding “facts of life”, I figured the odds of her conceiving were pretty low.  But what the heck, might as well try.  So, imagine my surprise when we had her ultrasounded two months later and learned she was indeed pregnant with a due date of June 13^th – the first day of camp!

As winter turned to spring, Milky’s belly got bigger and rounder and she began to develop an udder.  She’s always been a chubby little goat, but by the end of May she was a wide as she was tall.  She looked and acted great, with a healthy appetite and plenty of energy.  Pregnancy seemed to agree with her.  While we were on vacation in early June, the pet sitters who were milking our other doe, Skittles, each evening felt sure they would show up to milk and find babies in the stall, even though they weren’t due for another week and a half. Luckily, she didn’t have them while we were away.  I just hoped they’d come a day or two early as the idea of running camp while babies were being born felt a bit overwhelming.  Plus my brother and his family were visiting from Cincinnati and I hoped they’d get to meet the new kids before my brother and nephew had to head home on the 14^th. 

On June 9^th, four days before the official due date, I turned Milky out to pasture in the afternoon and she happily trotted out there and munched away on the grass as usual.  At 5:00, I brought her in for the evening and fed her some hay.  This is normally Megan’s job, but she was at an amusement park with some friends so I filled in for her.  Milky ate the hay with gusto and acted and looked as normal as could be.  I had to go to a 4-H meeting at 6:30, so Brian was in charge of milking and bottle feeding the other baby that evening, with some help from Molly.  He went out to do that around 8:00, looking in on Milky Way before he commenced to milking and all looked fine.  But a few minutes later he heard a loud, alarming bleat coming from Milky’s stall.  He ran to check on her only to find a tiny little kid on the ground!  In a panic, he yelled for Molly to grab some towels and frantically dialed my cell phone number.  It rang alright, but no one answered as it was sitting on my desk recharging instead of being with me at the meeting.  They were on their own!   Molly quickly got the towels and rushed to the stall in time to help catch and dry off a second kid while Brian again dialed my number and then called my mom.

By the time I got home at 9:00, I noticed the light on in the barn and found no one inside the house, so I moseyed down to the barn.  Imagine my surprise when I found Brian and Molly along with my mom, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew, and Megan and her friends (just back from the amusement park) all standing around the stall, with two kids on the ground and Milky still pawing the ground and looking uncomfortable.  Within a few minutes of my arrival, she pushed out a third kid and I quickly jumped in a started helping Molly dry him and the others off. 

When all was said and done, we had two new bucklings (Mikey and Charlie) and a doeling (Galaxy), a tired and bewildered but attentive new mom (Milky Way), and a reluctant but relieved first-time midwife (Brian!).  And Molly did such a great job in the midst of all the excitement that I feel certain she is ready to have her own doe bred next year and take care of her first kids.  As for me, although I missed seeing the first two kids born, it was great to know that everyone else could pitch in and take care of things so well without me.  And I got a kick out of listening to Brian’s frantic messages on my cell phone the next day.

Life Lesson:  You can only plan so much!

Vacations

When we first considered moving from our suburban neighborhood to a rural property, one of the things we were concerned about was how we would be able to take vacations and get away once we had farm animals to care for.  I mean, finding a pet sitter or a boarding facility for a beloved dog can be tricky enough, but when you have 5 horses, 9 goats, 22 chickens, a llama, 5 cats AND a dog – well, you see the dilemma.  Yet, it was important to us not be tied to the farm to the extent that we couldn’t get away for a ski weekend or take a family vacation each year.

And I figured, I’m a creative problem solver; where there’s a will, there’s a way!

One of the first things you figure out when you live in the country is you’d better know and befriend your neighbors.  On our street there are 10 properties of approximately the same 5 acre size.  Eight of us own horses, so we often rely on each other to help out when needed.  There are times when we may not see or talk to a neighbor for months at a time, other than a wave from the distance, but if a horse gets loose, it’s amazing how quickly someone spots it, rounds it up and puts it back where it belongs.  We’ve done this for just about every neighbor at some point, and they’ve done it for us.  And we always offer and are willing to feed and care for their animals when they have a need, so when it’s our turn to ask, the favor is often reciprocated.

Another thing you learn is that there are plenty of folks out there who would love to live on a farm, but probably never will, and they are often happy to “play farmer” for a week to get a fix for the country life.  We’ve had whole families as well as single friends who have been willing to come for a weekend or even a couple of weeks at a time and take care of all the critters in exchange for the chance to experience and enjoy the rural life.  In fact, Brian and I did this for some newlywed friends of ours almost 25 years ago.  We stayed on their farm and took care of their horses and house pets while they went on their honeymoon, and I still credit this experience with being one of the reasons we eventually ended up living this lifestyle ourselves.

So even as we’ve accumulated more and more animals and our feeding and care routine has become more demanding and involved, we’ve always been able to get away for a much needed change of pace or family down time at least a couple times a year.  But it’s not easy.  I spend hours making arrangements, typing up notes, worrying about details, and generally stressing out before each and every trip.  My “farm notes” has grown from a single page of instructions to a 7 page Microsoft Word document and sometimes I need a vacation just to recover from planning for the vacation.  But I feel really lucky that there have been so many willing (and even eager) friends and neighbors to step in and help out so we can occasionally take a break from the daily responsibilities and get away. 

This past week our family went on a vacation and I spent a good two weeks preparing notes, recruiting and training helpers, moving animals around to make things as simple as possible, and getting everything in order.  Just as I finished all the preparations and had all 4 helpers lined up, we found out that the place we were planning to go (Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons) was having unusually terrible weather with snow, road closures, avalanche warnings, flood warnings, etc.  Somehow this just didn’t sound like the trip I had envisioned when I’d started planning it months ago.  But since I had all my pet-sitters in place, I knew for sure we were going on a vacation somewhere.  I just really wanted to go somewhere that felt a little more like summer.  So, the morning we were supposed to leave, I completely shifted gears and decided to head south to Mesa Verde and the Four Corners area instead.  I cancelled hotel reservations up north and booked a hotel for our first night in Cortez, CO.  I thought we’d get down there and then plan the rest of the stay.  Risky, but with a wonderful weather forecast in that area, I figured how far wrong could we go.

Luckily, I was right and we ended up having a fabulous time visiting some parts of Colorado we had never seen before.  I guess for most people planning the vacation itself is where they spend all their time and energy, but for me, that’s the easy part once the animals are cared for!

Life Lesson:  Make good plans, but then be flexible

Invasion

Last Saturday morning we got up early to get the girls ready to run a 5K benefit race being organized by our middle school.  It was being held to raise funds for a beloved teacher who had contracted a life-threatening infection a few months ago and had accumulated soaring medical expenses as a result of his long stay in the hospital.  It was a drizzly, chilly morning but our spirits were high as we got ready to celebrate the miraculous recovery of the teacher who had just gotten home from the hospital the day before. 

Brian went out to feed the animals as usual, but when he came back in he looked pale and shocked.  Turns out some kind of predator, probably a raccoon, had gotten into our chicken pen and there was carnage everywhere.  We couldn’t believe it as the pen, where the mature hens and bantam rooster were being temporarily housed while our new spring chicks had taken over their normal coop, was surrounded by a very high wire fence with only about a 1 foot gap between the top of the fence and the roof of the barn.  But apparently that had been space enough for the marauder to climb over and take out 7 of our hens and the little rooster.

Upon hearing the news, the girls cried and I tried lovingly to console them and to make sense of what had happened.  Brian was faced with the painful task of rounding up the dead birds and placing their broken bodies into a large garbage bag to be dealt with later.  He was moved to tears, too, in compassion for the birds as well as empathy for the sadness his daughters were feeling.  We’d lost hens before to predators and thought we had all grown a little more detached from the inevitable occasional occurrence, but this loss felt worse.  For one thing, many of these hens had been shown at the County Fair last season and had won lots of ribbons and prizes, and apparently we were more attached to them than we had realized.  And then there was just the feeling of being violated that comes when a predator enters what you had regarded as a safe space.

I really didn’t think the girls would be able to pull themselves together quickly enough to finish getting ready and out the door for the race within the time we had allotted.  But they really wanted to show their support for their teacher and got it together in time to make it to the race.  While it was chilly and gloomy, they were determined to carry on in honor and celebration of the occasion.

At the start of the race, they were greeted by a wonderful and warming sight.  The beloved teacher whom they’d worried about for so long and who had been given only a 7% chance of survival months earlier, was there with his wife, also a teacher at the school, and he was beaming from ear to ear at the sight of all these supporters.  Another teacher was with him and was crying for joy at the fact that her friend and colleague had made it and was on the road to recovery. 

Although we were all still gloomy and sad about our losses for the rest of the weekend, which was not helped by the cool, cloudy and damp weather, we found moments of happiness and celebration every time we considered the bigger picture.  Imagining what our teacher and his family had been going through for months, and the jubilation all that knew and loved them were feeling as a result of his courage and perseverance through this ordeal, sure helped to put things into perspective.

Life Lesson:  Life has its ups and downs; focus on the ups whenever you can

Goat Milk?

One of the things we soon learned about having dairy goats is that once the babies are weaned off their mother’s milk, you accumulate a lot of milk rather quickly.  Even with only one milker in the barnyard producing 3-4 quarts a day, that’s somewhere between five and seven gallons of fresh milk coming in each week.  And although goat’s milk is deliciously creamy and sweet (especially that of Nubians), it’s a little too rich and high in fat for my family to drink straight being that we’re used to drinking non-fat cow’s milk (did you know that goat’s milk is naturally homogenized which means it’s impossible to separate the cream from the milk without a mechanical cream separator?).  So not long after our first goat kids were weaned, I decided it was time to learn to make goat cheese.

Now I thought this was going to be a very complicated and time-consuming procedure that would require all of my focus and attention to learn how to master.  And given that my summers are very full and busy with all the camps to run, animals and kids to care for, and goat shows to go to, I thought I would learn the art of cheesemaking while on our annual summer vacation at my family’s cottage in northern Michigan.  Each July we travel to Mullett Lake, MI where we relax at a 100+ year old rustic cabin that has been in my family for 5 generations.  Life is simple there as we have no phone, no television and few responsibilities, and I thought this would be a great break from my normal hectic pace that would allow me time to really focus on becoming an artisan cheesemaker.  And it just so happened that the first year we had goats was also the first year we decided to drive to Michigan instead of flying, which meant I could bring milk with me!

So, a couple weeks before we left for our trip, I ordered some basic ingredients and equipment from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, and as we prepared to make the three day journey across country, I packed a cooler with 3 half-gallon containers of frozen goat’s milk.  Each night along the route, I carefully drained the melted ice from the cooler and repacked it with fresh ice from our hotel’s icemaker.  Once we arrived at our destination, I put the by now mostly thawed milk in the refrigerator and waited another day or two while I enjoyed the time to unwind and relax.

Finally, the big day arrived and I was ready to learn to make goat cheese!  I had my trusty Home Cheesemaking book at the ready, along with my cheese thermometer, butter muslin (very fine cheese cloth) and packet of Chevre culture as I gingerly heated the liquid gold in a pot on our cabin stovetop.   The directions said to heat it to 86 degrees, add the culture (which was about 1/8 of a tsp of very fine white powder), stir, cover and let sit for 12 hours at room temperature.  As I sprinkled the powder into the milk I couldn’t imagine that this tiny amount would have any effect on this large pot of milk, and I was surprised at just how little action was involved in these few steps, but I figured the hard part must come later so I pressed on. 

When I checked the pot after 12 hours, I was amazed to find a large, solid round “curd” floating in a liquid pool of slightly yellowish green “whey” – amazing!  The next step called for scooping the curd into a cheesecloth-lined strainer, and then tying the ends of the cheesecloth together and hanging it over a sink to drain for another 6-12 hours.  Easy enough, and more waiting.  After the required length of time had passed, I untied the cheesecloth to reveal a lovely, creamy white mass of something more similar to cream cheese than the dry, solid chevre I had envisioned, but upon tasting it on a cracker, we all agreed it was a success! 

Now, several years and many, many pounds of chevre, fromage blanc, ricotta and mozzarella later, I can’t help but laugh at how mysterious and difficult I thought simple cheesemaking would be.  Admittedly I haven’t ventured into the world of hard cheeses yet (in cheesemaking circles it’s said that soft cheese is easy and hard cheese is hard), but maybe I’ll have to cart some goat’s milk across country again this summer and give it a try!

Life Lesson:  Try something new – it might not be as difficult as you think