General Newsy Updates

I was planning on writing something like four blog posts in a row and then thought, "Why not just conglomerate it all into one post?" Yeah, that's me; I'm a bit slow sometimes on thinking up simple things. So this post is just a general newsy update for y'all! 

Staring me right in the face today is HEAT! It is hot, hot, HOT! Okay, all of you who are anywhere other than the Willamette Valley may laugh at me, since we don't even have humidity to contend with here. But one weather station says it's 98 degrees, and a second one says it's 100 degrees. Either way, both are a bit hotter than I like. I know friends and family down South who have been having days well over 100 degrees (I heard one report of 116!?) and they have humidity. I really shouldn't complain over here... But I am. ;) The animals seem to be taking it moderately well, although you know it's hot when even the barn swallows are panting, like mine are. I'm ready for Autumn! Wool sweaters, crunchy leaves, cool western winds, and the chance to start wearing my Carhartt coat again!

Heidi's kids are doing really well so far and were finally named yesterday evening. The blonde female is 'Minuet' as a slight offshoot of my musical theme I have going with the goats, and the brown male is Pippin. :) I've had two Frodo's, a Samwise, and a Merry, so I figured it was high time to bring the last Hobbit in. Hehe. I did decide to pull both kids off of Heidi this morning, as she is just too... Hmm, motherly? Whenever a kid stood up to try and nurse, she would just knock it back down with her vigorous licking; the result was a pair of starving and weak kids (better now that they're on the bottle!) and Heidi's udder was becoming engorged. Thankfully none of them are complaining about the separation (although Heidi is still able to lick and nuzzle the kids through the fence) and it has been one of the easiest transitions yet. This afternoon, I realized that I would have to milk Heidi ASAP in order to release the pressure on her udder. One side wasn't so bad since the kids were able to steal a couple of snacks, but the left side was completely untouched since Thursday. Heidi has always been a nightmare to hand milk as she has tiny teats, tiny orifices, and she kicks like a bucking bronco when on the stand. I prepared for war and got my goat. As expected, Heidi blew up. Kicking, heaving, bucking, I could see that this might get old fast if I now had to milk her 2x's a day. Then a thought popped into my head... What would happen if I put the milking machine on her? Her teats were the same size as Mattie's, and maybe I could get her milked out fast enough with that thing? It was worth a try.

The milking machine was set up and I tentatively flipped it on. It's rumbling hum filled the parlor and Heidi looked at it with curiosity. Now, how on earth would my karate champion of a caprine take this? I put an inflation on her left teat (the really engorged side) and watched...

Holy kohlrabi! This was a completely different goat! I held the machine at her level and watched in amazement as she totally relaxed. I didn't have her tied, and was not touching her at all. That ol' girl didn't move a single muscle. It made sense though, as I thought about it. Heidi's previous owners had bought her from a commercial dairy, so Heidi was probably used to being machine milked. You could just see the thought on her face, "Finally! It's about time you started doing this thing the right way!" Well, if it makes her happy and it saves my hands, then it looks like I now have a machine milked goat! I went inside to pour the milk into a jar and wash the milk bucket again. Heidi gave a half gallon just out of one side. Whew, no wonder she was looking uncomfy! 

Along the subject of goats, Sombrita left today... :( She has always been hard for me to milk since her teats are so big and my hands are so small. I was able to put up with it for a little over two months, but I just couldn't do it anymore... There comes a time when you have to ask yourself if something is really worth it. Yes, Sombrita was a lovely goat, but was it worth it to keep milking her when it caused so much pain? I really don't need carpal tunnel this early in life, and I think I probably would have gotten a case of it had I kept going with her. As it was, my left arm, from elbow to finger tips, was going numb more and more frequently throughout the week from milking her. Was the numbness worth it to keep her? I had to choose: Either keep Sombrita and give up other things such as knitting, spinning, and writing/typing, or find a new home for her. I agonized over this dilemma for a week. I didn't want to sell her and lose those genetics. If nothing else, I at least wanted one more daughter out of her before completely losing her. I love her conformation, her bloodlines, and her ability to outproduce herself (meaning daughters are always better than her). I thought about drying her up and just keeping her around, but what about when she kids next year? Dry her up immediately after kidding? I didn't feel that was a wise choice. Grrr! What to do, what to do!? Finally, the answer came upon me in one swift moment. I was reading a book, and I thought I was pretty engrossed in it, when the idea of giving her to a friend popped into my mind. Bingo! I dropped the book and rushed to the computer, writing a quick, three sentence email. Would my friend like a free goat? I figured by giving her to this friend, I would get to see her pretty often, keep tabs on her, and I told my friend that my only condition was that I would love to have a doeling from Sombrita someday. Friend agreed and came by to pick her up today. It was hard watching her go, still... Her pretty face and that gorgeous black coat of hers has always tickled my fancy. But I think this agreement will work well and everyone (including goat) will be happy. 

Mattie the cow is doing super well over here and we have become quite comfortable with each other. Although, she has taken to wrecking my chicken tractor lately and I fear it may not live long enough for the turkeys to stay in there until September! Having an adult, lactating cow has been a huge learning curve for me in the grass management department. In short, I've botched the job this summer. Who knew that a single cow could eat SO much??? Now half of my pasture is overgrazed and has been scorched in this heat wave. [sad, sad face] Lesson learned, and learned well! She's still giving her usual 2 to 2.5 gallons per day and that's working well. I must admit that I've been resorting to weekly milk dumps just so I would have room in the fridge and jars to use! So now I'm scurrying to get the rest of the cow shares sold so I won't have to keep dumping unwanted milk. A herdshare member did ask to donate a fridge for my raw milk and I was tickled at the thought! I'd like to take her up on the offer, but we'll see what happens...

Back in the beginning of June, I was having a rodent problem. There's no way to put that discreetly, I was battling mice. By July though, I noticed something: There had not been a single trace of a mouse in quite a while. They were gone. POOF! What on earth happened? I didn't mind of course, but I wondered if they had momentarily disappeared only to rally forces before they stormed my doors and ran me out of town. It was quiet... A little too quiet. I found the answer to the riddle today. Walking out of the barn this afternoon, I just barely missed stepping on a whopping, three foot long snake! It was a female, Pacific Gopher snake whom I had seen back in June, but at that time she was only 12" long. After two months, and who knows how many mice, she had tripled in size and heft. She was a monster and she was beautiful. Gopher snakes are often mistaken for Rattle snakes since they will drum their tail on the ground which makes a rattling sound if they are in the wild, among dead grasses and leaves. Since she was on hard dirt floor in my barn, there was no noise from her fast beating tip. Gopher snakes also have a bandit's mask over their eyes which is a nice visual, and they're head is a different shape from their poisonous cousins whom they try to impersonate. I quickly and smoothly scooped her up and watched in amazement as she wrapped herself around my arm and tightened her iron coils as much as possible. Yowch! I got the message: Please look but don't touch. I worried that she might go after our layer chicks which are only 3 weeks old, but the brooder seems to be pretty snake proof as far as I can tell, so I'm going to wait a bit before I relocate her. I do enjoy having her as rodent control in the barn. 

Hmmm... What else... I still have a handful of rabbits here, but I think I am going to butcher them all and put them in the freezer. What with the herdshares and the dairy animals, I don't have the time to really work with the rabbits and expand on that venue like I should. When I start back up, I want to do it right, and I want to start with stock from Polyface. Their rabbits are amazing and I would rather have stock that I know will do well on a forage based diet, over local rabbits that will take a few generations to do well. The turkeys are also doing really good and are growing insanely fast! I've been meaning to do a separate post about them... You can't watch them without thinking of the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park. If you gave them little claws instead of wings, it's be just like having your own dinosaur. ;) LOL. 

So there you go! Life is busy, busy, busy now that kidding season is over and we've hit the height of summer!

A Reflection, Perhaps?

Have you ever thought that people's gardens might reflect who they are? Do you think I could make an accurate guess about you if I were to see your garden?

Below is a picture of Duet, looking through the fencing and straight into my little garden. As I looked at it this morning, I thought how much it looks like me. It really is MY garden.

To be blunt, it's a scrappy jungle and I love it that way. Everything is rampant and green, with the pumpkins mingling with the tomatoes. There is a Russian Mammoth sunflower growing just about smack dab in the middle of it all and it will grow to be 12' tall. When I first planted in the spring, there were 10 neat and tidy beds. There was fresh wheat straw laid on the paths and I tiptoed through it. Now you can't even tell where a path might be.

How is this garden like me, or vice versa? As I looked at it this morning I saw parallels: It's just a scrappy, slap dash, impulsive thing. With the sunflower growing in the wrong spot and the pumpkins rebelling against their space. It seems to have no rhyme or reason to outsiders, but it knows what it's doing. It has a plan, even though most just see chaos. The most productive thing in there is not so very useful at all (in the long run anyway), for it's four huge nasturtium plants. This garden likes whimsy it seems, to have that many flowers and cut short on practical veggies. In fact, practicality is not at first noticed in here... There aren't really any rows, just bunches and mobs. The weeds poke their faces up hither thither and quite a few are left there on purpose. Oh this garden... It is cram packed and vibrant in every nook and cranny. With the cleavers nesting with the watermelon and the thistles guarding the kale, one is just reminded that nothing is perfect; least of all humans and gardens. This plot was once a neglected corner that sat useless for years... It had concrete buried too near the surface to till it, yet too far down to dig up; so nothing grew there save the most determined of weeds. And then a farm girl came along and changed that. She put down over three feet of compost in that area and now it's her jungle garden. She only hopes that one day she too can be as vibrant and cheerfully chaotic as it is. 

What does your garden look like and how does it reflect the gardener behind it?

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

No, no, no, no, no!!!! It can't be true! I refuse to believe it!

I just found out that my all-time favorite doe, 'Saada El-Pekah' is deceased. Her owners put her down just recently. I am dumbfounded, shocked, and upset. Why? Why, why, why, why???? I've always dreamed of getting a kid from her, and she was the very epitome of the Nubian breed. And now she's gone. Poof. Nubian breeders, you understand.

Saada El-Pekah... My favorite goat.

The Kids

Wonder of wonders, Heidi kidded exactly on her due date and gave birth this afternoon! I had to help pull the first kid, since it was an oversized, 10 lb. male, but other than that the birth was fast an uncomplicated. :) I've been looking forward to seeing what colors I would get, since Heidi is white and she was bred to a black buck. I'm pleased with the resulting colors. I was also tickled to see that the ears on the kids are exactly the same as last year: the male has floppy ears, just like his sire, and the female has elf ears (1 inch long) just like her dam. Both kids are doing right well and they're nursing off their mama. Heidi is the one doe here at GSF who gets to keep her babies since she's such a pain to milk. I may still pull the kids in a week or two since she's almost a little spastic with the babies, but we'll see...

Anywho, here are ALL this year's babies! Including pics of Chad Gadya and Duet, whom you haven't seen yet!

First off is Heidi's little doeling... I'm open to name suggestions for both of these kids, should you have some ideas...

And nextly is her whopping son! I love his chocolate brown coloring!

Below is Chad Gadya and Duet... Both just turned two weeks old and are thriving on the bottle. :)

Chad Gadya

Chad Gadya

Chad Gadya

Duet

Duet

Duet again!

Aaaaand then of course there's still Snickers and Frodo.

Snickers

Frodo.

Thus ends the 2012 kidding season! Next up is breeding season! :)

I Don't Sell My Milk

So, I've been keeping y'all in the dark about what's been going on over here... It wasn't intentional, but once it started I got so busy that I just never got around to telling the entire story. 

   Quite a few people have contacted me in some form or fashion with their regrets that I would probably sell my cows now that I've found that I can't tolerate their milk. My response was always "Huh? Sell the cows? I didn't buy them for myself!" And then I remember that I'm getting these responses because I never fully explained their purpose. These cows ain't going anywhere. In fact, I hope to someday have more of them. 

 I've been selling raw milk straight from this farm for a little over four years now. According to State law, I could not advertise that I had milk for sale (it all had to be word-of-mouth), I could not deliver my milk, and I could not have more than 9 goats, 9 sheep (dairy sheep, that is), and/or three cows. that was fine with me for a long time. The biggest number of milkers I ever had was four goats, customers would come and pick their milk up, and everyone was happy. For a time anyway. In the last six months, I've found that dairying is my passion in life. Forget the dream of being a vet tech, never mind the thought of being a horse trainer; I loved my goats, I loved milking them, and I wanted this to be more than just a hobby. I was ready to expand and grow into a micro dairy.

But how to do that? Having a Grade A facility would cost an arm and a leg, and I just barely had the money to buy each month's batch of hay. I needed to be able to advertise what I was doing, I needed to be able to deliver, and I wanted to have a minimum of 10 goats. Hmmm, I'm already past the dairy exemption with these plans. I wrestled with this idea for, I kid you not, two long months. I looked for loopholes, I talked with folks, I brainstormed... And of course, the answer was right in front of my face the whole time. Duh.

 Enter Raw Milk Herdshares:

It was *perfect*. There was my gateway wide and clear. But wait, you say, what's a "herdshare"??? Dearie, it's the best thing in these here parts, that's what it is. A herdshare is what is sounds like: The seller splits his herd into "shares" and people become joint owners of a cow or goat (or sheep). The buyers then pay a monthly boarding and care fee to the seller, and in return they get 1 gallon of milk each week. For example: Let's suppose we have an average Jersey cow who is giving 5 gallons of milk every day (okay, in the real world there are days of fluctuation in production, but we're imagining here; right?). At five gallons a day, that makes for 35 gallons of milk every WEEK (5 gallons per day x 7 days per week). If each herdshare member gets one gallon of milk a week, then you could have 35 members. They each pay you a boarding/care fee at the beginning of the month, and in return you take their milk to a agreed upon drop-point in town (or where ever it is). 

 As it happens, Herdshares are legal in the state of Oregon, and these are becoming immensely popular. It was ultra nice for me, since now that I'm not selling milk (I distribute it!) I can have the number of animals that I want/need, and I don't have to worry about the dairy exemption. :)

 Once the idea of a herdshare finally came into my head, I was so excited I was practically hopping around everywhere! It was only April at the time, and none of my does were milking yet, but boy did I have ideas...

 Then the second thought came to mind: What if I got a booth at the Saturday Farmer's Market as a drop-point for milk? Oh goodness... Why can't I ever think small? Now I was really excited, but I also wanted to check this idea. Was it sound? Was there interest? I spent the next few weeks snooping around, talking with buyers at farmer's markets, market vendors, market managers, and anyone else I could think of. Since the Saturday Market was what I was eyeing, most of my questions went to folks who were there. What would they think of having raw milk at the market each week? Would it affect their buying habits? Would it help or hinder neighboring vendors? Did the managers feel that there was enough traffic that this idea could float? 

The feedback was staggeringly good. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE I spoke to was on fire for the idea. Vendors were ecstatic at the thought that it might pull in extra customers for them, managers loved the thought that it might bring in more traffic and would be something beyond the typical veggies, meat, and eggs. Customers got round eyed... Raw milk? Here? At this market? While speaking with a vendor, one lady was listening in on the conversation and finally interrupted to ask if I was really, truly thinking about bringing raw milk to the public. She got so excited she was almost vibrating. I figured that was a good sign.

   By the end of May, I knew something: I needed a cow. If I wanted to make this raw milk dairy work, then I needed what the public wanted: Cow milk. Hazel the Jersey/Holstein was the first attempt at this, and as y'all saw, it didn't last. You really do get what you pay for. Then some sweet friends offered me Mattie, and offered to do a pay-as-we-go deal. They knew my plans and my dreams and offered me a leg-up in getting this started while putting payments on the side until I got situated. My grandparents surprised me as well by paying for a huge chunk of the cow and further helping me get started with this. I was in business!

 Now, am I at the Farmer's Market yet? Alas, no! But I don't think there's a day that goes by that I'm not thinking about it. I have people already lining up for milk, so part of me wondered for awhile if the market would even be necessary; but I think I may try for it anyway. Goodness knows it would make life easier with that being a permanent drop-point. The nice thing about the Saturday Market is that it's year around, and you have a permanent booth. So I could very easily put a refrigerator in my booth and leave it there. There's electricity available and I don't have to tote my stuff back and forth each week. Kind of like my own little store... 

 What's my ultimate goal, you ask? Well, just know that dreams change, especially long-term ones. But right now, I'd like to someday see myself with 3--5 cows and 15--20 goats and doing 2 markets a week. I may never get there, but it's a goal. :)

So that's the deal with Mattie. Yes, I'm dissapointed that I can't have her milk, but I'm not worried about it going to waste. My breeding plans for the goats have changed over the summer and now I'm working toward each animal averaging 4,200 lbs of milk each season. I'm bringing in old bloodlines and doing a bit of mixing with new bloodlines to get this, so I'm excited to see how it turns out. 

 And at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I just love my dairy animals. Even if I didn't have any buyers for the milk, I love these girls. :)

GOaT Milk? I like mine Raw!

A Girl Dreams

Some girls dream of their own future home... They envision the curtains and the paint colors, the plates and the silverware; how they'll decorate, how they'll make it a home. 

This girl dreams of a dairy. Of concrete and stainless steel, of stark white walls and iron stanchions. A room, a facility, a place. I dream of how I want it to look; how I want it to be. With drains in the middle of sloping floors,   and windows facing South. Hot water at the ready, and the capability of milking 4--5 animals at a time. The thought of such a thing is enough to give this farm girl the shivers and a gleam in her eye. 

Lace curtains may come one day soon enough, but this girl mostly wants a dairy.

Chicken Butchering (Which I Never Wrote About)

Writing about chicken butchering has been a mix of forgetting to do it, putting it off, and not wanting to think about it. Plain and simple. Or not. In short, July 2nd (the big day) was the most horribly awesome day. Yes, you really can have both of those adjectives put together.

I had 114 chickens to butcher in one day, had 6 hours to do it before customers began coming, and only had four helpers (only one of those four had an idea of what to do). Sounds like a recipe for fun, eh?

The day was long, and we had problems galore. The scalder kept on sputtering out without my knowing it, which then made the chickens next to impossible to pluck. I had to spend most of my time jumping around, trying to do everything at once and helping those who needed help. Time flew by too fast... Now that I look back though, if it hadn't been for the scalder, we could have gotten done pretty fast. But since those problems occurred, we ended having to have customers wait for their birds which I hated to have to do. On the flip side though, the chickens were all a really good weight (average of 4.5 lbs. with quite a few 5-6 pounders in there!), and I got a really good bleed out on all of them. Last year's biggest problem was that the dispatcher wasn't slitting the chicken's jugular well enough and the birds still had a lot of blood inside them. While at Polyface Farms, Daniel Salatin taught me how he dispatches his birds and the technique worked great! I had always heard (and done) that you just slit one side of the throat without hitting the windpipe; this works tolerably well, but the birds drain pretty slowly. Daniel recommended doing two slits on either side of the throat, and being very careful not to hit the windpipe. Much, much faster! We had a perfect bleed out on all the birds, and they looked great. 

In the past, we've bought our freezer bags from the same place that we rent the processing equipment, but this year we found to our dismay that we had to find a different supplier. After a few days of panic I managed to find a local farm that would sell me some of their bags. The cost? Fifty dollars for 100 bags. Ouch.

The clock eventually crept up to 5PM and we still had a little over 50 chickens to process. The five of us just couldn't do this; not at the rate the scalder was failing us at least! I went inside for some ibuprofen and tried to figure out what to do... We needed to give the equipment back the next day, and I didn't think my helpers would want to come back again to do this still more. What should I do?!?! I went outside and stopped short: Out there I found my own family members (who have always said that would NEVER help me butcher, for understandable reasons) pitching in, and everyone who had a cell phone was on it and calling in reinforcements. I wanted to cry. These were my birds that I have worked on for the last 8 weeks, they were my responsibility, and this was my botched job of the day running out of time like this. And yet, these people so selflessly came to help me butcher these birds, and now they were calling in help for my sake. Shucks, I couldn't even pay these sweet people. 

After a few moments to regain my composure, I jumped back in. Help was on the way and we now had two people at every station (save the dispatching which was left solely to me). Chicken catchers, scalders, pluckers, eviscerators, Quality control checkers, baggers, weighers, and people to greet and help customers. There was one moment that really hit me like a 2x4, and that was when the help had arrived, and there was a group of customers picking up their birds. I realized that you can't farm alone. It's virtually impossible. I may have cared for these birds from day #1, but now I needed a community of people around me to process these birds, and to buy them. Knife in hand, blood all over my arms, I stood still. And watched... I had a community of people surrounding me this day, and it was awesome. 

The clock continued to tick, and the scalder ran out of propane as we neared the end. That maddening moment when you're so close, but you're so far... A dinner was quickly consumed in shifts and we all wearily picked up our jobs again. It was 8PM when we finally finished our work... It had taken us 10 hours to get those birds done and we were all so tired that we were loopy. By the time my dad and I finished cleaning the equipment up it was 9:30PM. And I still needed to do the milking chores...

All I wanted to do the next day was sleep. And sleep, and sleep. Alas, that was the day that Metty kidded, so I once again spent the daylight hours outside. But as I sat outside with the newly born goat kids, I thought about the previous day. It was so horrible that I never want to do broilers again. And yet, it was so wonderful to meet all the new customers and see their excitement over my clean meat that it's hard to not say I'll do it again. I made virtually no profit; I put out roughly $900 to do this, and got back roughly $500 by the end of the day. Things cost more than I was expecting, unexpected problems arose, grain prices had skyrocketed, and my prices were too low. Live and learn, I guess. But I made a lot of new friends who will hopefully remain loyal customers, and let me tell you: I have never slept so good in my life as I did that night. ;)

If I am ever crazy enough to raise broilers again, I will definitely raise my prices (I did $2.80 per lb. for organic chicken and you read the results above!) and I will take them to my local processor. It's worth it to me to pay the extra and have the pros do it in a timely fashion. I'm always so harried and frenzied every year during butchering that I don't feel like I've taken the time to really talk with my customers. Next time (again, if there IS a next time), I will have customers come the day after processing, and I want to be calm and collected so we can visit with each other and strengthen the farmer/customer bond. It's worth it to me.

So there you have it folks: Chicken butchering was a horribly awesome day.