Act Accordingly.

It's A Start

Nothing is impossible. Just know that deep in your heart, dear friends. 

While talking with a gentleman at the meeting on Saturday, I mentioned that I was looking at the possibility of renting a farmstead in Willamina. The man perked his ears at this idea since he had food related projects underway in that small town and was looking for more farming people in his area. Of all things, it turns out that his grandparents used to live in the very house that I've been looking at. With a smile on his face he told me that the hill on that property is the best around for winter sledding. We talked more, about livestock, gardens and rent fees, and then, pulling out his wallet, he handed me a quarter. I cocked my head in a questioning manner as he still held the small coin in his hand; what was this for? I asked. 

"This is my contribution. Come to Willamina."

I grinned at his frankness and jokingly told him that I didn't think a quarter would *quite* cover the monthly rent fee for the house and land.

"Perhaps not", he said, "But it's a start."

I accepted his contribution and tucked the quarter in my pocket. The man was right about one thing at least: It's a start. Very rarely does anyone start out big and grand with anything. We start out in the trenches; scrimping, saving, making do... You start small and work your way up through blood, sweat, and tears. So for me, I am starting small.

I have a quarter. 

For Stacey Jane, and all you others in my area...

If you live in the Sheridan, Willamina, or Grande Ronde area and are wishing you could have gone to the Saturday meeting that was hosted by Nourish Yamhill Valley, then here's a second chance for you! 

I got this email today, and was told to spread the word; we need as many as people possible to see this idea grow into everything it could be. I know a lot of the folks who I met on Saturday will be here, and it should be a down right good time. :)

Just a reminder to anyone interested in gardening, local foods movement, sustainability, homesteading skills, small farms etc.  We are having the first meeting around these ideas at the West Valley Community Campus at 266 SE Washington Street in Willamina at 6:30 pm.  The agenda will start with a tour of the campus complex showing all the amazing possibilities that can be had with this 44,000 sq ft, 11 acre complex.  We will move into a meet and greet segment to get to know one another and what your interests and passions are for these ideas and the West Valley.  After that a little brainstorming around a vision that you all will help develop and some ideas we could start exploring  and then hopefully some organizing of people around their common interests.   Please send us any suggestions for the agenda or any ideas you would like interjected to the group if you can't make it to this meeting.  You can contact me directly at djabc2@embarqmail.com  or call me at 503 876 3904   or 503 581 1508.  You can also contact Jeri St Onge ,  Susan Richman,  or Denise Wilms.    Hope to see you.   -Dave 

Oh Yeah...

I forgot to mention this, but Chad Gadya's twin sister is also up for sale as well. If I have any hopes to have my own farm in the near future then I need to prioritize and hunker down to business. Thus, 'Goat Song's Duet' is being offered up for sale and her sale price will pay for some projects that should greatly help in giving me and my dream farm a steadier, comfier salary. 

Duet (or "Dewey" as I affectionately call her) is a carbon copy of her brother. Seriously. People come over and they can't tell who is who; heck, I still have trouble sometimes telling who's who, and have to resort to checking who's the buck and who's the doe. She is every bit as lovely as her brother, and oh - my - goodness will this girl MILK! She has 2,000 lbs. of milk stacked on either side of her pedigree so she would be an excellent home milker, or a start (or addition!) to your dairy herd. She's my girl, and quite frankly she's the best doe kid I've had born in my herd since I started 5+ years ago. 

I don't currently have any pictures of Duet, but here's the link to Chad Gadya's sale post. I ain't kidding when I say she's a carbon copy. She looks just like her brother; just ever so slightly darker in color. But she's got the same conformation, the same frosted ears, and even the same star on her forehead. :) Oh, and she just turned 10 weeks old. 

My asking price is $350 unregistered, and $450 registered. 

You want her... You know you do. ;)

Grab Her While You Can!

This little lady goes by the handle of 'Goat Song's Shilling'. She was one of last year's kids out of my pretty Cove Orchard doe, 'Penny', and by Too Much Bucks Jagermeister (Shammy's, Lakeshore, and Six-M-Galaxy bloodlines). I had given Shilling to some friends who needed a companion goat for their milker, but just recently got her back since said friends have decided to sell off their animals. I really don't have the room to over winter another doe (since she would have to stay with the adult does and the two cows), so as much as I love her spots, she needs to find some new stomping grounds ASAP. 

Shilling is a purebred, unregistered Nubian doe, she is CAE/CL negative, and has been exposed to a buck (my Tamarack boy! Kastdemur's bloodlines on him!). I don't *think* she was officially bred to Tam, but I won't know for sure for another 2.5-3 weeks to see if she comes into heat again or not. 

Shilling is $250 unregistered and $350 if you would like her registered. If you want her bred to ma' fancy shmancy buck, then please tack on another $40 (which pays for stud fee and boarding/care/feeding since she'll have to stick around for her next cycle!)

Shipping is always a possible option too, if you are out of state. I know a LOT of livestock haulers, and ordinary goat people who will put together a "train" to get her from Sheridan, OR to your place. 

He's Here

'Grande Ronde HLV Gold Tamarack' has officially landed here at the farm.

I bought myself a buck. Hoo boy...

Imagine a 5 month old goat kid who is already just over 100 lbs. and is not only bigger than the yearling does, but is just about the same size as the adult does.

This boy is a mammoth. 

And just like most bucks, he is a total puppy. All he wants is for you to hug him, but since he's rather -- uh -- fragrant this season, he's going to have to settle for gingerly placed pats on his side. That's about all I can muster. ;) 

An Awesome Day

Today was an awesome day.

I got up at 5am this morning to have the morning milking and barn chores done before the clock struck 8am. I managed to do so with just ten minutes to spare! The sun was dawning behind a shade of clouds, but no rain fell; things looked good so far. I was waiting for someone I had never yet met before, but we had emailed multiple times over a span of time (story of my life). She was the event coordinator for today's adventure and offered me a ride to our destination since she would be passing by, and I had no other method of transportation barring the option of riding the milk cow (not a bad thought, really...). I looked forward to this day with such excitement that I fairly beamed. After meeting my new friend and exchanging smiles and laughs, we set out! We were headed to a meeting of small farmers who live in the Sheridan, Willamina, and Grande Ronde area, where we would discuss our food system we have, how we can make it better, and what we small farmers can and should do.

Driving through the winding roads of Sheridan, I admired the autumnal colors of golden rod, burnt umber, and soft red. The town was putting on a color show that I didn't even know about. :) Passing by an empty lot that was blanketed with leaves, I spied a pair of crows. At the sight of those black birds I smiled and relaxed completely; this was going to be a great day, and the duo of crows were not only a good omen, but a foretelling. Come what may, there are autumn leaves and a pair of crows behind me.

The meeting (or "conversation" as it was actually called) was being hosted in, oddly enough, a small Japanese school that resided just off the main road in Sheridan. A Japanese school? Here in Sheridan? Will wonders never cease?? Surprise aside, it was indeed a Japanese school that was even complete with the rule of "no shoes in the house". Yep, there was about to be a gathering of local farmers and we would all be wearing our socks the whole day. I couldn't resist chuckling at the thought.

As usual, I wore my teal-colored shirt from Polyface Farms that says on the front, 'Lunatic Farmer', and on the back it blares, 'Healing the land one bite at a time.', it seemed pretty appropriate to wear and it helps blog readers find me. We won't even mention the fact that it's a great conversation starter... LOL.

People began to trickle in, slowly, one after the other. I would be lying if I said I wasn't secretly hoping that someone younger than me would come walking in the door. Always the youngest in every agriculture event, I am looking forward to the day where I can shake the hand of someone who is younger than I am. I think that just might make me feel like an adult. :) A young looking guy came in and we eventually struck up a conversation about (what else?) farming, Joel Salatin, and draft horses. After a few minutes, I couldn't bear it anymore; I absolutely HAD to ask him how old he was. No, I'm not looking for any possible future farm partners, I just wanted to know if I was by any chance a little older than he. Incorrigible, am I. Alas, it turned out that he was four years older. Darn it. So once again feeling like a kid who took the wrong turn at Albuquerque, I sat down at a round table seated for five people, and awaited the start of everything.

You may think you've seen the real "Caitlyn" when you see me at church, or at the library, or even here at the farm, but I don't think you've seen the real person until you've seen me in a group like today's. I am a different animal when around my type of people. Surrounded by lovers of farms and food, I was in my element and if I had the ability to purr, I think I would have.

The meeting officially started at 10am and what followed seemed almost magical. Using sticky notes that were then stuck to a giant map of our area (it was longer than I am tall, and I ain't short!) we mapped out our assets here in the area. What do we have here? What can we use? We had farmers/gardeners/producers scattered all over the landscape, we had butchers, bakers, and wine makers hither thither. We had warehouses, truckers, food banks and non-profits sprinkled throughout, and consumers pretty much everywhere. Here's the start of a battle plan, now what do we do?

As impressive as our map with brightly colored sticky notes looked, it was missing stuff. We had our assets, now what were our gaps? If we had all this, then what was keeping us from turning these three towns into a food-centered paradise? All of us who were here were practically foaming at the mouth to be tangibly working with food in some form or fashion; what was hindering us?

We then worked on a list of our gaps. I think we came up with 20 things? Everything from lack of equipment and local grain, to needing a community composting center, to realizing that we need to some how lower the price of organic, local food. Twenty gaps that all needed solutions... To make the process easier and more fun, the list was split into portions and doled out to the five groups that were here. Everyone got four gaps to sort through and flush out before reporting back to the leaders and everyone else. My group got the challenge of figuring out possible answers to a community composting center, the lack of local grain (and how to mill small amounts for us small farmers!), how to deal with the problem of people having land and not knowing what to do with it, meanwhile there were dozens upon dozens of people who didn't have land, but wanted to farm, and the last problem was the barrier of the "organic" certification that the small folks face.

After much talking, brainstorming, laughing, scribbling, and head scratching, we had our game plans. And so did everyone else. [enter Beethoven's 5th symphony] Our leader grinned with a smile that reminded me of the Cheshire cat and slyly announced that each table now had to report their craziest idea. Oh boy... My group and I all sheepishly agreed that our composting idea was probably our craziest (but also our brainchild and favorite!). Now who do you suppose they chose to report the crazy idea? If you guessed the answer to be me then please move to the front of the class. It seems that I can't get away from crazy ideas and I am forever the one to explain them. Hehe. Oh well, I will take the title of absurdity; it's kind of fun being a lunatic farmer.

Second to last, I stood up and walked over to our flip chart when it was my time. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I'd give it a shot. Our composting idea was as follows: We need an area, rural most likely, that could perhaps be donated to the community for our composting site. Everyone would bring their food scraps here, both consumer and restaurants, and it would be mixed with their leaf piles of autumn, their Christmas trees of winter, their wilted weeds of spring, their spoiled fruit of summer, and the soiled bedding from their barns. The piles would be neatly piled until they grew to a height of 4' feet or more and began to heat up. Then came our favorite part: Once the piles were ready to be turned and stirred, instead of investing in expensive machinery that would put us in debt and fall apart at inopportune moments, we would put hogs in there! Just like what Joel Salatin does, we would release small hogs that were around 100+ lbs. into the enclosed area and watch them root and stir that compost into the blackest, richest stuff you could ever want for your garden. Folks who put their food scraps into the pile could have the option of purchasing a quarter of half of a finished hog, and would also get a discount for the finished compost. By the time all was said and done, you had a happy farmer who had sold the hogs, happy hogs who were literally in "hog heaven", happy people who were getting grand compost to grow more food with and weren't being saddled with expensive machinery and infrastructure, and best of all, there would be BACON at the end, and that's just flat out awesome. I was laughing by the time I finished my last sentence about the awesomeness of bacon and sat down to a healthy round of applause. I guess these people like bacon too.

After that exercise, we looked at this idea further... We've dreamed it up, it sounds crazy, now how could we make it feasible? What if we had local 4-H or FFA kids help take care of the hogs which would double as a livestock project, AND community service? What if we put all of this over on yonder piece of property? There's a fellow down the road a bit with some weaner pigs for sale... Oh we talked. And laughed. And dreamed. For the first time, I was with people who weren't afraid to dream the impossible. I was with people who had big ideas and they weren't afraid to make these things happen. Did I mention I could have purred?

All the other groups had wonderful ideas as well; one group was on fire for starting a food hub for our area, complete with a website that would be frequently updated. Another group wanted to create a food guide so people would know what is available and where to find the farms. A third group was scheming up gardens for children and teens, and the fourth group had invented a master plan of a farmer's market that encouraged bartering and had children selling produce from their very own little gardens.

By the end of the meeting, er, conversation that is, we were all stoked, full to the brim with ideas, and we had just made a bunch of new friends. I was plumb tuckered out by the time I got home, but I was also excited. Excited for what I learned, who I met, and excited for things to come. I love these kinds of people. :)