Cleaning the Pasture

Today we cleaned the west pasture... okay, we shoveled cow shit.  We moved the cows out of the pasture over a week ago to let it grow while they graze on the east pasture.  If we leave the cow pies where they lay, we're told that the cows will avoid the grass around it for three years.  By scooping them up, we get compost in the garden and keep the pasture at 100% cow food.  Working in teams, one person with a garden fork and one with the wheel barrow, we got it done in two hours, but I feel like I've put in a long hard day.

Cow shit isn't nearly as bad as some things, but it isn't pleasant either.  At lunch my 15 year-old recounted at length how bad the smell was.  But it really wasn't that bad.  The chickens received the benefit of our labor.  Those cow pies are full of bugs and worms.  They swarmed it for hours.

Our sick chicken isn't any better, but she isn't any worse either.  Even if she gets better, she has stopped laying and I don't know if she'll start again.  Unfortunately since we separated her, she has now become special.  One of my twins has given her a name, "Soody."  I can't imagine that chicken is feeling fine and it seems humane to put it out of it's misery, but I care more about the feelings of my daughter than the feelings of the chicken.  We'll wait a while longer.

An important part of the self-sufficient lifestyle is seed saving.  There is strategy and skill to real seed saving, but this year I'm only doing the easy stuff (I have to leave something to learn next year!).  Today we gathered lettuce seed.  I turned the flower heads over into a bucket and gave them several good thwacks to knock the seed in.  We got seed and fluff and little crawlies.  I put a lid on the bucket and set it aside.  Hopeful in a week the crawlies will have all died of old age.

We have been buying our wheat at the Boise Co-Op for a while.  If we had an extra acre we'd grow our own, but we don't.  They carry an Idaho Organic wheat at a pretty reasonable price.  I don't know if the wheat would qualify us for the 100-mile diet, but I decided that I'm going to focus on my state rather than a 100-mile radius.  At least I know I'm buying from people who are paying taxes in my state.  A month or two ago the Co-op was having a *fantastic* sale on that Idaho Organic wheat.  Whereas we normally pay about eighty cents per pound, it was only thirty-five cents!  The fellow said the farmer has a large harvest and they were moving the grain for him.  At such great prices, we bought 600 pounds, enough for a year.  It doesn't seem wise to keep it in the paper bags that long, so we got food-grade buckets and transferred it.  When we were done we had sixteen buckets and a bunch of empty bags to show for our work.

A bucket full of grain, pure and dry, is a beautiful thing.  Sixteen of them sitting in the basement, safe from mold and crawlies, is like wealth and safety.  Bring on the winter!

Waiting

Our life is full of waiting.  I thought it would be the hardest part of this life-style, but I’ve found that it feels more like a promise than a burden.

Today I made granola bars.  I discovered that our stock was out and the kids eat granola bars and cottage cheese most every day for snack.  The granola bars I made today won't be ready to eat until tomorrow.  We’ll wait.

Christina and the calf, who we call beefy, moved to the east pasture today.  Our acre pasture is divided in half so they eat one half while the other grows.  The book says to give the grass six weeks to grow, but after three weeks their other pasture looked pretty mowed down.  Moving them means that we have some work to do in the west pasture — cutting down any weeds they didn’t eat and breaking up or scooping up the cow pies.  Cows won’t eat anything near a cow pie for three years.  Pretty smart.  But, if we break them up good, the irrigation will pull them into the soil and they will be absorbed as just good fertilizer.  The last time we moved Christina to a new pasture, the fresh grass gave her a little spike in milk production.  This time, there will be no spike.  She is dry.  While she grows strong on fresh grass, we wait.

When my in-laws built this house, they put in a mechanic’s pit.  It’s been concealed under oil-covered boards as long as I’ve known this place.  My husband is converting it into a root cellar.  He cleaned it out and cut new boards to cover the top.  Something about those fresh-cut boards makes it look and smell like a cellar now.  We have potatoes and onions ready to go down there.  Soon squash will be ready too.  It will all sit there through the winter and wait.

Last spring we planted nine rhubarb plants.  Nine is really a crazy amount.  A single full grown plant is usually more than a family can eat.  We love rhubarb and when I was ordering plants, I put it out to the family, “should we buy one or three?”  Their response was, "can we get more?"  "Well, they have a bundle of nine."   We watched the plants come up this spring, knowing that if we touch them it will hurt long-term growth.  So we stayed back and waited.  Next year we’ll harvest a little and the following year I think we’ll be market growers of rhubarb!  But for now, we wait.

I’ve always hated waiting.  The week before Christmas was painful.  The time before vacation was agony.  It took monumentous will power to wait until payday for something I wanted to buy.

This waiting is new.  I’m not waiting until I can get something, I’m waiting until God gets it ready for us.  I’m not wishing time to go faster, suffering from the self-denial.   Instead I enjoy the quiet delight of somebody getting a surprise ready for me. While I wait, I find myself savoring the hunger gently growing and knowing that the satiation will be sweeter.  Our I-want-what-want-when-I-want-it culture takes away specialness.  When I ate apples everyday, they were plain.  Now when I only eat them in October and November they are a special.  When I had dessert every day, it was just another part of dinner.  Now when we only have dessert for celebrations, it is special.

So today I wait with a goofy grin on my face while God gets things ready.