Cozy Cold

It dropped to 9F.  Yesterday, we finished all the pipes and fittings and put heat tape along the exposed areas.  This morning the water isn't flowing.  Dang.  We assume the problem is a fitting but after an hour of pouring hot water here, there, and everywhere, we gave up and filled the stock tank with buckets of water. 

With this cold snap coming, we suddenly remembered our irrigation pipes.  The pipes have a low spot where they take the water to the back of the pasture.  My husband and oldest son pulled and yanked until they finally opened up and found they were already dry.  Dang.

The milk is still filtering slowly but there are no clots.  By the end of the pail, it's just dripping along.  So we're still fighting mastitis.  Dang.  It's getting better but I'd like it to clear up faster.

The cows don't seem the least bothered by this cold weather.  We moved the pasture gate to split the shed in half and put jerky and beefy on one side and kept Christina on the other.  A friend suggested we put beefy with jerky so they can keep either other warm.  It's cute how they cuddle up together when they sleep.  All three cows go out in the pasture several times a day to just run around.  Jerky is bouncy like a fawn.

For as cold as the thermometer reads, milking isn't unpleasant.  I figured it would be painfully cold, but it's not.  The shed breaks the wind, the cows' body heat warms it up, and Christina's udder keeps my hands nice and warm while we're milking.

This morning Christina gave us two gallons and jerky got his belly full.  Our frig is filling up with jars of milk; it's a beautiful sight.  This morning I warmed up two gallons and got a batch of cottage cheese started.  I cooked up a quart of milk with sugar and egg to start ice cream.  A half-gallon of cream is awaiting an attempt at cream cheese.  It is warm in the house, the sun is shining, and the early cooking for the holiday makes everything smell good.  It is easy to be thankful this year.

Life Goes On

The stomach flu that claimed our nine-year-old daughter last week is now raging through the rest of the family.  Everyone has dropped except me and my other nine-year-old.  I think of this as something to get through, but my twins are excited at the prospect that they are the caretakers of the family.  Before I got up they had already fed the cows and gotten the chickens up.  Since then they've hung laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and folded some dry laundry.

Life does go on, even with so many in bed.  It was bread day again.  I make two loaves at a time and they last two or three days.  When our oldest was at home, they only lasted one day.  My morning began with wheat grinding.  The machine is fast, but every time I use it, I'm reminded how much I would prefer a hand-crank model. 

I make bread by hand occasionally, but it's faster and easier to use the KitchenAid.  In six minutes it's mixed and kneaded.  We were told by KitchenAid not to run the mixer longer than five minutes (although it never said that in their manuals), so we are careful about not running it too long.  After an hour rising in a warm oven, then I put it into two loaf pans, another 30 minutes of rising, and bake at 350F for 35 minutes.  With only two kids eating, I should be able to get the heal before the crowd descends.

It's been two-and-a-half weeks since our last fresh milk.  My days now have fallen into a rhythm with our store of frozen milk, and like most things, it hasn't been simple.  I tried just thawing the milk in the frig but it took five days and then it had a slight freezer burn taste to it.  I found a new way.  The first day that I get it out of the deep-freeze, I leave it on the counter for two or three hours and then peel the plastic bag off.  The second day, I break up the crystal block into a slush.  The third day it's ready to pour and drink.

I miss fresh milk.  I really miss fresh cream.  We are now eating commercial butter and I got some ice cream for pie.  Within two or three bites, I had that old ick feeling that I associate with dairy.  Not only does Christina milk taste amazing, it doesn't make me feel bad.  Not even a little.  ...seven more weeks... my hunger is growing.

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!

The Power of the Sun

We find ourselves using the power of the sun more often.  Of course the sun is ultimately the source of all food — causing the garden to grow and the grass to grow which feeds the cows — but there is more to solar power.

Solar rays are effective sterilizers.  I read that several hours of direct sun exposure is as effective as a bleach rinse.  Because we drink our milk raw, without pasteurization, I'm especially careful about sterilizing the milk jugs.  After thoroughly cleaning them with soap and water, we set them out all day in the sun to knock off any germs that survived the washing.

Actually, I probably don't need to be so fussy.  While Christina was milking, we never had milk over four days old because the frig would get too full!  3-4 gallons a day fills up a frig pretty fast.  But since she's dried up, we actually had some milk sit in the frig for nine days before we used it.  At nine days, the milk smelled as fresh and sweet as the first day, so even raw milk takes a long time to sour.

We started hanging our laundry whenever we could about a year ago.  I've already noticed the difference the sun makes.  Some of the musty smell that I thought was unavoidable, vanishes completely in the summer, only to return in the winter when we're using the electric dryer.  I've found that I love the peace and solitude of hanging laundry.  I love the quiet movement as the clothes go up and I enjoy the camaraderie of taking them down in the evening with whichever daughters are around.

We will use a root cellar this winter for the first time.  The book says that onions need to dry for ten days after they are pulled to harden their skin and make them last longer in storage.  We pulled our first batch of onions and set them on the step to dry.  This is from the patch that grew the worst.  I'm hopefully for a much bigger harvest from the other patch.

Our three walnut trees have started dropping nuts.  We set them out for the husks to dry to a dark brown before we remove the them and crack the shells this winter.  I'm thinking of seeing if we can grind the walnuts into a walnut butter.

Using the sun these ways is slow and quiet.  Nothing needs to be done while the sun's rays silently do their work.  It requires patience in waiting and the ability to remember to bring things in when they're done.  But that's about all that is needed from me.  I don't actually do the sterilization or drying, the sun's rays do.  I just put things out.  God's activity is the same way — often slow and silent, but it is the real power behind the work.  I just show up and put things out.

Salty Coffee

Weird.  Raising food means dealing with what you’ve got.  The milk and cream from Christina’s last milking tastes like somebody spilled salt in it.  We have milk and cream in the freezer, but it won’t be thawed until tomorrow. So this morning I drink salty coffee or I skip it.  That’s OK.  I can deal with a little salt.

One-and-a-half gallons of salty milk...hmm... I’ll make yogurt and see if it’s OK.  If not, I guess it’s chickie food.  (check out Recipes Page for making yogurt)

Usually home grown food is better than what we’re used to from the store.  The watermelon we ate yesterday was perfection — sweet, juicy, and crisp — picked right off the vine.  Well, the second one was perfect.  The first one had a dot of rot on it, but I figured I’d just cut it off and the rest would be fine.  The knife sunk in and all at once liquid flooded the counter.  I whisked the fruit to the sink and we threw down towels.  After the crisis was over, the twins took the rotten watermelon to the chickens, who swarmed it.

We don’t count eggs anymore.  We used to count daily and be amazed that we just had to go get them.  For free!  But now our chickens are laying a dozen a day and we are having trouble keeping up.  The books says that hens will lay a lot less when it gets winter dark, so I’ve been freezing some.  This morning I found almost 4 dozen eggs in the frig.  Too many.  While breakfast was cooking, I broke 5 eggs in a bowl, beat them, and poured them in a one-cup tupperware.  After I filled three, I took them out to the freezer.  Tomorrow I’ll pop them out and store them in a bag for winter.  We still have two dozen left.  I need to cook something that uses lots of eggs.

Homeschooling amplifies every parenting issue.  I got hit by that stick again.  I found out that the twins have been skimping on the work they do by themselves — only reading half of the assignment, only doing half of their Rosetta Stone, only doing half of their recorder practicing.  I think back to yesterday afternoon and the barrage of “Mama, can I...” that flooded me while being assured they had finished their work.  It makes me so mad (and hurt).

When the kids were in school, if they didn’t do their work, I was frustrated and worried, but not personally hurt.  Now that I’m the one giving assignments, their laziness feels like a personal insult.  I’m not good at separating my hurt feelings from an impartial analysis of their educational situation.  It’s one more instance of my poor mothering.  Now I taste salt and despair.

The conflict unearthed, contrite faces look at me as they go through their work.  I’m still upset, but they are so cute.  Reading about magnetic fields, a simple experiment was explained and they looked at me hopefully.  We laid down two books with a bar magnetic between them and paper over the top.  We sprinkled some iron filings and there it was.  OK, now I’m not as upset with them. 

The Last Day

We milked Christina for the last time today.  Well, until November.  But it feels like the last time.  Seven weeks ago when she arrived, I longed for this day.  Milking our first week was an ordeal.  I had read lots of books but had milked only twice in my life.  I felt incompetent and overwhelmed.  At the end of each milking I remember thinking, "oh my God, I have to do that again in 12 hours!"  I had to hold on for seven weeks and then it would be over. 

But today I don't feel relieved; I feel sad.  I'm not overwhelmed any more.  I've learned how to grab the top of Christina's teet and pull with a satisfying gush of milk and cream.  I've learned to love the taste of her milk, more than I ever thought I would love milk.  I've learned how to make butter, yogurt, ice cream, sour cream, and cheese.  And I've felt cared for by a large brown animal with dark eyes. I've seen God's abundance in the simple grass transformed into milk and cream just waiting for us.  All we have to do is go get it.  But tomorrow it won't be there.

After moving from the dairy and feeding us for seven weeks, Christina gets these two months off to grow strong for the birth of her calf.  On or about November 18th we'll go through our first calving.  Another first.

I've felt so called to this life of sustainable living but it's been a year of crazy firsts.  I'm a city girl.  There's no farm or livestock in my past.   We've read lots of books and had wonderful people with real knowledge who have helped us along the way, but we've been living a sitcom learning so many things the hard way.   Only a year-and-a-half ago this all started when we moved to a house on 1.5 acres.  Now we've got a big garden, 14 laying hens, about 20 meat chickens in the freezer, a milk cow, and a beef calf that will be ready for the butcher in another year.  We've rejected most every disposable that had been part of our normal American life (except toilet paper, good God!).  We've reduced our energy consumption by putting in sky lights, switching to low-energy appliances, hanging our laundry to dry, and learning to live with heat in the summer and coolness in the winter.

It has only been as we've intentionally moved to this life that I've realized how dependent we have  been on modern food systems.  I carried an assumption that since I had money I had a God-given right to the food I bought and that it would always be there — magically, just always on the shelf, ready to be bought.  But the truth is that I was profoundly dependent on the labor and intelligence of others, many of whom don't have the money to eat as well as I did.  I also had become dependent upon the practices that provide cheap meat, food in boxes, and ingredient names that look more a chemistry supply list than God-created food.  Food was a factory product.  I was a committed Christian who had lost touch with with the God who feeds us.

Today I am slowly moving to dependence on God the Creator... God acting on this land, growing things in their own season, as is proper and right for the plants of God's creation.  What I used to see as just plain old land, a source of dust and dirt and weeds, I now see as sacred ground, as life-giving, as a way to find God.

Our family-life has been redirected toward the fertile soil.  My nine-year old twin daughters begin their day by "getting up the chickies."  Early in the morning in their outdoor shoes, they fill the feeder, open the coop door and rush out of the pen.  They love the chickens but are still a little intimidated by them.  Our 15-year and 13-year old daughters have become competent milkers, taking over my spot in the evening milking with their Dad.  Our 2-year old son has learned to play in the yard while we work in the garden right beside him.  He joins his sisters when he can talk them into it and squeals, "Christina," every time he sees her.  Our 19-year old son moved out this summer and shares little in this adventure, making me struggle with how do you be a family member without being a household member.

Our lives have taken on an easy rhythm of caring for animals, homeschooling, cooking, harvesting and back to animals before the night slows the tempo into satisfying rest.  Our family life has become centered around food and family rather than clocks and schedules.  Sabbath rest is an exciting freedom from weeding, harvesting, and cheese-making giving time for lazy eating, movies, books, and music.  But every day is each other.

Even our education has moved into the family.  We've homeschooled for several years, off and on, but there is a contentment in homeschooling this year that I've never felt.  Learning, a life-long activity, has become interwoven into the life-long activity of eating.  After trying lots of different things, we've settled on a curriculum that uses lots of narrative.  Starting our third year with Sonlight, I have fallen thoroughly in love with their approach and don't plan to ever use anything else.  Immersion into history and historical fiction makes deep learning nearly effortless.  After many years of mistakes, we've learned how to push enough to create the excitement of challenge but not the despair of burden.  Watching their eyes spark as they grasp a new concept and their shoulders square as they approach a problem with confidence is a constant source of joy for me.  My husband and I joke that each evening we arm-wrestle to see who gets to homeschool the girls the next day.

Our two months "off" begins.  We can leave if we want, only needing someone to feed the animals while we're gone.  Our milk will come from the 20-gallon store in the freezer.  My arms will rest and heal into a strength that I hope will prevent the carpal tunnel from returning.  Although we are approaching the equinox, it feels like we have entered the winter solstice and will wait for the silent land to wake up.