In the Garden Finally

It could not have been a more perfect day to get into the garden — sunny, warm, and a light breeze.

It began with my husband talking that tiller into working after its water dousing.  I'll bet he spent upwards of an hour pulling the string before it finally ran on its own.  That's pretty interesting stuff to watch, so our three year old got out a chair to watch (we helped with establishing the safe distance).

After all these weeks of waiting, the soil is finally turned.  It was pretty good, but some areas were still muddy.  We'll let it dry overnight and do a second tilling tomorrow and get things planted.

Being outside let's me see things and start new planning.  We decided to make a pig pen behind the barn and let the pig dig up all the weeds and fertilize the area.  This is where I want to put my strawberry patch.  I've read that if you want an area for a garden, just put a pig on it for a season and they will strip all the weeds, turn the soil over, and fertilize it well.

We also decided to extend the chicken pen to plant some more fruit trees and give the chickens access to the pasture.

What to do first?!  I know what to do first, get stuff planted!

Hiding Bad Stuff

Our basement garden is alive and well.  The lettuce has been feeding us for a month and the seedlings are ready for the garden.

It rained against last night and the garden is an expanse of mud.  The forecast is for sunny and warm beginning tomorrow and lasting for several days.  Tilling starts tomorrow!

Meat cooking day came to us. We cook up about ten pounds of hamburger with onions and green peppers and then freeze them in quart containers.  We can whip dinner together in under 30 minutes with one of those.  Last night we spiced one and ate it with ricotta and grated cheddar over potatoes.  It was so good.

Well, we did it.  We gave Christina antibiotic in each teet after milking last night.  Now we must pour the milk out for four days.  Such rich, smooth milk running into a ditch, it breaks the heart.  But there are chemicals hiding in there that would be hard on us. 

How many other things look good and healthy but hide bad stuff?  I didn't have to learn a lot about the industrial food system to come to the assumption that most all commercial food is hiding bad stuff.  It looks good, but we don't see the pesticides, the long-lasting herbicides, or the healthy elements that have been extracted out.  Even in faith, evil and sin can be hiding right in the good stuff.  The temptation of Jesus shows that Satan has no trouble quoting Scripture for his own purposes.  So even Scripture can be hiding toxics.  Scripture, like milk, has to be reared in a healthy environment, nothing snuck in, and received as a gift rather than used as a weapon.  Then it becomes the healthiest of all foods, like Christina's rich milk, able to bring us sustained growth and long-lasting well being.

Growing in the Present Moment

I planted onions two weeks ago and put them out in the little greenhouse.  Nothing.  Not a single little shoot.  Hmpf.  It says germination is 7-14 days, but I'm thinking it's not going to happen.  I'll bring them indoors and see if things change.  

The sun came out for a while so we headed out.  The goat heads have already taken off.  I can't stand goat heads.  After the satisfaction of pulling those nasty weeds out, we get a second satisfaction as the chickens enjoyed some fresh green.

It's been over a week and time to turn the cheeses.  When I'm diligent about getting to them, almost no mold forms, but when I lolly-gag they get mold patches.  The mold comes off easily with a vinegar wipe, but still. 

We tested Christina's milk and it shows "weak positive," consistent with the state lab's results.  We have several options but one requiring the least effort is to treat her with antibiotics and throw the milk out for four days.  We decided to do it this evening after milking.  The antibiotics are easy to give, just fit a little tip into each teet and squirt it in.  We are greatful to have time off from cheese-making as we get the garden in, but rationing milk is another shift.

The spiritual masters speak repeatedly about living in the present moment.  God is with us every moment; looking at the past we can remember God's loving action and looking to the future we can anticipate the path God has laid for us, but God is most accessible in the present moment.  This living with constant shifts pulls me into the present moment without the effort of will power.  We garden when the weather says.  We harvest when it's ready.  We deal with lots of milk and then we suddenly change when it stops.  Family life pulls you to the present too, but there is a new intensity to the present that this life has given us.  I am going slowly, but I am going.

Mud Mud Mud

I think the garden is soggier than last week.  The forecast is for more soggy weather and then warm and sunny toward the end of the week.  Our tilling plans are revised again.

In anticipation of hard work in the garden, we took the week off from homeschooling, but today we're indoors.  The next thing on the list is wall washing and touching up paint so that's the focus of our attention.  After my mother-in-law died but before we moved in we had the whole inside of the house painted.  It looked so fresh and new. After two years of living, that fresh look is gone.  There are nicks, holes, and stains.  Today we started with filling in holes and washing walls.

Our last butternut squash in the cellar are looking sorry.  After cutting off the soft spots, the rest went into the oven.

Part of the benefit of being a "licensed" raw milk seller is that the State Dept. of Agriculture does regular testing of our milk.  It's nice to know.  Our first testing came back good except the somatic cell count, an indication of sub-clinical mastitis.  We fought a case of mastitis last November, but those cells shows that a low-grade infection is still in progress.  Now we need to make a plan on how to deal with it.

Return

My teenage daughters and I had a wonderful trip together while dipping our toes into dominant western culture.  We discovered a new development — not only are plastic silverware used extensively, they now come wrapped in plastic.  More trash!

While we were gone, our 19-year-old son came every day to help with milking.  The first day, Christina put her foot forward so he couldn't get at either teet.  After my husband got her foot moved, she stared at our son as he milked.  She got used to the change, but her milk production was down a bit.  When I came out for the first milking after I got home, she watched me walk the whole way out and then headed to the stanchion with gusto.  Her production is back up to normal. What can I say, she's my cow.  :-)

It was forecast to rain all week, keeping us out of the garden, but today the sun came out.  I spent some time driving our baby tractor with the tow-behind rototiller.  It is so satisfying as it turns under the weeds and leaves dark fluffy soil.  

This time with machinery reminded us of our adage — I drive it and my husband fixes it.  The tiller ran out of gas and in an unusual gesture of self-sufficiency, I refilled the tank.  Afterward it wouldn't start.  It was close to dinner time so I drove it back to the barn.  I told my husband and he said, "are you sure it was gas?"  Suddenly I remembered a jug of water in the garage and ran to look at what I used.  ...yep, it was water...  Shesh.  So now my husband gets to spend some quality time cleaning water out of the tiller.  Dang.

While I was tilling, my husband was getting that stump out.  He hacked and sawed and pulled and got it all cleared out.  Here he is joyously displaying some roots he just ripped off.

When we got home I was greeted with, "we're almost out of hay."  What?  The kids feed the cows most of the time and it seemed like we had so much hay it would last forever.  Sure enough, we only have a few bales left.  I then discovered that buying hay in spring is a lot more difficult than buying it in the fall.  We found a source for enough to get us through May when the new crop of hay will be available.

We moved the cows to new pasture.  Christina spent all day today out on the pasture, ignoring her feeder with the hay.  Cleaning the shed was a breeze and she gave lots of milk.  There is nothing in the world like fresh pasture.

Jerky is a fully weaned calf now.  He's 18 weeks old, eight weeks older than jersey bull calves are typically weaned.

Ready to Go

We have spent the day packing and getting ready.  We made wheat crackers, even enough to leave some home.  We sliced cheese.  We packed jerky into neat bags for the drive there and the drive home.  We cut up carrots and celery.  We grabbed the dehydrated peaches.  The water bottles are filled.  Clothes are packed.  Enough electronics to entertain us for days are stashed away.  And some wool blankets and boots are shoved under the seat, just in case.

I'm looking forward to this time with my two teenage daughters.  With a large family, we get so little one-on-one time, so this is special.  I hope at LA Congress they taste some of the joy and grace that I have felt at this amazing conference.  I hope that sharing this time together deepens and grows our relationship and that this trip is a source of fond memory for years to come.

But I'm sad to leave the younger ones and my husband.  I wish they could just go into stasis while we're gone, instead of having to keep up with all the work while we're gone. They have been so encouraging and selfless as they help us prepare, knowing what fun we will have that they will be missing.

What blessings I have.

Preping for Extra Food

We're supposed to be tilling the garden today but it's still raining.  This is the last time before our trip when we could till, so now it has to wait until we get home.  Catching a decent day to till and plant is always a struggle, but this year seems more difficult than most.  Being gone for six days right in the middle isn't making it easier.  I'm praying for several good days as soon as we get home.

With half the family gone, the rest are going to have trouble keeping up with the milk and eggs coming in the house — about four-and-a-half-gallons of milk a day and about five dozen eggs a week.  Today I taught one of the twins how to make pudding.  She thinks that is a preferred way of using milk and eggs.  After about sixty seconds stirring, she asked how long it would be until it boils, but she made it all the way until it was done.

My husband is getting trained up on making cheese.  We are still making two or three cheeses a week to keep up with the milk.  We're both getting tuckered out from so much cheese-making.  As I've talked with people who had cows when they were young, not a single one has said their parents made cheese.  Instead, they had a hog who ate up the extra milk.  My husband's resolve against building a pig pen is waning.

Emergency Mucking

On Saturday morning we did an emergency mucking.  The area outside the cow's shed had probably been getting worse for a while, but all of sudden there was a thick layer of green-brown slop.  Poor Christina would be up to her ankles in this muck in order to get to her feeder.  So we dropped everything and threw shit.  We cleared out the muck that had made a sizable damn and drained the swamp.

Shortly after we got started, my twins emerged at the shed door with water bottles for us all. We had hurried out and forgotten. Our little girls took good care of us all.

The pile of mucking had also worked it's way over in front of the shed, so while some of us got the swamp drained, others got a good portion of the pile over.  My arms felt like they moved a thousand pounds by the time we were finished.

Sharing time with my teenage daughters throwing this stuff lead to some interesting reflections — like it's no coincidence that muck rhymes with other words to express frustration.  When we came in we were literally covered in the stuff. Ugh.

Pleasantly, Sunday morning Christina sauntered into the milking parlor with the cleanest udder and feet we have seen in weeks.  That was a nice affirmation for such hard work.  We are formulating new plans to keep this area from getting so bad again.

This is not a pleasant part of having a cow.  Although I have to admit that it felt good to get outside and work.  It wasn't too cold, the sun peaked out several times from behind the sun, and I walked away with sore muscles but a satisfied heart.

Today we begin a two weeks break from homeschooling.  We follow a year-round schedule and these breaks in the middle of the year are such a treat.  These weeks will be full for us.  I am going on a six-day trip with my teenage daughters and we have a garden to get planted.

Signs of Spring

We went out to the garden to dig out a stump.  Our neighbor said he would try to pull it out with his tractor, but we need to dig it down a bunch.  While we were out there I did a little survey work and discovered that spring has come under the winter brush.  Here is one of our nine rhubarb plants making way for the new season. 

New spring weeds and overwintered weeds were all over.  The rototiller will take care of many of them, but some of the larger one we pulled and gave to the chickens.  They always welcome the fresh green.

It was a pleasant day for filling the cows' water.  Our ten-year-old loves to be out there with her cows.  I wish it wasn't such a muck mess around there, but I guess that's life with large animals.

Garden Time

Today we planted celeriac.  It's a relative of celery, with the same flavor, but it grows into a big root like a turnip that you cube up into cooking.  Celery is really hard to grow in Idaho, although I've started some just to try.  Celeriac will have a better chance of getting mature before the heat hits.

It suddenly occurs to me that it's March 10th!  Ack!  I need to get onions started too.

Those lettuces we started in January are big and producing well.  We are regularly eating salad now.

My ten-year-old twins are studying magnetism and did a cool experiment. First they set this up, a magnet pulling a paper clip up but a thread preventing full contact.  Then they put different things in the empty space to find out what could disrupt the magnetic field.  Now that is science!

It has dried out a little and we'll try to get out into the garden today. 

New Lent

We made soup stock.  When we had our beef butchered, we asked for soup bones, and we have lots of them.  Making stock was easy — just throw those bones with attached meat into a pot, slice some onions in half, add a bunch of water, and let it simmer all day.  This batch yielded four half-gallons of dark brown fluid and enough solids left over to feed the chickens well tomorrow.

Today is Ash Wednesday and meat abstinence takes on a new tenor for us.  We will fast from meat and sugar, as is tradition.  But I think we will also make dinner exclusively from food God has given us from this land.  Eggs, cheese, milk, and veggies.  Lent is an time to focus on the compassion and mercy of God and that is no more tangible than in the food God has given us.

With Christina giving so much milk and cream, it adds up quickly.  We are suddenly overrun with cream.  When I mentioned that we have too much cream, the girls offered to drink it with cookies at snack.  Chuckling, we agreed.  They drank a half gallon of cream and said it was wonderful.  My husband helped them out.

I started another batch of ice cream.  It will go through the ice cream maker today and then harden in the freezer tonight.  Maybe I'll make a cherry pie tomorrow to melt it on.

Pre-Garden

As our egg production has come up, we are getting used to cooking with eggs again.  Our youngest is so happy to have scrambled eggs for breakfast every day and puddings have re-emerged in our menu plan. 

Everybody loves rice pudding.  After making it once the traditional way, I tried it with brown rice.  One daughter says it is better.  The others can't tell any difference.

Those sorry looking cabbages are looking less dead.  I trimmed all the nasty leaves off and new growth has already emerged.  I think it must have been sun exposure that did them in.  Okay, lesson learned.

It is snowing again today. Next week would be the traditional time to prepare the garden and get cold weather things planted like carrots, lettuce, peas, etc.  My older daughter said, "I hope it keep snowing so we don't have to work in the garden.  Wait!  You'll just make go out there in the mud.  I hope it dries up!"

Long Winter

Yesterday morning, for the first time, it smelled like spring.  Every year I am hit by an awareness of spring and this year I've had to wait until March to feel it.  The last few weeks I've had to consciously remind myself that winter doesn't last forever (but what if this is the first time!!).   Of course, this morning we got up to snow and chickens hiding under their coop.

The cows have known spring is coming for a while.  Every day they spend more time out in the pasture. And every day they spend more time with their heads down, rocking rhythmically, presumably getting something to eat.

We have reason to believe that Christina is pregnant.  The time has come and gone for her to go into heat.  She had one day where she seemed a little more energetic than normal, moo-ed twice, and beefy tried to jump on her twice, but that was it.  We called the breeder guy and he said it's probably just a little blip of hormonal cycle that the pregnancy didn't fully suppress.  I hope so.

Our breeder guy seems like an old time agricultural fellow, knows his stuff but is quiet and humble.  He comes all the way into town for us.  Like many quiet fellows, his humor is dry.  When he bred Christina the second time, he said she gave him a look that said, "that's the ugliest bull I ever saw."  We've been laughing about that ever since. 

One of the few things I don't like about homeschooling is correcting work.  I seem to do it only late in the evening, partially because that gives the girls time to turn everything in, partially because it's quiet, and partially because I procrastinate.   Thinking through geometry proofs, chemistry rational, and essays while parts of my brain have already waved goodbye is somewhere between frustrating and painful.

A fever and head cold has been working through the family.  Right now it's got me in its clutches.  While waiting for spring, I'm also waiting for good health.  Waiting.  Waiting.

But I believe I shall enjoy the Lord's goodness in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!
 — Psalm 27:13-14

Power of Advertising

Our self-sufficient lifestyle began 21 months ago when we moved into this house.  At the time we canceled our cable TV to use the digital antenna.  With all the work of moving and growing food, along with the switch to different, and more complicated, TV reception, we just never got back into watching TV.   We haven't left all media — we watch movies and documentaries — but it has been 21 months since I've seen a TV commercial.

Before we moved TV had been a regular part of our lives.  We had our favorite shows, we watched regularly, and we prided ourselves that we could resist the subtle and not so subtle marketing. 

Twenty-one months later I realize how wrong we were.  Some basic assumptions and beliefs have shifted in my life.  I used to think of shopping as relaxation or recreation.  Even grocery shopping let me buy something new and I enjoyed the constant flow of new things into my life.   I realize how new things were a message to myself that I was valuable, alive, and appropriately entertained.  That is exactly what the advertisers want us to think — the way to feel good is to buy something. 

I used to think of factory produced food as superior to home grown stuff.  Poverty was having to grow your own food.  Prosperity was being able to buy.  There were great mysteries in life that I left to the professionals — butchering chickens, making crackers, and breakfast cereal.  And that's exactly what the advertisers want us to think — leave it to the professionals.  Even the concept of cooking from scratch has changed, now including the comingling of a box of gelatin, a tub of sweetened whipped oil, and a tin can of fruit.

I used to think that environmental degradation, global poverty, and climate change were just too big to affect.  I couldn't change the practices of huge multinational corporations, and what difference did my little life make.  I carried despair but little action.  That's exactly what the advertisers want us to think — you can't make a change so don't try.

For a long time I've been aware that advertising numbs us into being mindless consumers, but I thought that awareness gave me immunity.  Now I realize how much it had stained my subconscious.  Awareness of advertising is not enough to resist it.  If everybody around you is drunk, sooner or later you'll feel wrong for being sober.  And so it is with advertising. 

Twenty-one months later I don't crave buying new things.  When we need something we buy it, but I don't look forward to it like I used to.  I find that our amateur homegrown food is not just as good, but is better and healthier and more abundant.   For the first time, I truly believe that our lifestyle makes a difference to global issues, because I believe God is big enough to use every good for greater good.

When people look at our lifestyle as eccentric and somewhat crazy, I don't agree anymore.  Instead, the standard American lifestyle is somewhat crazy.  Why do we think that milk and meat from crowded, sick animals raised on non-natural food is right?  Why do we think that a person's value originates with buying instead of with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?  Why do we think that genetically modified crops are superior to God's work?  Why do we think that a life well lived, in partnership with the divine, is not the most world changing thing?

Lent is coming.  This could be an opportunity in your life to take power away from advertising and give it to God.

Less Trash

In the days before paper filters, milk was strained through cloth, a reusable resource.  We've decided to adopt this practice once a day: cloth in the morning, paper filter in the evening.  We still do a paper filter once a day because it's a consistent medium to ensure the milk is straining fast.  If the filtering slows down, it's a symptom of mastitis, so a daily fast filter makes us feel good.

With so little packaging coming in the house, our trash volume has gone way down.  We have changed our trash schedule to only putting the bin out every two weeks, along with the recycles.  The contrast between our family of seven putting out a bin every two weeks and people down the street with two or three full bins every week is a demonstration of the trash produced by standard American living.  How much less we would consume if we just stopped throwing so much away.

Beefy spent a good portion of the day running around the pasture.  At nine months old, sometimes he seems so grown up, but then he runs around the pasture kicking his feet and we remember he's still a little kid cow.  When he came to us at 2-1/2 months, the first thing he did was run down the pasture.  Maybe he thinks he's a horse. 

Sorry Plants

Those cabbage plants I put outside are looking pretty sorry.  Dang.  Does this look familiar to anyone?

They may have been burned by the sun; I didn't take them out a little bit each day to harden them off.  They may be reacting to the cold, but that seems unlikely.  They may have gotten too hot before I realized how warm it got inside that little greenhouse and opened it up.  They look sorry, but they may survive.  I hope.

The sun came out and the cows have been enjoying it.  We see them eating a little on the pasture once in a while, so there must be a little grass growth.

For as much as we cook, you'd thing we'd make a full dinner every day, but you'd be dead wrong.  By evening I'm wiped out.  I prefer to make a big pot and eat on it for upwards of a week.  Today we made chili.  Here it is at the beginning — soaked beans at the bottom of the pot, onions, meat, tomato sauce, molasses, chili power, salt, and zucchini.  I put grated zucchini in all soups — we have gobs and it's a nice thickener.   This will feed for us for at least five meals.  Praise God!

Road Food

My teenage daughters and I are going on a trip in a few weeks to the LA Religious Education Congress.  I've gone for at least ten years and this conference is one of the highlights of my year.  During the conference, I often find myself inspired to take a leap into something that has been nagging at me.  It was at LA Congress several years ago that I decided to write a book.  It was at LA Congress two years ago that I sketched out our food growing plans.

This will be the first year for my teenage daughters and they are excited for the road trip.  We are starting to get food ready now — today it is jerky.  Our hamburger has almost run out, so we ground some chuck roast.  It was the first time we've ground meat and was easier than I expected.  After running the meat and fat through two times it was smooth and even.

After mixing in the spices and curing salt, my husband put them in strips in the dehydrator.  They spent all day drying.  The last step is dabbing off the oil before putting them away.

The hardest part of this lifestyle is remembering things in the evening.  Yesterday evening we had to pull out the jerky out and not forget it all night.  I also had some cream cheese draining in the pantry and some butter to put away.  I've started writing notes on our white board to remind myself, but that only works if I look at the board.