I Pray They All Make It

Oh Good Lord. I just found some squash that has been thawing in the frig for a long time, maybe a few weeks.  It didn't smell bad so I cooked it up into three pumpkin pies.  Pumpkin pie is a multi-purpose food.  Plain it's breakfast or snack.  Add whipped cream and it's dessert!

This has been one of the coolest Memorial Days I can remember.  Today the rain finally broke and we put in a hard day in the garden.  It is time to get everything planted.  Every day we wait now reduces our yield.

One of us ran the cultivator down the rows to pull up the weeds, then another came behind with a hoe to put the row back together and take care of any surviving weeds.  Finally, I put seeds and plants in the ground.  We got the sweet pepper plants in, along with several marigolds.  I laid out the seed packets and got quite a few taken care of — pickling cucumbers, slicing cucumbers, radishes, zucchini, dry beans, flour corn, green beans, and squash.  We planted one section in the "three sisters," the Native American reference to corn, squash, and beans growing together. I've never done it so it will be fun to see how it turns out.

While we were out, my husband said, "have you looked closely at this wheat?"  Look what we found!  Seed heads.  There are lots and lots of them.

I pruned an apple tree that had a broken limb and took the opportunity to look over our fruit trees.  There are lots of baby fruits on those trees.  Oh, I pray they all make it.

Muddy Planting

It's been raining for several days and the forecast is to keep raining all weekend.  It's cold and muddy and I have other things to do, but these are ideal conditions for baby plants.  So we headed out and got the last of front garden planted. 

We put in peppers that we've grown from seed.  We grew four different kinds of hot peppers — jalapeno, habanero, poblano, and serano.  The last two are good for chili power and chili verde, I think.  My husband loves hot peppers so he talked me into the jalapenos and habaneros. 

The last two herbs got planted — rosemary and majorem.  Getting those herbs to grow is no easy trick.  Of the four pots of rosemary I planted with five seeds each, I got one plant.  I carefully put it in the ground and prayed over it.

While we were out we could survey the rest of the garden.  The raspberries we put in last year are healthy and covered in blossoms.  The carrots and spinach have germinated.  The snow peas are several inches high.  I also spotted some baby weeds making their way into the world, but that's for another day.

My daughter planted okra and I planted popcorn, brussels spouts, watermelon, cilantro, and chives.  Finally, we tucked in some marigold plants and came in out of the cold.  I think it's time for some hot chocolate.

Coming to the End

The baby chicks seem to have quadrupled in size at two weeks old.  They are growing so fast.  We opened up the other end of the brooder to give them more space.  We may be pushing it to go four weeks before moving them to shed outside.  They are easier to take care of in the garage than outside so we'll wait as long as we can, but they get more flighty when they are packed too tightly and these cardboard boxes can't grow any bigger to give them more space.

Yesterday I made cheese #58, a colby.  The process is smooth in my head, I remember all the steps without looking, but I still messed it up by heating the curds too quickly.  Dang.  Hopefully it will still turn out good.

Our cheeses have flavor comparable to the expensive "specialty" cheese at the store, even the mild ones.  The flavor isn't strong, but it's well developed.  My husband has been making toast with melted cheese for years, which I never much enjoyed, until we did it with these homemade cheeses.  Wow, it's good!

Fast food in our lives means food that we've cooked another day.  Today we're making a big pot of stew for the freezer.  When the day has been busy with weeding or cheesemaking or canning, it's nice to pull something out of the freezer and dinner is ready in 15 minutes.

Our children follow a year-round schedule for schooling.  Most of the time they are enjoying being off while their friends are in school, but next week is the last week of school around here and my daughters have five more weeks to go.  I'm anticipating a little bit of a hardship with that.  Even though we only take a two week break in between "years," there is something about getting to the end of the year that even wears me out.  I find myself trying to condense stuff to finish a little early.

Early Garden

That lettuce I started from seed and transplanted six weeks ago has grown well.  We are enjoying salads every evening along with some early radishes.  I think it's a pain to wash lettuce, but the salads are so good!  They are crisp, sweet, and rich.

We are slowly getting on top of the weeds in the garden.  This old cultivator is like a manual roto-tiller.  It works remarkably well.  Three passes plows up the row.  One or two more days and we'll have all the garden done.  It rained hard last night, so we'll see if we can get out there today.

The two cups of wheat I sprinkled on the ground last fall has grown to about two feet high.  It's such a pretty mass of flowing green in the wind.

After a few times of throwing tall, green grass to the cows while we were weeding, they now are intensely interested in our afternoon activity.  They come over to the fence and if grass doesn't come flying, they start mooing at us.  It just cracks me up.  We were working the garden to a chorus of cows.  Then we broke down and picked some grass for them.

First Romano

After five months aging, we cut into our first romano.  We pulled out the knife and it did nothing on that hard rind.  Then we tried the electric knife.  Still nothing.  Finally we got the bone saw and slowly chewed our way through the block. 

It took alot of strength. My husband had to throw some body weight into it.  The flavor was pretty mild, which is a little disappointing after all that work, but we've noticed a big difference in our cheddar's flavor from the day we open it until two days later in the frig.  We're hoping this flavors-up too.  That block of cheese grated up to fill a gallon bag.  It's time to make pizza!

I finished the quilt top.  This quilt will be 90"x90".  I didn't mean to make the border so big, but after they were cut, the deed was done. I don't have enough of any one fabric for the back side so I might piece together two different ones, or maybe I'll look for a sturdy sheet for the backing.

After laying it out, my three-year-old gave it a test drive.

My teenagers do lots of talking about what they want.  Ok, they're complaining about what they don't have — things and leisure.  I remembering wishing similar things when I was their age, and suffering for lack of them.  Age and this life have taught me how I can have anything that is worth having because God has given me the strength and ingenuity to grow it or build it.  That's a powerful lesson that I hope my children will learn faster than I did.

It's Different

After the excitement and success of throwing the pulled grass and clover to the cows, it occurred to us that they'd be willing to do the work.  My husband walked Christina out of her pasture and over to the weeds.  She leaves the roots in, but we can take care of those later. This is heavy, healthy grass.  She worked it with gusto.

The outside chores seem to grow faster than we can keep up.  The garden needs weeded badly.  We need to bury an irrigation pipe and then move the manure pile over.  The lawn needs mowed.  The asparagus needs moved.  And then there's planting. I'm having a memory that last May was a pretty busy time too.

We are falling into a schedule of regular work outside, but there is so much to be done that it's hard to decide what to tackle first.  I remind myself that this is process.  We'll get to the immediate stuff and over time we'll see the long term stuff take shape.  But I'm impatient.  I want it all done now, sort of like the spiritual life.  I want to "be there" spiritually right now, but I know that the key to happiness is to enjoy the journey.

Now that we cook most everything from scratch we are learning new ways of taste.  Our food isn't manufactured to identical industrial standards and everything tastes a little different.  We make bread every other day and it's always a little bit different.  This one turned out especially good.

Weeding Surprise

I only got one row weeded.  Of course, it's the strawberries.  Everything else can struggle, but I want those strawberries to be happy.

We had intended to each do a row, but when we went out, we discovered that some early weeds were going to seed, so those were our first priority.  There was a big patch over by the irrigation pipe.

As we started pulling the two and three foot high grass, we discovered that the asparagus hadn't died.  We planted this asparagus last year, but it didn't seem to do well and since I hadn't seen it earlier, I figured it didn't make it.  But here they are!  The stems are thin but they're alive.  I might transplant these to give them a better place to live.

As we pulled the grass and clover, it occurred to us that this is cow food.  Within moments of throwing bunches of it over the fence, the cows came over and started eating like it was a feast.  We had trouble throwing the grass fast enough.  Like many of the surprises God keeps for us, we never expected that weeding would become such a happy event with cows giving us eyes and gentle moo's.

There's nothing like a video of the little chicks.  Here you go!

Good Growing Weather

The chicks are one week old.  They are eating and drinking alot more!  We have to refill the feeders several times a day now and they clog the waterers within a few hours.  Chickens naturally scratch and kick stuff around.  These little chicks kick so much stuff into the waterers and there's no room for water.  We hung a big waterer at one end that hopefully won't fill up with stuff so fast.

We have had only one fatality, so we still have 79 chicks.  After making it past this first week, I don't expect many will die, so we probably won't have the typical 10% failure rate.  These little chicks are coddled in a way they don't get at commercial farms.

Last week it warmed up into the 80's and then over the weekend it rained.  The warm wet weather is ideal for the garden.  I put a bunch of my seedings in the front garden and they are all looking strong.  The front garden looks so good.

The back garden looks different.  This weather has been good for the weeds too.  In the back garden the weeds are creating a ground cover only occasionally interrupted by garden plants.  You can barely see the lettuce on the back left of this photo.  But the soil is so muddy we can't get out there to pull weeds.  Hopefully the ground will have dried out enough to weed tomorrow.

That lettuce looks big enough to pick.  I'm looking forward to a salad to reward my weeding efforts.

Ah... That's Better

We opened up a side of the brooder and now the chicks have room to get to the food and water without fighting a crowd.  In only three days this little chicks have grown noticeably and move a lot faster.  Overnight we had our first casualty.  They say that up to 10% of chicks won't make it, so we're on track.

My daughters modeled the different kind of chicks we have.  This is a White Plymouth Rock.  We have 55 of them (we think).  They are good layers and grow big for meat.  We'll keep 15 for the next flock and the rest go to the freezer in September.

We have a dozen of these Black Australorps.  They are good layers.

We think these are the Araucanas.  They don't lay better than average but their eggs are large and pale green.  It just seemed like fun.

My daughters talked us into a "show" bird for their 4-H project.  This is a White Crested Polish.  The adult picture looks really funny to me, but my daughter thought it was cool.

The other daughter got a White Silkie.  These are small birds but their feathers stay really soft and silkie.

Baby Chickens

Yesterday we drove out to Caldwell and picked up our order of day-old chicks.  We ordered 2 Araucana, the kind that lay pale green eggs, 6 Black Australorp, a White Crested Black Polish as a pet, a White Silkie as a pet and 50 White Plymouth Rocks.  That's a total of 60.  When we picked them they said they threw in a few extra.

The first step with new chicks is to take them out one at a time and dip their beak into the water until they take their first drink.  As we took them out we counted and discovered they threw in more than a few extra.  There were 80 chicks!  That's a lot. 

The brooder we set up is way too small.  The largest group we've brooded before was 35 so this is a lot more. This brooder was probably too small for 60 but it's definitely too small for 80.  Today we need to extend it by taping boxes on the ends to make it longer. 

The kids love the baby chicks.  They ask about once an hour if they can hold them.

Some of these chickens will replace our laying flock and the rest will go to the freezer.  If these all live, we'll be butchering over 60.  The largest number we've butchered in the past was 25 or 30.  Hmm... we might have to do two butcher days.

The chicks cost $95 total so the portion for chickens in the freezer is about $71.  We spent $20 on chick feed.  When they get bigger we'll switch them to grain that we mix ourselves which will cost about $30.  That averages out to $2 per chicken in the freezer.  Our finished chickens weight about 3-4 lbs.  That works out to about 50¢/lb. for humanly raised meat. 

Weed Success

After letting the chickens out and moving the little pen, we found a nice hole in the weeds.  We don't know how it affected the chickens being in there all day, but that weed control is nice. 

We moved the pen and put in more chickens this morning.  I'm thinking my husband should make another little pen so we can have two work gangs of chickens going at once.

The average last frost for this area is May 9th, yesterday.  I have tender plants ready to go in the ground and the 10 day forecast isn't anywhere close to freezing, but if I plant and a frost comes, it will be a lot of work to save them.  Do we plant so it's less work taking care of the plants but risk the hard work of protecting from frost?  It's a real discernment in laziness.

Weed Help

Saturday morning we woke up to rain falling and suddenly noticed the garden full of green.  Closer inspection revealed it wasn't stuff we planted.  The crab grass and perennial thistle are having a wonderful time. Ugh.  These are such difficult weeds to conquer.  But then we had an idea.  Let the chickens do the work!

My husband built a little pen from livestock fence.  We put some water and four chickens in there this morning.  We didn't give them any food so that they would work hard on the weeds, eating deep down to the roots.  The area already is looking much better.  we plan to keep this up, moving the little pen to a new area each day.

After a second tilling, we got furrows cut into the front garden.  I plowed rows and then my husband followed with the push furrower.  The furrows were deeper and better defined than when we skipped the tractor step.  Now it's ready for planting!

Tomorrow our chicks arrive, which means today we have to get the brooder ready.  I think there are 56 little day-old chicks arriving.  Several will be for my daughter's 4-H project, about 35 will be for the freezer in September when they're grown, and 15 will replace the current flock.

Baby Garden

My little plants in their jiffy pellets are getting too big, but it's not quite time to put them outside.   I transplanted them into bigger pots.  These are really big pots, so I put two per pot.  It will give them room to grow for a few more weeks until it's warm enough outside.

My plants in the basement are outgrowing their spot under the lights.  A friend pointed out that the average last frost in Boise is May 9th, so we decided it's time to get these guys used to sunlight.  Yesterday they were out for two hours.  Today they stayed out for four.  Tomorrow will be six, and on until they can go the whole day without being traumatized.

Those big leafy things on the edges are celery.  This is not a good climate to grow celery — they need a long cool season without frost.  Here we've got eight weeks at most between last frost and intense heat.  But, I'm still giving it a try.  Even if they're small, they will be great in soup next winter.

Christina's milk is different every day.  Over the winter when she ate hay, the milk and cream levels were pretty consistent day to day.  Now things are fluctuating a lot.  The cream level swings between a shallow ¹⁄6 layer up to a think ⅓ layer.  Her production has stayed up at 4½ to 5 gallons a day for the last three months, with no drop off as we expected.  My theory is that as the pasture grows, it feeds her so well that her production has stayed up and the cream level is the result of the different stuff growing in the pasture.  We originally planted with a "pasture mix" that had different kinds of grasses and legumes.  Last fall we overplanted with alfalfa.

Tomorrow my two teenage daughters take their first AP test.  They have been working all year getting ready for this test but their teacher (me) is inexperienced and the preparation hasn't been smooth.  Homeschooling has so many benefits, but one of the draw backs is that the teacher is always inexperienced, kind of like parenting.  I pray my daughters don't pay the price for my lack of experience.  By noon tomorrow the test will be over and then two aching months of waiting for the scores begins.

The End of Weeds (well, some of them)

I tilled the front garden.  This area is high on one side so the flood irrigation leaves some parts dry and drowns others.  After tilling it, we used the scraper to pull some dirt from the top to the bottom.  After drying out overnight, we'll till it again and get furrows cut in.

There were some nasty weeds out there.  It was satisfying to watch the rototiller do them in.  Our well head is right in the middle of the garden area and is surrounded by healthy perennial weeds.  We need to deal with that soon, but other stuff comes first.

As I was tilling, I was able to admire the raspberries we put in last year.  They look healthy and are growing quickly.

I have had tilling on my to-do list for several weeks, but it always seemed too cold, too windy, or I was tired.  They say that part of the farming life is working when the weather is ready instead of when you are.   Having grown up in the city and working when it fit my schedule, it's a real effort to get moving by the land's schedule.  I wonder if people who grew up with this life have an easier time picking themselves up and going to work. This is one more lesson in living in the present moment.

Our full dairy day went well.  The hardest part for me is remembering to come back when I've started something.  At 10pm I remembered the fromage blanc and got it hanging for the night.  I remembered the "fresh" culture and got it poured into ice cube trays to freeze overnight.  The butter didn't need attention. But I forgot the romano and this morning discovered it had brined for 24 hours instead of 12.

This morning I mixed a little salt and whey into the fromage blanc until it was a spreadable consistency. This will be wonderful on toast with jam.

Full Dairy Day

This romano is coming out of the press and going into an all day brine.  It is cheese #55.  I am slowly learning how to make cheese better and how to accept the things that just don't work out. 

We're still getting holes in the cheese.  I emailed the cheese supply place about the holes and they said that we might try stirring less (we can do that!) or adding more pressure.  We're doing both.  It'll be two months before we know if it worked.

The day is full of dairy stuff.  A cheese culture is growing in a jar in warm water inside the crock pot.  A warmed gallon of whole milk with culture and tiny bit of rennet will be fromage blanc tomorrow after spending the night draining.  Cream is culturing in warm water to be churned into butter tomorrow.

Yesterday we had a family come over at milking time to learn about Christina and how we do things.  They plan to become regular milk customers.  It's so much fun to see people taste their first Christina milk and the smiles as they see how we live.  They all tried milking and did pretty good.  The kids especially liked visiting the steers who seemed to enjoy the attention.

Today we opened a new bucket of wheat.  We have six buckets left of the sixteen we started with.  But then I remembered that it's May and we bought that 700 lbs. of wheat in July or August.  This year we'll buy more if the crop is surplus or the same if it's not.  After a year of this Idaho organic whole wheat, I can't imagine we'll ever go back.