Milk for Us

Christina continues to improve. Yesterday she seemed marginal, but she came out of it. Her eating is not quite up to normal, but it continues to improve.  This evening we will milk her out fully for the first time.  We are still seeing signs of mild mastitis but we're hoping that it will resolve with diligent milking.

This morning we had our first snow.  After milking, we turned jerky out with her while we cleaned the shed.  He bounded around in that wild, goofy way that babies do and Christina tried to keep up with him.  These times in the morning are becoming cow parties.

We are finding a functional pattern of letting jerky nurse while we milk.  It helps with the let down and he does his own work.   Christina is pretty full and it takes a lot of strength to milk her.  My arms have probably weakened in these two months too.

Christina is past the colostrum days and her milk is now for us.  Tomorrow we will make our first yogurt in two months, and maybe fromage blanc, and we're thinking about whip cream.  Monday I'll make cottage cheese.  These what-to-make-first decisions are difficult.

The storm we've been racing has come in, but the temperature has stayed above freezing.  Work continues on piping water out to the cows.  We got it dug out, laid all the pipe, and have most of it filled back in.  Tomorrow we'll enjoy some sabbath rest and we're hoping to finish Monday.  The kids were complaining about the work until I explained how much water they would have to cart out to the cows *every* day if we didn't do this.  The complaining stopped.

Our Christina is Back

This morning we woke up to a familiar cow.  Christina was standing by the fence looking at us, with ears aimed toward the house, the same place as she was every morning last summer.  She had that look on her face, I'm ready, you can come now.  When we opened the gate to the milk parlor she hurried in, gave her calf a lick and then enthusiastically headed for her candy (molasses covered grain).

Jerky was pretty enthusiastic too.  We let him nurse on the quarter that we're worried about while we milked the other three.  He emptied it out faster than we ever could.  We didn't fully milk her out, just took the pressure off, but it was still almost three quarts.

With milking done, we turned to cleaning out the shed.  It had lots of cow pies, more than we've seen in the last three days combined.  A high functioning GI tract is another sign that she is recovering.  In the short time we were out there, she pooped twice.  Normally I would have been bothered, but this morning it was welcome.

Remember that trench we made on Monday before this all started?  It's still there and a big storm is heading in.  It's supposed to rain and snow for the next four days and get really cold — a forecast low of 5F next Tuesday.  Yesterday my husband made it to the store for all the pipes and fittings.  This morning he'll get them all put together in the garage and we'll all help lay them in as fast as we can go.  Hopefully we can get it all laid today, but it won't be hooked up.  I guess we'll be carrying water out to the cows for a while.

On Monday night I also started some tomatoes.  They were all frozen and Monday I scalled them and slipped their skins off.  I filled two buckets and hung them in cheese cloth to drain overnight.  I didn't get back to them until Wednesday.  By this time, almost all of the water had drained out.  I put the resulting pulp in a pot and heated it up.  In less than 30 minutes, we had thick paste. Those six or seven gallons of tomatoes reduced down to three pints of paste.

Today we praise God for Christina's health, we watch to make sure it sustains, and we thank God for all the people who have helped us through it.

Day 3: It's Not Over

The night went well, but then Christina went down again this morning.  Last night she ate constantly and stayed on her feet all evening.  My husband got up once to check on her.  I feared she would be laying down sleeping and then we'd worry, but instead she was out in the pasture grazing.

This morning we went out to milk for the first time.  She was really full.  We planned to only take two quarts to decrease the draw on her body, but it seemed that we needed to take the fullness off.  After five quarts it finally seemed like she wasn't totally full.  When I filtered the milk, it had lots tiny clots, which can be a sign of mastitis.  Oh... dang... now what?  The best treatment for mastitis is to fully milk her out but the best treatment for milk fever is to not fully milk her out.  Our friend from the dairy said, it really comes down to which do you want to treat: milk fever or mastitis.  Well, since we have some experience with milk fever...

We decided on a compromise.  We went back and fully milked out the one quarter that seemed the hardest, and therefore might be the one infected.  If it is mastitis, it's still pretty mild.

In the midst of all this, we noticed that jerky sounded gurgly when he breathed.  He's at risk of pneumonia because he didn't get the colostrum as quickly as he should have, so we took his temperature to see if he was developing an infection.  I am getting way too experienced at taking cows' temperatures.  It was normal, thank God.

After milking we let jerky go with Christina and he immediately started suckling.  Two hours later we noticed that she had stopped eating.  Uh oh.  I ran to the store and bought extra of everything, including four bottles of calcium.  When I got back she had laid down and wasn't doing anything.  Her nose was dry but her head and ears were up.  We prepared for another under the skin injection, but this time with a cow who had a bit of spunk in her.  We would tie her up but we needed to be able to release her quickly if she flopped around. First I searched the internet for quick release knots and then we practiced tying them.  Finally, we headed out, ready for a fight.

Our older daughters were stationed at her back end to push her down if she tried to get up.  We tied her to the post and got the shot going.  She actually didn't fight too hard, but she did jerk her head and the needle pulled out. My husband stuck her again and this time the fluid started dribbling out of the first hole.  So he had one hand holding the needle and the other one pushing on the first hole.  It would have been funny if she wasn't so sick.  He finally gave up and went to the other side of her neck.

That shot went better, but the first shots were still leaking a bit.  Again he had one hand on the needle and another hand on the two leaking holes.  Toward the end, Christina leaned her head over on me as if to say, "I don't feel good."  My older daughters spent the whole time watching, trying not think about the needle, but they didn't have to shove a cow back to the ground.

In half-an-hour she was still laying down, but chewing her cud.  In an hour and a half, she got up and has been eating ever since.  Until she is completely out of the woods, we will keep the calf away from her.  At least we have the milking area gated off so we have a place for him where they can be separated but still see and smell each other.

Yesterday her head was all the way down and it took two bottles of calcium and six hours to get up.  Today it was one bottle and one-and-a-half hours.  We're looking forward to a no-bottle day.  Then we'll only have mastitis to fight...  and a calf to feed...  and keep healthy...

Recovery

Christina is up and eating!  It's a beautiful, wonderful thing.  She's not out of the woods yet, but things look really good.  She tried four times before she finally got to her feet.  Those legs were wiggly and wobbly.  She stood still for quite a while and then took her first shaky steps.  She went right over to her baby and then promptly to the food.  She hasn't eaten in over a day and we are so relieved.

It's been a long day.  After that first bottle of calcium this morning, she still wasn't getting up and her temperature stayed low.  At 12:30pm we gave her another bottle of calcium under her skin.  While we were waiting for the solution to drain into her, I took her temperature again and it was just beginning to come up.

An hour later we took her temperature; it was coming up but she still looked awful.  After a bit she picked up her head and kept it up, looking around.  We expected her to get up soon, but by 3:30pm she was still down.  We talked to another vet and she recommended that we roll her over (yeah, she actually told us to roll over a thousand pound cow).  She said that the side she was laying on would be really sore and falling asleep.  Five of us pushed with everything we had.  Finally, on the sixth try she went over.  We brought her calf over and she even tried to get up.  Her legs shook hard and she went back down.  After several more tries, she finally got her back legs under her and straightened up in slow motion. 

Jerky hasn't had much attention today.  He's gotten some milk in the bottle, but was shivering.  We got out an old coat to wrap around him and set up a heat lamp.  We have him in the milk area so Christina can't fall on him but close enough that they can touch noses.

Tonight we'll keep an eye on Christina to make sure she doesn't go back down.  Tomorrow, her due date, we'll do our first real milking and, God willing, will begin normal, mundane milking.

Thank you for all the prayers.  God has answered them and saved our cow.  I think I'll be able to sleep tonight.

A Calf!

We found a calf in the shed this morning!  Christina had calved in the night, in fact, probably pretty recently.  It was still wet.  We covered it with towels and gave it a good rubbing. Christina was licking it well.  I got a glimpse under it's tail and didn't see any boy parts, so we think it might be a girl.  It's windy and stormy today, but inside the shed, in this corner she has it in, feels cozy and decent.

I'm sad that we missed the birth, but not that sad since it happened in the middle of the night.  Yesterday was a long, hard day.

We started an emergency project.  We have a hose that runs out to the cows for their water and we got heat tape to keep it defrosted through the winter.  After opening it up, my husband discovered that he'd have to buy some heavy-duty extension cables to make it work, so we decided to put our time and money into a longer term solution — burying a pipe below the frostline.

My husband spent the morning getting things ready.  Early afternoon he rented the trencher.  The guy at the shop said that a 100 foot trench would take a couple hours.  As soon as he started, things looked dismal. The ground was heavy and slippery and it the going was slow.

As the sun was going down, he was no where near done.  I took a headlamp out to him and he kept going.   We took water and cheese out to him every half hour and he kept going.  I took this picture of him working.  My camera isn't very good in the dark, but it didn't look much better to the naked eye.  Finally, at 9:30pm, after six hours, the trench was done.

I've heard about farmers having to work in the dark and always thought it sounded awful.  His spirits seems pretty good, but I would have been cranky.  At least it wasn't freezing cold.

All the while I was inside taking care of kids by myself, while getting tomatoes skinned and hanging.  I've heard that the self-sufficient lifestyle means regular 12-hour days.  Part of me feels good at investing so much hard work.  Part of me does not.

But then I see that cute little calf.  There is joy and wonder in the midst of all this work that is bigger than any of us.  Christina let us over to the calf, but pushed beefy back when he tried to get too close.  Christina seems okay, no sign of milk fever, and is enjoying her first morning with her baby.  Today we'll watch closely to make sure she doesn't develop milk fever, that the calf nurses, and that everybody gets along okay.

This morning will be our first milking.  In five days the colostrum should be done and we'll be drinking fresh milk.  Praise God, creator of all good things and the mother of all mothers!

Bonus Eggs

Seven eggs!!  We got seven eggs!  The twins ran in from putting the chickies to bed with eggs rolled up in their shirts.  How will I use them all?!

I had shifted my thinking to three or four eggs a day. I had accepted it as God's way and in humility, I adjusted.  Right at that moment to have seven eggs in one day feels like God winking at me: that's right, it all came from me in the first place, and today I felt like a bigger gift just to surprise you.

It is so easy to take control from God.  When we got our first laid egg last February, it was magical.  The eggs were just there and all we had to do was go get them. But as time went on, I began to feel entitled to those eggs.  When they started to decline, I was a little out of sorts.  I felt the eggs were mine now, that somehow I had earned them.  I had gotten to that place without thinking about it, without any conscious or malicious thoughts toward God.  My eyesight had dimmed until God was the small wish-giver that pervades most of American spirituality.  And then God reminded me, again, of who is the Creator and who isn't.

Christina looks different this morning.  Her udder is rounder and the birthing area has become red and a little swollen.  Three days until her due date.

We pulled out the last cheese I made before Christina dried up.  It had more holes in it than I had hoped, but the flavor is good, although mild.  It tells me that I still don't have it all figured out (dang!), but things are moving in the right direction.  When Christina freshens I'll make extra cheese so some has time to sit around and get sharp. This cheese was two months old.  We have to let it sit for six months to get sharp.

With two bushels of grain corn drying in the garage, we figured it was time to use some.  We popping the kernels off the cob and then we ran it through the grain mill.  It ground fine like wheat flour.  Tomorrow I'll add some to our bread and see how it goes.

A friend told me about being caught in a blizzard years ago and having to live off the canned food in the pantry for a week.  I realized that we could probably live off the food we have stocked away for at least a month.  We rarely get traffic stopping blizzards here in Boise, but now I kind of look forward to one, just knowing how well we'd eat through it.

Cozy Warm

It is a day of cooking.  I started with putting together a big stew, made mostly from homegrown food — carrots, onions, potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, peas, beans, yellow squash — along with beef, celery, rice, thyme, salt, and pepper.  I kept cutting and adding until the pot was full.

The onion skins, celery tops, etc. went into anther pot with a beef soup bone to make stock.  We'll simmer them both all day and see what happens.

As soon as the soup was done, I realized that we are out of bread, so I ground the wheat and made the dough.

The pumpkin bars I made yesterday, from a recipe in Simply in Season, were a big hit.  They were gone by evening.  I put another batch in the oven for today's snack.  We called them zucca bars. My two-year-old was so cute saying, "dat good, dat zucca bar."

It's been two months since I put that parmesan to age.  The book says to oil it to keep it from cracking.  Without saying a word, I handed the block to my daughter and asked her how it smelled.  She took a long whiff and said, "that smells like parmesan."  That's a good sign!  I rubbed it with olive oil and put it back in the cellar.  Next July we'll find out if it tastes like parmesan.

It been freezing at night but warming up during the day.  Our automatic waterer for the chickens had a layer of ice this morning.  Before letting the chickens out of the coop, my daughter broke it up enough for them to get to the water while the ice melts during the day.  Soon, we'll have to switch to the heated waterers, which means filling them every few days.  Last year we didn't have warmers so we took water out three times a day in the coldest weather.

Christina seems the same.  We are one week from her due date.  This morning as my husband headed out to feed the cows he said, "well I think I'll go count cows."    She'll probably be late, but we're still watching her.  We are down to three gallons of milk and one quart of cream in the freezer.  I'm hoping it'll be sooner rather than later.

Yesterday we entered the twelve darkest weeks of the year.  Here in Boise, we also deal with haze for much of the winter and it makes it even darker.  Today with the sun shining into the kitchen and the cooking stew warming the house, it feels cozy.  Thanksgiving this year will be special with so much harvest of our own.

Sustainable Living

We are halfway through Christina's dry period.  It's been a month without the morning and evening milkings that kept me grounded in the day, a month of making the milk last, a month without learning the next thing to make good cheese.  I'm trying to focus on the benefits of this rest time, but I'm not very good at living without what I want.

Christina and beefy have eaten the east pasture down and we moved them back. It's been four weeks and the west pasture looks decent. Christina knew just what was going on and headed right over; beefy needed a little more encouragement, but they immediately began feasting on the new fresh grass.  It makes me laugh to see cows with heads down, rocking back as they plow through grass.  They are celebrating eating too.

The book says that cows won't eat an entire pasture and don't expect them to.  But our cows do.  Today when we moved them off the east pasture it looked like it had been mowed clean.  The last few days I've seen them out there working even the little blades.  I worry that they're starving, so we check the hay feeder but they have enough.  I think they just love fresh grass and they'll take a little bit as a snack, even while living of the dried stuff.

With them moved, it means that we have to scoop the cow pies to clean out the east pasture.  Ack!  When will we work that in?  My husband's working on building a little harrower that will break up the cow pies and then we won't have to scoop as much.  I wish he'd hurry.

With the fading sun, hanging the laundry requires a new kind of organization.  The trees to the south, that provide such wonderful shade in the heat of the summer, now shade a much larger area, including the clothesline.  With cooler temperatures and shorter days, it takes all day long to dry a load of laundry instead of just a few hours.  We are limited to two loads a day and they must go up early in the morning.  What I miss the most is the smell of sun-dried cloth.

Jerky has become everybody's favorite snack.  My husband is trying to do jerky with some sliced meat, rather than hamburger.  After making twenty or thirty thin slices, he says that hamburger is the better way to go.  This meat will marinade for a day and then go into the dehydrator.

This sustainable living that we are doing sure does take a lot of work, but it feels like such relevant work and it is grounded in relationship.  Thank you God for meaningful work.

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!

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.