Life and Death

It's been a while since I've written, so I thought I'd make up for it with some really intense subject matter--Life and Death.  I used to have the impression that farmers were people who made life happen--farmers help plants and animals to grow and thrive, so that the people who eat them can grow and thrive.  And this is true.  I understand myself as a food midwife, ushering zucchini and eggs and cheese and jam into the world.  But farming is undeniably also about death.  There's a lot of casual death around here.  Out in the garden, where we are helping the tomatoes and carrots and beans to grow, we pull out any plant that we don't want there, starve it of water and nutrients, and throw it on the compost heap to rot.  The beautiful red beetles that were munching on the potatoes last week were smashed under my boot by the handful.  Of course, too, we know that the turkeys that I've fallen so in love with will be dinner come November, and that we are raising two beautiful calves that will likely be dinner too, and that soon we have to slaughter a couple of roosters because we have too many of them.  I know that life and death is everywhere in the world, but the interplay between them is so close to the surface here on the farm.  Yesterday it bubbled up right in my hands.  We had a little chick, two or three weeks old, who couldn't walk.  Something had gone wrong with his or her legs, and the poor little thing would flop over every time it tried to stand.  We tried nursing it, separating it from the others and giving it its own food and water, making little splints out of pipecleaners... but none of it worked.  The Chick sat in one place for a day and a half, unable to hobble even to the dish of food we'd put out for it.  And so we had to kill it.  I know that I kill mosquitos all the time, and weeds, and that I've eaten meat for most of my life and so am implicit in the killing of animals, but this was the first creature that I've had to take in my hands with the implicit purpose of ending its little life.  I could feel it breathing, and hear it chirping, and he relaxed in my hands when I turned him on his back and through my tears I had to twist its neck.  I don't think I was decisive enough--it kept breathing, chirping, flopping.  Brendan gave it a few more twists and we left it on the compost pile and went to eat breakfast.  And our lives go on.  One becomes very aware, on a farm, how much our living is tied up in dying--not just our own eventual deaths, which color everything, but the little lives extinguished for our survival--or even just our comfort--every day.  It's enough to make one stop and think, isn't it? 

Me and My Cow Friends

I'm working on befriending the cows.  I really want to learn to milk, so that I can give Sue some time off.  And so I can know how to milk a cow!  I've been spending a bit of time in the pasture each day with a pocket full of cow cookies and sweet grain, trying to convince them that I'm a pretty nice person, really.  LaFonda is such a sweet and loving cow that the very first time I came out she let me brush her all over.  She's the one I most want to love me, since she's the milk cow. 

Her calf, Lindyhop, is less convinced.  Here he is playing on the compost pile--he's kind of a goof!  He's getting bolder--now he'll come and lick my fingers, if I'm patient, and today he even let me pet him for a second.

Lariat is kind of a grouch.  She knew that I had food today and came right up, and would tolerate petting if I kept up a steady stream of food, but I could tell she didn't like it.  When I tried to spend time with the calves, she actually headbutted Lindy out of the way to get to my pocket-full of grain!  At least she let me touch her--she used to take one sniff and turn around as if to say "nope.  we're NOT friends."  I don't have a good picture of Lariat's calf Jitterbug, who's beautiful and black and very shy.  I can't haven't ever gotten close enough to touch her, although she's starting to get used to my presence.  I'm hoping to start halter training the calves soon, but I'll need to get the piggy mamas out of the way first! 

 Lindyhop, the steer calf, is starting to be convinced.  He'll lick my fingers a little and today he let me pet him for a second. 

And Now We're Farmers!

I'm sorry that I haven't posted anything yet--the four days since we got here to Squash Blossom Farm have been FULL of work and learning, and there's been no time or energy to spare for futzing with computers. I just got my computer hooked up to the wireless here, so I should be more connected from here on out, but if you really want to get a hold of me, call and leave a message on my cell phone, and I'll (probably) get it by night time. I'm trying to be as present to life HERE as possible.

Anyways. An update is, I think, in order.

It is BEAUTIFUL here. I feel like we've walked into a dirty little piece of heaven.


Here's the view from my window.  Yup.  Pretty darn spectacular.  I catch a great sunrise every morning, too.

Our first day here we were cleaning the outdoor kitchen when I heard a new noise.  I walked into an unused (except for junk storage) room of the barn, and found a whole bunch of baby chicks!  9 of them had fallen into the holes in a cinder block and couldn't get out.  Their poor mama was terribly flustered... she'd hidden them away in that room and then couldn't get them out!  We're letting her keep them in there until she wants to join us in the outside world, so she can take care of them on her own terms.

Brendan and I spent some of our time yesterday gathering wild yummables to sell at the farmers market.  These were surprise goodies--nettles (yes, the stinging kind!) and wild parsnips, which can give you a terrible rash!  If handled and cooked right, they're both excellent, and we'd like them out of the meadow, so... here I am with some muddy parsnips, freshly dug up.

We spent the rest of the day BAKING.  One of our major projects is to learn the art of sourdough bread.  We started multiplying the starter on wednesday night, mixed the dough on Thursday night, and baked all day on Friday for Saturday's farmers market.  We made 48 loaves total, all in the outdoor clay oven, which had to be refired between every batch.  It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun!  Here are some of our whole wheat loaves, fresh from the oven.  Below that is a picture of us at the farmers market.  We sold all of our bread, and (surprise!) all of the nettles and most of the parsnips!  It was a good day, and when we got back we all took a well-deserved nap.