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? 

Baking Day

Friday is baking day.  We get up early, let Sue do all the morning chores, and roll our sleeves up for a long day.  I run the inside oven, making pastries and sweets, and Brendan bakes the bread out on the patio in our wood-fired clay oven.  Here's what we have for tomorrow's farmer's market:

Raspberry Cream Cheese tarts, with our own berries!

Elderflower cupcakes, garnished with black raspberries and crystalized elderflowers

Of course, the sourdough bread.  We make white, whole wheat, rye, and multigrain, and score each with a different pattern so we can tell them apart.  These are rye and white.

Come see us at the market in Downtown Rochester or at the farm, any weekend!

God, bless the little berries, black, blue, rasp, and otherwise...

Guess what this is?  Ah!  Our first beautiful ripe red juicy RASPBERRY!  We've been harvesting strawberries for a week and a half now, but we only get a handful every day--soon we'll be simply SWIMMING in raspberries.  Can you tell I'm pumped?  Yesterday we had buttermilk pancakes with raspberries and rhubarb syrup for breakfast.  YUM. 

P.S. Extra points to anyone who gets the title reference...

Turkey-Love

You know how you always hear that turkeys are stupid and mean and ugly?  I vehemently deny it!  I am quickly falling in love with our little turkey charges.  We have ten of them, and Brendan and I share most of the turkey duties--mainly giving them food and water, changing their bedding, and spending some time with them each day to make sure that no one is acting funny or sick. 

Ok, so other people might think our little turks are ugly, but I think they're... endearingly ugly.  Like little dinosaurs.  They're definitely not mean--though they are a bit clumsy and keep on accidentally stepping on the ducks.  And they may not be the brightest birds in the coop--they can't find any kitchen scraps we put in unless we put them right in their dish with the feed--but they're sweet.  They're really curious, and will peck lightly at any speck they don't understand--a colored patch on your jacket, a picture of a chicken on a feed bag. 

And they're growing so fast!  Already it takes two hands to hold one, and they get bigger every day.  The toms have started getting red on their necks (you can see a little in the picture above--it's more pronounced now) and they've taken to puffing up, holding out their wings, fanning their tails, and turning in little circles, showing off for anyone who will watch them.  They think they're pretty tough, but when we tried to let them out of their little pen to explore today, not a one would leave the coop on its own.  I think they're shy around the big chickens. 

My mom is ordering one of these babies for thanksgiving.  I look forward to sharing my handiwork with my family, but I know there will be a few tears shed and many thank-you's said when I eat one of these sweet little critters.  

The Deluge

There's a section in my favorite novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where it rains for something like 20 years straight.  That's what it feels like this week, although it's really only been 4 days or so.  The chickens have been hiding under the truck bed to keep dry; I guess they have cabin fever too and want to stay out of the coop.  I have a lot to do in the garden (the weeds!  the rain is helping them out TOO MUCH.) but the whole garden is a mud puddle, and every step I take compresses the soil into a concrete brick, which I absolutely want to avoid, so... I have to find other work to do.  I'm getting a head-start on baking for the weekend (this week: lemon-poppyseed chick cookies, peach-strawberry tarts, rhubarb cupcakes, and, of course, wood-fired sourdough bread...) and I've been cleaning out the barn... an adventure that could take a loooong time.  Yesterday I faced the extra-glamorous task of scraping chicken poop out of the barn loft, where they roosted all winter.  Today... I think I'll organize the GIANT PILE OF TOOLS in the front part of the barn--they'll be much more useful if we know where they all are!  My mucking-about boots are getting a solid workout in all of the mud.  Here's hoping it clears up for the weekend! 

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. 

A Day Off = A Day On

Tuesdays are shaping up to be my days off--the weekends are full of farmers market and farm store, and once I get home from Church on Sundays its more fun to work in the garden and chat with visitors than to sit inside by myself.  Tuesdays are perfect--the weekend is done and cleaned up after, and there's no rush to get ready for the next one yet.  Last Tuesday, Brendan and I borrowed the car and went to find the thrift stores in town.  It was over 100 degrees, but we had a picnic anyways.  It was a good day to not be working!  

This Tuesday I was on my own, since Brendan's on a family vacation.  I started off the day slow and lazy, reading in bed and having breakfast in my pajamas on the hammock, and then decided, since it was a lovely day, to get off my butt and have an adventure.  Sue got her bike down from the top of the barn, and pointed me towards the Douglas Trail, and off I went!  

The Trail is lovely, deep and wooded, with farms dotting the way.

I was totally overjoyed when, about 2 miles into my ride, the trail crossed the Zumbro River.  I miss rivers like crazy in this, my first summer away from Camp Amnicon.  It was total bliss--with a dash of nostalgia--to sit on the bank and daydream.

 And I found some marsh marigolds, my favorite wildflower!  They grow all over at Amnicon, and they added to the sense of home. 

There was a nice little perch up on the bridge where I could watch the river go it's way.  I wish I would have brought a field guide for trees or birds or wildflowers!

 Did I mention that it was a glorious day?  

My ride ultimately took me to Pine Island, a cute little town about 8 miles down the trail.  I wandered around a bit, had a muffin in a coffee shop, and decided to head back.  By the time I started home, the wind was whipping up and it felt like rain... and it seems like the uphill stretches are disproportionately arranged for the way back!  Sue called at one point to ask if I wanted a lift, but I persevered and made it back to reward myself with the uber-delicious cinnamon ice-cream I'd made that morning.