Blooms

Madeline's been working on creating a perennial garden next to my garage this summer. It's one of the perks of having a kid in 4-H. They get a project to do, and you get something done for you.

I'll wait and share pictures of the complete garden when she's finished. Almost there - just a bit of weeding to do and the rest of the mulch to put down.

In the meantime, here are a few of the blooms. If I get the names wrong, someone please correct me. I can grow pretty much any vegetable, but I have a black thumb when it comes to flowers. I'm hoping the flower-growing gene skips a generation, from my mother to Madeline, just like the nail polish gene seems to.


Asiatic Lily


Black-eyed Susan


Tickseed


some kind of little daisy-like flower :)


A completely out-of-focus shot, but I love how Rafe is down there smelling the catmint.

Colorado Potato Beetles

A couple of weeks ago I was out admiring the rows of potatoes (and ignoring the weeds).



Until the 1700's potatoes were grown for their flowers, not for eating, and considered botanical exotics.



When what to my wondering eyes should appear but a bunch of Colorado potato beetles munching their way down the row. Since then I've paid Olivia one dollar a week to go out 3 or 4 afternoons a week and look for beetles, picking any she finds into a bowl of hot soapy water. It seems to have taken care of the pests. None have been sighted in the last week, but we're remaining vigilant.

Spring Work

After all the calves have been born, and before we turn the bull in for breeding, we "work" the cattle. This involves putting number and fly tags in their ears, vaccinations, treatment for internal and external parasites, and castrating the males by "banding" them. They don't like any of it much, but for us it's nice to get to see each one up close and personal.

My brother works for our vet and he is kind enough to give up part of his Saturday afternoon to do the work for us. My dad also came and helped run them into the chute (so I didn't have to!). Matt, of course, was also running them in, and Madeline was helping match up ear tags to the correct calf. Her participation was part of her 4-H beef project this year.


All of Matt's hard work building the corral paid off. The cows and calves were much easier to round up and herd through the chute.


Except for "Wild Thing", who lived up to her name by jumping a gate.


The calves were sorted off and run through the chute first. This provides a little incentive to the mama's to go through, too, to get reunited with their babies. Here's Miss Petey after having her ears "pierced".


One of the Hereford cows. Unfortunately I couldn't stick around to watch the bull come through.


To the left is the newest calf, Spunky. For comparison, to the right is Fudge, who was born about 3 1/2 months earlier. Just like our kids, they grow up fast!

Still Here

Had to take a little break to do some resuscitative surgery on my computer. I'm back up and running, but have yet to reinstall my photo editing software. Stay tuned...

Oh, and the new calf's name is Spunky. He lived up to his name yesterday by kicking me squarely in the shin as I tried to move him. Ouch! Good thing he's cute. I can't really blame him, considering he was 6 days old and just had his 'boyz' banded. I'd be a little crabby, too.

Tardy, Slow-Poke, Lollygagger

The cow we call Wild Thang finally popped her calf today. No pictures or a name yet.

I was in the garden around 8:00 tonight and noticed that newborn calf in the pasture. So Matt and I walked out to check on them and Wild Thang stupidly took that poor little baby through the creek. He made it across to the other side, but then couldn't make it up the bank and was stuck there in the cold water. So Matt waded across and boosted him up. Wild Thang did not appreciate Matt touching her baby, and we both thought she was going to charge Matt. But both he and the calf got out of the creek safely and dried off eventually.

Last summer our bull broke his 'important part' jumping over a barbed wire fence. But he'd only got part of his job done, so we had to buy another bull to finish things off. We then had the vet do ultrasound in the fall to see how far along each cow was, and sold off the late-bred ones.

Or so we thought.

Apparently Matt goofed and sold some other cow instead of Wild Thang.

Oh well, it still works out okay. She birthed just in time to be re-bred on schedule. (July-bred cows calve in April. A good time to calve in Iowa.) The bull will get turned in with the cows in 2 weeks, and Wild Thang will be coming back into heat very shortly after. And the late calf will help spread our cash flow out a bit come 2006/07.

For your reading pleasure

Some blogs I've been reading lately...

That's a Cute Little Farmhouse
This blog belongs to my cousin and his wife, and documents their restoration of a rundown Iowa farmhouse/methlab to its former glory. It's an amazing house (it's neither little nor cute but rather large and beautiful), and they're doing amazing work.

Lucky Me
A blog by a sweet soul in southwestern Iowa who is restoring a stray dog to her former glory. Such a great story!

Oliver, Daily
A daily pic of Oliver the Weimaraner (and sometimes his little brother, Hugo) who is currently in his someday former glory. (Follow me?) Some of my recent favorites are here, here, and here

Mmmmmmmm, Good!

Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper poured over vanilla ice cream.

I'm addicted.

Life Skills

WARNING: Don't scroll down if you're easily grossed out!
Today we discuss chicken butchering and there are photos.

After picking up the chickens from the processor on Wednesday, Madeline helped me load them into the freezer. "I'd like to learn how to butcher a chicken," she remarked. As it turns out, we had 3 that escaped us by hiding under the shed when we were loading up. So I told her if her dad would help her, they could butcher those 3 chickens. I don't know the first thing about butchering anything but Matt's foster parents butchered 200 chickens at a time each summer, and butchered their own hogs as well.

Matt is all over anything his girls want to do that's not "girly". When I got home from church Sunday morning, they had a pot of water boiling in my new portable fire pit and were headed out to the pasture to round up the tres hombres. Madeline held their feet while Matt chopped off the heads.

After a dunk in the water they were ready to pick feathers. Madeline picked an entire chicken by herself.




Matt singed them over the stove and I got the duty of "gutting and cutting". We fried all of the legs and thighs for supper and froze the breasts for later.

Chicken butchering seems like one of those things that probably used to be considered a life skill. Not so much these days, but maybe it will come in handy for Madeline someday. Right now, at age 9, the career tracks she's considering are singer / actress / supermodel or veterinarian. Hard to imagine her using her chicken butchering skills if she winds up in NYC or LA. Matt reminds her that even in those career paths she can still farm on the weekends. We shall see.

Things That Made Me Happy Today

Neighborliness
I took Ike for a walk this morning at 6:00. Our farm is just 1/2 mile outside town, so we walk to town and around town a bit and then back home. I met 3 or 4 other early morning exercisers, out for a walk or a bicycle ride, and every single one of them said "Good morning!" to me. Sometimes living in "Mayberry" is nice.



Our whiney tomcat, Earl Gray.


Beds of spinach and lettuce, and tomato starts waiting to be transplanted in the bottom right corner. (Empty chicken feed bags make excellent mulch, provided they don't have a plastic liner.)


Rascal, the only kitten in this litter that survived. Tiny kitten with a huge, round, fat belly - since he has the milk bar all to himself.


My Rose Combed Brown Leghorn baby roo. He is officially now the prettiest bird on the farm. (Although the Golden Polish and Buff-laced Polish would probably beg to differ.)


And this is what made Matt happy...

a rented post hole digger

Hair, Hair, It's Everywhere

(anyone else's three-year-old love "The Hair Book"?)



Ike is blowing coat and it's a sight to behold. Madeline's been raking his coat out every day this week, in preparation for showing him in the 4-H dog show at the county fair next month. Olivia and I each took a turn at raking today as well.

Some people spin Pyr hair, I've heard. By the time he's done with this you could make quite a sweater.

Madeline and Ike had their first training class this week. Ike did really well, considering he's never really been around other dogs. He's definitely the largest dog in the class, although I think her club-mate's Saint Bernard weighs more. It will be interesting to see her try the agility exercises with him, especially stuffing him through a tunnel!

44

That's how many birds we ended up losing. 44 out of 96. Heartbreaking. I dreamt of chickens all night long.

All of this had me feeling like a pretty crappy farmer. But then I was talking to Matt last night about what things we can do differently with the next batch. And he told me he was proud of me for sticking with it, for planning to do it again after a loss like this. And I realized yes, I've got it, stick-to-itiveness and optimism. What makes any farmer raise livestock or plant crops another year, in spite of the heartbreak that can and does happen? Stick-to-itiveness and optimism. (And in some cases, crop insurance.)

So maybe I'm a real farmer after all. Or becoming one, anyway, with "experience" (read "lots of mistakes" ).

I really am looking forward to August when I can try again.

Bad Morning

It was hot here yesterday, in the 90s. The chickens were hot, but doing okay when I fed and watered them at 5:30 yesterday afternoon. So I was not expecting to find 24 dead chickens this morning at 7:30. By the looks of things it happened in the night because they were in sleeping positions. All of the dead ones were at the back of the shed. They were not piled up at all, just lying next to each other like they do when they sleep.

The kicker is that we're taking them to the processor tonight, to be butchered tomorrow morning. So these were big, market weight birds, almost 9 weeks old, probably 7 to 9 pounds each.

So I'm thinking through all of the variables this morning. What could I have done differently to prevent this from happening? And praying that today's heat won't take more of them. Off to get some advice from the Homestead-Work and SustainableAg email groups.

Such is the game of farming.

Found Objects

Neighbors down the road are selling their 35-acre farm and moving to town. They are an older couple and dealing with health issues. Don has been so nice as to give Matt a truckload of old barnwood, and we were also able to buy some steel fenceposts off him.

Along with the wood, Don sent this little treasure home with Matt. A monstrous old wooden chicken feeder. I love this kind of stuff. Soon it will be overflowing with petunias.

Sissy's Little Helper

So blogging has taken a backseat to planting the last several days. (Everything has taken a backseat to planting the last several days.) Many things still going into the garden. I'll get some pictures of that soon.

Madeline has been working on her 4-H project, a perennial garden to the side of my garage. Rafe watched her and Grandma (aka "Beanie") digging in plants this afternoon, and when they left he leaped into action watering everything.

As much as he loves to play with water outside, it's a different story when it comes to bathtime. Ask him if he needs a bath and he'll reply, "No, I don't got my stink on."