Happy Halloween!

A firefighter, a nerd, and a pirate this year. Scary, aren't they?

And Happy Birthday Mom

My mom's a Halloween baby. This was a few years back when she dressed up with Madeline & Olivia for trick-or-treating.

(Man, how tiny and cute were they just 5 or 6 years ago?! And how happy am I that our house doesn't look like this anymore?!)

Happy birthday, Mom!

When Organic Isn't Organic

A couple of news items from The Organic Consumers Association. These just make me so so angry.

INDUSTRY SNEAK ATTACK ON ORGANIC STANDARDS RAMMED THROUGH CONGRESS
Despite receiving over 350,000 letters and phone calls from OCA members and the organic community, Republican leaders in Congress October 27 attached a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill to weaken the nation's organic food standards in response to pressure from large-scale food manufacturers. "Congress voted last night to weaken the national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the integrity of the organic label," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. "The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi billion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years. As passed, the amendment sponsored by the Organic Trade Association allows: Numerous synthetic food additives and processing aids, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review. Young dairy cows to continue to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production. Loopholes under which non-organic ingredients could be substituted for organic ingredients without any notification of the public based on "emergency decrees." OCA will work to reverse this rider with an "Organic Restoration Act" in Congress in 2006. http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm

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DISASSEMBLING THE FAMILY FARM: CONGRESS CUTS MORE PROGRAMS
A big thanks to all of you who responded to the Organic Consumers Association's Alert two weeks ago regarding impending agriculture appropriations cuts in Congress. The original proposed Budget Reconciliation bill would have cut $3 billion in conservation programs and food stamps to low- income Americans. Your letters helped stop Congress from cutting food stamps. Unfortunately, corporate agribusiness lobbyists got most of what they wanted, slashing funds for sustainable agriculture and farm conservation programs, while maintaining $20 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to the nation's largest chemical-intensive and genetically engineered farms. According to Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), the Conservation Security Program, which helps family farmers protect the land and reduce pollution, received the bulk of the cuts, while the 2006 Federal Budget "authorizes additional tax breaks of $70 billion - the lion's share of which will go to the very wealthiest Americans." http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/agbill102105.cfm

It's All Who You Know

And in our case it's not who we know in high places, but who we know in the not-so-high places. A friend of Matt's from high school left his career as a highly-paid software engineer and moved back here. Now he spends his days scrapping metal from farmers' groves and barns. Fun and income all rolled into one :)

Sometimes he finds treasures like these Pride-of-the-Farm pig feeders. These babies are hard to find - new or used - in today's age of confinement hog raising. We've been looking for a year. We got three of them for the sum of one hundred dollars. Plus the farmer threw in some flat metal hog feeding troughs and a rotating hog feeder. Having these 3 big feeders means we'll be able to have the elevator deliver our feed in bulk, rather than having it bagged. So we'll be saving the cost of the bags.

As Garth sings, "I've got friends in low places...". They're the best kind!

Fall Tree

You can see this same tree in summer here.

New Blogger, & Accolades

A couple of links for your Monday morning.

There's another blogger in the family! Madeline is taking Food & Nutrition for one of her 4-H projects this year. So she's started learning to cook, and is keeping a recipe journal in the process. You can find her recipe journal at Maddog in the Kitchen .

And my favorite soapmaker is on her way to fame and fortune after a shout-out in Cooking Light magazine. I can personally testify to the amazing-ness of her Amazing Kitchen Soap. And the Gardener's Soap. And the Green Pear, Honeysuckle, Apple Blossom, Berry Berry Nice, Kudzu and Gardenia. I have a couple of those cool wooden soap holders, too. Since Matt started using her soap, his eczema has cleared up!

Prepping Rafe to go into the Pharmacy

"Rafe, you're going to be a good boy in here."

"Why?"

"Because you're going to stay by me and not run and just look and not touch anything."

"Why?"

"Because you love your mama."

"You so silly, mom!"

Pig Tiller

Before we finally rid this year's garden of weeds and frost-killed tomato plants, we let Sara have at it for a couple of hours. Matt just called her over to the gate, let her out of the pasture, and walked her over to the garden. She's such a tame girl! Then I hung around doing yardwork and kept an eye on her. No need for a fence - she had a ball eating the soft tomatoes and rooting for missed potatoes.



Abbie kept an eye on her, too.



It's fun to watch Abbie try to figure out how to do what her instincts are telling her to do. Her instincts were telling her to keep that pig in the garden. She would follow a couple of feet behind Sarah and let out a bark now and again. But if Sarah would turn around and look at her, Abbie would turn tail and run behind me. Still very much a puppy!

New Chicks on the Block

One of the guys where Matt works decided to get out of chickens and into bees instead. So we're the lucky benefactors of this beautiful batch of pampered poultry and some nice chicken equipment, in exchange for some frozen chickens and some cartons of eggs.



The "blonde" chick at the back is Marilyn Monroe, and one of the two roosters is (I think) Elvis. Some of the others have names, too, but I can't remember now who's who.

The free-range chicken thing is getting a little out of hand. Not that they cause any problems, in fact they eat a lot of bugs out of the lawn and pretty the place up while they're doing it. And it's not that we've got a predator problem. Everyone's very good at coming back into the corn crib to roost at night, except a few outdoor-types who insist on roosting in a tree right outside the corncrib.

It's the fact that I've got 19 hens plus 20 pullets plus 14 new chicks (not sure if they're hens or pullets) plus a silkie...and I'm only getting 13 eggs a day. We've either got to figure out where they're laying, or round them all up and shut them in the coop for a couple of days so they figure out the nest boxes. That would require stringing poultry netting across the ceiling of the coop. The walls stop short of the corn crib roof and these girls can fly! They roost clear up in the rafters of the corn crib. One of these days we'll get around to it.

The boy and his piglets

The piglets grow so fast! I wanted to get a picture of them so I recruited Rafe, whose favorite "job" is running them out of the shed.





No losses to tetanus this time - the males got both the vaccine and the anti-toxin when they were castrated.

Sarah has about a month off without piglets nursing or Winston looking for action. She's so happy :) At the time the piglets were weaned they were so big that they'd just rush her and knock her down so they could nurse.

Love those curled up tails.

Photo Friday:Conspicuous

Our dilapidated old shed with Rafe's bright yellow Tonka parked inside. Conspicuous evidence of his playtime here.

Make your entry at Photo Friday.

Spuds

The potato and onion harvest is in. Into the garage, anyway. We have yet to haul them down to the basement for winter storage, but for now an empty cattle tank works.



One group is definitely a red potato. The other looks like Yukon gold on the inside. I really thought we did russets, too, but I'm not seeing any now. Will have to dig out my ordering records. The yellow onions are wonderful.

Despite my novice planting technique, the sweet potatoes yielded really well.



Matt could eat potatoes for 3 meals a day. Must be those "Quinn" ancestors. Bring on the potato recipes, everyone!

Chicken, or Dust Bunny?

Our one remaining Silky is still here. She waits around for the Araucanas to lay their little blue eggs, and then she sits on their eggs for them. She's such a sweetie!

Another installment

of "One of These Things is Not Like the Others"



(You can see the first installment here.)

Up, Up and Away

In honor of Public Power Week Osage Municipal Utilities held an open house for their customers. So Matt got to spend the day giving bucket truck rides to kids. The girls love it when they get to ride with Dad. Rafe and me, not so much. We stayed on the ground.

Matt and Olivia on the way up


All the way up


Matt and Madeline on their way to the sun


This was as high as Rafe would go

Brrrr!

Happy and Blue 2 posted today that winter has officially started in Canada. It feels like winter here in northern Iowa, too. Two days ago it was 90 degrees (I was SO glad we didn't still have chickens on pasture) and the kids went to school in shorts and t-shirts. Today it's barely 40 degrees and we were scrambling to find hats and mittens this morning.

It's supposed to drop into the 20's tonight, so we'll be digging potatoes and onions and cutting brussel sprouts after work today. Last night I canned 14 pints of salsa. Want to do another batch this weekend, and also can a couple dozen pints of plain tomatoes. The soldier bean plants need to be pulled and hung up somewhere to dry, but it won't hurt them to freeze so that can wait.

Then it will be time to pull the bean & pea trellises, and the chicken wire that surrounds the garden, mow off the remaining plants/weeds, and mulch the strawberries. My dad usually brings his plow over after he's done with his own fieldwork and turns everything under for us.

We also need to rent a posthole digger and get the backyard fenced, fix up the chicken coop for winter and bring home the new pullets we're buying, wean the calves, and mow the grass one more time. I said to Matt one day last week, "Guess it's been awhile since we mowed. There's a stalk of corn growing by the kids' trampoline." We've been so focused on getting paint on the new porch that the lawn has been neglected. As soon as I can get my computer to stop acting up I'll get a picture posted of the new porch and paint job.

Once all of the outside winterizing is done we'll finally get to start in the house on fall cleaning and window washing. At this rate I won't be done with that before Thanksgiving, but I do have in mind a "fall cleaning reward challenge" that may help garner some help from the girls. We'll see how that goes!

"We must eat them to save them."

That right there is the philosophy behind Heritage Foods USA , serving up rare and heritage breeds of pork, lamb, poultry and other things direct from the farmer to you. My "pretty cool" link-o-the-day.

The Boy, He Likes Honey

Good thing we just ordered 6 pints from one of Matt's bosses that keeps bees!