Eleven

Every bit a "tween".

Wants to wear makeup...but doesn't want to be home alone after dark.

A baby doll on her birthday list (and received, thank you Grandma!)

Wants to be a dog trainer, or a beautician, or maybe a veterinarian. (But freaks out over blood or vomit, so not sure how the veterinarian thing would work out.)

Too much like her mother :)

Loves sports, and dance, and singing, and the stage.

A very good student.

Almost always has a smile on her face. But is also an incessant worry wart. (As I said, too much like her mother.)

Love her so much!


Happy Birthday, Maddog!

Sarah's hogging the mudhole. Poor Winston!

One young visitor to the farm asked, "Is that a black pig, or a white pig covered with mud?" It's hard to tell some days.

July garden report

Lazy Housewife pole beans

I mentioned yesterday that the lettuce and spinach varieties we planted this year did really well for us, so I thought today I'd share what other vegetables we've been impressed with so far. For the most part we tried to use all heirloom seeds this year.

The lettuce was Bon Vivant Mesclun Blend from Vermont Bean Seed Company, and the spinach was Bloomsdale Long Standing, also from VBSC. Both stood up to the heat through the end of June, longer than I expected.

Our other early crop, peas, was a success as well. We planted Little Marvel from VBSC. A heavy and prolonged producer for such a little plant. It's small size would make it ideal for a small backyard garden.

We've also been enjoying Calabrese broccoli from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Cabbage loopers are the bane of my gardening existence, so we tried row cover this year. When we saw a cabbage moth fluttering underneath the row cover we pulled it all off, thinking we'd failed. But when it was time to start harvesting we found no worms! The worms have just appeared in the last few days, so I think the row cover helped us beat the life cycle. Next year we'll leave it on longer.

We've been picking Lazy Housewife pole beans from Seed Savers Exchange for over a week now and loving them. About 10 days earlier than any other pole bean, and they stay tender even when they get way too big.

For bush beans I've been very impressed with Empress, also from Seed Savers. They had much better germination than Kentucky Wonder Bush, which we haven't even begun harvesting yet. We've been harvesting Empress for 10 days now.

We've just today started harvesting zucchini. We planted Black Beauty and Golden, both from Baker Creek. I can't wait to make zucchini cupcakes and zucchini cake. Unfortunately it's going to be too hot the rest of this week to even think about running the oven. Anyone have a microwave zucchini cake recipe?

So that's what we've harvested so far. We'll be having our first cucumbers in the next day or two! The tomato plants are loaded, but nothing is turning yet. I'll give an update when we start pigging out harvesting.

Salad Bar

Edited: All the pork is sold!

Our lettuce bed and spinach bolted 3 or 4 weeks ago (which is a lot later than I expected...remind me to buy the same varieties next year.) But I noticed some bugs on them at the time, so we left the plants hoping they'd act as a trap crop.

This weekend we decided it was time to pull them out. Matt pulled, and Rafe helped him pile them into the bucket of the tractor. The pigs were the lucky recipients, though the chickens did their best to cut in on the feast.

If you think this looks like good bacon, get your order in quick. We only have 1, or possibly only a half, left. They'll be butchered in September.

I'll also mention now that pre-orders for chicken have been coming in like crazy. I've been trying to decide what to do. I have orders for 60, plus we usually keep 16 for ourselves. I start with 100 chicks, but some years my death loss has been 20 or 25%. I don't want to oversell myself, but I'm not sure I want to commit to more than 100 chicks either.

So here's the deal. I'll take pre-orders for up to 25 more chickens, and I need to have those orders by August 2nd. That will give me a chance to order an extra 25 chicks if I need to. (I don't have the room to raise more than 125 at once.) After August 2nd I will still take pre-orders but whether you get your order or not will depend on how much death loss we experience. These orders will be filled on a first-ordered first-filled basis. And of course any extras we end up with at butchering time will be available for sale after the 5th of October.

And I might as well throw in here that you can also pre-order beef. We have a couple quarters still available in September, and a couple in January, and several in October and November.

Email with questions or orders...themillers92 (at) osage (dot) net

Initiative

The other day I was working in the yard when I noticed Olivia come out of the house, grab Rafe's wagon, and head over to Matt's garage. When I saw her load a bag (a 50-pound bag!) of calf feed I figured out what she was up to.

She headed out with it, and after 10 minutes or so had passed I thought I'd better go check on her. By that time she'd managed to fill a 5-gallon pail full of shell corn out of the corn wagon - which required that she undo the straps holding the tarp over it, shovel out the corn, and then re-secure the tarp - and had both the wagon and the pail inside the calf pen.

I said, "Wait right there, I want to get the camera!"

You know she's a scrapbooker's kid when she didn't bat an eye at that.

"Good," she said, "then there'll be proof for Dad that I did this all by myself."

When I got back she proceeded to haul that heavy pail of corn across the pasture, refusing to let me help her. Then she came back for the wagon with the bag (50 pounds!) of calf feed.



The big feeder calves were hoping she was bringing it for them.


Then it was open the bag of feed and dump it in the feeder...


...dump in the pail of shell corn...


...and mix everything together.


I managed to keep my mouth shut about maybe not feeding calves in white shorts. Good mom! (And no, I won't let her do this all the time. Poor thing will give herself a hernia!)

So pardon my brag :) I was pretty impressed with this 8-year-old 61-pounds-soaking-wet girl of mine. (And so was her dad when he got home from work!)

Best in Show

So I promised a fair update days ago. But allergies have

kicked.
my.
butt.

all week. Ugh. I'm so thankful we got over an inch of rain last night! Not only because we desperately needed it - we haven't had any of the rains they've had south of us - but also because I woke up today and magic! the allergies were (almost) gone. A little Claritin-D and ibuprofen and my head was good all day.

I had big plans to take a nice picture of Madeline and Ike and their purple ribbons this week, instead of this picture that Matt hastily snapped in front of the garbage can. But, refer to paragraph 1.

Friday night was Share-the-Fun, which is basically a 4-H talent show. Madeline sang "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera. She was a lot more nervous than last year, because last year was her first year and she wasn't eligible to be picked for state fair. This year she was eligible, and she wanted it pretty bad. So she was disappointed when she was picked as first alternate to state.

Saturday night was the dog show. Madeline & Ike won Junior Best in Show for Obedience, and Madeline also won Junior Best Handler. Needless to say, she was elated. Not only that, she was close enough in points to the Senior Best in Show that the judge had them do a "run-off". The senior girl won, but Madeline said, "I don't even care about that - I just can't believe I was anywhere close to her she's so good!"

Two purple ribbons go a long way to easing disappointment from the night before!

I volunteered to help in the dog judging ring. One of my duties was to stand as a "post" with another person so the handlers could do a figure-8 exercise around us. First dog in the ring peed on me. From behind, so I didn't even see it coming. So that made for an oh-so-memorable evening. It didn't bother me. I'm a mom, and a farmer. I've had worse bodily fluids on me.

And thus ended the 2006 fair for us. Memorable, indeed.

Well that was interesting

This morning I received a surprise visit from a compliance officer with the Meat & Poultry Inspection division of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS). Whew, that's a mouthful!

Very nice guy but, wow, he drove all the way up here from Des Moines just to check up on little old us.

"Someone gave me your farm's order form..."

Which immediately set me to wondering why someone gave it him. Because they thought he might want to buy some meat? I can't imagine. Does someone think we should be shut down? If so, who? Just a concerned citizen, or someone whose business we're cutting into? Oh, the conspiracy theories.

It took him all of 5 minutes to see that we've jumped through all the hoops we're supposed to jump through. Freezer inspected by the Department of Health. Scale inspected by the Department of Weights and Measures. Licenses obtained and properly displayed. Meat & poultry state inspected. Packages officially and properly labeled.

But it made me feel good that all of my i's were dotted, my t's crossed. I did a lot of research and made a lot of phone calls when we started this business, to be sure we were in compliance and 100% legal. Hope he didn't make the 2 1/2 hour (one-way) trip just for us.

So now that we're even more officially official, we'll return to farm updates with the final County Fair report to come later today...

Hee hee, I feel like including that in our advertising: "Now with more official officialness!"

Fair Report

Thanks everyone for your kind comments on Madeline's photos. I'm happy to report that she got blue ribbons on all of them, and the one of Rafe & Ava got a "Considered for State" ribbon. It didn't end up getting selected for the State Fair, but was selected as an alternate. So she was happy with that because, wow, they must have had at least a hundred entries in the photography division.

(Though I can't imagine why they'd ever need an alternate in photography. What would prevent a photograph from "going" to the state fair? I think it was more of an honorable mention.)

Anyhoo.

Her recipe blog also got "Considered for State", but didn't end up being selected.

But her horticulture project, which was a shade/sun perennial flower garden, did get selected for the state fair! So she is very excited to have something going to state this year, the first year she is eligible for that.

Yet to come is Share-the-Fun tomorrow night, and the dog show on Saturday night. And 90-degree weather. I'm so glad we don't have livestock at the fair this year.

You be the judge

It's our county fair week, so blogging may be sparse for a few days as I help Madeline scramble to get her fair projects done. She took Photography as a project for the first time this year. Here are her fair entries. You be the judge...blue ribbon winners?


Rafe & Ava - this one is my favorite!


Dwarf Phlox, in the garden Madeline did for her Horticulture project


My cousin's Pug, Lily


Madeline's favorite, my nephew

All images copyright Maddog Photography :)

Daycare

The two young Hereford cows were charged with calf daycare this afternoon, so the other cows could "go out" across the creek with the bull.

Notice the very plump black whiteface cow to the left. That's "Wild Thing", and we're still waiting on her to drop her calf.

My mom suggested today that I blog about our town's Sesquicentennial Celebration. That's 150 years!

It's also our church's Sesquicentennial and the picture above is our pastor portraying an early Methodist circuit rider in yesterday's parade. It was awfully brave of him - I don't think he'd been on a horse before!

Edited to add:
See those 2 green circles in the street between the horse's front feet? The local 4-H horse club sponsored a game called "Road Apple Bingo" this year. You purchased those circles for $1 each, wrote your name on yours, and placed them in the street anywhere on the parade route before the parade started. During the parade, if a horse left a "deposit" on your bingo card you won a prize! I thought that was pretty clever.

The celebration continues through this weekend with an all-school reunion and several other goings-on. Small town fun at its best!

Independence Day

Hope yours was celebratory! Ours included...

~ fireworks at the river last night during which Rafe lay face down on the blanket with his hands over his ears chanting, "I want to go home now!"

~ the annual parade in town this morning, clocking in this year at almost an hour and a half and consisting of the usual farm implements, classic cars, and fair queen candidates. The kids caught enough candy to hold them until Halloween.

~ a cookout here with my family. My dad brought firewood and made me a fire so I could have roasted hot dogs...been craving them all summer!

~ still had a fire about 10:00 tonight, so Olivia, Rafe and I made s'mores. Or as Rafe calls them, snores.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Peas

I think whatever we're harvesting at the moment is my favorite. Tonight it was peas. So sweet eaten straight from the pod. Olivia's technique is "one for the bowl, one for my mouth."

I cannot fathom how many peas we would have to plant in order to have a significant enough yield to freeze any for winter. Each year I fill a bowl with pods, thinking I've reaped quite the harvest.

And then they're shucked.

And we've got just enough for one meal.

A sidedish.