They just keep on keepin' on

I keep thinking that the beans are done. Really. I've almost ripped them out twice now. But these heritage beans, they just keep on keepin' on. The Energizer Bunnies of beans. The few (free) hybrid seeds we planted are long gone. But not these - Lazy Housewife and Kentucky Wonder Pole, Empress and Kentucky Wonder Bush. They're doers. And there are still blossoms on those plants out there.

Matt picked all of these Saturday morning, while I was at the church practicing the organ for my cousin's wedding. Then Sunday morning, once we all rolled rather tiredly out of bed after the late night wedding dance, we sat around and snapped beans. And drafted my other cousin and her girls into service as well. And they don't even like green beans! They may never spend a night with us again.

The freezer is already brimming with bags of frozen beans, so Matt pressure canned these. I don't like the flavor of canned beans as well, but they are handy when you need a quick vegetable on busy nights.

New Digs

Chuck, still half the size of the broiler chicks

The broiler chicks - and Chuck! - are all safe and sound out in the pasture. The move went more easily than I expected, they all just crowded into a corner of the garage and we plucked them up and put them in the trailer. Then we dropped the trailer in the pasture and fed them in the trailer. We went back to the house and had our supper, then went back out just before sundown and put the birds in their shed. I like to lock them in their shed the first night so that they know where shelter is and will return to it at night, or when it rains.

We don't do chicken tractors. Instead we use electric netting to surround a little insulated wooden shed on skids in the cow pasture. Feeders and waters are set out in the grass. We move the setup every 7 to 10 days, depending on the condition of the grass. I like this setup because the birds have a choice to be where they feel comfortable.

Some like to be in the shed


Some like to be outside, contemplating the dirt


Rafe and I took a walk out there this afternoon to see how they were doing. They're about a 1/4 mile from the house. Before we headed back, Rafe thought we ought to have a picture of ourselves.

Chickens have taken over my garage

a broiler chick takes flight

The broiler chicks have taken over my attached garage with heated floor. Not that they need the heat this time of year, but still, my garage sure makes them a luxury brooder.

Truth be told, I like having them right here close where I can dote over them the first few weeks. And with the spring batch I do every April, that heated floor comes in handy when the weather is cold and damp.

But this week they broke down the chicken wire fence that was supposed to keep them contained, and now all 127 broiler chicks (lost 1 last week) plus Chuck have taken over every corner of my garage. We got their pasture area fenced off last night, but their electric net fencing wasn't heating up. Their fencing hooks into the electric fence that runs the perimeter of the cow pasture. There's a short somewhere in that perimeter electric fence, so Matt has to fix that before we can move them out there.

Hopefully tomorrow night...I'm ready to have my garage back.

It's going to be an interesting move this time. The procedure is that we back the livestock trailer up to the garage, open the garage door, then pick each one up out of the pen and place it in the trailer. But with them free-ranging in the garage I haven't figured out how we're going to have the garage door open to load them out, without them running out the door all over the place. The kids are pretty good chicken wranglers, so I'm sure we'll manage.

If nothing else it should be a good photo opp!

Local food sources?

I find the One Local Summer challenge going on over at Pocket Farm so inspiring, but I've never participated. While our meat and veggies obviously come from our own farm, I don't know where to get locally grown/manufactured staples such as flour or cheese.

So how do you find out if such things exist? I'm looking for things within about a 100-mile radius of here. This would include the cities of Mankato, Red Wing, Rochester and Winona, MN; LaCrosse, and Prairie du Chien, WI; and Waterloo, Marshalltown, Ames, Fort Dodge, Estherville, and Mason City, IA.

Suggestions, anyone?

Random gardening advice

Don't leave a basket of freshly picked tomatoes where the chickens can find it.

An-tic-i-pay-yay-tion

We can never know about the days to come
but we think about them anyway.
And I wonder if I'm really with ready to eat you now
or just chasing after some finer day.

I've never managed to grow a watermelon before, but right now there are maybe a half dozen moon-and-stars melons out there in the garden. I'm out there checking on them, first weekly and now daily, like little unborn babies growing bigger and rounder and nearer to their due date.

Tell me, Internet, how do I tell when these things are ripe? The one in this picture is bigger than a basketball. They all sound alike when I thump them. Should the vine start to dry up? I don't want to miss out on sticky, juicy, melony goodness. In fact I want to have a watermelon party and invite some friends and family over to partake.

And tomorrow we might not be together
I'm no prophet, I don't know nature's ways.
So I'll try and see into your eyes rind right now
and stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days.

With apologies to Carly Simon.

Chuck

Another edition of "One of these things just doesn't belong here..."

Our duck hatched out two chicks last week. Yes chicks, not ducklings. The brown one in this picture, and a fuzzy yellow one. The next day the fuzzy yellow one was dead, looks like it got injured maybe. The nest is in the cattle shed, so it could have gotten stepped on.

That same afternoon I was out visiting the pigs when I heard this "cheep cheep cheep". Mrs. Duck had gone to the creek for a bath, and the little brown chick was running around trying to latch on to any hen that passed by. They all ignored him, so I snatched him up and took him inside to the brooder with the broiler chicks.

As with almost anything around here, he had to have a name. So chick + duck = Chuck!

The broiler chicks are about a week older than Chuck. It's absolutely hysterical to see Chuck trying to snuggle under the wing of a broiler chick. The broiler chick will just stand there with a look of bewilderment, little Chuck tucked under its wing! Thankfully, they don't seem to pick on Chuck.

Oliver

We have a new boar! And as you can see he's a Berkshire, not a Large Black. I had so wanted to stick with a LB boar, but the closest one we could find was in Indiana and the cost of gas right now just made it too expensive a venture. I hope one of these years to start a LB breeding program here, but for now we decided to try a Berk.

Then it was time for the all-important name choosing. Since Matt dubbed the gilts "J-Lo & the Posse" (because they have nice hams), we almost thought to go with a rapper name like B Diddy ("B" for bacon). But we decided to keep with something a little more regal, and Madeline came up with "Oliver".



The gilts sure seem to like Oliver so far! The sad thing is that Winston will be leaving us. He's become almost a mascot for Sugar Creek Farm. There will be tears shed when the day comes for him to go.

I went to Grundy Center and bought milk

This afternoon was a "fun day" for me. I took a trip down to Grundy Center to see my friend Lisa of Gracious Acres fame. And I bought milk. But I'll get to that in a minute.


photo copyright BP Photography :)

Lisa is one of the most generous and thoughtful people I know. When I arrived at her place she had a little goodie bag waiting for me, with a cute little old-thyme gardening postcard on a plaque and a t-shirt from my very favorite scrapbook artist.

We had a wonderful afternoon of exploring the little shops of Grundy Center, lots of talking and catching up. Lisa and I actually met because of this blog, when she responded to my plea last December for someone to buy beef from us. Such a short time ago, but it feels as if we've known each other for ever.

I'm sure I'm repeating myself here, but it's just one of those friendships that "clicked" right away. We both have a passion for small farms and local agriculture, for saving old buildings, for scrapbooking, for chickens. And today shopping at the Farm & Fleet we discovered that we both utter the same little "hm".

Yes, we shopped at Farm & Fleet and bought milk. We're crazy, the two of us.

So one of the shops we stopped in has just started selling organic milk and meat products. (If I remember right it's called Gems.) We got to talking milk, and when the clerk mentioned the name "Kalona" my head spun around like I was auditioning for a remake of Poltergeist.

"You have Kalona milk?!?" I exclaimed.

This is a milk I have only heard about. Drooled over. But have never been able to get my hot little hands on. It's beyond organic. It's vat pasteurized, and non-homogenized. I think it's about as close as you can get to milk straight out of the bulk tank, without actually taking it straight out of the bulk tank. (Which is illegal in Iowa. ahem.)

So yes, I went to Grundy Center and bought a half-gallon of whole milk and a half-gallon of 1% milk. And a rag rug, and a picture frame. And then Lisa and her DH (and I do mean "dear") and sweet daughter took me out for a most delicious supper. And I was so full I moaned the whole one-and-a-half hours home.

And I didn't even get side-tracked by this:

Cedar Valley Memories 2006

Once again a fine steam engine show was put on by the Mitchell County Historical Society and steam engine aficionados from near and far. The volunteer effort is extremely impressive.


A giant Case. I don't know anything about it, but the silver eagle on the front of it caught my eye.


The Reeves engine that I showed last year. It's even bigger than the Case. You can see that the tires are taller than the man standing next to it. Check out the comments on last year's post for more details on this engine from one of the engineers that runs it.


This is the little steam engine that Rafe was so interested in. I think it burned coal and wood in the fire box in the front part of the engine. The fire looked bright and hot, and Rafe decided he wasn't going to sit so close to it in order to have a turn at the wheel.


There were also volunteers demonstrating spinning and rug hooking. This one happens to be one of our customers! She's spinning rabbit fur.

Tractor Pull

Ever since our county fair, where he saw his first tractor pull, Rafe has been asking to see another one. If you know Rafe, you know he has this dramatic aversion to loud noises that involves covering his ears and screaming. But the tractor pull has become the one thing he will brave loud noise for (with the aid of ear plugs.)

We headed to the 11th Annual Cedar Valley Memories steam engine show on Sunday. Rafe was going to get his tractor pull.

Except that the tractor pull had been held on Saturday. Not Sunday.

(My sister-in-law read the schedule in the paper the same way I did. "Same schedule both days." Therefore neither one of us is crazy.)

Anyway.

So there was no tractor pull. But there was a pedal tractor pull, and Rafe said he would give that a try.

But you never know about Rafe. He'll sometimes say he wants to do something, and then chicken out at the last minute. For example there was a little boy driving around a miniature steam engine at the show. Rafe was entranced and wanted to ride it in the worst way. Until he got close enough to see the fire box.

Never. Mind.

Matt always reminds me that it's good Rafe has a conservative side, considering his love for all things fast on wheels...motorcycles, dirt bikes, race cars, etc.

So I wasn't holding my breath that he would actually go through with the pedal tractor pull. But when the emcee called his name he couldn't get down there fast enough. He jumped on that tractor and took off without waiting for the word "Go!"



In the end he took second place in the 4-and-under heat, and earned a really nice trophy for his efforts. Although he thought the bottle of Moutain Dew they gave him was just as great as that trophy.


In this picture he looks like he's sad about not getting that first place trophy. He didn't care a lick about that. He's sad because he really wanted to get back on that tractor. He couldn't understand why it wasn't like a carnival ride at the county fair, that you could keep riding as many times as you wanted.

Coming in second qualified him for the state finals. Who knew there were sanctioned pedal tractor pulls with state finals?!? (And who knew that you could compete in the 18-and-over category? Couldn't talk Matt into it.) They're being held in September in Marshalltown, so we'll see if it works out for us to let him have another go at it. Guess all that riding around in the garden he's done this summer paid off!

Pictures of the actual steam engine show tomorrow!

So tired

It's chick time again! This little guy was so tired he fell asleep standing up.

I usually do 2 batches of 100. I had so many pre-sales this time that I upped my order to 125. With the 3 freebies, I've got 128 fluffy yellow balls running around the brooder right now. Love it!

More from Heritage Farm

As HHG commented in the last post, Seed Savers Heritage Farm is farmer eye candy. I thought that was a very good way of putting it! Here's a few more snapshots:


A look back at the barn from the trail


A few of these signs interrupted our trek on the trail. Unfortunately we never did see a bull.


The trail also wound through the woods where we saw this face looking at us.

Daytrip

Today my parents took the kids for an overnight, as they do every August, heading west to Clear Lake. Matt and I decided to take advantage of a kid-free day and take a little daytrip ourselves. We headed east to Decorah.

The main destination for our trip was the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm. The farm is open to visitors, and you can take self-guided tours along the trail system they've developed to view their preservation gardens, Ancient White Park cattle, historic orchard, and more. We spent about 3 hours walking around, getting a close look at some the thousands and thousands of varieties of heirloom vegetables they work at preserving, taking notes of what might be good to try next year. I highly recommend a visit - we enjoyed it very much!


Farm cat


Beautiful garden showcasing a mixture of flowers, herbs and vegetables


View of one of the preservation gardens from the second story of the barn

Stay tuned, more tomorrow!

Overheard

when Matt was home for lunch today.


M: "Olivia, how are your calves today?"

O: "Good! Tommy's balls fell off!"


Somehow "good" and "balls fell off" don't seem to belong in the same sentence together. But maybe that's just me.

Z is for Zinnia

Blooms that Madeline started indoors and transplanted into the vegetable garden (much to Matt's chagrin.) She'd like to try this on a little larger scale and sell cut flowers at the farmers market but, alas, too little tillable land on this farm.

In Stitches

From the moment I heard the words, "It's a boy!"

(the actual words of the ultrasound tech were,
"It's a boy, and he's pretty proud of himself, too!")

I knew that this moment would come.

Rafe's first stitches.

And I don't imagine his last.

He was wrapped up in a towel after his bath,
took off running, tripped and hit his chin
on the dining room hardwood floor.

Not exactly how I'd planned to spend my Saturday night.

5 Frankenstein-like stitches in his chin.

4 people to hold him down.

2 hours, and

1 slushie later.

Stitches and safety goggles.

Only Rafe.