Trestle

The west side of our farm is bordered by a railroad track and a trestle that takes the train over Sugar Creek. You might think that the rumble of the train is an annoyance, but to me it's comforting.

Study: Cornfield in a snowstorm

Another day of snow and crappy driving. The best thing to do is stay in the house and play with snow pictures. I like the middle one best. Its starkness reflects the reality of a late-February snowstorm, after an entire month of gray and dreary and snowstorm upon snowstorm.

Which one do you like best?








3 years ago:

Commando farming

1 year ago:

Entertainment

Ag Speedlinking: 02.28.08

Toward a sustainable Cohasset: Rekindling a love affair with food

"Americans worry more about food and derive less pleasure from eating than people in any other nation surveyed."

*****

With your cloned meat, a side dish of safety

"A survey by Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, found that 89 percent of Americans want cloned foods to be labeled and 69 percent said they have concerns about meat and dairy products from animals."

*****

Dems work to keep subsidies for agribusiness

"It's as if the Congress is operating in a vacuum, completely ignorant of what the market is doing."

*****

So cute I can't stand it

Ducks cuddling with calves


Snoring piglets.


Olivia in her first year of volleyball.


The little uniform! The little kneepads!


The little "Green Devil" socks!


2 years ago:

Before and after

1 year ago:

Powered

Ag Speedlinking: 02.27.08

Non-GM Breakthroughs Leave GM Behind

"...you’ve missed the great unpublished story of 2007 – all the non-GM answers to precisely the problems (drought-resistance, salt-resistance, biofortification, etc.) that proponents claim only GM can solve."

*****

Five minutes with Ken Meter, sustainable ag pioneer

"He is currently working with some 28 local foods initiatives in 14 states, and despite a myriad of challenges – from land-use issues to political inertia to economic uncertainty among farmers themselves – he says he’s “excited about the emerging possibilities out there” to build stronger, more viable, local economies by using local foods as an economic development strategy."

*****

Reading, writing and agriculture; Effort underway to educate children to save farming

"Educating future consumers through the mandatory teaching of agriculture in schools could breed a generation of citizens that embraces the importance of farming to the local and national economies.

*****

Maddog's Hogs: Chapter 1

Cute, little sleeping piglet butts!

This is a guest post from Madeline, age 12


Hi. I'm Madeline and my mom said that I should write about my babies (my pigs). So here it goes.

Well first of all they already are really tame! Thanx to me! So that's good. I'm sorry to say, though, that we have lost one! She was the biggest gilt. She died by drowning.

See, we have this nipple water and a baby feeder. The feeder has 3 sections to it and an open top where you pour the feed. Then our nipple water is a 5 gallon bucket with a plastic nipple in the side and you fill it with water. I figured that they were smart enough not to go on top of it and get the water that way!

Well I guess I was wrong, because when I came up from playing in the basement to check on them I saw her butt up. I went over there and gasped! Of course the rest you could probably figure out if you know me personally! I went over there with my mouth opened big and eyes bugging out. I poked her butt and when she didn't move that is the part where I shed, well, let's say more than one tear.

At that time Olivia was over by me and when I started pulling her out (the pig) she said, "Okay, okay wait," and she ran to the other side of the room. My mom was really the only one that made an attempt to comfort me. Once she heard the tractor over by the garage (because I was loading my baby up) she came downstairs and asked what happened. Once I told her what happened she said "Oh that sucks!"

So yeah, that was an upsetting day.

My dad of course only said, "So...I heard you lost a pig!" And my dog Ava wasn't much comfort either, because the next morning I saw the pig up by our front porch...what do you think that means? Now thanx to my dad's great thinking we have a lid on the bucket. So for all of you first or second or even third time pig lovers/owners MAKE SURE YOU PUT A LID OVER YOUR BUCKET!! Or else they might drown!.!

Anyway, I have to open the garage door once a day at the least to air out the stink in there! I also have to scoop out their pen once a week and I give them straw whenever they need it. We have heat lamps for them, too, just in case they get too cold.

They truely are the babies of the family!

Thanks for reading our blog...and for those of you who purchase our meat, I will be having some meat for sale (pork) but I just wanted to let you know that they had antibiotics put in them before we got them and they haven't had vegetarian food. But I do have meat for sale if anyone feels like making a little girl very happy!

Love,
Madeline*


3 years ago:

Q & A: Blood spots

2 years ago:

What's in your butter dish?

1 year ago:

Bad ice storm!

Ag Speedlinking: 02.26.08

First seeds placed in Arctic global seed vault

"Blasted deep into the frozen rock of an Arctic mountain, the collection stored in the vault could prove indispensable for restarting agricultural production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or human-caused disaster."

*****

Breadbasket Inflation

"So: High food commodity prices will create an economic incentive for transgenic crops, which if handled carelessly, could cause disasters far more catastrophic than a few thousand poisoned pets. There's a happy thought."

*****

How to Cook : Ribs

Another day, another day off school. And then the predicted storm totally missed us. The good thing to come of it was that the girls' dance classes were cancelled, so I had time today to cook ribs and blog about them. Just for you!

Ribs are another one of those things that, for a long time, I was intimidated by. I had many rib failures before finally finding a recipe that fits my lazy cooking from scratch lifestyle. Indeed the recipe is not only lazy, it's perfect for a lazy weekend. Low and slow is the key here. Low heat and me cook you long time.

I'm starting to drool just thinking about it.



Above I have about 4 pounds of beef short ribs.



And here I have about 2 pounds of pork spare ribs. There's another couple of pounds hiding outside of the shot. Allow about a pound and a half of beef ribs per person, or one half to one pound pork ribs per person.

First things first. The rub. The rub is one of the things that was missing from my early attempts at ribs. This recipe makes enough rub for all 8 pounds of the ribs I fixed today. If you're going to fix fewer ribs, just throw the leftover rub in a ziplock freezer bag and throw it in the freezer for next time.

The rub includes a couple of tablespoons of Essence of Emeril. You can buy this in the store pre-prepared. But Emeril has been kind enough to share his essence recipe with you! So you can also make up a batch of that, and store the leftovers in the freezer.

One thing about living in the country is that if you're out of a certain ingredient, you try to make do with something else rather than run to the store. I was out of some of the components for Emeril's essence recipe. So I used "Organic Delta Rub" from Excalibur Seasonings instead. I was also short on cumin, so I substituted curry powder for some of that. Don't be afraid, get crazy, get creative, experiment!



I sprinkle the rub over the ribs, and then pat and rub it in so that it sticks to the meat.



Wrap the racks of ribs in foil, and lay on cookie sheets. Stick in a 275 degree oven, along with a pan of water to keep them moist, and then just walk away. Read the paper. Clean something. No, on second thought, don't do that. This is supposed to be a lazy weekend. Watch a movie. Or two. Whatever you do, leave these puppies alone for 4 to 5 hours!



When they come out of the oven they will be moist and the rub will be a nice golden color, fused right into the meat. These are the beef ribs.



And these are the pork ribs. Remove the ribs from the foil at this point.

Now you can stop right here and eat them just like this if you want. A friend of ours does this, and sets the barbeque sauce out so that people can choose to use it or not.



Or you can coat the ribs right now, both sides, with your favorite barbeque sauce. Then stick them back in the oven, without the foil, for 10 or 20 minutes. Just long enough so that the barbeque sauce heats up and starts to carmelize a bit.

Our favorite sauce is Famous Dave's. However the first ingredient listed in Famous Dave's sauce is - you guessed it - high fructose corn syrup. So then I was going to make my own. But they all call for ketchup, and any ketchup I looked at in the store had - you guessed it - high fructose corn syrup. So I threw my hands up in despair and used up the last of the Famous Dave's I had in the fridge. My quest for the perfect sauce continues. If you have tried-and-true barbeque sauce recipes, post them in the comments or post on your blog and leave a link in the comments.



It's all over but the crying now. And the moaning. And the unbuttoning of the pants.

(And I could really use some more vegetables on my plate, but the kids were complaining that they didn't get enough so I had to sacrifice. Because who's going to deny their kids when they ask for more veggies?!?)



Be sure to have plenty of napkins on hand. Nothing like gnawing your meat off the bone.

How to Cook: Ribs
3 T. brown sugar
2 T. Essence of Emeril
1 T. salt
1 T. ground black pepper
1 T. paprika
1 T. cumin
1 T. garlic powder
1 t. cayenne pepper

Mix together to make the rub. Sprinkle rub on both sides of rib racks and press into meat. Wrap ribs in foil and cook on a cookie sheet at 275 degrees for 4 to 5 hours. Put a pan of water in the oven along with them.

Remove ribs from oven. Discard foil. Coat both sides of ribs with barbeque sauce. Return to oven for 10 to 20 minutes, until sauce is hot and carmelized.

I would think you could also throw the ribs, wrapped in foil or not, into a crockpot and cook them on low for 8 hours.

Ag Speedlinking: 02.25.08

Small food, farm business provide healthy future for Iowa

An op-ed piece from the Des Moines Register by my friend and mentor Penny Brown Huber, executive director of the Grow Your Small Market Farm program.

*****

Farm program aids immigrants

"According to the statistics, refugees and immigrants also comprise the largest and fastest growing population entering the field of farming today."

*****

Speaker at organic farming conference derides corporate agriculture

"“Do we treat anything that we truly care about primarily on an efficiency basis?” [Andrew Kimbrell] asked."

*****

Duck rainbow

The msucovy ducks I have presently are quite the pretty rainbow of colors!

I have a couple that are white with brownish heads and tail feathers.





This drake is grayish white with a gray head.



This one is a pretty chocolate color with striking white wings.



A pretty rippled chocolate-slate mixed coloring shows up in some of them.



And then there's the rippling in a pure chocolate color, with some white showing up in the wings again.



A pretty bluish slate.



And one of my favorite drakes, black with a greenish shimmer and white wings. It was one like this that those idiot boys shot this winter.



Which one is your favorite?


3 years ago:

And everyday losses

Watch horse

Photo Friday: Rural

Snowbound

Our little chicken house in the pasture sits snowbound. But before we know it the shed will be surrounded by fresh green spring grass, and busy with 3-week-old broiler chicks.


3 years ago:

Everyday miracles

Don't hate us because we're beautiful

Thanks for all the good conversation about collecting from customers. Keep it coming! I was glad to have some of you chime in from the customer's perspective.

I'm not sure we answered ang's question. Sounds like ang is having a problem collecting the deposit itself. You can go back and read the question in the comments here. Anybody have suggestions for ang?

You all have convinced us, we need to take deposits. We've already sent the newsletter out for this year, and we already have some pre-orders for this year, so we probably won't start until next year. But it's still being discussed.

Speaking of the newsletter... if you're interested in purchasing from us this year but are not currently a customer, email me your mailing address and I'll get a newsletter + order form in the mail to you. themillers92 (at) osage (dot) net.


3 years ago:

One of these things just doesn't belong here

Round 2

2 years ago:

Visitor

What's going on

1 year ago:

Sale Barn

Corn recipe #2: Smokey corn chowder

Ask the Readers: Collecting Payment

Reader "ang" left a good question in the comments of yesterday's Small Farm Business post, regarding collecting payments from customers. This is a really important piece of direct marketing, so I thought I would throw it out to the SCF readers.

This isn't a problem for us when selling meat retail. The customer comes to the farm, or the farmers market, tells us what they want, gives us money and we give them their meat.

But when we sell beef & pork on-the-hoof, our customers pick up their meat right at the locker. They pay the locker for the processing costs at that time. We let the customer know how much they owe us for the meat, and they either drop a check in the mail or come out and pay us in person. So there's the potential there for things to get dicey. The locker only requires payment for the processing before letting them have their meat. They could pick up their meat and then stiff us.

It's never happened, knock on wood. But there have been a couple of times when we've waited a long time for payment. In that case I usually just send them a reminder in the mail about once a month. That's about as confrontational as I get. Once Matt made a phone call to somebody that hadn't paid yet, a couple of months after getting their meat. They did pay, another month later.

We're very willing to work with our customers that need special payment arrangements. If they need to wait on their income tax refund, or their end-of-the-month paycheck to pay us, we're fine with that. Those customers that talk to us ahead of time about how and when they're going to pay have never been a problem. It's the ones that you don't hear from, and don't hear from, and don't hear from that get worrisome.

What are some things we could do? I've considered having the customer leave a check for us at the locker when they pick up their meat. Or I could give the locker a list of those customers that have paid us, and ask them not to let meat go to those that haven't paid. But I hate to inconvenience our locker folks. They're busy enough.

One thing we probably should be doing is collecting a deposit when somebody places an order. When someone recently cancelled on us we were wishing we'd had a deposit from that person. It would presumably make people less likely to cancel, provide us a bit of "insurance" if they did, and give us a small advance to help cover the costs of raising the animal. Part of me thinks this is perfectly reasonable, part of me thinks I'm not placing enough trust in my fellow human, and part of me thinks the extra time keeping track of such things isn't worth it.

So maybe I'm a lazy pushover.

How do you (or will you, for those just beginning) handle collecting payments from customers?

Ag Speedlinking: 02.21.08

Fight food costs by growing your own

"Americans finding soaring food prices hard to stomach are battling back by growing their own food."

*****

New farm bill should make way for beginning farmers

" A little help for beginning farmers from our federal government, as it helps large agri-businesses, will go far in securing the future of agriculture in this country."

*****

And from the Mother Earth News vaults:

Rex Oberhelman: $27,000 (Net!) from Five Organic Acres

I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but this story is 22 years old. That was good wages back then! A really interesting story about how a guy who lost his farm, turned to alcohol, and then lost his family turned himself around growing produce and fruit & vegetable starts on 5 acres. A worthwhile read!

*****

Is it spring yet?

Another snow day today. The kids were happy, but I keep reminding them they won't be happy when they're in school in June!


4 years ago:

Flirting

1 year ago:

Polishing off his stash

Small Farm Business: The Checking Account

When we first started our farm we took care of the farm expenses out of our personal checking account. We didn't have any farm income yet, so any farm expenses were funded out of our personal finances anyway. I used Microsoft Money for our personal budgeting and checkbook program, so I set up a "Farm" category there to keep track of what we spent.

One of the first action items to come out of taking the Grow Your Small Market Farm™ class was to set up a separate checking account for the farm.

Sure, for a while we were just transferring money over from our personal account to cover the checks we wrote. But having a separate checking account, among other things, puts you in the mindset of treating your farm as a business.

It also puts others in the mindset of treating your farm as a business - your bank, other businesses from whom you purchase goods or services, and your customers. Having an account with our farm name on it means our customers can make checks out to "Sugar Creek Farm" instead of to us personally. Hopefully this helps them take you seriously as a business and prompt with their payments!

The checking account, and the deposits and withdrawals in and out of it, become the skeleton for budgeting and accounting. After the first year you can use your checkbook entries to see how much you spent in what areas, giving you a base to build your budget for the coming year. You can also see when you had spending or income in each area, giving you a base to build your cash flow for the coming year.

It also makes tax time easier. Each entry, whether income or expense, will go directly into one or more categories on your Schedule F.

To take it a step further, I highly recommend using QuickBooks or some similar accounting program. This was another action item from the GYSMF™ class. By simply entering your checking account transactions into QuickBooks, and putting each transaction into a category, you suddenly have some extremely valuable reports at your fingertips.

More on QuickBooks later, but suffice it to say getting ready for our tax appointment now is a piece of cake. Matt spends about an hour figuring how much mileage we put on the truck last year for farm use. Other than that we simply print out Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports for our accountant. Our entire tax appointment tonight was a quick 45 minutes from start to finish (and included both personal & farm taxes and a lot of chattiness!)

Ag Speedlinking: 02.20.08

Monsanto U.

"Public-university researchers get cash for studying GMOs - and the shaft for studying organic ag"

*****


Flour power...Newfield farm banks on organic farming trend

"On his 400-acre organic farm [Thor] Oechsner grows spelt, oats, wheat, corn, soybeans, and hay. He also grows various high-nitrogen soil-building crops, like clover, which are plowed under. In an era where times are tough for small farmers, he derives 100 percent of his income from this small-scale operation."

*****

Express 5: 'The Hippy Gourmet' on Chow & Travel

"While wearing tie-dye T-shirts (and, sometimes, chef's whites) in his Haight-Ashbury home, Brennan invites the viewer in, espousing the ease of cooking the natural way, all while dotting sentences with "dude." Featuring delicious recipes using fresh vegetables, home-grown herbs and completely sustainable products, the show is the exact opposite of what you'll get from the Food Network's one-size-fits-all chef-lebrities."

*****

And the answer is...

Piggies! Genie at The Inadvertent Gardener was the only one to guess it!

I also liked Ang's guess, and no, he would not be allowed to keep the laptop :)

These are Madeline's 4-H project pigs. In order for them to be market weight at fair time this summer, they have to be born in January. We don't have the facilities to winter farrow. (We barely have the facilities to farrow, period.) So we bought these from my brother.

They're about 4 weeks old and came out of an 80-degree barn. It's too cold still to just stick them right outdoors. So we're "brooding" them in the garage. It has a heated floor and works pretty well for that purpose. We've been brooding chicks in here for years. (The first batch of those comes in April.) The garage is attached to the house. So many bloggy photo ops, right here at my fingertips!

Madeline got right to work making friends with her new babies.



First she sits quietly in the pen and lets them come to her. They start chewing on her foot.



Then she decided to just lay right down with them. Again they come to her and try to chew on her. (Perhaps they're attracted by those shiny new braces that were just installed yesterday?)



She's got them eating out of her hand already!



A little belly scratch is nice.



Then she picked each one up and had me take a picture. Then I marked each one with a number so she can match them up to the pictures. Now they look like they're ready for some kind of race.

Ag Speedlinking: 02.19.08

Living food: raising standards

"What is becoming clear to the public is that buying meat -- or any other food -- should involve knowledge of growers' practices. When it comes to a family's health, quality is worth the cost."

*****

Greener pastures

"Nitschke, 31, who herds heifers through pastures near Yosemite National Park, doesn't consider himself an environmental activist, though he's planting saplings to protect nearby streams and runs a light herd to let his pastures breathe."

*****

Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream pledges to help save nature's unsung heroes

"The food producer responsible for one of every three bites the average American eats is in crisis. And more than half of Americans are not even aware there is a problem."

*****

Prepped

Can you guess who/what is moving into my garage tomorrow?


3 years ago:

My buns are burning

1 year ago:

Eating from the freezer

Ag Speedlinking: 02.18.08

Push to expand locally grown food sales

From the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. The article says about my alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa, "UNI will spend about $230,000 this year on local food, Secor said, about double from a year ago. The money not only stays in the community, she said, but the students love it. On Wednesday, students chowed down hamburgers made from steers raised locally and processed at the Gilbertville Locker."

*****

Michael Pollan: Choice, elitism, fries

A nice little interview with some choice food for thought (pun intended) from Pollan. Especially his comments on the link between our current eating habits and our current healthcare system: "'if the government were responsible for our health care costs, the government would suddenly have a powerful interest in the American diet.' He thinks if government footed the bill for consumer choices, it would be far less likely to cave in to the food industry when making recommendations and setting policies."

*****

Connecting the dots; the pervasive economic infrastructure of war

I had a hard time connecting the dots this Cedar Rapids author was drawing here, from war to Iowa agriculture. But there are some interesting thoughts buried in here, and some fascinating figures. For example, he states that Iowans spend $4 billion to purchase food from out of state each year!

*****

Prequel

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m going to write a series of posts about how we manage the “business” side of the farm. It is by no means a perfect process. If it were it wouldn’t take so long and I wouldn’t gripe about it so much.

We didn’t start out as a business. When we started our farm in 2002 with 4 Holstein bottle calves, it was just going to be a fun project for the kids to do. It would put a little money into their college accounts and put a little beef into the freezer.

But that all seemed to change when we made the conscious decision not to use hormone implants. Not using hormone implants is definitely not the “norm” around these parts. And when you do something that’s not the “norm”, be prepared to defend your actions. In researching our choice, I found out there was actually a name for what we were doing – “naturally raised”.

There we were, with 4 head of cattle but only needing ½ of one for ourselves. Why 4 head then, you may ask. Cattle are herd animals. When raised singly they don’t thrive as well and can literally die of loneliness. So you want at least two. Which means you want at least three, so that if one dies you still have two. And if you have three, what’s one more if the farmer selling you the calves happens to have an extra?

So even doing this just as a hobby, there’s still the business of finding someone to buy those extra 3 ½. In other words, sales. And for us, sales pretty much means talking to people. Spreading the word, mouth to mouth. And this turned out to work just fine. We were able to find takers for our extra beef the first several years.

After those initial years, our customers could pretty much be divided into 2 groups. The first group likes our beef because it tastes better than what you can buy in the store. Many people say it brings back memories of the beef their grandmother would fix for Sunday dinner. (And when we added pork and chicken we got the same comments.) It seems like people don’t even realize how different modern commodity meats are from the farm-raised meats they grew up on until they have some of ours. This group of customers doesn’t really care about the hormones and antibiotics. They just know good meat when they taste it, and they hadn’t tasted it in a long time until they tasted ours.

The second group of customers are the ones we say are “with the program”. They do care about antibiotics use in livestock, about implanted growth hormones, about humane living conditions for animals. This group of customers has been a little harder to ferret out than the first. The organic movement, the local foods movement, the sustainable agriculture movement all have been a lot slower to take around here than they have in other pockets of Iowa like Decorah, Des Moines, and Fairfield. But little by little people seem to be becoming more aware of these issues.

It was hard in the beginning because we were trying to target the second group of customers. But finding them was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. So at a certain point we took “natural” out of our marketing almost completely, and focused on the “old-fashioned” aspect of it that more of our customers seemed to care about. However this lack in the second group of customers will hopefully turn out to be a good thing, because it means we have a lot of room for growth in that market for this area. It’s just been at the farmers market this past summer that we’ve really started to market ourselves as “natural” again, and find people that are looking for that.

That still doesn’t really explain why we grew from hobby into small business. The short answer is passion. Or perhaps more accurately, a rediscovered passion. We both grew up on farms, but for various reasons didn’t pursue agriculture as a career. I could say a lot about those reasons, but that’s another post for maybe never. But even at this small scale we’ve rediscovered the passion for farming we’d had all our lives. We want our own children to have the experiences we had growing up. And making “good food” available to those who aren’t in a position to raise it themselves is a passion in itself.

The long answer would also mention that the farm just sort of took on a life of its own, and our passion let us get caught up in it instead of having an actual thought-out plan.

Where do we see ourselves evolving to in the next 6 years? Believe me, the thought gets voiced every so often that maybe we should go back to hobby status. We can’t say as we’ve made a true profit in any of these years, through a combination of continuous growth, stupid mistakes on our part, and economic factors beyond our control.

What does any of this have to do with budgets and cash flows and business plans? If it were still a hobby we wouldn’t need any of those things. And perhaps there’s someone reading this that’s still at the beginning. Perhaps sharing our mistakes will save someone else the trouble.

To be continued….


Related posts:

Why we do this

Inspiration


3 years ago:

Houseguest

BWD

2 years ago:

Photo Friday: Baby

Weekend Linkity-Link: (Another) Blizzard Edition

This is the 3rd day this week of snow, blowing snow, white out, yada yada yada. School has already called a 2-hour delay for tomorrow morning. We took a heifer to the locker this afternoon. I wasn't sure we'd make it through the drifts pulling a trailer. Thank goodness for four wheel drive!

Interesting, though, that what little traffic was out and about was mostly people hauling livestock. We ran into our neighbor at the elevator where we go to weigh our animals. He was selling 3 semi loads of cattle today, trying to get his truckers here before the weather got even worse. On top of it he'd had a heifer calve this morning and had to call the vet to pull it.

Then we went to retrieve our eldest daughter from her weekend at her godmother's house in Minnesota. The drive up was bad enough, but the drive home was worse. Apparently they pulled the plows off the road after dark. Big big drifts. Once again, thank goodness for four wheel drive!

All sorts of lovely things happen in this weather! On to the links...

*****

A thankful heart by Plain Old Kristi. A lovely post for Valentine's Day this week!

Pi day recipes for homemade pie at Kitchen Parade. Bake a pie to honor pi, and win a prize! I need to take this challenge. My mother-in-law was a fantastic pie maker. She kept our freezer full of pie, so I never learned to make it. It's mainly the crust I have issues with.

On Meat from the Indianapolis Monthly. A good portrait of an old-fashioned butcher shop, much like the one we use.

Rural Decay Flickr pool. What is it about pictures of neglected buildings? Such beauty, such sadness. I imagine what these places were like when they were new and useful and had an active everyday life.

*****

Meme's and awards, oh my!

A little catch-up here, as a few of my friends from blogland have tagged for one thing or another.

Tim at Nature's Harmony Farm tagged me with the "7 Things You Don't Know About Me" meme. I'm going to cheat a bit here and link you to a past post, Weird and rather boring things.

Both Frugal Mom and Laura at Urban Hennery (love her blog name) awarded me an "E for Excellent" award. That made my day!

And finally, Ang at Children in the Corn tagged me with an Archive Meme. For this one you link to 5 of your favorite posts in the 5 given categories. So here goes!

In the Family category... Our farming heritage - Part 1

In the Friend category... I went to Grundy Center and bought milk about my friend Lisa at Gracious Acres. (Hoping this little prompt will get her blogging again!)

In the About Me category... The obligatory self-portrait and A little genealogy

In the Something I Love category... View from the cheap seats

And for the Wild Card, one of my all-time favorites... Optimism

I know I'm supposed to be passing this on to a number of other people. But I never send on chain letters/recipes/stickers etc. Not even when they're from my mother. (Right, Mom?) So if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged! Leave a link in the comments if you complete your mission.

Sea of pigmanity

I startled the pigs out of their nap, and they all jumped up and ran out of their "bedroom".


3 years ago:

Chicken therapy

2 years ago:

Sculpture

1 year ago:

It's time to play

Ode to one of our favorite winter books

Snow today. Again. I haven't heard the official totals, but I'm guessing 6 inches? I think our school district is bound and determined not to add any more snow makeup days to the end of the school year. By golly they're going to get those kids to school come hell or high snow drifts. Then let them out early. That way they get to count it as a day.

Today they let them out at noon. As soon as the kids were home the snow stopped, and the winds never came up like they were supposed to. Heh.

As soon as the bus left this morning I suited up, grabbed the camera, and traipsed around in an effort to compose an ode to my kids' favorite winter book. I even climbed cornstalk bales to get a few shots! What I won't do for a picture of a cow. And how I was hoping I wouldn't fall in between the bales and be stuck there until afternoon chores.

So do you know what book this is?


The snow gently covered One with a white blanket


The snow gently covered Two with a white blanket


The snow gently covered Three with a white blanket


The snow gently covered Four with a white blanket. (Okay, so I had to make a slight substitution here.)


The snow did not gently cover Five with a white blanket in our story, because our Five is smart enough to stay in out of the snow.

Did you get it?




1 year ago:

A couple of sweeties

Ag Speedlinking: 02.14.08

Designing sustainable small farms from Mother Earth News

"In this issue's mini-manual, the executive director of the renowned New Alchemy Institute tells how to create your own
permaculture plan."

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Organic wisdom from old books also from Mother Earth News

"A little time spent combing the shelves of local bookstores or libraries can help remind you that 'new' ain't necessarily 'better'."

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Support your local farmer

"Time again to consider CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)"

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Itchy

The calves have obviously been using the barbed wire to scratch their itches. There are little tufts of black hair caught in it the whole length of the fence.


2 years ago:

Timber!

1 year ago:

Frosting

Ag Speedlinking: 02.13.08

Better biofuels before more biofuels

"This not about corn or sugarcane, or even switchgrass; the key idea is that climate-friendly biofuels should not use fertile land. There are at least three ways to get away from the food-fuel-wilderness competition... All of these approaches require "second generation" biofuels, but we also need greater energy efficiency in our cars and trucks, as well as for new technologies like affordable electric vehicles."

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Biofuels and the fertilizer problem

"Wow, so our big 'renewable' domestic energy source relies heavily on a mined substance, of which we own a tiny reserve. The biggest store lies in a nation run by Islamicists, a group with whom we're engaged in hostilities. The second-biggest store is lodged within the borders of a budding geopolitical rival. Hmm."

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Reindeer Calf games

It's finally still light enough when I get off work that I can go out and snap a few pics. The mood is definitely different out there in the late afternoon than it is at noon when I usually go out. At noon everybody's sleepy, just hanging out chilling or napping.

In late afternoon they've just been fed and everybody is feeling fat and sassy. The calves in particular are feeling their oats, as they say. Oh the games people calves play...

The calf version of boxing



A staring contest



The perennial favorite, King of the Hill



And the winner!




Putting the finishing touches this week on our newsletter and order form for this year. Then I plan to do a series of blog posts about how we go about doing a budget and cash flow, setting prices, and our business plan. Hopefully sharing it can also be a learning experience for us - I'm sure there are improvements that can be made in our process!


2 years ago:

Big boy toys

1 year ago:

Cat box