Denise Domning's Blog, page 24

A Sad Day

Today, I say good-bye to Elsie, Georgie and Hannah.  As you, my plucky readers, know, I’ve not been being able to wean Hannah off Elsie.  Neither heifer nor cow wants their Mommy/Daughter time to end.  With Hannah only days away from being 6 months old, this weaning process has now taken half her life.  That’s three months with Elsie locked away from her little herd when cows are herd animals and need to be with other cows.

Two weeks ago, I had to stare at the fact that nothing was going to work.  I started looking at my options.  I could either dry up Elsie so there’d be no option but for Hannah to give up, but that meant no milk to sell and no way to offset the cost of their hay.  Also, there’s another calf on the way, so I’d find myself in the same dilemma in another seven months.

Option two, was finding a place for Elsie to stay for a month or two, so Mama would be out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind for Hannah.  That was pie-in-the-sky, because there was no guarantee Hannah wouldn’t recognize her mother when Elsie came back and I’d be in the same situation.  And again, I was left buying hay for two unproductive animals while Elsie was gone.

The last option was to sell Elsie.  Again, that left me supporting two unproductive animals until Hannah has her first calf, some 18 months from now.  That’s when I realized I had to sell them all.  I reached out to my dairy friend Becky in Williamson Valley.  She, like me, is passionate about Jersey cows.  Addicted, maybe, because at first, she told me she didn’t need another cow.  Then a week later, she emailed back and asked for Elsie’s bio.  I gave it to her and was completely honest, that Elsie is stubborn, food aggressive, I’m not entirely certain she’s pregnant, she’s antsy in the stanchion, doesn’t care for hand milking (Becky only hand milks) and fiercely protective of her babies, even if one baby is an orphan unrelated to her.

God bless Becky.  She still bit.  She and her milking assistant came to see Elsie and fell in love.   Then Becky asked if I’d consider selling Hannah as well.  I replied with “Only if you also take Georgie.”

Within minutes the two of them were arranging their three new animals.  Elsie will be kept with a couple of their in-milk cows who will be less likely to bully a newcomer (thus setting off Elsie’s “bossy” tendencies), while Hannah will be paired with another heifer around her own age who has the unlikely name of “Hannah”.  Meanwhile, Georgie will be kept with another little steer who’s been lonely as he’s younger than the other steers and needs a playmate. That was all I needed to know I’d made the right decision.

If I needed confirmation, I got it yesterday.  I brought Elsie up to milk her, got the milker set up and turned on the vacuum pump.  The pulsator started clicking, but the teat cups wouldn’t hold.  That’s right, the ancient old vacuum pump failed as I watched.  It was a message from the Universe…I was done with milking, even if I didn’t like it.

How perfect.  I released Hannah and Georgie.  They raced up to the stanchion to join Elsie.  Hannah latched onto immediately and did the milking for me while Elsie spent a full hour grooming Georgie.  They spent the rest of the day doing what a cow herd does here–grazing, terrorizing turkeys, trying to steal the chicken food hidden under the coop, trying to break into the hay storage and generally running rampant over the property.  A great day was had by all.  I left them together in the corral for the night and will keep them penned until the truck comes around ten this morning.

I’m very sad.  I’ll miss them all incredibly, but it would be far sadder and much more stressful, not to mention expensive, for me to keep them here.  Listening to Elsie mourn over being kept by herself day in and day out has been very difficult.

The best part…Becky left me with the promise that I can buy them back any time I want.

 

Help! Timmy’s in the Well!

My internet has been up and down so many times lately that I’m beginning to feel a little off.  You know, that jerky weird way you feel when you decide you to give up sugar.  My whole system gets antsy if I can’t check spelling by typing a word into Google.  Seriously! Cross the room to pick up the dictionary?  I don’t think so.

So, it started at 4:30 AM or so yesterday.  Bear barked THAT bark, the one that says things aren’t going well outside.  The Mason Ditch is off at the moment.  The Mason Ditch is Blue Line #2 that runs through my property and, although it does send water through my property, I can’t use any of the H2O. Blue Line #1 is Page Springs, which is my water source and I can use as much of it as I want or can contain.  Blue Line #3 is Oak Creek which is Oak Creek and lovely to look at.  For the record, the Mason Ditch is actually also Oak Creek.  The water is diverted from the creek some 5 miles or so upstream from here.  The channel takes it past my house and onward to where it can be used a few miles south of here. Just like Page Springs, the Mason Ditch channel has to be maintained and apparently something somewhere has gone awry so the water is off while the new hole gets plugged.

The point is that when the water is off, the natural barrier it creates goes off with it.  Moosie has more than once made his way off property by trotting under a bridge that he usually can’t get under without mask, fins and snorkel.  Bear doesn’t go under the bridges.  The last time he got near one there was live electric tape just above the water level.  He didn’t stop yelping until he reached the safety of the porch.

So by 4:45 AM I was in my jammies and robe, standing at the kitchen door.  There was no sign of Bear although I’d just heard him barking on the porch.  I hesitated, whining to myself that I didn’t really need to go looking for a dog on Walkabout in the cold and dark.  I almost had myself convinced that I’d dreamed the whole thing when I turned the lock, intending to stick my head out the door to see what I could see.

Bear was there in an instant.  His tail was in full curl (when he’s excited his tail curls into itself like a Chow) and his ears, which are as lazy as he, were upright.  It makes him look like a huge white husky or at least like a dog with some ambition. He danced back and forth, moving nervously from paw to paw.  Turning, he raced to the porch railing, barked that worried bark again, then raced back to look at me.

The translation was obvious for anyone who speaks Lassie:  “Timmy’s fallen in the well and you must come save him!”  Or in Bear’s case, I think it was:  “The Little Guy is in trouble!  You need to save him because this is way too scary for me. That’s why I’m on the porch and not with him.”

Now worried, because Moosie’s instincts don’t let him back down from a fight and coyotes can walk under the same bridge he can, I grabbed my coat.  Shoving my bare feet into a pair of manure-encrusted shoes, I put on my headlamp and trucked out into a chilly but beautiful star-lit night.  There was no sound of coyotes tearing into anything or javelina squealing or the stench of a skunk giving up its life to Moosie’s lion-worthy Sharpei jaws.

Bear, who usually moves like a sloth except when he’s playing with Moosie or the word “treat” is involved, actually ran ahead of me.  When he turned and saw I wasn’t keeping up, he raced back to encourage me to move faster.  He stopped near the larger of the rolling chicken coops and aimed his gaze across the damp ditch channel at the thick, four-foot-tall blackberries that line the bank.  There was no growling, squealing or yipping.  The chickens in the coop were quiet and there was nary a gobble from Tom roosting with his girls in their nearby coop.  Usually, if there’s something going on outside their space the birds make noise.

My heart fell.  The coyotes had already been and gone, and left Moosie for dead in the blackberries.  If he was in there and hurt, I’d never find him in the painful and prickly dark.

Just in case, I whistled.  The blackberries rustled.  Crawling on his belly, Moosie slithered out of the brambles and into the ditch, then popped to his feet to prance happily over to me.  Like Bear, his ears were perked and his tail curled in excitement.  Unlike Bear, his nose was bleeding in at least two dozen places.

Moosie’s wounds don’t show up well among all the dots

Oh, that again.

I breathed in relief and aimed my head upward.  As the headlamp played across the top of the trees that tower over where Moosie had just been, a pair of eyes glowed orange.  In another tree was a second pair of orange orbs.  Two raccoons, perched at the top of two different trees.  Coyotes, javelina, bobcats and Moosie aren’t the only ones who turn the empty ditch into a buffet, moving themselves from salad to entree to dessert.

I didn’t have a rifle handy yesterday morning.  If I had, I still probably wouldn’t have attempted to end what Moosie started, not at four in the morning.  First, I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t be able to hit the broadside of a barn and, second, I’m sure no one living near me would want to be awakened by my attempts to hit something much smaller than a barn.  Instead, I grabbed Moosie by the collar and took him into the house.  Bear followed and while I washed Moosie’s muzzle and treated his wounds (today, his nose is twice its usual bulbous size), Bear helped by cleaning up all the cat food.  Then he went back out into the cold where he’s much more comfortable (the Kuvasz is “almost impervious to inclement weather”), content to know he had for one shining instant been Lassie.

 

 

Lasagna Gardening

At the request of three people, I’m posting the official Farm on Oak Creek how-to guide for building a Lasagna Garden.  No, this is not a garden that contains basil, tomato, sausage and noodle plants.  But it is a great way to build a quick and very fertile garden ON TOP of everything from Caliche to our local red adobe clay soil to concrete.  Yes, you can grow a garden on your driveway if you so choose.  I’ve actually built one of these on concrete.  I had lovely herbs, radishes and onions in it, then the Javelina came through and had an equally lovely feast.  The next one was lined with Lavender.  They never touched it and I had enough flowers from the Lavender to make Lavender syrup.

I continue to use this “recipe” here on the farm.  Almost six years ago now, when I first arrived, I hooked the massive rototiller attachment to the ancient John Deere and made a valiant effort to till the soil near the barn.  The tines of the rototiller BOUNCED off the ground.  That’s how sun-beaten and compacted–and dead–my soil was.  No sweat.  I’d been building this layered, instant garden for years in Scottsdale because, well, I’m impatient. I was laying out four foot wide by eight foot long garden beds at the time.  It was far more satisfying to build an instant garden than working to build my soil, which can take a couple of years.

After the rototiller incident, I decided to go the same Lasagna route since I wanted–no, needed a garden right away.  Never mind that the space was forty feet long by twenty feet wide. After all, what else was I going to do with a whole house’s worth of moving boxes that had to be disposed of?

Because I was doing such a massive space, I didn’t bother with creating rows by framing the beds.  You’ll probably want frames if you’re doing a small space.  They can be made of wood or whatever you have at hand.  All you’re trying to do with a frame is to contain the garden, which has a tendency to slide a little at first, especially around rambunctious dogs and kids.  Don’t worry about building the frames as tall as the garden.  The contents will swiftly begin to decompose and as it does it flattens significantly.

As with any garden, choose your spot well.  The amount of light your plants get is important.  Out here in the desert Southwest, midday and afternoon shade is good while in cloudier places, making sure the garden gets lots of light is important.  If you don’t know much about gardening, I recommend you talk to your local county Extension office.  Chances are, they’ll have the information you need right at their fingertips.  Most Extension offices even offer gardening classes.

Building the garden requires cardboard, newspaper, bone meal, blood meal, enough alfalfa to cover the size area you’ve chosen with a single layer of flakes, which should be about 3 inches tall, enough straw to cover the area with 9 inches of straw, or 3 layers of 3 inch flakes and, lastly, 3 inches of compost.  For you city folk, you can buy bales of straw and alfalfa at a feed store–and there will be feed stores in your area even if you’ve never noticed them, what with all the new urban home chicken and goat owners around.  Do what you can to find straw that hasn’t been too saturated with pesticides and herbicides.  You definitely want to avoid straw made from cotton plants.  Those suckers are seriously toxic. The same goes for alfalfa.  The most recent numbers I’ve read is that about 69% of alfalfa in the US is now GMO.  That means lots of Roundup in your garden, which is definitely a threat to the roots of your new seedlings.  If you can’t find alfalfa that you like, check for bales of oat or barley, or a mix of those, or even an orchard grass.  None of those are GMO (not enough money in it).  Also, don’t use compost made from sewer sludge.  So much toxic stuff still makes it through the composting process, including residues from all sorts of pharmaceuticals.  If you don’t know how or from what the bag of compost you found at the big box store is made, ask.  If the answer is “I don’t know”, you might want to check with your local rock supplier.  They often have bulk compost for landscapers and will sell you a tub or two.  And, these days, there are a lot more people making compost for sale from landscaper leavings.  Check at your local farmers’ market or look on-line for a local Permaculture group.  Permies are a great source for all sorts of natural garden ingredients.  THIS IS IMPORTANT! DON’T SKIP THIS: Wet down your compost before you put it on your garden.  It doesn’t have to be completely soggy, but it must be damp.  As wet as a damp sponge would be good.  If compost goes on dry, it will stay dry and everything you plant in it will suffer.  If it goes on damp, it will retain water.  It will retain even more water if you mulch the surface of your garden after you put your plants in.  You can use leftover straw as a mulch if you have it.

So here’s how to build your instant garden.  Lay out your flattened cardboard boxes to fill the space you’ve chosen.  Cover them with a layer of newspaper.  Sprinkle generous handfuls of bone meal and blood meal over the newspaper.  Then, tear into that bale of alfalfa.  It will come apart in squares.  That’s a flake.  Lay out a single layer of alfalfa flakes.  Top that with three layers of straw flakes. Cover the last layer of straw with 3 inches of your damp compost.  Water it well, then start popping in your purchased seedlings. Yes, it can be the same day or even in the same hour you finished building the garden.  I don’t recommend trying to start seeds in this as for the first few weeks it gets a little hot as the garden gears up, and you really won’t be able to keep it wet enough to start seeds.

Great looking dirt!

And what happened to that massive first Lasagna garden of mine?  It’s now decomposed to ground level.  The dirt is a gorgeous brown and filled with mycorrhizae, fungal forms that feed my plants.  Right now, it looks pretty tatty, but I’ve been harvesting arugula, chard, parsley and fennel out of it all winter.  I finally cut back the asparagus that I intend will someday fill it from one end to the other.  I’m about halfway there.  Asparagus all spring is a great way to get rid of moving boxes.

 

 

 

Curious George

Georgie checking out my phone

Georgie, my little steer, is now nine months old.  This means he stands above waist high to me and his horns (such as they are–Jerseys don’t have big horns, thank heavens!) are fully grown out.  And he’s got personality oozing out of his pores.

Dang it!   The last thing I want is to get attached to that not-so-little creature.  He’s destined for one thing, the dinner table.  I don’t need a pet steer.  But Hannah does need a big brother.  At least right now.

That weaning thing is still a work in progress, and it’s not progressing very quickly.  Neither Elsie nor Hannah want their mother-daughter time to end.  They’ve been apart for a full week now, something that the rain made really difficult.  I usually put Elsie down in the lower pasture near the creek.  But last week the creek was swollen and rising.  I’ve seen the creek when it’s at full flood and it’s pretty scary.  I didn’t want to put Elsie in harm’s way, so I locked her into my orchard where she wreaked havoc on my little apricot trees.  Argh.  The only positive is that every other time I’ve kept them apart this long, the both spent the day bellowing.  This time, Hannah makes a few noisy complaints then settles down to spending the day with her big (sort of) brother.  Then again she’s five months old now as of January 10th.  Surely, this means her system is ready to stop with the milk.

Speaking of the milk, Elsie has surprised me.  Last year was her first fresh, meaning her first time producing milk that wasn’t for a calf.  She only managed to stay in milk for five months.  This time, as the five month mark passed two days ago, Elsie seems to have settled into a steady two gallons a day.  That’s not much milk for a Jersey, but I suspect Elsie’s not a full-blooded Jersey.  Buying a cow is a lot like buying a used car.  Certain facts just don’t get mentioned.  I’m not complaining, mind you.  First of all, two gallons a day is plenty of milk for me.  And, if Elsie isn’t full Jersey, this means that at worst, Hannah is half Jersey as her sire was a Jersey bull.  That might offer Hannah some protection from Milk Fever, which hits Jerseys hardest.

So, back to Georgie.  He wants to play all the time these days.  I actually think he likes the cold weather, or perhaps he likes the sun warming him up on a cold winter day.  Whatever it is, he’s been unfortunately frisky.  Why unfortunately?  Because cows play by head butting and he has those hard little horns, and Hannah won’t play with him because of that.  Moosie and Bear have learned to keep half an eye aimed over their shoulders when he’s close by.  The turkeys are always vigilant around him.  He especially wants to hit Tom because Tom spends much of his day puffed up, his tail feathers spread wide.  That presents Georgie with a very attractive target.  I’m always aware of where he is when I’m out walking the fields.  I, apparently, also present a tempting target.  Maybe that’s because I turn around and grab him by the horns and shake his head.  Maybe I should stop doing that….

Trying to make that ball butt back

Last week, my niece Danielle came to visit and we had a marvelous time together.  We made cheese for her to take home and Jalapeno Jelly, which we then delivered to Pillsbury Wine Company downtown Cottonwood, where we went on to do a little wine tasting.  And Danielle played with Georgie.  She even got him his own toy, a pretty blue ball–one of those big yoga balls–that Moosie tried to steal.  Luckily, no matter how Moosie tried he wasn’t able to master the art of walking on top of the ball, so when he finally gave up and George circled back in on his toy.

But, try as mightily as he could, the ball refused to butt back.  It just kept bouncing away from him.  He tried dancing around it, threatening it with much head shaking.  No response.  He even backed up on it and tried a good kick.  It didn’t kick back.  After two days of effort, Georgie was over it.  He went back to chasing the turkeys and the dogs, and he once again started climbing onto the commercial kitchen porch to see if I might be in the kitchen.  I also caught him peering into the laundry room door.  I think he was hoping it might be open the way it was the one time he walked into the house.  No luck.  He’s considered walking up the eight steps that lead to the back porch, but that many steps seems to confound him.  Stair climbing is not a natural cow trait, I guess.

Is anyone in there?

Yesterday he spent the whole afternoon in the parking area, trying to convince the dogs to play with him. When they refused, he went under the porch and lowed. It was a 10-year-old’s whine. “I’m so bored! There’s nothing to do around here.”

New Year’s Intention

I don’t mess around with any namby-pamby resolutions.  Resolving is way too close to dissolving for my tastes, and that’s what most people’s resolutions do–they dissolve.  If I want to achieve forward momentum in 2016, then I need to set my Intention.

An Intention is a pact between me and God/the Universe/All That Is or whatever you choose to call The Supreme Consciousness.  Once I present my Intention and He and I shake hands over it, it will come to fruition.  Let me repeat:  If you set them, they will occur.

Try it some time.  Back in the day when I lived in Scottsdale, just for fun I’d set the Intention to hit all green lights on Shea Boulevard from the 51 Freeway to the 101 Freeway.  Off I’d go, whizzing along with nary a stop.  Need that close up parking spot and don’t have a handicapped sticker?  Set an Intention.

I’ve been doing this since my early Twenties with big and small, silly and important Intentions, and I’ve figured out a few things about them over the years.  First, they only work if you make an authentic request.  In other words, you really do intend for XYZ to happen. There are no value qualifications with Intentions, such as “and make it easy on me, please”.  That’s a prayer.  With Intentions, the traffic lights are either green or they’re not.  You don’t get to choose how they unfold or what the ride feels like once you’re on it.  Just hold on tight!

Case in point.  Twenty-nine years ago when Ed and I had only started dating I had the opportunity to go wine tasting in Napa (one of my favorite things to do).  He offered to watch my boys so I could enjoy the weekend.  Two weeks before the trip, I dreamed that I opened a hospital business letter that said (I’m really not making this up): “We regret to inform you that Denise Domning died in a car accident.”

Needless to say, I woke up certain that I shouldn’t go on that trip, that I was going to die if I did.  Ed poo-pooed me when I told him and insisted that I go.  I reluctantly let him talk me back into taking the trip.  However, I wasn’t willing to completely give in to “sanity”, so I set the Intention that “I will not die in a car accident”.  Note those words.  This is a lesson in specificity.

When I met up with the other members of this tour in San Francisco Airport, the tour guide asked if anyone knew the area and would be willing to drive.  I do, so I offered to take three other members with me in a rental car, which happens to be a brand new Cadillac.  Off we go to Napa, but once within town my co-pilot gets us lost.  Turns out she had the map upside down.  We park on a side street and straighten that out, then make our way back out to Napa’s main downtown drag, finally headed toward our hotel. That’s when I see him coming.  Cars are screeching to the side as he swerves lazily back and forth across all the lanes of traffic.  I start pulling to the side, but not in time. His car slides down the length of the Caddy, tearing off the top of the gas tank as he goes.  Suddenly I have no power steering and I’m being shot across the street into oncoming traffic.  Despite that, I manage to navigate the behemoth back on the correct side of the yellow line, then let it drift neatly into a convenient street side parking space.  The drunk ended up with his car buried into another parked car behind me.

Everyone gets out.  The only injury is minor.  The girl sitting behind me hit her head on the window.  The four of us stand next to the Caddy and wait for the officials to show up. (I’m so old that I can actually remember when there were no cell phones.)  The fire department gets there first.  A couple of the firemen come rushing over to see if we’re okay.  After they’re assured that there’s no blood, they look at what used to be a brand new Cadillac.  They shake their heads, glance at us, then shake their heads again.  One guy returns to ask who was driving.  When I hold up my hand, he says to me, “We can’t figure out why this car didn’t explode on impact, or how you managed to drive it over here.”

Well, it didn’t explode on impact because if it had I would have died in a car accident.  That wasn’t in alignment with the Intention I’d set.  Of course, in hindsight I can now see that what I should have said was “I will not HAVE a car accident that threatens my life.”  Specificity.  Keep that in mind as you set your Intentions.  Or be brave and make them broad, then wait for the rollercoaster car that’s sure to show up.

After you’ve carefully crafted your Intention and stated it for God to hear, there’s only one rule.  Set it free.  No obsessing.  Forget you said it. There’s nothing more to be done on your part.  Intentions aren’t prayers; that’s a different sort of communication between you and your Creator.  So, no pleading allowed, no panic or desperation.  Nor are they mantras.  No repetition is necessary.

Why set it free?  Because if you hold onto it, you’ll want to be in control of it.  That puts you between a Universe-wide consciousness that is always hungry for something new to play with and the billion piece jigsaw you just offered Him.  Thy will, not mine.  You don’t get to say what road you take to reach this goal.

So what was my Intention last year?  To know the moment of my marriage’s death and be free to declare it. Check.  It wasn’t Ed who asked for the divorce, it was me.

Apparently, I’d also made it implicit in this Intention that I wanted to heal as quickly as possible, because almost immediately and pretty much despite myself, I began to work my way out of the trauma.  (There was a lot of internal, “Oh, just stop sniveling”.)  Not saying it was fun or easy.  I burnt every picture he didn’t take (I warned him to take what he wanted because I was going to burn everything that reminded me of the marriage.)  If I had the slightest emotional reaction to something, I got rid of it.  I presently live in a house that lacks anything with an emotional connotation.  Surprisingly, I still have a lot of stuff.

So here I am, just shy of six months divorced and I have to admit that I love my life.  Oddly, or maybe not because of all that burning, the last 29 years now feel like a dream, almost as if they hadn’t really happened or had happened to someone with whom I’m barely acquainted, someone I really don’t want to know any better than I already do.  I accept that there will never be a retirement account for me, but I make a pretty good salary and I can still write, so I’m likely to continue making a decent salary.  And if that doesn’t work out, I guess I’ll figure something else out.  I’m liking being the me I am right now.  I smile a lot, I sing to my animals (I’m not sure they appreciate this), I get up excited to start each day, I have friends who appreciate me and celebrate me.  The family members who have chosen to keep me are precious beyond words, but I have no animosity toward the others of my family who have chosen to pass on me to keep my ex. He can be a charming dastard.

Now that I’ve defined forgiveness as a properly set boundary, I’m free to step out of my emotions and see without pain.  The retirement money the ex plowed through was both of ours, and even though he’ll inherit more, the fun, shared future full of possibility that money once represented for us is just as gone for him as me.  I acknowledge now that he had no control in the matter of his spending, that unless I could have locked him out of the accounts the money would have been gone within ten years no matter what. He’s a desperately unhappy man, one who was already struggling with depression at 6, one I dragged from counselor to counselor as I tried to help him, a recovering addict who never managed to exit addiction’s Fix or Flail ride. Buying things became his legitimate high, the only way he could feel good.  When the money was gone, it should have come as no surprise that he would want to be gone as well.

So, I thank my Creator for delivering me from the marriage as requested and even making it easier than I expected.  As for this year, I’m going to leap off the cliff.  I Intend for the farm, the kitchen, the books and me to blossom.  I wonder what sort of rollercoaster car will show up for this one?

Just Breathe

It happened.  At long last, I know where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.  That’s right, Cornville!  It looks like you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.

Today, the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved my use permits.  Not only can I keep 2 kitchens in the house (one commercial and the other residential), I can rent out the commercial kitchen.

I need to say that again.  I CAN RENT OUT MY COMMERCIAL KITCHEN!   I can begin to generate at least a little income stream from this monstrosity of a house.

And because of that I can live here for as long as I want, propagating my asparagus, building new gardens that work for me, planting new orchards along the ditch side, raising pigs if I choose or buy another milk cow.  And because of that I can live here for as long as I want propagating my asparagus, building new gardens that work for me, planting new orchards along the ditch side, raising pigs if I choose or buy another milk cow.  I can bring in a hundred laying chickens. I can keep my dogs here on the farm where they belong and I don’t have to find homes for six of my eight cats.  I can paint the living room.  I can tear out the fireplace (OMG! that mantelpiece has to go–or maybe I’ll paint it green and blue…because I can!) and put in a wood stove insert that will heat the house with wood from this heavily overgrown property.  Perhaps, if God (via Amazon) is good, I might even build in the new kitchen then turn this vintage 1985 wreck of a kitchen into the living room it ought to be.  I can think seriously about replacing the tractor.  Who knew that instead of wrapped presents under the tree, I’d be dreaming about a Kubota with a rototiller?  I can even park it in the front barn!  Woot!

I can go on splitting my daffodil bulbs and iris rhizomes, and seed them across the hills and ditch bank.  Soon arugula and sorrel will cover the rocky slopes (where there’s been cow poop) and I’ll keep encouraging grass along Oak Creek until I’ve tripled my pastures.

And I will eventually wean that calf.  (She broke through my barriers and emptied half of her mama’s udder last night.  More baling twine is needed!)

And Tom will die in his sleep right here where he’s lived his whole life.

I’m home, Toto.  I’m home.

Bless everyone who was praying or thinking of me today.  Bless Tammy DeWitt of the Yavapai County Planning and Zoning department for all her help.  Special thanks go to Eric Marcus, Su Petersen, Kevin O’Melia and Jacquie Robinson for their neighborhood support, and again for showing up to the meetings along with Steve Cassagio of the Cornville Community Assocation.  Your presence made it all easier.

Lastly, thank you Cornville, Arizona.  I didn’t know this place existed until May of 2010, and now I’m sorry I waited so long to find you.  What an amazing hidden gem of a place this is, and I’m overjoyed to be a member of this community.

 

Corral Rework

The weaning process continues, and continues to fail.  I’m pushing now for two days off, one day on.  Part of the reason I’m so unsuccessful (I think) is because the corral is all wrong.  Or was all wrong until today, many thanks to my friend Su Petersen of Verde Valley Alpacas (great roving and yarn for the knitters out there!)

The corral started out wrong.  The ground under it is fine clay, deposited over the millennium by Oak Creek.  It lacks any organic matter which means that although it can absorb water, the water it absorbs doesn’t go anywhere.  It puddles about 10 inches below the surface and stays there.  Worse, it’s clay.  So as the cows walk on the wet dirt it does what clay does and compacts beautifully.  Think adobe.  Think brick.  Think impenetrable.

Theoretically, what should have happened before we raised the corral was to build a bio-active base.  That means digging down about 4 feet, putting in some of the flood fall logs, then topping them with a thick layer of organic matter and topping that with bio-active soil (i.e. compost).  After that, we could have added the native clay.  Since that didn’t happen, I’ve got what I’ve got, as they say.

It isn’t so bad in the open area of the corral, where the sun hits even in the winter.  That area tends to dry out better.  But under the roof, where the stalls are, it simply doesn’t warm up enough to do anything but freeze, thaw, seep and freeze again.  This last week I acknowledged that I had to do something. I tried raking off the layers of straw I’ve been adding in an attempt to do…um, something, I’m not sure what.  No dice.  Where it was frozen, I couldn’t move it and where it wasn’t, it was so wet I couldn’t lift it. So I brought out the broadfork.

If you don’t know what a broadfork is here’s a photo.  Frankly, this is the best core strength building piece of equipment known to Mankind.  Thrust the tines into the soil, balance both feet on the bar while holding the handles and rock back and forth, driving the tines deeper.  Then step off and lift.  I worked both stalls three times this week.  I hit “bedrock” (that compacted clay) all three times, but succeeded in turning the top 7 or so inches of poop-filled, matted straw stuff.  The smell that followed told me clearly that I had lots of anaerobic bacteria.  There’s no stench quite like it.

That also told me what I had to do.  First, the calves couldn’t use the spare stall (the wettest one).  But it’s cold and they need at least a little protection from the weather. Ah-hah!  I’m no longer storing hay in one end of the bale storage area.  That meant I had the long narrow area between the stalls and the turkey coop for them to use.  Its placement means it’s warm (relatively) and dry. That’s why we’d been storing hay in it.  That also gave me an exclusive “calf” entrance to the corral, and that meant I could keep Hannah locked up away from Elsie without having to ward off Elsie.  Yay!  One problem solved.

But what about Elsie?  She can’t be using that stall with all that icky stuff beneath her feet.

That’s when the light bulb went off over my head.  I had five more pieces of pipe corral fencing.  All I needed to do was divide the corral in half.  Ta-da!  Two sides of the corral, Hannah on one, Elsie on the other, both of them with plenty of room to stand or lay where they want.  After that I’ll line the north side of the corral with the 30 bales of straw I just ordered.  That will give  Elsie a warm place to huddle outside of the stalls.

That’s where Su came in, helping me to carry and bolt the extra panels into place.  Then we reinstalled the plastic chicken wire between the bottom pipe and the pipe above it.  Why do that?  Because I’ve caught Hannah and Elsie lining up against the fence so Hannah can snack on milk.

As for Elsie’s stall, I went over it again with the broadfork, then added a thick layer of dried leaves.  Tomorrow, after the bales are in place,  I’ll saturate it with whey, and hopefully the composting will begin.  Even if she chooses to stand in it, she won’t be ankle deep in anaerobic bacteria and that’s a good thing.

Gotcha, milk-thief!

And if she wants to spend time with her baby…well, they can lay back-to-back in either side of the fencing.  No more milk for Hannah!

 

Snow and Soup

When I started this post earlier today, I had just come back in after doing my morning chores in the rain.  That always makes the chores worse because, for no reason I know, I haven’t managed to buy myself proper rain gear.  No windbreaker, no Mackintosh coat, no real rubber boots.  My boots come from Tractor Supply (if you had told me ten years ago I would buy clothing at Tractor Supply I would have told you you were crazy–just sayin’) and they aren’t REAL rain boots.  Although attractive, sort of, my cheap-y boots are just glued together.  It’s always a shock to walk through a puddle or step into the ditch and discover where the glue has disappeared.  With this most recent pair, the glue seemed to melt away.  I’ve only owned them for two months and they’re leaking everywhere.  Rather than buy new and/or better boots, I’m avoiding stepping into the ditch or creek.  The things I’ll do to avoid shopping, sigh.

At any rate, I came back inside dripping and shivering, returned to my computer only to glance up and see…SNOW!  Large, white flakes drifted gently down to dissolve the instant they hit something.  This went on for at least a half and hour.  That was it.  I grinned and pulled out the fixings for soup.

Turkey soup, that is.  What a surprise!  I already had the broth made from a previous carcass so it super simple.  I put about a quart and a half of broth into a pot, tossed in a pair of drumsticks (sorry dogs, they’re mine today!), simmered until they were cooked then stripped the meat off the bone.  After that, I chopped up a stalk of celery, half an onion and a carrot, and threw them in.  For spices, I added small cayenne pepper, a little dried sage (I didn’t want to walk outside and pick fresh) and about eight stalks worth of parsley leaves.  I’d left the parsley on the counter to dry after I picked too much for a previous dish.  I crumbled the dried parsley leaves and left out the stalks, then added salt and pepper and cooked until the veggies were soft.  It was time for lunch by then, and my impromptu soup was delicious. Then again, I like what I cook which I suppose is why I cook even if it’s just for me.

My all-time favorite soup is Cream of Broccoli. Let me say that I had never eaten broccoli until I was an adult.  Growing up, it was canned green beans, canned corn, canned kidney beans and salad made from Iceberg lettuce with carrots and tomatoes.  For dressing, it was Thousand Island all the way.  Or, if we were out, mayonnaise, pickle relish and ketchup, which is sort of Thousand Island-ish.

I made broccoli soup yesterday for my grandson Josiah’s birthday lunch.  Although he claimed to like it, I’m not sure he really tasted it.  The only thing he cared about was the homemade Macaroni and Cheese.  Mac and Cheese is what he’d live on if he were allowed to choose.  He said mine is especially good because I make the cheese, which in his mind makes it seriously homemade.  I hope he never figures out that I’m not making the noodles.  Nor will I ever make pasta from scratch.  That just seems like too much work and I don’t really have the counter space for rolling out long sheets of dough.

For me, a bowl of broccoli soup with an apple and a hunk of cheddar cheese is heaven, so heaven is where I’m going tonight with the leftovers. I might even splurge on a grilled cheese sandwich to go with it.

Some notes about the recipe.  For broth, you can use chicken or turkey broth but if you’re buying broth consider using Pacific Brand “No-Chicken” broth.  It’s an all vegetable broth and really works well with the broccoli. The sweetener is because broccoli can sometimes have a sour taste and this softens it. By the way, don’t overdo the nutmeg.  I have a friend who overdosed on it.  She said it was an awful experience.  Who knew?!

Cream of Broccoli Soup

2 stalks of broccoli (this can be stalks with florets or use 2 thick stalks or 4 thinner stalks without the florets and save the florets for something else), peeled and coarsely chopped
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 medium potatoes, yellow or red, coarsely chopped
4 cups of broth, plus an extra cup of water if you like a thinner soup
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup milk or milk substitute or 1/2 cup goat yogurt
1/2 to 1 tbsp sweetener of your choice
ground nutmeg to taste

Put the broccoli, onion, garlic, potatoes, broth and salt and pepper into a pot.  Bring to a boil and simmer until the veggies are fork-tender.  Drain the veggies from the broth.  Using a food processor or a blender, puree the vegetables until smooth, adding broth if needed for processing.  Return the puree and broth to the pot, stir in the milk and sweetener.  Ladle the soup into a bowl and top with ground nutmeg.  As I mentioned, fresh apples with cheese or a grilled cheese sandwich really go well with this soup.  Enjoy!

 

 

Christmas Egg Hunt

It was like being in one of those Bil Keane “Family Circus” cartoons, the ones where the kids made their labrynthine route from one place to another.  I knew the chicken was laying her eggs in the wood pile.  The reason I knew that was because I’d found her first nest in the neat little hollow of the sycamore tree.  She did not take kindly to my removing her precious babies and found herself a better hiding place for her next set of eggs. I’d seen her making her way back to the wood pile and reappearing a little later, plus her favorite rooster cackles for her when she lays her eggs.  Now there’s an odd genetic trait.  What better way to tell predators to come and eat than to cackle right after the egg is laid?

Although this little hen is only about 6 months old, meaning she’s just started laying eggs, she takes procreation very seriously.  I think she fully intends to brood her small cream-colored eggs once she has a dozen or so in the nest.

She’s a funny little hen, being part black and silver Cochin and part Jungle Fowl. FYI, the Jungle Fowl is supposed to be the original Asian bird from which all chickens are descended; I got this bird from friends in the Village of Oak Creek (he was a gift rooster, not that there is really such a thing.)  That rooster was the one that killed the hens he didn’t like and I killed him after that.  Now, mind you, the Daddy bird was about half the size of the Mommy bird.  The logistics of how little Goldilocks came into the world are somewhat mind-boggling, as is how two dark colored chickens managed to produce a baby as brightly colored as she is.  Even the slight feathering (a Cochin trait) of her feet are blond.

So, after I stole Goldilock’s first clutch of eggs–she had eight in the tree hollow–she took umbrage and found this new nest in the wood pile.  For a week I scoured the pile, lifting this piece of wood and that stick, peering into corners and daring to stick my hand into dark places (not really a good idea–I’ve seen Brown Recluses out there).  Finally I realized there was only one way I’d ever find that nest.  I’d have to catch her as she was making her way to it and watch where she went.

It happened the other day.  I was out on the swing–the turkeys love to watch people swing; they stand in a semi-circle and comment to each other about how that creature is managing to fly without wings–when I caught a glimpse of gold making its way back toward the wood pile.  I slipped out of the swing and started to follow her.  She stopped stock still.  Her head turned one way, then the other.  I’d been spotted!

Sure enough, she turned and walked away from the woodpile, moving casually as if she’d meant to go in that direction.  Up the embankment she went, clucking to herself, shooting glances at me.  She zigzagged along the embankment until I eased around the trunk of one of the giant sycamores and disappeared from her view.  A minute later I peered around the edge.  Yep, she’d done a 180 and started back to the wood.  I poked my head out.  Dang!  She saw me.  This time, she went the other way, walking along the top of a fallen branch, inspecting the ground beneath it as if hunting for a tasty bug.  I shifted a little more forward as she took another turn.  I crept out of hiding.

Too soon!  She caught sight of me and froze. I did the same and stood completely still. Her head turned again, first one eye, then the next checking to see if it was really me.  Apparently it wasn’t, because after a moment she began moving again.  At this point, I think she was getting a little desperate with that egg ready to make its exit, because she pretty much made a beeline for the area where I knew she had to be laying.

Hint: she’s at the center of the photo

But as I followed her around that last piece of wood, I lost her.  All I could see was the blanket of dark golden sycamore leaves that cover the pile. Augh!  (Okay, I know…that’s “Charlie Brown” but it fits the situation.)  Every one of those leaves was the exact color as that chicken!  But she had to be here!

Back and forth I went, studying every inch of this particular heap.  It was five minutes before I spotted her.  And they say chickens don’t see color. See if you can find her in the photo. (Hint: she’s at the center)

There were ten eggs waiting there for me after she left.  Just as I expected, once I took them she abandoned that next.  I’m thinking she needs a chicken-cam buckled to her tiny head.  Either that, or I’m going to have to let her sit on her nest and hatch out her babies.  Just what I needed, lots more chickens that lay SMALL eggs.

Turkey Proliferation

Count them for me. I get 35 and the photo doesn’t show them all.

I think I have more turkeys now than when I started slaughtering before Thanksgiving.  Okay, I know that’s not true but it sure feels like it.  I think I miscounted, which is easy to do with turkeys as they refuse to stand still and so I can count them.  I even tried counting at night while they’re roosting, but the minute I start moving toward the back of the coop, birds leap off roosts and start milling in agitation.  When you have (apparently) a hundred birds, that’s a lot of milling.

This is how it works with turkeys.  Around early April the hens finish laying their eggs–anywhere from 15 to 25 of them.  That means they started popping out those cute brown-speckled ovoids near the beginning of March.  This last year I started with 20 hens and they scattered to every corner of the property to nest.  They love the blackberries, unfortunately.  What keeps me out also keeps out most of the predators.  There were even a couple outside the fence in the vegetation by the road.  I found one and built a box around her, but I didn’t find the other one until she’d hatched out her babies and was trying to find a way to rejoin the flock.

Mind you, once the girls start sitting, they don’t move for about 21 days–no food, no water, no nothing.  Then all of a sudden at day 21 a motley, skinny bird appears at the food dish and gobbles (pun intended) down as much as she can in three minutes, slurps up some water, then disappears again. That’s how I know hatching is imminent and to start watching for the babies, who dutifully begin appearing 7 days later.  If all the eggs haven’t hatched out by day 30, Mom leaves the nest, abandoning the other eggs even if they’re viable.  That’s what broody hens are for.  I had one who happily hatched 7 babies for me.  I just kept putting the peeping eggs under her. (A day or two before they hatch, both chicks and poults will start peeping inside the egg. Did I mention that baby turkeys are called “Poults” and that’s the root of our word “Poultry”?)

Anyway, most of the first clutches are hatched out by the end of April.  That’s their natural cycle, which really does make them the perfect bird for Thanksgiving because they’re full grown by the end of November.  So April was when I first started counting beaks.  By May I was pretty sure I had 150 birds.  Ten or so floated away down the ditch as their mothers tried to convince them they could fly using their little Tyrannosaur appendages.  Another ten either drowned in the water troughs (they’ll jump up on the edge, teeter a bit then fall in) or were knocked on their backs and couldn’t right themselves.  As I’ve mentioned before, this is a serious turkey design flaw.  I spend a great deal of time in those first weeks watching for overturned poults.

By the beginning of June I was pretty sure I had 140 birds.  They certainly ate like that many birds.  I’m so glad I don’t do confinement farming because the food costs would be astronomical.  It’s far cheaper to let them graze on grass and bugs, and my cherry tomatoes dang it.  By August there’d been a few dog malfunctions–17 birds this year, but he’s doing so much better that I’m starting to think he’s finally got it, by George!–and a good deal of mountain lion and/or bobcat intrusion.  By that I mean I thought I was down to 80 birds.

Then Thanksgiving came and went and I know how many I slaughtered.  After that I started frowning at the food bowls.  Not much relief on that front. So I took another eight birds on Friday, just for broth and ground meat.  That should have taken me to less than 40 birds.  But I keep looking and counting as best I can as they dash and dart around me.  I swear I’m still over 50 birds.  What?!  Were they hiding on the hillside until Thanksgiving passed and are just now returning to the coop?  How did I miscount by that much?

Oh, wait!  That’s right, I can’t count.  I have Dyscalculi.  That’s Dyslexia for numbers.  I struggle with numbers because they jumble and shift in front of my eyes.

Post-rigor shrink-wrapped birds

Well, no matter how many there are, I need to be down to 20 hens and Tom by the year’s end.  It took me 3 hours to process the last 8 birds.  If I do 8 every fifth day, I can shrink wrap the previous set of eight using the hot water in the scalder before I start plucking the next set.

Why am I waiting five days between batches, you might ask.  This appears to be a little known fact, even among people I expect would know this.  So here it is: Birds, just like beef, need to process for a few days after death before they’re edible.  While beef hangs–or used to hang for a couple of weeks while processing; now all but the small slaughterhouses use chemicals for force the meat to soften before its time–birds need to be kept refrigerated for at least three days while rigor mortis passes.  So the birds you buy in the supermarket are either shot up with softening chemicals or have been sitting for probably a week before they even hit the wrapping machine.  Things that make you go “hmm”…