What a day!

I can't remember the last time I came inside and blogged about my day, but this was a day that won't be forgotten soon. We have an apprentice staying with us who is learning about goat birthing, and just as we were about to go outside this morning to milk the new moms -- because their babies are not nursing evenly on both sides -- I heard Sherri yell over the monitor. She was at day 148, and I was expecting her to give birth today because her udder was getting quite big when I saw it last night. So, instead of going to see the new moms, we went into the kidding barn to see Sherri.

She was pushing every now and then, and after about thirty minutes, I heard the phone ring in the barn office. It was a neighbor telling me that a llama was in her yard. Our apprentice had already seen two textbook births, and I'd explained a little to her about dealing with complications, but I said, "This is Sherri. She's had nine years of completely uneventful births. Usually when I hear a sound over the baby monitor, I come running out here to find a kid already born, so she knows what to do. You just have to wipe off the nose and put the kid in front of her face."

I called a friend and asked if someone could come over to help with catching the llama, so she and her teenage son headed over. It started to rain again, and I said, "What else could go wrong?" I realized my cell phone was dead, so we gave my friend's cell phone number to the apprentice ... just in case.

We headed out to find lady llama. We went over the river and through the woods and everywhere else, and we couldn't find the llama. After about half an hour, my friend's phone rang. The apprentice said, "A head is out, but there are no feet." I told her not to worry, we'd head back because we hadn't found the llama anyway. We were almost home when my friend got a text that said, "Kid out!" So, I turned the car around again, and we headed back to search for the llama some more. Then we got another text that said, "Buck doe twins." Finally, I headed home because I had a radio interview scheduled for 11 a.m. to talk about Ecothrifty, my latest book.

When we got home, I went into the barn to check on the kids, which were huge! Later I weighed them and found that the buck was 4.9 pounds, and the doe was 4.5 pounds, which is really big for Nigerian dwarf kids. I'm happy with 2.5 to 3 pound kids, and I'm pretty sure the does would agree with me on that one!

My friends left, and I came inside, waiting for the phone to ring at 11:00. It didn't ring, so I called the back-up number, and got a recording saying it was disconnected. Just as I started to panic, I got an email from my publicist asking if I was ready for my noon interview! Ah! The confirmation email was wrong; is said 12 eastern time.  I'm in the central time zone. An hour later, I did the interview and then decided we should head out to look for lady llama again. Turns out she was easy to find. She was in our pasture! Maybe I should have looked there earlier? I don't know. Maybe there is a place in the fence that was damaged by the storm, and she can now come and go as she pleases. Or maybe it was someone else's llama that was seen? People tend to assume any animals around here are always ours because there are not that many livestock owners in our area.

The deadline for my next book is tomorrow, so I'm hoping to have more time for blogging after that. I still need to tell you about the other births we've had so far and show you the cute pictures of the kids. We are up to 11 kids so far this year, and more are due in February.

Chicken changes

 

Our three-year-old New Hampshire Red hens and two-year-old Ameraucanas went to the poultry processor in mid-December to become stew hens. Although the Ameraucanas were only two years old, they were never great layers. At age two, they were not laying as well as the New Hampshires that were a year older, which was disappointing. They also stopped laying really early in the fall. At the end of November, none of us could remember when was the last time we saw a blue egg.

Buff Orpginton 4-month-old pullet

Jonathan and Mike cleaned out the chicken house and moved in the young chickens. I ordered 25 Buff Orpingtons from a hatchery in September. Why September? If I'm getting pullets from a hatchery, I prefer to get them in the fall because they wind up laying more eggs. It takes about six months for most pullets to start laying, so if you get them in September, they will reach six months of age right around the same time that most hens start laying after their winter hiatus. So, they start laying and they lay incredibly well because of the long days of summer. If you buy spring pullets, they start laying a few eggs around the time that the days are getting shorter and then slow down or even stop from December to February, so when you look at the number of eggs laid in their first year, it isn't great.

I quit buying roosters a long time ago because I realized you always get a couple anyway, possibly because of sexing errors or possibly because they add a rooster for "warmth" because they are always undersold. (Most people want hens for eggs.) I almost didn't get a rooster this time as only one turned out to be a cockerel! Maybe I should start adding one rooster to my orders in the future to be safe. Although you don't need a rooster to make eggs, we want fertile eggs so we can hatch our own replacements.

The New Hampshires were amazing layers. The only thing I didn't like about them is that they didn't go broody at all. Raising animals naturally means that I want them to reproduce on their own. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't want broody hens, so poultry breeders have been breeding towards less broody hens for decades. Orpingtons were one of the first two breeds of chickens we ever owned, and some of them did go broody, so I'm hoping a few of these girls will follow suit.

Silver Sebrights

I also added to my Silver Sebright flock. After a year with my first batch of Sebrights, which included half Goldens, I only had two hens and a rooster that had not been eaten by predators. (Okay, we had also eaten some of the roosters.) I ordered another 15 Silver Sebrights, and my one Silver hen finally hatched a brood by late summer. She hatched ten and lost six of them, but the four remaining were all pullets! Hopefully her mothering skills will improve in 2013. The positive/negative thing about the bantams is that they run all over the farm, which means they eat almost zero purchased feed, but they wind up as dinner for predators more often than the other chickens.

I bought the new Sebrights in late spring because they are only sold straight run, and most of the cockerels were destined to become dinner. At 3-4 months of age, almost all of them dress out at exactly a pound each, and when split down the middle, it makes a beautiful little grilled chicken for two people. One half is the perfect serving for one person with your own little leg, thigh, wing, and breast. I'll have to remember to take a picture of one next summer when we grill them!

And in case you're thinking that you see a few chickens in these pictures that don't look like Orpingtons or Sebrights, you are correct. We hatched a few eggs in the incubator this past spring, so we have four New Hampshire pullets, a Barred Rock pullet, and a cross-breed pullet.

This spring I will also be getting about a dozen straight run Delawares.

The longest week (or two) of my life

Four year ago when I adopted Joy at age 11

When I turned off the computer two weeks ago on Saturday night, December 29, I went upstairs and discovered that my little bichon was dead. She was 15 years old, and her health had been deteriorating for the past few months. She was going blind, and her arthritis was getting so bad that I was thinking about calling the vet to see if there was another medication that might help her more than the one she was currently taking. There was an obvious correlation between her ability to get around and her appetite. If she wasn't feeling good enough to walk around, she also wouldn't eat, even if I put food right in front of her. Still, I didn't expect her to be gone so suddenly.

On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, I was furiously working towards my goal of completing 50,000 words on my goat book so that I could celebrate a quiet evening at home with Mike. At 5:00, however, everything changed. My sister-in-law called to say that my mother-in-law had "taken a turn for the worse." She had been diagnosed with lung cancer in the summer, but when we had seen her on Christmas Day, she seemed fine. She was eating well, joking, and playing cards with the family. I found Mike outside and told him we needed to head over to his mother's house as soon as he finished the evening chores. It was the last time I would look at my manuscript for eight days.

We finished up everything at home, got in the car and headed over to her house. My sister-in-law was there, making phone calls to relatives when we arrived at eight o'clock. We hadn't eaten dinner, so we brought some cold meatloaf with us and put it in the kitchen. As soon as I saw my mother-in-law, something in my head said that she would never see 2013. I don't know if she ever knew we were there, but Mike held his mother's hand for the last two hours of her life.

The next six days were spent driving back and forth from home to the Peoria area to help with funeral plans and be with family members as they flew in from across the country and around the world. It was the most beautiful celebration of her life as we all scoured dozens of scrapbooks that chronicled all of her travels and volunteer work. She and her husband, who is now in the final stages of Alzheimer's, had traveled to 44 countries, some for fun and some to do volunteer work, like their trip to Haiti as support staff for doctors who were caring for the people there. Over and over, the words, "a life well lived" kept going through my head.

And every night, as we drove home and I walked into my bedroom, I kept expecting my little Joy to greet me, hobbling across the floor with tail wagging. And then I'd remember that she was gone.

Luckily, my two youngest children were on break from college, so they were able to run the farm when Mike and I were absent. Still, it made me think about what would happen in a similar situation when all of our children have careers of their own in a few years. But I know we can't live our lives based on "what if."

In the midst of all this, my son's car broke down and had to be towed, which was followed by a $600 repair bill. And he and I just got home from a three-day conference. We've also had to get ready for goat kidding to begin. Trips to Memphis and Dallas to do TV shows promoting Ecothrifty had to be canceled. Memphis is rescheduled for March, but I haven't rescheduled Dallas yet. And the elephant in the room, which no one really wanted to discuss, was the fact that Mike's father will probably not be with us much longer either. So I feel like I'm in the middle of a huge life lesson on acceptance and patience.

Mold-ripened cheese success

If you've been around for awhile, you might remember some of my failures in mold-ripened cheese ... like this one ... and this one. They didn't all turn out so badly. One was actually good enough to take to a party, although it didn't look like any mold-ripened cheese that anyone had ever seen. It was at least tasty, and it didn't look like a total wreck.

In October, I attended Jim Wallace's cheesemaking class in Massachusetts, and one of the cheeses on the agenda was Camembert. When I got home, I could hardly wait to try out the ideas I'd learned. And here is the lovely, delicious result!

What was the difference? Well, I had always failed in the affinage -- or aging. I had read somewhere that you could not age a mold-ripened cheese in the same cave with non-mold-ripened cheeses, and unfortunately I believed it. So, I had tried all sorts of crazy ideas ... like aging in my refrigerator (which was obviously too cold, and I knew that, but there was a book that said it would work, so I tried) and aging in a picnic cooler with ice, which meant I had to remember to replenish ice twice daily. I also tried aging in another frig without the proper thermostat control, thinking I could remember to keep turning the refrigerator on and off to keep the proper temperature. Geez! I really can't believe I tried all those things!

Jim ages his mold-ripened cheeses in his regular cheese cave, but he puts them in plastic food storage containers with a cheese mat in the container for drainage and air circulation under the cheese. It is so ridiculously simple that I'm kicking myself for not figuring that out sooner! But as they say, better late than never. And I'm thrilled to be able to make delicious homemade mold-ripened cheese now!

Taking lambs 'down south'

On Friday, we loaded up three of our spring lambs to take to the locker for turning into lamb chops. Anyone who thinks sheep are dumb has never met our sheep. They are ridiculously smart. I think they can actually read minds, or they have incredibly good hearing, and they can hear our conversations a quarter mile away ... in the house!

Jonathan went out to the pasture with their hay just like any other day, but no one wanted anything to do with it. They sensed a trap!

But we did eventually manage to herd them into the shelter area in spite of their reservations.

I was in charge of closing the gate behind everyone when they ran into the shelter area. Jonathan was in charge of standing behind a temporary fence so that the sheep wouldn't knock it down and run out into another pasture entirely. And Mike was in charge of actually catching the sheep and putting them into dog crates on the back of the pick-up. We usually use a trailer, and when Mike suggested dog crates, I thought there was something about the idea that wasn't quite right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

So, Mike caught the first one ...

and this handsome fellow was watching as his friend was loaded up.

And then Mike caught him. Without another person available to handle the gate between the pasture and pick-up, Mike had to hop over the fence.

And then Mike caught the third one.

And then the third one decided he didn't want to go to the locker.

 
You see that dog crate? It had a door only moments earlier. The door is now bent up to the point where it is probably ruined. The ram hit it once and shook the whole crate as I saw one of the door's four pins pop out of the hole that is responsible for keeping the door attached to the crate as a door. I yelled at Mike because he was closest, and he stretched across the tailgate of the truck to try to hold the door in place. As the ram hit it again, Mike realized the ram would soon have the door detached from the crate, and he jumped onto the pick-up bed. And it wasn't a moment too soon!

As Mike held the lamb, we brainstormed about how to get him to the locker. We agreed that the ram was able to knock off the door because the crate was big enough for him to back up and get some force behind his head to hit the door. We wound up putting him in a smaller crate, and we put the crate in the cab. Mike turned the other two crates so that the doors faced each other, which we hoped would dissuade the other rams from trying to knock off the doors of their crates. And even if they did try, we were assuming that they would not be able to get out of the crate because when they were end to end in the bed of the pick-up, they were snug enough that the rams would not be able to get out, even if the door was missing.

I was worried from the moment I left the pasture. The last thing I wanted was to hear that our lambs were splatted across I-55. I wasn't even that optimistic about the one in the cab with Mike. What if he busted out of the crate while Mike was driving and then he busted through the window? I have no doubt he could have shattered the window with one hit from his head. Luckily my worst fears were not realized, and all three made it to the locker, and the crates and the truck were still in one piece. Mike said that the two rams in the bed of the pick-up did get a little rowdy when he started to unload them, however. So, he won't be using dog crates again to transport rams. We are just really lucky that the one tried to get out when we were still right there and could stop him.

We have more lambs and goats to take in this Friday, and I'm not sure how we'll do it. Mike is worried about the truck being able to pull the trailer up the slight incline to get out of the pasture. (It's a rear-wheel drive.) Usually we park it on the road, but that's a long way to carry a sheep from the shelter to the road, which is why he liked the idea of using dog crates. Maybe we'll come up with Plan C by this Friday!

Moving day

We recently moved our guinea hogs to fresh pasture. This may not look like much to you, but to a guinea hog, it's a lovely buffet. We always know when they're fed up with their current pasture because they start rooting. As long as they're happy with the offerings, they eat the grass and weeds above ground. This is Julia in the lead. She follows me around like a dog because she was our first guinea hog, and she's rather attached to me.

I can't believe she's going to be three years old in March! Doesn't she have a lovely profile? And she is an excellent mama, too!

York is the handsome boar on the right. He's visiting for a few weeks to ensure that we have piglets in the spring. We saw him breed Julia already, and her estimated due date is April 1.

On the left is Julia's daughter, and she needs a name! Any suggestions? Mike suggested Julia's Child, and when I vetoed that one, he came up with Destiny Child. Not sure I'm too crazy about that one either, but I am very impressed with his creativity. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them! It's not every day you get to help someone name their pig.

I left my heart in Shelburne Falls

Since my first book came out, I've done quite a bit of traveling, and although it's fun, I'm always happy to come home to my little homestead on the prairie. Such was not the case, however, when Mike and I recently attended Jim Wallace's cheesemaking class in Shelburne Falls, MA. I had to remind myself that I had a farm full of animals counting on me to come home and take care of them. Otherwise my visit would have ended with a stop at a real estate office! What's so awesome about Shelburne Falls?

I imagine this is what most of America looked like and felt like 50 or 75 years ago. There isn't a national chain in site in their lovely downtown. The locally owned grocery store has a sign out front that says they support local agriculture. Each of the quaint locally owned restaurants have about a dozen tables, and local foods are on the menu. Towards the end of dinner one night, I asked a question about the lavender-maple glaze on the heritage pork tenderloin at the Blue Rock Restaurant, and the chef came out to tell me how he made it. He sat down, and we chatted about his use of locally grown ingredients. As we were talking, a customer stopped by our table on her way out to compliment the chef on her dinner and give him a kiss on the cheek.

When Mike suggested we check the menu of a pub our second night in town, I assumed they would have the usual pub fare -- factory farm burgers and previously frozen stuff that is tossed in a fryer. The West End Pub had a pleasantly surprising menu with locally raised grassfed beef burgers and chili! They even have locally made liquor and beer. Even though Illinois has plenty of wineries, I don't think I've ever seen Illinois wine in a restaurant here. A few restaurants have sprouted up that make their own beer, but otherwise, the alcohol in our restaurants comes from far away.

While at Jim's house, I had my first ever hard cider and wondered why -- coming from a state that grows apples -- we don't have hard cider available commercially in any of the stores or restaurants that I've been to.

We stayed at the Dancing Bear B&B, whose owners have their own farm and served delicious farm fresh breakfasts! When we arrived, Phil asked if we had any dietary restrictions for breakfast, and I sheepishly said, "Well, if you have meat, you don't have to fix any for us because we only eat locally grown, pasture-raised," and as my voice trailed off, he replied, "Oh, that's the only kind we serve." If we had not needed to be at our class by 9 o'clock, I could have really stuffed myself with the delicious breakfast Phil prepared, which included a to-die-for quiche and fresh baked bread and muffins. And because we were totally captivated by the B&Bs food, we did not have the chance to try Mocha Maya's breakfast, whose sign is pictured at right!

Unfortunately, we hardly got to experience the community at all. Jim said that they have lots of world-famous artists and crafts people living there, including a leather worker and a man who ties flies for fly fishing. The downtown certainly had a great mix of little shops. I personally was very interested in the Vavstuga Weaving School, but when I checked their website, all of their beginner classes for 2013 are already full!

Ever since Superstorm Sandy chased us home in a rental car when our flight was canceled, I've been saying, "I left my heart in Shelburne Falls!" So if you live in the northeast and want a great place to spend the weekend, head over there! And if Mike didn't have tenure at the college, I'd be begging on a daily basis, trying to convince him that we needed to move.

Instead, I've been daydreaming about turning our little village into another Shelburne Falls. It's been dwindling for more than 40 years, so I've been told, but why couldn't it become a weekend destination with quaint B&Bs for people from Chicago and St. Louis? Why couldn't the farmers around here grow organic food to serve in small, locally owned restaurants with chefs who can see their future steaks grazing in the fields? Why couldn't we have world famous artisans whose classes fill up a year in advance? It could happen ... couldn't it?

Attending a cheese class

Last month Mike and I headed out to Massachusetts to attend a cheesemaking class taught by Jim Wallace, the technical advisor for New England Cheesemaking. Jim has traveled all over the world attending workshops and visiting with traditional cheesemakers. And people come from all over the world to attend Jim's classes. The gentleman in the light blue sweatshirt pictured above is a chef from Colombia. No, not Columbia, Missouri or Columbia, South Carolina. He's from the country of Colombia in South America! Mike and I flying out from Illinois was not a big deal, as there were several people there who had flown in from other states, as well as a few lucky souls who lived close enough to drive over to Jim's house for the class!

Obviously there is no way I can share with you everything that we learned in those two days, but I will tell you that half an hour into the first day, I knew it was worth the $375 that we each paid to attend. I've been making cheese for about ten years, and Mike has been making cheese for six. We've read books and followed recipes and tried to figure out why sometimes one thing worked and other times it didn't. We had so many questions about the science behind the curds and whey, and from one minute to the next in Jim's classes, there was one light bulb after another that kept going off in my head as I started to connect the jumble of dots that had been building in my head for ten years! My only regret is that I did not attend this class at least five years ago.

Mike took pages of notes. I took more than a hundred photographs. And by the end of the second day, my brain was so overfilled with information that it was as leaky as the Camembert that was draining! Here are a few highlights --

Most recipes tell you to cut the curds to a certain size -- like 1/4 inch or 1/8 inch -- and cutting curds diagonally is one of those chores that would just drive perfectionists crazy! But for both the cheddar and the toscano, Jim cut the curds into one-inch pieces, but instead of doing those crazy diagonal cuts, he then went to work with this gizmo that he fashioned from a whisk to look like the curd cutters that traditional cheesemakers use in Europe.

I tried using one of our whisks at home to cut the curds for a batch of feta, but some of the curds got too small, too fast, so I think I need a whisk with less metal thingies. And I should probably change the shape of the metal thingies the way Jim did with this one.

From the traditional cheddar class

Jim uses Jersey milk from a local farmer, which is why the curds look yellow. Don't they look divine!

Cheddaring is kind of like French milled soap. You let the curds set up, then you rip them apart and start over again putting the curds in the mold.

After cheddaring, class members helped to rip up the curds to prepare them for putting into the cheese press. That's Mike on the right. Chef Mario on the left has a little video recorder strapped to his head to capture every moment of the class for watching again later!

I have never seen a book that describe cheddaring very well, nor have I seen any that actually have pictures, so this was very helpful!

This is what the cheddar looked like the morning of the second class!

Since getting home, Mike has made two batches of traditional cheddar using tips he learned from Jim's classes. Previously, he had made farmhouse cheddar, which ironically omits the cheddaring step.

Over the weekend, we also made Camembert, a mold-ripened cheese, and Vacha Toscano, a tomme. Pictured here is one of the Camemberts after a few hours of draining. Mold-ripened cheeses had really been a challenge for me. In the past they turned out okay sometimes but not so great at other times. I learned in Jim's class that your success or failure with so many cheeses really lies in the aging -- or affinage -- which I had always assumed was my problem, but I had no idea what to do about it. I got some great ideas from Jim's class though, and I now have some Camembert aging beautifully.

Of the 17 different cheeses we have made in the past, we never made a tomme, but I am really looking forward to making one very soon. Jim's was delicious! Lucky for us, we still have a few goats in milk. Mike and I were saying that we should have taken this class in the spring when we are drowning in milk. We could have come home and started making cheese like crazy!

And this is Jim's cheese cave where he ages his creations. It is in a corner of his basement that stays naturally cool year round. He keeps mold-ripened cheeses in plastic containers to keep the humidity at the higher level that they need for proper affinage.

In addition to being blown away by Jim's class, I also fell in love with Shelburne Falls, MA. It is the most lovely little New England village. In fact, I'm writing a whole separate post about it!

And if you're a cheesemaker anywhere in the world, I highly recommend Jim's classes. He already has them scheduled for next spring. Click here to learn more.

Love is in the air

It's fall and that means one thing on the farm ... breeding season for the mammals. All of the goats are bred that I want to breed for January and February kiddings. The cows keep coming into heat, and we're working on finding them a boyfriend. Provided his DNA testing comes back negative for a nasty genetic disease, he'll be here soon. And now for the pigs --

I sold my boar last winter. I figured it was a no-lose idea. If I decided to stop breeding pigs, I'd have one less to sell, and if I decided to keep breeding pigs, I should buy a new boar anyway to breed to the former boar's daughters. Then as the months went on, I kept telling myself that I should sell all the pigs. Well, you know how my farm reduction plan has been going! So, I decided to borrow a boar from a friend.

Meet York --

He was slightly shy about hopping out of the trailer. I suppose he thought he should play it cool around the new ladies.

But in no time he was ambling around the pasture and checking things out, including the electric fence, which he had no experience with. He quickly learned to stay away from it. He also became a very quick fan of whey, which is a by-product of our cheesemaking.

The girls are not terribly fond of him, but I'm sure that will change when the hormones kick in at some point. York will be here for about a month or until we've seen him breed both girls. Pigs are pregnant for slightly less than four months, so hopefully we'll be seeing piglets at the end of March!

Help wanted

You may remember that a few months ago, I said I was going to liquidate the Shetland sheep flock, and a couple months later, I admitted I had sold exactly one ewe lamb. I have since gone through a variety of decisions to sell different species ... and changed my mind more than once. The simple fact is that I don't want to get rid of any of them. But I can't deny that there are not enough hours in the day for us to continue doing everything that we did when our daughters were still living at home. So, if I don't cut back on something, that means I need help! But who to hire?

A few years ago, I read an article by Joel Salatin in which he talked about hiring help for your farm. He suggested that the first employee you hire be someone who does the job that is your least favorite. Because he disliked leaving his farm to deliver his food, his first employee was a delivery driver. If I think about my least favorite job on the farm, I'd have to say it's gardening. It is really hard for me to say that because I want to do it all! But I'm an animal person. I love the livestock. I don't exactly love gardening, but I love the fresh produce, which is why I garden. So, logically I should hire someone for the garden.

Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Because we don't really make money on the garden, so hiring someone to work in there didn't make much sense. But if I think back to my original goals, it was supposed to be a market garden. And with 32 acres, we have plenty of room for a very productive market garden. We just need someone who has the knowledge and desire to do the growing. We can provide the land, the seeds, and the equipment. They could also sell the produce at a farmer's market, which would provide a source of income that we could share.

I don't have all the details worked out yet, and I need to do a bit of research to figure out how to make this work. But it seems to be a much better idea -- and something that I really want to do -- rather than selling off the animals.