Chimney fire

Heating with wood is more complicated than I realized. This morning, our basement started to fill up with smoke. The chimney that goes from the stove to the ceiling had smoke leaking from the joints -- I thought. My husband said it was the chimney itself that was smoking, because it was so hot, the paint was burning off. Not sure, since I got out of there as quickly as possible and starting opening windows on the first floor.

My husband closed the vent, and within a few minutes, it appeared that the fire had stopped. I am certainly glad that we have a wood stove instead of a fireplace because a fireplace chimney would be hidden from view. Also, I'm not sure how you would stop a chimney fire if you couldn't close the vent and cut off most of the air from the chimney.

The wood stove has only been in for two months, so having a chimney fire is quite a surprise to me. I thought people got their chimneys cleaned once a year. My husband said that maybe we need to have ours cleaned more often since we're using it constantly. I guess it's time to do some more research. Anyone have any suggestions?

Stuck duck

Although I've heard of ducks getting stuck in freezing ice in a pond, we've never had it happen here -- until Sunday. I looked out the window and saw a lone duck sitting on the ice near the water's edge in the morning. An hour later, he was still there. And another hour later, he was still there. I convinced Mike that he would not be there for two hours if he were not stuck, so he went out there to rescue him. He discovered that the duck's breast feathers were frozen into the ice. He took out a pitcher of hot water and poured it around the duck's breast. The duck flapped his wings and stretched out his neck, but he didn't get loose. Mike took out a second pitcher -- and a third. Finally, as he walked out there with the fourth pitcher, the duck started to flap its wings as Mike approached, and he was free.

Real life

Sometimes I feel like what I'm doing isn't real. I'm not really a farmer or a homesteader. I'm just a city slicker who moved out here to play make believe. Then sometimes reality smacks me in the face. That happened yesterday. Another buck died. It's the third one this week. For the past three years, we've had bucks die over the winter. Although our does have not died, some have had trouble with aborting pregnancies and not getting pregnant. Last summer, when a doe died, I thought I'd discovered the culprit when I learned that she had been severely deficient in copper. I started to give all the goats copper boluses since it's the only copper supplement available without a prescription, and none of the vets believe that copper deficiency exists -- even when faced with lab results that confirm it. Since I started giving them the copper boluses, the does have improved dramatically. We've had no trouble getting anyone pregnant, and we've had no abortions (knock on wood) this year. But a week ago, my bucks started dieing.

Yesterday, I decided that we needed to get a better picture of the buck's nutrition. Maybe something is missing from their diets. Maybe they're dieing from lead poisoning. The health department won't test our water because it has sulfur in it -- no, I don't understand the reasoning. Two years ago we sent our water in to the state, and we were told that they would not test it because there was sulfur in it. So, I called the local vet to ask if she'd send the goat's liver to the state lab because that's where copper, selenium, iron, and lead are stored. The local vet is not a large animal vet, but seriously, how hard is it to send a liver to a lab? I don't think it's much different than doing a necropsy on a golden retriever dog.

Almost a dozen phone calls later -- to the local vet, the university lab, and the state lab -- I realize that my options are not good. The local vet won't do it, a reality that confuses me, as well as the doctor at the state lab. I start crying. I briefly consider driving 199 miles to the state lab to deliver the goat myself. I can't spend $300 on a necropsy every time a goat dies, but I can't just let them keep dieing without knowing what I need to do.

I call my husband's cell phone and office phone with the idea that I'll ask him to come home and remove the goat's liver, so I can freeze it and then mail it. As I'm dialing the phone, I apologize to my daughter for being such a wimp. Both phones ring until I get voice mail. I can't leave a message. It's too embarrassing. I hear my mother's voice saying, "Don't bother him at work with that!" I know what she would have done. I stop crying and say to my daughter, "I'm going to get the liver." She looked at me in disbelief. "You can help, but you don't have to. I don't care."

It's a small goat, so the liver should fit into a pint-sized Ziploc bag. I grab three, as well as a quart-sized bag, just in case I'm wrong. I find the disposable scalpel that I bought several years ago from the livestock supply catalog -- just becuase it was cheap, and who knows when you might need it? Or why? Katherine says that rubber gloves were left in the barn after the last time goats were tattooed. I put on my barn clothes and coat and head out. She follows me and asks, "What if we do something wrong?" I chuckle. "He's dead. What can we do wrong? If I faint, don't worry about it. As soon as my head goes down, I'll start breathing again, and I'll wake up. It'll be fine."

We put the goat in the middle of the barn floor, which is covered with straw. Having no idea what to expect, I say, "If there's a lot of blood, the straw will soak it up, and then we can just throw it in the garden. Blood is good fertilizer." I remove the scalpel from the packaging and ask Katherine if she wants to do it. She takes the scalpel and asks where she should cut. I know the liver is on one side, but I'm not sure which side, so I suggest that she just cut open the middle of the abdomen. At first, she just stabs at it, and the goat's belly deflates as gas escapes. I don't recall all the little details of the next 10 minutes, but she cut the layers of skin one at a time and accidentally cut open the rumen before we realized what it was. It was full of chewed up hay. There was no blood, and the parts were all rather fascinating. I never felt faint, and as we figured out the identity of each part, we announced it to each other and to the barn cat who was watching, hoping for a morsel. "Oh, this is the large intestines," Katherine said. "You can see the poop in there."

While most of the parts came out easily, we learned that the liver was attached. It took us twice as long to actually remove the liver as it did for me to find it. We didn't know how much of the liver was needed, so we wanted to be sure to get all of it. Once it was detached, I dropped it into the pint-sized bag, then took it into the store room to wash the blood off the outside of the bag, then put it into another pint-sized bag and another one and finally the quart-sized bag. The liver is in the freezer now, and today it will be on its way to the lab.

Last night, I was talking to a cattle farmer, expressing my frustration about the lack of large animal vets. He added that vets really are of little use to farmers anyway. "If you can't take care of it yourself, it's usually too late," he said. Yes, I've learned that too. While I was certainly upset that the vet would not remove the liver for me, I was also upset about my goats dieing and my feeling of helplessness. Death is a part of life, but our spoiled 21st century minds don't want to accept that. We want 0 risk; we want 100% success. At times like these, I remember Thoreau's words about wanting to experience all of life, even if some parts are mean and ugly. This is real.

Cutting open a goat in the middle of my barn to harvest the liver was a surreal experience for me, but it was not any different than simply butchering an animal. I've never done it myself, but I've watched my husband do it, glad that he was willing. While this experience was a big deal for my daughter and me, I remind myself that it's something that every hunter does during deer hunting season. While part of me thinks that my mother would have been proud of me for handling the situation, realistically I know that she would have expected nothing less.

Creek in the snow

We had about 6-7 inches of snow last night. This afternoon, Katherine went for a walk with the camera. This is my favorite photo of the 75 that she took.

We should consider ourselves very lucky that we only have to walk out the door to see such beauty. And it is unspoiled by crowds and noise that one would find by visiting a natural tourist attraction. I question whether I should feel selfish for having so much beauty right here, just for us. I am willing to share though.

Wood stove update

The wood stove has been smokin' ever since I wrote about it three weeks ago. It's wonderful. My favorite thing is being able to stand next to it when I'm chilly.

The best part (not to be confused with my favorite thing) is that we have substantially reduced the amount of propane we are using. Woo hoo! When I'm home, the propane heat does not run at all because the wood stove can keep the house at 65 or warmer. We've gone two whole days in freezing temps without using the propane heat. In fact, the second floor gets up to 69 or 70. At first we assumed it was because heat rises, but I think a huge contributor is the chimney that runs through our closet. It's a big radiant heater, of course. We were going to wall it in because it's not pretty, but we are trying to think "outside the box" and figure out how to make it more attractive without losing that heat.

What's for dinner? Cloned steak!

Looks like the FDA is really going to let cloned meat into the food supply without any labeling requirements, as well as milk from cloned animals. This sounds crazy, but it's true.According to one story, there are already 570 cloned animals in the United States. I'm glad I haven't eaten any commercially produced meat in the last 19 years. Who knows what is already in meat that we don't know about -- in addition to all the antibiotics and growth hormones that we do know about. It amazes me that we're supposed to trust the government to monitor the safety of our food when they claim that things like BHA, BHT, pesticide residues, growth hormones, and antibiotics are ALL safe! Yet, they fight tooth and nail to keep little farmers from selling raw milk or farmstead cheese or animals butchered on the farm. So, if you live in the city and eat only FDA-approved foods, it looks like you'll be having genetically modified tomatoes in your salad, cloned steak laced with growth hormones and antibiotics, along with your pesticide-laden potatoes. Yum! And it's all safe and nutritious!

Adventures with sheep and goats

On January 8, Sherri gave birth to quadruplet doelings! She has had triplets every year (four years running), so the quads were unexpected. They were also quite large for quads. The smallest was 2 pounds, 14 ounces, and she was not standing or nursing after an hour, so we brought her inside to bottle feed. Her sisters are growing so fast, but she is staying small and runty. That's a picture of a four-day-old kid nursing.

Yesterday, our sheep disappeared. Shortly before sundown, someone called to say the sheep were down the road. When we got there, they had just run into the timber. The dog, who is still green at only 10 months of age, ran straight at them, which just drove them farther into the woods. Then we couldn't find his "off" switch. But as it got darker, the sheep just would not move. Mike caught one and carried her out of the woods, which was about half a mile. We decided to leave everyone else and wait until dawn.

This morning, four of us went out there, armed with corn chips, crackers, and loose sheep minerals. As soon as they saw us, they came running toward us, then they suddenly took a sharp left turn. Thankfully, that was towards home. We couldn't keep up with them though. They ran all the way home! Very strange!

As I was tromping through a frozen, crunchy corn field and then down a deserted country road as the sun started gleaming over the horizon, it reminded me of the Army commercial they had on television about a decade ago. These men get out of bed in the dark, then start jumping out of helicopters, shooting, blowing things up, and then they're sitting around a campfire drinking coffee as the sun comes up. The voice-over says that in the Army, you'll do more before dawn than most people do all day. I guess that homesteaders don't count.

Providing our own heat

In December, we were running out of propane, so Mike called the gas company and left a message on Friday. No response. He called again on Monday, then Wednesday. Finally he spoke to someone who told him gas would be delivered in a day or two. That adds up to Friday, but by 5:00 Friday, we had not received a delivery. He called again and was routed to the emergency number, where he was told that if we wanted a weekend delivery, we'd have to pay an additional $212. I was furious. No, we would not be ripped off by the gas company, even if it meant we might lose heat over the weekend. We have six-inch exterior walls with excellent insulation, and the in-floor heating actually emits warmth for quite a period of time even after the gas turns off.

We came up with a plan. We need gas to heat water, which also heats our floor -- and our house. We also have a gas stove in the house, but in the barn, we have an electric stove. We also have an electric griddle, a crock pot, and a bread maker. We decided to do most of our cooking with the electric appliances -- pancakes on the griddle for breakfast, soup in the crock pot for lunch with bread from the breadmaker, and then for dinner we'd use the electric stove in the barn. We turned down the thermostats to 65 degrees and decided not to shower all weekend or use hot water in any other way.

By the end of the weekend, I realized that 65 degrees really is not that uncomfortable when one is wearing three layers (undershirt, turtle neck, and sweater), and in fact, when I was cleaning house, I got hot and had to take off the sweater. By the time the gas had been delivered on Monday, I had decided only to raise the temperature in the bedrooms to 68 degrees at night and 67 during the day. I saw no reason to raise the first floor temperature any higher than 65.

Then, I saw the bill. They had charged us $3.44 a gallon for the propane. My first reaction was to panic and think about how we would never be able to continue to use propane as a source of fuel if the price was that high. I didn't know what we had paid last time the tank was filled, but I knew that it was under $1 a gallon five years ago. I checked prices on the Internet, and the national average was a dollar less than we had been billed. When we called the propane company again, we discovered that we had been overcharged -- we should have been billed $2.11 per gallon. We were told that our bill would be adjusted, but this did not make us feel much better about the situation. If they wanted to charge us $3.44 per gallon, they could. And at some point, they will. Even with our super-insulated home and 95% efficient gas water heater, it will be too expensive to use propane.

We have 32 acres of mostly wooded property, and every year at least a couple of trees are blown down in a storm or fall down because of beavers chewing up their trunks. We have at least one living tree with solid wood go down every year. Last year, a huge tree fell down because it was growing on the bank of the creek, and erosion caused too much of the roots to become exposed, and the tree just fell down. We have a truly unlimited supply of free heating fuel. Using wood from your own property is also carbon neutral, so it's better for the environment. Although burning wood does emit greenhouse gases, the growing trees have been reducing them. Bringing the wood to our house uses zero fossil fuels, which emits zero greenhouse gases. And if we use wood to heat, we won't be using propane, which has to be trucked in to our house after it has been refined somewhere and brought in from some field possibly thousands of miles away.

As I type, Mike is installing a wood stove. The best thing about a wood stove is that we will always have wood. Mother Nature won't suddenly raise the price to something we can't afford. There are no weekend delivery charges. Chopping wood is great exercise. With our cast iron cookware, we'll even be able to use it for cooking in the winter.

A Christmas to remember

No, I didn't receive some longed-for gift. We did not have a visit from some long-lost relative. We did not even have a meal that was particularly memorable. We did have a priceless experience, although less than joyous. We had our first middle-of-the-night kidding emergency.

The goat's pelvis was so tiny, we couldn't get the kid out, so we took her to the vet, expecting a c-section. He used to raise pygmies, however, so he had lots of personal experience with such problems. He tied ropes to the kid's front legs, and Katherine and I held Giselle and braced ourselves on the opposite side of the table. At times, my brain screamed inside my head, "Just cut her open already! Do the damn c-section!" But I kept reminding myself that he used to raise pygmies and had probably done this lots of times. Finally, after 15 minutes of pulling, a little buck emerged, looking half dead. Katherine squealed with excitement, but as the vet briskly rubbed the kid, he said, "He still might not make it," and then he handed the kid to Katherine. After a few minutes, the limp kid gained some muscle control and was able to hold his tongue in his mouth. We allowed ourselves to get hopeful.

Giselle wanted nothing to do with him. She would not look at him, much less sniff him or lick him like a normal mama goat. When I tried to latch him on to nurse, she acted as if nothing were happening to her udder. Her baby did not exist. So, we have a house goat. He is our first boy in the house, and Katherine is trying to litter box train him. We've trained previous goats to towels, but then realized that they can't tell the difference between a towel and a carpet. Oops. We're hoping this will work better.

After considering St. Nicholas, Kris Kringle, and Rudolph, we finally settled on Nick as the kid's name. Since his mama had such a hard time kidding, he will definitely be castrated. We don't want to pass along those genes. We certainly don't need any more pet goats, but it's going to be hard to let this little boy go!

Agritourism vs. working on the farm

Funny how I was just talking about requiring turkey customers to spend a day on our farm, and today I read this in the NY Times: Down on the Farm With Your Sleeves Rolled Up, an article about agritourism, where farms charge people to visit and sometimes work.

I really don't like the idea of agritourism, as I think people visiting farms for sleigh rides completely miss the point that most people need to understand -- it takes work to grow food in a way that is sustainable. I really don't think anyone learns much of importance by taking a sleigh ride in the country or feeding a baby animal for 10 minutes. In some ways it might even do more harm than good. Sleigh rides and baby animals are fun, and while that is part of farm life, it's only one tiny segment of it. When that is the only thing that people see, they get the idea that farm life is this Utopian existence. It's not. I love living out here, but not because it's perfect. Like Thoreau, I appreciate all parts of it, the joyful, the confusing, and the devastating. Learning to live with nature is a constant learning experience. One never knows all the answers, and each new day is filled with opportunities and surprises, some wonderful and some not.

Little of that knowledge is obtained in the few minutes it takes to feed a baby animal, and none of it during a sleigh ride. You might begin to get an appreciation of it in a day, but to really understand farm life, it would take at least a few days or a week. And it's not just any week. We're hibernating during winter, the garden is frozen over, and the animals are just hanging out too. There are some days in spring where I feel like I've lived a month in 12 hours. Summer is not too crazy, but as fall draws near, we're kicking into high gear again, trying to prepare for winter. Maybe this is why some people say I should write a book. I suppose this is my passion -- I really want people to understand where their food comes from.