Conflicted

A week ago, my baby girl moved off to the University of Illinois to continue working towards her bachelor of science degree in molecular and cellular biology with a minor in chemistry. Our oldest left three years ago, and today she is an electrical engineer in Chicago. That means we are down to one child left at home, and I'm pretty sure that number will be zero before I blink! As much as I love my children and miss them as any mother would, there is also a practical side to them leaving home because we live on a farm.

Years ago, people would say, "That's a lot of work" when they learned about all of the animals that we had and how much food we grew for ourselves. I'd always respond, "Not really," and then explain that there were five of us, so it added up to less than an hour morning and evening for each of us. At the time, it never occurred to me that when my children were gone, it would mean more hours of my time spent taking care of farm chores. It easily adds up to about three hours each morning and evening when one person has to do it all, which is six hours a day! I've talked about this a little in past posts when I was left home alone, but those were isolated days -- not a regular occurrence. Now I have a new normal.

And I am terribly conflicted. It is easy enough to say that we need to sell some of our animals, but it is another thing to actually do it.  To sell animals, you have to do things like advertise them, and it is really easy to procrastinate when your heart really is not into something.

Remember the Shetland flock liquidation I wrote about a couple months ago? I've sold one ewe lamb. I may have mentioned it on Facebook, but I didn't really advertise them.

And I was planning to cut back on the goats. In fact, I have two listed as "for sale" on my website. But I am brutally honest about their shortcomings -- maybe honest to the point that I over-emphasize faults and talk people out of buying them? I don't want them to be disappointed, right?

However, there are only so many hours in a day, and I already have more than enough to keep me busy! And I've signed a contract to write another book, plus I'll be doing a book tour for EcoThrifty this fall.

Of course, we will always have chickens because I love my fresh eggs and chicken meat -- and besides, they don't take much time. And even though I've all but given up on the idea of milking the cows, I love having our own grassfed beef. I do know a farmer who raises organic cattle an hour away, and I'd recommend his beef to anyone. I've even eaten it myself when we didn't have any. It is actually the only beef I've eaten in 24 years that we didn't grow ourselves. Maybe it's the Texas blood in me (I lived there the first 19 years of my life), but I just really like the idea of having my own cattle. And the cows only take about 10 minutes morning and evening to care for.

As much as I love having my own pork, I'm not sure it is such a great idea to have my own breeding stock. If we went back to raising pigs from weaning in spring to finishing in fall, at least we wouldn't have to care for them over the winter.

The goats take more time than any of the animals, mostly because of milking, but it is especially hard to sell the goats! I have spent ten years selectively breeding them to get better and better milkers. Last year, several of our goats were on the Top Ten list for the One-Day Milk Test with the American Goat Society, and Charlotte was #1 for pounds of milk produced. And just this year, I finally had two first fresheners that milked like champions! Agnes, pictured above, freshened last September and is still milking! I couldn't possibly sell her or Alexandria, the doe that freshened in October and is still going strong. I have a number of distinct genetic lines, and in order to have genetic diversity, I need to keep a certain number of unrelated goats. I am starting to understand why parents might want a child to take over a business that they spent a lifetime growing. Even though I've only been at this for ten years, it isn't something that I want to give up! And it isn't something that I want to see dissolve into oblivion as the herd is sold off in bits and pieces here and there.

Then there is the house -- I'd really like to see our house get finished before I die. No, I'm not that old or sick. I'm just losing faith. Eight years after breaking ground, it still is not finished. That's why the blog intro (on the left) still says I'll write about housebuilding progress. Believe me, if anything ever gets done, I will let you know! They quit selling the tile that I was going to use around our bathtub. And I'm not sure we can find the baseboard or the deck railing. We put it out in one of the barns when we bought it five or six years ago, but I don't remember the last time I saw it.

I want it all -- beautiful house, writing books, growing our own food, and even a vacation now and then. But at some point, something has gotta give! Writing? No. Housework? Too late -- that's been history for a long time already! Animals? I just can't decide!

Our first farm crawl

What's a farm crawl? I think it's an Iowa invention, but it's becoming an Illinois thing after last weekend! You see, I have these farm-girl-girlfriends from the Iowa-Illinois Quad Cities area, and they had a "farm crawl" last year in September. It was such a success, and they kept talking about it and telling me that I should get together with some local farm-girl-girlfriends and coordinate one here. And that's exactly what I did.

Since April, the four of us have been meeting monthly -- Janet from Eden's Harvest, Cheryl from the Farmer in Odell, and Kat from M2A Farm (Am Too A Farm) -- and planning the North Central Illinois Farm Crawl. Even though we're all within about ten miles of each other, we live in four different towns and two counties, so we had to come up with a somewhat general name.

We created a website, mentioned it on our Facebook farm pages, as well as internet groups related to livestock, and contacted the local newspapers. We cleaned up our farms, put signs on the fences to tell a little about the animals in there, and set up tables with homegrown items to sell.

And then the big day arrived! And we were astonished at the number of people who came to visit our farms! Not only were there people from the local area, but we even had some visitors from Chicago and the suburbs. We're estimating that we had about 300 visitors throughout the day. At Antiquity Oaks, the first car arrived at three minutes before 10 a.m., which was the start time, and by 10:30 when we did a goat milking demonstration, there were eight cars here.

We sold goat milk soap, books, yarn, roving, and sheepskins. And we had tons of fun talking to everyone. The other farms had just as much fun, and by the end, we were all talking about next year!

So, if you want to keep track of our plans for 2013, you can subscribe to the Farm Crawl blog.

Carmen's kidding

 Carmen and Rosie

Carmen was due to kid last week, and even after ten years of goat birthing, it was a unique experience -- starting with the last week or so of her pregnancy. I could see her belly bouncing from across the stall in the barn. And when she would get on the milk stand for her grain, I'd put my hand on her belly and feel the crazy kicking and squirming inside. It had me a little worried that someone might rip off an umbilical cord or otherwise get hurt. You know how us grandmas can be!

Thursday afternoon around three, Katherine came into the house and said that Carmen's water broke. So, I posted on Facebook, "Carmen's water broke! Babies coming soon!" I will never again do that! I wound up spending the next nine hours going in and out of the barn watching her and worrying. But I kept seeing her belly bouncing, so was not too concerned about the kids being okay.

Finally at midnight I decided I'd sleep in the barn. As soon as I walked out there at 12:20 a.m. with my sleeping bag and pillow, Carmen got serious. I pulled out my new camera and started snapping a few pictures. It wasn't too long before I saw a nose and then a whole head. And then ... nothing else. A contraction came and went. Carmen pushed. And there was still just a head.

I reminded myself that the kid looked perfectly fine and was very much alive, and that eight years ago, it had taken about 45 minutes to get a lamb out of her mama after her head had emerged because the mama was running around the pasture. And the little ewe lamb was perfectly fine. Still, I ran into the barn office to get rubber gloves and iodine. I squirted iodine all over my gloved hand and slid my fingers into Carmen to see if I could find a leg to pull on. There was nothing to be found within easy reach. After a few minutes, I decided to get Katherine to help because she has smaller hands, and it was a very tight squeeze in Carmen's pelvis.

I ran into the house and yelled, "Mike! Katherine! I need help! NOW!" Katherine was already asleep and was not terribly happy about being woke up in the middle of the night to help, but she sleepily put on her shoes and headed to the barn with me. It was not an easy task and took a bit of pushing and pulling on the head for her to find just the right placement of the kid's body in the pelvis for her to be able to get her hand in there to find a leg and pull it forward. Once she did that, it reduced the size of the kid's shoulders enough that she was able to pull it out.

The buckling looked huge, and I immediately told Mike to get the scale. I had to know what the little monster weighed! No wonder Carmen had trouble. A few minutes later, she was pushing again, and another black kid started to emerge. This one had both front hooves under its chin and came out without any help from us. It was a doe! And it was equally huge. I thought it might even be bigger than the buckling, which had weighed in at 4 pounds, 1 ounce. As it turned out, the doeling weighed merely three ounces less than him.

Within ten minutes, both kids were walking around on wobbly legs, and five minutes later, they had both latched on and nursed. There was no hint that the buckling's entré into the world had been anything less than perfect. By 2 a.m., I was in bed.

Carmen and kids were the stars of Saturday's Farm Crawl.

Carmen's kids are all named after operas, and Mike suggested Figaro for the buck, so I decided to check out the Figaro opera for female names. The doeling will be Countess Rosina Almaviva, which I'll call Rosie for short. And I may leave off the Countess on her papers because otherwise, I won't have room to add her sire's name.

Rosie will be staying here as a future milker, and Figaro will be sold as a future herd sire ... although it is really tempting to keep him too!

Bridget's new heifer

Yes! After having three bull calves in the last two calving seasons, we finally got a heifer! This is little Ciara, which is Irish and pronounced like kee-ra. The plan is to keep her, so she can be our future milk cow.

On Saturday morning, July 28, Katherine and I were doing chores, and when we took Chaffhaye out to the cows, Molly and Bridget came running up right away. Molly's calf wasn't far behind. As I stood there admiring the little bull calf, I saw something small and black moving in the distant grass. I gasped and moved quickly to position myself to see around the cows, and sure enough -- there was a little calf!

Katherine and I jumped over the gate and went running down the hill. The little calf walked towards me, and I got one stroke under the chin, when the little darlin' took off like a rocket running across the pasture! She ran smack into the electric fence and got herself terribly tangled in it. Katherine rushed to unhook it at a juncture, as the calf was bawling like crazy. I had almost reached the calf when she freed herself and took off running towards the western fence. I yelled at Katherine to run faster and cut her off before she got herself tangled in that one.

Finally we got her turned around and slowly pushed her back towards her mama, who was happily munching away on the Chaffhaye. Once we had her reunited with Bridget, we were able to get close enough to figure out the gender. She is a shy one though, so we'll have to work on socializing her. I'm not sure if she's polled or not, but her head doesn't look as round as the bull calf. Daddy was polled though, so there is a 50/50 chance that she will be naturally hornless.

Water, water ... nowhere

Somehow the goats opened the gate today and came into the front yard.
And they quickly found everything green!

How long has it been since we've had any measurable amount of rain? I'm not entirely sure, but it's somewhere around seven or eight weeks. We are officially in an "extreme drought," according to the Drought Monitor. I've gone through all the usual stages of grief -- denial, anger, bargaining, and finally acceptance. There is still a part of me that is angry, but the logical part of my brain keeps telling me to just settle down. Acceptance is probably the most difficult thing for humans to learn.

This morning, we sent nine goats to be processed. They were wethers from last year that didn't sell. I had hoped to sell them this year, but most people don't want year-old pet goats, even at a discounted price. They want babies. The plan was to butcher them at the end of summer if they still didn't sell, but at this point, they were eating grass that is far too valuable for future pets that will sell for the cost of a few bales of hay, which they have already consumed. It wasn't that long ago that I said I could never butcher a goat, and it certainly was not easy bringing the boys into the barn last night, knowing where they would be going this morning. But I have to think of the welfare of all the animals out there. Unless there is a good reason to keep one, it has to go. And I really need to sell the sheep, or we will wind up with a freezer full of lamb and mutton by fall.

Carmen is pregnant and due to kid in 2-3 weeks. She really loves the weeds in the driveway.

It has been so easy over the past ten years to take for granted all of the beautiful, lush grass that grows throughout our summers, as well as the nearby hay fields. I had always thought that our animals would never go hungry. This summer, however, those pastures are rapidly turning brown. And the surrounding hay fields are dieing. I normally need about 800 bales of hay, which we start feeding towards the end of October or early November, depending upon the weather. But we need to be feeding hay now -- at the end of July! I was able to find 240 bales of alfalfa, and you don't have to do any math to conclude that it isn't nearly enough to last until next spring.

Finding no other alternatives, I decided to buy Chaffhaye, which is haylage. There wasn't a dealer within 100 miles of me, so I bought a truckload and can sell some to other people if they find themselves in a bind, unable to find hay for their animals. If no one buys any, I'll have plenty to feed my animals for more than a year. Yeah, that was pricey, but it's a good answer. I've heard more than one livestock producer say you should always have enough hay in storage to last for two years.

The garden isn't doing very well, but we've been able to keep everything alive. We aren't planting anything new. Although we're assuming we have a good water well, I don't want to take anything for granted because there are some people around here whose wells have run dry. The last thing I want to do is haul water from town. I've noticed a new water truck driving down our road the last couple weeks. Towards the end of next month, I'll plant some seeds for lettuce and other greens to overwinter in our low tunnels, but I'm not planting them until this horrific heat is passed.

Our pond is drying up, which is simply a constant reminder of our new reality. Every bit of dirt that you see in the photo above and below was covered with water two months ago.

I hope the crack willows don't die. They are accustomed to growing in the water, so I imagine they have pretty shallow roots.

On the bright side, we now know where all of our buckets disappear to!

But the sobering reality is that the situation is not expected to get better. The Drought Outlook shows the drought continuing through October at least.

Molly's new calf

When I was doing chores on Thursday evening, Molly the Irish Dexter was walking across the pasture towards me. I immediately noticed the front of her udder because it was quite large and so tight that the skin was almost shiny. That got my attention! Was she in labor? Was she really close? I started watching her carefully, and as she turned around, I saw her rear udder, which was not even close to being so large. Knowing that her fore udder had to be pretty uncomfortable, I was feeling sorry for her thinking that it would probably still be a couple days before she calved because I expected the whole udder to be that large just before calving, rather than only the front half.

As I was finishing up chores, Molly was nowhere in sight. I thought about looking for her in case she was in labor, but reminded myself that her rear udder was not impressive, so I headed into the house.

Friday morning, Katherine and I headed down south to the little city for shopping and a visit to the chiropractor after she milked the goats. Mike was handling the rest of morning chores. About ten minutes down the road, I thought about wanting to water the grass in one of the buck pens -- yes, I am a desperate woman with this drought -- and picked up my cell phone to call Mike. When he answered the phone, he was really rushed, so I asked what was up, and he said that Molly had calved.

Mike wanted to get back out to it to make sure that the calf was clean so that flies wouldn't lay eggs on it and cause a bad case of maggots (also called "fly strike"). We've dealt with two cases of fly strike here, and that is more than enough for one lifetime! The first time it was a lamb, and the second time it was a turkey hen that had been attacked by a coyote. Nothing much turns my stomach, but maggots crawling around inside the skin of a living creature make my belly feel like it is being turned inside out. I'll die a happy woman if I never see that again!

Mike had just found the calf before I called, and he didn't even know if it was a bull or a heifer. He called back a little later to say that it was a bull calf, which means that of the five calves born on our farm, four have been bulls. Bridget looks like she'll be calving in about a month, so maybe she'll have a heifer and start to even out the numbers a little.

The challenge with apprentices

Our apprentice last summer with Viola, one of the goats he milked twice daily

Quite a few people have asked why we don't have an apprentice or intern this summer. The simple reason is that I have not been trying to get one. And here is the long answer --

When we had an ad on WWOOF, we received a lot of inquires from people who were completely new to homesteading and agriculture. Being completely new to it ourselves ten years ago, we didn't really see that as a big problem. And if people were as motivated as we were ten years ago, it would not have been a problem. Unfortunately it can be a challenge to judge someone's motivation. I had learned from reading internship descriptions from other farms that it was a good idea to have potential interns visit for a day to get an idea of what real farm life is like. And that is an excellent idea. It weeded out a couple of people. Unfortunately, it doesn't weed out everyone who may not be a good fit.

There were numerous people who did a great job during their trial day. We got along great, and they seemed to be genuinely interested in this lifestyle and work. Unfortunately, as it turned out, they were just passing time while trying to get a real job. After accepting apprenticeships with us, several wound up calling at the last minute to tell us that they had accepted a job offer and would not be coming out. There was one who just never showed up and didn't answer my emails or phone calls. It was especially frustrating because in most of those cases, there were others who had also applied, and we told them that the position for that time period was filled. It felt like they had only viewed the apprenticeship opportunity as a fun way to get a "free" vacation while job hunting.

I thought about requiring $100 deposit for apprentices that were accepted. The deposit would be returned at the end of their internship. If they didn't show up or left early, they would lose it. The idea was that it would weed out people who were just looking for a fun way to pass a few weeks while unemployed.

I thought about making it a paid position, hoping people would be more motivated to show up, but then I thought about how much time we put into teaching. Almost everyone who applies has absolutely zero experience, which means we spend a lot of hours covering very basic information, and simple chores wind up taking us twice as long, sometimes longer to accomplish, than if we were doing it ourselves. There is no way I could justify paying someone for making my life more complicated.

Because people do learn a ton while working out here, and we provide room and board, I had contemplated starting to actually charge for the internship. In fact, I do know of one farm that charges about $5,000 for an apprenticeship that lasts a few months. But then I started to think that if someone was paying us for the experience, there would probably be some kind of liability issues, and I didn't relish the idea of trying to explain this to our insurance company. They would probably have no idea how to deal with it. Is it tourism? Is it educational? Or is it something else?

It actually takes a lot of time to correspond with people and then go through the trial day. When someone first contacts me, I send them a list of questions about their background, what they already know, and what they hope to learn, as well as things that they don't really want to do on a farm. After the emails back and forth, they come out here for a day, which winds up being less than productive for us because we are explaining everything we do, which takes more time. We also spend a couple hours talking over lunch. And then I check references. If you've ever hired someone, you know it is a rather time consuming process, and even though these are unpaid positions, the process is the same. As much as I love the idea of teaching new people how to do everything that we do, I need to figure out a better screening process for applicants because this is far too time consuming, and the return on investment of time is terrible.

So, I'm not actively looking for interns or apprentices. I don't have ads anywhere now. It is mentioned on our website, and I have received a couple of inquiries in the last few months. Someone is supposed to come out in January for kidding season. She wants to learn about kidding first hand so that she can have her own goats at some point. She graduates from college in December and will be looking for a full-time farm internship that will start in the spring for next year's growing season. It sounds like she is serious and that kidding season will fit into her schedule well.

This post is long overdue, as I've had several people asking me what I thought of the idea of having an intern or apprentice. I've been telling them for at least a few months that I'd be posting about my impressions soon. The bottom line is, if you really need "help" on a farm, it is more helpful to hire someone who actually has a background in what you're doing -- or at least has worked outside doing physical labor in the past and has shown some sort of commitment to the idea of growing or producing food. Our most successful intern was Michael, an ag student who had done an internship at another farm the previous summer.

I may start actively looking for apprentices or interns in the future, but for now, I am happy to pay an experienced person to help out. For the summer, we have a local college student coming over three times a week to help with weeding, watering, and daily goat chores. She grew up on a farm with goats and a garden and needed a summer job. She is comfortable around livestock and knows her way around a garden, which means she is actually helpful.

Broiling and steamed

No, this post is not about food. "Broiling" is about temperatures in excess of 100 degrees every day for about a week now. Today is supposed to get to 111 degrees, and it was 101.3 at 10:13 this morning, which was not what I wanted to see.

Combine these temperatures with no rain for more than two weeks, and what do you get? The grass is turning brown, and on a farm, that is not a cosmetic complaint. We are going to start watering a couple areas of pasture. Of course the garden is not happy either, so we have been watering the vegetables plants for awhile already.

So far the animals are doing okay, although I did have one goat that quit eating. Earlier this week I realized she had a pretty heavy load of parasites, so I treated her for that, but she still didn't regain her appetite. I took her to the U of I vet clinic yesterday, and they couldn't find anything wrong with her, so I'm assuming that the weather is just making it harder for her to recover. We've put her in the barn office with an air conditioner until tomorrow when the heat wave is supposed to break.

"Steamed" in today's title is about how mad I am that something -- I'm assuming another raccoon (or two) -- has completely wiped out our flock of heritage turkeys. We found the remains of three, but we haven't seen a live turkey in days. We now have a trap set, but so far, nothing has been caught. The number of chickens and ducks is also decreasing. It seems that coons are bad everywhere this year. We haven't had a problem in about eight years ourselves. A friend was saying that she thinks it was due to our very mild winter and early spring, and I agree. Baby raccoons born at zero degrees are far less likely to survive than those born at 50 degrees.

It is going to be strange without turkeys roaming around. We've had breeding turkeys ever since we moved out here ten years ago. Unfortunately, the hatchery sent us almost all broad breasted turkeys in our order last month, so with only two Spanish black poults, the odds are 50/50 that it's a male and a female. But it's not a great idea to have only one female with a male anyway.

So, for now, there isn't much we can do other than wait for the heat wave to break and the raccoons to wander into the trap.

Camelid spa day

It really doesn't matter how you explain it to them, llamas do not enjoy their annual grooming, which includes mani-pedis, haircuts, deworming, and booster vaccines. And they seem to dislike the mani-pedis and haircuts the most. Before shearing, however, they have to have the dust blown out of their hair, partly because it is the first step in cleaning the fiber, but also because clipper blades will last longer if they're not cutting through dirt.

So, here is Dolce having his fiber blown out. He is our only intact male, and he was so good this year that we were all wondering if he was sick or something. He didn't object to anything. Tuscany, however, was a different story. He is our smallest gelding, and he was not happy with any of it -- not even being put into a stall in the barn. In fact, he jumped right over the door the second we turned our backs on him. He kept throwing fits the whole time he was being sheared, shaking the chute that he was in and giving me flashbacks of the year when Dolce tried to tear it down.

But the real challenge of the day came when we tried to shear Sitara. It was easy to get her into the barn -- we lured her in with grain -- but as soon as she was haltered, she refused to move. She laid down in the stall, so we moved on to another llama. Finally, only Sitara was left. Somehow the shearer finally got her out of the stall and outside for blowing out her coat, but as soon as they were heading back into the barn, she decided to plop down right there in the middle of the barn, and she refused to move. She just laid there like a diva, and the shearer got to work. They rolled her from side to side while she made a noise similar to a mountain lion. Finally, they finished up shearing, cleaned up everything, and left. And Sitara just sat.

And sat.

And we wondered if she'd dehydrate and die. After all, it was really hot. We put a bucket of water on the ground for her, closed the door, and left the barn.

An hour later she was still sitting. Two hours later. Three hours later. Finally, almost four hours after the shearers left, she stood up. Katherine happened to see her standing in the barn, so she took the end of the lead rope and led her out to the pasture.

In praise of daylilies

Every June or July, I walk around the yard and take pictures of the dayliles. In spite of our dreadful heat, which has already gone into triple digits a few times, these flowers are doing pretty well, which is one reason I love daylilies so much. So, for your viewing pleasure, here are a few photos!

And a few daisies!

I really do not have a green thumb, and I don't have the time I would need in order to have the beautiful flower garden that I would love to have. So, daylilies are the perfect flower for me. They come back year after year in spite of the heat and lack of special attention or watering. These pictures were taken after two weeks without rain. We are watering today, but I can't think of too many flowers that are as forgiving as daylilies.