The General Farmer

Getting Close

We are almost there! The last few weeks have been spent doing nothing but getting this house ready to live in. There were a few minor unwanted interruptions, like getting somebody's leg X-Rayed (no broken bones, thank goodness!) and one VERY welcome distraction (a visit from Grandma!) but other than that, we have spent most of our time at various hardware stores picking out lights, paint, wood, trim, stain, carpet (can you hear the money draining out of our account???) or at the farm working. Brett is completely focused on getting us into the house this weekend - I can practically hear him dreaming about what he needs to do after he falls asleep at night. And, as always seems to be the case here in Oregon, the rain is a big factor. Because of the rain, the mud on the new sheetrock walls took longer than usual to dry. So did the final texture coat. Because of the rain, the stain on the hardwood floor took longer than usual to dry. So did the seal coat. Tomorrow is paint day (assuming the floors are dry by then) and, because of the rain, the paint will probably take longer than usual to dry too. So we are being patient. And we are getting pretty excited - we are almost in our farm house! Woo hoo!!!

Making Pretty

There is so much going on over here on the renovation front. I hope to have tons of pictures to show you soon - seems like so many projects are almost finished. The upstairs bathroom is almost tiled, we have almost decided on carpet, we are almost ready to paint upstairs, the boys' beds are amost ready to be repainted... SO MANY decisions have to be made when redoing a house, and while I am generally a pretty decisive person, deciding on colors and sconces and grout is not easy for me or something that I ever like to think about AT ALL. I suffered a minor internal breakdown a few minutes ago in Home Depot while gathering carpet samples. What if I choose the wrong color? The wrong "pile"? The wrong padding? What if there is a totally different store with different carpet colors and piles and paddings that I should go to instead? The man working the carpet department asked me about 5 different times if I was doing alright - he could probably see the panic in my eyes. I am definitely not destined to be an interior designer - I feel exactly like I did when planning my wedding: let's get this finished so I NEVER have to do it again!

In the midst of endless intimidating house decisions, these quilt blocks were just the thing I needed. The assignment: scrappy string blocks using whatever-the-heck fabrics you want. No matching, no coordinating, no planning ahead... ahhhh... I still don't understand how the quilty magic works, but whenever you cut up a bunch of non-matching pieces of fabric, stir them around, and sew them back together, they somehow end up looking fabulous. Too bad I can't put my house together that way! These were made for do. Good Stitches, the charity quilting circle I am a part of, and it was wonderful to have a colorful, concise project to do that I felt confident doing. Stay tuned for lots of finished house projects!

Fall

I am amazed that the everyday scenery can be so utterly different just one state away from home. Back in California I only saw an perfectly undisturbed spider's web a handful of times. Here, where the fog seems to roll in every night and sticks around until well after lunch, these beauties are everywhere, each intricate detail hilighted by a string of pearled dew. I hope I never get used to seeing such delicate and perfect creations.

This last weekend we had our first loss on the farm. We discovered the glitch in our otherwise perfect mobile chicken coop set-up: moving it while the chickens are inside is dangerous to the birds. We lost three of our best girls, one of them Annie, our very favorite bird and the only chicken who would qualify as a pet. Both my boys adored Annie, and she seemed to love them, often running over to them when we would arrive at the farm after school. They enjoyed carrying her around the farm, and when they didn't carry her, she would follow along behind them. Even the subcontractors who have been working on our house loved Annie, and we often caught them sneaking her bits of their lunches. It was a very, very bad day. We had a funeral for her, and each boy built a little wooden cross for her grave, which they decorated with the best rocks from their collection. Ug.

So this week we all started off a bit subdued. Things aren't the same without Annie running to the car to greet us after school, and the boys have bouts of sadness between long stretches of not even remembering that anything bad happened. Kids are wonderfully resilient, aren't they? Modifications are being made to the chicken coop, and we (and the chickens) are enjoying the crystal clear, cold, sunny days. And marveling at the spider webs.

New Tradition

Somebody had a visit from the Pumpkin Fairy last night... He was wearing overalls and driving a pickup truck. And he pulled up to the house to deliver not one, not two, but EIGHT pumpkins. He didn't have time to stay and chat, though; he had a lot more pumpkins to deliver.

I suppose some day I will be used to this newly discovered aspect of Halloween in a farming community: excess pumpkins. But I still get a big kick out of seeing the piles of pumpkins at each house along our street and watching the piles grow as people slowly harvest their own pumpkins and give the extras to neighbors. It is the fall equivalent of summer's zucchini plague. And I love it. Happy Thursday!

We Have a Coop!

In spite of all the human house projects we are working on, all work halted over the weekend in order to construct our chicken coop. It had become a necessity. When we arrived here, we put the chickens in a ramshackle temporary coop made of pieces of old shed and scraps of chicken wire. It contained them for about three days, after which the more wiley girls started finding ways to escape. We would find them happily foraging in the neighbors' sunflower field across the street and wonder how quickly we were about to wear out or welcome. More and more birds began escaping the coop, so we jerry-rigged on more pieces of chicken wire. The wilder ones of the flock began roosting in the tree directly above where I park my car and dropping gigantic poop bombs all over it. The farm chores slowly became more complicated: arrive at farm, gather eggs in the coop, sustain gashes from protruding bits of chicken wire, put on jacket to protect self from chicken wire, catch escaped birds, return them to the coop, rip jacket on protruding bits of chicken wire, hunt for hidden eggs that were laid by escaped chickens, add more chicken wire to coop... by the end of last week, there were zero chickens in the coop and we hadn't found any eggs for several days. It was time.

Brett had been dreaming of a mobile chicken coop for a long time, back when our chickens ran completely wild in California. Yes, they were happy, yes their eggs were all the better for it, but there was poop EVERYWHERE, and no matter what I did I could not keep those birds out of my garden. We determined that when we had our own place, we would not allow it to be ruined by poultry. The idea was to give the chickens an enclosed area big enough to give them lots of room to roam, with an open bottom so that they could peck at the grass and bugs. Two wheels would be attached to one end of the coop allowing it to be hoisted up and towed by the tractor to fresh green pasture once they had mucked up the place they were. 

We do not have the best of luck turning ideas like this into reality on the first shot, but it seems that in this case we've done it. All four of us spent most of Saturday constructing our new mobile chicken coop. Brett did the framing, I attached chicken wire, the kids hammered and ratcheted, and when it was all done, it was time for the moment of truth. Brett hooked the entire huge thing up to the tractor, hoisted it up, and dragged it out into the pasture, and it didn't break into a million pieces! After celebrating our success, we spent another hilarious hour running around the property chasing and catching the chickens, who really wanted nothing to do with their beautiful new home. Once inside, however, it was obvious that they liked it. For one thing, they were all hungry and thirsty. They are a spoiled bunch, and used to a continual supply of chicken feed and water. Running wild around the property and refusing to go into the one place where we had left their food and water had left them all a bit out of sorts. It was a really wonderful day for our entire family. Not only did we finish one of the many projects on our list, we got to spend some great time together laughing and helping each other and appreciating our farm. All that is left on this project is a coat of white paint and two roosters who are proving very difficult to catch. (And did I mention it was SUNNY??? The perfect day.)

Missing Thor

One month ago, when we drove out of our California driveway and started the trek northward to our new home, my seven year old burst into tears. He was not crying about saying goodbye to his Papa or Uncle Chris, who were standing there waving goodbye. He was not crying at the idea of leaving the only home he had ever known. He was crying because we were also saying goodbye to our dear old dog Thor.

Brett and I bought Thor for $30 from under somebody's RV thirteen years ago right after we got married. And while he never turned into the brilliant farm/watchdog that we had envisioned, he has always been a steady and loyal part of the family. He was exceptionally gentle with both of our kids from the time they were born and was never too far off while we wandered around the farm on various adventures. And even though he was constantly whining, running away from home, digging through the neighbors' trash and having panic attacks if he heard a lawnmower, he was the best ground squirrell catcher on earth, and never even thought about eating a chicken. Sadly, though, we were unable to bring Thor with us on our move. At thirteen, Thor is almost completely deaf. Plus, he has lived his entire life on a farm, far away from busy roads, fences and tiny yards. Since our first month here was going to be spent in a 700 square foot house in the middle of the city, we knew that Thor would have an extremely difficult time adjusting, and we worried that he would run away, get lost, or even killed. It was a sad decision, but one that was made much easier by the fact that the people who moved into our old house are major dog lovers and volunteered to adopt him along with the house. So, while it was going to be a loss for us, we decided to do what was best for Thor and let him live the rest of his life in his home.

Well, things that make sense to adults can be pretty hard for kids to understand. Poor Moses, who is our oldest son, was very sad to be saying goodbye to his faithful old dog. Many times we almost decided to bring Thor along with us based on how sad Moses was, but every time I pictured that shaggy black dog sitting in a teeny tiny yard in the rain with trains and busses driving by, I just couldn't do it. I have owned that dog for 13 years, and I knew for a FACT that he would scale the fence and take off running through the unknown streets never to be seen again.

Thus the tears as we pulled out of the driveway. Poor Moses cried for 45 minutes without stopping, begging to go back, asking me if everyone else could move except him, worrying that Thor might not remember him when we came to visit. I was heart broken. Not about the dog, but about my son. I feel sad now, a month later, remembering it, and find myself wondering yet again if we made the right decision. We will get another dog, of course. Our family doesn't feel quite right without one, and no self respecting farm should operate on a dog-free basis. For now, though, life is certainly much easier without a dog to take care of. 

Last week, in one of those I-don't-spend-enough-time-teaching-things-to-my-kids guilty moments, I asked each boy to write a letter to somebody they missed. Titus wrote to his best friend Avery, and Moses wrote to Thor. It was such a sweet reminder for me that almost-eight is still very young. Moses was extremely serious about this letter, and told me that he drew a picture of him and Thor together so that "Thor will remember what I look like." We addressed it to Thor, put a stamp on it, and sent it off, and I managed to get through the entire operation without even once cracking a smile. I hope the letter made it to him - we miss you Thor!

Rabbits on the Farm

We haven't planted a garden yet, but we do have a different exciting farm adventure going on: rabbits!

Now, this is a post that I have been thinking about for a LONG time, trying to figure out how to put it delicately, how to avoid offending and freaking out my dear vegan friends, and feeling quite terrified that it will drive even the most loyal reader away from this blog. But there is no avoiding it any longer: yep, you guessed it. These bunnies are for dinner. 

Several months ago, in our efforts to become more self-sufficient, Brett and I realized that we spend a large percentage of our grocery money on meat. Meat is expensive! And while I eat very little meat because of my on-going health issues, there is no way I am going to convert the three guys in my family to a strictly plant-based diet. I started making 2-3 meatless meals per week, which cut down on our spending, but we wanted to go farther than that. We wanted to know where the meat we were eating had come from, what was in it, how it had been treated. After some research, and taking into consideration our limited space (at the time) and budget, we settled on raising rabbits. Rabbit meat is extremely healthy - per pound, it has more protein, fewer calories, less fat and less cholesterol than chicken, turkey, lamb, and beef. Rabbits are easy to care for, do not take up a lot of space, and are famous for their ability to have lots of babies very frequently. Plus, my dad raised meat rabbits when he was in high school, so we had a mentor, which made things much less intimidating. We bought one buck (that's the male) and two does, and got started. 

It has been several months and I think we're finally getting the hang of things. And while "harvest day" is not at all fun, I do appreciate having good clean meat that enjoyed a peaceful, happy life while we were raising it. Our rabbits live in nice big cages, with regular forays to the rabbit run to play in the sunshine. We feed them rabbit pellets and all the fresh Timothy hay they can eat, trim their toenails, cuddle and pet them, and make goo-goo faces at them while they are cute little babies. We love them, and we appreciate them and are grateful to them for providing food for our family.

In the "nursery" we have two litters right now: Hunny Bunny is nursing 10 babies, and Eleanor is the proud new mama to 9. That's a lot of rabbits! I have to say that taking care of the bunnies is my favorite farm chore. I appreciate the chickens for their eggs, but anything to do with chickens turns out to be a poopy mess, so all poultry chores leave me irritated. I enjoy time in the garden but always seem to have something better to do than pull weeds. With the rabbits, though, I find that I linger in their barn even after their chores are done. I love the smell of their hay, love how they hop over to their cage doors to greet me (well, they are probably just hungry) and get a huge kick out of all those babies hopping around. I even like cleaning up their poop - it is like little black balls of GOLD for the garden. Everything about them makes me smile. 

And now the truth is out. The reason I've been hesitant to tell people about our rabbit venture is not because I feel guilty or apologetic - I am happy that we raise our own meat. But I have noticed that many people feel much differently about eating cute furry rabbits than they do about eating chickens, pigs, or cows. They think of rabbits as pets. In America, rabbit meat is considered a delicacy; you can't even buy it at Whole Foods! And while I'm not trying to convince you to start your own meat rabbit adventure, I am encouraging you to not run away in fear when I invite you to dinner and rabbit stew is on the menu. 

The View From Here

We spent a lovely drizzly gray day at the farm. Summer ends abruptly here, and we are now enjoying fall, watching the colors deepen and seeing everything get washed clean. Weekends are lovely, with nothing more than a couple garage sale bikes and mud puddles to ride them through to keep little boys entertained. It is a simple life, and I love it.

Micro Gardening

In our minds, life is divided into two parts: life at the cottage and life at the farm. I spend the morning and the better part of the day here at the cottage and in the city taking care of chores, shuttling kids to and from school, cooking, cleaning, etc. Then in the afternoon the kids and I head out to the farm to take care of the animals, run around in the open space, and check up on the hubby, who spends most of his day at the farm working on the house. In my daydreams of how this would work, there was a garden involved. A huge beautiful garden which I would tend to every afternoon when we made our way out of the city, and from which I would already be harvesting all the vegetables we could ever want.

Once again, however, my daydreams have been shoved aside by reality. My garden site is currently also the "Junk Pile" site, which means I would have to relocate a 6-foot-high pile of old wood complete with nails and 90-year-old insulation to even access plantable dirt. I will also be needing a rototill. Or, preferably, a tractor. And, while we're talking about things I need, I will also be needing a different perspective on slogging through mud in the rain and cold, because it seems like I will be doing a lot of that in the garden, as well. All that to say that my dreams of a huge garden have been put on hold for now, in the face of reality.

But it really didn't feel right to not be growing ANYTHING here in the cottage. So I planted a little container of microgreens - perhaps you have seen them at Trader Joe's in a tiny little box for about $6? Mirogreens are what happens when a seed germinates and is given just a little bit more time to grow. All the energy and nutrients of the entire plant which have been locked up inside that tiny seed explode out and are concentrated in one spindly shoot and two practice leaves. While you could never sit down and eat the nutritional equivalent of 100 full-grown broccolli plants (think of the bathroom issues, oh my), you can intake the equivalent of that energy with just a handful of microgreens. Plus, they taste good and make your salad look pretty. AND microgreens are super easy to grow, take up almost no space, and can be raised practially for free. Now you can spend that $6 at Trader Joe's on a bouquet of flowers to congratulate yourself for being so healthy and frugal.

Here's what I did. To make my microgreen seed mix I simply dug out all my old seed packets and mixed together a bunch of the left-overs. I never seem to use up an entire packet of seeds, so I have a bunch lying around. I think this particular mix is kale, lettuce, broccoli, parsley, and chervil. You could use anything really, but I would steer clear of tomatoes, eggplant, and pepper seeds since they won't come up well and you really shouldn't eat the leaves of those plants anyways. If you don't have seeds lying around and don't feel like buying any, I promise that your gardener friends will have extra seeds they would be happy to give you.

My growing container is the empty plastic box of spinach I bought. I poked a bunch of holes in the bottom, then filled it with regular ol' dirt from outside the front door, using the plastic lid as a drip tray underneath. I sprinkled the seed mix generously over the top of the dirt (it's ok to use a lot because your seedlings don't need much room to spread out), dusted the seeds over with a very thin layer of dirt, put it in a sunny (well, sometimes sunny) window and watered. This is a very rewarding project, because you will see your seeds start to come up in just a few days. A week or two after that, you can harvest them. I use a pair of kitchen scissors and cut them just above dirt level, rinse them off, and they are ready to go! Once they are all harvested, you can do it all again. And again. And again. I think this is going to be the only fall garden I get, so I plan on raising a LOT of microgreens! Do you have any smal space gardening projects going on? I'd love to hear aobut them... 

Quote of the Day

"Mom, it just seems like people who live in the city are spoiled. They're always saying 'Let's go to the theater!'"