Winter "events" and getting the farming done

I lost time over the weekend working in the calving barn. I worked 12 hour shifts over the past four days, and today Jenn and I got caught up. During our time together, she indicated that we had received between 18 and 22 inches of snow over the weekend. I knew we had received a lot of snow, but I had no idea we experienced a three-foot dump. After getting my truck wedged into a drift across a local road, I suppose I should have known, but when you are preoccupied with working at getting a dairy farm through a snow storm, you often don’t realize the full extent of the events that occurring in all around you.

I was staying pretty busy at the farm, and between calvings, assisting in the milkhouse, constant fixes to the truck, and treating a load of ill cows over the past four days, my time was also filled with a steady moving of snow from one place to another, I never bothered to add up the number of times that I cleared five inches of snow from this place or that. I also didn’t have time to read or listen to weather reports while breaking through at least three inches of ice in some of the water troughs or de-icing DeLaval parts in the unheated barn. In fact, the necessity of getting things done and keeping things going on the farm and the surrounding roads meant that the folks working on the farm had very little time to talk about the weather. Of course, if anyone asked me, I simply said it was the “best day ever” – my stock answer for most any inquiry about the nature of my day.

Yet, after working through a weekend like that, then finding out that you bested three feet of snow, I considered the nuances of the past days and how it seemed like less than a nuisance to navigate the various obstacles presented by working outdoors in sometimes sub-zero temps. I have concluded the following:

Working on a farm often means working at or pretty close to home. That means a hot meal with family in the middle of each day.

The pleasure of the celebratory nature of family meals when work is done for the day. Our family mealtime is often filled with laughter as well as good food that we have grown ourselves. There is a satisfaction to enjoying the fruits of one’s labor so directly.

Employers that value your work and that don’t micro-manage.

The satisfaction of laboring for an hour to pull a backwards and upside down calf, and finding it alive and well, followed by a twin that birthed easily and is just as healthy as the first.

Doing the job right.

Just one of the many reasons that the hardest day on a farm is better than the easiest day at the office.

Just a few more thoughts on this season’s weather. This winter, and much of last winter, are reminiscent of the winters of the 1970’s that set the standard for my winter experiences. I was a between the ages of 3 and 13 during that decade, and Michigan experienced its share of blizzards, cold temps, and multiple snow days. Also, that decade was filled with hockey in the street, driveway basketball that required chipping the ice of the cement an inch at a time, and dreams of baseball season marking the official end of Michigan winter, even when opening day was snowed out one or two years. During the seventies, Michigan had four distinct seasons. I wonder if we might return to that weather pattern for a few years. A strong winter makes the Tigers’ home opener that much sweeter.

This ain't farmin'... Is it?

Though we haven’t began the farming season yet, the farm related tasks are building up and I am expending some energy, as well as having some fun and generating some excitement, getting things done. An old friend, Melanie Ragsdale, has just provided a new logo for the farm. I met Melanie when I first moved to West Michigan with Jenn. We met each other through the practices of a garage band that practiced in the basement of her Rockford home. We lost contact for a few months, and then I met her again working through a small newspaper that I was hired to write for. She put the whole paper together.

Through the wonders of Facebook, we caught up with each other, and now our families are in-touch, and, working together. Sandhill has sought out Mel’s talents as a design professional and is looking to her to provide us with business cards and promotional materials. She has provided the farm with its first “official” logo. We look forward to doing more with her. Go to our facebook link to look up her business info.

Other things are going on. Updating a website is something I never thought of as farming related, nor did I anticipate having to look high and low for a few folks to manage the vegetable shares. Of course, a move from one home to another is in the works, and yesterday we met with Ron to talk about some mundane things like whose furniture we will be using, and how we will keep up with all of the social media work. I never imagined farming would include so much computer work, but in fact, human relationships are being forged in very new and different ways these days, and computers will not only have a lot more to do with agriculture, but the relationships between food producers and consumers as well.

I hope to offer more info about shares in the next post. We are selling shares and taking individual poultry orders now, and that will become the primary work of February.

We're buying the farm!

Writing has never really facilitated cathartic activity in my soul. Many events in my life have taken apocalyptic shape or had supernatural aspects that have convince me – informed aneed to change perspective or to rededicate my faith in new ways. It is after the catharsis, or, as Quakers often say – convincement - that I might write. Quite often, the writing is about violence and the role of violence in our world. But today, I sit ready to update the regularly avoided farm blog.

We are purchasing a farm, not of our own or on our own, and ready to put our dreams into action. Farming is an action, and a creative one at that, yet the incredible amount of activity that surrounds the farmer is often betrayed by the pace of that activity. My favorite kind of farmer is the cattleman who saw that his steers had gone beyond the boundaries of his fencing. He noted with some smugness that the cows did not realize they were free to roam because, in fact, they were quite satisfied in the corn field that they had broken into. The farmer never bothered to lure them to safety behind fencing – the beef just stood, ever active in their feeding, but ever pastoral in the way they went about it.

When one purchases a farm and commits the self to full-time creativity, there is an understanding that the passive activity of day-to-day farm chores is simply 40 days away from the next crisis. I can tell you exactly when 300 lb. hogs will escape. It will be at dinnertime with guests over, and the hogs will simply trot by the dining room window on their way to the neighbors’. I can also tell you exactly when there will be a massive poultry catastrophe. It will occur when I am too tired to check up on the kids chores and realize turkeys have been fed pig mash for four days…

Yet other activity goes beyond simply startling the observer and seamlessly helps make the narratives of life ever true. On Easter two years ago, after a difficult loss of two lambs and a ewe in birth, an unexpected lamb was born while all were at an Easter dinner. And, everyone saw the birth through the dinning room window. Regardless of the stories that shape your life, an unexpected lamb born in spring is exactly what makes the stories of one’s life true. Life keeps truth credible. I think I have told the story of the resurrected chicks a few times too many, but the fact of 70 chicks being “resurrected “ from a catatonic condition through the use of a dollar store blow dryer is one that will stick with our family for quite some time. The story if 75 chilled to the bone chicks slowly warming back into an animated state exhibits the importance, if not unmitigated truth of hope.

The hope for us now has evolved from a hope that we will find a stable place to farm and raise our family to a hope that we can make an positive impact in the community that we are soon to be a part of. One of my critiques of my dear Quaker friends is that one will often say they are seeking community. The fact is, we are already in community, wherever we are, and do not feel like we belong, or that we want to belong. The first reality is difficult to navigate, but the second difficulty might be considered latent self-righteousness. I am a city boy by birth and standing, but have learned that, to love your neighbors, you have to be in relationship with them beyond the scope of talking about baseball and the weather. Indeed, you must respect and love your neighbor even when they talk about keeping their guns, tree-huggers, Jesus as the only way, and their distrust of creeping leftist threats against the best of the amendments and commandments. We live in Michigan folks, and you can only move so far in any direction before you sink or swim in a very big lake, or a very stinky state. You see, we are all already in community, yet some of us a marginalized or self-marginalizing. Worse, many of us simply marginalize others because we disagree with them. All of this seems contrary to the aspects of community we insist we are seeking for ourselves.

There is nothing to bring community together like meal-sharing and the provision of food. Many relationships have been cemented when a plowing favor is returned with a turkey or so many pounds of beef. A dozen eggs go a long way when a neighbor is hurt on the job, and pre-cooked meals from the farm a great as house warming gifts or baby-welcoming gestures. And, when the farm is supported by a community that love to eat the produce, the farm is a community-building enterprise. It is not creation ex nihlo,  however, but  building upon a foundation that has all of the pieces necessary to reflect the best of who we can be despite differences. Such a community should be a church, but over time, I have more faith that it can come through farming. Wish us luck, and buy lots of shares. We move over the month of February until we spend the night when the calendar turns to march. A new spring beginning.

How to Make Refrigerator Pickles

You will need:

• 1 quart jar
• Cucumbers
• 3 Tbsp vinegar (white distilled or apple cider)
• 1 Tbsp salt
• enough water to fill the jar

Optional:

• Fresh dill
• Fresh garlic cloves
• Black peppercorns

Directions:

• You can use whole cucumbers or cut them into slices or spears.
• Put water, vinegar, and salt into a saucepan and bring to a boil
• Add all other ingredients to the jar
• Pour the boiling mixture into the jar, making sure to cover all dry ingredients
• Screw the lid on tightly and let sit for 24 to 48 hours.
• Your pickles are now ready to eat!
• Store them in the refrigerator after opening

Vegetable Share Week 10

Kale
Chard
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrots
Radishes
Summer Squash & Patty Pan Squash
Pickling & Salad Cucumbers
Bell Pepper
Mixed Greens or Lettuce
Assorted Flowers

Enjoy!

Amphibian Friend Visits Garden

Look who we found napping on our broccoli leaves, frogs are favored guests in organic gardening as they help control insects

Vegetable Share Week 9

Salad Cucumber &

Pickling Cucumber

Jalapeno Pepper

Cabbage


Kale OR Swiss Chard
Mixed Greens OR Lettuce
Carrots
Beets
Summer Squash
Herbs
Assorted Flowers