farm stuff

What the Heck Happened?

sastyk — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 10:40:55 +0000

What the Heck Happened?

In my last post, more than four months ago (oy, that's bad!), we had just acquired four new children, 11, 3, 3, and 16 months, and were settling in and getting adjusted. And then I didn't blog all summer. Or for most of the first month of autumn. A few people wondered whether I was eaten by a Yeti or had gone entirely feral. Neither is true (that I know of - I'd probably have noticed the Yeti thing.) It just turned out that going to nine kids, four of them 3 and under, several with major disabilities, pushed my limits a little. Or a lot. We pulled it off. We settled in, we did it, but the blog and quite a few other things were casualties.

It has been five months almost since the "Gang of Four' arrived, and a lot has happened. It culminated last week with 11 year old D. going to live with relatives, leaving the three younger ones with us. The relatives are wonderful people, but we were heartbroken that D. didn't get to be raised with her siblings, and are still sad about that. The little ones are struggling to understand yet another loss (they are part of a sibling group of six, and two brothers already live elsewhere). D's move was the end point of rough September and early October that included a bout of pneumonia for little Q., now 21 months, some major challenges with Eli, my autistic eldest's school placement and 11 year old Simon's first foray into public school (entirely by his choice), which he hated and which only lasted a few weeks.

I know I'm a bad blogiste, but every time I have sat down to write this post something major has changed, and I've had to start it over. I'm hoping I get to the end this time/

And a lot has changed, both in our family structure and our lives generally. This is likely to be an extremely long term placement, and the settling in process has been a long one - but over the last five months, we've become a family. It is a somewhat different family than the one we had before - four bio boys, Baby Z. (who I can no longer call "Baby" Z because he's almost 15 months old and starting to walk), and a rotating cast of a couple of additional foster children. Instead of preparing for kids to come, stay a few months and leave, we're preparing for the long haul - not sure yet what that will mean for the Gang of Three, but no one expects this to end soon, and it is possible that they will stay permanently.

Z. is headed rapidly towards permanency - I may be tempting fate by saying this, since nothing is certain in foster care but that everything is uncertain, but barring a bolt from the blue, the odds are that Z will become our son legally within the next year. He's been with us now since he came home from the hospital, and the legalities will just confirm the fact that he is ours in every way that matters. At 15 months he's a peanut with a mop of curls and a huge personality. He's the smallest and loudest personality in the house.

The oldest of the Gang of Three, K. (boy) and R. (girl) are boy-girl twins, going on four. Both have some significant delays and behavioral challenges, K more than R. Things started out tough - during the first month in our home both twins tantrumed for HOURS daily, their speech was almost incomprehensible and their behavior was the worst I've ever seen in a preschooler (and that's saying a LOT). After four months of structure and consistency, their tantrums are down to a comparative minimum, their behavior is like night and day, and they are thriving and learning. R. is my little shadow and helper, - she loves positive attention and does a great job helping me cook or set the table. K. is sweeet, impulsive and gentle, and loves to help take care of the two little ones. Both are a joy to be around...most of the time now.

21 month old Q. is a tiny, sweet, tough cookie - she's definitely feels the world revolves around her. I've seen her walk up to 13 year old, 6'1 Eli, whack him on the knee and grab a toy away from him. When she came to us she didn't expect much from grownups, who hadn't given her much, but she's become our funny, snuggly, heart-of-gold toddler, the one we never knew we were waiting for. She is smart as a whip and She and Z. are home most of the day with us, and at 5 months apart are best buddies, except when they are hitting each other.

Eli is 13 now - we celebrated his bar mitzvah a few weeks before the Four arrived. He's taller than I am and a fairly good natured teen. Simon his heading rapidly into adolescence and will be 12 soon, complete with eye-rolling and sarcasm, but also with that teen sweetness - he's 5'3, obsessed with old movies (yes, he can tell you about the earliest version of Ben Hur, in case you wanted to know) and happily back to homeschooling. Isaiah at almost 10 wants to be a professional baker and keeps our cookie jars full, and keeps us laughing - he's a natural comedian. Asher is our fix-it guy in training, unusually strong for his nearly-8 years, and also the best big brother in the world. Three years ago when we began fostering Asher's only request was that he get to be a big brother. He is, and he's great at it. All of them are/

What's changed for us? Less sleep, less free time, of course. We broke down and bought a refrigerator after six years of fridgelessness - we've used ice and an old fridge as an ice box to cut energy use, but with so many little people drinking milk and such expanded food bills (our kids came to us tiny and radically underweight - they've all grown at least two clothing sizes and sometimes much more in five months), during the heat waves this summer, we decided we were wasting food, and it was worth the additional electric usage.

During the first few months we did more grocery store shopping than we ever had before, simply for lack of time and energy to make multiple stops. My four little ones were all in diapers when they came (R. is nearly out now), and I had been cloth diapering Z, but had to stop because I couldn't keep up with the laundry with four kids in cloth and a 12 person household. I'm hoping to get R. completely out of diapers and K. day dry, so I can go back to cloth with Q. and Z.

We had a hard frost on Memorial day weekend, the day after I laboriously planted all our tender plants - and then added the kids that same weekend, and mostly never replanted. My garden was the smallest it has been since our first year here and I did less preserving than I ever have.

All of which sounds bad. Except here's what we did do. We taught children not be afraid that there wouldn't be any more food, and feel safe and secure in our home. We have children who now appear solidly on the weight charts, and instead of wearing 24 month clothes at 3 1/2, wear sizes appropriate to their ages. Kids who tantrumed hours each day now can go to a restaurant with us and sit nicely waiting for their food. Long-neglected health problems are resolved or resolving. I didn't grow a garden. I didn't give my farm the attention it deserved. But I grew four children, sent one off into the world and made three a secure part of our family. The garden will come around again in the spring.

Gradually we've come back to things - there was more preserving and local purchasing these last couple of months, and things have settled in fairly well. We are cutting back on our animals to have time to concentrate on our family for a bit, but the genetics are still there and we will come back to it again (see next post - hopefully an opportunity for some of you!). The truth is that we can't do it all - but we've done what we can and there will be more to come.

So that's where we are - there will be more writing now, I think/hope/intend. I'm longing to have that outlet back in my life. I hope a few of you are still around to hear, and that all of you are well. We are. And hey, I finished the post!

Sharon

sastyk Thu, 10/17/2013 - 06:40

Tags

adoption

farm stuff

foster parenting

Sharon,
I was just browzing on the internet and I came across your blog. I really enjoyed reading everthing your family is facing and accomplishing. I am a grandmother raising two grandchildren. I really admire everything you are doing for the children. May God continue to Bless you and your entire family.
Janis

Sharon,
I was just browzing on the internet and I came across your blog. I really enjoyed reading everything your family is facing and accomplishing. I am a grandmother raising two grandchildren. I really admire everything you are doing for the children. May God continue to Bless you and your entire family.
Janis

So glad to see you blogging again -- and I'm in awe of all that you've been able to accomplish with the children. I can't imagine doing even a small fraction of what you're doing -- and I just have the two Hairy Hooligan malamutes!

I'm still around!

Welcome back! And congratulations on all of the wonderful accomplishments.
Please accept my condolences for the loss of daughter D; for your sakes, and for the siblings; such a terribly sad thing, to separate children. I hope very much, for all of you, that you will, at least, have the opportunity to remain close, rather than losing each other entirely. Maybe even sleepovers, and multi-day visits? If good wishes make any difference, you have mine, and, no doubt, many others.
Have been madly preserving here, and very, very ready to be done with that, except there are always just a few last things to finish up. Learning more about lactofermentation, which is new to me. Not crazy about sauerkraut, or pickles, and the green beans are mostly causing frustration at this point, they may be a fail before even being tasted. But brined green tomatoes have been a revelation; those are definitely staying on the must-make list. Continued Independence Days reports to myself, through e-mail, and that has been quite useful. Currently we're doing a pantry challenge; focusing on eating All of the food I've spent all these hours preserving, and for some reason, giving it an official name is helping to keep me from giving up and stopping for takeout or something processed, on the way home, just because I'm tired. Absurd, but whatever works!
Am looking forward to reading about your continuing adventures.

Wow, what a summer you have had. Never mind, growing children is more important than growing vegetables, especially while there are still supermarkets for our convenience.
Did you ever read the third book in the Little Women series? You remind me so much of Jo in Little Men, with her big house full of children who need love, food and a future. Blessings on you and yours in the glorious chaos!

Welcome back! i've missed your writing!

Have been thinking of you often, as is my habit. Chalking it up to the changing seasons of life. Nice you can check back in.

I have been doing more food growing and preserving, still keeping up wit da duckies, still a long list of projects yet to begin or complete.

I am so happy to learn that you are well and that all of the children are thriving. I have been reading and re-reading "Making Home" all summer to keep my mind in Sharonland
of course, you have made the best possible decision to put the children first. Please keep us informed when you can. A few lines will do! It was worrying not to hear from you, but I should have known that you would do a wonderful job.
Blessings on your head, Bonnie

So glad to have your voice back! You always inspired me to be a better person, ecologically and personally, and I have really missed that.

I am happy to hear that your family is growing as you had hoped! Hope to hear more from you, maybe before February this time. :)

I'm so happy to see you back blogging. 8) I miss hearing about your life and adventures. You are doing wonderful things and making a difference in the lives of children who need it the most. The plants will always be there next year.

Always knew you'd be back. But I have no words to describe how awesome i think you and your family are. Wish I could pop over to lend a hand with your garden while you're busy growing more love in the world.

Nice to have you back :)

viv in nz

Welcome back! You have been sorely missed, but never doubt that we all knew you were up to Very Important Work. It just fills my heart like crazy to hear that there are children who have found a loving home with your family.

Blessed be!

Oh so glad to see you back! Have missed your posts tremendously, and wow, bless you for loving those children.

So glad you're back. Children are the most important, gardening and everything else, comes next.

You being back has made my weekend. I've been checking and worrying regularly. So pleased that everything is OK

Nice to see you posting. Hope you have a little time to do some more. I recently read a paragraph out of your book about church model to a Transition Humboldt Group.

Love the description of the kids.

Glad to hear from you again and to learn what has been happening! I'll look forward to reading more about everyone whenever you have a chance to blog.

Crunchy Chicken just announced she's taking up blogging again, too- after a year off- I understand the urge... :-)

Great to see you back and that you and the family are hale and healthy! Awesome work with your bonus kids :)

I figured it was something like that. I am glad to know that I am not the only one who has to change to adjust to members of the family. We had to sell and process many of our animals last fall due to lack of money to feed them. It was hard and is still hard to have empty pastures. But it is what we needed to do for now. I am hoping that some day we can go back to some of it.
Congratulations on growing four children and making them feel secure. I understand how hard it is on a household to have toddlers who are in constant tantrum mode ~ or least that is how it feels. It can be very unnerving. I am glad that that period has scaled down a lot.
Take care and know that I will be here when you can come visit. Give the little ones and the big ones hugs from me.
Take care!

I'm so glad you're back! We just took placement of our 2nd daughter, our 5th child, and our 2nd child by adoption. And we had a major flood and lost our basement along with our store of extra food. I can very much relate to things falling off the priority list. I am actually just re-reading your Independence Days book and it's giving me the motivation to get food things back together!

Welcome back, it is lovely to hear things are slowly becoming easier. Must be the year for it - we have had a tough period too, so it must be time to find an outlet for all the pent up passion.
So good to 'hear' from you again!

Great to have you back. I did wonder and I did worry a little as you weren't too well on your last post.

Thank goodness you are back. Really missed you. I was quite worried.

Sharon, it is impressive and brave of you to undertake this foster care work. I'm sure your home community is proud of you for what you're doing to ameliorate some of the suffering you see around you. Maybe you can hire a responsible teenager or two to help out periodically with the babies? I imagine there are some who would be happy to help in your homeschool community. As former homeschoolers we appreciate the value of support. Don't let burnout deprive you of your important communications with the world.

Welcome back. It sounds like a wild few months, stressful and blessed at the same time. Glad the new little ones are much healthier and happier now.

I knew exactly why we have not a heard a peep from you all these months, but am so glad to get your news. I am also glad you had sense enough to let the farm go a bit, although it was probably not god sense… just the inevitable.

So funny ,I was just thinking about you this morning as I was working in my garden. Wondering what was happening with your expanding family. So happy to have you back-missed your posts immensely. What a summer you had-you are all so lucky to have one another. Looking forward to more updates. Welcome back!

Welcome back! I've been checking in every once in a while, and just generally hoping you were ok. You are--and better than that, you're helping others to be ok. Good for you.

You don't need to apologize for ANYTHING!

Let the Cuteness Unfold!

sastyk — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:03:46 +0000

Let the Cuteness Unfold!

(Mina with Goneril and Cordelia - Regan is on the other side of her out of sight)

No-drama Obama has nothing on No-drama Mina, who calmly gave us triplet doelings last night with no muss or fuss. Yes, that's three little girls from her over-achieverness. And she politely waited until we were done with dinner, and by the time we realized she was in labor, she had delivered three goats and had them all up and nursing. All in all, an incredibly auspicious beginning to our kidding season and just one more reminder of Mina's basic awesomeness.

As you may remember, every season's kids get a name theme, partly because it is fun, partly to remind us what year they were born in. So far we've done Flowers and Herbs, Greek Mythology, Liquors and others - this year, as you may be able to guess from the baby's names, the spring kids will all be from Shakespeare (I'm hoping for a buckling named Sir Toby Belch myself ;-)). The summer babies will have dessert names (the kids are hoping for twins they can name "Trifle" and "Truffle.")

Babies are up and doing great, Mom is, of course providing ample milk, and life is good. Now it is really spring!

Regan and Goneril are almost identical, but Regan has moonspots on her side.

And Goneril has a bigger blaze on her forehead.

While Cordelia, as is fitting, is a little different looking. The cuteness is the same, though.

The happy family!

Sharon

sastyk Tue, 04/24/2012 - 03:03

Tags

Oh, the cuteness! I want - I want NOW! (I suspect Bast wouldn't mind, either)

Who's their father, Sharon?

So cute!!

What a great mama. Yay Mina!

Triplet girls?! How lucky are you?

They are Wiggy boys - hopefully he'll pass on those beautiful udders and attachments that come with his genetics (his daughter Arava has the nicest teats and udder attachments I've ever seen on an ND).

Olympia, I know, isn't it amazing. I'm hoping this year compensates in some measure for last year when we had 2xs as many boys as girls.

Sharon

Sharon- It IS amazing.

I'm sure you've told us numerous times before, but do you care to share one more time what breed your goats are? And are healthy triplets common with said breed? When I was a kid, my parents raised Neubian goats, none of whom could produce a full set of living triplets :(, although they gave birth to three at a time pretty often. They kept having boys, too. :(

They are Nigerian Dwarf goats, and they are somewhat famous for having multiples - I have friends who have had sets of quads and quints. We've never had more than triplets at a time. This is our fifth set of triplets in three years - but our first set of all female trips. We did lose one triplet last year - Mom was a first freshener and I wasn't home, and I think what happened is that she didn't realize she'd given birth to three, so never licked the last one and it never breathed. Otherwise, they've all done fine - and we had a first freshener with enough milk for triplets and some for the pail!

Twins are much more the norm - I actually think that singles are the hardest thing for these goats, because they tend to be a big bigger (kidding problems are uncommon, but the only time we've had them has been with large singletons) and also because they tend to favor one side when nursing which can mean engorgement early on.

So far in 20 kiddings over three years we've had 10 sets of twins, 5 singles and 5 triplet sets. So we've averaged 2 kids per kidding, and twins are the norm, with singles and triplets about equally likely.

In terms of kid losses at or shortly after birth, we've lost one triplet and one twin.

Hmmmm...interesting to see it all laid out like that. Thanks for asking!

Sharon

Sharon, sounds like an awesome track record- such sturdy little animals! And they are, of course, quite mind-blowingly cute- but you knew that.

Put simply, sustainability issues have brought a more focussed & honourable reason to my scientific career.

yes cute aa harikalar sÃ¼pperler yavru hayvanlarÄ±n hepsi gerÃ§eÃ§etin Ã§ok Åirin oluyor. insinanda hayvanÄ±n bitkilerin heryeiÅÃ§n gÃ¼ezil kÃ¼Ã§Ã¼k olanÄ±, mobilya derseniz bunda bir bellona fark yarÄ±tÄ±yor derim sadece. sevimli hayvan yavru resimleri iÃ§in blog teÅekkÃ¼rler ellerinze saÄlÄ±k.

Make Your Own Hurdles

sastyk — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:12:04 +0000

Make Your Own Hurdles

No, not the kind used in track and field (although if you really want to jump over them I won't stop you), I mean the sort used to keep livestock in without breaking the budget on fencing. They look cool, and now is the perfect time of year to prune out branches and hurdle making materials. We use low ones to keep chickens out of spots we don't want, and have a few that we use for moving livestock to create chutes - but I'm working on more. As long as it is time to prune trees and cut wood anyway, you might as well make some fence as well!

Two tutorials, first a written one here from the wonderful Alan Shepherd

A nice video using hazel as well:

Pretty cool, eh?

Sharon

sastyk Wed, 01/18/2012 - 03:12

Tags

I wonder if you could adapt this method to prairie grasses somehow. We don't have much wood in my area. I don't have any small livestock to keep in, (yet) but I do have small children.
Surely I could bundle some Big Bluestem into strong enough ropes to at least make an attempt.
If I try it this summer, I'll let you know how it goes.

ok, I TOTALLY cannot BELIEVE you found, and posted this video!!!!! I spent like 2 days, 5 months ago, researching traditional hurdle making; and THIS is the best one. In my gustibus. Whaddayou, like, my twin?? :-)

I think this guy is brilliantly talented. And he obviously learned this skill from someone trained in the old tradition. Wonderful.

I was researching it because; we're about to be drowning in smallwood; and need to be using it- hopefully to generate cashflow. This is an ancient way to do that, which might well have a place today. So how long have you been making hurdles?? And you do realize, the kind you jump over are named for this old kind? I think bored shepherds invented the jumping sport-

Thanks for posting, I have always wanted to make hurdles. What kind of wood are you using? Do you coppice?

Thanks for posting this! I was mulling over fencing I could purchase to keep peas and bush beans in line. Now that you posted this, I realize I've got plenty of hazel shrubs needing pruning as well as bamboo needing to be thinned, no doubt enough to create the fencing I would have otherwise purchased.

Storm Views and Supporting Northeastern Farmers

sastyk — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:45:52 +0000

Storm Views and Supporting Northeastern Farmers

Thought you might want to see what the storm looked like from here. Let me note that this is a pretty minor situation - the farms in the valley that we rely most heavily on lost *all* of their crops - the whole thing was swept away by the storm.

Still, I admit, I broke into the chocolate the first time I saw my garden under the water.

You can see my poor flattened corn up there and a few cheerful echinacea flowers that at least for now have survived the flood. The back beds are wetland native herbs and plants - they at least will probably make it.

You can see the raging torrent that our creek became (it is normally a quiet little stream) - at its peak, that was about 8 feet from the house (normally a lot further). Also see the honey locust that landed right behind the back bedroom.

There's the locust and a glimpse of the lake that formed on our backyard pasture.

And here's the other big downed tree, right in front of the buck barn:

All in all, it wasn't so bad - our farm will lose a lot of our late season herb crops, many of the flowers we had intended for our friends and our self-provisioning vegetables - some were already put away, of course, but a lot weren't, and most of it is toast. It will cost us some money and time in repairs, but we, the livestock and the house are safe, and we can go forward. If you want to see more of how this was for some others, Kathy McMahon has a great post about her experience with pictures from Central Massachusetts.

The farms in the Schoharie Valley, down the hill from us, however, and others in the Hudson, Catskills and along the Mohawk weren't so lucky - many of them lost *ALL* their crops, and some lost buildings as well. For those of us in this region, please remember and help your local farmers anyway you can - most of them will struggle to rebuild after this disaster and to go forward. I'm working on brainstorming some kind of organized response for Northeastern small farmers struggling with Hurricane Irene's damage, and welcome suggestions if you have them for how to help!

Sharon

sastyk Tue, 08/30/2011 - 07:45

Tags

hiya; been doing a little more digging regarding the program we benefited from in 2008- it was harder to dig out than I thought; apparently it was really a one-time fund raising effort; by the IATP:

"2008
At a January reception in Minneapolis, the Sow the Seeds Fund celebrated an effort that donated $383,900 to 31 farms in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa that were damaged by massive storms in August 2007."

I got $5k for a replacement walking tractor; no strings, 1 page of questions to fill out to apply. They saved a lot of butts; and it was focused on small sustainable farmers.

they might be able to tell you how they pulled it off- and they're great networkers; likely have connections in your region they might share.

try: iatp.org

We got so lucky here, Sharon. While the Connecticut River is the highest I can recall seeing it, *we* had clusters of oak leaves and some twigs on the ground. Oh, and the barn floor is squishy. Aside from that, nada. Even my corn is still upright and happy. I'm very sorry for your losses - at least once my doggone fence is finished, I can provide some cash for you when I bring my goats home. Will keep you posted....

Sharon,

I am hoping that many of the 'lost' crops come through with at least a partial yield.

I assume you are right, that economically anything that might survive to harvest is useless, it won't cover expenses. But I still hope . .

Blessed be.

I only find very piecemeal news about farmer impacts from Irene but it is very thought provoking -- and almost all of it relates to small farmers.
One of the farmers we patronize just emailed that many of their neighbors had their feed crops flattened and friends of theirs in New England/NY area were dumping milk because the trucks couldn't get in and had lost not only buildings and crops but also cows due to a dam failure.
I just read about a concern down here in south Jersey where blueberry fields remain covered with water with concerns about root death affecting next year (we're past blueberry harvest here).
While the impact on us personally was negligible the whole thing is interesting from a preparedness angle (and I don't mean to trivialize more serious consequences) -- I have friends who are scurrying around borrowing freezer space since they are on the one block with no power in their town (and low priority). And there's the whole make hay while the sun shines aspect -- I delayed getting peaches to put up since the season would normally last a few more weeks, but the storm may have really affected the late peach harvest.

Unfortunately, there was so much septic waste backed up, and the fuel tanks from the local oil suppliers overturned, so much of the food, even if technically salvageable, probably won't make it.

And Susan trust me, I'm kicking myself for not having made more salsa earlier in the year!

Sharon

Grim about the septic waste and chemicals. It's VERY hard to contemplate- but- places that flooded this time; and or almost flooded- may be places to move out of crop production; and into timber or pasture.

The floods will continue; and get worse. That's what climate change; otherwise known as climate weirding, climate collapse, or climate chaos; means. Hard to face- but. There it is.

We must be ready for a great many stories like this as global climate change brings more and more weather like no one has seen in historical times. Climate change is going to make refugees out of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. Government and private resources will not be adequate to make most of these people financially whole, entirely aside from their personal tragedies, large and small. Farms and homes, and beloved places will be destroyed or altered beyond recognition. Historical places which have stood for hundreds or just scores of years will be blown away, washed away, or burned down. The world is changing and probably not for the better as far as the creatures and ecosystems alive today are concerned.

Greenpa, thanks for the program info - I'm definitely going to propose something like it. As for moving the flooded areas out of production - I don't think that's likely at this stage. After all, the flooding is how those became the best soils in the area, right? I would think a more likely scenario is one that adapts to regular flooding in spring and fall - eventually it might be necessary, of course, but in the nearer term, the most fertile soils in the region are the ones that get flooded out regularly - even the sewage will eventually be a net gain...eventually.

Sharon

I'm not so sure about the sewage being a net gain. Nutrient rich, sure, but municipal sewage also contains a lot of undesirable components - pharmaceuticals, household chems or anything else people washed down the drain, etc.

Please accept our wishes for everyone who were on behalf of the Turkish people.

Her Åeyi bize etkisi kiÅisel Ã¶nemsiz iken bir hazÄ±rlÄ±k aÃ§Ä±dan ilginÃ§ (ve daha ciddi sonuÃ§larÄ± Ã¶nemsizleÅtirmek anlamÄ±na gelmez) - Ben bir blok ile borÃ§lanma dondurucu alanÄ± etrafÄ±nda scurrying arkadaÅlarÄ±m var kendi kasabasÄ±nda hiÃ§bir gÃ¼Ã§ (ve dÃ¼ÅÃ¼k Ã¶ncelikli).

We've been farming in the western Catskills for 11 years. The flooding gets more and more frequent. "100 year" floods almost every year. Our crop was wiped out by Irene, as were many central/eastern NY farms (not to mention VT). We're having a fundraiser for Catskill farms on Sept. 18. For details contact: target409@hotmail.com or haw@delhitel.net

Alane- exactly. It's going to be difficult; but it really is time to adapt- and not put the crops in those places, any more. Really hard to do- but you are seeing it.

Sharon- I did make previous comment; twice- which for some reason went to "held for approval" - and they never then actually appear. You might want to dig it/them out; there's serious stuff to discuss about what's in the sediment, these days.

CSAs, Deflation and Japan Relief

sastyk — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:40:51 +0000

CSAs, Deflation and Japan Relief

Sundry stuff on a busy day - and a day when everyone is transfixed by world events.

First, my colleage at Dean's Corner has offered a good guide to high tech ways to donate money to Japan relief. There are 10,000 people in Japan who haven't eaten since Friday by the best estimation, and events are adding to the horror. If you want to help, these are some simple ways.

Second, the always thoughtful Kurt Cobb has a great essay everyone should read about the deflationary impact of high oil prices:

The logic is so simple it's hard to understand why smart people with advanced degrees can't see it. Commodities, particularly oil, pull money away from other sectors of the economy. When people are forced to choose between paying for heat and gasoline or paying the mortgage, they pay for heat and gasoline. Cars don't budge without gasoline (unless you can afford an electric one) and most people need their cars to get to work. The heat can be turned off rather quickly by the utility company in comparison to the glacial pace of a mortgage foreclosure that can take many months and sometimes more than a year.

This situation is particularly problematic because it pulls money out of the financial sector. And, despite all the nonsense about the financial industry being on the mend, the industry is actually becoming more and more vulnerable by the day as it increases its exposure and leverage to financial and commodity markets. The speculative animal spirits of the banks, hedge funds and other large investors, buoyed by all the virtually free money available for borrowing and huge taxpayer-financed injections into zombie banks, may now be hurtling us toward another jaw-dropping financial catastrophe. As Hyman Minsky might put it, stability and prosperity lead to instability and crisis as market participants become more and more emboldened on the upswing creating the illusion that all is well. Then, when prices and credit expansion go beyond what the economy can sustain, a decline ensues that is often dramatic as confidence suddenly shifts to revulsion and fear.

It is a critical point, and Cobb is absolutely right - most people can't see it. Do read the entire thing.

Finally, if you live in the greater Albany/Schenectady/Saratoga/Troy region or will be visiting there during the spring, our plant CSA, focusing on unusual edibles, permaculture plants, herbs, native plants and of course, the best heirloom garden vegetables is finally taking members. We'll have drop offs around the region! Check out the details here, and join by sending me an email to jewishfarmer@gmail.com! Someday I'll have a lovely online checkout system, but I'm a work in progress! You don't have to join to get great plants for us, but the CSA members get the best deals and the first choice of varieties!

Ok, back to the seed mines!

Sharon

sastyk Tue, 03/15/2011 - 06:40

Tags

I share your concern about Japan. I lived there four times for a total of 13 years, and I'm deeply worried about friends still there and the Japanese people at large.

However, people are not starving because there's no food. The people who are suffering right now are in areas hard hit by the earthquake and tsunami that are now inaccessible. Japan has a robust Red Cross organization of its own. I recommend this cautionary blogpost about donating to Japan right now, what will and what won't help: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/03/15/what-to-do-about-japan-a…

Hmmm...high commodity prices are not by themselves deflationary, but because other, larger, deflationary forces (credit destruction, slowed velocity of money) are already at work in the economy, and have been for the last two or three years; the Fed's money-pumping has only barely kept up. The tepid recovery and complete failure to clean out the Stygian stables of the financial system keep wages suppressed, leading to people having to make tougher choices between essentials (food, energy) and nonessentials. But that's a symptom, not a cause, of deflation. You might remember the 1970s? Rising energy prices in those days were not seen as deflationary.

Jeanmarie, I don't think anyone thinks that the Japanese are starving because there's a famine - the problem is that moving food into dangerous areas is expensive and requires money. Yes, Japan is a wealthy nation and has a vital Red Cross, but giving money to the International Red Cross is not a bad idea here - just as the US found it difficult to mobilize funds during and after Katrina, so too will Japan need help.

Moopheus, the difference, of course, was that rising energy prices in the early 1970s still went in large part to the US, which had just peaked in production. The transfer of large chunks of your wealth to other nations strikes me as a more significant factor. But the other thing is that stagflation is a misnomer - you can have *deflation* and *price increases* at the same time. Stagflation equated popular understanding of inflation (to be about prices, rather than the overall money supply) with economic and blurred them together to explain a perfectly normal phenomenon - a deflationary economy with significant price increases.

Sharon

Yes, that's right. We have deflation, and we have commodity price inflation. But we do not have deflation _because of_ commodity price inflation. We have it because the banks are broke and the overall money supply is shrinking despite the Fed's efforts. There is high global demand in the commodity markets, and evidence of speculative manipulation in certain markets (esp. oil). There's other stuff going on too, of course--China's currency manipulation means that some of the inflation we should be seeing is showing up in their economy instead.

The Change

sastyk — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 07:17:49 +0000

The Change

"Did you look at the forecast?" "Is this it?" "Should we get them out?"

My children keep asking, and I keep telling them that I think so, but that no one can know for sure. We are talking of the change in the weather, slated to begin today, warming us up from the last wave of bitter cold with night temperatures last night around -12 (we hit -29 earlier this winter, so that's pretty balmy), to days in the 40s (gasp, and maybe even near 50) next week, while nights are just below freezing.

It is possible, of course, that the warm spell will turn and go south, although the predictions are optimistic. It is possible that after the melt-off next week we'll go back to the deep freeze, but an extended warm period like this usually means the beginning of the end for winter. This might just be the beginning of spring. After a long and bitterly cold winter, we're all excited. (And probably a little optimistic, given that it is -5 right now and we're expecting snow within the next 24 hours...but it is supposed to be 35 tomorrow, so that's enough to encourage optimism!)

"Them" are the maple taps. It isn't for nothing that the Northeast is said to have five seasons - spring, summer, fall, winter and mud. We really do have a transitional season during the annual melt-off when everything is running - the creek, the melting snow over the driveway, the streams of mud down my children, and the sap of our tiny sugarbush.

My woods are fairly new, and the hardwoods are just beginning to take significant place in them - 50 years ago, my 18 acres of forest was pasture. You can find the old standard apple trees and the stone fences that kept in the cows easily enough as you walk through the brush and woods. There are only a few maple trees big enough to tap, mostly in the old hedgerows - but that's ok. We have dozens of neighbors with larger projects going, and are happy to purchase some syrup from them. For us, this is a pleasure, a few quarts of syrup for pancakes, and the knowing that spring will come.

Sap runs when days are warming and nights are cold, when the ground defrosts and the puddles pool, and as the snow melts. For many of my neighbors, maple syruping is part of a living, but for almost everyone who does it, it is a way to move into spring, awaiting the red-winged blackbird and the peepers, out in the woods, outside, luxuriating in the warmth of a 40 degree day and the smell of reducing syrup.

On March 1, The Carrot Barn, the large farm in the Schoharie Valley we visit regularly will reopen from its winter rest. Within a few weeks, their greenhouses will be full of spring flowers and fragrant with the smell of earth and hyacinths, and we will go there to take deep gulps of springtime air through the cold days. The house will gradually fill with seedlings as well, the smell of wet earth and the hope of spring. Perhaps next week, if a day reaches a bright and non-windy 50, I'll carry them outside to sit on the porch, protected from bright sun and cold wind at first, bringing babies out to meet the world.

The Robins came back at the end of January, the junior does started breeding last night for summer babies (actually they started a couple of weeks ago by accident, but I'm trying to pretend I'm in control here - the animals, however, are also feeling spring in their blood!), and the seniors will start to kid in early April. My tub will be filled with baby chicks in a few days, peeping and awaiting weather warm enough to move into the barn. All in all, the turn of the year is coming whether old man winter likes it or not.

For now we hang, quietly, or not so quietly, impatient, waiting for spring. It is coming, It is almost here. Every sign debated, every change tasted - there is no moment in time when we are more in tune with our place and world than in the pause between winter and spring, when we stand, waiting for the moment when all this pent up energy is finally released!

Sharon

sastyk Fri, 02/11/2011 - 02:17

Tags

It is so funny how a cold, muddy nasty time of year for most becomes so looked forward to when one belongs to the Maple sugaring crowd! Starting out drilling holes with the cleaning solution freezing in the bottle and ending with green popping out. It is amazing.

Two weeks or so till drilling for us in Wisconsin.

Here in eastern MA, we tap around Valentine's Day, so that's next week. Interest in farming things comes and goes at the school these days as I've said in previous postings, but perhaps some kids will go out with me next week.

Up north, on the new homestead I purchased, it too is mainly land that was pasture half a century ago. Most of the land that hasn't been rented to a neighboring potato farmer is coming up to eastern white cedar and white ash now, but thankfully I have a decently mature sugar maple on the front lawn. There's probably a few more hiding in the newish woods given that there's 25 odd acres back there, but even one nice tree would be enough for now, if I ever relocate up there.

The great thing about being a maple person is how fast it makes the next 5 or 6 weeks go......probably too fast at times. Spring work loads will be here before we know it!

I noticed the season tipping towards Spring last week- like a deep bass note in my core. The sun is up when I leave work, more birds every day (I think some robins are using building heat vents to survive an early migration), even with 2-4 feet of snow and crazy -bajillion cold this week. It will be the Equinox all too soon!

Renting in the Minneapolis metro, I have no place to tap. Hopefully I can brew some beer and trade with a friend. Or there are those birch trees in the office park... ;)

Stephen, Mazel tov on your new place - I'm so excited for you! And yes, you are right - there's this waiting...busy...waiting...busy..waiting...OMIGOSH I'm never going to sleep again thing going on.

Sharon

In Maine I've heard the four seasons described as Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Mud.

Though much of that is just propaganda to scare the southerners away.

You forgot black fly season. If the winter doesn't scare 'em, those critters will. ;)

Spring is humming it's warm up tune here in Iowa too.
Birds were heard yesterday as I went to work.
:-)

I enjoyed that post Sharon.

Alas we are not quite there yet. The goats are still confined - not enough greenery out there yet.

Since there seem to be some Mainers here (my new place is in northern Maine), allow me to post this, as found on http://www.city-data.com/forum/maine/376036-oil-prices-forcing-people-l…

AUG 12: Moved to our new home in Maine. It is so beautiful here. The mountains are so majestic. Can hardly wait to see snow covering them.

OCT 14: Maine is the most beautiful place on earth. The leaves are turned all the colors and shades of red and orange. Went for a ride through the beautiful mountains and saw some deer. They are so graceful. Certainly they are the most wonderful animals on earth. This must be paradise. I love it here.

NOV 11: Deer season will start soon. I can't imagine anyone wanting to kill such a gorgeous creature. Hope it will snow soon.

DEC 2: It snowed last night. Woke up to find everything blanketed with white. It looks like a postcard. We went outside and cleared the snow off the steps and shoveled the driveway. We had a snowball fight (I won), and when the snow-plow came by, we had to shovel the driveway again. What a beautiful place. I love Maine.

DEC 12: More snow last night. I love it. The snow-plow did his trick again to the driveway. I love it here.

DEC 19: More snow last night! Couldn't get out of the driveway to get to work. I am exhausted from shoveling. Darn snow-plow!

DEC 22: More of that white stuff fell last night. I've got blisters on my hands from shoveling. I think that the snow-plow hides around the curve and waits until I'm done shoveling the driveway. JERK.

DEC 25: Merry Christmas! More friggin snow. If I ever get my hands on the s o b who drives the snow-plow I swear I'll kill the idiot. Don't know why they don't use more salt on the roads to melt the stupid ice!

DEC 27: More white stuff fell last night. Been inside for three days except for shoveling out the driveway after the snow-plow goes through every time. Can't go anywhere, car's stuck in a mountain of white stuff. The weatherman says to expect another 10" of that mess again tonight. Do you know how many shovels full of snow 10" is?

DEC 28: The stupid weatherman was wrong. We got 34" of that white stuff this time. At this rate it won't melt before the summer. The snow-plow got stuck up in the road and that fool came to the door and asked to borrow my shovel. After I told him I had broken six shovels already shoveling all the snow he pushed into the driveway, I broke the last one over his fat head! He is suing me.

JAN 4: Finally got out of the house today. Went to the store to get food and on the way back, a damned deer ran in front of the car and I hit it. Did about $3,000 damage to the car. Those beasts should be killed. Wish the hunters had killed them all last November!

APRIL 3: All that snow is finally melted. Now the basement is full of water and the driveway is 6" deep in mud. Car got stuck and I had to call the tow truck. Guess who was driving it and he hadn't forgotten the snow shovel incident.

MAY 3: Took the car to the garage in town. Would you believe the thing is rusting out from that stupid salt they put all over the roads. Had to pay $200 to have them fix the broken spring from the frost heaves.

MAY 10: Black flies are so thick I can't even see out of the car windshield.

JUNE 21: Planted a garden but the deer came out of the woods and ate the plants. I went to town today to buy a gun. If I see one of those four-legged vegematics I am going to blow its head off!

JULY 7: Moved to our new home in Miami. It's beautiful here. The beaches are great! I Can't imagine why anyone would want to live in that god-forsaken State of Maine!

I agree Steve.Thanks.

When the weather warms early like it appears it's going to, I always worry about the fruit trees, grape vines, and other blossoming perennials. If it warms too much too quickly, they bud out and then a freeze gets them. I'd rather it warm gradually and then stay warm when spring comes, but that's increasingly unlikely in our increasingly weird climate situations.

We had a high of 51F in St. Louis today. It also seems like winter's back is breaking here. I finally got all of the sleet-turned-to-ice shoveled off the driveway and started pruning the clump of elderberries that has grown together and encroached on the witch hazel. Speaking of the witch hazel, it started blooming; that's my sign that winter has begun to transition to spring.

Don, you are right, of course, and there are all sorts of compelling reasons for not wanting an early spring. That said, I want an early spring ;-).

Stephen, that's hysterical, and so accurate!

Sharon

Sharon; have you read Scott Nearing's book on maple sugaring? Called, I think, (The Maple Sugar Book.)

Man, did he ever do his homework; though it predates "modern" practices like plastic tubing and high-tech evaporators, he had more facts crammed in there than I've ever seen anywhere else. Really "good stuff", and a sideways insight into one of the founders of "back to the land".

We've stopped doing more than a little ceremonial tapping here, though we used to actually make syrup and sugar to sell. The biggest reason is that the seasons have become highly erratic, and usually extremely short, compared to historical patterns.

Something I don't recall being in Nearing's book, which I just ran into last year; Korea has a huge maple tapping practice, also; but not for sugar or syrup; they package and sell the straight fresh sap. It's an ancient traditional "spring tonic" sort of thing; goes for very fancy prices in the city.

If you haven't ever tried it, do try just making your tea with maple sap. Very nice. Works for cocoa, too, though to my palate it comes out a little too sweet; and for plain coffee, I find it just a bit strange.

We do drink quite a bit just straight out of the bucket. The Koreans are on to something.

(absolutely CRUCIAL clarification; it was the Korean sap stuff I just ran into last year; I ran into Nearing 30 very odd years ago.)

:-)

Using raw sap would be okay if done right away, but sap spoils so if one wants to keep it around for a bit, I think it needs pasteurization and sealing, i.e., some type of canning.

Thoughts/experiences appreciated of course.

Scenes from the Farm in Winter

sastyk — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:56:28 +0000

Scenes from the Farm in Winter

These were taken before the 18 inches of snow that fell the other day, so you can actually see the ground, but the scene is still basically the same - white, with scattered critters. We're all definitely starting to dream of spring!

The creek in winter

Asher at the Creek

Isaiah, finding material to repair our (very primitive) footbridge

Hauling wood is a daily chore. When the snow is falling hard, my fuzzy, frosty spouse looks vaguely like a yeti after a few loads ;-).

With all this weather, it is good thing all the stuff in the root cellar is still holding up! At least we don't have to worry about shopping between storms!

Ducks in the Snow!

I bet you didn't know that goats could smile at you, did you? Well, Calendula says "hi!"

Mina the Milk Truck and her daughter Poppy come out and check things out.

I do not fear winter! I am Jessie the snow goat!

Maia and her girls, Marshmallow and Licorice, however, see absolutely no reason to go out in the nasty snow when they could stay in the nice cozy barn. They are fairly sure their server will be by with another flake of hay any minute.

Toasted Marshmallow the rooster says "Come back soon! Bring snacks!"

sastyk Thu, 02/03/2011 - 08:56

Tags

is that gray/dark beard split natural? if so, cool.

Yup, wholly natural - and I think it is pretty cool too!

Sharon

OMY goodness that is goat cuteness! LOVE the pics!

Wonderful pictures!

Wow, your farm looks incredible. I can't wait until I live somewhere where I can have duckies and goats!

What impresses me most is the contented look on every person and beast.

Wow.

Wow, that is a metric ton of cute from Calendula. Trust me, keep posting cute goat pics, and you'll see a traffic uptick. :)

Wow. Global warming in flake format. Hurry Tell Al Gore

Hey, denier, do you realize that the Arctic right now has above-normal temperatures? So do many other parts of the world. Do you realize that 2010 was the warmest year on record, even beating out 1999?

Just because it's cold and snowy in upstate NY right now doesn't mean global warming isn't real. It's a GLOBAL phenomenon after all.

@denier: Warmer air is able to hold more water, so snowstorms will become more frequent/severe in certain areas of the U.S. as the overall climate warms (exactly where is determined by air currents, among other factors). Weather that's localized both in time and space, as Don says, is not useful in determining long-term climate trends.

If you would like to know more about global climate change, feel free to try the following blog, which is written by some truly awesome scientists:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

Can you say "weather" and then ask yourself why we don't use the word "climate" as a synonym?

Sharon

Lovely photos!

Gorgeous photos. I see you, too are still knee deep in winter!

It does seem like every story that has images of snow, mentions cold weather, etc., does bring out people who deny climate change. Here is one of the funniest (though just a touch unpc) rebuttals to people who seize on a photo of snow and decide as a result that climate change must not exist...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f6Z0_HMLo8

Wow, those baskets look to my untutored eyes like a TON of apples and onions. Would it be too much to ask what a full root cellar for your family looks like overall?

A lot. Remember there are six of us, and this is our primary source of food (root cellared, preserved, bulk) - and it represents an approximate year's supply - ie, there won't be any more potatoes until the new ones are dug in late June, we'll switch to scallions when all the onions sprout, etc... Also my kids eat approximately their weight in apples daily (ok, maybe not quite, but it seems that way). For our family of six, we usually go through 300lbs of potatoes, the same of onions, and 15 bushels of apples. And we'll run out of apples. A lesser quantity of carrots (I have terrible carrot soil, but there's a carrot farm down in the valley, so I buy those in bulk), parsnips, celery root, quinces, pears, beets, turnips, rutabagas, parsley root, jerusalem artichokes, etc...

Sharon

Sharon - Could you spare a pound of Jerusalem artichoke tubers? I've been trying to find them for planting and can't find a commercial source who will ship NOW. If we wait until they ship in May, it will be too hot to establish them.

Will pay postage and send you mesquite-smoked serrano chilis for your spice collection. Smoky and warm flavor to BBQ sauces and anything else you put it in.

Tales from the Barnyard: The Sharks and the Jets

sastyk — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:52:29 +0000

Tales from the Barnyard: The Sharks and the Jets

The Sharks and the Jets are fighting over by the compost pile. Well, ok, maybe not quite, but it has that feel to it. You see, we have two street-gangs of ducks. The first ones, Pekins and one ratty looking Rouen who is shooting for the "oldest living duck record" have been around for a bit. The Rouen was the only duck on our farm for about two years, after his girlfriend succumbed to the siren song of the creek and got eaten by something. Then, this year on Christmas morning (which would make a great Christmas miracle story if a. I were a Christian and b. it weren't ducks ;-)), a group of Pekin ducks appeared in my barn.

It turns out that they had wandered away from a neighbor's house back in early December and spent three weeks living free on our creek during bitterly cold weather and heavy snowstorms. When the creek brought them down my way, and they found a barn, with food in it, the pooped, thin ducks decided they'd found paradise and stayed. When the neighbor found out they'd settled at our place, she was just pleased they were still alive, and observing that she didn't have appropriate housing, gave them to us. So then we had ducks. The ratty Rouen joined the group, and ducks, moving as ducks do in perfect symmetrical unison began roaming our property.

In the meantime, I had already ordered 10 ducklings from a hatchery to deal with our snail issues. The last several years have been incredibly wet, and last year, as some of you may recall, Selene, goaty herd queen, came down with meninfeal parasites. These are a little pest that live on snails, carried by white tailed deer. In the deer, they are harmless but in llamas, alpacas, goats and occasionally sheep, they can cause paralysis and neurological damage. We caught Selene's case, although not fast enough to avoid some residual weakness, but it isn't an experience we're longing to repeat. It

In order to avoid a repetition, figuring prevention is always better than cure, we set about three strategies. The first is to work harder on developing tree crops to feed our goats with - there are fewer snails up than down, and unlike sheep, which pretty much prefer to eat down, goats prefer up. So the more of their calories and nutrition they can get from trees, the fewer snails they accidentally eat.

The second was the acquisition of Mac the Marshmallow, our giant livestock guardian dog. Mac's job is to protect the goats and poultry from predators (the sheep have their own guardian, a donkey named Xote), but also to discourage the deer from coming too close to the pastures. Mac is still a work in progress (he's in dog adolescence and mastering his job), but he has learned to chase the deer back to the treeline, but stop and not go any further. We don't want him to run deer, either, but he seems to grasp the distinction.

The third strategy was ducks. The snails that carry the parasite are a major problem, and ducks love snails. We hadn't expected the magic appearance of duckage, so we ordered some babies. Isaiah, after agonizing over whether to pick chickens or ducks to be shown at the fair decided on ducks, and ordered fancy crested ducks (they are weird looking things in my opinion, but Isaiah loves his ducks)

I also got a few buff ducks, which are supposed to be good foragers. After giving a couple away to my brother in law, we were left with 8 juvenile ducks. They are now young but full grown, and doing a really good job with the slugs and snails.

But the two groups of ducks hate each other. We're not talking mild hostilities here, but something deeper and fundamental. The Pekins and Rouen bully the younger ducks (who outnumber them and are mostly bigger) mercilessly, but every once in a while, the beaten-down junior ducks stage a sally against the older ones, attacking them with beaks.

When the ducks start fighting, Mac becomes very, very distressed. He's a new age kind of dog, and disharmony in his little fiefdom upsets him. He barks, paces, jumps, and finally intervenes. He's unremittingly gentle, so we never worry about the safety of the ducks, but the ducks don't share my confidence, so they scatter hysterically as he comes over to restore order. If the ducks are still fighting when he gets there, he picks on up in his mouth and decides it is time for a little calming therapy for that duck. And he licks it for a while.

I think he's just doing the paternal thing "ok, calm down, let's have a soothing bath and a cup of tea" but the ducks don't seem to appreciate a dog-tongue washing very much. Great Pyrenees do drool quite a bit, too, so even though the feathers are waterproof, the duck in questions inevitably looks kind of bedraggled.

After the 120lb dog asserts his authority, the ducks usually go back to their normal state, the two groups assiduously avoiding one another, until the next time competition for a particularly juicy and delicious slug or something brings them into contact, and the gangland violence begins again.

Sharon

sastyk Tue, 06/15/2010 - 03:52

Tags

Love it! The tongue washing is too funny. I have a coworker who also has a farm and used to have a Great Pyrenees; I'll have to ask her if he ever licked a duck. =)

Your description of Mac trying to calm down the ducks (or duck in question)with a few friendly licks made me lol!

I had a dog that loved cats and would groom them-I can imagine ducks care less for dog grooming than adult cats. And ever so often a chick would end up in his mouth(wet but okay). I guess when you're licking a fluff ball it does stick to the tongue....

So, how on earth do you train a dog to keep deer to the tree line?

A previous girlfriend's parents owned a Golden Retriever that would randomly grab one of their chickens (Blue Silkies I think they were called, they had feathers on their feet), and run around with it. Being a Golden he had a soft mouth, so no chickens were harmed, but by the time he'd run around the barn with it a few times and let it go, the poor thing was undoubtedly dizzy but with a new lust for life (like Raymond the convenience store clerk in Fight Club).

This does make me want ducks though, I didn't know there were ones with little pompadours! With that hair you should get tiny leather jackets for them, the image would be complete!

Way back when I was a teenager we had a very loving dog. If one of the cats came too close she would pick it up like a puppy, bring it into her doghouse, then hold it down and give it a bath. If she ever ran free in the neighborhood, she would go a block away and choose a chicken from our neighbors yard, then she would bring it home and just hold it. Once she brought one into the house and let it go. The chicken did not want to be caught after that.

This is completely OFF topic to this particular blog post of Sharon's, but OMG!!!

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

Love it, love it, love it!

That's a great dog you've got there, my friend :)

Rabbit-fed Pigs and Farmers as Teachers

sastyk — Wed, 05 May 2010 07:01:53 +0000

Rabbit-fed Pigs and Farmers as Teachers

"It is funny, but not that funny."

Eric's comment does not stop my uncontrollable giggling. My step-mother comes over to see why I'm hysterical. She agrees with Eric - it is funny, but not funny enough to explain why tears of laughter are literally coming out of my eyes.

I'm reading a passage in Michael Perry's excellent book _Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting_. I gave the book to my step-mother for her birthday, and during a family visit (note blog silence) from which we returned last night, I finally read it.

Now I read a lot of the "How We Done Moved to a Farm and Made Fools of Ourselves" genre of literature, because people give them to me and lend them to me, and I'm one of those people who will read anything. Some of them, like Perry's missive, are good. Some of them are dreadful (I will try to refrain from naming names here.) There are sub-categories to the genre - "How my wife/husband dragged my behind to the farm and I learned to put up with it" (_Hit by a Farm_, _Stronger than Dirt_), "How I bought a farm and actually didn't do any farming but hired other people to do it and wrote cute stories about animals" (_50 Acres and a Poodle_ and various books by Michael Korda and Jon Katz_), "How we Farm Very, Very Seriously and Work Very, Very Hard" (_Harvest_ and the totally luminous and wonderful _Seasons on Henry's Farm_.)

When the books are good, I often read them not for the charming stories of the pet rooster or the melodic prose about tomatoes, but for the odd recognitions of common reality - the things people who farm (or sort of farm) know but other people don't, or even secreted tips about how to do things. From _Seasons on Henry's Farm_ for example I recently got a new idea about how to start broccoli seedlings that I plan to steal and I smiled with recognition at the stories about how the farmer actually gets all the seconds - the tomatoes with the bird pecks and melons with soft spots. I actually learned to preserve food precisely because during the years we ran our CSA, I don't think I ever ate a perfect tomato. Ate plenty of good ones, though.

But back to my irrepressible giggling about Michael Perry's book. Somewhere in the middle of his book, which is as much family narrative as farm book, summer comes and rabbits begin to overrun his family farm. Perry goes out and shoots them to protect their garden, but can't decide what do with the dead rabbits. He remembers that he was told never to eat summer rabbits, because of the risk of Tularemia, but his country-upbringing left him with a deep aversion to shooting anything he was not prepared to eat (this is one of the best ethics of rural life, and nearly every young hunter I know has a story of eating something they shot by accident or stupid youthful intent, and that a parent forced them to consume - literally eating crow is an excellent moral lesson in its own way.)

Unwilling to feed them to his family, Perry finally gives the dead rabbits to the pigs. Pigs, being omnivores, devour them with bright delight and enthusiasm. Perry observes that he is not easily grossed out, but that watching it was pretty disgusting. The description alone is worth the book.

But the part that set me rolling on my Mothers' couch was not that unappetizing bit, but Perry's meditation on the possibilities of this food source. After all, he observes, in summer he has a nearly unlimited supply of cottontails roaming his property and eating his lettuces. This free food then could be set to supply protein to his pigs, which could then be marketed as fed on truly local, home produced feed.

Perry observes, however, that he anticipates trouble at the farmer's market. While "grass fed beef" offers up an unmistakable visual image of green pastures and bovine contentment, the same does not arise from the image of "rabbit-fed pork." It was his suggestions of possible marketing slogans that sent me into hysterics.

You probably think this is funny, but not that funny too. And you may be right, but the reason it tickled me so much is that I've spent a lot of time in the last near-decade trying to explain food to people, and I can see precisely how this would go over at most of my local farmer's markets. I can envision myself with my banner advertising "locally produced and sustainably raised rabbit-fed pork." I can see the kind shoppers figuring "rabbit fed...does that mean they are fed on lettuces and dandelions like rabbits....it can't mean..." and coming over to see. I can see myself putting up a poster board, like many fellow farmers have of the steps in production, with pictures of me holding up a .20-.20 and pointing it at the rabbits, and the recoil of horror by many kindhearted folks who don't like guns and don't quite grasp that they are a basic tool of the trade out here.

I can see the expressions of horror growing as the next picture shows me proudly holding up a dead cottontail. And then the shot of the pigs...well, let's just leave it there. What's funny about this is that it involves actually marketing the parts of agricultural life that most farmers wisely try and leave out of the discussion, recognizing the limits of their audience. Because the bucolic day to day life includes many things that make people unfamiliar with agriculture look horrified - and the best way to make suburban or urban affluent audiences happy is to leave those bits out when we can. We run into too many people who still are grasping that yes, all eggs come out of some bird's butt and yes, so do my nice, grass fed ones.

The ignorance that people have about their food is starting to soften - in 2003 when our CSA began, we often had to explain to people that no, we don't raise strawberries all year round and that certain things will only be available at certain times, and yes, eggs really do come from chicken, even when they come from the store and the beef is not born in styrofoam packaging (you think I'm joking, but I'm not!). Those conversations still go on but less often, and more and more people recognize obscure vegetables or can ask about how animals are raised. But there are still fundamental barriers. A number of times, for example, I have had people ask me whether the meat birds I raise for sale were raised as vegetarians.

I understand what people are asking, and I don't blame them for it. They know that cows really are supposed to be vegetarians, that feeding cows bits of other cows and the old belief that "protein is protein" has turned out to be wrong, and they assume that's true of chickens as well. But what they don't know is that chickens are omnivores - probably because most of them have rarely ever seen a chicken, much less what they eat.

Chickens do eat grass, and ours gets plenty of pastures and plenty of vegetables, but they also eat bugs, the occasional rodent or small snake, and any meat scraps they can get their hands on. Given a choice between kale and a baby mouse, my chickens will take the mouse with enthusiasm and delight. The only way to raise vegetarian chickens would be to confine them. Left to themselves, if one of my other chickens dies, my hens would cannibalize it (we don't leave them to themselves on this subject, but not because we don't want them eating other chickens).

Pigs also have a taste for meat. Consider the scene in the film The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy falls into the pigpen, and Bert Lahr's farmhand, helping rescue her, has heart palpitations and has to sit down - proof that he is a coward. Modern folks wonder what the big deal was about Dorothy getting all muddy - but the reason Dorothy's fall is rightly frightening is that had she not been able to get out, the pigs would have devoured her.

Most of us choose not to know that sort of thing - that pigs happily eat meat of any kind, including human, and that along with table scraps and fresh produce, raw cottontail would make a perfectly nice supplement to a pig's diet. Given the wild abundance of rabbits, I can't see why they shouldn't be fed to pigs, and would happily go and buy Perry's rabbit-fed pork (except, of course that we don't eat pork) - but I would be one of a very few people who didn't turn away in horror.

I am on record as believing that the de-industrialization of our agriculture is both wise and inevitable - I do not believe we will have the wealth, the energy resources or the ability to absorb the outputs of our present agricultural model over the long term, and that because such a transition is necessary, we'd be better off doing it sooner than later, and more gradually than not. I believe in necessity of that transition, and I also believe it is viable to drop the energy intensiveness of our agriculture dramatically while still feeding people - the argument is largely laid out in _A Nation of Farmers_ although I've come to some refinements on that take since the book was written 3 years ago.

But what I don't believe is that this will take us back to a world of perfect purity, to what I think many of my customers and most customers are looking for. For this reason, I'm not an organic purist, for example - I think it will be necessary to reduce inputs, but I don't expect that reduction to go to 0 anytime in the immediate future, and given tough enough times, I can certainly imagine circumstances in which I'd be pretty grateful for a few bags of 10-10-10. I admire farmers who produce food organically, and I do so myself and have for years - but I know it is easy now when the Agway is just over the hill, and make no promises of absolute purity. 90% organic would be fine with me. I patronise not the organic orchards far from me, but the local ones - the ones trying to reduce pesticide use, trying to bring in new, disease-resistant varieties, and most of all, trying to make a living at a business that suffers even more than average from vagaries of weather.

A friend of mine sells fruit - and this is a damned hard way to make a living in our climate. She sprays as little as she can, and not at all whenever possible, and uses mostly organic materials - but she can't get a reliable crop of peaches or apples every year without using a few things that aren't organically certified, and she depends on that money. Every time she goes to market, she explains, no, she's not organic, but she's getting closer every year, and points out the things that aren't sprayed at all, and explains what she does use and why. And every year a few people roll their eyes at her and say they are off to buy organic peaches from far away. I can understand, I really can, and who knows their necessities. I also know that if she doesn't stay in business, there will be no low-spray local peaches, and probably never any organic ones. I buy hers. I think more would stay if they understood how hard it is to deal with fruit tree diseases in our climate and region.

A woman I asked recently asked me how I felt about cows being fed on bagged old bakery bread - she observed that couldn't be natural, which, of course, it isn't. But she is headed for the country, has thought about this stuff and was thoughtful when I argued that I felt that raising some animals on food waste, particularly in and near populated areas, was essential if we're going to create resilient cities. I know many people object to the idea of meat chickens raised on conventional food scraps, preferring pricey organic bagged grains. Me, I think if we're concerned about sustainability, we're going to have to raise some of our protein on the waste of our own communities - and that disdaining a chicken fed a few doritoes, along with vegetable scraps and bread - is a little strange given that most our bodies contain the residue of a few doritoes as well, no matter how purely organic we are most of the time ;-). We do not eat without any blood, contamination or imperfections - asking farmers to feed our animals that way is a false choice.

I am all for pasturing animals - we all know that feedlots and CAFO agriculture is pretty bloody horrible. There are no animals that deserve to live the way we raise them in industrial food systems. I raise all my animals on pasture, and since well managed pastures with high levels of organic matter can sequester almost as much carbon as forests and support more diverse wildlife than almost anything but forests and wetlands - including many endangered species that depend on open grassland that are not mowed constantly - I think pasturage is a wonderful thing. I live in an area that grows grass well, and everything else less well - my property is wet, steep and rocky, and its best use is the conversion of grass into meat, milk and eggs.

At the same time, however, as in some ways I live the bucolic ideal, I also live in the grubby world of blood and mess - when an animal dies on my farms, if it is suitable for human consumption and its death certainly not from any risky cause, we eat it. If not, we toss it to the dogs, or the coyotes, or the chickens. When we butcher, entrails go to these creatures as well. I raise some animals simply to feed to other animals - my extra red worms go to the chickens as a winter protein supplement. The cute bunnies on my porch love when my children push dandelion greens to them, but their offspring will be butchered and eaten by my dogs, to reduce my dependence on the industrial pet food system. My "grass fed dogfood" is good - but I also know that my dogs roam the wood eating random horrible things they find. Of course, some of them probably ate grass too...

My tools include hoe and shovel - and guns, which are kept carefully locked away, but come out when the sheep are threatened (I do not shoot coyotes, since I benefit more from having predators in my ecosystem than I lose from their predation, but I do make loud noises to scare them away) or when I have to put down an injured animal, or when groundhogs dig under my garden fence.

This is the part that most people who have bought food from me would prefer not to think about. The blood and guts, the imperfections, the hard choices, the ugliness and the fact that there's nothing pure about my work. In _A Nation of Farmers_ Aaron and I quote Clayton Brascoupe who says "When you farm, at the end of the day, your hands are dirty, but your hands are clean." And that's true, as far as it goes. You do good work, and your hands get dirty with the complexities of farm life, but cleaned by the fact that you are as honest as you can be about them. But honesty only gets you so far - they are still awfully messy. And the choices are going to stay messy - and complicated and hard as we attempt to deal with the reality that our current system won't last. What we get in the future will have trade offs and hard realities to it too, no mistaking - and things that most folks may not like to think too hard about.

And I guess that's what made me laugh so hard in Perry's narrative - the way he so perfectly put his finger on what would have to change for a customer to come walking gaily into his farmstand and ask that he give him five pounds of that rabbit-fed bacon. We've begun to teach people some of the truth about where their food comes from, but it is only just a beginning, and it is a long trip to get a whole picture. That day may even come - it depends on the quality of teaching that farmers and cooks and people who write about food manage to do.

Most people don't go into farming to become teachers - but that is just part of the job. Particularly if you are growing something unusual or doing it in a new (or old) way, you have to teach people why what you do or what you grow is something interesting or tasty or better for the planet. It isn't easy, and most of us don't hold a candle to Madison Avenue when it comes to advertising our wares. Still, I take hope from the fact that Madison Avenue has been able to sell so much bad tasting, bad for you junk, and am working up that photo display for when rabbit-fed pork becomes all the rage.

Sharon

sastyk Wed, 05/05/2010 - 03:01

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I loved this essay.

I too have problems making people understand the choices and realities of raising animals. Also, it makes my practice of live-trapping mice and then feeding them to the chickens seem less like a gladiatorial game and more like a sound, farmerly decision.

I love this! Especially the bit about buying not-totally-organic produce; I do that too b/c I'd rather buy the local thing than the most "pure" thing. A lot of the folks at the farmer's market aren't certified organic 'cause of the cost involved (in fact one of the stands has a sign that says "Now certification free!" LOL) but do their best to not use pesticides & junk.

I think what the phrase "rabbit-fed pork" leaves out is the information that the rabbits were something harmful and unwanted, and feeding them to the pigs is a way of using them up instead of wasting them- as opposed to being fed rabbits b/c that's the best thing for them, as in "grass fed beef." Personally I think I'd rather eat Perry's rabbit-fed pork than any of the feedlot pork from the grocery store.

Do you happen to know where I can purchase "dorrito fed chicken eggs"? I think they would make delicious omelets.

The Buddha taught the principle of "right livelihood": to make a living in such a way as to do no harm. Both farming and teaching should be done in such a way as to do no harm, but seldom are. Engineered economic realities make it difficult to farm or teach in such a way as to do no harm but if you can't farm or teach in a harmless manner, you have no business farming or teaching.

What's a .20-.20? I'm not familiar with that round. Surely you wouldn't kill a rabbit with a .30-.30. No head left to feed to the hog. Do you mean the .22 long rifle rimfire cartridge?

Pigs are, biologically speaking, very close to humans. Why would you feed something that may be contaminated with a potentially fatal bacteria in humans to a pig? Do you want them to get sick as well?

Other than that, I agree with the whole 'waste not, want not' thinking.

Yay Sharon,

My favorite post yet. Funny with cost benefit analysis and a thorough dressing down of people who equate squeamishness with morality. What's not to like.

becca@#3

"Do you happen to know where I can purchase "dorrito fed chicken eggs"? I think they would make delicious omelets."

The grocery store. Lots of chicken feed uses "bakery waste" I once got some eggs from a guy who had been feeding his Araucanas whey and a baking industry recovered feed product called Cookie Meal all winter. They were fantastic.

I made a girl throw up once when I explained how a good farm dog learns to lie still and let the chickens pick the ticks off him.

P.S. You left "The Egg and I" off of your list. Betty MacDonald should get a mention since she started the genre and was hands down hilarious.

She gave us Ma and Pa Kettle.

PPS

darwinsdog,

20-Caliber and 17-Caliber are marble models for "varmits" They make small holes and shoot flat for a mile.

Those plagued by coyotes are partial to the Weatherby's .17 HMR rifle but ammo is often hard to find.

I can testify to the omnivorousness of pigs-I have a pet pig(I taught him manners as a baby and now he won't give me an excuse to eat him) and as a smaller-than-a-cat piglet he found a dead frog. I wanted to make sure it was a. really dead and b. not a toad, so I tried to take it away. I was able to tell it was dried up frog but only because it wouldn't all fit in his mouth-I couldn't get it out. And it took him about 15 minutes to manage to chew it up. Since then he's expanded to leftover dog leavings-bits of armadillos and rabbit that they missed.

So I'm totally behind rabbit-fed pork. Maybe described as second degree pasture raised?

Thanks for responding Prometheus. The only .20 factory load I'm aware of is the .204 Ruger. There may be others but I've never heard of the .20-.20 round. I suppose it's possible that someone necked down the .30-.30 cartridge to .20 and chambered a custom rifle for it but I don't see why anyone would do so when there's certainly ballistically superior factory loads on the market, such as the .223. I knew a gunsmith in Illinois who necked down a .308 cartridge, I think it was, to accept a .177 bullet, and built a custom rifle to fire it in. That little bullet would punch thru a bulldozer blade! I'm guessing that Sharon meant the .22 rimfire as her rabbit killing round.

I have a little single-shot .22 pistol - a "garter gun" - that will only accept the .22 short. I'm tender-hearted and always pop a critter in the brainstem with it before I butcher. It'll drop a goat or sheep with nary a bleat or twitch, so long as it's to the medulla and not the forebrain. Of course, the Navajo always thought I was silly for insisting on shooting a sheep before butchering it. Said it wouldn't bleed out right if shot first, but I didn't care. I just couldn't bring myself to cut an animal's throat without shooting it first. I suspect that Sharon feels the same or else she'd just ring the bunny's neck.

I'd like to affirm the fact that hogs are dangerous. People have been killed by hogs. When my daughter was little she played with the goats and other animals but we always warned her to stay away from the hog out behind the barn. I'd buy little ruptured pigs - umbilical or inguinal hernias - at the sale barn for little or nothing, sew them up, shoot 'em full of combiotic and, if they lived, raise them up to butcher. The hog might seem friendly but I told my daughter not to go in the pen with it. A hog will knock a kid down & kill it. And pity the poor snake that hogs discover in their pen. Even a rattlesnake will be killed & eaten by hogs.

Susan, your statement that pigs are biologically close to humans is true, but depending on your scale, those fatal bacteria are biologically close to us as well. Pigs' skin is very similar to human skin (except I don't think they sweat), but that doesn't mean they are entirely like us. AFAIK, their stomachs can handle things that are far worse than what humans can handle. Heck, I know my dog would be able to best me at a Fear Factor game any day ;)

I've never heard of this disease before, so I looked up a few things. It appears that the only real danger with a "summer rabbit" is in dressing them. You should wear gloves and of course cover any open wounds, but as long as the meat is cooked, there's no real risk. There were some pretty obvious signs to watch for in the rabbits as well, such as an infected tick bite with bare skin around it, and you can check the liver's appearance after dressing. In fact, it seemed like the majority of places were saying that the real risk to humans is from ticks (of course those nasty bastards would be in on the game).

Great article, and I love the take on organic vs. sustainable. In my mind, it's not that hard a choice between locally grown 90% organic with minimal pesticides vs. certified "organic" (note sarcasm in quotation mark form) that's been trucked 3000 miles after being picked green.

Oh, and rheather, I'm so jealous right now, I've always wanted a pet pig. The frog story was sad though, as I share a residence with a White's Tree Frog who is probably waiting patiently for some crickets as I type.

When we lived in Vermont some years ago, our church made money off the tourists with a summer fair and barbecue. One year a local rabbit farmer who supplied French restaurants in NYC donated several dozen dressed rabbits. To my surprise, rather than being impressed with the fancy eats we had available, the tourists were horrified. Almost all of them ate hot dogs instead of "bunny BBQ".
Many of my extended family farmed, and I remember that scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is walking the fence and starts to lose her balance used to give me chills. We kids were told the truth with no varnish about staying out of the hog pen.

Great commentary.

My emphasis is always on local and in season vs. organic. Like you, I feel like if we don't support our local farmers and other local businesses that they will close their doors, and we'll have fewer and fewer options, until Big Box is all there is ... and when they go bankrupt, which they will, we'll be left with no choices.

I'd eat rabbit-fed pork from a local farmer. It's far better than the CAFO antibiotic laced pork from the grocery store - which we never eat!

Susan, your statement that pigs are biologically close to humans is true...

Depends on what your definition of "close" is. Hogs belong to the clade Cetartiodactyla which includes whales, dolphins, and even-toed ungulates. Humans belong to the clade Euarchonta which includes primates, colugos & treeshrews. The smallest group that would include both hogs & humans is the placentals exclusive of the xenarthrans: sloths & such. Bats are considerably closer to humans than hogs are. "When pigs fly" maybe they'll actually be "close" to humans.

My favorite questions from a customers, and my grandmother's responses:

Q: Do you milk the cow in the petting zoo?
A: He's a baby bull, and he doesn't like to be milked.

Q: Why are the rabbits in a cage, isn't that cruel?
A: Well getting ripped to shreds by a coyote is cruel, too.

Q: Are the bananas local?
A: *laughter* No, bananas don't grow in Connecticut.

darwinsdog,

This site has a lot ballistic data for the popular brands. What they are not telling you on this page is that they are crazy loud.

http://www.6mmbr.com/20Caliber.html

When I was young person, mother would give me 25 cents for each armadillo I killed. They dug in her garden. We would shell them out and hang them on the fence of the chicken pen where they would be skeletonized fairly quickly. Wild rabbits and squirrels we ate ourselves.

Awwwright. What is this, a gross-out party?? :-)

Since you guys have already set my (sensitive) stomach roiling- take THIS:

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Feeding-Chickens-Maggots.html

:-)

I thought it was funny. Laughed till I had tears. Rabbit fed pork sure has a different ring to it than say, milk fed pork. Not something a farmer is ever going to be able to pull off advertising. My grandfather would have quietly fed his pigs from what ever source was available and kept that information to himself. Most people really don't want to know what goes into the sausage making. Thanks for the book review. I'll have to check out Michael Perry's work.

Hmmmm, I can almost hear Joel Salatin saying pigs eating rabbits is expressing their pigness. Porcine philsophy!

I had a customer who kept pigs. God bless the poor animal that got caught in the pig pen...he lost more cats that way. And the pigs hunted them! I often say, if cows were omnivorous, they'd eat us, too.

Well, I have mixed feelings about this. I can see how it all makes sense from your point of view. And there's a long history to the genre of "making fun of the educated city slickers who just don't understand life in the country." It was a staple of cartoonists in the early 20th century, when more Americans lived in rural settings.
But it's a good example of why I could never be a part of the traditional or typical rural culture or mindset. One of the "family values" of the family I grew up in was "be kind to animals." I don't even snort derisively at the saying "love animals, don't eat them" (though I wouldn't exactly put it that way, since it seems a little sappy). I grew up in the countryside (we weren't from a rural background, though -- my dad was an academic). And I liked some of the individual people I knew. But by and large I never cared much for the culture of rural people. Part of it was the widespread prejudices against outsiders, educated people, professors, artists, liberals, nonconformists, hippies, science, scholarship, foreigners, Jews, gay people, city people, atheists, (and on and on and on)... But a big part of it was the casual and cavalier (callous, in my view) attitude toward animal suffering. The instrumental view of animals, as though they are just another piece of equipment, rather than creatures in their own right, with their own reasons for being here. And on top of that, the attitude of smug superiority toward "city slickers" with "sentimental" feelings toward animals. That really grates on me when I encounter it. "My grandpa used to put the kittens and puppies in bags and throw them in the pond," one person told me. Well, excuse me for considering the fellow to be depraved. Similarly, when I was a kid we had a neighbor who shot up a bunch of birds in one of our trees. Apparently they were eating from his garden. Us kids saved the one injured surviving bird and nursed it back to health. Named it chip-chip and released it. Maybe it ate some more of the idiot's garden -- hope so! :-) That man was vile.
Anyway, I sure wouldn't eat "bunny-fed pork" (well, I don't eat meat); and if that guy were my neighbor, I would shun him. I can see how it could be considered funny to feed dead bunnies to pigs (they were already dead anyway, so no additional harm to the bunnies) anything really surprising and incongruous could conceivably be funny -- but isn't it also kind of a revolting idea? It's not so much a moral issue as an aesthetic one!
I mean, yuck. Really.
My sister lives in the country, raises chickens. She recently posted on Facebook about taking an injured bunny to the vet, and then to the wildlife rehabilitation center. Good for her, I say! I think that's a better thing to do with bunnies than feeding them to pigs, honest I do. It builds character, too: a compassionate and kind character, rather than an emotionally calloused one. You guys can keep on showing off to one another how emotionally tough and realistic you are, and look down your nose at me if you wanna (it's part of the grand tradition of contempt for those city folks who think they're so smart). I will continue to be in my sister's camp. I think I'd support raising kids to believe in "be kind to animals" rather than thinking of slaughter as just another household chore. Personally, I try to minimize, to the extent practical, the amount I contribute to unnecessary animal suffering -- and yes, you bet, especially of animals I consider cute, animals who are directly known to me personally, and animals who are in endangered species. Irrational? Illogical? Not sensible? Unrealistic? Maybe. Whatever. It's part of who I am, and I'm happy to stay this way. But one final thought: "be kind to animals" (and "try not to hurt animals") is surely no less sensible than "of course, we don't eat pork." So don't start pointing fingers at me for not being logical! "We don't eat pork" isn't based on compassion or empathy. I'm not sure what it's based on (Marvin Harris had a theory), but I'm pretty sure at this point it's just a matter of inertia and conformity.

Never had much to do with pigs but that is a great use of rabbits! I wouldn't trust a pig anyhow - I've seen what they can do to dogs etc when hunted. Wild pork is delicious by the way! So is rabbit casserole :)

I am a country girl but not a farm one. Nevertheless I do know where food comes from including all the nasty bits and my only thing is being humane in our treatment of animals.

Vegetarianism is only possible locally when the land is suitable. Our area wasn't. It was sheep and cattle country with a short growing season so veg was rather limited. We grew a large garden but some things just weren't possible. In this scenario you have two choices - eat meat as well or suffer deficiencies.

viv in nz

DD, you got it just right - I'm thinking ".22" and .30-.30 simultaneously (I own a .22) and my brain is typing something else altogether. Not quite as amusing as when I called the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Atkinson ;-), but my brain does that sometimes.

I've never actually shot a rabbit - realistically, to do the photoboard in question I'd probably have to have better eyesight than I do - or get Eric to do it. They are small and fast moving.

Mike, I'm actually surprised more people haven't taken offense at this ;-). I do think that you've already decided what I think of you (which isn't necessarily what I actually think) and are already defending against arguments I'm probably not going to make ;-).

At the same time, I think it isn't so much making fun of city slickers (plenty of rural kids grow up fairly ignorant of where their food comes from too, because they may see it grown, but don't have any way of connecting that field of corn to the doritoes they actually eat) so much as dealing with the reality that we won't be able to feed everyone without a certain level of practicality - one most people are bothered by. And some of that may well be for legitimate reasons.

I enormously respect vegetarianism as a choice - and if you are going to be a vegetarian, there's no reason to eat or support rabbit fed pork - the people who trouble me are the ones who want meat without any of the complexities of meat. Those who say they won't participate in meat production have made other choices, and have found other ways at getting a little way towards honesty.

I think my view of animals isn't quite the one you are anxious to attribute to me - for example, one of the reason I raise some of the breeds of animals I do is because unless they are raised to be eaten, they will go extinct. There is no such thing as a refuge for endangered livestock species - they exist in some kind of instrumental relationship with humans or they and their genes and their history disappear forever. No one keeps pet tom turkeys, rams or bulls. Unless they are economically viable - and for some species, edible, they are gone. And I consider their endangered status to matter.

We have rescued animals too. We believe in being kind to animals too. I can understand why someone can't imagine it is possible to be kind to animals, to rescue and preserve them and also kill and eat them, but I think it is. And indeed, even a vegetarian needs sometimes to protect their food sources from animals that also want it.

One way or another, feeding 9-10billion people is going to drive us to the very edge of our capacities - I do not believe we can throw away that land that cannot be tilled, that is steep and rocky, or food scraps in that project - period. And if we do, that's more land that is taken into production of other foods, more land that is converted to fields of corn and soy, stripped naked of all animals that can't live on a single diet, and then run over with a combine to mix soy and ground nesting baby birds. There's blood in everything.

Sharon

My own observation is that the prejudices of rural communities are often somewhat overstated - having lived a lot of my life in cities, and living now with the obvious cultural markers of alienness - ie, we're visibly Jewish, we're visibly leftist, etc... in a rural area, my observation is that while urbanites are instinctively tolerant of difference in ways that other people are not, they are also

You are spot on about this, but my question is only semi-related.

We're raising broilers this spring, and decided to incorporate food scraps into their diets (preferably turned into black soldier fly larvae.) But my husband and I make very little food waste, so we decided to get some of the copious waste from the local grocery store in our nearest town. Sure enough, the random worker in the produce section informed us that they throw away a few trash bags of unsellable produce every day, but when we talked to his manager we discovered that the company now has a corporate policy that this food waste has to be destroyed. We called all of the grocery stores in our surrounding area, and all of them had the same policy.

I suspect you may have talked with people who have jumped through the hoops to find a source of food waste. Where did they find it?!

Some of them dumpster dive behind grocery stores and restaurants because of exactly the policies you mention, Anna. Sometimes restaurants are willing to save scraps in special bins - my step mother goes to the local cafe where they put scraps aside, and for a while a friend of ours who runs a sandwich shop did the same (it didn't work out for us since we just didn't drive past the sandwich shop often enough). Right now Eric is negotiating with SUNY to put up bins for students to scrape scraps into that he will pick up as part of their sustainability project. It is a cheap and easy way for them to get points. Aaron gets them from a coffee shop in his neighborhood.

I think it is probably easier to work with small institutions not large enough to have formal policies.

Sharon

As I said before food waste at the manufacturing point is a major part of feed production.

Griffin Industries??? I think.

There have been several attempts to consolidate food waste at the retail point for use as feed or compost.

The problem is that you need a lot of hands to separate the spoiled food from its packaging and in the process a lot of people are going to be exposed to a lot of scary bacteria and fungi.

If you could find a way to do it so that it does not violate every health code regulation a dozen times you would become quite rich quite quickly.

After all, a bag of potting soil costs more than a bag of Doritos.

The hitch is the initial step of less and biodegradable pcb free packaging.

If we could get over the need for everything to be tamper proofed blister packed and the insanity of a piece of fish wrapped in clear plastic with a sticker with a picture of a piece of fish on it we could just burn retail food waste, generate electricity and have lovely potash the farmers would line up for.

Oh and Mike Cagle@#20

For somebody flogging their own compassion liberalism and open mindedness your post indicates a affinity for wicked petty self aggrandizing pejoratives that would fit right in at a Klan meeting. If you are an example of the present character of urbane tolerance in Gotham, stay there.

I have to go now, a bunch of us dirty ignorant inbred racist sexist homophobic fascist hicks are going to poke kittens with sharp sticks before we take bites out of the last narwhal for lunch.

As far as vegetarianism -- can't find it now, but wasn't there a study on why certain kinds of malnutrition cropped up suddenly in India and they traced it to "improved" standards in cleaning up veggies for market? Not enough bugs in the diet ...

Asian people are very efficient.

I read of outhouses built over pig pens and fish ponds. The pigs and fish eat the human manure. I understand that its high in protein, form all the bacteria growing in our gut.

Woah, Dale ... that grossed me out WAY more than rabbit-fed pork ever could. :/

Y'all have given me the motivation to approach our local (non-chain) grocery store and restaurants to ask about scraps/produce. Thanks!

#26 Risa

"..wasn't there a study on why certain kinds of malnutrition cropped up suddenly in India and they traced it to "improved" standards in cleaning up veggies for market?"

The Jains were developing micro nutrient deficiencies from a lack of insects and microorganisms in their food. (vitamin A, B12 and vitamin D deficiencies).

Jain vegetarianism was already the strictest form(no root vegetables, filtered water, nothing fermented, nothing with a lot of seeds etc.)so when their hygiene practices overlapped commercially cleaned food, it made them ill.

Now most Jains take supplements (particularly during phases when they are not allowed to eat chlorophyll).

shojin ryori vegetarians haven't had any problems I have heard about but it is a lot less strict (The Buddha ate meat when it was offered to him as a gift).

@sharon in 22: Rowan Atkinson played an Archbishop of Canterbury as Blackadder in the first season (a plot making fun of the story of thomas a becket). But a very funny thought/slip!

If feeling physically ill when I hear that the "low-spray" apples are treated with "agricultural streptomycin" means I'm a city-slicker, then I'm definitely guilty.

Dale- well, a little oversimplified, but yeah. I was in China in 1988, way in the back country where it wasn't all cleaned up for western consumption. On a long stretch of empty road, one of the guys in the minivan urgently needed to go. No problem! Every 1/2 mile or so, there's an outhouse at the roadside. Built by the farmer. For the convenience of the travelers. And the fertilizer.

In the same area, they've got the diaper problem solved, too. No diapers. No bottoms to the pants. When you can, you hold the kid out over the road; there will be a dog or pig or chicken along in a couple moments to clean it up.

I could go on. :-)

Depends on the apples - agricultural streptomycin is common in large scale orchards, not so much in the ones I'm talking about.

Sharon

i see nothing inherently wrong with eating meat that was raised on stuff i wouldn't eat myself. far as i'm concerned, the intestines, skin, and immune system of whatever ate that stuff is insulation enough; if the animal managed to survive decently well eating the thing-i-won't-eat, then its muscle tissue is far enough removed from the taboo to be okay by me, and any lingering ickiness disappears in the frying pan.

after all, i'll happily eat farmed tilapia, and i've seen the videos of how they're raised. fish farms use tilapia as the first stage in cleaning up tanks polluted past the use of other fish species; they're basically raised in somewhat diluted fish-shit mud. still taste pretty decent fried, though.

making an issue of the aesthetics involved is a slippery slope, because very few non-human animals give a hoot about the aesthetics of their living conditions; i've seen dairy cattle up close, and if i worried much about their aesthetics, i'd be unable to consume milk products ever again. i suspect much the same could be said of goats.

I liked Perry's description of 'pancake kitties'. It did for me what the 'rabbit fed pork' did for you....uncontrolled giggling, for several minutes, and everytime I reread the passage that evening. I know it isn't really funny, but I've watched cows collapse in a heap many times and the mental picture was too much.

Love your work...keep it coming.

On Chores

sastyk — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 08:26:20 +0000

On Chores

Chores sounds like such a dreary word, and until I moved to a farm, I would never have believed that I'd have anything positive to say about it. As a kid, I did chores around the house, and while I may have groused less about the dishes and cleaning gutters as an adult, I certainly didn't (and don't) love the jobs.

But on a farm, chores are something else - they are bookends to each day, a formal structure like the forms of a sonnet or musical scales that shape the day. They can be speeded up, slowed down, slightly elided and occasionally contracted out, but for the most part, they are there, implacable, eternal and oddly pleasurable.

"Chores" mean the most basic tending of animals, and over the years they've grown from a few minutes a day (a quick scatter of chicken feed, the dumping of some water and back) to half an hour or forty minutes of barn work every single morning and evening. I don't do it all every day - in fact, Eric does more chores than I do, and sometimes we do them together, either on summer evenings when the boys are playing baseball in the driveway or on winter nights when the boys go to sleep early. But often enough one of us is out in the barn alone with out thoughts and our creatures.

There are about 40 chickens at the moment, including 5 roosters, all of whom we are fond of, so who stay, even though we don't really need that many. There are 20 chicks in the brooder. There are five mature ducklings and 8 adolescents. There are five rabbits - two cinnamon does and a cinnamon buck and two male angoras. There are eight goats - a buck and seven does. The rabbits will kindle (have babies) in a few days, so the numbers will rise. In May, I have hopes that two of my does will kid. In August, the rest will. There are two hens setting nests right now. The population will rise when the fields green up and 15 sheep and lambs arrive to take up residence on the pasture along with Xote, their guard donkey. Add to that the two dogs (one working farmcollie, on Great Pyrenees) and six cats in barn and house (including Rubeus, who thinks he's a dog and trots to the barn at my heels alongside the vastly larger canines), and there's a whole lot of feeding going on.

Feeding the chickens and ducks takes just a few minutes, and laying down hay for fresh bedding adds a couple more. We haven't yet done the spring barn clean-out and the layers are getting thick - it is hard to push open the door. I do them first, to get the hens out of their perches in the rafters, where otherwise they poop on unsuspecting people's heads. Down they flutter, following the siren song of food. Watching chickens short of fly is pretty funny.

Next I invite (with grain, we bribe them) one of the milking does (four) up on the stanchion, wash her udder and milk her out. Evenings aren't the most productive time, so I have time to fill the duckling and chick waterers and give them their food after I've filled the milk jar. We're having a cold snap, so they get a brooder bulb in their segment of the barn and the most insulated spot. I hold one of the tiny bantam chicks in my hand for a moment and it pecks feed off my palm. I will refill the ducklings' waterer before I leave because they can't resist playing in it. The ducklings are getting large, and when it finally warms up at the end of the week, if it does (I'm hoping), they should be able to go outside for the first time.

I'm drying up Jessie, since she was bred in December and should kid in about 7 weeks - maybe. Frodo, our buck, was showing some serious interest in her a few days ago, and I'm worried that she was in heat. If so, she'll kid with the rest in August, which is a bit of a delicate timing issue. We're going to Virginia for 5 days in September, and the babies all have to be big enough to be left by then. If she's not pregnant, Jessie will get to hang out and be fed like a pregnant doe without producing anything - she's not complaining.

I feed the bunnies and give them their carrots. The does are both pregnant, and they get extra food. Everyone gets some hay and a carrot along with bunny pellets. The baby rabbits will be cute - but they are an attempt to close the circle of outside feed sources at our farm. We don't eat rabbit (not kosher - pity, I like rabbit) ourselves, but we will sell the rabbits for meat, or to other breeders, and I have a plan to donate them to local urban community gardens, but mostly we're raising them to reduce the amount of pet food we will buy. Rosemary and Sage, the two cinnamon does are pets, as is Parsley, the buck (Thyme is one of the angoras), but their babies, while cute, won't be.

The next doe is on the stanchion and I milk her out - the first jar is full, and I switch out another. Most people buy milking pails, but I milk into glass mason jars, and I've had no reason to buy something specific, since they work well and I'm cheap. One of the little cochin bantams (about 1/3 the size of a regular chicken) likes to spend her time sitting on the goats' backs - it is warm, and you are always near the grain. They look like strange, fluffy oxpeckers on very small hornless rhinos ;-) - it is my safari. One of them comes fluttering over my head with a swoop of wings and lands on the Maia's back. I toss her off, and she comes back and lands on my head - I'm wearing a scarf, but I still don't want chicken poop on it, so I remove her - but it is strangely companionable to have a small chicken on my head. How could I hate this?

I brush the goats quickly and look at their feet. Then I have a minute while Mina is finishing her grain to lean over and watch the other goats. There's a lot to look at - I'm trying to guess if Maia is coming into heat, and I will her to hurry up (that trip in my mind). I look at Bast - is she bred or just getting chunky? Do they have enough hay? Is their water bucket full? When do I need to vaccinate them for tetanus by?

The last goat, Selene, is up on the stanchion - I milk her and I bring Frodo and the three young goats their ration - they get to share. I refill the duckling's waterer, and pet a couple of the ducklings, and make sure the hay feeder is filled. I let the birds out into the sunshine, make sure all the bunnies have fresh water and bring a little sheep's wool to the cages of the two does that are going to kindle to make sure they are plenty warm (fortunately, our cold snap seems to be winding down before the birth). Tomorrow we're expecting rain, so I add more bedding to the barn, since the animals will be inside.

I've been out here a little more than half an hour. I sometimes bring the radio out, and Eric usually listens to music while out in the barn, but I enjoy listening to the animals as well and enjoy the quiet. There's the sound the rabbits make when they begin to drink from their waterers, a steady clicking sound. There's the noisy quack of the ducks, which settles into the sound of splashing as they can't resist diving into their water dish. Everyone else is munching. It is dark now, and the goats are settling in for the night. When it is bitterly cold, they all huddle together, but now they make comfortable pairs - Maia with her daughter Arava, Selene with her daughter Tekiah, Mina with granddaughter Bast, and Jessie snuggling against Frodo, all gently chewing.

My last stop is to top off the goats' waterer and turn out the light. Before I flick it off, I gather the couple of eggs that were layed in the goats' manger - there are always a few and slip them in my pocket. I call out "good night critters" - which is silly, since they don't care what I say, but I somehow feel compelled to say good night to the barn and the creatures in it. The dogs are waiting for me outside - they've done their job, chasing errant chickens nesting in the hay barn into the barn, and stood guard, waiting for me. I fed them before, so my re-entry into the house is a cue that they can go stake their territory, barking challenges to the dogs that live half a mile up and over the hill, and hearing them barked back.

I'm tired, but it is a happy tired, and I don't mind the chores. I find my time in the barn to be soothing at night, and energizing in the morning. I find the creatures fascinating and am grateful that I get to watch them. I get to see them as animals, behaving as creatures of their species do - and also as personalities. I know that Selene is bold and greedy and bossy to the other goats, but also personable and affectionate, while Maia is quieter, less pushy, but also more reserved, and that Frodo stands in front of every door, not pushing to go out, but guarding his girls. I know that Blackberry the cochin rooster will stay outside the barn until the last hen is in for the night, and that if he's outside, I or the dogs need to go hunting for that one last hen. I know that Mac will lean his considerable weight against me when I come out, a "hi, I'm here" reminder to scratch his ears and praise him for helping with the chickens. Mistress Quickly, collie through and through (she only has two speeds, high and off), races ahead and runs back, looking at me for confirmation she did good.

Into the house to feed the cats - they all come in at night now, ever since Zucchini, our barn cat, disappeared. The temptation is a little soft food. Myxie and Minnie are elderly, and the soft food dispenses medication to Myxie and needed calories to Minnie, who we thought wouldn't last out the winter, but did. It draws Dayenu out of the basement where she's been chasing cobwebs and maybe mice, Rubeus in from the barn and Culpeper, who had a long life as a roamer before we adopted him, out from who-knows-where.

I'm done now - All things Great and Small are fed and watered and tended, patted, scritched, loved, admired and tucked in for the night. I get dinner now. It takes me longer to write it than do it, and most of the time, the doing is strangely pleasurable, and largely relaxing. Oh, there are days when Eric and I play "who has to do the chores" - days when everyone is sick or it is biterly cold or when the creatures are misbehaving (which usually means we screwed up in some way - the creatures like their routines and when we mess with them, they do what they do). But for the most part, the chores are comforting, enjoyable, a half hour at each end of the day that do something satisfying and comforting. I can do them without thought, and sometimes I do, engrossed in considering some problem. But often I do them with thought - mindfully, joyfully, revelling in the brush of feathers and the warmth of bodies. And when they are done, and I go off to my dinner with a sense that the day, whatever it contained, began and ended rightly.

Sharon

sastyk Sun, 03/28/2010 - 04:26

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