One Less Family Farm

Our community is rural.  We pride ourselves on our agricultural heritage.  So much so that when the local high school seniors had their last day of school on Thursday, they ended their senior walk of the school complex by posing with more than a handful of tractors in the school parking lot. All of which had been driven to school that day by members of the senior class. We are farmers.

However, as this week draws to a close, there is one less family farm in operation.  One more small farmer gone out of business.  He was a dairy farmer, operating the same family farm his father did, and his grandfather before that.  The date on the barn says 1913.

It was a small establishment, as dairy farms go these days; only sixty cows.  Enough to employ several workers, but not enough to be able to turn a consistent profit in these times.  Sadly, the farmer decided to auction off his sixty head, and all his machinery and milking equipment: several tractors, hay balers, hay rakes, hay wagons, manure spreader, silage chopper and silage wagons. . .  He is keeping the land, the house he's lived in all his life.  A neighbor with a much larger dairy farm is renting the fields, so at least those will stay productive and available to future generations of farmers.

He is going to take a 'real' job now, in his fifties.  A job where he is no longer the boss, a job where he has to report to someone else at specific times on specific days.  One where he will get a regular paycheck, where he can count on making money if he shows up to work, unlike farming.  It is, for his family, the end of an era.

Random Evening Pictures

Days have been pretty full lately at this little place here.  It's that time of year when the sun is up for hours after dinner, and we spend most of our evenings outside.  There is so much to do, what with planting the garden, weeding the garden, watering the garden, weeding the flower beds, mowing the lawn.  And that's just the ordinary late-spring stuff; on top of that we have all the getting ready for DD1's graduation open house items to do--things like emptying the garage and giving it a good scrub/sweep in preparation for setting up the tables and chairs for her party.  Invitations have all gone out in the mail, now we need to be ready to seat 60+ people at any one time during the three hours of her open house.  But cleaning the garage is a task for next week; this week is all about getting the garden fully planted.

I've been in the garden until either sunset or until I can no longer stand being attacked by the hundreds of little vampires--aka mosquitoes--that have appeared this week; coming out right around eight p.m.  Last night I actually had the camera with me in the garden because the day before I'd spotted a new pair of birds, bobolinks, and wanted to get pictures of them should they show up again.  I did manage to get a couple pictures, mostly blurry, and then made use of the camera on my way through the evening rounds of shutting in chickens, etc, before retiring to the house for the rest of the night.

bobolink singing on a fence post

turned away from the camera, showing his markings

Bobolinks sound very similar to red winged blackbirds, and are about the same size, but as you can see, they do not have the same coloring.  I'd never seen one before, or at least, not in it's fancy mating plumage, and had to go look it up in my bird book.  Apparently they are cousins to blackbirds.

Blackberry blossoms

The blackberry canes out by the garden are all in bloom right now.  They showed up three years ago as volunteers (no doubt seeds sown by the local birds), and I now cultivate them into a fairly neat row next to part of the south end of the garden.  I haven't yet been back to the woods to see if the thousands of blackberry canes back there are blooming yet.  I'm guessing not quite, as it is cooler and shadier in the woods, usually putting the plants a week or two behind what is in the sunny fields.

white and purple mid-height iris

tall white iris

My iris are blooming right now too.  I have probably over a thousand iris, of three different varieties.  Unfortunately, I don't know what any of them are!  All were given to me free-for-the-digging; by friends, former neighbors, and by my Mom.

By this time in the evening, it was well past 9:00, and the sun was quite low in the western sky.  Time to shut the chickens in before going to the house where DD1's graduation gown awaited my iron; today is her last day of school and it is customary for seniors to wear their gowns to class on their final day.  The last half hour of their high school careers will be spent on Senior Walk, where the graduating class, in caps and gowns, parades through the high school, middle school, and elementary school--all are housed in one rambling interconnected building in our little school district.

sunset over the hayfield

sun through the trees on the west line

love the glow of the sky versus the black silhouettes of the tree branches

chickens gone to roost

Back in the Saddle

I'm back in the saddle again.  Hopefully creating a new good habit of riding regularly, instead of the willy nilly hit and miss kind of riding I've done for most of the past five years.  Yikes, five years!  But yes, when I look back at my riding log, it's really been five years since I was riding at least three times a week.  That's pretty depressing, since riding is my passion and what, aside from my husband and kids, brings me the most joy.  How much more joy could I have had in the last sixty months if I had only made riding a priority instead of letting everything else get in the way?

For the past two weeks, I've been riding two to three times a week.  It's great.  I'm happier.  Not only is it a fun form of exercise, I find that by starting my day with a ride, the rest of the day is amazingly more productive. 

The Mare and I

Can you believe she's 23 years old?

*photo credits go to DD2, who was kind enough to sit in the shade beside the riding arena and take pictures of me riding*

Cheese Ball!

While discussing what would be on the menu for DD1's graduation open house (coming up in 18 days!), she and I had an awesome idea.  We had been talking cheese and cracker tray, but lamenting how unappealing sliced cheese looks after being exposed to air for as little as half an hour (because we buy cheese in blocks, then slice, shred, or cube it ourselves, saving money and avoiding the preservatives used when you buy cheese in those altered forms).  We would still like to serve cheese, but not have it look rubbery and, well, gross, shortly after being served.  So our revelation was to serve several cheese balls instead of sliced or cubed cheeses.

And, since we are of the DIY mindset, both for saving money and for the health benefits of eating foods prepared in this manner, serving cheese balls means we must learn to make cheese balls in the next two weeks!  Then DD1 innocently asked me what type of 'finger food' she could bring to her AP English Class end-of-the-year tea party.  Seeing an opportunity for practicing my cheese ball technique, I replied "Cheese ball!"

I found a very easy, but also tasty sounding recipe in one of my most-used cookbooks, omitted the one ingredient I didn't have readily on hand, and created a one-pound ball of cheese spread rolled in freshly snipped chives (from my herb bed).  DD1 took it to school.  The AP English Class feasted, and played croquet on the school lawn.  The leftover cheese ball returned home.  This was all that was left: 

Maybe a third of what was originally sent.  Considering that there were only about a dozen people in attendance at the tea party, and it was a feast with many other edibles than just my cheese ball, I'd say this recipe was a hit.  Definitely made the cut for the open house.  :0)

Next I want to attempt one with dill.

Here is the recipe for the cheese ball pictured above:

2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, softened at room temperature

1 cup shredded sharp (or extra sharp) cheddar cheese (about 4 oz block)

1/4 cup finely chopped onion

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1/3 cup fresh chives, snipped

Put your cheeses in a bowl and let sit at room temperature until soft.  Beat in onion and Worcestershire sauce on low speed of a hand mixer.  Once creamy, beat on medium speed, scraping bowl often, until fluffy.  Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.

After sufficient chilling time (8 hrs minimum), shape cheese mixture into a ball.  Roll in the snipped chives.  Place on serving plate (I used the lid of a Tupperware storage bowl, then used the bowl as a cover for transport to school!).  Cover and refrigerate at least 2 more hours before serving.

Knowing Our Food

At this little place here, we know our food pretty well.  I'm not just talking about the knowledge and skills to take something from the grocery store, combine it with other items from the grocery store, apply heat, and then serve on the breakfast or dinner table.  No, I'm talking about a deeper sense of knowing.

We know the chicken that is served for dinner.  We know what it looked like when it arrived at this little place here, a peeping  little fuzzball.  We know what it looked like as it grew feathers, as it gained height and weight and breadth.  We know what it ate during the process: non-medicated feed from the local farm supply, as well as a good quantity of grass and clover from weeks it spent on pasture, any bugs or worms it caught, and table scraps or garden produce that got a bit over ripe (chickens happen to love zucchini the size of baseball bats.  Good thing.).

Currently we have twelve Freedom Ranger chicks shacked up in the dog cage in our garage.  They are two weeks old and still need the heat lamp while their feathers grow in.  In another week or so, they should be fully feathered and ready to go out on pasture for the remaining month or six weeks of their lives.

July and August's Barbecued chicken ;0)

We know the main entree to be served at DD1's graduation open house in slightly less than three weeks.  "Open House" was born at Mother-in-Law's place in January, one of sixteen piglets.  She spent the early months of her life in the barn with her mother and siblings.  Then her mother was removed, and butchered (she was an old sow).  The sow now resides in several freezers belonging to members of DH's family.  Meanwhile, "Open House" cavorts happily in the pig pen with five of her siblings, the rest having been sold off to 4-H'ers looking for their summer Fair projects.  She enjoys sunshine, fresh air, and all the slop and pig feed she can eat.  She'll be weighing in at about two hundred pounds when she is harvested for roasting and serving at DD1's party.

"Open House"

We know the vast majority of the red meat in our diet.  They live in the woods and the fields of our neighborhood.  We co-exist; they eat some of our pasture, our garden, our trees.  In the fall, we harvest a few of them, and in turn we eat them for most of the year.  Free range food at it's finest.

free range red meat

We know the turkey that will be the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving meal in November.  We fed him.  We talked turkey to him.  We enjoyed watching him grow and strut.  We felt a deep appreciation for his existence.  Thanksgiving is not just a day of gluttony and football.  Thanksgiving is being thankful for the things that define and sustain your life.

"Big Tom"

A lot of people ask how we can eat an animal we have raised.  An animal we have known.  An animal we have watched grow, and then watched die.

Our question to them is how can we not?  How could we possibly eat meat from an animal we didn't know--didn't know how it lived, didn't know what it ate, didn't know if it was healthy or not at the time of it's death.  Knowing our food is much better than eating blindly.  Ignorance is not always bliss.  Or should I say, bliss is not being ignorant of your food.  Bliss is knowing your food, knowing that it is safe and healthy, and that your food enjoyed the time it was alive.

It Was Worth The Wait



This is my long-awaited new couch.

"New couch" has been an item on my wish list for a few years now.  The ones we had were pretty worn out.  Okay, a lot worn out.  Most people today would have been ashamed to have such shabby looking furniture in their homes.  The arms on one had the stuffing sticking out.  The seat cushions of another sport big long tears where the fabric wore out and split.  The reclining couch no longer reclined, rather one end of it listed drunkenly to the side.  I joked about taking a sawzall to it and making it into a sectional since it didn't seem to want to be connected any more.  The rattiest looking one sported a homemade slipcover--really just a queen sized blanket draped over it just-so and tucked in at the sides and bottom.

Most people would have gone out and purchased a new couch long before now.  But I'm not most people, and neither is DH.  When you live the kind of life we live, instant gratification is somewhere between a cuss word and a pipe dream.  It's not in the realm of financial responsibility--or financial reality--to run out and spend hundreds or even a thousand dollars or more on a new piece of furniture when there are more important bills to be paid and your savings account is still struggling to rebound from years of a poor economy.  Years of no raise at work, but increased utility costs, food costs, gas costs, insurance costs (multiple teenaged drivers), taxes. . . you get the picture. 

So, we spent a good long time working our way down the list of necessary purchases before "new couch" made it to the top of the list.  During that time, and especially in the last twelve months, DH and I spent a good chunk of hours doing what we came to refer to as "sitting on couches".  Some couples go out to dinner.  Some couples go out to the movies.  Some couples take weekend getaways.  We sat on couches. 

Meaning we would go to a furniture store and test out practically every couch on the premises.  We were looking for the just-right couch, so that when the list said it was time to purchase one, we'd know exactly the one to invest in.  I'm sure we looked pretty odd, as DH would sit on a couch, and wait several minutes for the feeling of it to sink in, then slowly get up, move to the next couch, and repeat the process.  I, on the other hand, would sit down and immediately know if it was a 'good' couch or not.  Some, I nearly got whiplash from my head snapping backward when the backrest was not upright enough--I felt like I was falling backward into an abyss.  Others, I felt like my hind end was sinking in quicksand on the non-supportive and squishy overstuffed cushions.  Others, my feet didn't touch the floor while seated (and I wear pants with a 32" leg!) because the couch was too deep. 

No long sits for me.  Nope.  Most couch testing went something like this:  bend knees, prepare to make contact with the couch.  Contact made with rear, fall backwards because backrest of couch was not in preferred position (I like to sit very upright, no slouching).  Or, contact made, pop up like toast ejected from a toaster because the couch was u-n-c-o-m-f-o-r-t-a-b-l-e and I was not about to sacrifice another second to a sub par piece of furniture. I probably averaged three seconds per couch, LOL.

 I was looking for a couch that had a firm seat, cushions that didn't get squishy toward the edges--front, back,  left and right--a backrest that supported proper spinal alignment (most seemed to want to rock me back onto my tailbone), arms that were a comfortable height, and that my feet could be flat on the floor while seated.  Oh, and was comfortable too.  It couldn't feel like sitting on a hard wooden bench, yet it needed to have all those desired supportive features and no squish.

While up north for Christmas with DH's side of the family in mid-December, we happened to stop in to a store that one of his childhood friends owns.  DH was talking to his friend about getting ahold of a used refrigerator (our Beer Fridge had died and needed replacing),  and I test-sat some of the couches in the store.  To my surprise, I found The Couch!  From the very first touch of my pants to the seat cushion, it just felt right.  It welcomed me.  It supported me.  It comforted me.  I was so relieved, after months of sitting on couches, dozens and dozens of couches, to know that The Couch really did exist.  It wasn't some air castle I was hankering for; it was real, made of wood and cloth and foam.

It took four more months for "new couch" to hit the top of the requisition list at this little place here.  When it did, I called up north to DH's friend and asked him to order me The Couch.  Not only did he order me The Couch, he gave me a great discount on it.  What he charged me, including taxes, was three figures less than the price on the sale tag back at Christmas time, which itself was 70% of the regular retail price.

I'm a happy camper.  A happy couch owner.  A very long awaited, very perfect, very comfortable yet supportive couch.  It was worth the wait.

Practical Thinking

My husband isn't big into giving gifts.  Meaning he doesn't pick up a bouquet of flowers on his way home from work, or a box of chocolates for Sweetest Day, or a card for any other occasion--including birthdays and anniversaries.

That doesn't mean he doesn't give gifts at all, rather, he gives big gifts, just not little token ones, and not often.  For instance, for years I'll get a 'Happy Birthday" phone call when he's at work and suddenly remembers it's my birthday.  Then, out of the blue, on another birthday year I'll get a brand new Carhartt coat for a birthday gift because he'll have noticed my other one is completely worn out and patched over several times.  Practical.

We joke about our first Christmas together, in which he bought me a pair of earrings and a case of Twix because he couldn't think of anything else. He knew I had pierced ears and liked candy bars, hence earrings and Twix. 

But there have been other Christmases where the gift he gave me cost so much more: the year he got me a KitchenAid Professional 600 mixer because I had injured my shoulder and kneading bread dough by hand was quite painful.  The year I got a large dump-cart to tow behind the lawn tractor so I wouldn't have to tote my gardening equipment--which is a lot when you tally up stakes, hoes, rakes, my 4 lb sledge for pounding stakes, tomato cages, bean poles, etc, etc--from the barn to the garden by hand (and foot).  The years--a dozen years apart--that he bought me insulated Carhartt bibs to wear for outdoor work in the winter.  Not cheap gifts, and very practical.  Things he felt I needed to make my lifestyle (outdoorsy, but also very much in the kitchen) better.

This past Christmas he gave me what have, in recent weeks, become my most favorite gifts yet.  One was small, and very behind the times, compared to what most people have.  It is a cheapy mp3 player.  It plays music.  That's it.  But that's all it needs to do, because I love music and to be able to take it with me to the garden, to the woods, in the barn, down the road while I'm running, is something that makes me happy.

The other gift I got last Christmas was much bigger and much more expensive.  It is something that alot of women would turn up their nose at.  It is a Stihl MM55 tiller, with a wheel kit.  I love that thing.  It is so much easier to handle than a regular size rototiller, and I can churn up weeds between rows in the garden in nothing flat (and no sore shoulder afterward!).  Since the operating instructions say to always wear protective ear coverings, I have teamed it up with my mp3 player--I wear big funky looking headphones because ear buds just don't fit me right; they fall out just from breathing while I'm sitting still, no chance of moving around, let alone holding a vibrating power tool.  Yes, the two best gifts ever.  I'm out there jamming to great tunes while annihilating weeds in my garden!

I love my practical thinking man.  Who needs do-dads when a girl can have hard-core workwear, heavy-duty appliances, power tools, and music?