learning to be human, since 1984
farm
Summer Updates
0679 days
Nearly six months ago, I moved away from the big city. Seldom have I longed for the restaurants, bike lanes (paved roads, for that matter) and friends, despite the fondness for them that I had developed. I now call this place home—the vast, wide open skies and rolling hills of North-Central Wisconsin—and I couldn’t be more sincere in my love and appreciation for where I live.
Mostly, it’s because I have learned, experienced, and accomplished more things recently than during any other time since childhood. In fact, it often reminds me of that period of my life: constant discovery, invention, failure, and recovery. Never, though, has my learning been in such a different area of knowledge: mostly farm related. I have also learned a lot more about food, programming, and design (three things I love, but already knew a lot about).
To give you a taste of my current life, here’s what I did over the past 2 days:
- Tweaked the Barn Dance poster
- Cooked a big pot of really delicious soup
- Weeded a 300-foot bed of carrots, three rows deep
- Integrated a client website with several social media plugins, including a language switching feature (between English and Arabic)
- Read a book, the subject of which I am not allowed to disclose
- Helped dig a 11′x12′ hole for the foundation of a wood-fired brick oven that we’re building over the next several weeks, pictures to come (the plans for which I modified to make a 3′x4′ cooking area)
- Wrote an article for the farm newsletter, entitled “Who’s the Sauce?” (hint: not Tony Danza)
- Learned a new song on guitar (Home, by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes)
Since moving here, I’ve also:
- Driven a tractor
- Produced maple syrup, from tapping trees to cooking down
- Learned to drive stick shift
- Built websites for several clients, with more lining up
- Learned Drupal enough to build high-end, custom website templates and integrate modules
- Become proficient with jQuery
- Cooked for 50 people (with a little help from my friends)
- Learned an incredible amount about organic and sustainable farming
- Learned to run quickly through the woods
- perfected my bread recipe
- handled bees
- pulled ticks off a dog
- chased pigs and cows back to their pastures
- picked raspberries
- cooked meals with freshly picked produce
- learned to become part of someone else’s family
- helped with wine-making
- harvested wild ramps from the woods
- loaded hay into the barn
- learned how to fingerpick on guitar
- made nearly 2 gallons of raspberry jam
- greatly improved my ping pong and pool skills
- learned more about state and local politics than I ever expected to
- hung out with a toddler, witnessed him seamlessly attach an initial fricative to the rest of a word which he previously pronounced in a toddler-variety of English.
- butchered chickens
I’m sure there’s more that I’ve forgotten, and even more to come.
Eat Your Heart Out, George Orwell
0You may have met Goldie-Arf in yesterday’s post. Well, Goldie likes to bark: at cars passing, at the cats, for no good reason other than she’s a dog, and so on. But what I heard around 5pm last night was not a bark. It was a growl—and despite never having heard such a snarl from her, I knew it was Goldie. Goldie doesn’t growl unless something is awry.
So, I looked outside, and there they were. In all their splendor, rooting about near the door of the house the pigs chortled with the cry of freedom.
Here they are, the glib porkers:
I sighed with relief; Goldie wasn’t caviling with a coyote or exchanging words with a wolf. I called Tony and after giving me clear directions about what to do, I wound up doing something entirely different.
To help explain you’ll need to know two things:
- Pigs do not like snow
- The layout of the farm. And what better to show that than a photo or two?
Except, during winter, it looks like this:
On the phone, Tony told me to lure the pigs with their food pail (the pink path) to the Northern pasture door, shown in red below.
The pigs weren’t having it! In the Summer, the pigs pasture West of the machine shed, and North of their stable area; they are free to come and go inside and out, whenever they please. Leading them back inside their pasture area isn’t a big deal during any other season but Winter – then again, I can’t imagine that they have ever left the stable when there was snow high on the ground. I needed a new plan, and fast.
After luring them back into the stable pathway (yellow), I took down the pig pen fence (they must’ve pushed the holding gate over, and hopped over the fence). I made sure the mother was watching – and when she followed me, I led her and her piglets into the pen (green). I nailed the fence back up and secured the gate so they couldn’t push it open again. End of story.
Anyone want some bacon?
Meet the Animals
1816 days
The family is away, and I’m doing chores in their stead. Really, it’s just feeding the animals, so I figured I’d post some photos:
First and foremost, Goldie the farm dog. She also goes by Goldie Arf. You’re the man now, arf.
The cows are very thirsty! And very much ungulates. They nudge and moo if one cow is taking too long at the watering area. Reminds me of kindergarten. Large, hairy, hay-eating, wet-nosed kindergarten.
And now, the pigs. Also ungulates, and quite smelly. Soon they’ll have their own portable A-frame shelter for the spring/summer/fall. I’m not sure if they’ll come in for winter as they do now, but all the farm animals are pastured. For some animals, like the cows, this means they just eat the grass. The chickens get to dig around for grubs and insects, and also are supplemented with organic grain feed (seeds, corn, etc). The pigs pasture as well and get scraps from here an there. No meat though, especially not other pigs.
I don’t know their names yet, but the mother above is bred every year. Most of the resulting piglets (usually 8-10) are sold off, but they keep two or three for food. Its processed at Dayland Meats, where they cut it into chops, bacon, hams, shoulder, and other tasty morsels of piggy goodness.
There are currently three pigs, and we’re actively looking for a boar with which to breed the mother. This means either we buy the boar, or a fee is charged for breeding. If the farm does buy one, it will most likely be sold off – granted a profit is made on the sale of the resultant piglets. Enough talk. Here’s another pig photo:
And now, my favorites: the baby chicks. These little ones are about 3 weeks old. In a factory farm, that means they’ve reached middle age. Most factory farmed chickens don’t make it past the 6 week mark. Stoney Acres carefully chooses the breeds of chicken, selecting from rare breeds specialized for meat, eggs, or both. This year, the farm is producing eggs as well as chickens for meat, so we’ve got a few varieties of chickens. I’ll write a more specific chicken post in the weeks to come. For now, cute photos:
There will definitely be more to come. I will probably start blogging about farm stuff on the farm’s website, http://www.stoneyacresfarm.net. In addition to the photographed animals, there are also goats, getting honey bees shipped soon, and there’s talk of sheep for meat and wool. Lots to learn and look forward to.