Seasonality

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Farm Bank Deposits

Northern people have always been savers.  Those that didn’t save didn’t make the winter.  Those that saved may have made the winter.  Farmers are savers.  We are savers.  Unfortunately, we don’t have any money.  We save sunshine.  This is the main branch of the First Chism Heritage Farmers Bank, established in 18??.  We keep our sunshine here.

Isn’t it majestic? (don’t mind the paint job or the leaky roof)  Several times each year we walk up to the teller’s window to make a deposit.

Then, to keep banking fees to a minimum, we head into the vault to help arrange, sort and stack the deposits.  Here’s a small portion of this year’s deposits.

In the foreground you can see a low stack of sunshine in the form of alfalfa bales from the third cutting.  Further back, among the posts, is more sunshine in the form of grass hay we cut earlier in the year.  To the left (and out of the camera) is an absolute mountain of alfalfa hay.  There are also a few fair piles of straw tucked away here and there.  Tons and tons of sunshine.  Think of the different kinds of hay as different kinds of currency and I’ll keep my lame bank analogy running.  When withdrawals are needed we head into the vault, determine which kind of currency is in demand that day and grab a whole bale of it.

Since this is a farm economy (and something of a closed loop) any withdrawls from the loft vault are soon to become deposits somewhere else.

Then deposits somewhere else.

Then deposits somewhere else.

Then out to the alfalfa field.  Just add sunlight and a dash of rain and we’re ready to fill the barn vault again.

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Apples and Raindrops

Let’s start with the apples.  Wife took the kids to pick up apples at Aunt Marion’s house (sometimes the kids get confused and call her grandma aunt marion or even Maid Marion…lol). 

They filled three bags, barely making a dent in the supply.  Aunt Marion filled two buckets with apples that were good enough for applesauce.  Please notice the top of the tree broken and laying on the ground.  Yup.  She didn’t let me prune that tree.  Maybe this winter…

Kids had a ball.  Aunt Marion refuses to slow down.  She was convinced my 7 year old son couldn’t lift the bucket of apples.  Wife was convinced Aunt Marion couldn’t lift the bucket of apples…wheezing as she was.  It was a hot morning but everybody worked hard.  The pigs were pleased with the fruit of their labor.

Then…wait for it…..wait for it……IT RAINED!

It rained and rained and rained.  Four and a half inches in 2 hours!  The pond filled up and there were even puddles in the driveway!  But nothing comes without a cost.  It cost us our computer and our phones.  Lightning struck the phone line outside of our home somewhere and our DSL modem sparked inside the house.  Though the hardware checks out I can’t get the PC to boot.  I’d say that’s a fair trade for a full pond.  Oh, and the roof leaks!  Isn’t it wonderful?!?!?  Merry Christmas Mr. Potter!

Look for before/after pictures of the pond on another blog post if I can ever get my PC to boot up again…

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Rain at Midnight

Clouds rolled in at dusk.
It rained 1/10th at midnight.
Clean, Fresh.  I’m happy.

or

It rained at midnight.
That makes me a happy man.
My shoes are wet today.

or

Storms rolled through last night.
It gave the Earth a shower.
Everything smells fresh.

or

Giant hackberry fell
The barnlot, the house, the shed
branches cover all

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All Peached Out

Whew!  I brought 3 bushels of peaches home on Thursday.  Friday we canned the bruised ones but the rest were too green.  Saturday they were looking pretty good but we had a family gig most of the day followed by church in the evening.  That takes us to Sunday morning.  Early Sunday morning followed Sunday afternoon followed by a nap.

32 quarts of peaches, 17 quarts of pie filling, 6 pints of peach salsa, 4 pints of peach and dewberry jam, 7 gallons of frozen peaches, we gave away peaches to family and ate so many we all foundered.  There may have also been a peach daiquiri in there too…

What’s the fun of working if there is no reward for hard work?  What sounds good to you?  I say we have peach sundaes on homemade goat milk ice cream piled on top of waffles!

…or if you’re 7 you can scoop it up into a waffle cone.  The kids were pretty well peached out at this point and opted for chocolate syrup and carmel on their ice cream.

I have done harder work.  I have worked longer hours.  But standing in a hot kitchen on a hot day holding hot, sticky peaches wears on the body.  Mom reminded me that the old timers would put up 100 quarts of everything.  Here’s to the old timers.  Thanks to mom and Aunt Marion for helping out this weekend.

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Putting up Peaches

Peach preserves, peach pie filling, peach halves, sliced peaches…

I made arrangements to buy 3 bushels of peaches from Calhoun county.  That’s a lot of peaches.  We’ll be busy for a couple of days so please forgive me if I don’t keep things updated here.  This is me practicing what I preach.  I’m stocking up.  I’m buying locally.  I’m buying in bulk from a small farmer (my co-worker’s father-in-law).  They are not organic.  I’m sure they have been sprayed but this will do until we get our own orchard planted.

Each box (pictured below) is half a bushel.  Half a bushel makes about 9 quarts of canned peaches.  Sterilize and fill each jar, pour in hot syrup and place in a hot water bath for 30 minutes.  Not much to it, just a lot of work.

It’s scald, peel, slice and pit over and over and over.  But, boy! they taste good.

Mom says when she was a girl my grandpa would drive to Calhoun to load up the back of the truck with peaches.  Then extended family would be in the kitchen (my kitchen) working together to put them up.  It’s hot, sticky work.  Here’s to hoping help is willing…and we don’t run out of jars…

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Make Hay While the Sun Shines

Boy is the sun shining.  Every day.  Sun, sun, sun.  Nothing but sun.  All the sun the grass can eat.  It’s time to put that grass away for later.

Let’s focus on the alfalfa field for now.  The alfalfa field looked like this (well, not as many blooms).  You want to allow the plants to get to about 10% bloom before you cut.

So we cut it three days ago with dad’s hay conditioner.  It gobbles up the hay, crimps the stems and lays it gently in a windrow out back.

When you’re finished and it has cured for a couple of days you get a field like this:

If you look closely there’s a spot on the left where the alfalfa was killed.  Our chicken tractors were on that spot when we got about 3″ of rain across a week but the bulk of the rain came toward the end.  The chickens turned that spot into mush.  The alfalfa gave up the fight.  Otherwise, the chickens don’t seem to have hurt the stand and remember, they do this when they go past:

So, I have long windrows of alfalfa.  It looks dry

but if we look closer we see it needs to be raked before we bale.  The stuff underneath isn’t quite ready yet.

Grab a handful of stems and give them a twist.  If they don’t break, they’re not ready.  If they’re not ready you’ll end up with moldy hay at best, a barn fire at worst.  But then, if it’s too dry all of the leaves will fall off and the hay will be all stems.  Quality hay is a skill.  It’s a skill I continue to work on and probably will for the rest of my life.  Sigh…

Next I rake the windrows together, turning the hay so it will dry better, combining rows so we make fewer passes up and down the field baling.  What’s a rake?  This is a rake.

So this….

becomes this…

A few hours later and we’re ready to bale.

We baled and baled and baled.  The bales may get moldy from all the sweat I soaked them with.  No pictures of the baling process this time but you can look at the blog post from an earlier hay cutting.

The fields are bare now.  Ready to grow back again, hopefully encouraged by a coming rain.  Before the rain gets here I need to clean up the small piles of hay we missed with the baler.  It’s not hard work, just one wheelbarrow at a time.  Sometimes I carry an armload of hay as I ride my bicycle.  That makes my wife laugh.  Why is she always laughing at me?  (lol)

Now it can rain.  Please, Lord, let it rain.  I’ll take a light rain that lasts 3 weeks.  I’ll take a series of downpours over the next three days.  Last night it sprinkled just enough that you could smell the rain on the hot tar of the road.  That’s a summer-only smell…and I would like to smell more of it.  Just let it happen, Lord.  I’m ready.

Can I get an Amen?

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School’s Out For Summer

It’s time for our planned summer break.  The broilers are all in freezers or customer bellies.  Just pullets and a few turkeys on pasture.  Our daily workload has dropped significantly.  Now all we have to do is feed and water in the morning, milk the goats and just check everybody a couple of times and we’re set.  Well, we have to soak the hog wallow a couple of times too.  This accomplishes two things; drains the hot water out of the 100 yard long hose so they will have cool water to drink again and gives them a cool place to pig it up.

Now, when I get up before the sun I don’t have to spend 15-20 minutes moving chicken tractors, feeding and watering.  I just open the chicken house door, feed there, water the rabbits, shower and head to the office.

We have waited all spring for this day.  We partied like it was 1999…well we watched the new True Grit and ate pizza after the kids went to bed.  Now we’ll tick off the days till we get our last batch of broilers mid-August.  We’re thinking about scrapping our big order for fall Cornish Cross chicks and ordering a variety of alternative broilers just to try them side by side.  We thought Kosher King, S&G Heritage White, Freedom Rangers and Moyer’s K-22.  Let me know what you think in the comments section.  Also, give me suggestions for alt. broilers just in case I am missing a good option.

Just a side note, I took a hog panel off of one of the hoop chicken tractors to give the pullets a bit of extra shade.  They seemed to appreciate the shade, I appreciate how many different ways I can use those chicken tractors.

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How does the Week Look?

What does your week look like?  I’m on vacation this week so I’m penciling in the plan.  We got this mostly roughed in during our weekly planning meeting yesterday but not all the detail.  Weekly planning meeting?  Yup.  If we don’t sit down every week to sync up our planners we get lost.  We also meet with the kids to find out where they want to go.  There is supposed to be a big family meeting as we think it is important to involve the kids in family goals.  That meeting was missed yesterday so we could attend the Sustainable Backyard Tour.

This week I have a couple of books I want to finish reading, fence to build, chickens to process, bookshelves to design and build, wire to run, and ponds to swim in.  That means I’ll spend the week reading to the kids, teaching about fence post placement, teaching anatomy, geometry, fractions, measurements and buoyancy.  I also need to get the greenhouse ready to plant for fall crops and I may start digging potatoes…no rush on that though.

Today is more filled out than Thursday.  That’s kind of on purpose.  I try to stay flexible.  Things happen.  Some projects drag out more than others.  No big deal.  I have a to-do list and have that list prioritized.  I’ll knock out what I can and if, by some miracle, I get to the end of my list I’ll find more to do.  There is always more work to do.  If things were right in the universe there would be no unemployment.  But then, I try to avoid discussing politics and economics here.  There is more work to do than can be done…it’s an issue of price.  OK.  I’m done.

This week finishes out our broiler production season.  We may run a small fall batch depending on sales but at this time we’re leaning away from it.  Exciting times.  Chicken evisceration, blueberry picking, raspberry picking, potato harvest, goat milking…it’s both fun and overwhelming at the same time.  Everything has to be done at once.  It has been that way since February.  Ah, the good life.

How about you?  Staying busy?

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The New Kestrel

Each year we find an American Kestrel or two in our yard.  This year is no exception.  They appear to nest in the elm tree in the corner of the yard.  You know, the one with the big burl up high.  You don’t know?  Come by and I’ll show you.  Anyway, this little fella posed for pictures on Wednesday.

Not quite flying yet but very spirited.  There are probably another three or four around somewhere.  I would guess they are hiding in the tall grass on the other side of the fence.

They are fun to see each spring.  Last year one was just getting it’s wings as it chased a group of starlings.  It couldn’t quite turn as fast as the starlings could and it crashed into our house.  I found it hiding in the spirea under the window of the front room.  Boy was it ticked off!

Keep an eye out for little raptors but keep your hands off.  They are entertaining but very, very strong.

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Mulberries, Hay and other Delicacies

Do you have mulberries where you live?  Do you even notice them?  We have them here.  When I was a kid in New Minden we had one in our back yard next to the gate that led to the alley and Mrs. Ruth’s yard.  There was a crotch in the tree just right for a 7 year old to park in and make himself sick eating berries.  I did.

Today we baled hay in the bottom where mulberry trees abound.  I picked a handful while I was walking out to where dad was ready to bale.

I picked another handful when the baler went under a mulberry tree.

I picked yet another handful for good measure.  Don’t mind the hay hook.

I also took inventory of the dewberries crop.  Not as many as I would like to see…

…and the blackberries.

We pick and freeze as many as we can get my hands on but we really don’t go past the edge of the woods because there’s a bumper crop of poison ivy out there every year.  This year is no exception.

Each spring we clean out our freezer and find forgotten gallon bags of berries and make a big batch of mulberry, dewberry, blackberry, strawberry mixed jam.  Yeah.  It’s pretty good…better on ice cream.

So anyway, we were out there to make hay.  I’m a little allergic to hay.  On the third pass I started sneezing.  By the fourth pass my hankie was soaked.  Dad runs the baler clockwise around the hayfield.  Both of dad’s main fields are on a slope so it’s an interesting ride.

Between the two fields in the bottom and the barn lot we put up another three wagons of hay.  We have had an unusually dry spell so this is far and away the best first-cutting hay we have put up in years.  Isn’t it pretty laying in windrows?  That hill made about 65 bales.

Hang on…ACHOOO!!!!