An eclectic mix of observations from the farm in Oregon about politics, literature, education, life in general, and anything that interests us. There will be a chronicle of discovery as we build a new, solar friendly, energy efficient, elder equipped house under "THE SHAMBLES."
I'm beginning to understand how this site works. "Farm Chronicles" will become a Klinkenborg style narrative about things that happen on the Shambles farm while "The Shambles" will be devoted to progress on the new buildings.
posted by Richard Yarnell @ 5:12 PM
Now retired: formerly US Coast Guard; Actor; Union Exec (AEA); Solar industry exec; Theatre Manager; canoe builder and woodwright; farmer
9 Comments:
April 1st was no fun at all.
Our original llama "Danni" woke up looking like a sick llama. She was getting on in llama years (18, or thereabouts). She lacked energy and had stayed away from the barn long enough that we were worried about whether she was getting any water.
We spend the day giving her small amounts of water with a syringe normally used for worming in hopes that she'd eaten something that didn't agree with her in which case, if we could keep her hydrated and active, she'd recover.
Late in the afternoon, after first showing signs of renewed vigor and then relapsing, she died in the pasture. Considering it has rained hard the last couple of days, this was not a convenient place. She was a large animal which we would have to disassemble to move.
Even though we're not absolutely sure she died of old age and natural causes, we salvaged some of her meat. I cut her legs off but didn't bother trying to butcher the rest of her. Certainly, we weren't going to keep the organ meats.
The other llamas kept their distance except for PD, a strange gelding, also marked for the freezer) who circled up to the carcass, always with an accusing eye kept on me and the knives I was wielding. He took a close sniff, wheeled, and galumfed about 20 yards. Later, again keeping his eye on me in case I meant him harm, he hugged the fence until he was even with us, whereupon he broke for the barn and the comfort of the rest of the herd.
We put the chains on the 4WD mini and used it to pull Danni out into the woods where she'll make a feast for any number of organisms.
There's an interesting change in attitude or approach that occurs as life ebbs. In the morning we spent a lot of time trying to keep the creature alive. We both showed concern and affection for this mother of several of our herd. However, after she died, thee was a workman like attack on the remains. She had become a resource to be exploited. Now there's 40 or 50 pounds of, probably tough, red meat hanging in the woodshed. It will eventually get to the freezer as stew meat or ground meat and feed us a hundred days, more or less.
April 2nd
Lambing for the year is over and the crop is less than we'd hoped.
First we lost our favorite and prettiest ewe before she'd produced for us at all. We don't know how she broke her leg, whether someone else in the paddock popped her, or whether she stepped in a hole while pronking around the place. (She was young enough still to pronk.) Her lamb, fully formed and about a month from birth, was healthy and plump. We butcher the ewe and mourned the loss.
The first of the lambs was whole and healthy, born to a first time ewe who evidently stepped on the lamb, infuring a nerve in her right rear leg. Because of the damage, the lamb couldn't chase her mother's teats and the ewe, sensing the damage, did everything she could to avoid the lamb. In the hope that the nerve damage in such a young animal would, over time, correct itself, we brought out the bottles and began feeding her ourselves. Given the amount of rain, against policy, we brought her up to the house - making a trip to the barn every two hours in the rain is nasty. Those first three days are a two hour schedule, then three, then four and now six. We splinted her leg so she'd walk on the hooves, and while she still has weakness in her leg, she is quite proficient when allowed to run with the other sheep.
She's back in the barn full time now, although confined, and her mother, who recognizes her and runs interference for her even though no longer capable of feeding her, suggests next year she'll make a good mom.
That leaves our last ewe, Paige, who had a boy all by herself. When we found him in the morning, he was cleaned up and had the fat belly that proves he'd been suckling.
We'd rather have girls than boys, especially in a small herd. Our original ewes, a motely crew of elder ladies that a neighbor no longer wanted, were fine to learn on (keeping Jacobs is not at all like keeping heavy bodied sheep that make up the commercial diet).
So we'll have two new lambs, a small flock of bronze turkeys to try to keep confined, and the replacement chicks to raise until they can integrate themselves into the producing flock, a different breed each year so we know which hen is how old. At this time of year, we sell about 10 dozen eggs a week.
Now, if the rain will slack off a bit, we can think about getting a garden in the ground.
Time passes:
Several days ago, it being spring and all, Susan pointed out there were a couple of cottontails sitting in the corner of the yard. I took this to mean that the large hunter type should execute one or both of them. Retrieved old octagonal barrel .22 and proceded to send a shot over the head, between the ears of one of them. They retreated to the cover of BLM berry bushes. (I'm a pretty fair shot, or was, until I got my new glasses - trifocals that I'm still struggling with. I can't find a way to get the right part of the damned things down far enough to give a reasonable picture of the open front site.) Anyway, the rabbits lived to sylflay another day.
A couple of nights ago, I was working on dinner, Susan was headed out to feed. She had no more hit the door than she was back, without a word. Next time I see her, she has the very same rifle in hand. Two pops; a long pause; "Dinner?"
I suggested she dress the limp carcass she had in hand and that we'd have it the next night (she wasn't home so it was 2 nights later). So in about 10 minutes, back she comes with a little over 1.5# of boy rabbit, including the liver which I did want to examine before committing to eating a wild, if garden fed, rabbit.
Last night, end of the work-week for Susan, I sheared the delicate little boy in half, put him on a bed of brown basmati rice and onion, partially drowned both in chicken stock, added some chunks of William's (the mule) carrots and popped him in the oven, freshly repaired with a new element - it pooped out half-way through the baking of what would have been three really fantastic loaves of bread. 35 minutes later, Susan was sighing and carrying on about an admittedly tasty, succulant, and tender gobbet of Beavercreek fauna. Now, if I can find the other one....
PS: Susan's reputation as a huntress precedes her. When we still lived in Portland, three, predatory BLACK roosters descended on our small garden. They were ominous like the helicopters in movies about Viet Nam era combat became ominous. Susan grabbed the pellet gun (discharge of firearms within city limits being illegal) and proceeded to nail one of them in the eye. We never saw the other two again, the garden was saved. Their rangy companion managed to flavor a pot of chicken stew. Waste not, want not.
For quite awhile, I've been aware that hay bales are getting bigger. As the machinery to handle them is developed, it makes some sense to make th packages bigger. The limit used to be what a man could reasonably handle - say 100#. Now there are 125, 150, 800, and even 1000 pound standard bales, not to mention those round ones which, I'm told, can weigh up to a ton. They make sense: just unroll one in a field and feed a whole herd at one time. It does look a little silly to put them in plastic bags, but even that makes sens.
But even more than the bales getting bigger, I've noticed that the 100# bales I used to be able to man-handle weigh more.
Just put some hay up in the barn. 125# bales just about killed me. This getting old sucks.
ry
Sunday, late afternoon, a neighbor I'd never met, drove into the yard to report that our mule, William, was tied up in his neighbors yard. It seems William had gone visiting a 3 year old filly - strange behavior, since William is a middle-aged gelding.
I had no idea how William had escaped and it was too late in the afternoon to walk the deeply buried back fence line by the time I'd walked William home along the public road. It was gracious of my neighbor to follow me home and I was grateful. In the course of conversation after William was secured, I found out he knew that I'd help fight a fire that destroyed his trailer home some 5 years earlier. By the time I'd "run" through the woods on my place, gotten through the fence, and crossed his field of new christmas trees, all this burdened with shovel, hoe and a machete, the fire department was hosing down the totally destroyed trailer, ignoring entirely a ring of fire burning through the pale, dry grass toward my place and, even closer, a wooded swale that lead to several hundred acres of August parched forest. I was having trouble getting ahead of that ring of fire when another passerby showed up having walked from the county road carrying a soda acid fire extinguisher. What he was doing with that in his car I never found out and can't imagine. Between us we got that grass fire out after it had burned around a 100 yards from the trailer.
Anyway, the next morning, while I was off doing errands, I got another call telling me that William was back visiting the filly. This time, I nervously walked William home alone and then went back to walk the back fence. In the soft ground, I was able to find where he'd come out of the berry thicket and managed to stay fairly close to the fence on the neighbor's side. It appears that William had made a cozy little paddock for himself, probably for months, before he broke through the berries. At the corner, I found all five strands of barbed wire cut on both sides of the corner post. I suspected hunters. I had a fence tool with me and was able to patch four of five wires on each side of the corner, hoping that William wouldn't just try to walk through what had become a familiar path.
I left a note telling Rich what I'd found - just so he'd know William was off the hook.
Later still that evening, Rich and his wife came calling. He said it wasn't hunters that had cut the fence: he had. He needed some hog wire that had lined the corner. He just cut it out and took it.
I'll grant that it's an old fence line. William is the only animal we run in that part of the property. But to cut a fence along a line established long before you acquire a property used to be a hanging offence similar to rustling horses. I thought he was kidding. When he made it clear he was serious, we agreed that he would mend the fence.
I'm glad he told me, but I'm surprised he did. Clearly, he was embarrassed. He could have left it that hunters had come through there, poaching.
I met Santiago, a lean guy with a big family. He owns the attractive filly. He was knocking down weeds around his christmas tree stand. William got me out making rounds I should have made years ago.
When I found William the second day, he was without a halter and had twenty acres, more or less, where he could have run to avoid capture. I can tell you that turning your shoulder toward a horse, or in this case, mule, truly is irresistable to them. With a bit of constant soft chatter which I started from 50 yards or more away from him, after I stopped he came the last 15 yards to me. He'd been without water all day and when we got close to his own turf but still up on the County road, he blew my head off with a very donkey like braying - I'd never heard him do that before.
All's peaceful again though: tomorrow I'll shear the ewes - after the cold weather and before the intense sun arrives.
Spring is may favorite time. Spring in Oregon is spectacular. Compared to Southern California, where spring might go unremarked in most years, the season here brings technicolor change.
Everything sproughts new green coats. The land, the deciduous trees, and even the conifers all put out fresh green. It begins as chartreuse against the dark grey/blue green of the evergreen forest and gradually runs through kelly to forest green again.
Even the hated invasive Scotch Broom is spectacular. Yellow doesn't do that deep rich egg-yolk gold color justice. Then, as they begin to fade, reality sets in as we realize those flowers will produce seed that can be viable for a century.
As the globe warms, the mix of migratory birds is changing, or at least their timing is. We've got two feeders now on the window next to the dining table. There are at least 12 species squabbling over an unlimited supply of oil sunflower seeds. It's not clear to me what damage those birds can do to one another, but a resolute stance and an open beak usually works. Sometimes the little gold finches can intimidate even the much larger grosbeaks. Last year, I was watching the mayhem when a hawk flashed past leaving a cloud of feathers from a young grosbeak who wasn't paying close attention to the neighborhood.
The crows have returned to their usual nest in the aptly named Burnham wood. This year, the carnage round the chicken yard is enough to warrant hanging netting to keep the crows out of the chicken's eggs.
We think the potted Japanese maple must have broken through its bottom because it has suddenly become much larger - just in time to be moved to make room for the new house!
The bummer lamb is finally off its bottle and indignant about it. I know why ewes finally wean their children. Those last couple of weeks of being butted in the udder must hurt like hell. What start out as gently nudging become impatient, full out, head butts that will lift the much larger ewe right off the ground.
The late May rains, 2-3" in the last week, auger high fire danger later in the summer. But for now, all's right with the world.
Grass is wonderful stuff. Fresh it's succulent, tasty, and
convertible, by proper animals, into protein, wool or fiber, and
leather. It's relatively easy to grow and it can be preserved by
drying it in the sun. Over the years, we've found ways to make
handling and storing hay efficient. As machines have become ubiquitous on the farm, heavier and heavier bales can be made and moved to storage or the field. Where, not so many years ago, hay came in bales that ranged up to slightly over 100 pounds (about the limit for a crew to buck all day by hand - three wire bales of alfalfa weighed 100-125 pounds, 3 string bales up to 100 pounds, and two string bales anywhere from 30-60 pounds, at least in the old days) and could be bucked by fit young men, now bales can be found in several shapes. Some familiar rectangular ones can tip the scales at 1000 pounds; some round ones at over a ton. Nowadays, some farmers put the round ones in their own plastic bags - no barn needed. Those are particularly handy when feeding cattle in a pasture: stick a pole, attached to a tractor, through the middle of the bale and carry it to the pasture. Remove the wrapping, and push it until it unrolls for the cattle to eat, all lined up and mannerly.
Obviously, haying is a warm weather sport. Spring and early summer
sun makes the grass grow quickly. Grain forms and trick is to cut the
grass while the almost fully formed seed is still firmly attached.
The problem is finding a window of warm dry weather long enough for
the cutting, drying, baling and then bucking into dry storage. Rain
on cut grass is bad. Very bad. There's more skill and judgement
needed than most people realize to get a good crop of hay.
We'd negotiated for 300 bales of weed-free grass hay from a friend of
a friend. He'd told us only a couple of days before, that the hay
would be baled on Tuesday. At the crack of dawn this morning, I got a
call to say the first bale would hit the ground at noon. Of course it
would. Today was the first 100F day of the year, up from 70F most of
last week. And even though the weather report called for several days of very hot, and more importantly, dry weather, if we wanted it, we needed to claim it.
So, we slathered ourselves with SP45, rounded up all the plastic
bottles we could find and filled them with water, called around to see if we could get some last minute help - two people is one or two short of an efficient team, and failing that, drove 10 miles to the field we'd never seen. The baler was being tended to by a, charitably put, "crusty" old guy who misinterpreted my question, "Have you started yet?" It was possible since there were supposed to be two fields. When he began to swear at me and looked like he might have a heart attack in the already 95F heat, we drove on to find the owner to let him know we were claiming our hay. We had enough truck and trailer for 150 bales and hoped to persuade him to let us have a day or two to get the rest. We did and will get the balance from the smaller second field on Wed. But we didn't start loading today until the temperature had climbed to 100 merciless degrees - that's when the baler finaly got his machine running.
This guy does good hay. He keeps the weeds out, fertilizes it, and
his baler is conscientious if nasty. [A digression about that: it is
understandable that balers are testy. They've chosen to work with the most temperamental of all farm machinery. When I was a kid and leased 25 acres every year to make oat hay, I asked Pop why we didn't just get a used baling machine and not have to worry about scheduling
someone to come in at just the right time - oat hay is the most time
sensitive kind: wait too long and the seeds fall off; do it too early
and there's very little nutrition in the seed. His short answer: you
don't want to know even a new baler, let alone a used one. For those
who've never had the pleasure, a baler is dragged behind a tractor
from which it gets power. First, it has a little conveyor that scoops
up the grass that's been raked into windrows, and feeds it into,
arguably, the most dangerous maw on any farm. The grass is then
rammed into a square shoot where it forms compact flakes. While this
is being done, twine or wire (in our case, jute twine of a pleasant
green) is fed around the new bale, and at just the right time (the
bale should be exactly twice as long as it is wide so it stacks
efficiently) a complicated little sub-assembly ties a knot in each of
the two strings. Then the bale is ejected and, if all goes well,
turned 90 degrees on its side.
Baling, indeed every step of making hay, should be immensely satisfying. Cutting the hay is a precise art. Leave no stem standing. Raking it after it's baked to dry in the sun, makes neat, parallel mounds in an irregular spiral that starts out following the margin of the field. Usually, those rows are turned once, so that the grass dries evenly. Too dry and the bales will not be compact; too wet and spontaneous combustion can burn a barn down. Then baling completes the transition from chaos to order as all these precisely shaped and bundled geometries dot the field. And the smell, first of new mown grass and then of the finished hay is wonderful.
Our part of this "making hay" ritual, is limited to picking it up and stacking it safely on a truck or trailer or both, and then loading it
into the barn. To have the first really strenuous job of the summer
start on a day the temperature spikes 30 above the average, and keep in mind, this is in the middle of a treeless, shadeless field, is
probably dangerous to those of us whom I shall now call aged. We had
50 bales on the truck when the friend of Susan's who'd set us up with this new source, showed up to help. He's one year my junior, an ex-locomotive driver who has a love of machines and making parts for them from scratch, and who, according to Susan, can't stand to be idle. Without him, I doubt if we'd been able to stack the 104 bales we ended up with on the trailer. Elton, pooped out 6 bales short of that, but I've got to commend him for the sense he had to stop. For the gals who've gotten this far, us guys just can't help making a competition of any activity, even if we don't admit, or even know, we're competing, and even when we know better. But Susan had just replaced me in the field: that is, she was placing the last 12 bales on the top of the load to tie it all together while I drove the truck.
So Elton left, we spent the next half hour tying the load in place.
(To whomever it was that invented those ratcheted, web ties, thank
you. Ever so much easier than using hemp line and truckers' hitches.)
While she was up on top of the trailer load, Susan could see people
collecting hay on trucks and trailers in nearby fields and found a warm feeling of camaraderie. Here in the midst of all our industrial might, people, walking on their feet, using their backs and arms and bent steel hooks, were throwing the most elemental of feed into stacks. On big farms that can afford it, the baling machines are fitted with springs that throw the bales up onto trucks that are running beside them or elevators are drawn behind the balers that do the same thing. Those machines displace a lot of misery. But not around here where fields are seldom more than 50 acres and do double duty, good for only one crop a year.
We got our load home without incident. We did pass two spilled loads - people just don't learn that it pays to take the time to tie the
load firmly to the truck. We parked outside the pasture so the mule
couldn't feast on the load, had some lunch, a shower, and, for me at
least, a Valium aided nap. (Kill those back spasms before they get so
tight they feed on themselves.) After it had cooled down, we moved
the old elevator into place for its third season of work, found it's
tiny motor, and proceeded to put about 130 of the bales into the loft
I built a couple of years ago. I get the easier end of this process
because Susan can walk around in the loft without fear of crashing her
head into the roof trusses. I've described the old, jury-rigged,
second or third hand elevator before: it is, by acclamation, our
favorite acquisition.
On Wednesday, when the morning temps promise to be back in the 70's,
I'll load up another 150 bales, more or less, and we'll spend another
evening packing it away. Wednesday, because the baling machine, with
its brand new knotting module, failed the crusty operator, despite his yelling at it loudly enough that we could hear him 20 acres away. I
won't give your language filters any exercise, but will only say that
the hapless machine was described with strings of 15 to 20 salty, or
down right obscene, adjectives all in a row - over and over again. So
the second field, our field, won't be baled until at least tomorrow,
and I have things scheduled on Tuesday, and Elton has told his friend we will be there to pick up the hay as we said we would, and, more importantly, pay for it. If Elton has recovered sufficiently, he
probably won't be able to stay away either.
Early in the Spring, we converted the duck run, used for flightless
Indian Runner Ducks, to a run suitable for Bronze Turkeys. (Bronze Turkeys are not the same as American Wild Turkeys, but they are very rare with only one breeding flock still in existence. We bought ordinary Bronze since they can breed while the hybrid broad breasted must be inseminated - the large breast is an insurmountable (as it were)
obstacle to sex. We did end up with a male and were going to try for
our own, small, breeding flock.) Things were fine until Thursday night, more probably very early Friday morning, when some damned critter dug under the wire and killed all five that remained.
Susan found three of them, the other two disappeared, gathering, from the two feathers I found later in the morning, in two different directions
several hundred yards from the run. Neither of us had ever had a
fresh, farm grown, Thanksgiving turkey before. And while these are
modest sized birds, and not wild ones for sure, they do have a
somewhat gamy flavor (good gamy, not spoiled gamy). Susan used the
wheelbarrow to trundle something around 60# of spoiled birds into the
shade of the house so that after breakfast I could salvage what could
be. All three were usable. I think I spotted the culprit running off
at the bottom of Birnham wood. I only got a glimpse of what was
either a coyote or a dog.
These were not sexually mature, but from an economic standpoint were
ready for slaughter. We would have kept a pair for breeding, put
two into the freezer fairly soon, and kept one growing into November.
I got a good lesson in why commercial processors prefer white breeds of bird: it's harder to see the missed pin feathers. It was a labor of love with pliers and tweezers to get most of the feathers out. Easier than duck, but a lot harder than chicken.
On Friday, I took the most mutilated one and slow roasted it. It was good, but would have been much better in November.
And yes, given a chance, I'll nail that coyote because there are still
lambs and chickens to worry about.
So, I lied. My really truly favorite time of the year on the farm is now. Not because of the 90F plus temperatures, or the weeks' long periods without rain during which the grass becomes the color of straw and the fire danger goes to fire enging red, no, it's because the wild black berries ripen.
While I was bottling honey, Susan went into the woods to her favorite berry picking site. She found one large bramble torn up and a mess. Only one of our animals has access to it, so she started snooping around. The culprit left its scat, a calling card. There's at least one bear in the area.
I've never seen a bear around here. it's a little too populated even though there's a small section of BLM forest next door and small chunks of remaining stands of cedar and fir. But they are being logged nly to be replaced by more xmas tree farms. Maybe we inherited someone else's critter when they razed his home range.
She did get a mess of berries. Some are in a crumble that's held together with custard, some are already frozen for next winter, and even more are sugared in the fridge waiting for morning and our breakfast.
Post a Comment
<< Home