Archives for January 2014

Someone’s got to do it

January 23, 2014 · By Ann ·

width= — Chimney Rock trail, Capitol Reef NP. Note R's unfortunate IPhone camera ergonomics. A great way to take a tumble followed by a helicopter ride. Call me old school, or just old, but these viewfinderless cameras have suboptimal user design, more so if you wear reading glasses. If you are going to hold a camera out like that, the shutter button should be on the back, where the thumbs want to be. Sigh, my G9 has a big scratch on the lens. That's no excuse for the flare, but I'm still going camera shopping next time I'm in Salt Lake.

I had an opportunity to say thank you to someone this weekend. She’s done a lot to steer us newbies in the right direction. And she has taken on a thankless task in our town, the kind that gets people mad if not done perfectly, has no compensation, and nobody else will step up to do their fair share. So I said thank you. Surprised, it seemed, that anyone noticed, she said, "Someone has to do it."

I didn’t think fast enough, but I wish I’d said, "but not well." She does this job well when she doesn’t have to do it at all, and we appreciate it. Or in the Utah vernacular “we ‘presheeate-chya.”

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It’s a month past winter solstice and the chickens are laying again! We forgot to open the doors until late in the afternoon last Sunday. By then the temperatures were well above 80. We let the hens out of the hoop house to run around the yard even though there isn’t much to eat. Sunshine and fresh air has to be good for them, right? Maybe it was the impromptu sauna, or the extra dose of protein from some freezer-burned chicken meat R tossed them that morning, but Red laid an egg the next day. Never forget their intra-species cannibalistic dinosaur heritage – their favorite food is, of course, chicken. Another hen laid an egg yesterday and I got two today, so hopefully they are on a roll.

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I marked my calendar for April 21. That’s the day our 8 goslings should ship, if all goes well at the hatchery. These eggs haven’t even been laid yet, and they already cost me $150, including shipping. The window for ordering geese is narrow. They don’t lay for much more than a month, so if you don’t get them in the spring, you won’t get them until next year. I learned that the hard way. And the goslings sell out fast, so you need to reserve early.

Why geese? People say geese are mean. That seems to be the main argument against them. Mean geese could be a good thing or a bad thing. Mean to me, bad for the goose. Mean to someone trying to get into the orchard when I’m not around, that could be a good thing. Mostly we want geese because they eat pasture and they are entertaining. Spending time with geese mowing the pasture will be far more fun than running a gasoline powered motor. I told R we will call him Konrad if the geese imprint on him.

We are getting the American Buff breed, chosen from the Livestock Conservancy list of heritage breeds at risk of extinction. Maybe their "lovely apricot-fawn color"” won’t look so bad if they get into the red mud around the place. It was a coin toss between them and the Pilgrim goose, another American original breed, because they are both on the Slow Food "”ark of taste"” list. Unless one makes a foolish mistake in harming either of us, these birds will be spared a trip to the freezer. If we are lucky, they will pair up and raise their own broods next year, although as first time parents, you can’t expect them to hatch anything. We have to sort out a water source for them. Contrary to lore and legend, they don’t need a pond, just a bucket to get their heads wet. But they will be happier with water to splash in. Now I wish I hadn’t given away the kiddie pool I once bought to hold live crawfish overnight when we had a Mardi Gras party. That was back in 1995 or so. Probably a fresh one would be a good idea. Nothing but the best of Craiglist for our livestock.

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We are going to CiderCon2014! I am excited! Another exclamation point! I’ve never been to Chicago for one thing. We might go to a blues club. There will be a cider tasting. Not to mention the loads of actual useful information and contacts we will make.

If you had asked two years ago what the hardest part of living here would be, I never would have thought that it would be finding ranch-sitters. We (finally) found someone who will stay here for the week of CiderCon, but I realized that we just aren’t very good at networking on this topic. So if R or I actually know you in person and you want to be on the list for ranch-sitting vacation opportunities, send me an email. The minimum chores take about 10 minutes morning and night. Collect and eat eggs. No shoveling manure. Playing with goats optional, but highly entertaining. Slate is not dog-proofed, so sadly visiting canines are impossible. If it works out that you can get a bit of quiet work time, a retreat or use the place as a base for hiking adventures, that would be awesome for us too. Maybe we could actually take a summer vacation this year!

Yes, I live in a vacation mecca, but every once in a while I just need to feel the road under my wheels again.

T is for Trouble-Tommie goes to the vet, but was it in time?

January 10, 2014 · By Ann ·

Duchess: is she or isn't she? We may not know until April.

I looked out the window this morning to see all the goats staring forlornly into their shed. The weather has not been ridiculously cold, so I let the chickens out of the hoophouse. Naturally having anywhere to go, they decided to go under the goat gate. And naturally, being able to choose anywhere in the goat pen to go, they started scratching in the shed. And naturally, being the terrified, brainless birds that they are, they wouldn’t come out because Tommie was staring at them. It was a standoff until I called off the goats.

Tommie, by the way, is doing quite well after his surgery. We stuffed him into a borrowed dog carrier for the one hour ride to Richfield. It was as loud as predicted. The vet sedated him before we even took the carrier out of the car. Why bring that racket inside when you don’t have to? While Tommie got fixed, R and I raced around Richfield doing errands since we don’t make the big drive to the city more than every couple of months. R even found Boggs in his size at the feed store; how our desires have been reduced to neoprene footwear and an ash bucket is another day’s post.

But there we were at the vet’s counter, ready to collect our unhappy beast. It was a good thing in the end that we did not try to do this on our own. The initial burdizzo clamping had left some scar tissue that had to be excised-turns out he was fully intact and we would have likely bungled the job a second time. As I paid the $75 bargain, I said how I was looking forward to a quieter ride home, at least one where we could converse below a shout. The tech said, “Oh, he’s been making a lot of noise back there.” Even with a shot of no-hurt, he squalled the entire way back, worse than the cats, worse than the toddler not getting a pack of Lifesavers at the grocery.

An hour later, he was still letting us know how unhappy he was. In retrospect, the poor guy was probably hungry, but he needed to wait until he was a little more alert to eat anyway. Car-sick, woozy goat, no thanks. It was long past sunset when we got home. In the dark it was easier to carry the dog crate to the pen than to try to leash him up. He was waking up, the hollering non-stop. He didn’t shut up until he heard the does calling back. The sound of his herd calmed him down right away. A stunned moment of blessed silence. Out of the box, a few mouthfuls of hay, a drink of water and he was off with the girls for the night. The next morning, he wasn’t running so fast. Two days later, it was like nothing had happened. Except the buck stink is gone, he’s not mounting anyone, and he’s stopped trying to butt me whenever I go into the pen. The girls have waggled their tails at him a couple times. He doesn’t seem to care if there is hay in the feeder. Now that sex is mostly forgotten they are a happy herd, chasing each other in circles, playing goat-of-the-mountain on their stumps and looking for grain and things I don’t want them to do, not necessarily in that order.

We still don’t know if Tommie actually got the job done for either of the does. At some point I guess I could Google the signs of goat pregnancy. Since I can’t do anything about it now, I am pretending it didn’t happen, like parents who suspect their teenager is more active than they’d like. The girls will let us know if they need anything. They are pretty loud and obnoxious when they don’t get their every whim. After all, they are still teenagers too…we could be in for trouble.

2014 Goals on the ole homestead

January 6, 2014 · By Ann ·

I drafted up a post on my goals for 2013 but never hit the “publish” button. Oh well, most of them got done anyway. We have a hoop house, the new orchard (on the rechristened “Bluebird Parcel”) is fenced, the wood stove is in, we have goats. And only one tree died, the one that accidentally got mowed over in an unfortunate incident with the Grillo that shall not be mentioned nor repeated again.

Putting stuff like targets and goals out in the world works. Nothing like using fear of public shame as a motivator. That may be shallow, but true. Here are the big ones for 2014.

Finish the permaculture design for the Bluebird Parcel
Plant and water the new trees
Build two more sheet mulch beds
Raise a gaggle of geese and a bunch of meat chickens
Plant the hoophouse in time for winter veg
Go to CiderCon2014
Intern at two or three cider operations during the pressing season
Sell something at our farmers’ market
Start harvesting rain water from our roof with gutters directed toward some useful location
Build an outdoor pizza oven
Install and plant an arbor on the west side of the bunkhouse to give some afternoon shade
Paint the front door
Make 20 lbs of cheese
Learn 10 local wildflowers
Start a monthly photo series
Hike more trails and do more hammock tending

That last one is for R. He sees these lists and thinks I forget he needs time to do actual bill-paying work. The list seems like a lot of jobs, but most of them we can bang out in a weekend and/or have fun doing together. Kind of like a random date afternoon with shovels. Actually, I think it will be easier than last year, if (and it’s a big if) the watering doesn’t kill us. That’s the one I am most worried about, and the one I can do the least about. A huge injection of money could solve it, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, I may be hauling water all summer, and if that is what it takes to give those trees a good start, then I get a mulligan on everything else until 2015.

P.S. Thank you for your kind words and comments about Mango. We are all adjusting as best we can, including Slate. Her quiet, constant presence in our day-to-day goings-on may not have been as demanding or comical as her brother’s; but it is a different dance, learning to be three bodies instead of four. We are figuring it out as best we can.