Dirty and Tan and Loving It

My hands are not spotless.  My fingernails are torn and there is a definite line of dirt under each one.  My hands are scratched and scarred, my fingers bent, my palms blistered and calloused.

My arms are tan . . . until they reach my biceps.  My body is pasty white but my lower legs match my arms.  My neck is darkened but the top of my head is untouched - along the perfect line of my straw hat.

I walk with a slight stoop in the morning, and my feet hurt at night.  My joints crack and I groan when I stretch my back.

I love it all.

Each and every callous on my hands has a story.  The farmer's tan is come by honestly, by farming.  The dirt under my fingernails is my own and the plants which were tended by those hands, those fingernails, are just beginning to offer up their thanks in the form of fresh goodies.

I love it all.

Party Hardy

For those of you not in the know (a group which included me not too long ago), tonight was National Night Out.  In celebration of this event, our block got together and threw a mighty shindig, complete with a visit from the fire department, more food than you can imagine, and many many friends and neighbors.  As a special treat for us, I made a gargantuan salad almost exclusively with the products of our garden.

Good food, good friends, good memories.  Thanks to all who came.

Strawberries Out Our Ears

I am ashamed to admit it, but I grew up in Los Angeles. Along with the smog and the traffic and the cranky people, LA produces some spectacular strawberries.  They are positively huge.  Sweet, and good.  However, until moving to the northwest I never had anything with which to really compare them.

Our strawberries are NOT large, by any stretch of the imagination.  But what strawberries in the northwest lack in size they make up in HUGE taste.   How one little berry can pack so much flavor and such intense sweetness, I will never know.  They are so small they don't even begin to approach round, but in their little football-shaped frames there are quite a few surprises.  If you have the chance to try these sweet little explosions of flavor, I strongly recommend you do.

Now excuse me while I wipe the drool off my chin and go raid the fridge one more time for the fruits of our harvest today.

Night Banjo

 It was hot today, not so hot that you don't feel like doing anything, but spring is clearly gone in the northwest and summer is here for the interim.  However, come evening the breeze blew the heat out and as the stars came out the air became pleasant and sweet again.

I found myself this night on the back porch with no one but myself, two dogs, an oil lamp, and my (borrowed) banjo.  It was bliss.  I was not precise but very productive - learning three new songs in less than an hour.  I will spend the next few nights working over those songs, adding pull-offs and hammer-ons, and if I'm lucky a few drop thumbs.  I will make them mine and will add them to the growing litany of songs I know that are older than my grandfather's grandfather.

While I played, everything else melted away and my life reduced down to the music and the lamp and the evening breeze.  My unemployment was unimportant.  The weeds in the vegetables for the time being forgotten.  It was wonderful and it was mine.

Seriously, We Need a Cow

We have friends staying with us while they look for a home nearby.  We love having everyone here, all of them, but the speed at which we go through milk is astonishing.  We have six kids in the house, all under 10, so you can imagine how much we drink.  Add to that my cereal habit (still, can't help it), and we're going through nearly eight gallons of milk a week.  It's amazing.

Now, how to get a cow past the City Code Enforcement???

Our Newest Additions

Okay, they're really our daughter's additions to the flock, but it's all one big flock anyway.  Two weekends ago SuperSuris had the first major alpaca sale in the Spokane area in as long as anyone could remember.  It was a great time, rain notwithstanding, and approximately 15 animals were sold - a great first go.  Two of those animals, a white suri by the name of Luna and her female cria, were bought by our daughter as a set.

Luna comes from famous lineage and her fiber is pure white and has great density and lock.  Her baby, who we've been calling Cinnamon Roll until our daughter gets around to giving her a proper name, is a feisty fawn-colored female with truly stupendous fiber.  I cannot wait to spin up some of what that little girl has growin'.

Luna and her baby will stay at SuperSuris for the time being as we continue to work towards our own little piece of heaven in the country.  Sadly, my unemployment has moved that out a bit, but we continue to try and get there.  In the mean time we continue to work at SuperSuris every weekend, so if you're in the area come on out and see us anytime!

Summer is Blooming

Yes yes, I know the typical season for blooms is spring, but we've had such a weird, wet, and cold spring that everything seems to be blooming again, as evidenced by this photo.

The farm is not just beautiful right now - it's absolutely resplendent.  The animals are waking up after a long cold spring, there are babies being born, there is shearing and mucking to do, spring cleaning, gardens to plant, pastures to reseed and water - and all of it simultaneously back-breaking and enjoyable.  The animals are happy for the care and attention and we're happy to give it.

And we have babies galore right now.  The first living being I have ever witness born aside from my own children was a little white male alpaca born on my birthday of all days.  He has a little brown spot on this head, like an odd little toupee, which will help us identify him later on in the sea of black yearlings that we're bound to have.  Many others have been born, as well as one little brown and white male who has the distinction of being the first living being I have delivered/caught, ever!  He was stuck in his momma a bit and I had to do a little pulling and shifting to get him out.  And what a gorgeous boy he is too.  We have our eye on him as he matures, though with his mixed coloring he will likely have limited utility as a herdsire.  I still love his fiber though.

So summer is breaking, the days are getting warmer, and we're getting busier.  Now that I have a surplus of time on my hands, I hope to keep y'all up to date on farm doings here - more often than I have.  Happy almost-summer, everyone.

What the . . . ?

Well, what could have broken me out of my stupor and finally gotten me to update this blog?  Well, honestly, that's the crushing unemployment that did that, but a contributing factor was the following story posted on CNN today:

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/06/23/does-4-h-desensitize-kids-to-killing/?hpt=hp_c2

Not long ago CNN ran an Eatocracy article where a prominent chef extolled the virtues of purchasing meats from 4H programs rather than big factory slaughterhouses, etc.  I read this article with raised eyebrows, totally agreeing with the author yet waiting for the hateful comments to start flooding in.  So many arrived, in fact, that CNN ran ANOTHER article (linked above) just discussing the comments.

Rather than supply my own comments on CNN.com (where I'm quite sure they would be lost in the flood), I've added them here.  Yes, part of 4H concerns the raising and eventual slaughter of animals for food.  However, are they less humane (wrong word, but it's what people say) than the factory slaughterhouses?  I think not.  I have seen many 4H cows raised in grassy pastures out behind kids' homes, pampered and groomed, and even loved.  Those same cows went on to make hamburger and steak for those kids' families and others who purchased them.  How is that as bad as putting hundreds of cows in paddocks covered in literal feet of excrement before shuffling them off to their deaths.  I think not.

I understand that a great number of people think that killing and eating animals is wrong.  I can't blame them for their opinion and I won't try.  However, I personally see no issue in raising one's own meat supply, treating that animal with care and sensitivity and, yes, eventually killing and eating that animal.

Please, don't vilify a program that has helped literally millions of kids learn about their world and their food supply.  You might as well get angry at the boy scouts for teaching kids to trample into the forest - never mind their proven history of helping to bring up responsible, caring adults who contribute to society.

Thus endeth the rant.

Have I Mentioned . . .

. . . how much I love playing the banjo?

Animal Joy

My father would call it "yet another episode of anthropomorphic theater," but I must say I have seen the joy that hides in the hearts of animals.  Spring is the perfect time to witness the proof, of course. 

As the days have grown longer and the sun warmer, everything seems to be happier.  The birds flit in and out of the fences, singing merrily to the sky, the eagles swoop and dive - not for food but for the joy of warmer air fluttering their feathers.  Even the bugs and the bees seem to be reveling in the sun and the new found warmth.

There is a particularly cantankerous group of "old men" at the farm, retired herdsires with good lineage but more years under their hides than others.  Because their pasture is in seed their world is limited to the barn and a small sandy yard between it and the next barn over.  That's not to say they have no entertainment.  Once a day they get to stand lined up along the gate - like the dirty old men they are - and ogle at the females as they traipse by on their way to their food.  But they certainly lack constant access to grass that the other groups enjoy on a daily basis.

Today, as we do every weekend when we clean and feed, I shuffled the younger males into the barn and let the old men out into their pasture to graze.  The sun was mostly hidden today, but the breeze brought the scent of fresh grass to their noses and those old boys took off like a shot.  From the time they entered the breezeway until they felt grass under their feet, maybe twenty-five feet at most, they shed years of age.  They hit the grass at a full tilt and began tossing their heads and pronking, dancing about with their lustrous locks swinging back and forth - just like crias do when the sun is beginning to set and the time to dance arrives.

Anyone who witnessed their romp - the dancing, the leaping - would have a hard time arguing with me.  It was animal joy and a wonderful thing to see after a long winter of snow and muck.

Shining Sun and Green Fields

Saturday was wet and wooly, with many a hail storm and that wet slucky mud that likes to pull the wellies right off your feet.  Not so on Sunday, as you can see.  The morning dawned clear and bright and I had four blissful hours at the farm with nothing but me, the sunshine, and 180 or so alpaca.  It was exactly what I needed. 

As you can see, the winter wheat is coming back strong and the ranks of tourists are set to follow shortly.  While the animal work at the farm always slows down right about now, the people work kicks into high gear.  Our friends' shop is near to opening again with a whole new lineup of products, including our candles!  We can't wait to see how well they do.

Clawhammer versus Bluegrass

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As many of you probably have, I always assumed that banjo was banjo - with many sounds but one essential method of playing.  Not so!  As it turns out, there are two major schools of "banjo thought" (though the actual amount of thought involved may vary) - Clawhammer and Bluegrass.  There are many names for both, but those are the seemingly most common right now. 

Bluegrass is the Tony Trickshaw kind of stuff, with lightning fast finger work and a rolling series of notes, each played independently.  Clawhammer, the style I'm currently learning, involves something called frailing.  It's a peculiar method of strumming in which you use your fingernail to strike the string, followed by a quick strum of three strings and then a pluck of the 5th string (the shorter one) with the side of your thumb.  This is nearly IMPOSSIBLE for someone used to the guitar as I am.  It isn't the motions that are difficult, I've learned similar strum styles on the guitar.  But I find my brain getting screwed up because I want to play the notes as I expect them to sound, but the strings seem all out of whack.

See, a five-string banjo like mine isn't like a guitar where each string going down is a higher tone.  On a banjo the 5th string (the one on top) is the highest tone.  The next string, the 4th, is the lowest!  Then it gets progressively higher like a guitar.  To my guitar-mind it's like someone took the high-e string and placed it under my thumb by magic.  Very confusing.

That said, I'm simply loving this instrument.  The rhythms are fun and endlessly variable and once you get frailing under control, you can play all manner of tunes without having to learn many new skills.  It's all patterns and knowing when to frail and when not to.

Of course, my family sincerely wishes I would learn some more songs so they wouldn't have to listen to the two I know played over and over, but that comes later.

P.S.  Wanna learn how to play clawhammer banjo?  Check out Banjo Equinox on Cold Antler Farm.  Jenna is walking us through the process and we're all sharing our experiences, our victories, and our setbacks.  Come on in and play, son!

Is It Planting Time Yet?

I was describing a typical Spokane spring to a friend who is contemplating a move to Spokane this summer.  Through my lengthy description he listened intently and then said, "So, it's a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing."

Exactly.

Saturday broke warm and sunny with a piercingly blue sky and my favorite white puffy clouds just cresting the hill over the pastures.  I was at our friends' farm solo that day, my wife held up at home with spring cleaning.  The animals were positively reveling in the sun, laying with their long necks and gangly legs spread out along the grass, snoring away.  I have to say, between the work and a little banjo practice, I did a little sun napping of my own.

And then, Sunday came, wet and cold and windy.  The clouds had moved in during the night and the rain and grauple began to fall early in the day when we were not yet done with the daily chores.

Spring is start and go, intermittent, and sometimes infuriating around here.  But it is also often beautiful and full of the promise of longer, warmer days, green grass, and shady maple trees.  I can't wait.

Our garden will be limited this year, due to the good possibility that we will be moving to larger property and the prospect of changing this urban farm to a more traditional (if we could be called that) rural setup sometime in the summer.  But we will plant potatoes, green beans, carrots, and broccoli at the least.  We have to grow something.

I can't wait.

Spring Has Sprung

Spring has sprung,

The grass has ris',

I wonder where all

The flowers is?

Horrible.  I know.  You can blame my grandfather for that one. 

Spring has arrived for sure here in the northwest.  Does that mean the flowers are blooming and the leaves are budding?  Heck no!  Spring is more subtle here.  More intermittant. 

It still snows now and then, between bouts of rain, but the hard frozen ground has turned to soft clay mud.  The grass is overridden with moss that will soon give way to the grass proper as the ground slowly dries.  The bulbs are just starting to push up through the soil, the first tentative green leaves beginning to show outside our laundry window.

There are the more traditional signs as well. The birds are definitely back, as my daughter's cat can certainly attest.  Rows and V's of ducks and geese have begun to fly overhead, returning from whence they came six months earlier.  The duck ponds at the City parks are full again, only this time with leaner versions of the autumn-fattened birds we saw leave. 

And really, only one thing truly screams "Spring!" to me in Spokane, and like the real harbinger of autumn, it's human in origin.  Often the first sign of real spring around here is the sprouting of oddly clumped blooms on my mailbox and in the seam of the storm door.  These brightly colored missives are the annual inundation of cheaply-xeroxed flyers for yard service, hauling services, handyman services, and something that triggers unwanted visions of Richard Simmons in overalls, a service called "power raking."  (Incidentally, don't do it.  It's HORRIBLE for your grass)

Spring has definitely sprung.  Now it's time to recycle the unwanted flyers and get to the business of waking up the ground.  Planting here we come!

Play That Old Can, Son

I have to say, for an old computer geek (okay, former computer geek) I have some rather musical proclivities.  I play the guitar, the piano, I sing (when I've had a few), and every single day I listen to some sort of music, lately a lot fo indy stuff and bluegrass.  However, given the range of musical instruments avaialble, I would not have thought the banjo would be on my list.

But then, one of my favorite homesteader/writers, Jenna Woginrich (Cold Antler Farm), decided to hold a Banjo Equinox, free online banjo classes.  I tried, along with many others, to win the brand new banjo from Banjohut.com she was offering via her blog, with no success.  Then it happened that my father's old stickpot, unplayed these last twenty years, popped into my mind.  Lo and behold, I will shortly have a banjo to play - whenever he gets the chance to mail it to me that is and once it gets some tender loving care from a local strings repairman.  In the mean time, my neighbor and good friend has graciously loaned me his.

And here I am, dropped, rather surprisingly, into the world of clawhammer banjo.  First class is Sunday (the equinox, appropriately).  More to come, I'm sure.

Something New

We arrived at the farm early today to do our share of shoveling pellets and pitching hay.  As my wife opened the front gate and my daughter and I drove Angus up to the barn something new caught my eye.  There, among the just-greening grass and old wrung out wooden posts, was a flash of blue and a new whistling song I hadn't heard in a long time.  The blue, of course, materialized into the form of a small bluebird perching on one of the fenceposts, singing his little heart out.  Then there were two, and three!

The ground is soggy, not frozen hard.  The pond has thawed completely, leading the neighbors to oil their ice skate blades and pack them away until next winter.  Even the bulbs are poking their first tentative green shoots through the now thawing soil, ready to spring up into fantastic shows of color any day. 

Spring is soon.  Very soon.  The air is filled with birdsong this morning, a first in many months.  We can't wait.

Fighting, Always Fighting

I apologize for the lack of posts of late.  My day job was intruding yet again on what I want to be doing.  I imagine this to be a common affliction. 

Today was a day for fighting with technology, let me tell you.  Sadly, there was nothing so romantic as the engraving accompanying this post.  Both my cell phone and my connection to the company network decided to call it quits on me all at once - leaving me without the ability to work while simultaneously robbing me of any method for communicating my problem to the home office. 
Sigh.

Paca Pellets and Chicken Splats

Ah compost.  Proof that in the end, even poop has its uses.  In the case of alpaca pellets, more use than some.  We've had chickens for a couple years now and I can't say enough good things about their manure and its effects on the garden.  As an example, adding chicken manure to the soil around radishes gives them a (slightly frightening) crisp spiciness that elevates this humble root from an oft' ignored salad garnish to a real flavor-packed little pocket of crunch.

The drawback of chicken poop is, unfortunately, a REALLY high nitrogen content that will burn the dickens out of any plant you place it next to, unless, that is, you compost it first.  Add to that the fact that chicken manure smells worse than any other livestock manure (including pigs, if you can imagine it), and you can see why it isn't the ideal fertilizer.

'Paca pellets (aka llama lumps), on the other hand, are almost odorless and contain a great mix of all three key fertilizer ingredients.  You can put 'paca pellets right on the soil without worrying about burning the fragile seedlings.  Compost the stuff and you have an amazing soil amendment that people will pay top dollar for (well, top dollar for a manure anyway). 

We spend a sizable amount of time every weekend pulling piles of straw and paca doo out of the barns. While the ever-increasing pile by the barn is growing by the day, every time I climb on the tractor and stir the pile the rich, black, steaming soil that is exposed screams "grow something with me!!!"  I can't wait to take my share of the pile for the veggies this coming spring.

Why the mental ruminations on manure?  Yep.  It's coop cleaning time again.  It better be, or the biddies won't ever speak to me again.

The House is Still Empty

It felt like spring.  The sun shone, the birds called, the grass even began to sprout.  For weeks we watched the grey skies and saw them gradually clear.  We heard the rain on the roof and we felt the ground soften under our feet. 

We were not fooled.

Winter, hiding like the coyote at the fence line, arrived again with a gale and dropped its silken blanket on our heads in the night.  The shoots are hidden, the animals are huddled in their barn, and the birdhouses are still empty. 

Spring is soon, but not yet.

Still Winter

After weeks of warm (40's) sunny days, it looks like we're going to get one last taste of real winter here in the inland northwest.  They are forecasting three to seven inches of snow tonight, a modest amount but enough to make everything pretty again. 

Mornings after a snowstorm have to be my favorite.  The ground is white, the sidewalks are nearly indistinguishable from the ground, and the whole City tends to take on a hushed overtone that I love.  Even the constant stream of traffic along the roadway next to our home is quieter for it, and I revel in that.

The first few winters we lived here were extreme - up to six feet piled up and berms so high I had to climb them to shovel the tops off to make room for more snow from the sidewalk.  I just couldn't throw the snow high enough anymore.  After the second such winter, I broke down and bought "the machine," my oversized and growling snowblower.  The machine breaks through even the thickest plow crud and makes a snowstorm an event to look forward to once again.  That, and the huge store of firewood we have at the moment, makes tonight's storm seem like the best thing to lift our winter spirits.

That being said, the alpacas are sure to be upset that their tender shoots of grass will soon be buried again.  Ah well.  We can't all be happy all of the time.

The Simple Things

Working closely with animals, one learns a simple truth.  Sometimes all you need is shelter, food, and someone who loves you.  Often, all we do is provide these three things and the animals thrive and seem grateful. 

As humans, we struggle to remind ourselves of this whenever life gets too complicated or we wish too hard for something.  Happiness is a warm stable, a full trough of hay, and people who care for you.  Anything more than that is icing on the cake, and while delicious, not strictly neccessary.

Rewards of Dirt and Toil

I find it hardest to write posts in this blog when I haven't been actively doing any farm work.  Both my wife and I have "day jobs," as I have mentioned previously, so farming is a part-time thing for now.  Of course, the long term plan is to make enough from fiber sales, market gardening, and limited farm goods (honey coming soon!) to allow one of us to give up the rat race for the tractor race.  We'll see how that evolves over time, but that is certainly the goal.

The thought of working for ourselves has all the glitz and glitter that a new car with all the gadgets has to so many others, yet we know that that car may have a bum transmission just waiting to need replacement, oil lines to constantly patch and re-patch, filters that clog up way too fast.  Farm work, of any kind, isn't easy.  We know that.  We're certainly not thinking, "Oh I can't wait until we can lean back and just watch the garden grow."  We have what I hope is a firm grasp of the time and commitment involved - as much as we can without actually doing it.  But, beyond that, we have learned the pleasure and satisfaction that comes from that hot shower after a long day of shoveling manure.  The iced tea I have while sitting in my chair after a ten hour day digging and a hot shower tastes better than any number of similar teas I have ordered in a restaurant.

That is our goal.  Lots of hard work and lots of sitting back at the end of the day, tired and hot, and thinking "I've done something today, not for my boss, not for my clients, but for my family."  And iced tea.  Don't forget the iced tea.

Once Again, Gene Said it Best

So, after making y'all suffer through a rant and whine about big business farming and it's effects on the soil (and the farmer), I just found a great passage in "The Contrary Farmer" by Gene Logsdon that put its all in perspective - in about 100 words less than it took me to do so.

"A farmer of deep ecological sensitivity is to the plow jockey on his 200-horsepower tractor what a French chef is to the legions of hamburger handlers at fast food chains.  The chef's work is infused with artistic, scientific, and spiritual satisfactions; the hamburger handler's is infused only with the ticking of a time clock.  To the plow jockey, soil is a boring landscape of clods that need to be crushed.  To the ecological farmer, every clod holds a wondrously exotic, tropical-like world of brilliantly colored microorganisms, the very stuff of life."

Perfect and beautiful.  All in four sentences too.

If you haven't read "The Contrary Farmer" by Gene Logsdon, it's well worth the money (or the free checkout from your local library).  It establishes the ethos of the modern small farmer so well I find myself reading it whenever I need inspiration and motivation, like now.

Getting Discouraged

Get ready for a whine-session.

Okay, I'm sorry to do it, but I have to vent or I'll explode.  We have been looking for over a year for the perfect place to land and grow the farm and our family.  We found a place last year that would have been great, only to find that our mortgage company had screwed us over and was so inept they couldn't even fix it if they wanted to.  Now, a year later, we continue to look and hope that both the right property and the right circumstances will come along. 

It's been a long time coming and some days it feels like it may not happen for a long time more. 

We continue to search, we continue to hope.  It's just getting harder the longer we go.

The Joys of a Mild Winter

I used to hate mild winters.  In fact, crazy as it sounds, one of the many reasons we moved from the warm southwest to the much colder northwest was because we love having four real seasons.  The first year we lived in Spokane we were literally buried under feet of snow all winter long.  The next winter was much the same.  And then we had virtually no snow for the third winter.  We missed it sorely.

This winter has been a little of both.  November was one of the snowiest on record and we were set for another deep winter - that is, until January arrived warm and wet with rain and sleet but little snow.  We haven't had any significant accumulation since December and the ground is generally bare. 

Last night it snowed for real for the first time in weeks.  It was strange to be reminded that this is truly the middle of winter.  Sadly, though, we woke to see it all melted away in the face of 40 degree rain.  Ah well.

Just as I was sinking into a bit of funk over the weather, as I often do when winter fails to impress, the animals gave me a little pick-me-up.  This last weekend was bright and warm enough that the herd all went out into the pasture for some midday fun.  It was the first time since last fall that we've arrived at the farm and found all of the alpacas out of the barn.  It was weird mucking stalls without first having to kick everyone out into the cold. 

Because of the good weather, we let the older males out into their pasture for the first time in a couple of months.  When snow is on the ground their pasture is a bit too steep for slippery alpaca feet.  Right now though, it is all grass and soft mud, perfect for a little mid-winter romp.  Well, the second that gate was opened I would have sworn that I was letting a pack of kindergartners out for recess.  These are the old men of the herd but they were pronking and bounding up and down the pasture like crias, stopping now and then to tear up the little green shoots that survived their snowy covers, munching happily.  For animals that have subsisted on picked over alfalfa and a little grain now and then, the tender green shoots of grass must have been like candy.

I know I should stop grousing and enjoy the weather, whatever it is.  After seeing the boys' unmitigated joy at being in the sun on snow-free ground, I took the hint and spent some time just watching them and sharing in their joy.

It was a good day.

Beeswax and Farming

Well, the candles continue to seel and people have asked why we use beeswax and not some of the big new flashy waxes like soy or palm - or even that old stand by paraffin.  The answer to this is somewhat complex so rather than bore those of you who don't care, we've made a page on the blog explaining our philosphy as it pertains to wax.  Please feel free to visit our Why Beeswax? page and let us know what you think.

Big Business

It's curious that a simple event such as a farm expo can leave me with simultaneous feelings of both immature joy and contemplative sadness.  Let me explain.

The joy is easy.  What little boy doesn't dream at one point of driving a big truck or a big tractor?  Equipment of all shapes and sizes seems to be the purview of the little boy (and many little girls as well), clearly evident by the fact that nearly a third of the people at the expo were under the age of twelve.  I got to sit at the controls of more than twenty big, expensive farm machines capable of clearing a field in minutes or picking acres of wheat in a single day.  The ten year old in me was thrilled.  There were innumerable knobs and levels to try, pedals to press, hydraulic chairs to bounce in.  It was simple fun.

And then, the mature adult in me kicked in and I was abruptly sad.  This is not as easy to explain as the joy, but I will attempt to be brief.  These various machines and tools are the latest and greatest products of what I know of as "big business farming."  No longer are farmers working several crops on farms smaller than 40 or so acres.  Now, farming so often means working a single crop (wheat/corn/soy) on 500 acres with million dollar machines. (I'm not exaggerating there - a fully equipped combine like the one in the picture costs more than $1.5 million once you factor in attachments and support vehicles).  These machines are so heavy and so massive that they literally crush the life out of the soil, requiring more big, expensive machines to fluff the soil back up again before it will sustain anything other than scrub.  Farmers, in the quest to meet their ever mounting loan balances, work bigger and bigger farms and require bigger and bigger yields to make a profit.  To do this, they add innumerable chemicals to the soil and spray awful insecticides and herbicides on their crops, just to push yields to a level where, in a normal year, they may be able to pay their loan payments.

This can best be exemplified by a common sight at these events - the spray truck.  Some of these are massive, almost as big as this combine, and all exist for a single purpose.  They spray chemicals.  Chemicals to enrich the soil.  Chemicals to kill insects.  Chemicals to kill unwanted plants.  Chemicals to stall ripening for storage of crops.  It goes on and on.  A quarter of a million dollars for a machine that does one thing.  These behemoths don't even have a trailer hitch most times.

It is because of this, among other things, that we are committed to small-scale farming.  We hope to be as organic as we can be.  Although certification is difficult, due to the fact that a single neighbor who uses chemicals can keep you from getting certified, we have the goal of Certified Organic ratings for our cash crops in mind.  We will compost.  We will spread manure.  But we will not buy a million dollar tractor or a quarter-million dollar spray truck.  And while the ten year old in me will shed a tear over that, it's only natural that the adult say no in order to protect the child.  In this case, my inner child will have to cry it out.  We're not doing it.

P.S. I'm not saying the state of things is the farmers' fault.  By no means.  This is a symptom of a greater problem, one I hope to talk about more in a future post.  That is, if you don't mind a little more ranting on my part.

Possible Second Animal

This little angel is Painted Indy.  Unless something untoward happens between now and May, she is most likely our second alpaca purchase.  Check out the cool coloring on this little girl!  She has the most impressive lineage and her full sister is beyond gorgeous.  This picture was taken three days after she was born, but more up-to-date pictures are forthcoming.

A week ago last Saturday my wife had the pleasure of attending the Priority Alpaca Auction in Las Vegas.  Aside from the obvious incongruity of a livestock auction amid slot machines and blackjack tables, it was a great event.  We were saddened to find that the alpaca business has it's crooks like everything else, in this case the not so subtle pressure brought to bear against suri alpacas by the organizers of the event, but it was well tempered by the fact that so many alpaca breeders are so friendly and open.  Everyone was there to have a good time and there is an undercurrent of support for each other, even as we all compete for the same animals and profits.

Little Indy is from Suris of the Western Slopes in Colorado.  We'll probably get to see her in person around May, when we'll make a final decision whether to purchase her or not.  Unless she comes in with something major like a hunched back or twisted hips, I'm pretty sure we'll soon have our second alpaca female.

One Down . . .

We sold our first candle yesterday, after about five minutes on the store shelf too.  Let's hope it keeps up.

Alpacas and People, Crowds Alike

It's striking how a large crowd of any type of mammal tends to resemble any other group of mammals.  When we feed the main herd, we typically kick everyone out of the barn so we can clean and feed in relative peace.  This leads to an inevitable scrum of alpacas at the gate, pushing and shoving to get in and find the choicest morsels.  Ever found yourself waiting to purchase concert tickets at a ticket counter?  It's much the same thing.  The heightened tension, the elevated tempers, the inevitable disappointment when things aren't run exactly as you think they should be.

Once the girls get inside, the parallels continue.  There really isn't much in the way of variety in the average alpaca's diet.  It's always alfalfa, first cut hay, second cut hay, and grain.  So, without the possibility of differing in food choice that humans and other omnivores enjoy, they much differ in their manner of eating.  Some pick the best hay out with their prehensile lips, pulling the grassy first-cut out of the stack no matter how I try to hide it with second-cut on the outside.  Others just dive in, the gluttons of the bunch invariably.  Others eschew the grasses entirely, opting to munch loudly on the grain (followed by much belching and coughing most times).  Sounds like quite a few teenagers I know.  Then there are what we affectionately call the bottom feeders.  They, for whatever reason, believe the best hay is to be had at the bottom of the pile.  These can easily be distinguished by their ever-present toupee of green alfalfa leaves.  Our Sweet 16 happens to be one of these.

Alpacas or people, it's always fun to see the differences and the similarities. 

Sick of the Rush

I was outside this morning chopping up the next round of cardboard boxes for the recycling bin (there are a lot of them when you live states away from family and Christmas has just come and gone) when I was blasted by noise from not one but two full-sized semi trucks whooshing by my house, followed closely by an impatient, engine-revving line of commuters trying desperately to get to work on time.  It struck me how much I have come to dislike the hustle and bustle of city life.  Sure, it's very nice being able to pop down to any of three grocery stores within five minutes of my home.  The availability of good restaurants and entertainment is nice as well.  But I'm just sick and tired of the noise and the constant rush rush rush.  Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone is trying to get somewhere desperately, almost always by car, and anyone who is not in as much of a rush as they are is "in the way."

Seeing as how my primary mode of conveyance, a full-sized pickup truck named Angus, gets about 10 miles to the gallon, I try as much as possible to keep the RPMs under 2,000 when driving .  This means it takes me a bit more time to get going at green lights and it also means that I most often can be found going the speed limit or less.  You would think that I was going five miles an hour by the attitude of drivers behind me.  How dare I go the speed limit!

Ah, well.  This, as is so much else, is temporary.  Some day soon we will leave this metropolitan utopia behind for the country.  I can't wait.

Thanks for tolerating my rant today.  I appear to be in a mood.

Shame On Me

To say we've been busy would be something of an understatement, even for us.  My wife spent last weekend at the Priority Auction in Las Vegas.  It was amazing to learn that so many people in the alpaca world are just like she is - giving, friendly, outgoing, and more than happy to share what they have with anyone who needs it.  She made all kinds of good contacts, had a good time as well, and came back with a line on a new cria that, come summer, may be ours for a good deal. 

For my part, I took care of chickens, children, and all the alpacas at SuperSuris.  I scooped poop, fed, did some minor treatment of goopy eyes and administration of thyroid meds to two crias that seem not to gain weight no matter how much they eat, in addition to taking my daughter to 4H and keeping a five year old from going crazy with boredom.  I mean, you can only watch "Lady and the Tramp" so many times before you go insane, right?

And yet, with all the craziness, it was a successful weekend.  My wife learned a lot and gained a lot of experience in the alpaca world.  All of the SuperSuris' animals were healthy and happy when the Walkers returned home, and my kids had a good weekend in spite of all the work.  My wife is exhausted, I am slightly more exhausted, but there are 180+ happy alpacas humming contentedly away.  We done good.

So why shame on me?  Well, because I neglected this blog for five whole days.  Such things can kill blogs and I've done it to myself.  I promise to do better in the future.

And Yet More Candles

We have the right wick, the right container, the right wax, the right scents.  Now on to massive candle making.  More soon.

The Warm Glow of a Good Lantern

We recently acquired a newly made Dietz lantern.  While there are many sources of light in our home and on our property, I find myself turning to the ol’ Dietz more and more as a source of both light and warmth.  This is the old-fashioned lamp many imagine when they picture old farms and barns, lit by glass-domed lamps, a guttering blade of flame safely ensconced within. 

Sadly, Dietz is no longer made in this country.  In fact, I don’t believe they’ve been made in the US in some time.  A Chinese company manufactures them, as they do so many other things, but thankfully the character and simple usefulness of these lights remains intact.  Sure, the manufacture of these lanterns isn’t as delicate or detailed as it once was, but the simple fact remains that come Hell or high water, we have a warm source of light for the house that can safely burn for hours without our worrying about dripping wax or lighting the drapes afire.

I have found it superior to a flashlight when delving into the chicken coop to fill the feeder or waterer, simply because it broadcasts an even orange light that doesn’t disturb the roosting chickens.  (For those of you who are thinking of getting into chickens, the best time to check them when they’ll stay put and tolerate a little handling is the evening.)   On cold nights the lantern has another use I have found.  The flame, when turned all the way up, generates a fair amount of heat.  This rises into the cap at the top and is diffused upwards towards the hand holding the bale.  This has the wonderful effect of thawing whichever hand is holding the lantern.  Because of this, I often change hands and enjoy at least one warm hand at a time.

A Lovely Day, Manure Notwithstanding

As a favor to our friends at SuperSuris, we will be working as hands on the farm every weekend during the show season.  This is formalizing our working relationship with them, which has been largely casual up 'till now, while possibly allowing us to purchase a second animal.  As their first auction is this weekend, in Las Vegas no less, I spent the weekend bent over a pitchfork, learning all the feeding and cleaning tasks necessary of a given weekend. 

Far from an onerous task, cleaning the barns has the ancillary benefit of allowing me to interact with the animals and to work alongside them, complete with their curious glances and intent hums.  I quickly found that by singing they would cluster around, trying to figure out what I was doing.  I got to know so many of them that I haven't seen much of that it was well worth the smell and the hard work.

On the many trips to the manure pile I made sure to stop and look around me.  The snow has nearly all melted, thanks to an unseasonably warm front which brought us a week of rain, and all the moisture is rising out of the ground as a low lying fog.  It is at times both eerie and beautiful and an earnest sampling of the spring to come.  The alpacas were enjoying the temporary thaw, pronking and prancing all over the fields they have mostly abandoned due to the snow and ice.  I loved it.

Two Wonderful Programs

For those of you interested in small farming and historical farming methods, there are two wonderful programs produced in England and made available on YouTube.  Both are in several parts, but all of them are on YouTube in order and they are well worth watching.  The first, called Victorian Farm, follows three modern folks, all with background historical knowledge (historians, archeologists, etc.) living on a Victorian era farm and living the life of a Victorian farmer.  The second series, called Edwardian Farm, is a sequel to the first in which the same three people try to live as Edwardians in a similar situation.  I think what strikes me most is the effort taken by the producers to reproduce the lifestyle and society in which these people would have operated very completely.  They often have friends and experts and family visit the show, but everyone is in period dress and the technology and methods are all period as well.  They are both a fascinating study in historic farming and I've learned a few things we plan to apply to our own operation once we get up and running. 

Here are the links to the first episode of both shows.  Watch them.  Devour them.  I have.

Victorian Farm on YouTube
Edwardian Farm on YouTube

The Business of the Farm

I knew that farming wasn’t like anything we had done before.  I had read the stories, the books, the blogs.  I came in to this expecting, nay wanting something different.

The timelines are longer yet slower, continuous but cyclical, and strenuous and relaxing all at the same time.  But what I truly didn’t expect was the business aspect of farming.  It’s surprisingly like every other business I have begun or worked.  The same records must be kept, the same conscious thought towards the bottom line, the same movement towards the biggest benefit for the least amount of work.  It’s so much like business that the term agribusiness seems much more applicable sometimes than agriculture.

And yet, beyond the business aspects of farming, there is an intrinsic benefit that the farmer receives from his or her work that cannot be quantified in terms of money or time.  I see it every time my wife sighs contentedly after spending a day in the barns, wrestling with crias.  I feel it every time I sit down after a long day of shoveling hay and manure (of all things).  I see it in my kids’ sleepy eyes as they attempt to stay awake in the back of the truck on our long drive home. 

The simple fact that we work with our hands and our bodies much more than our minds leaves us tired but content at the end of the day.  Spicing our days afield are the stolen moments when we look up from what we are doing and take in the simple beauty of a farm and the countryside.  In contrast, after a long day working at our “day jobs” my wife and I can’t help feel harried and stressed as we try to cram time in for the kids, a meal, and all the various little jobs that keep a house running into the few hours we have between coming home and going to bed.

Our time on the farm and our hard work there has led us to feel less contented with our urban life and to look forward to our short rural weekends more and more.  I guess that’s the point.

Alpacas in the Dark

A funny thing happens to the herd when the sun goes down.  Even when we are still working and the floodlights are on in the barn, the mothers and their babies definitely know that night is nigh.  The babies, often ranging around in their own groups away from their mothers, go back to their mothers’ side and hang close from then on.  The constant grunting and jockeying for the best spots at the trough die down and the low hum of contented alpacas soon takes over.  Slowly, imperceptibly almost, everything slows down and we’re left with the soft rustle of feet on straw and a few contented hums from nursing babies.

I was lucky enough to both be present at this time but also to have my camera with me.  The shot you see above gives some of the feeling of that time of day.

Once we had our own young safely belted in the truck and were ready to leave, I called out “Goodnight, Alpacas.”  I was rewarded with a short chorus of hums, followed quickly by silence. 

Here’s to moms with babies and happy humming.

Winter Sleeps

The terms sleep and winter seem to go together in the modern ethos.  We talk of the quiet of winter with words like blanket, cover, hibernation, slumber – heck, I’ve done that myself (see prior posts).  However, the weather this week has given me a new meaning of “winter sleeps.”  We’ve had an unseasonably warm week, with temperatures in the high 30’s and rain for the last two days.  Much of the snow has melted into sticky slush yet again and the drip drop from the rapidly shrinking icicles is a constant accompaniment.

However, spring has definitely not sprung.  Winter merely sleeps and will soon return in all its normal force. 

We’re supposed to see snow tomorrow, rapidly decreasing temperatures, and the return of heavy snow by Wednesday.  For my part, I wish it comes back stronger than before.  Having grown up in Southern California, I feel cheated whenever the snow on the ground doesn’t hold through the entire season.  Of course, no longer having to negotiate that snow with a small commuter car does help my outlook in heavy winter weather, but that’s beside the point.

Time for Candlemaking

Although we ordered our supplies from three different places at three different times, all three boxes arrived together yesterday.  The jars are beautiful, the wicks look large enough, and the scents . . . oh the scents.  My wife and I gave ourselves headaches smelling all of them last night.  They're a little potent in raw form but they will be wonderful once they're encased in beeswax.

Now begins the easy part, pouring the samples for the farms to which we plan to market the candles.  Whether they sell or not, one thing is for sure - our house is going to smell wonderful for the next few days while we mix and pour the candles.  The last time I poured the pumpkin souffle candles we all gained a few pounds - the sugary scent caused us all to overeat for a few days.

A New Year

Things are clearly changing on the farm, for the better we hope.  Our weekends, while still filled with our own chores as well as what we do up at SuperSuris to help them out, are less hectic and more varied – especially so as the store at SuperSuris will now be ‘by appointment.’  There just aren’t enough shoppers to keep the store open through the whole year.  Not yet, anyway.

Most of the other farms in Green Bluff are doing something similar – most having shut down until next fall.  Now is the time for recovery before the inevitable rush of prepping the fields and sowing the next crop.  The wheat fields are all covered in a blanket of snow, a condition that will likely continue through April at least, probably later.  The orchards are bare, the canes free of both berries and leaves, and everything sleeps under its frozen coverlet, waiting for the sun to be warm again and for the wind to stop blowing.

And yet, life for the alpacas continues.  Babies must be halter trained (as comedic as that can be on snow and ice), health needs must be seen to, and the endless shoveling in of hay and out of droppings must continue.  In one thing the care of the animals is a bit easier.  Because the ground is well covered by snow, and because alpacas are notably shy about slippery surfaces, they largely stay in the barns, limiting the piles of droppings from the widely spread piles of fall to only a few spots in the barn.  This makes cleaning easier but simultaneously smellier, as the stench is concentrated.  Still, it takes less time to clean up and feed as it did during the fall.

Only two babies still have blankets tied securely to their backs.  The rest are fleeced out and happily munching hay alongside their compatriots.  The weanlings are starting to get used to the idea that they no long have access to “mom” and her seemingly endless supply of milk.  Things are definitely settling down into a routine.