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.