I’ll happily argue about anthropogenic global warming, and real food, and what

was

the USDA thinking when they approved “Roundup Ready”. But I don’t actually have to.

The whole Green Revolution was a one off, that, in exchange for a one time increase in yields, stuck farmers all over the world with buying seed for cash money, and fertilizer for cash money, and praying for better than average rain every year. Hey, it works in Lake Woebegone. That instead of saving seed for free, and growing a cover crop and praying that the rain was just OK instead of actually sucking. Sound like a win to you?

Norman Borlaug went down to Mexico and saw the hungry people there. So he bred a super yielding hybrid wheat. Rock on, dude. Problem was, the seed heads were too heavy for the stalk, so it broke and became unharvestable. (The technical term is ‘lodged’.) Ok, he was a smart guy. He bred dwarf hybrids, so the stalk was stiff enough to hold up the heavier seed head. However, grass (wheat, rice, maize, barley, and several more) plants are very symmetrical. The roots are the same size as the plant above ground. Make the stalk half as high and the roots go half as deep.

So, there you are. Buy seed instead of growing the stuff your grandpa grew. Hope you make enough extra to pay for it. You have much more yield per acre, which needs more NPK to grow. Buy synthetic fertilizer instead of growing an off season cover crop. Hope you make enough extra to pay for it.

The dwarf roots don’t reach the subsoil to pull up the minerals. No worries, the government agronomists won’t tell your customers about the micronutrients they’re not getting. A carrot is a carrot, just ask the USDA.

Then, it doesn’t rain one year. The expensive dwarf 100 bushel an acre variety gives you ten bushels an acre, because it can’t reach water. Your grandpa’s (free) 50 bushel an acre variety gives you 45 because its’ roots went two foot deeper and found water.

Can you keep the home place?

I’m amazed by the number of words my Icelandic Sheepdogs know.

I’m also amazed by their memory, and their ability to solve a problem needing many complex tasks.

Just a few examples.

I was sitting on the steps dumping yogurt for the pigs. It gets sort of crazy, with big bags of trash, cardboard, buckets, etc. in the entrance way, but it’s still too cold to do it outside, so we just try to clean up after ourselves. But anyway, Disa’s favorite way to pass the time is to play with a squeaky ball. She loves to get under a pile of cardboard and squeak away. And it still works like a pacifier for her, so after a few minutes, she’ll fall asleep, usually at the top of the stairs, where she can keep an eye on me.

Today, she was squeaking it in front of me, and it went through the stairs riser, down into the basement below. She was puzzled. How did that happen? She found the crack, tried to look down, but it was a small one and she could only peer with one eye. Then she sat up, looked at me and barked and I told her to go get it.

The door to the stairs are a few feet away, heading 90 degrees from where the ball fell. The door was closed, but she knows how to open doors. It took her a while, though. Then she raced down, found the ball in our crazy full basement in about 20 seconds, and reappeared with the ball.

I played keep away with her for a minute (which she loves) and when I got the ball I put it through the hole. She ran down the stairs and got it and then wouldn’t let me have it again. Ha. Smarty.

This afternoon, we were talking about needing gas for the chainsaw and Frank said he was going to go to Bonnie’s. The dogs’ ears perked up. I thought they knew the word “store”, but they obviously also know “Bonnie’s”, too.

I said I’d come along for the ride, and we’d let the dogs ride in back. It’s just a mile to the store, all in town and they love to do that. (Yes, that is now illegal here, but there is a specific exemption if we are doing a farm job for which a dog is necessary. It was farm business, and the dogs believe they are necessary.)

When we went downstairs, I joked with them that how did they know they were going? They didn’t buy it. I wasn’t going to crush their hopes of going “bye-bye” and they knew it. (When they know they won’t get to go, they both look at me with sad puppy eyes and ears down and droopy. So sad.)

We of course found 20 things to do before we could leave. We had a lamb out, hungry ducks, and I spotted my wayward Chantecler hen where I could catch her. (Man. She does not like the rooster we kept, Pierre. She’s always wanting a handsome Icelandic Rooster, the hussy. But if I don’t get her egg, she doesn’t get to live here, so back she goes with the rest of the Chantees.)

When we finally headed to the truck to leave, they ran to the back of the truck, waiting for me to open the tailgate. Usually, they run to the door. How did they know? I had no clue they understood when I said “ride in back”. I actually can’t remember talking about it before — usually I just do it on my own, because I’m usually alone with them.

I think I must say something when I open up the window from inside the truck and let them go in back, but I sure don’t remember it. I thought I just opened it up. I’ll often leave them in the back of the truck while I run into the feed store or the grocery store. They stay really nicely, and if anyone comes up to them that they don’t like, they’ll get back into the front of the truck.

I knew they knew lots of words. They know sheep by the category and by name, and the same with the cows and pigs. If we have a critter out and want them to go round them up, we’ll say “go get the pigs” or “go get the sheep”, and they’ll go rolling out the door at full speed and go either left or right, depending. (Man, that’s handy. Man, I’m about to have Easter goose if that girl doesn’t stop trying to nest on the deck right next to the outlet and insisting on pulling the plug to the fence charger. Frank put a compressor in front of it to block her and she still managed, somehow.)

I’ve been spending a lot of time running the evaporator lately, which gives me lots of time to throw sticks. But they are too smart and too energetic and I give them harder and harder challenges. I never throw the stick some place easy. No, no. I make sure they see me throw it, and throw it into the most difficult place I can manage. A brush pile, on the other side of the fence, in deep snow, behind the stone wall. They always bring the same stick back. They’ll play tug of war with it for a while until it’s eventually destroyed and then I tell them to bring me another.

They’ll bring a new one, and I’ll usually reject it. “No. That’s too small/big/heavy/rotten.” They’ll go get another one. It’s hard when the sticks are mostly buried in the snow and ice, but they’ll work at it. (Disa gives me this look when she “finds” a stick and wants me to play with her when I’m busy doing something else. “Wow! Look what I found out here, a STICK!!! Let’s play!)

What a year he’s had!

He had a great year. We learned that he’s a great daddy, not that we ever doubted it. He loves babies of all types, after all, but he thinks baby dogs are The Bomb. He babysat them all the time. He played with them. He showed them how to play with Maggie. He showed them how to swim. He was such a joy around them.

He’s still a bad boy wanderer, though. Damn it. If you take your eyes off of him because you are busy with something else, half the time he’ll head down to the village, with or without his ball. Everyone in the village is so nice to him and they are so many dogs to play with that it’s really hard to compete with that. He’s such a houdini, with the digging and climbing. We thought we’d just keep tethering him, but he’s managed out of that lately, and keeps losing collars. (and tags)

He’s a great help around the farm. He knows “pigs” generally and “Albus” or “Minnie” specifically. It’s the same with the sheep. He gives kisses on command if I say “Oh, give her a kiss”. His whole backside waggle, waggle, waggles.

He can ignore a gaudy gaggle of geese forever, but the two tom turkeys, Randy and Dandy, get on his very last nerve.

He still loves sticks and balls, frisbees. He wants to be squirt with a hose, no matter how cold it is. He loves to swim. And run. Dig. He loves snow. He digs a spot under a shed to stay cool in the summer.

He likes to go bye-bye. He likes to hang out the window. If I say “shake” while he’s hanging out, he puts his paw up so his fan club often thinks he’s waving at them.

We call him Bjarki-boy. Bad boy. Bjarki-my-lad. Jeremy. (there seems to be one slot for “small male family member” in our brains.)

He still jumps up on you, damn it. Rarely on me, often on Frank, always on everyone else. I wish I knew how to break that habit. It’s really irritating. He treats everyone like his very best friend. He loves everyone. Yup, even you. Everyone loves him, too.

1. My Three Pyrs,
2. Bjarki-boy
3. Happy Furry Friday!
4. Going to the dump!
5. Foxy Bjarki
6. Geese? What are you talking about?
7. Checking out Minnie
8. Learning about digging
9. Bjarki & Roki
10. Open Wide!
11. Bad Boy Bjarki
12. Let’s play ball!
13. My brave boys

We charge top dollar for all of our products.

Note first that that is top dollar in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire: our prices produce gasps in Missouri and Manhattan for exactly opposite reasons.

We’ve decided we like to farm, so it needs to pay. Bringing in the dotcom dollars from away is more work and less fun every year. We’re farming here. We can’t sell out and move anywhere else better. Even before the great recession it didn’t make sense to start again someplace else, giving up twenty years of knowing the land and knowing the neighbors. Moving back the the city after all these years is not plan C, but more like plan Q.

So, we’re animal farming. There are too many rocks and not enough soil even for a CSA. We have a great raised bed garden. We hope to double it next year. It will cover its cash cost and feed us very well. But, no taxes, no fuel for the truck or tractor, and really not a balanced diet.

So there we are. We also simply can’t compete on price with the factory farms. A few people manage to sell eggs at supermarket prices, using bought feed, but I question how much money they are actually making. Therefore we must sell top quality for top dollar.

We personally have never gotten any flack for that business plan, but I see others catching it all around. We are producing really good food, but it’s only available to the comfortably off. Certainly, we’re doing nothing for the really hard up.

First, that’s only partially true. There are many people choosing to eat factory food and spend the extra money on something else, whether ordering pizza or having the latest smartphone and its $150/month service plan. Second, the local/high quality food system is still being built. Industrial organic food has only reached critical mass in the last few years. Fresh and local still has a long way to go. It will become more affordable as the infrastructure grows, just as industrial organic has.

But the real issue is that people who raise good food need to be able to make a living at it, or it won’t happen.

I didn’t do a single thing today really to help with the actual farming. Poor Frank had to do everything by himself, and all I did was nag to be sure he didn’t forget anything.

Well, I did one thing. The local college emptied out their walk-in refrigerator and we got a bunch of containers of hard-boiled eggs. I’ve been mixing them with either sour cream or cottage cheese (both from the same clean-out) and we’ve been feeding them to the chickens. So I managed to stand long enough to get a batch made for both chicken coops.

Other than that, I’ve been listening to Frank do everything. It’s amazing what I can tell is happening from the sounds I can hear from inside the house. When he brings the ducks and geese water, there is much rejoicing. WATER! WATER!

He cut the tree out of the tractor, and all of the sheepies went nuts. They are convinced that if a chainsaw is running, surely it’s to bring them tree-tops for treats, no? Uh, no, sheepies. There are no leaves in the winter, sorry. But he bashed open a bunch of butternut squash for them, and despite being frozen, they all went away. Everyone has orange noses. They are so cute. I love having them up near the house.

He fed the pigs just twice today, I think. We got a whole bunch of potatoes and have been heating the house by cooking them.

It’s so weird for me to not have stepped outside even once today, but I’m not moving well. I’m more sore today than I was yesterday, which I guess is no surprise. I’ve got a goose egg on the top of my head, and I know my goose eggs, so no exaggeration there! I started getting muscle cramps and spasms, called the doctor (and apologized for calling on Christmas!) and Frank drove to town to pick me up some muscle relaxers and visited his mom at the same time.

Disa has decided that the only way I will heal is to have her either on my lap or I should occupy myself by throwing her ball. She’s got a captive audience after all, and is making the very most of it. I miss my big white fluffy puppies but I’m in grim enough shape that I just can’t manage to go outside on the snow. The thought of falling is terrifying.

Jeremy is in New Jersey celebrating the holidays there with his girlfriend’s family, and is going to come up tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be horrid, so now I’ve got another thing to worry about, but it will be so good to see him.

We kept the Chantecler chickens locked in their coop for a couple of weeks, hoping to get them bonded both to the coop and to Pierre, the one Chantecler rooster we kept. Lisa optimized on ‘nice’ and ‘large’. I warned her about that, nice roosters get laid about as often as nice guys.

Saturday we finally caught the last of the Icie boys with their horned helmets and motorcycles, so on Sunday I let the Chanteclers out. Despite the miserable weather they trickled out of the coop and wandered about. It was sufficiently miserable that I let a few roost in the tree, hoping they would get the hint, and go back to their coop. No joy. Monday it stopped raining. By the time I went to close up the coop, every single one of them (including Pierre) was asleep somewhere else.

Today they didn’t even go back and check out their coop. They scrounged food and water from the other birds and bedded down outside again. Half of them were in the tree and quite happy looking, the other half on the bench on the porch, unhappy looking but not going in.

We grabbed them and threw them back in the coop. We have a problem here.

You know about Freecycle, right?

It’s a bonanza for farmers, I tell you.

I’ve gotten a big old bathtub to use for watering pigs. Tip that over, Hermione.

A truck cap that I hope to turn into a chicken coop.

A frame for a trailer that I can’t wait to have.

I’ve gotten random pieces of fencing and chicken wire.

Freezers and refrigerators.

A dog bed for Maggie.

Today it was a truckload of hay that we can use for bedding.

I’ve also given a bunch of stuff — as the kids moved out and we cleaned out their rooms — custom built Iguana cage, anyone?

I really need to go through my wardrobe and pass most of it on. I can’t quite wrap my head around the size I actually am, though, nor believe I really won’t need all those suits again some day.

Anyway, Freecyle: Good! I follow both the Claremont one and the Monadnock one.

We have our first farm-bred goslings! Two of the geese had already abandoned their nests when the one in the middle of the foundation hole hatched eight goslings on Tuesday. All six grown up geese are ecstatic. We are too.

We think we’ve figured out what will get us four clutches next year: 1. Toulouse geese need more than a foot of water to mate in. The geese are happy with six inches, but the eggs won’t be fertile and 2. The geese lay on the ground and picked a very wet spot to nest in. I picked up several light eggs that probably started to develop and then drowned. Next year we plan to pen them in a dry spot with a heated cattle water tank. This will also let us collect the early eggs which we can sell or eat ourselves. Geese live about forty years and we’ve heard that Toulouse in particular don’t take well to inbreeding, so our current goal is to get our current flock breeding reliably before we think about expanding it.

Ella Mae is unfortunately no longer with us. Lisa will write about that anon.

We have Danny on mowing duty. We have a lot of edges where grass is finally growing, mostly unfenced, mostly small. So we’ve been tethering him in each patch for a few hours to a few days depending on size. He seems to like it, as well he ought compared to the balage he’s been living on. He does have a spectacular ability to get himself tangled though.

Speaking of balage, our hay guy has 100 bales left from last year. We’re buying them, at a discount of course. That should get us comfortably through the winter. Of course we still need dry hay for the horses as well.

The primary time sink continues to be the garden. All the beds from last year are planted. We’ve added another 90 feet of raised bed. 65 feet have 65 tomato plants in them, the rest have strawberries. The tomatoes are planted through black plastic, and like the strawberries are very very happy. I’ve milled all the logs that John the Logger left us in 2008 and I have 162 feet of 6×6 to make more bed. We have many plants in flats in the hoop house that need homes. We don’t have the soil immediately available, but we have a backhoe and need stock ponds.

Lisa has also planted 6 flower boxes on the main deck, and 6 boxes of lettuce on the upper balcony. We need to pick up more potting soil before we do more window boxes.

May is ‘Get in the Garden’ month here. The last frost date used to be Memorial Day, but over the last few years it’s been more like May 15. We’re hoping that last night’s frost was the last, but we’ll be holding the tomatoes and peppers indoors for at least a week to be sure.

We’ve got all but one of the existing raised beds planted to early cold crops. We’re saving one bed with trellis for the cukes. We have given up on the “As early as the ground can be worked” thing, too. It doesn’t actually pay. If you wait two more weeks until most days are actually pleasant you only lose a couple of days growing time, and your germination is way better.

The garlic planted last fall is up and looking great, despite being snowed on and frozen several times. We’re trying to figure out why we didn’t plant three times as much. In 2005 we didn’t harvest soon enough. This time we’ll get it right (July) and save most of it for next years seed.

The chickens are uprooting onion plants left and right, which is driving us crazy. You only get one shot at onions, and we didn’t plant enough of them either. This afternoon we patched all the places the chickens are using to get into the garden, but they can still fly over the gates. Probably most of the fence as well, but the gates are shorter and flying is work if you’re a chicken. We’re hoping to at least have fewer of them in the garden.

The horseradish is doing great. Since we only use a quart a year, there should be a big surplus to split for future sale. Only one rhubarb plant survived (How can that be? It’s almost as tough as horseradish.) We’ve planted 5 more, three from Jung, two from Miller’s. The ones from Jung were perfectly fine little plants, but the ones from Miller were monster chunks of root albeit without much in the way of buds. I know which is which and we’ll how they look next year.

I remember posting last year that the purple asparagus was gone. It isn’t. There’s quite a bit of it left and we just planted another bundle of it from Agway to replace the ones the geese ate last year. The All-Male is all ferned out already, while the purple is still just shoots. We’re still getting new shoots on a daily basis. Next year, we eat some.

Today’s accomplishment was to extend the asparagus bed and plant 50 strawberry plants, 25 each June bearers and everbearers. We’re hoping the everbearers at least give us a crop this year.

We have two impossible and one hard thing to do between now and Memorial Day. Last year’s potato patch is supposed to be sweet corn this year. It’s full of grass and too many rocks to rototill. We have a place to put the tomatoes and peppers, but it needs raised beds. About six of them. And they’ll block the tractor from the corn patch. The hard part is planting 100 lbs of potatoes over in the pigs garden. We need to trench, and I think we need to trench by hand. It’s wonderful soil but there are rocks (boulders or ledge, don’t know, doesn’t matter) eight foot in diameter out there.

The season started early. There was a big run on Feb 28 that we missed. It was March 2 before we were fully tapped, which would have been fine the previous two years. Next year start tapping on Feb 15.

The warm weather in mid March was the end for a lot of people. Being in Marlow, we got another run in the cold weather at the end of the Month. The early stuff was light, and had a wonderful complex delicate flavor, I’d say the best we’ve ever made. The stuff at the end was grade B, black and strong maple flavor. (Note: Vermont grade B has an implication of off flavors. In New Hampshire the spec is only strong and dark, no off flavor allowed.) We kept some of both, for different purposes.

I don’t think the sap was as sweet this year as in prior years. We seemed to put in more sap per gallon of syrup than other years. I tapped half a dozen red maples this year, mostly when I needed a tree to hold up tubing and the available tree was a red maple. I don’t think I tapped enough to explain the lower sugar level. (I tapped a few silver maples by mistake in 2008. Their sap is not sweet, but there’s also almost none of it, so it didn’t actually affect the sweetness.)

I was able to get the tractor up the snowmobile trail this year for the first time. That let me add about 25 taps up there, which was good because the fence cut off a bunch of our Mack Hill Rd. taps.

We lost a lot of sap last year because I wasn’t here to bring it in before the buckets overflowed. This year I was here, but had to empty some buckets twice a day. Next year I want a gallon per tap of storage in the woods, and as much again up here. Then we can take a day off even during a good flow.

I pulled the last of the taps on April 12 and two or three trees were still running.