The late cukes are where the peas were.  The mesclun mix, instead of bolting, has actually gone on producing beautifully, so I can’t take that out.  The herb beds are already crammed tight – half of what’s in them is going to come out again and be moved into other beds, also not yet built.  I had another herb bed, but it turned out the dogs really liked to lie on it, and dogs are not good mulch, just in case you didn’t know.  Everything there had to come out  – I may still be able to make it work, but now I have to raise the beds up.

The green beans I hoped would be ready to come out aren’t yet, so I don’t have their space, and I have already cut down on zucchini plants – one needs extras in July, but by August, they aren’t worth it.  The sweet corn will be out soonish, but not yet.  So what’s a girl to do, but dig, dig, dig.

I’ve also got to set up another rabbit cage – the little doe that came out of Rosemary’s last kindling needs to be moved out before Rosemary has her second batch of babies.  I’m planning to buy another doe and buck this year – maybe from she of the bunnies if she’s got stock (hi Michelle), but I want to check out the fair first in a couple of weeks.

We’re harvesting all the good stuff  – the one advantage of a hot, dry summer is all the stuff I usually struggle with is doing really well.  My first eggplant is ready.  I’m getting enough tomatoes for salads, if not yet for canning.  The basil is exploding, and it is time for pesto making.  The hot peppers are booming – yay – speaking as a serious pepper-head, this is a real novelty and a joy. Hot sauce and salsa, here I come!

The rain hasn’t been ample, but it has mostly been enough to get along, and we’ve got more coming.  I hear an inch tomorrow – woohoo!  I’m trying to keep up with the herbs, and while they don’t dry quite as fast as I’d like in the drying room (previously known as the mudroom) the quality is great – green, fragrant, perfect.   

The boys are excited about naming all the baby goats.  We’ve decided that this year’s theme will be herbs and flowers.  We’re keeping the best of Frodo’s boys as a buckling, since Frodo is getting on in goat years and we’re a bit paranoid about losing his brilliant genetics.  The boys quite innocently suggested that we could name a buck “Goldenrod” or “Mandrake” and I admit, Eric and I had a good laugh on that. 

It is time to order my garlic and fall bulbs – I always get ornamental bulbs as part of my birthday present (in a couple of weeks) and this year we’re planning on radically expanding our garlic production.  The rest of the garlic is just about ready to harvest, and that’s tomorrow’s job.  The major challenge here is keeping the garlic out of Eli’s hands – he loves the long stems to play with.

I’m going to set up a segment of this blog to show farm products for sale and goat genetics and things, if I can pull it off, and ideally lots of pictures!  All of this is coming just as soon as I actually get time for it – but that will have to be soon, because there’s a nagging feeling in the back of my brain that I have a book contract to deal with at some point .  Best get things done soon.

Plant something: Echinacea, eclipta, mesclun, turnips, beets, kale, broccoli, peas, scallions, lettuce, arugula, daikon, kohlrabi.

Harvest something: Tomatoes, eggplant, basil, mesclun, zucchini, summers quash, green beans, carrots, daikon, new potatoes, bok choy, lettuce, meadowsweet, yarrow, mongolian yarrow, holy basil, mint, curry plant, sage, plums, raspberries, blueberries, eggs.

Preserve something: Dried many herbs, made blueberry-honey, blueberry jam and blueberry crisp filling.  Dried blueberries.  Made rhubarb sauce.  Dried peaches.  Made red currant jelly.  Saved pea seed.  Froze eggs.

Waste Not: Cleaned out the old stable for its transition to buck and winter poultry housing, and put the remaining old bedding in the garden.  Otherwise, the usual composting, mending, etc…

Want Not: Nothing new

Build Community Food Systems: Spoke at a hearing on a local community garden proposal – I think they’re going to get one.  Began pestering folk at my shul about setting up a community garden onsite.

Eat the Food: Making a lot of potato salads – I don ‘t like mayo, so they tend to be with a mustardy vinagrette instead – I really like the one with capers, garlic and last year’s dried tomatoes.

How about you?

Sharon

We spent the last few days enjoying ourselves with family in the Boston area – end ended with a wonderful family bash to celebrate my Great Aunt Sally’s 90th birthday.  When I was a kid I took such family occasions, and the pictures they always made us take for granted – but now I keep thinking “how many 90th birthday parties will I get to go to?”  The elders of my own childhood are mostly gone now, and every remaining member of my grandparents’ generation is someone my kids will remember only through the lens of childhood .

We stopped as we often do, at Old Sturbridge Village on our way there, a living history museum that reproduces life in the 1830s.  Because Sturbridge is just about halfway between my parent’s house and our house, it is a place we can all meet in the middle (which we do a couple of times a year), and also a great stopping point on a long car trip - it comes just about at the point the words “he’s touching me” start coming from the backseat.

My kids love Sturbridge and so do I.  When I was a child, it was also almost exactly between my home and my Grandmothers’ home in Waterbury, CT, so many of my childhood memories focus on Sturbridge.  My sons particularly love the Parsonage – one of the houses with a lovely garden and a traditional attic room with two beds.  The first time we went through the interpreter said “how many kids do you think would sleep here?  Probably four.”  She clearly expected the kids to be shocked at the idea of everyone not having their own beds, but my boys just laughed and said that was just how they sleep.  So since then the kids like to pretend they live at the Parsonage.

The days before we went were busy, trying to keep up and get ahead and deal with the extreme heat.   Now that we’re back and the kids are going to camp and other summer programs (half day for the three younger ones), Eric and I are looking forward to three hours every single morning to devote to the farm and farm work. 

We must build a buck pen.  We must build another kidding pen.  We must clean out the back area of the barn, which until recently had a wood cookstove in it (which has now found a new home – yay!) so we can move the winter milking back there and also set up beds for the dogs.  We are having friends over to install our new manual well pump on Thursday.  The sheep are arriving tomorrow, along with Xote the guard donkey, and there is fence work to do in the meantime.  There are garden beds to build and fall seeds to start.  There’s plenty for us.

The cherries are done for the season, the peaches and apricots are nearly ripe.  The black currants are ripe as well, despite heavy depredations by the goats (they will be moved ASAP, but until this year they’d been ignored).  Tomatoes are starting to come ripe, zucchini are in full swing and the beans are in progress.  We’ve also been eating the best mesclun mix I’ve ever had – called “the kitchen sink” by Pinetree seeds, it has a strong emphasis on my favorite, spicy parts – arugula, mustard, etc… plus pea shoots, asian greens and even a little lettuce .

Summer is settled in to stay.  The babies are coming.  Life is good.  And although the trips have been fun (and the last one should be too) we’re almost home for the rest of it.  I’m glad to be here.

Onwards:

Plant something – I didn’t plant much of anything due to the heat.  Started some broccoli and asian greens indoors.

Harvest something: Tomatoes, yarrow, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, the last of the snap peas, onions, green garlic, motherwort, mongolian yarrow, lemon balm, lemon verbena, sour cherries, raspberries.

Preserve something; Dried herbs, made cherry pie filling.

Waste Not: Nothing unusual.

Want Not: Made our usual Boston-area run of the awesome local Savers.  Found pjs for the kids, pants without giant holes for the husband, tshirts for Eli, pants for children with no behinds to hold them up for the other boys .

Eat the Food: Ate my Moms’ delicious food, including fish from their seafood CSA.  Can I just say how jealous I am?  Also ate what we call salsa salad a *lot* (we call it that because it started out as a salsa, but we eventually decided we just liked it plain) – chopped tomatoes, beans (black, pinto or whatever you like) and sweet onion (we use a variety called “candy”) mixed with lime juice, salt, a little sugar and chipotles.    We usually eat this with corn on the cob and salad.

Build community food systems:  Nada, although I got to see the results of my step-mother’s hard work on her community garden expansion – that was awesome!

So how about you?

Sharon

The strawberries have that end-of-season, very slightly past-prime taste, but they still make wonderful jam and dry beautifully.  And Isaiah brought over the first handfull of wild raspberries yesterday afternoon, and each of us got one, full of promise to come.

My kids are big fruit eaters, and we try to minimize our out-of-season fruit eating (we are not perfect by any means in this regard).  This means that my children have been eating apples more or less non-stop since last August as their primary fresh fruit.  There were some oranges and bananas in winter, there were fall raspberries, pears and quinces and the dried and canned fruit from last summer, but berries, cherries, peaches – these have not been part of our lives for many months.  The anticipation means that when they arrive, they are a bliss, and we enjoy them fully.

It is also time for the first wave of serious herb harvesting at our place.  Since medicinals are a big deal for us (and I hope will be a big part of the farm sales), they are taking up more and more time.  This week we set up our drying room – the glassed-in mudroom off my kitchen.  We closed it up and locked it and its southern exposure keeps the room hot enough to dry herbs very quickly – and since rapid drying is essential to keeping them green and fresh, we’ve been really happy with it. Eric set up  strings running across the roof, and I use rubber bands to hook the bunches of plant material hanging, while trays of flowerheads and smaller materaisl rest underneath.  So far, it has been a howling success.

We managed local zucchini today, and I have one tiny one and several blossoms, so I’m hopeful.  It amazes me how exciting zucchini is in June and how annoying in August .   We’re still putting in the new beds, but now I’m starting to think about fall crops – I still have a few summer ones to go, along with the perennials that I am establishing for for next year’s medicinal harvest.  Most of the summer garden is in, but there’s always a few late things that we are running behind with.

The goats are dry, and we are enjoying the break from milking.  When we go back, we’ll have seven does in milk, so we’ve decided to milk only once a day – less milk per doe, but enough for and plenty for the kids, and less work.  We don’t mind milking twice a day, but if we don’t  need to, we’ll be grateful to have evening chores shortened a bit, especially with more goats adding time.

I’m waiting for a cool day to rebreed Rosemary – she’s ready for another breeding and her babies are getting big and cute.  But bunnies don’t like heat and it can reduce male fertility, and we’ve been having a warm spell – I gather it will be cooler next week and am waiting for that.  

After Eric’s birthday party on Sunday we had an unbelievable amount of leftover lasagna and goodies – so we’ve barely cooked at all.  This has been lovely and the kids are thrilled with all the unaccustomed treats (not to mention the strawberry-rhubarb pie and ice cream my sister provided yesterday).  The supply is finally petering down, though, and we’ll go back to cooking – but not much to say about that this week.

Otherwise, just the usual, plant and harvest, preserve and plant some more. Starting seeds for fall crops, trying to get everything in the ground…it is all an endless but richly enjoyable project.

Plant something: Elecampane, tomatoes, eggplant, okra, melons, kale, broccoli, beans, flax, clover, amaranth, sunflowers, horehound, yarrow, goji berries, peppers, ginko.

Harvest something: Peas, eggs, kale, bok choy, lettuce, beets, strawberries, cherries, yarrow, motherwort, catnip, lemon balm, chamomile, calendula, red clover, yellow bedstraw, mint, betony.

Preserve something: Made more strawberry rhubarb jam, froze snap peas, dried strawberries, dried many herbs.

Waste Not: Nothing unusual, except eating down the party food.

Want Not: Nothing unusual – very party focused.  We didn’t even make it to our synagogue yard sale, usually a seasonal highlight.

Eat the Food: Yup, we ate food.  Nothing really exciting though, although I made a lovely black bean and corn salsa with the very last of our frozen corn.  Ok, ready for corn season again!

Build community food systems:  Some discussion of a community garden at our synagogue, which I really want to happen, and a bunch of radio stuff.  But I’ve got something bigger on the back burner, waiting for time to make it simmer.

How about you?

Sharon

And after that, we had to move all the furniture around so that Phil the official housemate of Gleanings farm could move in, which he did this afternoon.  He was here for three whole hours before taking off to spend four days with his girlfriend, but I gather this won’t be typical. 

Phil wants to learn to farm, so he was very nervous that we would have done all the planting before he got here.  He begged me to make sure there was still some planting left to do…oh, Phil, you innocent .

A lot got planted last week, not as much this one, since we’ve been tired and busy with other things, but I’m hopeful that the week that runs from tomorrow morning to next Friday will be good – before I head off for Washington DC next Friday.

We finally had some rain day before yesterday, which we desperately needed, and there’s hope for a bit more – we could really use it.  The weather has been so hot and dry it has been tough on the transplants and the early crops – this is quite unusual for us, I’ve only once before seen my lettuce bolt before the end of June.  Time to start another planting. But the projection is for cooler and wetter in the coming week.

The sheep still haven’t arrived – Elaine, my sheep partner-in-crime has had problems with white muscle disease and hasn’t wanted to stress the lambs by moving them, so the grass is getting tall.  I went and looked at a flock of Jacobs nearby, since I’m pretty determined to get my own sheep, but I’m leaning back towards icelandics.  Keeping an eye out for a local flock – if anyone knows a good one, let me know!

We lost some of the baby bunnies in the heat wave, despite moving them to a cool spot and the judicious application of ice packs, but the surviving ones have turned into little open-eyed bunny creatures.  I’m mulling over the purchase of another doe and buck, and trying to decide what would be fun to cross the cinnamons with.  The setting hens hatched out a few chicks, and the does are being dried off for July/August kidding.

First strawberries came to the table, although we lost a lot of blossoms in  a late freeze and won’t get tons ourselves.  But the local farms are open for picking and we’ll go tomorrow and probably Tuesday for the first batches of jam.  My kids can pick (and eat) an almost infinite number of berries. Yay!

Ok, onto the update:

Plant something: Elderberries, apples, filberts, pears, lady’s mantle, elecampane, liatris, dianthus, peonies, yarrow, maypop, hops, mulberries, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, onions, squash, cucumbers, orach, hollyhock, mullein, breadseed poppies, clover, zucchini, cabbage, broccoli, kale, chard, maximilian sunflowers, sage, lemongrass.

Harvest something: lettuce, kale, scallions, spring garlic, mint, chives, raspberry leaves, rhubarb, asparagus, radishes, strawberries, milk, eggs, yarrow

Preserve something: dried raspberry leaves, dried yarrow, made rhubarb sauce

Waste Not: Cleaned out freezer, and found surprisingly few scary things.  Decided not to freeze broccoli in the future, as we don’t like it enough to eat it – prefer frozen lambsquarters, kale or chard, and like our broccoli fresh.  Gave frozen broccoli to chickens who liked it fine.  Froze some cream for butter making…eventually.  Cleared crap out of Phil’s space and donated many things to Goodwill. 

Want Not: Finally got some pasta that wasn’t orzo or lasagna to replace that which was eaten.  Children very grateful.

Eat the food: Learned to make hardboiled eggs in the solar oven (thanks for the tip, Bernard!), ate lots of thai salad (lettuce, broccoli thinnings, asparagus, other veg, hardboiled eggs with peanut sauce dressing).  Made asparagus rolls.

Build community food systems – had a bunch of people at my house .

How about you?

Sharon

Everything needs to go into the ground, even as we’re building and rebuilding our garden beds, improving our soil and planting the last of the perennials and trees.  It all needs to be done yesterday, of course, but there’s a certain rhythym you get into when you are so far behind that it really doesn’t matter which of a thousand things you do next.

Meanwhile, Rosemary had 8 babies late last week, and is turning out to be a great Mom.  Sage has turned out yet again to be a really rotten Mom, and will be culled, I think.  We’re enjoying the milk flow before the inevitable drying up of the does (pre-kidding), and all is basically well.   Thankfully, since the garden is all right now.

Plant something: Apple trees, hazelnut trees, tomatoes, peppers, pennyroyal, nasturtiums, okra, corn, beans, beets, eggplant, onions, limas, sunflowers, gladioli, zinnias, cosmos, sweet peas, kale, broccoli, basil, various ornamental thingies.

Harvest something: Lettuce, chives, sorrel, bok choy, nettles, raspberry leaves, kale, beet greens, asparagus, rhubarb, milk, eggs.

Preserve something: Some rhubarb jam and some raspberry leaves.

Waste Not: Fully sorted out the kids winter clothes, gave away tons to goodwill and friends with younger children, also our winter wardrobes.  The usual, otherwise.

Want Not: Set aside some of the nicer ratty clothes for quilt making, made a bunch of new rags, patched sheets, ordered oatmeal.

Eat the Food: Asparagus and pesto risotto.

Build community food systems – donated some plant starts to a local plant sale.

At least it is precipitating – we have had two weeks of bone dry weather, and the soil was really too dry to plant outside the reaches of our hose – given our climate here, most of my garden is unreachable by any water other than rain, and we’ve never had a problem.  But it does mean occasionally waiting out a dry spell with delicate transplants.  But it is pouring now, at least.

It has been a quiet week here, with guests galore (my sister and her family, Stoneleigh) and not nearly as much work as I’d like.  The new raised beds are coming along slowly, and so is everything else.  

Asparagus and rhubarb are coming in – my first asparagus is just about tall enough to harvest, and down the hill in the valley, they’ve really got it in.  Love, love, love asparagus and rhubarb!

Plant something: lettuce, chard, beets, zinnias, clover, onions, rhubarb, pansies, hollyhocks, carrots, kale, marshmallow

Harvest something: Nettle, raspberry leaves, dandelions, sorrel, chives, rhusbarb, asparagus, eggs, milk.

Preserve something – dried some raspberry leaves

Waste Not: Dandelions galore going for rabbit food, the usual composting and feeding of things to other things.

Want Not: Ordered bulk pasta when I suddenly discovered I had only orzo and lasagna noodles in the house, but nothing in that critical medium size .

Eat the food: Asparagus wraps (fresh rice paper wraps with asparagus and fresh herbs with dipping sauce), rhubarb compote, stir friend asparagus and tofu .  Yum!

Build community food systems: Really cool new project in the workings, more on this soon!

How about you?

Sharon

It is very hard to get to the computer these days – first there was spring break for Eli last week, which meant more activities planned than usual, now it is catch up time, and the garden calls to us each morning.  

It feels like not much has happened lately – little increments of barn cleaning and bed building, transplanting and seed starting, pruning and seeing what survived (worst tree girdling winter I’ve ever seen!).  Good stuff, but I’m longing for a day when I go out into the garden after breakfast and don’t come back in until dark.

We lost the baby rabbits, all three of them – Rosemary just wasn’t much of a Mom.  I’ve been told to let her have one more chance, and if not, she’ll be culled.  We’ll re-breed in a week or so.

Eric is bringing the eggs to SUNY to sell now and a good thing too, since we’re getting 3+ dozen a day!

Ok, reporting in:

Plant something: Peas, sweet peas, carrots, onions, potatoes, chives, garlic chives, hollyhocks, johnny jump ups, pansies, bok choy, kailaan, raab, lettuce, kale, mache.

Harvest something: Eggs, milk, sorrel, good king henry, nettle shoots, dandelion, chives

Preserve something: Nothing

Waste Not: Building raised beds out of barn cleanings, gave blown duck eggs to a neighbor to paint the shells, mulched ground with a winter’s worth of paper feed sacks.

Want Not: Added some bread flour and lentils to my storage.  Got new glasses, badly needed.

Eat the Food: Lots of stir frying of greens and making them into salads.  Have had chives in everything.  Not sure why we don’t eat chives more.

Build Community Food Systems: Various interviews, helped out with a local school garden project.

How about you?

Sharon

The fly in the ointment has been Mistress Quickly, who has always been fairly mellow about other dogs, but is officially NOT PLEASED about Mac’s arrival.  He is already twice her size, so he mostly ignores her growling and snapping, but she’s convinced he’s a threat – every time one of us goes to pet him, she puts her body between him and us.  We’re working on reinforcing her positive behavior, and on softening her attitude towards him (there was a temporary truce when we did a little joint training, in which both dogs realized they had common ground – they both like cheese .)

So between Mac the Marshmallow whimpering at night without his Mommy (I finally slept downstairs with him, and he wedged himself between the sofa and me to get a Mommy substitute) and Mistress Quickly asserting herself as boss, things have been a little hectic and dog-centered around here.  We’re still figuring out how things are going to work, but it is, at least, exciting. 

I’ve also got a line on a couple of possible bucks for our girls, which is really exciting to me.  We have to work out timing and details, but it looks like our goat situation may be set to expand fairly soon, and, yay! no more “drive thru goat sex!”

Not too much else going on her, except that Mom was visiting and we were able to borrow her BJ’s card to actually get a couple of things that we can’t get as cheaply anywhere else.  I don’t think it is normally worthwhile to pay for a warehouse membership for us – we get most of our bulk materials elsewhere – but there are a few things that are a better price, most notably the pull-ups Eli has to wear to school and the dog food that Mac has been eating (we’ll shift him gradually over to our food, but we do *not* want a giant dog with an upset stomach!) .  So we did a little stocking up.

It took me a few days to really recover from last week’s workshop, and I’ve been focusing on the book as much as anything else.  I still haven’t finished my seed orders, which are one of the pressing issues for this week – since I want to do a lot of stratified things this year, and am planning on going to market with my plants, I need to get organized ASAP.  Otherwise, not so much going on here.

Plant something: Not this week

Harvest something: A few leaves of kale out from the snow during our thaw last week, as well as milk and eggs.  Got 5 eggs today (we don’t light) as well as finding a broody cochin hen, so spring will actually come!

Preserve something: I made some applesauce out of apples that were failing.

Waste Not: Nothing new

Want Not: Added more pull-ups and dog food to our reserves as well as a few other odds and ends (worcestershire sauce, old bay seasoning, nutella for the husband ).  Also picked up more cat food earlier in the week.

Eat the Food: Roasted vegetables wraps, stir fried kim chi and lamb in garlic sauce were highlights. 

Build Community Food Systems: A possible new project came my way, but has to be tabled until after the book.  Otherwise, nothing new.

How about you?

Sharon

I’m about to enter the stage of book writing where I never look up from the computre, but I am allowing myself a 24 hour recovery period where I read a lot of seed catalogs and place a order for spices that I’ve been meaning to do for a month or two.  I’m also really, really looking forward to seed starting – it has now officially been winter long enough to make me crave dirt under my nails. 

There are important decisions to be made.  Will I grow cutting flowers to take to market this summer?  Which turnip is better?  How many cherry tomato varieties do six people really need, and how many will we actually be growing? (Note the distinction between these numbers).  What medicinal herbs will sell? 

I’ve also got to decide what bee start up I’m going to be working with – I’m exploring the merits of different approaches.  And then there’s the poultry order.  Isaiah and Simon are going to raise their own chickens for show and eggs for them to sell – they’ve picked Salmon Faverolles (Isaiah) and Birchen Cochin Bantams (Simon) and are already hatching (so to speak) small poultry empires in their heads.  Meanwhile we’re doing a homeschool project on how to keep records and calculate profits and expenses.

Two of my workshop attendees were rabbit experts, which was awesome, since I learned how to butcher them (hypothetically, we didn’t actually do any) and also a bit more about what to look for in rabbit stock.  We’ll be breeding the buns around the beginning of March – yay!  I’ve already made plans to donate some stock to a local urban community garden that is interested in adding rabbits for manure (and eventually encouraging interested participants to eat them).

It has been one heat cycle since Bast and Jesse were bred.  Bast went into false heat earlier this cycle, which might be a good sign (that she is knocked up) or might not.  Jesse’s not showing any signs (although she’s hard to detect.  The official verdict is…well, maybe.  I think Mina went into heat Wednesday, but I had no car and the boys were on their way to NY, so I’ll mark it down and hope for the next time.

We are starting to look for a buck – it is clear that with this many does, a buck is a needful thing, and we’ve got the space to house him.  So if anyone has a really good milking lines, Nigerian Dwarf buck to sell fairly in the greater Capital District or within a couple hours drive, drop me an email at jewishfarmer@gmail.com. 

We also now have ducks.  The ducks that magically appeared Christmas morning turn out to have been escapees from a ways up the creek.  The folks they escaped from didn’t have good housing for them and had assumed they were dead, and didn’t want them back.  So now our lone duck is joined by four more Pekins – I was planning on adding ducks to our snail patrol, and I’m feeling a little “ask and ye shall receive” about it .

The goats seem to be recovering from our attack of meningeal worm – Selene is still weak in the hind end, but she’s able to jump up on the stanchion consistently and is starting to push Maia (who was happy to take over as herd queen and was kind of a bitch about it ) away when food is on offer. 

All the animals agree with me that we should do more workshops, except Mina, who does not like strangers and thinks this is weird and that people should not be in our barn, except maybe me and Eric and only when we are feeding her.  Otherwise, the dog, the cats, the ducks the goats and other animals were thrilled by more people to love them, more scraps to eat and more attention. 

Most of all, though, it is time to write the book. I’m having a tough time with this one – my heart is in my farm plans and with my kids, not at the computer.  But there’s work to be done and I’m trying to get excited about writing a book that helps people find a way to live well with a lot less where they are and with what they have.  It does fill a need.  I do need to write it.

Ok, update:

Plant something: I stuck some garlic I found in pots, but otherwise, nada.

Harvest something: Eggs!  The chickens are starting to lay again – I got 3 one day, and have had an egg every day the last few.  Since we don’t light

Preserve something: Lactofermented kimchi and sauerkraut, canned some applesauce.

Waste not: Actually, I think I wasted extra.  In our cleanout of the house I found, ummm…a lot of scary things that simply had to be thrown away.  The usual composting and feeding of things to other things ensued, and I did manage to clean out some books and give them away.

Want Not: I can’t bring anything new in until everything goes into buckets like it is supposed to.  New resolution!  Oh, except my Penzeys order, which I haven’t placed yet, but which is forthcoming.  I’m out of chipotle powder, and that is not allowed to be.

Build community food systems – Does convincing 8 people that they want goats count?  I’m still doing a lot of radio, and will be doing some speaking in the upcoming months, but things have been busy. 

Eat the Food: Because I couldn’t get out shopping this week (car trouble) I had to pretty much feed everyone from my pantry, which worked out awesomely well (and my participants were incredibly kind and brought greens, cider, beer and baked goods to supplement - gotta love them!)  Singapore-style noodles with stir fried veggies were a hit, as was the chocolate banana bread pudding. 

How about you?

Sharon

The big crisis is that Selene has meningeal worms, and Mina may as well.  These are parasites transmitted by white tailed deer that are carried by snails.  The goats accidentally eat the snails and the parasites end up in their spinal cords causing paralysis, blindness and brain damage, and eventually, death.  It is most common in the northeast after a wet year with an unusually warm fall – pretty much precisely what we had.

It isn’t contagious to people or other goats, but it is a nasty thing.  It can be treated by heavy doses of wormer – much heavier than are used routinely, but you generally only know about it when symptoms show up.  Selene is getting really large doses of wormer to treat it, along with anti-inflammatories, and seems to be recovering.  She’s walking well, although with a limp,  and she tried to jump up on the stanchion yesterday, something she hasn’t even attempted in days.  Still, it is a miserable thing to deal with.  We’re about to start treating Mina, who we suspect may be in the very early stages of the same thing, and are going to treat the whole herd preventatively.  I hate it when my goats are sick!

This means that I probably won’t be doing cheesemaking with my class of apprentices, which sucks, since I don’t think the milk will be clear of wormers.    It also means we have to think about strategies for reducing the snail and deer population near our pastures.  This means I’m more inclined that before to add another dog – keeping the deer far from our pastures becomes a priority.  I’m also thinking I need to add ducks, geese or guinea hens to keep the snail load down.

Otherwise, a quiet week here – lots of cooking and baking, lots of little projects.  Eli is on vacation, which is not his favorite thing in life, but he’s dealing ok so far.  He dislikes disruptions to his routine, and he loves school, so this is annoying to him, but he’s reasonably gracious about it. It helps that it is snowing today – Eli loves snow.  In fact, I looked out the window to see that he’d gone out in his pajamas and was swinging fiercely, a 9 year old in footie red pajamas with penguins on them, surrounded by a haze of white.  It was a lovely picture!

This week’s big project, besides more cleaning and rearranging and getting the book in order (It has to go to the publisher 3 months from tomorrow – let’s just say that I’d like to be a lot further along than I am) is the seed order.  The boys are excited to place their orders as well, and are also anxiously awaiting Murray McMurray’s chicken catalog, since they are allowed to select a bantam breed of chicken to raise to show at the fair this spring.  I’m also plotting the acquisition of bees.

Otherwise, it was a quiet and lovely week, such a relief to have Eric’s grading finished and a little time to pay attention to the house and to the family.  We’ve also had a lot of fun with friends – skating, movie nights, etc… The kids have already picked out movies for our staying-up-late New Years (we go to bed about 20 seconds after they do ) – Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” and the Monty Python Alum version of Wind in the Willows “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” (which Eric and I saw in theaters when it came out, but which I have little memory of).

There’s enough snow coming down today to keep us comfortably at home – the kids are hoping for enough to build snowmen and sled.  There will come a time when we’re tired of winter, longing to get into dirt.  But for now, winter is welcome, pushing us inwards, getting us focused on home.  The snow is falling on the spruces, on the housetops, on the ice and the world is pleasantly at peace around us.

Ok, actual update:

Plant something: Nope

Harvest something: Some kale from under the snow, a few eggs

Preserve something: Nope, lazy week

Waste Not: The usual composting, reducing consumption and feeding things to other things. Made it through all of Chanukah reusing the same four gift bags .  Have been feeding the autumn apples (the ones that aren’t good keepers) to the goats and rabbits.

Want Not: Nothing, really. 

Eat the Food: Made dim-sum style turnip cakes from our turnips, which were extremely yummy.  Pumpkin gingerbread was a  hit at Eli’s school, although just a touch overly sweet for me, new cranberry bread recipe invented to use up sour milk was great. 

Build community food systems: Too sleepy from overdose of baked goods.

How about you?

Sharon

Sharon