Tessio, Clemenza, it was nothing personal, it was only business.

May

Well, our experiment with pigs has run its course and seems to have been mostly a success.  Yesterday (Saturday 9/22/12), we loaded the pigs in a trailer and took them to the slaughterhouse.  In looking back on things I would say it went as well as it could.  We got them on May 12 and took them to the slaughterhouse on September 22.  Therefore we had  them for 133 days.  At the start of that 133 days they weighed 33 and 38 pounds each.  By the end they weighed 275 and 245, respectively (the small one at first, outgained the big one).  Meaning the biggest one at the end gained 242 pounds in 133 days (1.8 pounds per day), the other one gained 207 pounds in 133 days (1.5 pounds per day).  I had been expecting them to gain an average of 1 pound per day, so their growth rate was phenomenal.  Which is why they are being slaughtered in September rather than November or December.

They also were relatively little trouble to look after.  I had to refine watering them over time.  At first I was putting water in a pan for them, which went okay for a while, but they tended to want to climb into the pan or turn it over to make a mud hole.  So when it got really hot I got worried about them.  I then put an automatic waterer out for them attached to a 55 gallon barrel.  This worked much better, and after a little refinement was eventually the system I suspect I will use for all future pigs or goats, at least so long as it isn't freezing outside.

I did feed them every night.  If I do pigs again I may get them an automatic feeder so that I don't have to do that.  That said, it kept me in contact with them daily, and that seemed like a good thing.  Except, a lot of days the contact was closer than I wanted with an animal renowned for rolling in it's own feces.  I got frustrated with them for a while because they would come up and rub against my legs and I would go in the house smelling of pigs.  But I eventually started keeping a pair of "scrubs" pants in the barn, and slipping them over my shorts before I fed the pigs.  Once I did that feeding them ceased to be a problem.

July

Their housing and fencing also seemed to work out pretty well.  They never left their fenced in area (in fact at the end it was hard to get them out of it, more on that later).  Their house held up and seemed to give them enough shelter when they wanted it.  The old tin I put on it did leak some, and it looks like in one spot in particular the straw has started to mold and rot.  They also seem to have taken a significant chunk of the straw by the door out of it at some point.  Nonetheless it held up pretty well, and served it's purpose for the length of time I expected.

The day to take them to the slaughterhouse, however, was difficult.  The day before my dad went to the slaughterhouse and picked up their trailer to carry the pigs in.  Turns out it was a big horse trailer, and was about as much as his truck could handle.  Then in the morning I got up and put together a makeshift ramp, so I could just lead the pigs into the trailer.  They always follow me when I have the feed bucket in their pen, so I figured they would follow me into the trailer.  Then once Daddy was here with the truck, he got the trailer into position, and the pigs then made it clear they would follow me right up to the point where their pen usually ends, and no further.  So I called a friend (Thanks for the ideas Sean, they didn't pan out this time, but were an important part of the process).  He suggested making a tunnel they could go through and they usually will go through it.  So I used some T-posts and some cardboard boxes to make a tunnel, and daddy backed the trailer up almost right to their gate (the bottom of the ramp was now inside their pen).  Still, they decided they would just as soon stay in their pen (did they know where we were going or what?).  One of them did actually follow me all the way up the ramp, but wouldn't take the step off of the ramp into the trailer, and finally turned around and ran back into the pen.

Clemenza drinking water in September

This was getting frustrating, and I was concerned I may not be able to get them to the slaughterhouse in time.  Finally, my dad suggested hiring a Mexican guy he had gotten some help with in moving.  So we called Frank and I drove into town.  First I went to Southern States to see if they had any equipment that might help move a pig. (there is a snare thing that uses a wire to grab them around the snout, which is supposedly a pressure point and will make it easy to move them).  I looked for such an object, and came up empty.  Just in case I asked the lady at the cash register, and she said they had no equipment that she thought would help move a pig.  Fortunately, though, there were a couple of old timers there, and they said when they were young they would just get two people, each would grab a hind leg, and they would drag the pig backwards into the trailer.  They assured me that the pigs would scream a lot, but they wouldn't bite.  Well, this was good news, and in just a few minutes I picked up Frank and his friend Gabriel, and we headed back to the house.

Tessio enjoying a mud bath in September

I explained this plan to them, in some combination of my broken Spanish, and their broken (but much better than my Spanish) English.  They seemed uncertain.  I got Frank in the trailer with a pallet, so that once we had one on board he could block its exit.  Then Gabriel and I went back to the pigs, which were very nicely hanging out right at the gate.  I was pretty sure we had communicated the plan and gave an "okay let's do this now" kind of gesture/verbalization, and grabbed a pig by the hind leg.  Gabriel was apparently not yet convinced of this plan, but after I held on for a while he started trying to grab the other leg and was successful.  I can only say that this was very difficult.  Ultimately, it was successful, but the pig screamed a lot, and it took a lot of effort to get him up the ramp.  I didn't realize how much effort until it was over and I felt how tired my muscles were and my lungs were BURNING!  So we took a break.  Gabriel wanted to try using a rope, I told him we had already tried (we had, the results just weren't worth even mentioning early in this blog post), but I let him try.  He started to go for around the neck, and I told him that really didn't work, so then he tried to get it around the two hind legs.  This seemed potentially promising, and he tried it.  Before long the pig thrashed out of it so it was a no go.  By this time I was ready to do it again, and tried to communicate this to Gabriel.  It was more or less a repeat of the first pig, where I got the leg, and eventually Gabriel grabbed the other one.  This one was a bit easier, and we dragged it on board the trailer.  Then we all got out and locked the door and the pigs were in.  HALLELUJAH!!!

I took Frank and Gabriel back into town, and then came back and Daddy and I rode to the slaughterhouse. I really expected to see the experts at work here, and thought I would learn something about how best to move pigs.  Sadly that was not the case.  What really happened was the pigs were brutalized with pipes (only a PVC pipe. . . at first) to get them to go into the chute and then into the holding facility.  Honestly I found this whole scene pretty disturbing and will probably not take my animals to a slaughterhouse again if I can help it (though I'm hoping that the Chattacreek facility in Bowdon becomes a reality and is different from this).  Still, when it was all done, the pigs were there, and they weighed way more than I was guessing (I had planned to slaughter them at 200, and sort of guessed - after dragging them up the ramp - that they might have been 250 or so).  But they turned out to be 245 and 275 (as already noted above).  So we can expect to be eating a lot of pig for a good long while, and I'm a-OK with that.

So, to bring this to an end.  Raising the pigs was pretty easy, and they grew faster than expected.  Moving them was a royal pain in the ass, and slaughterhouses are brutal (which I guess shouldn't have been a surprise).  All in all, the only thing that feels like it wasn't a total success in this experiment was the last day of having contact with the pigs as living breathing animals.  Likely, most pigs we might eat have similar last days, so I still feel good about these animals having had a good life almost right to the end.  And next time, I'll try to be ready to take it all the way to the end and just kill them here on the farm.

Taking a Break from Dairy Goats

Last month, it was decided to sell all of the goats and take a break from dairy goats until we have more time to devote to their care.  Dairy goats are A LOT of work, and the break will allow us to work on the infrastructure needed to better manage the goats.  Luckily, we found someone willing to buy the whole herd, save 3 for whom we had already found other homes.  It was really sad to see them go, but it was a big relief as well.  Trying to manage all of the animals and the gardens, while Jeff is working full time and we've got a baby, was overwhelming.  However, we're still seriously considering getting a few (lower maintenance) meat goats soon-ish to help clear our land across the street.  The pigs have reached their goal weight (already!) and will likely be processed next week, leaving us with just the chickens and a barn cat for the time being.

Speaking of chickens, we have had three hatches of chicks this summer - all by hens instead of an incubator.  So much easier to let a hen do most of the work!  Initially, we had the problem of no broody hens, so we bought one from Paul and Terra.  We put about a dozen eggs under her, but only 6 hatched, 2 of which died (squashed in the nest.)  There was one poor chick that had gotten stuck to one of the dead chicks and some straw in the nest, so I soaked it in some warm water to unglue it.  After separating the chick from its entanglements, I attempted to return it to the hen, but she rejected it - probably because it looked funny and flopped oddly from having been immobile on one side.  Disappointed, but not yet accepting defeat, I decided to give it one more shot.  I brought the chick back into the house (The Haven Poultry Spa) for a day, giving it periodic warm water baths to remove the remaining goo from its body so it would fluff up.  By the end of the day, it had fluffed up considerably and was much more stable on its feet.  This time, I reunited the chick with its "mother" after dark, sticking it under the hen with the other chicks.  Success!  Later the next day, I couldn't distinguish the saved chick from the others.  However, as the chicks began feathering out, one of them did not grow any wing feathers on one side.  Methinks that the one winged bird is the chick that I saved.  We'll see how that works out.

About a month or so after the first hatch, the Dominicker hen given to us by some neighbors (because they didn't want such a broody hen) finally started sitting (almost a whole year after we got her!).  She's a big girl, so we put 16 eggs under her.  Eleven hatched, but a snake ate 4 of them the first day.  Darn Black Snakes!  We caught about 4 Black Snakes in our chicken houses around this time.  The Dominicker has been a good mama to the remaining 7 chicks, even taking under her wings at night One Wing and a sibling, since I didn't think a handicapped bird was ready for the big house yet.  This big family is still in the brooder, but they are all almost ready to join the main flock.

Prissy, the Silky hen, also eventually started sitting, but she only managed to hatch out one chick - just a few days ago.  I'd wanted to hatch out more Silkies, but I unfortunately cooked all of the Silky eggs right before she decided to sit.  We tried to get her to sit on 6 large-ish eggs (mix of New Hampshires and Australorps), since she is small, but she would only sit on a max of 4 at a time.  Stinker!  And then only one egg hatched!  Oh well.  In total, we got 12 new chickens.  It's too early to tell how many will be female, but it looks like 3 out of 4 from the first hatch set of New Hampshire Reds are female (including One Wing).

In gardening news, I had a good Spaghetti Squash harvest, which was exciting.  The tomato harvest was fairly good too, especially for the Moon Glows, but unfortunately, we were out of town when production peaked.  However, we were still able to do a little canning and sell some at market and to the CSA as well as enjoying lots of tomato sandwiches (yum!).  We recently shelled a big bunch of beans and black-eyed peas - approximately 7-8 pounds worth.  My luffa vines are growing like crazy this year (probably because I had the time to adequately fertilize and water them), and we're hoping the arbor doesn't collapse under their weight.

I also managed to grow quite a large number of English Lavender plants from seed.  They grow reeeally slowly, and I've had to baby them a lot, but I've finally been able to start planting them around the house recently.  However, the rest have started to look sad in their little pots, because I can't dig beds for them fast enough.  Darn heavy clay soil full of rocks and weeds with big roots!!

Our porch is now screened in and looks swell (thanks Forrest and Sean!).  Raine enjoys the new outdoorsy space to run around in.  Hopefully, we will have more of a lawn for him to play on next year.  Lastly, Paul and Terra are moving out of The Haven to become full-time residents at their place, Full Life Farm.  Although Raine, Jeff, and I will soon be the sole occupants of The Haven, we will continue to work with Paul and Terra on farming and developing the land.

-Annie

Locavore on the road, or why we're blessed to live in Carrollton

Several months back we planned this week to be the Davis family vacation.  So this past Saturday we packed up our stuff and headed to Gulfport, Mississippi.  We planned to do our best with the Locavore Challenge on the trip, but since we would be sharing our food decisions with family members, we couldn't be certain how it would be go.

Before leaving I did a little bit of research on the web and discovered that Gulfport has a Farmers' Market that is on Tuesdays.  So we bought some butter and cheese at Farmers Fresh, picked some produce from the garden, and headed down the road.

One note on the road.  Thus far, to my experience, every McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Cracker Barrel I have been in has a baby changing table.  As a result, we end up stopping at these (mostly McDonald's since they are ever present and often close to the interstate).  If anybody out there is an app developer and wants to make a changing table locator app, I would be all for it.  In any case, the first epic fail of our locavore holiday came at a McDonald's when we got some fries as a snack, and Raine got his first taste of McDonald's.  C'est la vie.  After all, we aren't fundamentalists.

Once in Mississippi we had a few days till the next Farmers' Market, so I bought some provisions at the local Winn-Dixie, after struggling to find anywhere else to go.  Later that day I found out that probably less than a mile from the Winn-Dixie was a store called Rouse's with this in the window:

We saw this and were excited.  Upon entering the store, however, it seemed largely to be a conventional grocery store.  Still, it was cool to see that somewhere else was doing a similar challenge (though theirs was in June so it was over already).  We did get some local oysters (local seafood being the big blessing of the gulf coast), as well as some beer that is brewed in Kiln, Mississippi (home of Brett Favre and where Jeff once camped while doing some Katrina relief work).  So still we needed to wait until Tuesday.

On Monday we stopped by where the Gulfport Farmers' Market is supposed to be happening, and there was no sign that it existed.  I asked a local business, and they pointed to a spot and indicated that before Katrina there had been a Farmers' Market there, but not since.  I'm not sure if it is because the facility is not built (possibly rebuilt) or if it is for lack of Farmers or interest, but we were stumped on local food.

We were discouraged, but we decided to look around at least for more local seafood options.  We also were looking around for what else to do.  After checking out Quality Seafood and Poultry (mostly seafood, but we did pick-up a chicken stuffed with crawfish etoufee there) we stopped into the Biloxi visitor's center.  Once inside we discovered that there is a Farmers' Market in Biloxi on Tuesday also.  So it was back on.  Perhaps we could have more local stuff than just seafood.

On Tuesday morning, we got up, had our breakfast, and headed to Biloxi.  Again, we were disappointed.  Given that most tables had bananas, it was clear that local foods were not the emphasis of the market.  We walked away wondering if any of the vendors were in fact Farmers, though one table did advertise homegrown okra.  We did walk away with some sweet potatoes we were told came from Northern Mississippi, but otherwise we were mostly disappointed.

Then yesterday, we needed to stop by the grocery store again and saw this sign:

This was in a different Rouse's but was seriously cool.  For a chain grocery store, they do seem to be showing flexibility needed to purchase from local farms, and they identify them in the store by name.  We thought that was cool and picked up more sweet potatoes to keep Raine well fed.

On the whole this has been an interesting learning experience about our community at home.  Being on the road has really made me appreciate the opportunities we have in Carrollton: a vibrant Farmers' Market that is full of fresh food every Saturday this time of year; local stores where we can get tasty foods from local farmers; and restaurants that have been featuring locavore specials.  It has also helped me see how much easier it is to eat local in the community where you live and know people.  I suspect with enough time we could be more connected and eat much more locally here, but years in Carrollton have made connections with the people who grow our food (and allowed us to grow a lot of our own) seem effortless.  Whereas only being here a few days, we might have had to spend most of our time searching out connections for local foods.  There's some quote that someone once said about how much we learn about home by going somewhere else, and it seems like that is definitely true for us.

A Night on the Town.

Well, I am glad to report the locavore scene at local restaurants is BOOMING!!!  My beautiful bride and I wandered the square tonight in search of local yummies and were not disappointed.  We began by getting some baby sitting from some of the elves who sometimes make delicious local food at Farmers Fresh on the square.  Once the baby was in good and caring hands (you can tell they are good and caring when you taste the food they make), we went on our outing.

We started at Little Hawaiian and surveyed their options.  They had 3 meat choices and a vegetarian choice. I'll write more on them a bit later.  From there we stopped by Blue's Steakhouse, which had no local options, so we kept on walking.  We were greeted warmly by the proprietor of La Trattoria on the Square.  We learned that they had 2 choices this weekend: a roasted leg of lamb and lamb kebabs (which I believe hale from Heritage Farm).  Alas, we had the chicken from La Trattoria last weekend, so we kept on going.  We stopped in briefly at The Alley Cat where we were told they had burgers with meat purchased locally.

On we went to the first place our tour would actually take a pause.  We stopped into Plates on the Square which had no obvious signage indicating local food, so we weren't expecting to linger.  But when we asked, we were told that they had a gazpacho made from all local vegetables.

It was delicious, paired with some wine that was not local, but lovely nonetheless.

From there we settled on Little Hawaiian.  As we walked in we ran into some friends of ours which was nice.  Then we sat down to make our choice among their 4 local entrees: local beef sliders (with beef from Dennis Farms, Tomato Capri (a vegetarian option), local roast beef (in a Texas style), and local pork from Gum Creek Farms w/ fresh ginger.  My special lady decided to go with the Sliders, while I couldn't turn down slow roasted and shredded pork with ginger:

These were also really good (much better than the picture).  The sliders had on them local green tomatoes that were fried.  I'm not sure, but I think the vegetables with the pork were reported to come from Hager Farm, though perhaps someone might want to ask Wendy about that :-).

As good as the food was, it was also great to hear from every restaurant we went to that people seemed to be excited about the local food options when they came in.  We wrapped up the night, picked up our bundle of joy (temporarily transformed into a bundle of anger and despair due to falling asleep without mama and papa) and returned home to find that while we were away, Santa Claus brought us a tractor!!  Can't wait to see what adventure that brings.

Why I didn't write a post last week.

So, the first week, I went at it full bore - I'm gonna write 3 posts a week.  Then I wrote 3 posts no problem - except, I haven't written anything since then.  I've spent some time thinking about why since then.  Seems like there are a variety of reasons.

The biggest thing is likely that last week's big farm news was unpleasant and awful and I didn't want to write about it.  One of our mama goats died last week.  It seemed like the obvious next thing to write about, but then I didn't want this to become the dead goat blog.  Also my feelings about it were much different than about killing a goat.  Having one of our goats die inadvertently left me feeling like a bad care taker - ashamed.  We do this because we are concerned about the well-being of our animals, and we failed one of them.  Or, perhaps, it is that these things just happen and are part of the game.  I spent a fair amount of the week with that being the obvious thing to write about, but I didn't want to.  I don't really want to now, but there it is.  I guess, oddly, when it comes down to it I'd rather shoot them in the head than letting them die of worms (which is what led to her death).  That is an odd realization.

That probably also led to some inertia and some unwillingness to write about other more mundane things.  So there it is.  I promise I won't write about a dead goat again, at least not this month.

Dispatched from the Haven or Where Do Ribs Come From?

Yesterday, Independence Day, was one of the harder days of growing and harvesting our own food.  Since I  had the day off, and it has been about 6 months since they were born we decided to harvest (my favorite euphemism) two of our young male goats.  I thought about getting pictures for this, but decided better of it. 

I used to say, that if you couldn't handle animals dying, you probably shouldn't eat meat.  Or more directly if you couldn't kill the animal yourself you shouldn't eat meat.  I'm not sure if that is true now - it's kind of like saying if you can't handle the sight of blood you shouldn't have surgery - which is more obviously not true.  In any case, it is a truth that all of us who eat meat contribute to the death's of animals.  At some level for me this goes back to the idea of food and connection.  It is a difficult part of what we do, and arguably the hardest part of harvesting the goats is the day leading up to it.  I certainly thought about what was to come consciously at times, but I'm not sure how much consciously my emotions were involved.  That said, late in the day I had a pretty profound sadness come over me.  I can't say what it was about - maybe it wasn't the goats, and it was just run of the mill ennui.  Or maybe it was difficult deciding this is what I was going to do with my evening, some part of me rebelling.  I'm not sure.  At the point when it was definitively decided that this was what was happening, however, I returned to being more about what I was going to do and the sadness passed on.


Here we do our best to make the death's as quick and painless as possible.  For the most part we try to make it like a normal day for the chosen goats.  The first difference, however, is they don't get grain that morning.  The less stuff in their stomach's the easier they are to clean.  We still send them out with the other goats, so they get forage and water throughout the day.  Since it was hot and there were thunderstorms about we waited until about 5:45 to really get going.  Leading up to this the knives are sharpened, the 12-gauge slugs are purchased, and the butcher's bandsaw is put together.  


Then someone goes and gets the first goat to be dispatched and a disposable bowl with a little bit of goat food in it.  We put the food down so that the shooter (that's my role) isn't pointed towards anyone or anything that would be dangerous if there was a ricochet.  I already have the shell in the gun, and walk up to something like point blank range.  This time our first goat was pretty docile, and he easily walked up and started eating.  I was able to take my time and line up my shot.  Once the trigger is pulled I see a moment of the dramatic change in the head, and the sudden appearance of red all around.  I immediately walk away.  Another person comes in quickly with a knife to cut the throat so that while the heart is still pumping the blood can be pumped out.  Then we take the goat and tie him to one of the beams in the barn so that he will be ready to be skinned and cleaned.


Then we bring the second goat over.  Last night he was skittish.  When we first put the food in front of him and let go of his lead rope, he immediately bolted.  I took the slug out of the gun, put it down on the deck, and we had to get him corralled again.  This time we tied two lead ropes together so that everyone could be out of the way, but he couldn't run too far away.  We brought him back, put the food in front of him, and he was either more relaxed or more into the food.  In any case, he began to eat.  A skittish goat is troubling for me as the shooter, because I need him to stay still while I walk up to have him in close range.  So I rushed this one a little more and felt more stressed by it.  Nonetheless, the result was the same: about half of his head disappeared, someone else comes in with a knife to cut the jugular and we tie him up.


Following this comes skinning.  From here on out things are basically the same for both goats, so I'll only detail one of them.  We skin from the neck down, splitting the skin along the chest and slowly working it down using a knife to cut the connection between skin and the fat and muscle beneath it.  Then the internal organs are removed.  It was around here that gallows humor began.  Last night it was when someone reached inside the carcass (now an it, no longer a him) to pull out the last organs (the lungs and heart).  It struck me as funny, because it looked like he had his hand inside a puppet.  This led to a moment of pretending that one of us was hosting a children's show with a dead goat as his side kick, asking "Apollo, you don't seem to be talking anymore.  What happened?  Cat got your tongue?" At this point the camera would pan over as the cat finishes off Apollo's tongue.  And tension is lessened.  


Once skinned and gutted, the feet and head are cut off, and we wash the body.  This takes longer than expected, because there are traces of goat hair here and there all over.  We wash, and wash and wash.  This has the additional benefit of helping to cool the meat down so that it doesn't spoil.  Finally we are satisfied that the goat is clean, and it is time to fire up the saw.  This is a relatively new piece of equipment for us.  It takes some time to set up (including a wasp sting for yours truly earlier in the day), but saves so much more time in preparation.  Now we set it to cut 1.5 inch slices and the rest is pretty quick work.  From here we carry the slices into the kitchen to be cleaned again.  


At this point it more closely resembles what we usually think of as meat when we buy it in the grocery store, than it does the animal that it really is.  We clean the pieces of meat in the sink, and then package them in freezer paper, label them and put them in the freezer.  We decide to keep out the ribs because they are hard to package, and they became tonight's dinner.  And so things go, we live, we cause deaths, we consume life.  It brings me back to connection.  Connection to reality much more than a chicken nugget can bring.  Connection to the cycles of life and death that sustain.

Spaghetti Squash with meat sauce

Here is the first home cooked dinner of our Locavore Challenge.  Annie grew the spaghetti squash, and we are totally digging it.  We use it just like spaghetti, but it comes from right here on our place.  I cooked it in the microwave.  All you have to do is poke some holes in it, and microwave for 10 minutes, then let it stand for 5 more minutes.  Cut open, take out the seeds, and use a fork to pull the spaghetti-like strands into a bowl.  We did two of them last night, and apparently I didn't have enough holes in the first one - so it kind of blew up in the microwave.

Here you can see the main ingredients (or some that are destined for cooking later).  The sauce came from one day's harvest worth of Annie's Tommy Toe tomatoes.  Actually it began with a couple of patties of sausage that I picked up at Vogelsberg's Bakery in Carrollton.  When I asked where the sausage came from I was told "Right from our own hawgs, and they don't eat much but these doughnuts."  So that's local, and a good use for something that would go to waste.  To that I added in some ground beef from the meat vendor that has recently arrived at Cotton Mill Farmers Market.  I also threw in an onion that was left over from before the challenge (I'm counting that as part of my 10).  I meant to add some of the copious basil on our counter, but forgot.  Nonetheless it was delicious.

Food and Connection

So, some of you may be directed here by the blog page from the West Georgia Locavore Challenge.  So it's worth knowing that while we haven't posted here for a while, that changes today.  For the month of July at least, I'm gonna do my darndest to post at least 3 times per week.

As my initial Locavore Challenge post I thought I'd expand on why local food is important to me.  I've been pondering that for a few days, and how it fits in my overall mission of working towards a better, healthier world.  What mostly comes to mind is that I think one of the greatest detriments to our society is how disconnected we often are.  We interact with machines instead of people at the bank, grocery store, and gas station.  We are in such a hurry that we often whiz by hundreds of miles without noticing much about what's going on.  And the list could go on.

Our culture is suffering from a lack of connection.  When we don't connect with each other, and often even ourselves, things often get problematic.  Go to espn.com and watch a comment thread, or even worse go to a news site that is covering the recent health care legislation/court case.  People who don't share a real world connection can be awful to each other, and our discourse suffers.  Likewise other violations ranging from simple rudeness to violent crime to massive corporate fraud (hello Mr. Madoff) are easier to perpetrate when we aren't connected to the people around us.  Disconnection is a real problem.

For me, when I think about what culture is, food is one of the first things that comes to mind.  I think Italy - I think pasta, Japan I think sushi, or for home I think of country style steak, mashed potatoes and gravy.  There are certainly other major components of culture, but food is also high on the list.  And then I look at most of the food in the grocery store and I have no connection with it.  The bananas are from south america, the tomatoes are from California, and the meat is from who knows where.  I don't have any connection to that food, or the people who grew it.

So, in our food we are as disconnected as everywhere else in our culture.  So as some one who would like a more connected culture, one way of trying to have a positive effect on the world is to work for a food system that supports connection instead of disconnection.  When I shop at the Farmer's Market I connect with people, and gain a greater appreciation for the food and the work they do.  When I work to grow my own food I gain a greater appreciation of the wonders of our world, and the magic that happens between a seed being planted, a tiny plant emerging, and a luscious tomato going into my sandwich.

Alright, so there is my sermon for the night.  If comments come in and spark conversation I may follow this thread some more.  Otherwise my intention is to post pictures of meals that I make during the month, discuss what is in them, and a bit about the cooking I did (tonight's dinner, which may get posted about tomorrow, involved a spaghetti squash explosion in the microwave!).

Eat on!

Two Little Pigs

So we have begun our newest undertaking here in the land of Freaky Farms:  Pigs!!!  Right now we are definitely in the "experimental stage" of doing pigs, so we started with two fixed boys (aka barrows).  We will raise them up, and eat them though we may try to sell the meat from one of them.

This began with our first experiment with electric fencing.  We put the goats inside our first fence on a regular basis, and they ate a lot of the greenery.  It was kind of a pain to take them back and forth to their usual place, so we eventually stopped and fenced off some other green food for them.  Instead, we decided to use some of the space they had started clearing and build ourselves a little pig hut.  For interest, and for speed of building we decided to try out a straw bale design (which Jeff found the idea for online).  This isn't straw bale building like someone would build a real house out of, but it should be good enough for the pigs for the time they'll be with us.  It took 21 straw bales, a little wood, some rebar, a bit of wire, and some old tin that we have left from the chicken house deconstruction.  It was built in a day, with the help of my cousin Michael and WWOOFers (I think only Andrus was here that day, but I might be wrong).  If this doesn't work, I guess we'll move on to sticks, and if that doesn't then bricks.

Then it turned out that pigs need to have special training for electric fences.  So we had to take a little more time and make them a small enclosure around their little straw house.  From our research you can use electric fences to hold pigs, but they need some convincing that running through it isn't a good idea.  So we have a small regular fence with one electric wire running inside of it about 6 inches off the ground.  This way when they hit the electric wire if they try to go through it they can't, so they learn that once they've been shocked they should turn around.  It turns out, they might have been okay with just the electric wire, when we got them and they hit it they seemed pretty convinced that they should turn around.  (According to some of my internet research if the wire hits them between snout and nose they turn around, if it hits them above they eyes they charge through).

Then this past Saturday the day was finally upon us and we went to Ranburne, Alabama (about 20 minutes away) to pick up our two new Hereford Pigs.  We got them because the guy who had them raises for shows, but their color doesn't quite match the Hereford breed standard.  Then we decided to name them Tessio and Clemenza.  Clemenza is of course the heavier of the two (weighing in at 38 pounds when we got them, compared to Tessio's 33).  They came home with us, and seem to have settled into their new surroundings reasonably well.  We're hoping to keep them in the small pin until they are big enough that we don't need to lower the wire on the big pin, but they may start to stink in the small enclosure if they stay there too long.  Time will tell.  They are definitely in a bigger enclosure than they were at their old place.

We are very excited by this new addition to our farm.  The pigs are hopefully going to serve at least two purposes.  One is root clearing.  Since our land was clear cut and is now growing back with all kinds of scrub and small trees.  Our best soil has TONS of roots growing in it, and that makes it hard to garden.  Since pigs like to root (dig for and eat roots) and are known for tearing up the ground, we are hopeful that they will help to get rid of the roots, or at least some of them.  If they do, pigs will become a definite part of our overall land clearing regime.  If they don't, they will still be very tasty (purpose number two).

"That's all folks!"
-Jeff & Annie

Warm Winter, Early Spring

The mild temps this year allowed us to get an early start on our gardens. On the south side of the property, the fence for the first goat pasture has been taken down, and Paul has expanded his garden beds in to the space cleared by the goats (left photo). I have dug a long new garden bed next to my beds on the west side of the property. This bed is between the older beds and the electric fence, which we finally installed and got operating about a month ago, creating another pasture for the goats. Eventually, this pasture area will provide more garden space for Jeff and I. Currently, we are growing a variety of cold weather crops, including lots of greens. However, some type of small black bug is eating up our spicy greens such as mustard greens and arugula. Additionally, we are beginning to put out the warmer weather plants, which were started in the hoop house and/or mudroom windows. Last week, these plants needed to be covered and protected one night, when we had a frost. Some plants still experienced frost damage, though, particularly my black-eyed peas, which don't tolerate cold temps well at all. I have also put in a couple of flower beds in front of the little blueberry patch by the driveway. I'm growing calendula and chamomile there.

We have used electric fencing to create two more pastures for the goats, giving them access to more greens to eat, since they have cleared their first two pastures. Additionally a fence line has been cleared across the street on the property owned by Jeff and I. We're working on putting in an electric fence and a structure to shelter the goats and provide a rain catchment system for watering the goats. This will begin the process of developing our 10 acres across the street from The Haven, which is very exciting for Jeff and I. We are also preparing for adventures in raising pigs, which is also rather exciting. The goats have already chowed on all of the currently available greens in the pasture by my garden beds (as can be seen in above photo), so we are going to put pigs in that area next to continue clearing it.

A separate paddock for our buck, Romulus, has been built, so that we can control our goat breeding. Romulus now resides there with one of his male kids. Romulus went into rut again in January, and we worried that all of the does were impregnated again already, but, luckily, that does not appear to be the case.

The newest arrivals at The Haven are a trio of Black Silkies. Silkies are a breed of chicken that are small, fluffy, and very friendly. They are really neat chickens that love to sit on eggs and raise chicks. Hopefully, Prissy and Buffy will hatch out new Australorps and New Hampshire Reds (our egg layers/meat birds) for us, in addition to more Silkies. Winchester is the young Silky rooster in the first photo below, and the young hen behind him is Buffy (both 4 months old). The close-up is of Prissy, who is an experienced mama hen.

Last weekend, we participated in the Cotton Mill Farmers' Market farm tours. It was a lovely day for the tours, and we enjoyed showing people what has been accomplished so far at both The Haven and Full Life Farm and discussing how we grow and produce what we sell at market. The farmers' market opens this weekend, so we have been very busy lately preparing for the tours and this year's market.

Lastly, we put a new roof on the house a couple of weeks ago. The last one got leaky, and the new one has some modifications for (hopefully!) helping to keep the house cooler in the summer. We also finally hung up our hammock. When there is time to relax for a moment from all of our hard labor in the evening, the porch is a nice place to sit or lay in the hammock. :-)

-Annie

Christmas Kids

Between the 15th and 25th of December all 4 does kidded. There are 3 sets of twins and one singleton for a total of 7 kids. Unfortunately, only one of them is female. The upside is that we will get plenty of goat meat out of the bunch, but, of course, there's an unpleasant aspect to that too. Anyway, they are all as cute as can be! With P
aul and Terra out of town for an extended holiday vacation with family, I played midwife with Andreas the wwoofer as my assistant. The births all went pretty smoothly, with Lily leading the way with her boy Augustus. Zella gave birth 4 days later, producing the only female plus another male (names to be determined by Paul and Terra but for the time being we are calling them Diana and Apollo). Katie birthed Caligula and Nero the following day, and Maegan kidded on Christmas morning. We couldn't resist naming Maegan's kids after some of Santa's reindeer, so we named them Comet and Cupid. Romulus (the mythological founder of Rome) sired this crop of kids, so the kids' names have a Roman connection.

We are now back in milk, so we have started making cheese again. A batch of mozz was made yesterday. We are looking forward to making the cheeses we made last year and trying out some new ones as well. We also have plenty of eggs right now, since The Haven pullets started laying in October. Lots of milk and eggs - yay!

Happy New Year!

-Annie