Spring Crazies

I'm in a frenzy to build a new goat shed by this weekend with rain predicted through Sunday and my husband away on a business trip. To make matters more interesting, the mosquitoes are just beginning to pop. Why do I feel like we've been here before. I have always had trouble heeding my own advice, from experience, of not to take on animals without the building and fencing already prepared, by yourself and with an infant on your back. We repeat our mistakes and failures in vicious cycles...that's my excuse, anyways. I've been ogling goat udders and lineages all week, trying to pick another buck for the two girls we have decided to keep from this season. I do not want them breeding with their "daddy" for obvious reasons, although goats do not suffer from the effects of inbreeding the way humans do. I'd like to improve our herd and the best way to do that is with an outstanding buck.

Our girls are fantastic to begin with, but everyone has a certain weakness and that's what we will try to improve with our new boy. Old Mountain Farm Ostara has great milking capacity with plump, easy-to-milk teats like her dam Anna Jarvis. Her udder attachment and length of lactation could be improved upon. Her daughters are incredibly productive milkers in their first season, so I can't wait to see what they will give after their second freshening. Our other doe line is great for completely different reasons. Trillium, like her dam, is a light milker with a deer-like physique and a calm, quiet and soothing disposition. She's passed her beauty and temperament reliably to her doe. I'm hoping that, like her dam, Trillium will also have a longer lactation than our other girls. So, I've been weighing my options and trying to decide between a buck with a champion milking dam and gentle personality or a more attractive buck whose dam has great udder attachment and is extremely vocal. I'm going with the quiet guy...we have neighbors. It also makes me think that personality is equally important in breeding, especially when selling to a pet market.

Back to building in the rain. I have two days left.

Morel Luck!

We were out in the woods again, spending a fantastic mosquito-free 70-degree day, to remove downed trees from our trails. It appears, the old aspen/poplar trees that filled our lot after the logging days have reached their mature age and are dropping quite regularly. This means we will soon have a stellar view of the river to the north, but the number of falling trees is a bit scary and has to be dealt with in some way. Novice chainsaw homeowners have arrived! My husband and I tag-teamed the kiddos and trees, with him stepping aside so I could wield the saw on Mother's Day. The gas fumes got to me after a bit and I yielded power. Having spent a few hours Saturday burning a huge pile of tree brush (our neighbors love us!), I didn't need my head swimming any more from asphyxiation. Just as I was finishing up, my 3 yr old was ambling down our long trail to bring me water when she spotted and picked our very first morel very much by accident.

I've spent the last two days of down time looking for more mushrooms, but have not had any luck. Wandering aimlessly about the woods with my eyes tired from focusing intently on the camouflage of leaves, I've a renewed appreciation for the efforts our forebears made to domesticate crops. Foraging for food would make for a difficult existence, indeed. This little treasure was sliced thin, fried in butter and divided three ways. Delicious and memorable!

Adieu!

Our first boys are leaving the farm for their new home this afternoon! Best of luck for many happy adventures to come. You'll be missed.

Goat Update

"Contrary" is thriving and more aggressive than her brothers at feeding time. She's just the right size to roost in the hanging feeder. Enjoy it while it lasts, little one!
The little kids are at a very fun age and putting weight on quickly. The older kids are beginning to be weaned off the bottle, as they are happy to gorge on grain and hay. They are plumping up and have been out to exercise in their yard nearly every day for a week, since the snow has finally melted. It's fun to watch their personalities develop and see them become more like mama goat. Inherited traits seem to overpower everything environmental at this point.

Garden Update

The weather has finally given us a beautiful weekend to work in the garden. Our snow is still melting in some areas, but now we have a decent area to play with. We planted two types of carrots, Nelson and Bolero, in a bed that we had just spread with our overwintered red wigglers and their casings. I've read that this is the best food for carrots and last year our harvest was improved by the vermicompost. The overall worm population in the garden is really remarkable. They've broken down all of last year's goat hay mulch into a rich substance I am tempted to call soil. However, they have also done some damage to our vegetables, so I made an effort to run the chickens over some older beds prior to planting.

Adjacent to the carrots, we planted two types of parsnip, Javelin and Lancer (OP), along with some burdock and radishes. I first read about burdock on a blog called "Living the Frugal Life" and I'm anxious to see if this root vegetable, similar to parsnip, will give us another spring dug treat to rely on during these starving months preceding the summer's bounty. The sandy nature of our soil should make it easy to store more root vegetables outside instead of limiting ourselves by what the refrigerator crisper can hold. The overwintered parsnips that we dug last week were gorgeous and a welcome addition to our meaty dinners.

Sugar snap and Oregon Giant snow peas went in just behind the carrots. I have a bad habit of not leaving enough space between rows because I'm always worried we'll run out of room for everything planned. This is going to catch up with me this summer when I need to weed the carrots. Whoops!

It took most of the weekend to transplant our starts of broccoli, red cabbage, kale, and chard. Immediately after planting, we installed row covers as a defense against cabbage moths. I also put in three varieties of edamame and some purple bush beans. It's much too early here for beans, but we're trying fava beans, which are very cold hardy, for the first time this year and I foolishly grouped all the "beans" together. Hopefully they will germinate before rotting in the cool wet soil.

Some blue potatoes went in a very sandy spot behind the asparagus and next to the compost pile, so I can top dress easily throughout the season. These originally came from the grocery as baby roasting potatoes, a few years back. Last year, the uneaten spuds began to sprout and I dug them in just to see what would happen. We were impressed with the yield and vigor of the plants. With such a small space to garden, it's impossible to grow all our own potatoes and I'd rather plant something with a more efficient output, but at the end of the season fresh potatoes are delicious and fun to dig. In some ways, it just wouldn't be a garden without a potato row.

This weekend among the quiet but familiar beds and sprouting raspberry canes, with so much gardening and backyard farming ahead of us, I actually began to wonder where the winter had gone so quickly. Such a break gives us a fresh and hopeful start to an improved season of eating.

Spring has sprung...without us.

Yesterday was mid-50s, sunny and a spring teaser considering today's snow. We're already a week behind our gardening schedule from 2010. Last year our cold-hardy transplants of kale, cabbage, broccoli, and chard were already outside and the bed preparation and seed sowing of carrots, parsnips, turnips, radishs, and peas was completed. This year snow is still covering 90% of the garden. Instead of getting impatient about it, we took advantage of the beautiful day and remaining snow by chopping down a beech tree that shades the back of our woodland garden. It's one I've been cursing for several years because in the spring we have full sun and easily forget what a menace this tree is once it has leafed out. By that point in time, the garlic is sprouting up, beds are planted and the tree cannot be felled without undoing the effort we've already invested in the garden.

So quite spontaneously and without too much prodding, my husband set out to the daunting task of dropping a large tree while sparing the house, chicken coop and goat shed. He's getting better with his aim, which increases with accuracy if I hedge my bet against him. Last year, in one afternoon, he nearly crushed our meat chickens a week from harvest and then narrowly missed our living room bay window with a second tree. Practice makes perfect fuel for the woodstove next winter.

Gouda makes everything Good

I waxed our first wheel of raw goat's milk farmstead Gouda yesterday. It's a little lopsided from uneven pressing and the dribbly white wax went on a bit thick. I would take a picture but it looks just like a waxed wheel of cheese (Ostara's udder is more impressive and not lopsided). Tuesday morning at 5am, my husband and I awoke to a loud crash. Still half asleep, our responses to the noise were alarm that either someone was breaking into the house or the mice in the ceiling were getting too healthy. The gym weight that was teetering on top of my Kadova mould slid off and onto the floor. There is always room for improvement. Despite it's ragged appearance, in 60 days, after it has matured in flavor, we will cut into this first cheese and appreciate the taste as well as the effort involved in producing such a beautiful thing.

This type of cheese can age for years, if it's done properly. I'm eager to have another option on hand besides freezer chevre. We consume large amounts of Cabot cheddar, which we're hoping to replace with this homemade hard cheese. I'm also very impressed by the yield. From 2.5 gallons of Nigerian milk, we now have a ~3.5 lb round of Gouda. Our next investment will be a kitchen scale, so I can brag more accurately.