Grateful harvest

These are the first fruits of our garden. It was all the snails and slugs felt they could spare. They are less sweet than many sugar snap peas I have had. I am not sure why. Thankfully, they are not lacking in snap.

-Alanna

We've been outnumbered

Three bull calves drinking milk from this 'New Zealand style' calf nurser

Dusty on a dewey morning

Ned

I guess when I say 'we' I am referring to the three female cows, Normandy and myself. Let me explain. We initially bought three Kerry cows. Shortly thereafter we purchased three bull calves. So, at that time, there were three bull calves, three cows, two wives and two husbands; a gender neutral farm give or take a few chickens. Two of those three cows were pregnant. That was the wild card. There was a 50% chance that we would remain in balance. Juno had a bull calf on June 19th leaving it for Sable to decide. Today Garth and Edmund came in from feeding the cows and announced that Sable had calved early this morning. "A heifer?" I asked. "No, a bull calf."

It is an overcast afternoon. The clouds carry on in an apathetic way, as though they forget they're raining, but it's too late to stop. Garth and I walked to the barn where the cows were all gathered. Lucky and Dusty were lying together at the open door (we named the three bull calves after the 'Three Amigos': Lucky Day, Ned Nederlander, and Dusty Bottoms). The two nursing mothers lay with their calves. The newest one (still yet un-named) has the intense and stricken look that comes with being born. The whites of his eyes are still visible. He is as tall as 'Borg' at the hip despite being a week his junior. His legs are long and gangly. There were a few chickens making their way along the edge of the barn and he stood up and stumbled over to them, inadvertently chasing them away. He has a couple of white spots here and there, a testament to the vast genetic possibilities latent within even something as carefully managed as a cow with a pedigree. If we decide to raise one of them as a bull, it looks from here like 'Borg' is the better candidate. He is entirely black and compactly built, but there is much to be seen.

While two heifers would have been quite fancy, and one out of two would have been grand, I am not discontent with our lot. How could I be, when the dams are so well and their calves are beside them?

-Alanna

Borg is Born

On the morning of June 19th, we awoke to find a new member to our herd! We named our new bull calf Borg as a nod to the 18th century philosopher and theologian, Swedenborg. Every dairy farmer hopes for a heifer (female) calf which would become a future milker, so we were a little disappointed with a bull calf, but it was exciting to have a new addition regardless. Borg's mother, Juno, has been very protective of him, and will paw at the ground in warning if she feels we are getting too close. If anyone has seen the high-spirited energy of puppies, they will recognize the same playfulness in a baby cow.

Here is a picture of Juno and Borg. These black cows in a dark barn have been hard to photograph, but I think this image captures them adequately.

Normandy

The slugs are winning...

In March, when we were making soil blocks and planting seeds I had a fantasy of harvesting vegetables from our garden for our table. I did not picture a thriving population of slugs and snails enjoying them first. They seem to prefer the brassicas (kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli) but they are gaining on the potatoes and the rhubarb. This region, like many areas on the East coast, suffered a tremendously damp and cool summer last year which may have given the slugs a leg up (they need one! HA!). But this could also be par for the course around here. I just don't know. My only recourse is to head up the to the garden in the evening with 2 cans of 'natty ice' and begin pouring.

I have placed bowls on several of the beds they like to congregate in. Crouched near the ground with wafts of cheap beer surrounding me, childhood memories of late night wedding receptions and big hair flood in. I leave these bowls of beer out overnight and come back the next day, horrified and amazed by the abundance of creation.

This photo, as impressive as it is, is a week into this routine. The first night I did this the bowl was full, FULL with a crusty top, of slugs. I take them down to the chickens who, after walking over and through them a few times, gorge themselves. If I eat an egg from a hen who ate slugs, who ate the kohlrabi I planted, I am still 'harvesting' from my garden by a circuitous path. So I suppose right now the slugs are winning in the timeline, but ultimately we can't lose.

If anyone has experience with vast numbers of ravenous slugs and snails and has had success by a different method, please fill me in. I do like vegetables.

-Alanna

Wildflowers

A series of drenching rains came after some weeks without any water to speak of and now a cooler period has just set in. The ground is finally fully saturated. I am thinking about planting radishes again and feeling relief about having just planted out our red russian kale seedlings before the weekend. The nights are in the 40's and it looks like it may stay this way for the next few days at least.

Granted I am new to this part of the world, but I am floored by the wildflower display here. We (Edmund) ha(s)ve been regularly mowing a small area around the house, (think of a bow tie around a large man's neck), and a walking path to get to the chickens beyond. We have otherwise let these meadows run their course. Walking through the knee high forage I let my eyes follow the colors below me. So many things are simultaneously in bloom, yet they manage to graciously share the spotlight. A week and a half ago I saw whole fields in bright pink. It was close to a bubble gum color, but there was a rich magenta in there somewhere. This pink was set off by stands of buttercups screaming just beside it. Today the roadsides were dotted with periwinkle bobbles on strong stems. Our stream bank has put on a floral skirt, thick with blue blossoms. The bishop's weed is endearing itself to me now after months of looking like the greedy and thoughtless intruder it has in other seasons. The peppermint is hugging the sides of the stream and was bountiful enough to yield a basketful to me this evening. For the best tea imaginable, I am following Dorothy's guidance; keeping the harvested leaves away from the sun and turning them regularly until they have dried. When we make this tea some evening months from now, I hope I can recall this subtly opulent spectacle. My heart goes out to all the people in the gulf who are experiencing a gross inversion of what I have described here. Today I am not sure how I would survive without petroleum, but this disaster is urging me to move in that direction. I know the stream bank would not be phased. We could start there.

-Alanna

Burning Star

I knew the printed news industry had been under intense stress lately with the accessibility of so many other news sources. I also gathered that the West Winfield Star (the local paper in our township) had lost a number of readers. Many people complained at the town meeting about not getting the important announcements that were published in the Star because they did not subscribe. "No one gets that newspaper anymore!" was roughly what I heard at the "Stop Re-Val" town meeting a few months ago. But at around 5:45 this morning we watched as the Star took yet another blow- their delivery man's car caught fire on our property. Garth and Edmund ran up to see what was going on and luckily Edmund told Garth to bring the camera. Thankfully, the driver managed to get himself, the daily papers and his small canine companion out of the vehicle before it went up in flames. The cows watched the commotion from just beyond the barn. I hope they realize how unusual an event this was.

-Alanna

Cows

"I'm calling to let you know that we're just leaving now so - CENTER LANE! - and we'll - NO, LEFT! - so it will probably be - WATCH OUT! - we won't be home until eight or nine."

This was the message Ed left for Alanna and Normandy on the farm answering machine Thursday afternoon. We had driven to New Hampshire that morning and were returning with cows in tow.

It all happened rather quickly. As Ed detailed in an early post, we have been wrestling with what breed of cow we should get. Before we bought the farm we read wonderful things about Mini Jerseys, but the reality did not come close to matching the hype. We looked at Kerry cows and fell in love, but they are scarce and don't produce much milk, though what they do is ideal for cheesemaking.

We next turned to Ayrshires, which are a common, productive breed, and which have milk with a similar protein and fat composition to Kerrys. To this end Alanna had been making phone calls to local breeders, and last week Ed and I went and met up with a farmer. He was nice, his farm was clean, and his cows were happily grazing out in the pasture. But they were really, really big. A few were as large as Holsteins. We want cows that weigh about a thousand pounds, and these averaged fourteen to sixteen hundred.

We had not pursued Kerrys in weeks or months, but on returning home from our disheartening Ayrshire visit we found a message that three were available for immediate sale - two very pregnant cows and one open heifer. The four of us discussed it a few times and slowly overcame our reservations. We agreed that the ideal cow for us did not yet exist, but that the Kerrys were the closest.

This raised the problem of how to get them. They were in New Hampshire, and we had no stock trailer. We called around trying to find one to borrow, and after exhausting almost all possibilities, Ed tracked one down. But then we found out that this trailer had no brakes. Driving up and down mountains with an extra three thousand pounds pushing on the rear hitch sounded harrowing, so we decided to build a crude room with a V shaped front onto our flatbed trailer. It took a frantic Wednesday afternoon and an even more frantic 5 to 7 a.m. Thursday, but at 7:30 we rolled out towing a contraption that looked like an amalgamation of a boat, a woodshed and a prison, but with wheels.

It was a long drive. The truck started making a weird noise ten minutes out, and despite the pointed front, the trailer was less than aerodynamic. The FM on the radio cut out about two hours in, leaving us at the mercy of Glen Beck and Thom Hartmann. We both started sweating every time we saw a cop, for though we had confidence in the quality of our construction, we weren't sure that it met the definition for a properly secured load. Worst of all, the bench seat in the truck is precisely calibrated to encourage a wholly unnatural curvature of the lower spine, which made it impossible for either of us to drive more than a few hours at a stretch. It was a bad trip.

But the cows looked great. We had been a little worried, because the man selling them estimated that one weighed fifteen hundred pounds. Luckily, he was very wrong. They stood just under four feet high, with a fine bone structure, and they were better muscled than most dairy breeds. They had small, well–formed udders, which a farmer friend yesterday described as “tidy” or “wicked tidy.” They were not too skittish, and it only took a few minutes to coax them into the trailer. We belted the rear gate shut, ate our lunch and set out.

The quote at the top of this post was about fifteen minutes into the trip, and it only got more stressful. It was six hours of praying that the cows were okay, that when they fell they wouldn't be hurt, that they wouldn't give birth, that they wouldn’t try to push through the walls we’d built, that the sheer stress wouldn't be too much. We both felt physically ill from the worry of the second half of trip, especially since the oldest, most pregnant cow was having a rough journey. It was torturous to not be able to do anything but try to get her home. What felt like a long trip on the way out felt like an eternity on the way back.

But finally, just before sunset, we pulled up. Alanna and Normandy came to meet us, and we were all terrified as we lowered the ramp. The two younger cows trotted out, but the old one was lying down, but she managed to scramble out of the trailer and to stand. Then all three went to the hay we had put out for them and started munching, and we went inside to eat dinner and drink a bottle of wine.

We have been spending as much time as possible with them, and they are rapidly adjusting to the new situation, though it may be a long while before the oldest, who already was the most skittish cow, trusts us entirely. They had been eating mostly hay and silage, but we are moving them onto pasture. For now we are thankful that everyone is fine. And we're hoping that the calves are girls.

-Garth