Overrun with Cabbage

Now I can't recall whether we started our cabbages indoors and a fungal root infection killed them, or whether we planted the small seedlings out and slugs did them in. Either way, let's blame the slugs. After loosing our own seedlings, we were forced to buy cabbage starts from a local greenhouse. They had started them quite early, so by the time we took them home to plant they were already several inches tall. This didn't concern me at the time because I didn't consider the corner that 15 mature cabbages might force us into. I tried to ignore all the large and robust globes forming around me, as if that would solve something. When I finally addressed the situation, many of the cabbages had split open. Water had begun collecting in their new crevices and a fishy smelling rot was encroaching at the edges. I should have acted sooner. Next year. I brought a machete to the garden and whacked the orbs away from their roots.

What does one do with this much cabbage? Lacto-fermentation is the only answer. Luckily it is a good one because, beyond preserving the cabbage, it makes its nutrients more available and offers beneficial bacteria for your intestinal flora. Unfortunately the temperature is still a bit high to make sauerkraut. It would be ideal if it could ferment for 4 weeks between 60 and 65 degrees. We considered burying our imaginary jug of sauerkraut in the stream bed, but the temperature two inches below the water level was 66.9. If this were mid-September, we would likely have perfect conditions, but August is August, and August it is. We proceeded anyway.

There is a lot of chopping to be done. We read that you should sterilize all of your tools before commencing. We didn't go farther than giving them a good wash. I have a number of food grade five gallon buckets. After rearranging all of our stored nuts, one became available.

After weighing and slicing, we added around 3 tablespoons of salt for every 5 pounds of cabbage. You are meant to bash away at all of this cabbage until it releases and becomes submerged by its own juices. We were without a proper utensil, but we made good use of the rolling pin, the potato masher, the metal tongs, and the knife sharpening steel.

Finally it became like soup.
There are fermenting crocks that are designed specifically for this purpose, and I hear they work perfectly. The crock itself has a large rim that holds water that the lid sits down into. The gases that escape during fermentation are able to move through this seal, while it remains impervious to air and pathogens from the outside. Ingenious... and expensive. The smallest one I could find was over $125. So we are winging it, again, like we did last year. Hopefully this experiment will turn out better than last year's. Last year's sauerkraut rotted because we didnt' have a good seal. When the gasses escaped there were air pockets left in their places and deterioration took hold. This year we filled a 2 gallon plastic bag with salted water (in case the bag breaks for some reason) and placed it on top of the cabbage, thereby keeping everything submerged. Garth found a lid for a five gallon bucket from his beer making days with a contraption on the top that lets gasses out without letting air in. The bucket is on the dirt floor of our basement at the bottom of the stairs. If all goes well, we'll be in sauerkraut for months. If it doesn't, we will have wasted a few good hours on a Sunday, and a season's worth of cabbage. I'm not sure where my bets lie, but I know where my hopes do.

-Alanna

Slaughtering Chickens

Warning: this post contains photos documenting the honest slaughter and processing of chickens.

Some people hold strong views on the topic of animal welfare, ranging from a utilitarian belief that the pleasure and suffering of animals is as meaningful as that of humans to a biblically grounded belief that humans have dominion over animals, a dominion so absolute that the existence of an animal is justified only to the extent that it serves a human end. But most people I’ve talked to about it search for a comforting middle ground – a place where animals lead happy, healthy lives, but are then quickly dispatched, packaged, and sold for a reasonable price in a supermarket refrigerator case. As I know from personal experience, the trick to rhetorically supporting this sort of food system while eating a burger that concretely supports factory farms is to not think about it too much.

But I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot lately. A bit over a month ago we butchered the sixty-five broiler chickens we had been raising, a few more than last year. The experience of killing animals is a singularly difficult topic to address in writing. When I say this, I do not mean that it makes me uncomfortable to discuss or describe in detail. Most any striking or meaningful experience loses something in the translation to writing, though it may gain something as well. But in the case of killing another sentient creature, the act itself is uniquely visceral.

We raised our chickens in a 10’ x 12’ cage with an open bottom. Twice daily we shifted this onto fresh grass, so the chickens always had fresh forage and somewhere clean to lie down. We actually purchased 100 chicks, and we only lost the expected few in the first two weeks, but a few days after we put them out, 30 died in a single night. A predator had killed five, and the rest had suffocated after piling up in a corner of the cage. A few days later I trapped and shot the skunk that was responsible.

Modern chickens put on weight incredibly fast, and even though we were raising broilers bred to gain slightly slower than the most aggressive commercial varieties, by nine weeks they were big enough, and dragging the cage around the pasture had started to bother both my and Ed’s backs. So on an overcast Saturday we set up the scalding tank and plucker beside a table in the hops barn and positioned the killing cones just outside.

Ed went and caught about a dozen chickens at a time, placed them in smaller cages, and trundled them in a wheelbarrow from the pasture to our makeshift abattoir. Each went upside down into a stainless steel cone with a hole at the bottom just large enough for the head and neck to pass through. Each head was grasped, and each neck slit with a sharp knife. After this they went into the scalding tank, and then the plucker, and then to a table to be cleaned, bagged and frozen.

Last year Ed and I did all these tasks in roughly equal measure, but this time, with both Alanna and my aunt Juliet helping, we each more or less took responsibility for a part of the process. I only killed a few of the chickens early on and spent the rest of the time gutting them.

There are parts of the whole experience of raising chickens this year that I regret. I am saddened by the ones that died near the outset, though I recognize that some predation is inevitable in any outdoor production system. Feed is extremely expensive, and I wonder if chickens with different genetics would have been more efficient and generally healthier. And the actual, final act of killing is sad. I do not feel guilty when I kill a chicken, nor do I feel empathy for it in the narrow sense of the word. The sadness arises from the simple recognition that nothing (except maybe mayflies and salmon) dies without a struggle, tempered with the recognition that deaths large and small constitute each of us.

Although I can’t imagine a plausible alternative, I find slaughterhouses problematic. Of course I am horrified by unnecessary brutality found in many of them, but I am just as troubled by the idea that most of us do not confront the deaths we have chosen to endorse while a few of us become utterly desensitized to them. One step in the right direction would be to let farmers harvest animals and sell their meat directly to customers, a practice which is allowed to a limited extent with chickens, but doing this to a broad extent would require a complete overhaul of the regulatory system, and it would raise a host of health concerns, some legitimate, others not.

In the meantime, we will keep raising and hunting and butchering for ourselves, and I would encourage anyone – particularly anyone who eats meat – to have a hand in the death that preparing dinner really starts with.

-Garth

More Mowing

With the gracious help of Edmund and Garth's father Lach, we are maintaining our resistance against unruly monocultures. The golden rod has just lit up our pastures, and we are eager to set it back. Both Edmund and Garth's unanimous distaste for machine work is inversely represented in Lachy, who is content to spend hours meticulously leveling these vast stretches. God bless him. His efforts were stopped short when, upon encountering the densest swarths, the drive wheel of the mower overheated and shattered in action. Enough was enough. The part won't be in until Wednesday, so the opposition has a little more time to dig in its heels.

Walking back from feeding the chickens yesterday, I ran into Datura. She had wandered away from the herd with her sister Lillyvale, breaching the electric line in an area weakened by tall grass, no doubt. I stopped to admire her. Isn't she beautiful? Edmund and Garth chased them back in a few hours later, which was easily done because they couldn't resist the companionship offered within their old confines.

Tall grass has a clinginess that cut grass lacks. It folds around my boots, clutching and then releasing. The bedstraw tangles and confuses my steps. Cut grass is not so jealous. It has been chastened, but will return stronger with less competition, we hope.

-Alanna

Human Intervention

We have been waiting for this moment. The thistles are in full swing. They are pouring their energy into these brilliant bursts of color before their seeds mature. They are still sterile now, but they have clearly agreed to lose everything for love. I hear the groan of the tractor. Garth is mowing swaths of burdock, thistles and parsnip that have been towering above our heads for weeks.

When hit at the perfect moment, it can be more than they can recover from. We want to break the cycle that has created a burdock monoculture on swaths of our pasture.

The winter squash has been asking for our attention too.

Meet the cucumber beetle. They eat the leaves of our squash plant, but what is more worrisome is that they congregate and damage the flowers as they're opening to be pollinated. The flower dies back without a fruit forming below it. You can spray them with organic pesticides, but the stores around us only sell the heavy duty insecticides, so I've been picking them off by hand.

They are slower than flea beetles and larger, which makes them easier to handle. I hope that the fruits our squash does produce will be extra potent because these beetles have diminished the competition. Cheers to hoping.

-Alanna

Growing Cows

We recently bought a new bull, Heamour Gerard Cuchulain (Hulie for short), who is noteworthy because he is out of Newbridge Gerard, the only semen from an Irish Kerry bull to be brought to the United States (as far as we know) in the last 10 years or so. Our aim is the broaden the genetic pool of our herd to the greatest extent we can. This is one of his offspring, Mystery. She is shaping up to be a wonderful cow. She has a deep and broad chest, and a warm and curious personality to complement her fine figure. She and her mother came to Cairncrest Farm last November when she was just two months old. When we bought Hulie, we decided to purchase another young Kerry heifer with him by the name of Solanine. Solanine is out of Ebon, the bull we had on loan here last winter.

Standing here next to Mystery she looks like a dwarf. By contrast her whole body is very lean and narrow. She is only two months Mystery's junior, but it looks as though it ought to be more. Although Ebon is one of the largest Kerry bulls, his offspring mature very slowly and begin quite small. When Datura and Lillyvale (Mystery's dame and her full sister), who are both out of Ebon, came here last fall they were rather small compared to the rest of our herd. They have both fleshed out considerably here on pasture. Solanine's mother was sold shortly after she was born, so I'm sure she didn't get the milk that Mystery did. So, it's hard to say whether or not Solanine's diminutive size is genetic or nutritional. It could be both. I have heard that early nutrition can greatly influence how genes express themselves over the life of the cow. As we watch her develop and compare her growth with this year's heifers who are also out of Ebon, we'll get a sense of what the contributing factors were. For now I feel relieved to see proof that we are doing one thing well- growing cows on grass.

-Alanna

Solstice Galantine

Our first solstice at Cairncrest Farm was in winter. Garth and Alanna had returned from their cheese making apprenticeship in France days before, and Edmund and I were scurrying to put the final coats of paint on the interior of the Talbot house. There was a pile of rotten wood and debris from the house clean-up in the driveway, and untold trash laying beneath the snow.

The winter solstice marks the onset of winter, but also the lengthening of daylight. It seemed an appropriate time to celebrate our collective farming venture. We invited "everyone we know" (which at the time were admittedly few) to share a large pot of chili and stoke the bonfire of debris in the driveway. That cold night, only the friendly couple who grow organic vegetables down the road came knocking on our door. It was just as well. The bonfire’s flames reached 10 feet high and we nervously looked at the electric lines dangling not far away. We had chili left overs for the next two days.

At times the number of projects at hand seems overwhelming. Last month we debated whether a solstice gathering this summer would distract from our pressing goals, not the least of which are building houses, tending a huge garden, raising chickens, maintaining our cows, and building a root cellar.

Deciding in the end to celebrate the solstice, Edmund prepared the wild turkey he shot in May into a “Turkey Galantine”. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this dish, the Joy of Cooking describes it thus:

“A galantine of fowl is an extravagant production that begins with the boning process. The skin of the bird eventually becomes the covering of an oversized, luxuriant sausage that contains the meat of the bird combined with eggs, spices and other meats. When a galantine finally appears in all its... splendor, no one will suspect how it began, for in no way does it resemble any bird ever seen.”

This turkey sausage was about the size of my 5 month old son, as long as my forearm and too large to put two hands around completely. We had leftovers after this solstice party as well, but not before twenty-odd people had taken a thick slice.

Lawn games! A ukulele! And what seemed like everyone under 40 in Otsego County were in attendance. I could only feel joy and optimism looking around that evening last week at our growing community of friends. Anyone who has moved to a place where they are completely new knows how slowly friendships are formed. So it was a particular happiness to take an evening to celebrate the longest day of the year cultivating the relationships we forged thus far.

Let’s do that again.

-Normandy

The above three photos were taken by our friend, Amy McKinnon, at our solstice gathering.

Here is a blurry photo or two from our winter solstice bonfire last year.

And of course! Edmund’s amazing galantine! Here is it being sewn up in cheese cloth before being cooked.

Here is the galantine leftovers we had the next day for lunch.

0 for 3

It's calving time here at the farm, so for several weeks now we've examined the rear ends of our cows at every opportunity since there are often observable signs of impending birth before a new baby drops. One of the most obvious leading indicators is a swollen udder, "bagging" as the parlance goes, but this is not a time specific marker. In our experience thus far it is more of a shot across the bow that a calf will be arriving in the following weeks, and doesn't afford a particular moment to prepare for. Of our three bred animals I carried the most concern about the heifer we call Vona (though her registered name is Cinders). Heifers are female bovines that have not yet given birth, after birth of a calf a heifer transforms into a cow. Never having experienced birth before, heifers sometimes have a hard go of it and don't know what to do for the calf once it drops. I hoped that Vona would calve during daylight hours so we'd be around to help if needed. Thankfully this is precisely how things worked out.

At something of a distance six days ago I spotted her dancing around during the middle of the afternoon and when she spun I saw what must have been a waterbag hanging out. She lay down and we gave her a few minutes to do her thing before approaching as Vona is flighty and high-strung. I heard a blat or two and then couldn't resist going over to meet the new calf, and it's a good thing I did. She gave birth to a bull calf, and he was pretty well hooded by the amniotic sac. She was licking at it tentatively and occasionally, and might have cleared the membrane from his face eventually, but it would have been a near thing. A little air was leaking under one side of the membrane, but he was struggling in his new efforts to breathe. So I eased myself in and cleared the membrane from his face and neck and then rubbed him vigorously. Vona then finally decided that licking him was in fact a good idea and took to nuzzling and tonguing him more definately. Less than one hour after I first spotted the waterbag emerging, Gonzo was on his feet tottering toward Vona's udder.

I'm really glad Vona is fine and we have a healthy little calf out of the whole ordeal. Since we're building a herd we were all hoping for a heifer calf, Gonzo's birth marks the third calf born here and the third bull calf. Garth actually came up with his name a week or two prior to his arrival as a sort of joke, because Vona is so excitable and crazy we thought any bull from her should be named accordingly. It's early yet, but as a final ironic twist, his personality so far seems much more in line with his very laid back, easy going sire's attitude. We have two more chances for heifer calves this year. Here's hoping that we don't go 0 for 4.

-Edmund

P.S. I wrote the above post on Sunday when I was lounging for the few hours I take off during the regular week. Since then we've had another baby born - a heifer calf to Juno (registered as Mabel). Ebon's owner names his daughters after poisonous plants (e.g. Lilyvale, Datura, etc), and we liked that tradition so we're calling the new one, Henbane. It is appropriate on two levels as it is a noxious plant, and Juno hates our chickens...