At the Market

Yesterday morning we visited the Farmer's Market in the park blocks at Portland State (my school). The weather was decent, the trees were beautiful, and the market was vibrant as usual, with the added fun of half the people there in Halloween costume!

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We spent $37 on an assortment of hamburger, bacon and sausages from Deck Family Farm, and for $15 we came away with a massive Queensland Blue pumpkin, a few smaller winter squashes, big bunches of Russian kale and curly kale, a couple cucumbers, several bell peppers, some green onions, and a few other goodies I can't remember!

We've managed to be very productive this weekend, which is helping me feel a lot better about the amount of stuff I have to get done during the week! We got the garlic in the ground yesterday afternoon, baked a batch of bread, I whacked back the huge and out-of-control butterfly bushes in our front yard, finished up some sewing, and have been getting lots of this week's readings for school out of the way. Don't worry, I'm still fitting in some relaxation time! Now I'm going to get outside for a few minutes before it gets dark, and catch up on a few little chores around the garden. Happy Halloween, everyone!

A Hectic Week

As you can probably tell from my most-of-a-week absence, it's been a little bit of a wild week. It's all been good, just busy busy busy. Our new housemate Lisa moved in on Sunday afternoon with her cat, Maggie. They have settled in and Maggie has let it be known that she is an incredibly sweet and friendly feline. She is an affectionate lapcat who enjoys sitting on the pillows of Matt's and my bed during the day, chicken-watching out the back windows. It's so nice to have a cat around; it makes this house feel even more like home.

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I feel a bit bad that Lisa moved in just as we launched into a busy week with houseguests all week and me down on campus every day- definitely not what things usually look like around here, but Lisa has been a real sport about it. It's been wonderful to have our friends Provo and Jeremy here all week, but no matter how awesome your guests, having extra people around makes things feel a little chaotic. Add to that the two new chickens (which have mostly made their peace with the old flock), four new rabbits and a big gathering of friends last night (which started before I got home from class), and my head is spinning! Not to mention school and studying, all of which is going great but definitely takes up a lot of my time. Oy.

I'm so grateful for Matt; he has been a great homekeeper in my daily absences, keeping the house in order, managing our growing menagerie and making delicious dinners (in the absence of a menu plan, which we abandoned with so much going on this week- must write up a new one today). He even went to a networking event this week sponsored by Friends of Family Farmers and has already gotten a handful of leads in the local farming world, including the woman we bought the rabbits from. On top of all that, he's been turning in job applications and looking up various internships, with some exciting leads.

Outdoors, things are getting colder and much more Octobery. I had some free time a couple mornings ago and picked the last of the tomatoes, including all the green ones that had reached full size, cut the remaining cabbages (which were small but probably not going to grow anymore) and picked the runner beans and brought in all the other last gleanings from the garden. I had enough time to plant in some cover crops and I'll do the rest today.

I'm looking forward to a nice day off from everything school-related today, taking the time to just settle back into home, catch up on gardening and baking and relaxing. I've been moving so quickly all week and been away so much that I feel a little out of touch with home, so today will be all about getting back in touch with things around here.

Minus One

Sadly, our little flock has been reduced in number. When I let the pullets out of the henhouse yesterday morning, Cluck Norris didn't come piling out with the others, and I opened the side door to find her huddled on the floor, not reacting except to open a bleary eye when I poked her (most unusual, as she usually freaked out the most when picked up). She was clearly ill, and we isolated her from the others, in a box in the living room, while we quickly chicken-proofed the yard and let the other four out to free range for the first time, with my parents (who were visiting) on duty to prevent escape or foray into the off-limits garden. With Cluck in quarantine, refusing to move, eat or drink and showing signs of infection, Matt and I quickly cleaned the coop completely of straw and shavings and litter, cleaned the run, refilled the henhouse and run with clean straw and shavings, gave the water dish a good clean and installed a new "big girl" chicken feeder.

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 My dad with the chickens, who loooooooove watermelon!

Lady Macbeth, Goldie, Esther and Penny all seemed hale and hardy and clearly enjoyed the freedom to roam, but unfortunately Cluck died around noon.

I kind of feel like this was our induction into the world of farming, although not the first chicken death I have dealt with (I had the unfortunate experience of losing both of my cousin's chickens to raccoons while house sitting three years ago....). Chickens get sick pretty easily, and we had been lucky to have all five chicks make it past chickdom, so to lose one at 10 weeks was sad, but not tragic. I think we handled it in the respectful but pragmatic way we want to deal with all animal deaths in our little family, treating the animal with dignity but moving on after the death has occurred, and not belaboring the point. Our best guess at the cause of death is Coccidiosis, a common infection among young chickens. It comes from ingesting chicken poo that is infected, so we are now keeping a much closer eye on the cleanliness of the coop and cleaning and refilling the water dish far more often, while looking for a waterer that will be easier to maintain. You live and learn, I guess, and it may be that we were being too lax about the state of the coop and the water, although it also could be something far more random. Luckily, the remaining four pullets are all healthy and lively and strangely seem more tightly knit and flock-like without Cluck.

On a brighter note, we had a great weekend visit from my parents, enjoying the fun of watching the chickens being, well, chickens, eating lots of good food, and trying to beat the heat (highs have been around 90 degrees again for the last few days and are predicted to stay that hot for the next week at least). Before we ended up in Portland, I took the train to Centralia, Washington and met my parents there, and we camped nearby and spent all day Friday at Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, exploring and enjoying the various visitors' centers, and taking a 6-mile hike through the desolated blast zone on an epicly clear and gorgeous day.

We hiked from Johnston Ridge Observatory, on the north side of the volcano, facing the crater formed by the 1980 eruption. Thirty years after the lateral blast knocked down trees and covered this area in up to 100 feet of silt and ash and killed every living thing in its path (including 57 people), the land is still barren in most places, although gorgeous with wildflowers and scrubby brush, but no trees. In the photo above, you can see the new lava dome that is growing inside the crater. If you enlarge the photo, you can see the many vents sending up steam on top of the dome, as well as a big puff of steam venting of the near slope of the mountain.

 Photos by Dad

 My parents have been wanting to see Mt. St. Helens and the monument since the eruption before I was born, and we finally did it!

 Mt. Adams behind Spirit Lake, which was displaced and filled with trees leveled by the eruption.

We were just five miles from the crater, a very beautiful and extremely humbling view.

A Day on the Farm

Yesterday (Saturday) we took a field trip, as it were, to Full of Life Farm, the farm that we buy most of our meat from. Jessa (Matt’s sis) came along, and we took the hour long road trip to St. Paul, Oregon, in the beautiful Willamette Valley, where Full of Life is situated. The farm is very new (about three years old), run by Bernard Smith, whose family homesteaded the property several generations ago. Bernard made the move from fast paced city life to farming after deciding to revolutionize the way his family ate, and bases his farming practices on Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms. Matt and I try to eat only pastured, grass-fed meat and eggs from pastured chickens, and Bernard is an excellent source of both. He now partners with a neighboring farm and sells pastured beef, pork, chicken and goat in addition to eggs. We believe that the health benefits of eating this meat vs. commercially raised meat far outweigh any extra expense in it, and would far rather eat meat from animals raised on their natural diets on open pasture in the air and sunshine than from those raised in confinement, eating grain and other things their bodies aren’t built to process. Since transitioning to pastured meat, we eat meat less often (once or twice a week) and make the most of our purchases, making stock from leftovers and bones and eating small portions of a cut over multiple meals. We have also noticed that we get sick far less often and have a lot more energy since cutting processed meat out of our diet.

We first got to know Bernard and his farm about a year and a half ago when Full of Life Farm started selling at a farmer’s market in Portland. Matt and I visited the farm once before but didn’t do an in-depth tour. This time, we attended Bernard’s Family and Friends Day, and got a walking tour of the farm, met all the animals, and learned all kinds of things (and were pleased to find out we already knew the answers to a lot of the questions Bernard was asked!), then enjoyed a picnic on the lawn by the farmhouse and a performance by a bluegrass band, with Bernard’s teenage daughter on fiddle. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, sunny and about 80 degrees, and we felt right at home, tramping across farm fields, smelling the sweetness of fresh grass and clover and seeing our food roaming and grazing happily in the sun. 

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Bernard explaining the brooding houses for the chicks.

 Red Broilers free ranging.

 The eggmobile, which follows the cattle through the paddocks so the hens can till the cow droppings into the ground to fertilize and encourage the grass growth. 

 300 red broiler chicks!

 Full of Life Farm uses guard dogs that are trained to protect livestock. Two Bernese mountain dogs guard the chickens.

 Layers free ranging. The breeds here are Australorp, Buff Orpington, Silver-Laced Wyandotte, and Ameracauna.

 Matt and Jessa crossing one of the cattle paddocks. 

 A beautiful Fjord Horse at the barn.

 One of the hogs chilling out in the barn. 

 Isn't Oregon a beautiful place?

 Turkey poults (Broad-breasted Bronze)

 The goats are guarded by an Anatolian Shepherd and a guard alpaca.

 Goatlets!

We ended the day by stopping into the farm store and buying a 10-lb box of beef cuts (which we split with Jessa) as well as some pork chops and a dozen eggs. We spent $71 and have enough beef and pork to last us at least six months, not to mention some delicious fresh eggs. I am loving the look of our freezer now:

We had a wonderful time, and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to know exactly where my meat comes from and how it is produced. There is such value in farmers and grocers who provide complete transparency about their practices, especially in this culture where so much of how our food is made is purposely hidden from us; because if we did know, we wouldn't eat it.

Back in the Low Country

Tuesday, The Ides of March, 2011

Nelson, New Zealand

After twelve fun and incredibly educational days at Spray Point Station, we have found our way back to sea level (almost) and are now gainfully employed and settling into our new digs in Nelson, the beautiful and vibrant town at the head of the Marlborough Sounds and one of the sunniest places in New Zealand.

Friday morning brought on an episode of Extreme Mustering, New Zealand Style. We drove to the top of the ridge overlooking the Cannister River, the same ridge we mustered west (towards the house) from on Thursday. This time, Roland had the goal of collecting a dozen or so sheep that we had seen the day before, over the fence on the eastern side and down towards the river (away from the house) into the area that had been fenced off for the Carbon Farm. There’s a reason they didn’t want to run sheep on it anymore, and due to this particular mob somehow ending up on the wrong side of the fence, we found out just why Roland doesn’t ever want to muster there again. After I herded four relatively docile sheep into an accessible paddock along the ridge, we then spread out across a massive and unbelievably steep hillside, slowly zig-zagging down all the way to the river, flushing 12 sheep out of the bush in the process. It all sounds well and good in writing, but it took us a good three hours to get down the hill, a descent of several thousand feet that involved navigating around a couple of sheer rock faces, through thick and tangled native bush, scaring up wild goats and pigs, and occasionally, for me, sitting down and sliding down the hill on my bum, in places where it was too steep to attempt walking! It was definitely extreme, but also exciting in an insane kind of way. Naturally, the sheep made it to the bottom about an hour before we did, and kindly waited next to the gate into the holding paddock while we finished our descent. Keep in mind, the distance between Roland (south end), and me (north end) was far enough that we weren’t even always within shouting distance. Matt covered the area between us, and we were all so far apart that for most of the time we appeared to each other as moving specks on the mountainside!

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 If you enlarge this photo and look really closely, you'll see a tiny red dot in the upper centre of the picture. That's me. I then proceeded down past the bottom right corner of the photo, and that same distance again after that.

When we finally all joined up all the way down at the river bottom, the truck remained parked at the top of the ridge, a several-hour climb behind us, so we took the easier way home, walking a good two miles down the relatively flat track out of the valley and then up Waihopai Valley Road (Roland went up the hill track later on the motorbike to retrieve the Ute). My feet and thighs have never been so sore as when we finally reached the house! We were very glad that mustering is only done in the morning, but what an experience!

On Saturday we got a reprieve, as Roland was taking some guests deer hunting early in the morning, so we spent the day playing with the kids, doing some work around the house, packing, and catching up with ourselves a little bit. We decided we needed to leave for Nelson around 2 or 3 PM on Sunday, so helped Roland with the muster again that morning. We drove back up the ridge to clear another of the huge paddocks on the side toward the house, and were treated to some eerie and ethereal lighting effects as we drove up the hill and straight into the low-hanging fog/cloud that covered us for the first 45 minutes or so that we were mustering. It was one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring natural phenomena that I have actually been in. 

The morning’s muster was relatively tame compared to the previous one, and we successfully collected 60 or so sheep, and as there were several very dirty ones, plus the ones we collected in the Cannister Valley, we drove them up the road to the house and into the sheep yards. 

 Several of the lambs from the Cannister side had never seen humans or fences before, and were a bit wild. A number of the sheep were very daggy and had never beend drenched and were suffering from fly-strike, so after drenching the whole lot, we pulled out the dirty ones and herded them into the woolshed for some dagging (shearing off the poo-ey bits that attract the flies).

Matt and Ben clearing a sheepjam.

Catching and securing a daggy sheep. 

 Toting a daggy sheep.

Roland gave Matt a turn on the drenching. 

 Herding the sheep into the race. 

 Inside the woolshed. 

 Note the burlap moccasins or "moccys" on Roland's feet. They allow the shearer much more flexibility to prop up the sheep, and don't slip on the wool and grease that always covers the shearing shed floor.

After watching Roland take care of a couple, I left him and Matt too it and went to shower and pack the van. When I checked back in an hour or so later, I showed up just in time to watch Matt dag the very last sheep! Much harder than it looks- not only do you have to shear off all the gross bits, which happen to be around the sheep’s most vulnerable parts, but you have to hold the sheep still while you do it, while leaving your hands mostly free. And having handled lambs and then caught several sheep over the last several days, let me tell you that restraining a fully grown sheep that doesn’t want to be restrained takes a lot of muscle and finesse! Matt, with a few stops and starts, got the job done, and it was fun to watch, but I didn’t get a photo. (This is just dagging, and it takes this much work…the hot-shot shearers can shear upwards of 300 sheep per day, it takes only a few seconds for them to shear the entire fleece off a sheep!)

After lunch and showers and lots of hugs, we said goodbye to our hosts, the kiddos, and Spray Point Station, with many thanks for the wonderful experience and so much new knowledge! It was a bright and sunny day, and the two-hour drive to Nelson was absolutely lovely, though pretty, lush little towns and skirting along the edges of the sounds. We had been searching on TradeMe (the NZ equivalent of Craigslist/eBay) for rooms for rent in Nelson, and through a massive stroke of good luck, got a reply and managed to arrange to see a room on Sunday night as soon as we arrived in town. Everything worked out wonderfully, and moved in that very night! We are subletting from the fun and vivid Nikola, in a house high on a hill overlooking Tasman Bay and across to Abel Tasman National Park, with loads of bright and wacky colors and decorations on the walls, and a lovely affectionate cat named Blossom. We pay $165 per week in rent as a couple, and have arranged to do a couple hours’ maintenance and garden work per week in exchange for utility costs. The views from the house are incredible, and our little room off the garage has loads of light, just the right amount of storage, and a sweet antique wooden writing desk that I fell in love with at first sight! 

 Looking from the dining room towards Nelson. The city centre is right behind the low hill on the left side of the photo. 

We started work at Kathmandu yesterday morning, and so far it’s going well, it is retail but in a fun environment, with very good people. We are earning $15 per hour and the store is right in the city centre, across the street from the library and the I-Site, and easy to find. We live in the suburb of Enner Glynn, so it is a 10 minute drive into town. We walked today, but it is a full hour walk each way, although a nice route. We are searching for cheap bikes as there is a paved bike path from the bottom of our road all the way into the town centre, about 5 km. 

We are settling in well, enjoying our new situation, and adjusting to working full time.

Last night's dinner, to celebrate employment and housing: Salmon with spring onions, rice, and a fresh salad from the garden.