Aphids Suck

The first two years we had this garden, we grew gorgeous Brussels sprouts but before we had a chance to harvest a single one, aphids found them. They left the other brassicas alone though so we got a good harvest of broccoli and kale, totally aphid free. This year, we opted against the Brussels sprouts. Unfortunately, it appears that in the absence of Brussels sprouts, aphids are perfectly happy infesting the broccoli, kale and cabbage that we did grow. I'm most disappointed by the loss of cabbage because we had some BEAUTIFUL heads forming!

We'd tried using non-pesticide type remedies in the past. Companion planting with lavender (which grows very well here) didn't help. The aphids were unaffected. Setting up two little lady-bug homes in our garden to encourage lady bugs didn't help either. I've seen all of one lady bug in our garden in the past 3 years. Chickens would probably eat ahpids, but they'd also eat our garden and I can't take that chance. (Chickens also love slugs by the way, but chickens sleep at night when slugs come out, so they are a terrible option!).

A little online research turned up an easy solution. Apparently tomato leaves (of the nightshade family) are poison to most bugs. You can make a 'tea' of tomato leaves to use as a pesticide. It's safe for humans and pets, but deadly to bugs.  The problem is that it's deadly to ALL bugs, so you'd also lose any beneficial bugs in your garden.  Since we don't have many of those, I figured it was worth a shot.  My plan was to only spray brassicas.

So I pulled off about two packed cups worth of tomato leaves and coarsely chopped them.

Then I added hot water and let the mixture sit overnight (or about 8 hours).

I then strained out all the leaves and poured the liquid into a clean spray bottle we had. I added plain water to fill the bottle (about another cup) and voila - organic tomato pesticide!

I immediately went out to the garden to try and rescue our brassicas. It took almost half the bottle just to spray our two kale plants. Then I tackled the least infested of the cabbages. The cabbages that were the worst, I just pulled from the garden. Same for the broccoli. Actually, it was as I was spraying the broccoli that it occurred to me that we DO have one beneficial bug in our garden...our bees! I totally hadn't thought about the bees, but I was careful to not spray any flower at all, so hopefully it won't affect them. I'd feel awful if I accidentally killed our three hives!

This was two days ago. Tonight will be my first opportunity to investigate the results. I promise to report back. Keep your fingers crossed for me that this worked!

And then there were 5...

On Monday evening, we took Polaris and Skylark on a LONG drive from our place to their new home. We found a couple with a good amount of land that were looking for some goats. They'd just lost one of theirs to coyotes, so they needed new ones to be companions to their lonely wether. As we had decided to not breed Skylark any longer and since we didn't need another wether around our place, the two of them went together. We drove them ourselves so that we could see the conditions of the new place. It's really nice and I think they'll be happy. They'll have a small Alpine wether as a companion and a small female boer-cross as well. Two acres just for them with plenty to eat and places to explore. The couple were very nice and very affectionate with their goats (which Skylark will appreciate) and I think we made a good choice.

While I'll miss her to some degree, I know that she'll be happy there. I really hadn't formed much of a bond with Polaris, but I'm glad that they went together as he's still quite young and seemed to welcome the security of a familiar goat when introduced to the new surroundings.

The remaining goats are doing fine. Pepper is providing us with milk, but she has continued to find a way to nurse Penny (the other little black goat baby!) through the fence that separates them. We've finally decided that we cannot thwart her, so we are going to outsmart her. We ordred an 'udder sling' that kind of works like a bra for goats. It's designed to help goats with low hanging udders from getting injured on the ground, but it can also be used to help discourage sneaky goat babies that should be weaned already! Hopefully this will help as we just don't have the room to put more distance between the two of them without investing in some fence changes that we are not financially ready to tackle just yet.

5 months = many changes

I cannot believe that it has been 5 months since I last posted on this blog. Due to the directional shift that my life has taken lately, I cannot pretend that I'm going to turn over a new leaf and begin posting like a regular blogger going forward. I would sincerely like to, but I must be realistic and I know that I just don't have the time.

That said, I miss the part of my life that this blog was representing. When others ask me when I'm going to update this place, I think not about the camera full of photos that I have not uploaded or the piles of recipes that I've collected to try, or the times I've thought about documenting another aspect of our 'farm life'....I think about how much I miss it.

Before anyone gets all concerned on me, we still have the farm. We still have seven goats (yes, the most recent babies are still with us for the moment!), we are down to only 9 chickens and one rooster, and we are up to now three beehives, one of which my husband captured on our property when a swarm showed up a few weeks ago. We still have a garden, we are now using the new barn and I'm working on the start of an herb garden that has culinary herbs in boxes hanging from our deck railing and medicinal herbs growing in the flower bed in front of our house.

So what has changed? The big whopper is that I have a new job. I am now the College Program Manager for my company and as such, I'm building a college program (we had none!) including an internship program and a solid college recruiting effort. We hire predominantly masters and PhD level graduates, so I will have the opportunity to use my technical background as a way to connect with the hires, with the hiring managers and with the professors at the schools we target. I will be doing a LOT of travel and therein lies the biggest change to our lifestyle. I travel, my husband takes care of the farm and neither of us have time to blog or cook or do half the things we used to do around the place.

We are working on scaling back and considering where our future lies. At this point, we don't see a whole ton of changes in the immediate future as we have no intentions of attempting to sell our place in the current real estate market. We've also got entirely too much that needs doing around the place before we could even list it (like replacing the wood stove and doing some work on the septic system). I think that for now, we are going to just work on scaling back a bit. To that end, we are working on finding a new home for Buddy, Skylark and Polaris (the boy goat baby pictured above). We will keep and eventually breed Penny (the girl goat baby), Daisy and Pepper (again). Dollar will be kept as a companion and because I cannot part with him. He's my 'little guy' who is actually the biggest dwarf goat we own! He's sweet and super easy to manage, so he'll be a good companion goat when we have to separate someone for some reason (like weaning). For the chickens, we are going to rethink how we house them. Each time we build a new coop/run, we learn something new, so eventually we'll get a system going that is virtually 'kink' free. All the remaining girls are still laying, but considering that more than half of them are now three years old, their production has significantly fallen off. This is a good thing for us because the egg load is now manageable.

The fruit harvest is looking good for this year so we've sent out feelers into our local community for anyone wishing to glean our fruit. Basically, we'll harvest what we want for ourselves and then send out a email to a local collection of people who will come and pick the remainder of the fruit for themselves (or for charity). All in all, I think we are making good progress towards getting on top of all we need to do and learning to have fun as well.

Just so no one thinks it's all work and no play at our tiny farm, that's not the case. We have a sea kayaking trip and two hiking trips planned still for this summer and two different people lined up to watch the farm while we are gone. It's all about balance, right? We just have to learn to build up our balance muscles a little.

A source of heat

You may recall the above photo. This was taken in the hotel room we stayed at briefly when we first moved to Oregon (we were waiting on our furniture). For some unknown reason, Kitty felt inclined to share a crate/bed with Chalie - all of his own accord.

Fast-forward 3 years (almost exactly!) and our new cat, Cooper decides that Kitty must have been onto something. I look up from my Kindle and see that Cooper has made himself comfortable on Charlie's dog bed - while Charlie is on it! Charlie awoke when I grabbed my camera, but they were both sleeping peacefully when I first looked up.

Neither Kitty or Cooper ever joined Maggie on her dog bed. Personally, I think it's a heat thing. Charlie radiates heat. He's often cold and shivering in the winter and can function quite well in the high summer temps. And his head is always hot to the touch. I think the cats like this feature!

Maggie is usually cool to the touch. She is naturally well insultated and is always energized and happy on a cold brisk morning. She will almost melt before our eyes in the summer heat.

Funny, but Maggie is just like me. Charlie is just like my husband. Both Kitty and Cooper will chose to cuddle up to my H long before they'll do the same with me. Apparently, it's not that they don't like me, it's that he is a better heat source in the winter! Phew, I feel like less of a pariah now. ;-)

Goat babies are here again!

Pepper had her babies on Feb 7, 2011!! She had two tiny babies - both black - one boy and one girl. They both have blue eyes (like their sire). The boy has a little white spot on his forehead that looks like a star, so we've named him Polaris. The little girl is still nameless at this point.

Pepper is turning out to be a good mom. She's still skittish of us, but she's attentive but not overly protective of her babies.

Since our herd is currently at 7 (for now), I thought I'd mention everyone:

Pepper (left) and Skylark (right)

Here is the proud momma, post birth. She and Skylark (the goat with white on her face) are butting heads a bit, but Skylark is definitely cutting the new mom some slack.

Dollar - who is HUGE for a Nigerian Dwarf wether. Dollar loves to be pet and will actualy choose to be scratched over food!

Daisy - our sweet little girl. She's very curious and loves attention. Her favorite past time is following humans around as we do our chores!

Buddy - our first wether and the only Pygora of the bunch. Buddy is kind of a bully to the other goats, but he is definitely entertaining!

Spring in January?

Apparently, our chickens think so...

The 'easter egg' birds lay green eggs. We haven't seen a green egg since October. When the days get shorter, most chickens molt and stop laying for awhile. Our 'easter egg' birds (aruacana/americana crosses) follow this pattern.

A few days ago, we got our first green egg of 2011. I guess it's spring. Someone needs to tell mother nature.

Gravel, gravel, everywhere....

Pile of gravel awaiting distribution. See that ground to the right/rear of the pile? See how green it is? Yeah, that's driveway. It should not be green.

We have a gravel driveway. At first I was a bit dismayed at this fact because as cyclists, my husband and I would much prefer to ride on pavement. Of course, our driveway is short, so we figured we could live with it and it certainly wasn't a deal breaker when we bought the house.

After almost three years of dealing with it, we had an estimate done to have it paved. Holy moley...that is NOT what we want to spend our money on! Besides the fact that gravel is better for the environment (it doesn't disrupt water flow patterns), it's cheaper. And frankly, in our little country farm world, I think the gravel looks better with our house than a pristine asphalt slab would. Unfortunately, all this indecisiveness has only led to a driveway that gets greener and greener each year (and not in a good way!).

Then we finally have our mini barn built. It has a gravel foundation under the main enclosed part. We are about to pour a concrete slab on the open part where the goats will live (concrete lasts longer than wood and it's cleanable for birthings as necessary). To pour this concrete, we need to add some gravel to level the area out a bit. Last weekend, we had a truckload of gravel delivered from a local shop up the road. $180. Significantly less costly than asphalt and it will do double duty as concrete foundation as well. Score!

Our wonderful small tractor, the handy cart and our new mini barn...

But now we get to distribute it. Yay, not. First we loaded up our handy-dandy new trailer to drag the gravel from the driveway to the back corner of our property where the barn is located. A couple of trailers full, and the space is sufficiently leveled. (This trailer will be 100% necessary to move 36 80lb bags of concrete to the site as well.)

The remaining gravel will need to be spread out on our existing driveway. This will not be fun. This will be back-breaking work. It is a necessity. Not only are the weeds taking over in the summer, but we are finding that the mud is getting a bit too thick in the winter. Gravel, gravel, everywhere... anyone looking for a unique way of getting some exercise this weekend? ;-)

Winter harvest - carrots!

Many pounds of carrots (and parsnips) awaiting their fate...

We planted 4 types of carrots and one type of parsnip (and beets) all in the same 12 inch high box in our garden last year. They grew like crazy! We've been harvesting them as we've needed them for stews or recipes since August, but we've never bothered to dig up the whole box.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to pull out a few and I found that I had to really hack at the ground because the top two inches or so were frozen. I decided then that the next time we had a string of warmer days in a row, I'd harvest the remainder of the carrots. We had that string of days last week - 4 or so of 50+ weather in a row...plenty to soften the box soil.

So on Sunday, I grabbed my old milk crate and set out to harvest the remainder. Uh, yeah. That was a bit ambitious. I had no idea how many carrots we had!! The crate above is only two varieties of carrots and the parsnips. I still have two more varieties of carrots and one of the ones I didn't dig up actually occupies a double space. The above crate was easily 20 lbs in weight and I have no doubt that there is the same amount or more still to be harvested. That's greater than 40 lbs of carrots in a 2' x 4' box! Talk about space utilization!

My plan was to can...but I just couldn't bring myself to pull out the pressure canner and all that goes with it. I'll save that for the next harvest (next weekend?). For the carrots above, I cooked a few pounds to have with meals, I mashed some of them and made a yummy carrot-orange snack cake. I peeled a bunch and put them in the fridge for snacking. I'm going to make some carrot muffins or cake later this week. And lastly, there will be roasting. Lots of roasting. Nothing is yummier than roasted root veggies with garlic and rosemary (both also from our garden). The yellow carrots in the above bin are ok raw, but they are buttery and sweet when cooked - even without butter or sweetener! YUM! Lastly, I've wrapped them up and I'm storing them on the deck railing for now. We have no room in the fridge!

Anyone have any carrot recipes they want to share?

A New Entryway

This is what our house looked like when the old owners first listed it - about a year before we saw it for the first time...

Our front entry into our house was pretty pathetic. It was narrow, partially blocked by the flower bed, ugly and worst of all, slanted towards the house so that when it rained (which happens here a lot), water would eventually run towards the house. If the water sat there long enough, it would soak into the basement walls. Not good.

This slant appeared to be getting worse each year so this year, we decided that it needed fixing. First of all, we had the huge old stump that sat in the flower bed dug out. Before we bought the house, there was a huge pine tree there (see above) but the previous owners removed it. We know it was pretty recent since the original listing showed the tree but it wasn't there when we viewed the house. We thought that the stump/roots were still expanding and therefore lifting the sidewalk. Once the stump grinder people dug it out, we found out that it wasn't the case. Most of it was already rotting. Ok, so the sidewalk might not have been getting worse...it just appeared that way. I didn't need that huge stump in the way of what will eventually be an herb garden anyway.

The next step was getting the walkway repaired and resloped. We briefly thought about doing it ourselves but quickly changed our minds when considering how this basically attaches to our foundation. So we got a few estimates and selected a local crew to do the work for us. They were going to pull out all the old cement, relevel it, widen the opening so that it curved towards the driveway more and create a new low wall to better contain the flower bed. They were starting work when I left for work one day and by the time I got home, it was done! Awesome!!

Here are the photos. I don't have great before photos, so these will have to do.

This is the front entryway before we had our siding replaced. Where the chairs are is where the water would collect against the house. You an also see how the dirt from the flower bed would just fall into the walkway.

This was taken as the siding work was underway. Here you can see the whole walkway and how narrow it is at the end by the garage (front door is to the left). The stump is where those flowers are in front of the ladder.



Here is what it looks like today! No stump. Nice wall. Open walkway. And no water collects against the house. Yay!

The next step is to extend the wall around the entire bed and get some herbs planted this spring/summer. Our plan is to finish the wall this winter so that we can plant as soon as it warms up.

2011 Begins

Happy New Year!


New years resolution #1: Blog more.


There, that takes care of this week. ;) Actually, my minimum goal will be at least one blog post a week..and more if I can swing it. Stay tuned!!


In the meantime, here are a couple of photos of our repainted laundry/storage room and our dining room.

The laundry room with a peep at our kitchen through the doorway. In the mirror, you can see the previous color on the partially unfinished wall (yellow).

Slightly closer shot of the shelving. I have green and yellow awning stripe fabric for curtains. Let's see how long it takes for those to get done!

And lastly - our dinning room. The trees in the background are only in residence during the winter - they usually hang out in the greenhouse (dwarf orange and meyer lemon).

Tiny Barn: On the Horizon!

It's unbelievable, I know!!

I'm actually updating the blog! ;-)

No, actually...I mean that we are finally going to have a proper barn! At least 'proper' for our tiny farm and our tiny goats. We have been researching this since we bought the place. We knew what we wanted, but most pre-designed plans and most pole-building places are organized around much larger buildings. Given that our space is limited, we really didn't want to give up too much real estate to a building, no matter how helpful that building will be. Plus, a big honkin' barn in our yard would look decidedly stupid as it would dwarf everything else.

We had basically come to the conclusion that to get exactly what we wanted and within our budget (a key consideration, of course), that we'd have to buy plans, modify them somewhat and then build it ourselves. This is a massive undertaking for two completely untrained carpenters. One look at my addition to our goat shed would quickly convince any doubters as to my lack of carpentry skills. So, to be smart about this, we ordered plans for a small shed and we were going to build that first, as practice. (Then we'd turn our current tool shed into housing for meat chickens...but that's a future endeavor). This shed was supposed to be built last spring - after we moved the compost pile.

The compost pile is still in its original location. The shed is not built. The plans are gathering dust and spiders in the basement. We just don't have time for this type of major project.

So, months later we just happend to walk into a 'Tuff Shed' building at our local HomeDepot. We were just curious. It was a 12x16 space and as we stood there, we realized that we could totally turn this into a workable barn for us and our small goats. We'd have to build some interior walls and figure out a pully system to load hay into the loft, but we could do that!

So we contacted Tuff Shed for a quote. It came out within our budget, but I had a lot of questions about the features we were choosing. Turns out, there is a Tuff Shed showroom not too far away. We took a trip down there last weekend and it was exactly what we should have done a year ago. We worked with the guy, toured all their on site samples, chose our own materials and features and basically created the barn that will suit us perfectly. He drew up the quote and for whatever reason, it was even cheaper than the first one! Top this off with the promise to build it on site next Monday - and we can promise our goats a new residence by Christmas!

This is essentially what it will look like.


We are providing the paint (left over from our house painting - we never used it on the deck) and they will be painting it for us, so ours will be a midnight blue color (coordinates with our slate blue house). The trim will be white. Our window and door configuration is different than the one pictured here, but the basic structure and openings are the same. Inside the enclosed area, we will be creating a clean, sanitary, milking parlor! Both sides will have loft space to store hay and feed bags (we'll create a pully system for this) and we will create a 'birthing stall' area inside the enclosed part so that when Pepper kids in February, the babies won't freeze to death if we don't happen to be in attendence.

And, if this turns out to our liking, we'll start setting aside a little more money to eventually have Tuff Shed build us a new garden/tool shed.

Can you tell how incredibly excited I am???

More Goat Baby Images

Daisy and Dollar atop the dog house together.

As promised - a few more photos of the goat babies! These were all taken a couple of weeks ago. Dollar is now almost twice Daisy's size. He's will become a wether this weekend because we feel that he has probably developed enough due to his large size and fast growth rate. Both goats are growing a shaggy coat that is super cute and very soft. Good thing they both enjoy being petted...they get a lot of attention!

My husband holding Dollar.

Me, holding Daisy. (please excuse the squinting - that morning sun is BRIGHT!)

And lastly, just because he was being a good boy - we have a photo of Cassanova, our only remaining rooster. He's got the oddest orange eyes - I swear that they are fake! So far, he's not shown us much aggression but he is still a young rooster. He's a cross between a white leghorn (father) and an Arucana/Americana/easteregg bird (mother).

Cassanova in all his orange eyed glory!

Babies and Bounty

Strawberry jam canned mid-summer - the start of our canning season!

We've been busy! Harvesting, canning, cleaning, fixing, and playing (mostly with goat babies!).

Since my last post we've named the goat babies (Daisy is the girl and Dollar is the boy), had them disbudded (they both turned out to have horns), and attempted to milk Skylark. Milking has been unsuccessful thus far. First of all, one udder doesn't produce much milk so we are hesitant to take any for fear the babies will suffer. They are eating quite a bit of other food now, so we may try milking her some this weekend. Secondly, she hates it. We ordered a hobble (a velcro strap contraption that will hold her legs motionless while we milk) but we have yet to put it into practice - again, hopefully this weekend. Dollar is growing like a weed. He's easily more than twice Daisy's size now. Both goats are super sweet and very friendly.

Pepper has been bred. We matched her up to a buck with similiar coloring to her and she made friends quickly. She stayed at the buck's place for a couple of weeks but is now safely back with us and tolerating the babies reasonably well. She should be due right around Valentine's Day. I'm anticipating naming at least one of her babies 'cupid'.

The farm bounty has begun! We harvested pears and then I dried and canned as many as I could in one weekend. Lots went to waste though - I am getting better at dealing with this! Then we harvested blackberries - they went into a LOT of jam and quite a few batches of muffins. I have a recipe from my mom that was based on the original Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins (remember back in the day when department stores had restaurants and bakeries? Jordan Marsh in downtown Boston was known for their killer blueberry muffins). I've subbed in blackberries (and whole wheat pastry flour) with much delicious success. I particularly love that they freeze so well! I also freezed a few quarts of blackberries for recipes later in the year. Lastly, I made a pear blackberry pie with cardamom in it and it was DELICIOUS! It was so good that I'm tempted to actually buy more pears to make it again for Thanksgiving. Oh the sin!

Then the harvest moved to apples. I did 16 quarts of applesauce (I still have a couple left from last year!) and then 6 of those went into making apple butter in the crock pot which then turned into 7 pints of apple butter. I also did a couple of dehydrator loads of apple rings for winter use (and hiking food!). Delicious apple bread, apple crisp and baked apples were also made. There are two more apple trees that are just now ripening, so I forsee much more apple products in our near future.

We harvested the garlic which turned out beautifully and is drying in the garage. We harvested TONS (possibly literally, though I didn't weigh them) of onions. One dehydrator load took care of about 20 huge Walla Walla onions (Walla Wallas are similiar to Vidalia onions for you southern readers!) and the rest are stored in the laundry room for general use. Having what feels like a neverending supply of onions is nice...but I can honestly say that I will never buy bottled garlic again. The home grown fresh stuff (we did four varieties) is incredible!

I didn't get many zucchinis this year, but yellow summer squash is taking it's place. I've successfully subbed summer squash for zucchini in my favorite banana zucchini bread recipe, so I will be doing quite a bit of squash shredding for freezing and winter baking. All the winter squash varieties appear to be doing really well, so expect a future post about sweet potato squash, pumpkins, butternut squash and Fujitsu black squash recipe experimentation!

And then there were tomatoes - and more tomatoes...and more tomatoes. Wow. HUGE harvest this year. With a friend's help, we produced 12 quarts of seasoned sauce this past weekend and two pints of salsa. My next project will be to attempt to can tomatoes diced since that's how I use them the most. I'll probably end up doing another batch or two of seasoned sauce as well. I will also chop and freeze and also dehydrate as many as possible to try to tame the hoards.

Then I'll move on to carrots...looks like a bumper crop of some delicious carrots! I think carrots are like tomatoes - the store bought ones just don't compare to what you grow yourself in terms of flavor.

Grapes will be the last to be harvested, I think. The plan is to put a new steam juicer to work so that we can get the most of our grape harvest. Who knows...maybe home made wine is in our future!

Goat babies are here again!

Skylark and her new babies a couple of hours after their birth.

On Tuesday, August 31st...one day after the date I predicted, Skylark gave birth to two baby goats. One girl and one boy. The girl is a sweetheart in almost the exact color markings as her mom (the black kid in the photo) and the boy is mostly white with some black markings. Both are very playful and curious. We anticipate that the boy will eventually be a handful as he's already the more adventurous one. The boy is slightly larger and is older by about 20 minutes.

On Monday, I expected that Skylark was going to be delivering soon. I actually hesitated to go to work on Tuesday morning as my H was still out of town until about noon and I had a feeling she was close. Luckily, she held off until the afternoon until after he'd gotten home. I'd cleaned out the goat shed that morning and left him a note to fill it with fresh straw when he got back. He went out to do just that and goat baby number one was already here and being cleaned off my mom! He threw some straw in the shed and called me at work to let me know. A few minutes later, goat baby number two arrived! What a huge difference from the events of this night, huh? As it turns out, Skylark is a great mom, so we had to do very little at all.

So now we have three things that we need to take care of right away. The first is getting them disbudded. Our disbudding iron is for larger goats, so instead of buying a new one immediately, we've located a woman that will do it for us. She also said that she can do these small breed goats with a full sized iron, so I'd like to watch in order to learn. The difficulty is that we don't yet know if either of these goats will have horns! Skylark has had polled babies before when bred to a polled buck ('polled' means that they naturally have no horns) so there is a good chance that one or both of these babies won't have horns at all. That would be AWESOME because disbudding really, really sucks. It's far worse than weathering the boys (castration) as far as I'm concerned. Rick may feel otherwise! ;-) This is partly why we haven't bred Pepper yet. She is polled and you cannot breed a polled goat to another polled goat or you get other potential deformities. The farm where we bought these two had only two bucks. One was polled (the one we bred to Skylark) and the other was Pepper's sire (can't do that combination!).

So now we need to get Pepper bred. Our plan is to get her bred soon so that she'll deliver in the spring and if we keep rotating like this, we'll have milk year round and babies twice a year! I've found a buck for Pepper who is actually colored exactly like her and who is not polled. Once we arrange a date, we'll take her to the bucks residence for a couple of weeks. She's never had babies before, so hopefully it'll go smoothly and she'll be a good mom.

Thirdly, we need to prep for milking. For the first two weeks, the babies get all the milk, but then we'll separate them at night and milk Sky in the morning (until they get weaned). There are two issues with this. First of all, Sky is much smaller than Sass was and this means that her udders are very close to the ground. There is no room underneath her for our old milking pail. It's too tall! I've found a shorter one that might be a good option for us, so we need to get that ordered. Secondly, since Nigerian Dwarf milk is twice as rich as Alpine milk, we'll need a seperator (or I'll never be able to drink it!). Sass' milk was probably about 3% milkfat (whole cows milk is 4%). Nigerian Dwarf milk can be 6 - 7% milkfat! That'll be like drinking half-half! Ick! The seperator we used when we had Sass was 1) too big - we'd have to collect milk for a week before skimming and 2) not working properly. We've found another one that will probably work, but I need to do a little more investigation first. We will certainly have no trouble making butter and cheese with this milk, that's for sure! Oooh, and ice cream too! Yum!

So all of this plus one more triathlon (Sat, Sept 4th) and the need to do some serious harvesting/canning/drying of both our produce and the local peaches that I want to buy and you have a recipe for a very busy holiday weekend.

Crater Lake

Us at approximately the half-way point of the ride - tired but still smiling!

So for the past 5 years or so, I've drooled over pictures of Crater Lake in southern Oregon. When we first decided to move out this way a few years ago, one of the first ideas that popped into my head was "oh yay! We can ride the Crater Lake Century!". The first year we were here, we were just moving into our house on the farm. We had just purchased a goat and we desparately needed to build a fence and shelter...and of course, milk her. Travelling 6+ hours away for a bike ride was impossible.

The second summer we were here, we actually signed up for the ride. We still had a goat in milk, chickens laying eggs and a garden that was difficult to manage. In addition, we were out of shape and overweight and both of us were working too many hours at our day jobs. We had to cancel.

THIS year, I was determined that we would go. I was so excited that I signed up right away (as evidenced by our bib numbers - 35 and 36!) and began making plans to do the ride. I stalled on breeding our first Nigerian Dwarf goat so that she wouldn't give birth until AFTER the ride. I was already training for triathlons, so I felt that I'd be in shape if we could manage a couple of longer rides. I found a girl to watch our farm (and with no goats currently in milk, it worked out) through a web site I frequent. We were really going to do it this time!

And we did. And boy, what a great ride it was! It was well supported, well organized and worth the 6+ hour drive. The weather was gorgeous (if a tad windy) and the route was challenging but satisfiying. And of course, the lake was spectacular.

Some of the most spectacularly blue water I've ever seen!

We started as late as we dared (start time was 6:30 to 8:30 am at our leisure) so that the air could warm up a bit. We headed out of the parking lot in Fort Klamath at about 8 am. We were registered for the century ride, but we had no intention of actually riding 100 miles just to say we rode 100 miles. We wanted to ride to the lake! So we skipped the 18+ mile tour of the valley floor and headed strait up the road that went to the lake. We climbed in the forest and while it didn't look all that steep, it was a pretty good incline. In addition, Ft Klamath was at 4200ft so to us flat-landers, it was a challenge.

We made it up to the rim and then turned left on to Rim Drive West (while the metric century riders turned right). This is where the climbing got difficult. It was steep. I was in my 'granny gear' and working hard to keep the pedals turning. It was also pretty hot as this part of the climb was in the sun and sheltered from the wind. But we plodded along and finally made it up the rim and FINALLY got the views. Spectacular!

Requisite photo of my bike taken at our very first view of the lake.

The ride continued in a clock-wise direction around the lake with plenty more climbing to be had. Spectacular views dotted the route both towards the lake and out towards the south as well.

Everytime I started thinking 'hmmm, I'm hungry' a rest stop came along. They were remarkably well placed and very well stocked. A handlful of grapes, a homemade cookie, a small subway sandwich, some water and we were on our way again.


There were a couple of spots where I felt pretty discouraged. It was hard to look down at my computer, realize we still had 40 miles to go and then figure that since we were only going 6 mph, that we'd be out there FOREVER. Luckily, there were a few downhills as well. By the time the last descent came our way (about mile 60), I was ready for it. My legs were done, my rear was killing me from the saddle and my shoulders hurt from riding in the drops so much to fight the wind. We FLEW down the mountain and back into Fort Klamath not a moment too soon as far as my rear end was concerned. Total distance: 78+ miles. Total climbing: 7500+ miles Average speed: ~13 mph (better than I expected!).

See the way the water is blowing in the wind? It was worse up on the rim - we almost bit it a few times due to super strong cross-winds.

We enjoyed the provided pulled pork sandwiches and baked beans and then headed back to the hotel for a nice hot shower and a nap. I'm so glad we finally got to do this ride.

Honey Harvest!

Slicing the caps off the honey comb prior to extraction.

So our hives are huge and full. We have two of them, one of which already has two FULL supers on it (the large box that tops the hive and where the honey gets stored). We pulled a few frames to give the bees more room about a month ago, and we needed to harvest that honey so that we could reuse the frames. We rented an extractor from the local bee place and invited some friends over to watch/help/learn.

First step was to cut the caps off the honey comb. This is done in multiple ways, but we used a hot knife to slice them open on both sides of the frame.

Each frame has a notch in the spinning mechanism inside the extractor - the centrifugal force pulls all the honey from the comb.

Then the frames get inserted into the extractor. This particular extractor holds 9 frames. We are looking to buy a slightly smaller one to use for future use as we anticipate rarely harvesting so many frames at once.

The frames are spinning in this picture (barely visable) while we held the extractor from shaking too much.

The lid gets closed once all the spaces are filled and the spinning begins. Everyone took turns. We actually had to hold the extractor pretty tightly because we were short two frames and it created enough of an inbalance to wobble. We did bolt it down to a wooden board, but it still shook quite a bit. Next time, we'll make sure to fill the extractor!

Here comes the first of the honey!

We had a special filter pan sitting on a bucket to catch the honey as it came out of the extractor. This makes sure that you capture any and all non-honey bits (like wax).

The empty frames can go back into the super for storage or reinsertion into the hive. The header on the blog shows a close up of the comb after extraction. (above)

After all the honey is out of the frames, we can reuse them by inserting them back into the super. This is actually helpful to the bees because they don't have to build more comb...they only have to fill it and then cap it.

This shows some of the beeswax caught by the filter as the last of the honey comes out of the extractor.

Lastly, we tilted the extractor to help the last of the honey flow out of the spout and into our filter. It was just beautiful as it glowed in the sunlight! And man...nothing beats fresh, raw honey for taste - it's heavenly!

Summer Fun

I admit it. That's what I've been having. Summer fun. I've been having so much of it, in fact, that I just haven't had time to blog. Shame on me, I know.

Let's see - what has been happening? On a personal level, I signed up for and have been training and competing in triathlons. Yes, triathlons. This non-runner, former swimmer decided to give it a shot and sure enough...I got hooked. I've now completed 3 sprint triathlons and 1 super sprint (all approx 0.5 mile swim, 13 mile bike and 3.1 mile run). I've got one more on my schedule for the end of the summer and then I will take the winter off from racing and focus only on improving my running (which is pathetic, at best). In the process, I've lost about 25 lbs and I feel 100% better about myself and my health.

We have also finally ventured off farm this summer. We found a lovely local girl to watch our animals and we went for a weekend hiking trip this past weekend. It was our first time leaving the farm together in over 2 years! We had a great time. The photo above was taken of me as I stood at the edge of our campsite with one of many waterfalls behind me. I'll post more photos later - it was a beautiful area called Goat Rocks Wilderness of all places!

We have one more weekend trip planned in a couple of weeks. We will be traveling to southern Oregon to complete the Crater Lake Century bike ride. We feel woefully ill-trained, but we are going anyway. I think it'll be a blast!

On the farm front, things are moving along. We think that Skylark is pregnant (it's kind of hard to tell on goats!) and if so, she is due the end of the month. We cannot wait to have goat babies around again, but I'm not really looking forward to the twice daily milking routine again. It will be nice to have fresh milk though. We still need to find a mate for Pepper. We've also asked a barn builder to draw up some designs for us, so there may be a REAL barn in our future. We'll see what he comes up with and how it'll sit with us financially, of course. I am just giddy at the thought of having a real barn with a real milking parlor. Strange that these things make me 'giddy', huh?

The fruit trees and grape vines are producing and the garden is exploding. We've had some successes and some failures, and I will definitely be back to share those stories with some accompanying photos.

The new chickens are shooting out eggs faster than we can eat them, so I'm once again on the hunt for egg recipes. And of course, now that we have more friends, we have more people with whom we can share eggs...thankfully!

Work is the same for both of us. We joke that if we ever come into enough money to pay off our mortgage, we'll probably get a divorce fighting over who gets to quit their job first! It's not that either of our jobs are so dreadful...it's just that we've both finally found so many other things that we'd rather be doing that work just gets in the way. I guess it's nice to have such a full life. I should not complain. :-)

Vanishing photos, policemen with rifles and biking

What do all these things have in common? My next blog post!

My husband bought me a netbook for an anniversary present (I think it was just convenient that it was anniversary time as he's been wanting to get me one for awhile so that he could have my desktop for some project). It came with Windows 7 Starter which is so full of limitations that it really sucked. He upgraded it to Windows 7 Home Premium last week and in the process, erased every single digital photo we had taken in the past two years. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I hadn't had a chance to back them up yet as I'd only *just* moved them from my work computer the day before.

When he informed me of this, I seriously thought it was just pulling my leg. He wasn't. Usually when you upgrade, the software will ask if you want to delete old files - that didn't happen this time. We think it's probably because he named my new profile the same as my old one so it just wrote right over it. Because of this, I have no more 'before' photos of anything on the farm or in the house. Not a single photo of Sass (who is now living on a different farm)...and every single photo I've taken with my new camera save the few that are still on it are all gone too. It was all I could do not to burst into tears while fixing dinner that night.

Luckily, because of a recent virus problem on my work computer, I have two profiles on it. I'd deleted all the photos out of the current profile because I wanted the space, but I forgot to delete them from the old profile that still exists on my laptop. I went searching and they were still there! I don't have any photos taken between when that virus struck and when I did the transfer (basically anything taken with my new camera), but it's better than being completely without anything since we moved in. Phew!

So, later that same night, as we are about to sit down to eat, my huband notices cop cars in front of our house. Two of them were out there with lights flashing and it looks like they were blocking off our road. OK, we figure there was an accident at the corner (it's happened before). Then we notice lights at the corner and further back on the other cross-street. Odd. We sit down to eat and not moments later the dogs start going crazy and we notice a cop in our backyard. My H puts on his jacket to go outside and see what is up and when the cop sees him, yells for him to take the dogs inside and stay there. Lovely.

I go to look out the guestroom window and there are now no less than a dozen town, county and state cop cars blocking our road! Flashing lights everywhere!

When I look to my right, I can see one cop standing half-hidden by one of our apple trees with a rifle in his hand. From a different window, I can see another cop squatting down, also with a rifle, using our greenhouse as cover. Holy crap.

Then we notice about 6 more cops with a HUGE black german shephard heading towards our back yard. They are combing the whole space - terrifying the goats. Luckily, by this time, the chickens were already in their coop or they'd be making a hell of a racket. We had to lock our dogs in the bathroom where they had no windows because they were also going ballistic at this point. A different cop finally had the courtesy to ring our bell and let us in on the story. Turns out, some lady reported that her car was shot at from the abandoned school building next door and when the cops went to investigate, someone was there and he ran from them. They were hunting this person down. I heard LOUD shots as I was cooking that evening - we hear them all the time - but I remembered these as odd because they were so loud that I heard them over the TV in the other room. Country living at it's best, right? To this day, we don't really know what ended up happening. By about 9:30 pm, they were all gone and we haven't heard any updates since then. Strange!

So lastly, about the biking. Last weekend we didn't make much farm progress because we spent a lot of time biking. On Saturday we met up with some friends and biked the route that my first triathlon will take in a few weeks. After the ride, those of us doing the tri also ran the race route for the run portion as well. It was my first brick and other than one fleeting desire to just sit down as I started the run, it went well. My plan is to do another one this weekend and then one more next weekend. On Sunday, we did a ride that we enjoy just north of us. We ended up doing just over 33 miles and it was a really great time. The weather was spectacular and we really enjoyed it. My sit bones were screaming at me (they aren't used to this much riding yet!), but it was worth the pain.

The hope is that this weekend we can manage at least some riding AND some farm progress. We've got some transplanting to do and the chicken coop needs to be cleaned. Fun! ;-) We are also working on relocating our compost bins so that we can build a new garden shed on the current bin location. I took some 'before' photos of the move - but they were among the missing so I'll just have to be content with posting 'during' and then 'afters' once we have them.

The New Chicken Run & Coop

One of the new chicks peeking out the front door of their new home.

So we hatched new baby chicks in February and while we enjoyed watching them grow up, they were getting entirely too big to be in the brooder in the garage. Additionally, they were getting too much dust on our bikes! ;-)

My husband spent a couple of weekends in a row (I only marginally helped) building a new run for them. We purchased the little coop for them off a guy on craigslist who builds them and painted it ourselves. Then, once the run was completed, we butted the new coop up to it, arranged the chicken wire, and let them explore. The base of the run is lined with cedar shavings for now, but we'll probably keep it full of straw or spent hay from the goat shed as time goes on. We figured that cedar shavings were a good bet since that's what the chicks had in the brooder and we wanted it to be somewhat familiar to them.

Here you can see the whole run and the coop.

It's located in the corner of the goat area, so to free range the birds, we can just open the door and not have to worry about the neighbors dogs chasing down our birds.

The coop opens from the side for cleaning and fetching eggs. The nexting boxes slide out (they are in the garage for now since it'll be awhile before these birds are laying).

This was when the new chickies first started to investigate! I think here they are saying to each other "you want me to step over this gaping hole right here? Really? I don't think I want to go outside that bad...".

So far, this arrangement appears to be working out just fine. The chickies have learned that their new coop is 'safe' and they go there when scared. They also put themselves to bed when it gets dark, so all we have to do is close up the coop (lifting that ramp and latching it to the side of the coop).

Now to just wait for the eggs to start....

Granola

Granola ingredients stored in Ball jars on the shelf of my new kitchen island.

A few months ago, I decided to try a recipe from Tosca Reno's Clean Eating Cookbook for granola. I'd never made my own granola before, but it seemed simple enough. That first batch was made with our own honey, dried pears from our own trees and mixed rolled grains from Bob's Red Mill Store on the other side of Portland. It was so delicious and so cheap that we decided that we were never buying store bought cereal again! Since then, I've played around with the ingredients using different sweeteners, different dried fruits, different nuts and even an experiment adding orange zest and maple syrup. So far, I've only had one failed batch for over-cooking the syrup. Out of the 10-12 batches I've made, I figure that's pretty good!

The basic recipe calls for 1 cup each of 4 different rolled (flaked) grains. I typically use a combination of oats, wheat, rye and either triticale or barely. For seeds, it uses sunflower and sesame. For nuts, it calls for almonds (I've used both sliced and slivered) and I often add or substitute pecans. The syrup that you toss the ingredients with is a combination of oil (canola or olive), sucanant (I've used date sugar or brown sugar as well), honey (or maple syrup), vanilla extract and a dash of salt. This part gets heated gently and then everything gets stirred in a big bowl and then spread out on a baking sheet with a good lip.

You bake it for 40 minutes at 300F. And you MUST stir the mixture every 10 minutes. The recipe then calls for the addition of the dried fruit at the end just prior to cooling. I added it at the beginning the first time I made it because I didn't read the instructions carefully and I actually liked it better that way. I think the flavors blend better and the fruit is a tad chewier in texture which I enjoy. Now I usually mix it in with 10-20 minutes left to bake as a compromise.

Granola baking in the oven.

Dried cranberries and date nuggets awaiting addition. I use unsweetened cranberries for more zing.


Finished granola! I like to add the dried fruit with 10 or so minutes left to bake as I feel like it better incorporates the fruit.

This stores beautifully for a week or two in an air-tight container. It's SOOO much more delicious than sore bought cereals - and much healthier, too.

The two best batches we've made were the first one and the one pictured here. Both were made with local, raw honey. The first one was our own honey, the one pictured here using honey from a friend. Wow, what a difference GOOD honey makes!