Red Sky

Out the door too early for a Sunday morning.
The ground is a crusty concoction of frozen wet snow.
The sun rays peek above the trees beyond the pasture

      (Beyond that misplaced home
      An island isolated in its suburbaness.)

And spread in a  red band across the horizon.

Red sky in the morning, shepherd take warning.

But the rain and snow have passed
Harmlessly westward to the sea. 
The wind blows cold, but the sun shines?
Would nature cry wolf falsely?

Safely indoors now illuminated in the night,
I know the sky does not lie.

One lamb is dead and one wide eyed by the wood stove.

Red sky in the morning, shepherd take warning.

The crosier and the mitre

2/12/2013

The pope said he's going to retire.
I guess he feels old or not up to the job.
Somedays I feel like the pope.

Like the mitre weighs heavy on my neck
and my shoulders ache from lugging around the crosier.

And somedays I don't think I know enough to decide what to do
to take care of those who depend on me.

But I'm not old (yet)
and I couldn't, won't, can't
do anything other than what I do.

So I look around me
and see the sunset sitting in my side-view mirror
and the sheep in the hollow grazing below the cows
up on the hill
where the altostratus clouds soak in the last of the sun's rays,
and I'm energized
and ready for the storms or sunshine that tomorrow might bring.

"Wathcing the Grass Grow"

      Disclaimer: If you're anywhere affected by "Nemo," you might not believe the following story.

      When I stepped out of the truck in my pair of non work, shoe-sandal hybrids the ground squished under my feet and the peeper chorus hit my ears. I could've skipped (with a bluebird on my shoulder--who in reality was sitting on the fence post watching things that bluebirds actually care about) through the old paddock into the new one where the cows currently chewed the cud, grazed, lazed and did cow things.
    
     Yesterday I'd strung the fence up hurriedly (admittedly as quickly as you can walking the perimeter of a 10 acre field three or four times wearing hip waders in the mud with a hand full of step in posts or weed-eating sleeping brambles or dead joe-pye and broomstraw) because I was rushing to meet Emily at the VABF (Virginia Association for Biological Farming) Conference. 

     We were excited to see Karl Hammer speak. He founded the Vermont Compost Company that produces compost for organic growers and raises a large flock of egg laying hens without any grain using food, tree and agricultural wastes from their community. Karl, the self appointed compost czar in the nation in the universe that he occasionally and fictionally inhabits, was as funny as he was inspiring. Fifteen or so years ago, he had around 60? hens and was making compost when he realized that the little bit of grain he still fed his chickens was a crutch for himself and not his hens, so he stopped feeding his hens grain.

    Inspiring. The potential... So if you've got hens, go find some five gallon buckets and food scraps, old hay, wood chips, leaves, manure and kick the grain. Exciting!  Like watching grass grow. One of my favorite compulsive past times.

    Every time I drive into Tuckahoe to move the cow herd, I stare at the old hay meadows (now pastures!) and ignore the road, which is fine on the lane at Tuckahoe where if you drive over 10 miles an hour your truck box or suspension will protest by giving out after repeated trips, but not on any type of highway or country road which I am very guilty of as Emily often shouts at me when we're driving somewhere, "Daniel! Are you okay?" She knows that I'm either ogling cows, ogling grass or falling asleep.

       In the past two or three weeks, I've really noticed that the fescue, clover and orchard grass seem to be growing. Even the first spot on the bottom ground (granted the James helps to heat that micro-climate) which the cattle were grazing less than two weeks ago is starting to regrow.

      There's hope in them blades! Soon the grasses, clovers, forbs, shrubs, veggies and saplings will be growing loudly. So next time you're bored, go watch the grass grow.

Another day of misadventures in hard-headedness

       I didn't see the gate swing open, but I felt it. On the ground, i gathered my thoughts. Then got up to make sure Bailyn went in the milk pen instead of the thirty ewes who exploded after her food. Once she was in the pen, I walked her around so that her udders were easy to get at. You'd think that after a year of this milking ritual, we'd understand each other. I guess we're both hardheaded.
     
      Bailyn is hardheaded because she can be. If she flat out doesn't want to let down milk or move, I can only wait her out. Not like she's got a busy schedule. Not like she outweights me by 600 lbs. Myself on the other hand, I'll blame genetics. My dad's hardheaded. Our discussions generally result in dad shouting at me so I walk out and then, the next time I talk to mom, she says that she hopes we can work it out, but the next time I talk to Dad, we laugh about something. A hard head like a glacier is slow to change (although maybe that's changing?).

      When I crossed the James headed north on 45 late on Friday morning, all I could think was, "no bleepity bleepin' way." Two days ago before Emily and I headed home from St. Stephen's market, we'd been talking to Robert about floods we'd remembered and big storms. We didn't expect much that night.

     Earlier that day, my Dad called to catch up and congratulated me on moving the cows to the bottom ground. Said he couldn't figure out a way to do it. Not really true. Before he moved to Tuckahoe full time, the caretaker, a man who I only know second hand through stories, used to graze his cattle on the lowgrounds. This was back in the day (you know, uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow walking to school) before weather.com and weather.gov. Apparently, his herd was on the bottom ground when a flood came up and washed them downstream. Some of the cattle ended up at the Country Club of VA. Tuckahoe tenderloin was on the menu that week.

      So Friday morning, I felt like I'd been caught with my pants down in front of class. I'd completely forgotten about Wednesday night's January thunderstorms. I raced to Tuckahoe fueled by fear. I crossed the tracks onto the lowgrounds and stepped over the electric fence into the herd. I walked south towards Tuckahoe creek and discovered that a 200 yard stretch of my temporarily permanent two strand electric fence was underwater. Not going to conduct much electricity underwater and caught up in flotsam and jetsam. I knew I had move the cows but I wasn't sure how far.

      I called up my brother in law. Even though he lives in North Carolina now, he's a voracious kayaker and learner. I asked him about the river level. He told me it was predicted to crest at 15.6, but looking at the graph, he thought it would peter out and not reach that peak. At that moment, the river was at 14.8. I could see that Tuckahoe creek was up over it's bank and headed into the field with my herd. Down by the railroad tracks, there was standing water, but nothing flowing yet. All good information, but I wasn't settled in a decision yet, so I called my dad.

      From the ski lodge in Utah he told me that 20 feet seemed to be the level when the all of the bottom ground flooded. He also said that if I moved the herd and got worried about the water level that I could just open their fence and let them wander over to Martin Neck which was the highest point on the low ground. Finally, he told me to see how much rain they got in the James River Basin. If they got 10 inches or more west of us, I needed to worry.

      Out in the field with an un-smart phone, I called Emily. After court and between the doctor's office and the post office, she looked on her phone (not while driving of course) and told me that I didn't need to worry. 

      My hard head has ignored Emily's advice before, to the tune of sheep trampling through fences, ewes prolapsing, resulting in grabbing them like a wheelbarrow and tipping them on their heads so that gravity would draw their insides back inside, wasting hours rigging an electric turkey scalder only to use it with a propane tank and many more incidents than I care to type at the moment or you'd care to read about, so I grabbed my step in posts and polywire and moved the cows out of their paddock into one where an eighth of the line wasn't under water and drove home.

      I got home, got some feed for Bailyn and headed out to get her up so I could milk her in the morning because if she stayed out with her calf, Boaz would gulp down all the milk. A few minutes later, that sheep powered gate swung into my head and I found out that maybe a hard head isn't all bad.

     

Recipe: Orange Braised Lamb Shanks

Oranges are always a big part of Christmas around here. Daniel's aunt and uncle live in Florida so fresh Florida citrus is always an expected and greatly appreciated Christmas gift.

Before Daniel wolfed down all of the oranges, I stole one for this recipe.  It was a big hit around here with scarcely a drop of sauce left for the house's mouses. 

I served the lamb shanks with freshly baked buttermilk biscuits with blackberry jam.

Orange Braised Lamb Shanks

• 4 lamb shanks (you can get away with 2 of you're feeding less)
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 large or 2 small onions-coarsely chopped
• 1/2 bottle of white wine (I always pick the bottle with the most amusing label)
• 1 1/2 cup water or lamb broth
• Juice and zest of one Orange
• 3 small cinnamon sticks
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• a dash each of nutmeg, cloves and allspice or a generous dash of your fav. pumpkin pie seasoning

   Pre-heat oven to 325. Sprinkle lamb shanks with salt and pepper. Heat butter in a large dutch oven on the stovetop.  Add chopped onion.  Just before onion is browned add the lamb shanks and brown on all sides.  Once the lamb is browned, add wine. Scrape any bits from the pan.  Add water, half of the orange juice and most of the zest.  Add cinnamon sticks and other spices.  Bring to a boil and stir.

 Transfer to the oven and cook, covered, for 2 hours.  The lamb should be tender and falling off the bone.  Remove the pot from the oven and put the lamb in a warm place.  Boil the sauce to reduce by half.  Add the remaining orange juice and zest.  Serve by pouring the sauce over the lamb shanks.  

That's the way that the world goes round

           Time is strange.  Lately it has moved so fast that I can't remember when I last posted on the farm blog.  Since then, we've butchered turkeys, set fence posts, hauled cattle and sheep to the butcher, held a sheep dog trial, witnessed the birth of another litter of piglets and a new bull calf by our milk cow Bailyn (my milking muscles are slowly getting back and shape).  My milking muscles are out of shape because one day in early October, I went out to milk Bailyn and the milk was bright yellow.  Colostrum.  I had a suspicion Bailyn was pregnant because of how she looked and I hadn't seen her in heat, but I didn't know for sure. Any rate, she was pregnant. I stopped milking her when I saw that colostrum so that she could save it all for her calf.  My hands feel like it was a year ago that I last milked Bailyn, but it's only been 2 months.
       On the opposite end of the time spectrum, butchering turkeys took an eternity.  We don't have processing equipment, so I made a scalder (seemed like a good idea, but the water heater element and thermostat in a barrel cut in half didn't work out as I planned, so we had to use propane) and we hand plucked the turkeys. 77 of them. Bad idea. I had some help from Emily, her brother and a friend, but there came a point on Monday evening when I still had about 35 turkeys left to butcher and my help had left or gone to bed.  So I didn't get to sleep.  I hadn't pulled an all-nighter in a while.  Forgot how that goes.  Time slows and slows.  Especially a task as monotonous as butchering turkeys. Cut, bleed-out, scald, pluck, cool down, gut, ice bath, repeat until our orders are met. Time crawled.  If there had been a clock, I would have fallen asleep watching the hands crawl by or the feathers pile up.  But that all seems like a year ago now.
      I guess it's like Navin said to Marie in the Jerk (especially the part about one day spilling into the next), "I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days and the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days and the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half."
     Wise words from a wise man.  Any rate, all we can do is enjoy the unusual ride that is time, that is life.  Like tonight when we were frying chicken.  Somebody thought we could use our small cast iron pan.  When we put the chicken in, the oil spilled over.  Emily asked if she should worry if I thought the burner might catch on fire.  I said, "don't worry."  Ate those words.
      Fire leapt up around that cast iron pan.  I went to the cupboard looking for baking soda and Emily shouted, "flour!"  We doused the burner in flour, opened the kitchen door, cranked a fan on high, and laughed.  Then we ate a delicious fried chicken dinner.  Stove was old anyway.

 

Bird Herding

        

         I've learned a lot over the past few years about how to work livestock from Emily. She instinctually knows where to be and where the animals want to go. "Watch their heads!" "Step into them!" She shouts out commands a mile a minute and I try to keep up.

        Last week I put my herding skills to use in two unusual situations, both involving birds.

             

       Herding birds? Is that like herding cats? 

      

     Wednesday on my way to feed the pigs, I crested the hill above pig village and saw a group of 20 wild turkeys intermingling with our gang of 20 extreme free ranging turkeys who had recently decided that life was better down in the woods by the pigs. This was free ranging gone too far. Action was needed before this gang went feral.

     

     I strode back to the barn and grabbed our lunge whip. I knew the turkeys respected this whip. When they were but young poults, I'd let them out of their safe home in the barn into the yard for grazing during the day (back when the days were long, remember?) and herd them back home at dusk. 

    
The whip worked again last Wednesday. I walked back down the hill to the nearly wild gang of 20 and started lightly smacking the ground behind them. After 10 minutes of walking and whipping the pasture, I had the birds back in the barnyard with their domestic, unadventurous friends (the rest of our turkey flock).

      


My bird herding adventures weren't finished for the week...

      Emily and I were finishing up our coffee on Sunday morning when we heard the call of a Carolina Wren.  Her call sounded crisp and beautiful, so clear that I thought she might be in the house.  Turns out she was.

          We went upstairs, a dusty place where we rarely go, and our friend was frantically trying to find a way out. We opened a window and stood back.  Our friend flew around the room, even into the window above the opening, but not out. Desperate, she flew right at me and squeezed between  the door frame and me. At that point, Emily kicked into livestock working mode.

        
         We followed the bird through two rooms, into a hallway and herded her back into the room with the open window.  Once there, we gave her no way to go but out the window. 

      
     Emily always preaches that when working animals you have to make every way but the way you want an animal to go very difficult. I couldn't imagine that you could herd something as small as a wren, but as usual Emily was right and the wren found her freedom. We returned to breakfast and our Sunday.