Fall Fever

Here I am. There has been no death or tragedy or anything. We just got busy with end of summer and fall and then we got lazy. But here I am to let you know about a Thanksgiving Miracle. The Miracle of Life!

As you know, we bought our ladies a handsome young man of their very own and were planning on breeding early for kids in February or March. But the goats would not go into heat! Not at all. None of them. And you can't force these things, apparently. We tried lighting candles and reading sexy stories and playing soft music. We had a talk with Millie about the does and the bucks and told her not to be afraid, those feelings, they are natural and normal (she is a young lady and this will be her first experience with a young man). We told Thor to be a bit more assertive and confident (he is a gentle spirit and perhaps a bit too timid for the more experienced mamas). Nothing worked!

We had really all but given up and were talking about buying a bred goat or a freshened goat in the spring. And then today Fanny Mavis started wagging her tail like crazy and pacing around in the area of the buck yard, and when Mike took her over to see Thor she just stood there and got right down to business! Yay! So if she took we should expect her kids around April 24th! Better late than never. She had triplets for us last year and has been our best milk producer. Otherwise we should expect her to go into heat in 21 days. Hopefully Millie and Ruth will follow her good example now. Thor was very proud.

In other news: We dried off the goats early this year. Ruth had a little skin infection on her udder and we just figured we would dry off and maybe go snowshoeing. Mike completed a new coop for the chickens, so now they have proper housing and and are closer to the house. He also finished the barn remodel as well as his shop area, cleaned all the garbage out of there and moved a bunch of crap to the "creepy shack," and is now working on weather proofing the part of the barn that floods in the winter (it's not where the animals live). We planted cover crop over the whole garden and mulched the parts that have overwintering plants. We chopped a bunch of wood so we can be extra cozy. We painted the living room finally and are getting ready to put up binds and buy some furniture. And a ton of other stuff too. Everything is snug and ready for winter. We have a few trips planned and family time. Basically we are all ready for our hibernation with books, movies, friends, video games, baking, and trips. And now that at least one of the goats has bred we can relax for real because everything is done. Winter is our lazy time. Ahhhh . . .

Jars?

Hey guys. We are running super low on jars. We used to have a ton but we are down to about 8 now.  Do you have any? Can you bring them back, please?

Thanks!!

Not Apologizing

Well, it's been two weeks. I fully realize that I am not the super-best blog keeper-upper, bit this is my blog and I will not apologize for the frequency of my posts. So there. The whole point is for friends and family to be able to look here and see what we are doing because for some reason you people are interested. Sometimes there just isn't anything to say is all. And sometimes it just feels like a list of tasks or something. Lately we have been trying not to work so hard or so frantically and to take some of the non-essential projects off the list for now. It's a hobby farm for goodness sake. That said, here are some things we have been up to.

I started planning for the fall/overwintering garden. We would like for this garden to feed us year round. I have some broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, and onions started and they can snuggle in to the garden soon along withs some direct sewn carrots and turnips and a few other veggie friends. Some other greens and things will go into the green house too. Plus we have all sorts of things to come out of the garden in the next month or two. You seriously see the size of some of my humongous winter squashes! I have Hubbard squash that khans got to be edging in on 20 pounds! The moles (and an over-excited Mike, frankly) had gotten to the potatoes, so we pulled those up and got three nice big boxes. I will plant more of those next user I think. And I found some artichokes is the garden this week too! I have always planted in containers and pots and I am astounded by what happens in real live dirt! We also  tilled up all the rows that weren't active and added some compost and are getting ready to tuck in some new seeds to overwinter and some cover crop. I love gardening! And I think next year will be even better.

We are still only getting one egg a day from one of our barred rocks. The other ladies don't seem to get it yet. At some point we will have plenty of eggs, but not today. We are also getting ready to breed the ladies and Thor is getting ready to to his duty. We moved the boys out of the barn too, because they are starting to stink. Right now they are sleeping in this little fenced in area by the house with no real shelter except a big tree. It's fine for now, but they will need real housing come the winter, so Mike one of the sheds from The Shire to what will soon be the Buck Yard. He towed it with the tractor because he is very clever. We will get the fencing done, set up hay and grain feeders, probably paint, and get some nice soft hay in there in the next week or so and then they will live like princes! This will be good for this spring too so we can wether any little boys we have and put them in with the fellas until they get meaty enough to butcher them. The ones we did this wear were still pretty little.

Grace's room is finished enough that she is sleeping in there now and all her clothes and things are in there. She still has her toys and books in the other room and we are dragging our feet a little on buying furniture until we get the door and trim up and such, but it looks really nice and bright and snug. And even more exciting Grace started 4th grade this week! Holy smokes! So we are back to earlier days and a more consistent schedule which really works out better for all of us.

I will try and post a few times this upcoming week and to get some pictures up as well, but history would suggest that it's only somewhat likely that I will do so. Really it's more fun this way because it's like a surprise!

Better Late than Never

Here is the first egg of the farm. It was one (small) bite per Cawley.

Tiny Baby Egg

Resting gently on an egg-pillow

Egg

I was so busy in the garden and canning and picking berries and getting things ready for Grace to start FOURTH GRADE (what!??) that I did not blog at all. Sorry about that. So here is the (disjointed) news:

You may have noticed that I love bullet points. I always have. It's just my style and you will have to get used to it.

• After all of the first egg excitement the second egg took five days to show up. At some point we may be tired of eggs, but for now we are just tired of feeding nearly 30 chickens and buying eggs at the store.
• I canned tomatoes from my garden. Twice.
• I vacuum sealed many fruits and veggies and cheeses and meats. Because I have a vacuum sealer now.
• I have 75 bazillion peas. Snow peas, sugar snaps, and shelling.
• I started seeds to overwinter. Fun!
• Chevre freezes nicely and I will be making a lot of it to see us though the holidays.
• I increased my 2011 berry-picking total to almost 80 pounds. (don't worry! the blackberries aren't ready yet).
• I have made 4 types of jam this summer and now I am done with jam for the year.
• Except maybe peach.
• I opened the last of the hard cheese for the year. They both taste like cheddar but I remain disappointed in myself. Hopefully next year will be better.
• My chest freezer has been decommissioned as a cheese aging box and reappointed as a chest freezer.
• Grace has many sassy new outfits for school.
• I also have some sassy new outfits and am ready for a date night. Mike.
• Mike fixed up our garden water situation in some terribly clever way and now it is considerably more efficient to water. Like magic!
• The goats also got a new water set up. They are very spoiled.
• Grace's room is all painted, and the carpet is on the premises. I hear it will be move in ready early in the week. I would not hire us as contractors unless literally the only thing you care about is coming in under budget. We are super good at that.
• Plus a bunch of dumb stuff like laundry and weeding and household drudgery.

I hear I am taking a day or two "off" this week, so maybe I will post some pictures or something with "sentences." But history would suggest otherwise so I better not make any bold statements.

YAY!!

Guess what we found in the coop yesterday?

AN EGG!!  (finally!)

It's very small, but it's perfectly formed and very lovely. And you have to start somewhere. I hope she (whoever she is) will tell the other ladies that it wasn't so scary or horrible and set a good example for the rest of them. Because one tiny egg is not going to be quite enough.

I have a picture of the egg but Grace is spending the night away and we promised we would not crack it open until she was here, so I will put up some pictures when I can include the inside and some shots of us enjoying it. Holy smokes do we love eggs. A lot.

Lazy and Grouchy

Sorry for the relatively long delay. My work schedule has been not exactly as I prefer it to be for the last month or so and this has resulted in extreme grouchiness on my part, which means no blogging. I usually work all my days in a row so I can have longer stretches off because I find it very hard to switch between days and nights (I work at night), so when I have only a few days off I do stuff like sleep until noon and then stumble around complaining about how the day is half gone for the next few hours and then I think 9:45 is an appropriate time to eat dinner. Also I try to cram a lot into my time off. And I get very grouchy about leaving. All of that make me feel like I don't have time to blog.

So for now you get some bullet-point style updates and that's it. But don't fret. I am back to my regular schedule and my glorious nine-day-off stretches starting Wednesday morning.

• We picked, canned, and froze almost 50 pounds of raspberries and Marion berries.
• In related news I had my first ever bee sting. It was dumb.
• I opened several aged cheeses. Some were good. One was quite good. Others not so much. I am frustrated and I am not sure exactly how to fix my mistakes.
• I made (and ate) pretty much butter from a friend's cow milk. I do love cream.
• I have tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers on a pretty regular basis now.
• We are wrapping up Grace's room construction.
• We ate another chicken.
• One of the baby goats had diarrhea, but I nursed him back to health and now he is perfect again.
• And those are the things. Pictures soon.

EXTREME EMERGENCY!!!

I mentioned in a previous post that I did not plant dill this year. I did go to some local nurseries but I could not locate any dill. There certainly is not enough time to grow some through seeds. So it appears that I am dill-less this year.

 This is sort of a big deal to me because I will soon be faced with about seven trillion pickling cucumbers. I must can pickles and if I have to buy dill at Safeway or something ridiculous like that I will, but I would like to save that for a worst case scenario. So this is a request for anyone who maybe planted too much dill or knows someone who did. Or maybe your neighbor did and you are comfortable with theft? Or maybe you know of someone in the area with dill for sale. Whatever works. If you can get me dill in any quantity I would appreciate it. I could trade you for pickles, cheese, milk, bread, eggs, money, praise.

Please help!

Thursday, July 14th

This week has been busy with house work. We had business, budget, and goal setting meetings early in the week (yes, we really operate this way) and with the garden chugging along and the goats growing and grazing away we are focusing all our energy (and money) on Grace's room remodel. We WILL finish before the start of school in late August. We are done with drywall and spackle now and we went supply shopping and got paint, primer, light fixtures, carpet, shelving, closet things, trim, and a few accessories. We are all set to get the room done in the next week or so and then we just need to get furniture, curtains, and a few more fancy bits and we will finally be done! We'll have pictures up soon! And then we'll be ready to start the next big project! What will it be? I know what it is, but I'm not telling.

Garden
We are eating out of the garden almost every day now! And our diet is getting more varied all the time. We have had greens and turnips galore of course, but now we are eating potatoes, broccoli, and cabbage too. We have had a pepper and a cucumber with plenty more of those just about ready as well as peas, beans, beets, summer squashes, carrots, and tomatoes coming soon. It seems so late in the year to be just getting some of these things, but remember, it was the wettest grayest summer in quite a long time and we got a late start. Plus with our climate it is about a month "earlier" here than it is in the valley, so we are not quite as behind as it seems.We have so many great improvements and expansions in the works too. Nothing is as good as having plenty of really good food all the time. And it's just so fun! We are taking with Grace's school about starting a school garden as well. Because we don't have enough to do.

Cheese
I have been taking a bit of a cheese break. I am mad at my cheese press and my aging box and am sulking about it. Plus I have been more excited about some other projects right now. It spite of that we have been just starting to eat some of the cheddars I put up a few months ago, and they have been pretty good. A little drier than I would like but very tasty. I will get my press and aging issues worked out soon and get back to work improving my cheeses. There is a ton of cheese ready to eat here soon, so I will have more of an idea of what I need to improve on.

Other Blog

Occasionally I write on another blog with some other rad ladies. I just posted about making some delicious feta cheese.

If you are interested here is the link:  http://ballsoutdomesticclub.blogspot.com/

There is also a link to it over there --> on the side bar.

PS: Let me know if you are interested in a taste of this feta! I have plenty to share with friendly friends. Like you!

Best Day

Mike got me a new phone. A fancy one that takes pictures and then uploads them to the internets. Probably through magic or something. So now I can take pictures and put them here so you can see the farm and how lovely it is, especially in the gorgeous summer! Here is my favorite sort of day:

Sassy

Pickle

Clean break

Just a few loaves . . .

A lovely day!

And then something awful and sort of embarrassing happened. I thought "the only thing missing is pickles!." So I went out to the garden and picked a few pickling cucumbers and went back to the kitchen to can just one little pint of pickles. Just to round out the day. I started some water boiling and went to get some pickling salt and spice and dill. DILL! I forgot to plant dill! Seriously? I planted NINE cucumber plants just for pickles and I FORGOT TO PLANT DILL! I will point out that I have dill seeds. I also found a drawing of my garden plan that includes "dill!" right there where I tucked in a few extra broccoli at the end of a row. Damn. I guess I will have to go to the nursery and buy some starts.

Thursday, July 7th

We had a great week playing Summer Vacation! At the start of the week we had decided to do no non-essential chores and have fun playing. And we did it! Mike and I both prefer to work and get very anxious when we don't have a project (or five) going, so this was an actual challenge for us. But we persevered and in the end we triumphed! The house is a mess! There is no new cheese! All construction stopped! I didn't even make bread! We did have a momentary lapse where we had a "meeting" to assess our progress from the last year, revise the "five-year" plan, and make very detailed six-month and one-year plans. I will write a separate post about that because I think it would be interesting for some of you to see where we have been and where we are going. Here is what we did instead:

We got the new goats of course. We made some new friends and connected with some old ones, attending a party at a near-by vegetable farm. Not like our farm. It's an actual farm where they grow stuff and sell it for a business. It was a fun evening and helped us narrow down our goals a little. Mike went fishing with some friends. Grace and I spent a few days with my mom. We watched the fireworks, went to a parade, and ate a ton of junk food. Grace went to a party at her friend's house. AND THEN we went to the water park in Mcminnville. (Recommended. It was super fun!) We also spent a fair amount of time skipping stones and napping. Plus the weather was gorgeous! So that's what we did instead of working! Don't worry we will be back to our natural state by Friday. Go!

Goodbye Chicken Rick

Today started as a beautiful day but unfortunately all Ricks that come to this farm become meat.  So today was the end for our first "Chicken Rick".  Just a warning, all Ricks that come to the farm are destined for the meat freezer.  If you are a Rick, friend of or family of a Rick I am sorry to tell you that if you or they come to our farm they risk the possibility of joining the rest of the Ricks in the freezer.  Just a warning. 

Rick had a hard time, he got his head stuck in some fencing early in his life.  Delilah let me know there was a problem in the chicken pen so I went and looked and Rick had her head stuck.  I was able to get her out of there but she suffered some damage but seemed ok.  Well, after a bit of time we noticed that Rick's beak was growing crooked and eventually he wasn't able to eat that easy.  We noticed that he wasn't growing much and looked pretty thin.  So instead of letting him suffer and dwindle away we decided to go ahead and butcher our first chicken.  

*Warning* Graphic Description Ahead!

The Butchering:

So, this is not my first harvest but it is my first chicken harvest.  I have felt confident I could accomplish this task for some time now.  I have read many books that deal with different methods for butchering chickens.  My favorite book so far is Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game it has detailed drawings and instructions on how to butcher most farm livestock. I also caught a quick video on youtube last night just to get my barrings.  

So this morning I got my butchering knives sharp and started to heat up my water to around 160* (we want the water around 140* for feathering) and bring it outside to sit in the sun.  I had a large plastic vinegar bottle that I screwed to a fence post.  I grabbed a bucket to catch the blood and throw the feathers in. 

I went in to get Rick from the coop, he was always the easy one to get.  I think he remembered I helped him.  If you hold the chickens upside down by its legs they calm down quite a bit.  I said my goodbyes to Rick and I performed the deed.  I was surprised how quick it was, he twitched a bit but he was restrained by the bottle.  I took him up to the house to take the feathers off. 

I wouldn't do this inside.  The smell is something different, not totally bad but something that would stick around for a while.  The feathers were a messy job but after a couple of dunks in the hot water they came off pretty easy.  The method I found to be the easiest is to just focus on an area and get it clean then move on from there.  Grabbing all over seemed to make a bigger mess than it was worth. 

Once all of the feathers are off (ok, some will still be around there but don't worry) it's time to gut it.  Like most animals you start at the anus and cut around it.  But at this point all you do is brake a couple bones and stick your hand in there and start scooping things out like ice cream.  This is a bit odd, mostly because it builds up suction in the cavity.  After everything is out you will need to cut off the head and use a torch/flame to burn off the excess feathers on the skin.  I used a propane tank that I use for soldering pipe.  Quick and easy, smelled like burnt hair.

Overall I thought it was a good experience.  It went super quick.  I think overall it was about 8 minutes start to finish.  Next time will go much smoother I am sure, and with more chickens it will cut that overall time way down.

Here's the finished product.  Again, she was small because she was so young but we will enjoy Chicken Rick tonight.

Update:

Chicken Rick was delicious.  We had him stuffed with onions and garlic.  Butter under the skin and topped with rosemary, S&P and olive oil.  Not quite as much chicken as you want for 3 people but  enough for 2 to share.

Chicken Rick Nude

Cooked Rick

Thursday, June 30th

We are goat people now, and it is that special time of year where goat people start looking for that special someone to breed with their ladies. Now that can't be any brush billy with in tact testicles. OH NO! It has to be someone with b reeding and distortion and a family history of excellent milkers. So a month or so back Mike and I began to look for a fella for our ladies. Someone worthy of them. Someone with class

We looked at some breeders with stud service and prices and location and found that after factoring in gas, lost time, and lost work, food, possibly boarding fees, inconvenience, having to drag Grace along (how boring), messing with milking times and missed milkings, and then the possibility of having missed the magical window of opportunity altogether. And having to do this with all three goats, on different days, we decided that the expense of buying and feeding and caring for bucks was worth it to us.

This may seem very silly having just talked about butchering our boys, but those weren't breeding goats. And genetic diversity is good, of course. So today we got two buck kids! Grace and I have named all the ladies so Mike asked that he be allowed to name the fellas.We are please to introduce our herd sires:

Thor God of Thunder:

Thor is three months old and, as you can see, he is quite a looker. And his dam is a great milker. According to the breeder we got him from he will be ale to do his duty this season, although we may have to build him a "ramp or platform" so he can reach the vital bits. I genuinely look forward to writing that post. We plan to breed in September for February kids.

AND

Captain America:

"Cap" is just a little fella. He will be a month old in a few days and he misses his friends back home. So we made sure to snuggle him in and he had a lovely huge bottle and fell asleep in the soft hay in his new pen. He will still need bottles for the next few months. Thankfully we have plenty of good milk and Grace is an expert at goat-baby care and feeding. She has been down to the barn about every 15 minutes to make sure he is ok. He of course, will not be ready this season, but we may breed him in the next year or two. He is primarily a companion of Thor for now. Goats need other goat friends. Plus with those lovely markings we may breed him just for the coloring.

Garden:

The garden in general is going gangbusters right now. Just imagine if we got a few continuous days of sun! Here is the big news:

We have an almost completely red strawberry! Finally! Plus some that are starting to get a little color and a ton of green ones. We have company coming tomorrow so maybe we can split The First Strawberry five ways! Or maybe Grace and I will go eat it first thing and then tell everyone about it later.

There is a melon in my greenhouse. It's only about the size of a gobstopper, but it is totally there and I can't stop looking at it. I also have super many tomatoes and probably a dozen peppers and about 10,000 pickling cucumbers. Thank goodness for the greenhouse.

Cheese:

Today while I was turning my cheeses in my aging box I found some mold (the undesired kind) on two of my cheddars. It was under the wax. Don't worry, though, I can totally fix that. The point is we tasted the 45 day cheddar and it was good. It was actually quite good which is awesome considering it is too young the wrong shape, and growing surface mold. I can't wait to try the ones I didn't mess up!

And that is the farm news! We are taking most of the rest of the week "off" to play with friends, go to some holiday fun, and hopefully play in the SUN!

Happy America to All!

"The trapping of the mole"

Ok, I hinted at this on my previous post and as per request here is what I do to keep the mole population down in my garden.  This method is the most humane way of killing moles that I have seen.  The traps are quick to kill and give obvious quick visual inspections.

I use "Cinch Mole Traps" these are available locally at Wilco in blue for around $22.00 a pair (two are needed for optimum performance)  I own 6 of them and I always have at least a pair just sitting in the batters deck waiting to go in the ground.

http://www.amazon.com/Cinch-Mole-Trap-Two-Pack/dp/B0053GHCP2/ref=pd_sbs_ol_2

http://www.amazon.com/Cinch-www-cinchtraps-com-C60-3B-Mole-Trap/dp/B002J86JLU/ref=pd_sim_misc_1

My property (as described by my neighbor) is "infested" with moles.  Now this has many meanings.

1. The property has not been managed in some time.
2. There must be a lot of worms in there.
3. The soil is not compact and has been loosened by all of this mole activity.

So we will all agree at this point that moles are not all bad.  I have even considered saving all the moles that I trap and skinning them for their hide.  It is some of the most beautiful and softest fir you will ever find.


On to the instructions:

Step 1
Find a fresh mole hole.  I like to take inventory of what mole holes are in the area and then look again in the morning (most mole activity happens at night) and spot the fresh mole holes by seeing the wet soil compared to the drier holes from the day prior (and yes, this is even noticeable when it rains).  I have never had any luck with a hole that was more than a day or two old.

Another way to detect moles, if they are not leaving holes but you may notice some of your plants are randomly wilting away or borderline dead.  Take a screw driver and probe around the suspect veggie.  If you feel a hollow spot then you have located your hole.  The mole now knows that there is a good treat in this hole so he is more likely to come beck.  These are great spots to try out.

Step 2
Dig out a 12" x 12" x 12" square hole directly over the selected mole hole.  You want to ensure your sides are sloped outward so that the walls don't fall into the hole and accidentally trip your traps or prevent them from tripping at all.   The main point here is to fully expose the mole tunnel so your traps will fit in there comfortably and you don't accidentally trip it while you are inserting it into the mole hole.

Step 3
Leave the trap and inspect it every 24 hours.  If your trap has not tripped in 48 hours then move it and place it in another location.   If the mole trap is tripped and remove the dead mole.  This trap is strong enough to snap the spine of a mole very fast and it usually does.  But on the rare occasion it will catch a paw of the mole.  this is why I check my traps first thing in the morning.  If a live mole is found remove him from the hole with the trap (Do not take him from the trap and release it, it will die if released)  The most humane way to deal with this is to kill it right off.  To do this take a machete or a heavy blunt object and strike just below the neck braking the spine immediately.  Do not hesitate and follow through.   Not doing so just makes the animal suffer.

Step 4
Tell the mole thanks for helping till your garden, but eating plants wasn't in his job description.    Don't laugh.  Even the life of a mole is worth something.


Here is a video of how to use the trap:

Ongoing projects and the future

From the beginning of our project here at the farm we understood that we did not know exactly what we would need and that we would learn as we go (because that's what we do best).  As the farm evolves we understand what is actually needed and we are able to invest more time and money into those projects.  So here is my update.


Barn:
We did remodel the barn but still stalled at about the half way point, this should get finnished in no time but I need to get a couple hundred bucks in lumber (and more importantly build it).  But here is what it looks like for now.

House:
The remodel on Grace's room is coming along nicely.  The drywall is up and spackled (on about 90%) we are getting ready to paint and hang doors soon.


Bucks:
We are getting boys for our upcoming breading season!  I will be redoing some of our fencing to create a secure pasture for the boys while also keeping them out of the girl's pasture.   So a lot of planning for the electric fence.   I'm just happy that I chose woven wire at this point because moving it around is so much easier than steel or aluminum wire.


Garden:
The garden is coming along nicely. We have been working hard for some time now, killing weeds, dealing with our ongoing mole problem (This is something that I have mastered, and I usually trap a mole within 48 hours of detecting a fresh mole hole) we also have the ongoing issue of our garden wanting to turn into pasture again so we are constantly re-working the pathways so weeds and grass dont' grow there either.  So far so good.

In conclusion:
There are a couple projects coming up (because it's summer) so those will be getting posted as they come along.

I went on a hike with a couple friends (Laura & Ben) we were in search of a old cabin on the top of my hill that was the original homestead for the property here (1900-ish) we were unable to find the actual cabin, it was probably no longer standing and the foundation was overgrown; but we think we found the plot that was cleared with an amazing view of the mountains facing west.

Here is a picture from the hike, this is about 6 miles east of our house on the top of the same ridge line the old cabin was supposed to be on.

Thursday, June 16th

This update is mostly about the blog site. We added some new stuff on the page this week! We added "What's in the Fridge" and "Coming Soon" side bar's to let you know what's here. This way you don't have to guess or scroll down and hope the last update is still accurate. I hope this makes it a little easier to see what we have to share with our friends in the farm fridge, and what is coming from the farm and garden soon.

I hope to have some info and fliers up on the fridge by Monday or so as well, so that some of our new friends can see info and prices. And maybe it won't be so weird to just walk into someones barn and grab stuff. As always, just let me know if there are ways I can improve this site, make it easier to use or to see what's important to you. The site is for our friends to use, so let me know what you want, and we will make improvements as we go,.

I also want to say, to both our new friends and old ones too: we are very new at this. There are going to be lots and lots (and lots!) of changes over the next months and years. We are making so many mistakes and constantly changing, and hopefully improving. Expect changes in the website, the cheese, the milk, the produce, and in the way we present, package, and get them to you. Not to mention the house, the land, the way we feed and raise our animals, the whole landscape of the farm. We have a five year plan that we are not quite a year into. Hang in there, OK?

This week I will be in Portland from Friday the 17th - Wednesday the 22nd. It's Father's day weekend, of course, but we won't be observing the holiday until some time next week, so stop by if you like and Mike will be here. The next month or so my schedule is all kooky, so I may be doing updates at funny times. Just until August.

This Week We Will Have:

Check the new sidebar! Instead I will sometimes do this:

Notes on Available Products:

• Little Round Cheese: This is going to be my go-to fresh cheese instead of the chevre. Why? Because I like it better, it's cute, and I can wrap it in plastic instead of packaging it in jars. ALSO I have again changed this recipe for the better. mmmmmmm . . .

Other Farm News:

Garden:

Our garden is having a had time realizing it's not pasture anymore. I keep being like: "Garden! don't worry about growing back all those weeds and grass! We are just growing vegetables now. I'll just put them where I want them, and you don't need to worry about a thing!"

But Garden is all " . . . . " Because it's just dirt and stuff. And the weeds just keep growing and growing and growing.

So we put black plastic on all the rows to try and get rid of at least part of the source of new baby weeds and cut down on the battle area a little. Because I AM GOING TO WIN! Not the damn weeds!

Greenhouse:

GUESS WHAT?? I have TOMATOES and PEPPERS in my greenhouse. Yeah, I know!

Thursday, June 9th

It's been kind of a weird few days. Not bad just that our rhythm is all thrown off and Mike and I do like a routine. It's probably therapeutic, I guess. Our niece, Mike's sister's daughter, is staying with us for a few days while her mom has a new baby. It's a boy and born at about 3:50 this afternoon. That's good and lovely of course, but these girls are about the same age and both of them only children (for the moment) and they have been driving each other CRAZY since first thing this morning. Bickering, whining, jockeying for attention, and generally being childish. Probably because they are children.

Then last night, just as we were settling in, Grace comes tearing into the house yelling that Delilah (the dog) is throwing up blue stuff in the driveway. It was D-con. TANGENT: we have mice galore. D found one in the bedroom. Grace saw one upstairs and then one ran over her foot in the laundry room and she lost it. Screaming, crying, more screaming. So Mike relented and put out some poison because the Mice in our house can lick a trap clean of peanut butter without tripping the thing. How do they do that!??!! The poison was out for 30 minutes in a closed room and she must have gotten into it when I went in to the laundry room to get a towel or something. So anyway Mike had to take the dog into Salem to get her treated. She is fine of course, but we were up until 1:00 with her so we are tired today. And D seems the only one able to squeeze a nap into her busy schedule.

And that's probably enough bitching for now. Summer vacation is off to a roaring start!

This Week We Will Have:

• Raw milk every day
• Little round cheese in fancy flavors or plain: Saturday
• Maybe Feta later in the week

Other Farm News:

Things are sort of in a holding pattern. Veggies are growing, but not grown yet. Chickens are getting big, but not big enough for eggs or meat. Cheese is aging, but not edible. Berries are blooming or little green nubs, but not ripe. We are mostly mowing grass and fighting weeds and getting ready to start taking down some trees and old logs for firewood this winter. And making cheese, of course.

FAIL!

Oh poop. We unwrapped the little bloomy rind cheeses and they were no good. At all.

Well, I suppose the cheese bit wasn't actually inedibly foul, but the rind part was bad in about three different ways. Here I'll tell you how:

1) It was wet. It leaked nasty, slimy, mouldy, cheese juice all over it's cheese box. I guess I didn't let them air enough before I wrapped them.

2) The rind was too thick. Gross. I read in a cheese book a description of a rind as "snappy like hot-dog skin" and that barfey little description seems to cover that description. So we are up to wet, slimy, thick, and chewy (I guess, the rind didn't actually make it to my mouth). What next?

3) AND the skin was slipping off the cheese. Bad bad bad.

So the first bloomy rind "taste" goes: wet, slimy, thick, chewy, and slippy. FOUL.

But look at all those lovely lessons learned! I am extremely self critical, so this is not easy for m). More drying time. Turn more often during initial rind development, leave them elevated on a cheese board in the aging box (seriously, that one I am really kicking myself about. Idiot!). That's all I have for now, but I'll do some reading before the next attempt. Which may even be tomorrow. No time like the present while this is all fresh in my mind. And really so much room for improvement. See how well I am handling this!

Oh! I should have taken a picture, but I dumped them all in the trash. Sorry.

Weekly Cheese Goals

Sometimes when I am away from home I find myself starting to dream about all the cheese I will make and the things I will do when I get home. I usually make a list on a sticky note, but this week I thought I would write them down here, so you could see the planning too. Because planning and bulleted lists are one of the best and most fun things anyone can do.

This Week's Cheese Goals:

• Eat the (first!) bloomy rind cheese (or possibly just stare at it suspiciously for a while) and then eat the baguettes I will make to go with them.


• Write a blog post about all the ways I messed up on these and speculate on how to improve them.
  Bake a second patch of bloomy rind cheese: ash half the batch and age the other without ash and then think about the differences.


• Maybe make TWO batches of the bloomy rinds and do a batch with Penicillium candidum and Geotrichum candidum and a batch without the G. candidum and then think about the differences.
  Pay more attention to turning these little bloomies in the first few days to improve the rind development because I am pretty sure I screwed that up pretty hard.


• Make little fresh rounds with NEW CULTURES! I know! I can hardly stand it! And then eat them and spend a lot of time talking about the taste variations.


• Roll the little rounds in herbs or spices or wrap them in pretty leaves or something to make them look and taste fancier.


• What sort of herbs or other flavors do you think would be interesting or tasty?


• Make another stinky washed rind cheese because I am seduced by controlled mold growth and stinky smells.


• If there is more milk (and there will be): make cheddar, jack, or some other pressed aged cheese.


• Post pictures of cheese.

Other Goals:

• Sterilize all my cheese cloth in boiling water and store in plastic bags according to size.


• Finish plating my herb garden.


• I think I should plant a ton of lavender in my garden! Yeah.


• Work on Grace's room a lot because when we finish her room we get to start on the utility room!


• Stare at my chickens and will them to spontaneously lay eggs.


• Play outside.