Tiny Farms

Any Gilligan Fans out there? Then you are aware of the fun and games that can come about after a three hour tour goes wrong. Ginger was highly over rated. Maryann? The real hero.Our tour however worked out just fine. The Fairbury Garden Club arrived right on time (as they had scheduled months ago, these ladies are organized) in old shoes like I had advised (these ladies follow directions) and after the meeting provided sugary snacks and fruity drinks (these ladies come prepared) Per their request, we first toured the farm, several were even brave enough to give Mad Max his yearned for behind the ears scratch, then gathered at the back porch for the speaker of the evening.Keith. Yes, that is correct. My husband stood up in front of a good sized crowd and talked about bees. For those of you who know my guy you know he is great one on one but really does not enjoy crowds, or so he always told me. It was obvious he's been fibbing. He must have figured out early on that his big mouth wife was more than willing to have her face out in front so why should he? But Tuesday night he blew it bad by not only talking to folks about bees, and their care and habits but he also seemed to be enjoying it. At one point he even asked the woman if anyone had questions?!?Of sure, they feigned a mild interest in my wee chat about making your own soap but it was the bearded guy and his queen bee that kept their interest. Oh well, I've had my mug in the paper twice in the last week it was certainly time for Mommy Dearest to get out of the limelight for once.

Cheese makers perform a daily alchemy, turning a perishable ingredient – milk – into something durable, storable and dense with protein: cheese. As a farmstead cheese maker you must rise before dawn to milk your animals – and  this milk is the magic. Cheese has a terroir, just like wine. Instead of the quality of the grape, it is the milk that is the first (and possibly the most fundamental) thing a cheese maker must get right. Happy goats make great milk, great milk makes great cheese.  Enjoy!

Shimmering by moonlight in my mind, with Lighten our darkness, were the contemplative almost coloured flowers in my garden. The Ungardener's moon rising Plumbago auriculata glimmers in an unequivocal whiteout. Dandelion seed head spangled with fragile stars anchored on a deep bronze heart. Once when I was a child I gathered various leaves with sprigs of Abelia from my mother’s garden to fill a vase for the living room. Tiny barely pink trumpets – one of the first plants whose names I learnt. Wild jasmine leans to lime green. Plectranthus madagascariensis spires of pure white flowers on a burgundy spike. Wild jasmine, Plumbago Abelia, dandelion seedhead, Plectranthus madagascariensis Tecoma lutea bringing memories of Cornish clotted cream, an edible buttery yellow. Daisies in lemon bietou and egg yolk Euryops pectinatus. Spiralling in mahogany with the olifantsriet flowers. Euryops pectinatus Euryops pectinatus, Tecoma capensis olifantsriet, bietou My white pelargonium from my mother, often shows blush pink. Jade plant Crassula ovata is known as Pink Joy. I have a pink Barleria; usually April Violets is in muted lavender. Pearl of Bedfordview is coming into her autumn flush. Dimorphotheca jucunda covers each petal in white to purple via shell and shriek pink. Crassula ovata, Pearl of Bedfordview Barleria, pelargonium Forgotten from April, is Tradescantia. It appeared uninvited and I weed it back. In the planters under the ash tree the Tradescantia is happy, and those flowers are a magic blue. Plumbago in a hazy sky blue. Mauve and white wild sage, my signature plant for this garden. Lemon verbena was one of my mother’s favourites. I've planted a bank of fragrant plants near the washing lines, and the South American lemon verbena flowers waft a delectable scent my way with the washing. My heart sings with Felicia amelloides, kingfisher daisy, felicity the colour of happiness! Felicia amelloides Tradescantia, lemon verbena lavender, Plumbago, blue sage There are three layers to our garden. The hardscape - Ungardening Pond, Karoo Koppie, formal Paradise and Roses, with brick lined gravel paths. With the green, and blond and dark, and silvery grey, even blue and red, bones of foliage. Today I sought the quiet understated moonlit colours – the third layer. But the second layer shouts in your face! I have deep velvety fragrant red roses. Black Prince, Anna’s Red, Alec’s Red and Papa Meilland. The Darling buds of May Cotyledon orbiculata is singing in terracotta. Pelargoniums in Schiaparelli pink and coral. Phyllis van Heerden is having a good year across the garden. Halleria dangles slender clear red trumpets. Halleria, Port St John's creeper Phyllis van Heerden, Dimorphotheca jucunda Cotyledon orbiculata with pelargoniums Apologies for the broken poll widget. I did SEE votes, but they were nuked back to zero overnight. Starting fresh with PollDaddy. Let’s try again to gather votes over the second half of May? Elephant’s Eye has 8 new subscribers via Feedly, but there are none for EE on False Bay. Black Prince, Papa Meilland Anna's Red, Alec's Red For Wildflower Wednesday (April link), as reflected in my garden, most flowers are South African. Today’s exotics are Abelia from Mexico, roses from the North, Tradescantia from the Americas, South American lemon verbena, and Mediterranean lavender. Pictures by Diana and Jurg Studer, text by Diana Studer (also on Google Plus) AKA Diana of Elephant's Eye - wildlife gardening in Porterville, near Cape Town in South Africa (If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. Those are my links)

Instead of housecleaning... I will: 1. draft a family manisfesto and share with the family via email to have them edit/revise. First draft: In this house we are real. We make mistakes. We say I’m sorry. We give second chances. We have FUN. We love the woods. We snuggle. We say good job. We DANCE while doing dishes. We attempt patience. We ask for big favors. We LOVE. 2. paint. Pulling out

Our beloved neighbors, Betsy and Don, are away tonight for Don's son's graduation. It is a tricky time to be away, because a whole bunch of lambs are due to be born any moment. They hired Cadence to farm-sit while they are gone and she and I got a crash course in lambing. It is predicted to be a rainy, stormy, muddy night, so of course it is highly likely that a bunch of lambs will elect to be born tonight. I went over to help with the evening chores and we were met by this darling lamb outside the fence (he was born a month ago, a result of the ram jumping over the fence before his scheduled rendezvous date.) It's ok of he gets through the fence- he won't stray far from his mom.Aha! We spied a new lamb, apparently born just minutes before we arrived, still wet. We were relieved to see it up on its feet, looking strong and healthy.Cadence decided we should do all the other chores first then try to get the lamb and ewe into the barn. The other sheep were hungry and we wouldn't have to contend with their demands if they were distracted by eating.Cadence and Israel fed the sheep, donkeys, horses, chickens, and dogs while I prepared bottles for the lambs.When we returned our attention to the newborn lamb, we discovered a second lamb! It must have been born while we did the chores. We followed Betsy's clever strategy of putting the lamb into a sled (two sleds in this case) and dragging it slowly to the barn as the mom followed. Easier said than done, however; my hour-or-so-old lamb kept jumping out of the sled.Don has built a nursery in the barn with a dozen small pens where the lambs can become securely bonded with their moms - no risk of getting confused with the wrong ewe. Weaker lambs will get extra attention and supplemental bottle feeding. The blue pvc pipe down the middle is a watering system.We bottle-fed a couple of lambs whose moms were not adequately nourishing them.This lamb was born last night in the rain and when Don found him this morning, he thought he was dead until he saw him wiggle a bit. He was a very large lamb and had been stuck for a while during birth so fluid had built up in his head, which was very swollen. Don said he didn't have a very good chance of surviving, but showed me how to tube-feed him this afternoon. Don had put the lamb under a heat lamp, but he was shivering and if you put your finger inside his mouth, it was cool, not warm like the internal temp should be. Tonight I put my finger in his mouth and his temperature was considerably warmer than this afternoon. It also looked like the swelling of his head had gone down a bit, but he was still lying motionless beneath the heat lamp, his mom curled around him. I was really nervous about tube-feeding him. If you accidentally slide the tube into his lungs rather than his stomach, that will kill him. But the tube slid in easily and I fed him a whole bottle of milk while Cadence held him. As we fed him he wagged his tail and then he pooped on her boot, both of which seemed like good signs! I hope this baby is standing tomorrow!Kind of nerve-wracking, but I like these sheep!If you want to know more about Don and Betsy's sheep, you can listen to my very first episode Prairie Air, my new radio show on the COBB Radio.com, where I interviewed Don about sheep-shearing and lambing season.

I was beginning to despair that it would never dry up enough to till and plant! But then Wednesday it seemed almost dry enough to till the veggie garden on the uphill slope. I spent about three hours trying to enlarge this plot , tilling through the sod on the edges, with the little Toro tiller. But then around supper time a neighbor stopped by with his big tiller behind his tractor, and in about 15 minutes tilled a new bed for us (the far one in this photo) and re-tilled this one, incorporating two front-end-loader-scoops of composted cow manure (courtesy of our other dear neighbor, Frank, who had come earlier in the day with his big machine to clean up our muddy cow yard!) I am so grateful to our neighbors who took a little tinme to help us out despite being equally behind on their own, much bigger farms! We paid them in eggs and dollars, but probably not adequately. Yesterday morning, Cadence planted the tomatoes, basil, and peppers - and it has rained steadily ever since; happily, we got them in in the tiny window of opportunity.Cadence transplanted some of the daffodils that were encroaching on the asparagus bed to the east side of the garden shed and they seem to like it there.We are feasting on the most delectable green and purple asparagus every day! The garlic is looking great.Cherry blossoms! The pears are also in bloom, but the pear, plum and apple trees were girdled by rabbits this winter and won't survive. Heartbreaking.The yellow fence is now erected around the bee and butterfly perennial garden- my Mother's Day project from Rog! We still have to make gates and paint the arbor. And the house!I planted and mulched all day yesterday, trying to make it look presentable for our farm's grand opening and art fair this weekend - it's getting there.A little garden sculpture I got at the Gold Rush antique fair last weekend (I spent as much money as I made, but it was a crummy weekend weather-wise and it wasn't much.) I have loved this figure ever since I saw it years ago in Savannah, GA; it is featured on the cover of the book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."The yellow butterfly magnolia is just about to bloom. It is not as heavily covered in buds as it was last year, before it was so rudely frosted and all the buds turned black, but it will still be pretty.The serviceberry bushes are covered in blooms! The blossoms should make the bees happy, and if we can beat the birds to the berries, it looks like a good crop coming.Greenhouse crops are doing well. We have been eating this fabulous lettuce and spinach!Red and gold beets in the high tunnel, interplanted with carrots.Next stop on the garden tour, the silo pond. I removed the greenhouse plastic from the sides this week.The frog population in the silo pond has now grown to at least seven - I have no idea how they find this pond!Plants waiting on the patio to be put into the ground...More plants in the pickup--please don't tell Rog how many flowers I have purchased this week!

It was a perfect day for tea. Rain's been falling mostly all day and it was just right for a cup of tea.I found a new tea that is absolutely delish. I loved Earl Grey teas way-back-when; but then I found them getting stronger and stronger--just a quick dip for my bag. Whatever my reasons, I haven't had it in years. I had received this free sample of Mighty Leaf's Earl Grey just last week. Mmmmm. Just as a proper Earl Grey should be, to me, anyway. A very enjoyable Earl Grey {hot}, if I do say so myself.Perfect for a rainy day.Labels: Tea, TN

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here. Incoming! I'm not quite sure where this past week went, so I'm not quite sure what all we did during it besides a whole bunch of laundry. I think we had some rain; I know we hoped for more. We said farewell to the wet weather creek, which hasn't run this long in years. Hopefully we'll see it again before next spring. There was lots of lawn mowing and weed whacking and mulching the raised kitchen garden vegetable beds with green gold (aka grass clippings). I cooked a fresh ham roast and made a batch of Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Coconut Cookies and a batch of double chocolate chip cookies and baked three French daily baguettes (recipe hopefully coming this weekend). We hooked the 16-foot flatbed trailer up to the '86 pickup and spent 11 hours out buying lumber and groceries and supplies while the new cat, whose name at this point is still That Cat, went to the vet to get tutored (my mother is probably the only one who will get this decades-old Far Side cartoon reference). We ate big freshly picked Swiss chard and kale chopped salads most nights and had macaroni and cheese with leftover ham three times (I may have made a little too much). Oh yeah, there were two (!) big black snakes curled up together in one of the nesting boxes in Rooster Andy's coop. Black snakes LOVE fresh eggs. The slithery couple was put in a cooler (which wasn't easy) and relocated to another part of the farm, hopefully far enough away so they don't make their way back. I actually snapped a couple of pictures, but I didn't think you'd want to see them. And I guess that's about all—or at least all I can remember. The rest is in pictures. 18 more photos below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . . Click here for the rest of this post »

I remember what it was like to punch a time clock. However, now that I'm officially "retired"...my days look a bit like this. Have a wonderful weekend, folks. Until next time, Lord willing. Sherry

The USDA recently announced $19.5 million in grants towards research on the impact of climate change on dairy and beef cattle. Researchers from universities across the nation are set to work together through a Coordinated Agricultural Project award in order to determine what cattle farmers need both short and long term. The project is designed to strengthen rural communities through knowledge on how to prepare and sustainably face climate change as a cattle producer. The information gained through the research will be used to educate cattle farmers and ranchers in the future.The Supreme Court unanimously sided with corporate giant Monsanto in a case that is sure to shake both agriculture and biotechnology industries. The case involved an Indiana soybean farmer, Vernon Hugh Bowman, who took Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready soybeans from a local grain elevator. The soybeans are resistant to the Roundup pesticide also produced by Monsanto. Bowman proceeded to plant his own seeds in future years, which had the same Roundup resistant characteristic. Though Bowman argued that the seeds were “self-replicating,” the court ruled that it was Bowman’s own actions that led to the eight generations of seed copying. The decision will be beneficial to innovative industries, which patent inventions that could be duplicated; however, with companies like Monsanto dominating much of the food industry, prices could continue to rise for consumers.In other Monsanto news, a report was recently released by Food and Water Watch detailing international lobbying for biotech products, which is funded, in part, by US tax dollars. In crafting the report, cables from 2005 to 2009 that were released on Wikileaks in 2010 from 926 diplomatic agencies in over 100 countries were studied, resulting in the finding that officials in US State Departments lobby for specific biotech companies, such as Monsanto. In 2009, a cable from an embassy in Spain requests for US government intervention to battle Monsanto opposition. The intervention came four years after Monsanto was fined $1.5 million for bribing an official in Indonesia, directly breaking the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Community food activists argue that these acts are harmful to local food systems and regional governments working against GMO crops. Monsanto and US officials both contend that these products are necessary to increase global food production. The report further explained that the US State Department promoted GMO products through pamphlets sent to Slovenia as well as DVDs sent to high schools in Hong Kong. U.C. Berkeley police arrested four people on Monday for trespassing and interfering with police forces. These criminals were not up to what you might think, however; they were arrested for the act of gardening. Resilient farmers and activists are keeping the Occupy the Farm movement alive in California, as angry occupiers took over a 12-acre University of California space to replace the abandoned weeds with veggies and flowers. Though police broke up the protest and plowed over the seedlings, occupiers expressed plans to return to the site this weekend. The plot was originally donated to the school in the 1920s and dedicated to organic growing and research. Since then the land goes mostly unused with plans to convert the space into housing, a grocery store and a parking lot. The movement began on Earth Day 2012 when activists executed similar planting, which was followed up by ten forums on the importance of the space in the past year. Though University of California administration was invited, no one attended any of the discussions. The Senate Agricultural Committee approved the Agricultural Reform Food and Jobs Act, more commonly deemed the 2013 farm bill, in a 15-5 decision this week that will move onto Congress next. Though the bill is long overdue since the extension of the 2012 farm bill, many food and farm activists are angered over the contents of this $100 billion law. The problem