Tiny Farms

I am home all day.After being in Wisconsin Wed and Thursday for the Vernon Hershberger Trial (still not over, will cover it in detail on raw milk Monday) , I am THRILLED to be home all day. The sun is shining, the wind is minimal,I slept great last night, the GK's come later this afternoon. I am in one happy mood!Then Keith came bearing bad news. Yesterday while waiting on a raw milk customer, one of our piglets decided the free range- great food- wonderful time with mommy-life was just too much for him.He committed suicide via the old bucket of milk trick.Keith had accidentally left a half filled bucket of grain and milk in the pen with mama pig and her 3 week old babies. One of the males, a greedy little tard, threw himself head first into the bucket and unable to wiggle his fat self back out of the five gallon bucket, he drowned in the quicksand consistency of grain soaked milk. Of course because he told no one where he was going, asked no one to accompany him, we can only assume it was suicide. The fact that no note was found really means nothing since the brilliant Red Wattle pigs don't learn to write until they are at least 4 weeks old. But then again no witnesses have come forth so perhaps fowl play was at hand.The barn is fill of ducks and chickens you know.Seriously, we feel bad. Very very bad. I never would have guessed that the weight of the piglet was not enough that he couldn't have knocked the bucket on its side with his wriggling around. Hopefully with his snout buried deep in the milk he died a good quick death. Another hard farm lesson learned. And one more piece of advice we can share with all our new homesteading followers.

Are you going to eat it... or look at it?

It seems to be a week of split trees here at Roundrock Journal. When I was last out to my forest, Libby and Queequeg took a nice nap in the cabin while Flike and I took a nice walk in the woods. We ranged all over the place, but it was a spontaneous walk and I failed to take my daypack along, which has a bottle of water in it, and the loppers, with which to liberate cedar trees from their earthly toil. The walk might have gone on longer or gone on farther if I’d had either or both, but at least we came to the spot in the forest that you see above. When we first came to Roundrock more than a decade ago, I put this little round rock (the size of an orange) in the fork of this tree. When I’d come by again, the rock would have fallen out, and I’d wedge it in there again. I did this several times. And then, it seems, I stopped coming to this part of the forest. But I remembered the rock in the fork on my hike with Flike, and we made this our farthest point. You see above what I saw when I reached it. The tree is eating the round rock now. This was, of course, my plan all along. It was also part of my plan to have a grandchild or two who I would bring along and point out the progress of the rock-eating tree. The grandchild part hasn’t happened, but the rock eating continues. And it seems I may need to find a larger round rock to wedge in the fork above this one so that it can begin being consumed, just in case I am honored with a grandchild some day in the next ten years. But I don’t want to be pushy about that.

This simple straight dough French bread (not sourdough) is the perfect baguette recipe for new bread bakers. Note: If you're a beginning bread baker, you might find my Ten Tips on How To Bake Better Artisan Breads at Home helpful. And if you've been longing to learn how to make your own sandwich bread, my popular Farmhouse White Easy Basic Sandwich Recipe (which can also be made with whole wheat flour) is a great place to start. While e-mailing back and forth six years ago, I asked Daniel Leader, founder of the renowned Bread Alone Bakery in New York and my bread baking hero, to recommend a summer picnic bread from his new book, Local Breads. He immediately suggested I try the very first recipe, Parisian Daily Bread, or what he calls The Four Hour Baguette. "It's simple, it's foolproof, and it's delicious," he said, and he was right. I've been baking it ever since. I credit Daniel's wonderful first book, Bread Alone, with turning me into a bread baker, and I've been recommending it for years to anyone interested in learning how to bake their own bread. After 20 years it's still in print, and considering there are thousands of new cookbooks published each year, that's really saying something. My original copy of Bread Alone is in four pieces. My second copy was signed and sent to me by Daniel himself when he learned my first one was falling apart, which of course thrilled me to no end. (Sidenote: one of my favorite novels is also called Bread Alone, written by my good friend and fellow Daniel Leader fan, Judi Hendricks.) Fourteen years after he wrote Bread Alone, Daniel came out with Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers. It's the culmination of dozens of trips to Europe over two decades in search of bakers who are still using time-honored methods and ingredients to create loaves unique to their towns and cities. Part travelogue, part bread making class, and part gastronomic history lesson, the book is full of colorful stories of local artisans and 80 of their authentic treasured recipes. Beginning bread bakers needn't shy away from Local Breads. The first 60 pages are packed with detailed information on equipment, ingredients, and techniques, all of it clearly written and easy to understand. Even better are the several dozen Q&As throughout the book, which are Daniel's responses to the questions most frequently asked by his students at the Culinary Institute of America and other places where he teaches bread making. The only trouble you might have is ever making it past this first recipe. Recipe below. . . Click here for the rest of this post »

I guess this could be a post continued about the big changes. Or not. The fact is, time and money are short and the heat is long. One thing about homesteading is that you MUST keep it moving along to suit your own family's needs. There is no set answer. First you pray, then you plan, then you pray more.I have no need for 12 good production hens, 6 meat hens....and a handful of roosters. So I sold them. They are making a family on 5+ acres very happy.I have a pen of bantams.....and they are happy. We get the eggs we need for us, and that makes the budget happy, I have a little group of hobby chickens that makes me happy, and I fix Bob eggs on the weekends that makes him happy. WIN-WIN over and over again!There are some odd chicks in the bantam pen....but that's for another day.

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Today's topic for The Beginning Farmer Show is one of those subjects that is way over my head, but it is something that all beginning livestock farmers will have to deal with much sooner rather than later! I hope that there is something that you can take away from my thoughts, but more importantly I hope you join in the discussion and share your experience.Whether you are raising cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens, rabbits, or any other livestock on your farm the breeding animals you keep and choose will have a huge impact on your business. They are the foundation of what you produce and they can have an impact (good or bad) that lasts for generations. So, it is very important that you select the right replacement heifers, gilts, ewes, hens, does, and so on and so forth! On this episode of The Beginning Farmer Show I will talk about how I go about selecting replacement animals from and for my farm in a very unscientific manner, and I will also share a few tips from people that really know what they are doing.When it comes to selecting replacement breeding stock (heifers, gilts, bulls, boars, etc.) my biggest and first piece of advice is to consult someone with experience, knowledge, and results. I have none of those things (remember I'm a beginning farmer), but I have tried to learn as much as I can in a short while. Way back in 2008 I attended a Practical Farmers of Iowa field day feature Gearld Fry ... a very well known and respected cattleman. Obviously he speaks specifically to cattle, but I think the importance he placed on selecting breeding stock has helped me with all of the different animals we have. You can learn more about Mr. Fry and his thoughts on cattle (including linebreeding) by checking out Bovine Engineering. If you'd like to read about the bullet point take-aways from a beginning farmer listening to Mr. Fry speak you can check out my blog post about the field day.There are a few things that I look for though when selecting replacement gilts for the Hereford pig herd ...Priority number one is that I select gilts from sows that are good mothers who protect and take care of the litters.I like to choose gilts that grow faster than the other gilts in their litter, and that have nice muscling and no physical deformities.The bigger the litter the better! Ideally we keep back gilts from sows that consistently have larger litters.Finally, it is important to me that the gilts are from sows that do a good job with the farrowing process (they go into a hut or build a great nest for farrowing).All of that selection criteria though can be summed up in two points that I learned from a farmer that has been farrowing out on pasture for years ...Select gilts with down ears (floppy) as opposed to up ears (ears that stand up). I realize this won't be true in all cases because there are some great heritage breeds out there with "up ears", but it worked for him and I saw the success he was having!Select gilts that lay down slowly. He said he watched his potential replacement gilts lay down and that he liked to see them get down on their front knees first, before settling down their backside. His reasoning is that if they lay down slowly the won't just flop down on their litter of pigs and crush them.That seems like very simple advice, but I saw the results of those two pieces of selection criteria and it was a sow herd that I would be more than proud to have on my farm. Also, it illustrates the most important thing that I can say on this subject ... find people that raise livestock like you raise them or raise the same breeds you raise and pick their brain on the subject.There is more to this show though than Farmer Ethan's ramblings on subjects that he knows nothing about! As you can see from the picture on the right the pigs are loving their new woodlot paddock, and this image is exactly why I love raising pigs so much. Most of the time they get a bad rap for being dirty and stinky, but our woodlot raised pigs are just a joy to rai

Trillium grandiflorum was one of the first wildflowers I learned to recognize.Trilliums have charmed and fascinated me ever since my days as a Girl Scout, when I learned to identify a few wildflowers. With three leaves and three petals, trillium practically named itself (tri = 3) and was easy to remember. I never set out to have a trillium collection, but I’ve never turned down an opportunity to acquire a new one, either. With my recent purchase of T. luteum, I now have five, possibly six, different trillium growing in my garden, and I thought I’d share them for Wildflower Wednesday.Either a smaller T. grandiflorum, or possibly a different species?These trilliums appear to be T. grandiflorum, but they are much smaller. (See photo below which illustrates the difference in size.) I don’t even remember when or from where I got them, but they have had several years to grow larger, and they haven’t. So I am not certain if they are really the same plant, or a different species.Trillium recurvatum with offspringI bought Trillium recurvatum at a plant sale several years ago. It was one bitty little thing, and I breathed a sigh of relief when it emerged from the ground after its first winter. This spring it has grown much taller than in past years, and I’m so pleased to see the seedlings growing around it.Trillium cuneatumTrillium cuneatum bears a superficial resemblance to T. recurvatum. They both have red flowers and mottled leaves. But the sepals of T. recurvatum curve down and point to the ground, while those of T. cuneatum point up. The leaves have different shapes as well. These four trilliums grow in the same bed, and the size differences are easier to see when you view them simultaneously: These four trilliums all grow in Fern Alley. Click on image to enlarge it.I bought T. cuneatum from Sunshine Farm and Gardens, but here’s one trillium I acquired just by moving here: Trillium erectum grows wild on our property. T. erectum grows along the bank of the side brook, and I have also seen it growing in other spots along the glen. It seems to be fairly common in our area. Last Saturday I went to a multi-vendor plant sale at the Ithaca High School in upstate NY, and I purchased T. luteum from the Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society–of which I am a member, which qualified me for a discount.Trillium luteum, a recent purchase This trillium will join the others in Fern Alley, which is a nursery bed for my spring ephemerals. Eventually I hope to divide my trilliums following Margaret Roach’s instructions and plant them along the side brook where T. erectum already grows. But for now, I am just enjoying them. Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. “It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!”

A long time ago, I posted the picture you see above of an old oak tree in my forest at Roundrock. I knew then that it wouldn’t be standing like this for long, but it managed to hang on. Although I can’t find the post right now (I’m lazy in that way), I suspect I made it more than five years ago. Thus this is how that oak looked let’s say five years ago. Here is how it looked on my most recent visit to Roundrock: I took this shot from quite a ways back so you could get the fuller impression. From the looks of the split and the debris around (and in) it, I’m pretty sure the oak fell apart within the last month. We’ve had some severe storms this spring, but they’re nothing more than can be expected for the Midwest. I’m sure one of the recent storms, the ones that are keeping my lake full so far this season, finally brought this old oak down. Now it can begin returning to the soil all of the resources if found there and from the sun.

Every spring same old thing.No time. It just gets sucked away from me. One minute I'm looking at the 0600 number on my phone (yup I've given up my alarm clock for my smart phone) and the next minute it's ten pm and I'm wondering what did I really accomplish today? So lets recap. We woke. While Keith did outside chores I helped one of our egg suppliers find room in our store frig for even more eggs, answered emails, called in beef cutting orders, invoiced pork customers from the week before. Then we drove 4 hours RT to meet with some fine folk who farm for a living, make very little money at it and our now fighting our own government tooth and nail to keep on doing it. Because we arrived early we took 20 minutes to walk and 5 minutes in a thrift shop so Keith could buy me the coolest old painting of Irish Cottages. I did turn 54 a few days ago. Yeah, yeah, I know I don't look a day over 53. Stopped on the way home for another errand, which is top secret. Even though I am a world wide public figure I'm allowed a little privacy. Keith then threw me out of the truck while he went to another town 20 minutes south for farm supplies.And then I...I...oh man this is hard to admit...I watched a little TV. Not much, nothing meaningful and the entire time I swear I was thinking about farm work, and I quickly turned it off as hubbie came up the drive (we didn't put in the alarm drive to just tell us when customers were arriving you know) He doesn't really need to know what kind of sloth he married. Feeling guilty as sin (is there any other kind of sin?) I hightailed it for the garden and did some serious weeding and transplanting. Distracted by my Mares whinnying I spent a few moments brushing her and promising for the umpteenth time we'd go for a ride soon. At 7pm Keith went out to milk while I did laundry and then ended up here. You will note that supper did not get made. Another Cheerios evening apparently.So why do I feel like nothing was accomplished? If any of you have a handle on this life thing let me know.If you have time that is.