Baby Chicks

I got a phone call 6:30 AM Thursday morning from the post office.  Our little peepers were in!  Come and get them

Our new Chicken shed in transit.   Found a John Deere wagon running gear on Craigs list for $200.  Ended up spending another $184.00 on 4  good used tires.

I saw a set up like this on a local CSA.  The birds free range during the day and spend the night in the shed, so as not to be eating by coyote’s , racoons etc. @ night.

I had the new chicken shed all set up with two heat lamps, 2 feeders, and a new waterier.  The day the chicks arrived it was windy and cold…even with the heat lamps I was concerned it might be too cold for the chicks so I did what any farmer would do trying to keep the baby animals alive…brought them into the house.  In this case, our living room

I was talking with  Janaan a farmer’s wife earlier this week.  She told us, her husband had brought, baby pigs, chicks, sheep and even a baby calf into their  basement to get them started.

60 baby chicks are in that box just waiting to get out

Here’s what they look like when you pop open the lid

baby chicks spending the night in our living room under the heat lamp

Yes we really do have 60 baby chicks in our living room.

At the water cooler

eating some tasty organic chick starter

birds eye view

Whatch you look’n at???

Here’s some pictures I grabbed of the Internet to get an idea what the chicks will look like when they mature:

Silver- laced Wynadotte

black-australorp-rooster.

Rhode_Island_Red_Rooster

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What I would really like to look into now is growing our own non-genetically modified chicken feed for next season…any of you reading this ever come up with your own chicken feed  recipe?  Talk to me.  We have an acre and 1/4 of ground behind the barn just sitting there doing nothing.  DM

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Update 4/20/2012  This post originally appeared on my other blog last week/ (it has more to do with things around our acreage)  Let me know if you’d like a link to that blog and I will get it for you.  Thought some of you might get a kick out of the little baby chick pictures. DM

Spring In The Country

I could not believe my eyes…

There they were, popping out of the grass in our orchard this past Wednesday evening.

Grey Morels….

A month early, no less…

close up of a morel I  found this week.

You’d be proud of me.

I resisted the temptation to pick them all,  and went to find my wife.

It felt like we were on an Easter egg hunt, only we were looking for mushrooms.

By the time we were done, we’d found over a 100:

They may look gross to the untrained eye, but boy are they tasty

They sell on craigslist around here for  $40 a pound.

In case you’re interested, here’s how I prepare them:

Cut them in 1/2  (sometimes little bugs like to hide in the hollow middle)

Then I soaked  them in salt water over night.

Rinsed them in clean water when I got ready to fry them.

Dip them in an egg wash

Then I put them in a baggy with crushed Ritz crackers and Johnny’s Seasoning Salt (shake)

Fry in real butter…

Yummy!

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Apple Trees

There are   60  semi dwarf  apple trees on the East side of our house and another 20 on the West side…

They are in full bloom this week…

Wild bee pollinating in our orchard

Just like the rest of the plants this year, the apple trees are a month ahead of schedule.

I am gradually coming to the place where I think I may build a bee hive.

So far, the wild bees have been doing a pretty good job of pollinating the trees….

We’ll see…maybe next year.

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Wild Asparagus

This morning I came across some more “edible landscape”

Wild asparagus…

Wild asparagus

I can’t stand the stuff myself, but Mrs DM loves it….

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Grant Wood

My favorite Grant Wood  painting  is “Spring in the Country”

Remember American Gothic?

Yep, same guy…

Local boy too.
Turns out he was a prolific artist.

Sometime when you have a minute, Google his name and check out some of his other work.

We probably have a dozen of his prints scattered throughout our country farm house.

I feel like I’m living in the middle of that picture this week….

Several of you live in urban settings..

I know  it can be kind of stressful….

so tonight is my humble attempt @ bringing a little country to your door.

g-nite. 

DM

Starting a farm co-op

A co-op:  An autonomous association of persons who voluntarily  cooperate for their mutual social, economic, and cultural benefit.

I attended an organizational meeting of a new local food coop  getting set up in our area.

It got my wheels turning  (again)

Why not start my own mini farm-coop?

First project : raise free range chickens

I floated the  idea on face-book a couple of weeks ago.

I have been thinking I would like to raise (20) to (25) free range chickens this Summer  and wondered out loud if anyone else in our area would be interested in going into partnership with us.

I had (4)  families jump @ the opportunity…..

All were young families with children living inside city limits so it was not something they could do on their own, even if they wanted to.

We live on 4 and 1/2 acres so there is lots of room to experiment.

It is just about as easy to take care of 100 as it is 25.

The chickens will arrive April 12

We will let them mature into sometime late August..and when they are ready, we’ll have an old fashioned “chicken butchering party” …just like your grandpa used to do.

We will share the costs equally and all pitch in on butchering day.

One of the young mothers had obviously been thinking about this for a while….

I’m guessing she’ s been looking forward to the day when they had a place of their own in the country.

She asked if I would consider getting some Heritage breeds, and using Organic feed to supplement their free range foraging.

(Chickens only get 3% of their caloric intake from foraging so you have to supplement their diet with something)

“Why not?” I said.

We ended up picking (3) different breeds…

I can’t wait to take pictures  as they mature!!!!

(the pictures below are some I found on the Internet so I would know what they will look like)

Black Australorp’s

Silver laced Wynadotte

Rhode Island Red

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It’s too late this time around to be a part of this adventure, but let me know if you’d like to be a part of something like this next year.

Even if you’re coming from a distance, (I live in Iowa)  there’s nothing to say you couldn’t schedule a trip here the weekend we butcher.

Please don’t leave any nasty comments on how cruel I am, etc. etc. etc….

I’ll just delete them.

I do believe I will answer for how I treat the animals in my  care….

and I  also believe there is a reason my teeth are designed to eat meat as well as vegetables.

Well, it’s been a long day.

I filled (7) raised garden beds full of dirt,  planted  (5) apple trees, (450) hills of russet  potatoes

….and a 400 sq foot patch of grain.

I’m beat.  g-nite. DM

Row of seed potatoes before they were covered up

Wheel barrow full of seed potatoes

Sometimes less is more

The Native Americans called it “Beautiful Land”

I call it…..

]

home…

Took these pictures the last few mornings….

Thought if someone stopped by my blog, I would have the coffee on….

Got three minutes for a cup?

If  a couple of these pictures look familiar, you may have seem  them on my farm blog last night..

Anyway, this is going to be a shorter post,

and that’s OK

Sometimes, less is more.  DM

Celebrating my Immigrant Roots

Grandma came to America in 1929.

She was 23 years old.

Picture of grandma when she was still single.

She came to America with a girl friend.

They, like thousands of others, came by ship…

Grandma second from the right

She told me later, she never saw her father again and didn’t see her mother until after the war. She moved to  Chicago, but came west to  visit her Aunt and Uncle on the farm near Scotch Grove Iowa.  Her aunt and uncle were her sponsors.

Grandma sitting with her Aunt and Uncle Fred and Hannah Otten  shortly after coming to America.

While visiting them  she met my grandpa.  A big strapping farm boy who spoke low German and English.

Side note…Grandma spoke both High and Low German.  She was a city girl from

Wilhelmshaven, Germany  a port city on the North Sea

His parents were good friends with the Ottens….and the rest as they say is history.

Grandpa told me his friends made fun of him for marrying a “city girl”

He said, “What’s it to them???   They could just  to go to….@%#&” .

Grandma  learned how to milk cows (by hand) .  Grandpa told me he got grandma  a couple of hundred chickens “so she could have her own egg money.”

Dad was born at home, (I’m pretty sure on the kitchen table)

Those had to be tough years..

Here’s a picture of grandma and my dad:

Here’s a song  that reminds me of grandma….

and finally, here’s a picture of me….all decked out in my German leterhosen.

The 2011 harvest is upon us

“The most important ingredient in the welfare of an orchard, is the sound of the Orchardist’s footsteps”

Below are some pictorial highlights of what’s been happening around here the past couple of weeks….

Yours truly picking the Ginger Gold’s

I use that little level to double check to make sure the apples are not sticking above the rim of the box.

When I put the crates in the cooler I like to stack them at least 3 crates high.  There are between 40 to 50 pounds of apples in a crate.  A bushel of apples weighs 42 pounds.

Long Island Cheese Heirloom pumpkins that were picked this weekend

Brandy-wine Heirloom Tomatoes. 

I lifted up some vines and discovered about 20 large ready to pick Brandy-wines’ just begging to be picked

2011 Cortland Apple crop (Royal Court strain).  I picked the last three bushel of these this morning.  We’re getting $1.50 a pound for them, but if you buy a whole bushel, I’ll sell them to you for $40.00.  Just 2 of these will be enough to make a pie

2011 plum crop.  I planted the plums just for fun. 

Broom Corn.   The broom corn is also just a novelty crop  I planted.  In the pioneer days, they really did make brooms out of these.

2011 apples in  the walk in cooler

At this point, I would guess we’re about 75% done picking apples.  Now you know why I feel like I live in the Garden of Eden sometimes.

 

10 reasons why you need to plant an apple orchard.

Hanging scale in our sales area

1.  Photo opportunities.   Our apple orchard constantly changes with the seasons.   There is always something catching my eye and bringing me joy.

Royal Court apple tree in bloom this Spring

2.  It provides the perfect blend of solitude and social interaction.  I love my peace and quiet.  There is nothing more nurturing for me than spending a Saturday morning alone, picking apples.  At the same time, I do love meeting and bantering with the public on occassion, and when the mood strikes, I will load up the pick up and head to our local farmers market.

Hawking apples at the farmers market last season

3.  Supplemental income.   Sure there is some work involved in tending an orchard, but not nearly as much as you might suspect.  One Semi dwarf tree  will cost you  $20 to $25.00 and once it’s mature, it can produce between 2 to 4 bushel of apples a year. = 80 to 160 pounds of fruit @ $1.50 a pound that’s $120 to $240 gross, from one tree…per year..not bad for some additional pocket change if you ask me

4.  mental stimulation.    While the basics of tending an apple orchard are pretty easy to grasp, there is always something new to learn.   Did you know there are over 750 different varieties of apples in the United States alone, and over 2000 varieties world wide?

5.  Keeps you physically active. “ Keep those muscles moving”  my grandpa used to say.  Between the pruning in the early spring, to the picking in the fall,  having an orchard provides me with lots of  opportunities  to be physically active outside, all the while,I’m getting paid  and enjoying some fresh air.  As I  get older  I will probably do more of that “you pick” marketing, but for now, I can still climb and honestly, I love picking apples.  Last Saturday, I picked about 1200 pounds of apples in about 6 hours.

6.  Provides me with lots of opportunities to bless others.  I’m not going to brag and tell you how this works itself out except to say, I try to sell mostly our #1 apples, which means, what to do with the seconds?    The opportunities  to give are all around.

7.  Get to enjoy some varieties of fruit that are hard to come by normally – plus if you can find them, you’ll pay through the nose.  Sure we have Honey crisp, was told last year they were charging up to $5.00 a pound for those little rascals.   So far this year, I’ve picked 11 crates of them and probably have at least another 8.  My personal favorite is called the Ginger Gold:

Ginger Gold.

It is every bit as crispy as the Honey crisp and sweet.   Last year we had 32 crates of these little jewels.

8.  Fresh apple cider.    You haven’t lived until you’ve had fresh apple cider pressed from your own apples.   It’s got a texture and taste you’ll never , ever find in a store -ever.  If you come to visit, and the apples are in season, you can help me press out a batch.

9.  You’ll  give the bees something to talk about.  Ever hear of the “waggle dance”?

10. Provides me with lots  of spiritual insight.

Life is full of mystery.    I believe God has hidden the answers to some of our questions about life in the apple orchard.

Pruning and suffering.  I hate it when people try to slap pat answers onto my life when I’m in the middle of something hard.  It makes me angry.  So I will not disrespect you and do that now.  Sometimes it feels like I’m getting “pruned”  and when it does, I barely have enough energy to survive, let alone  do more.

Fruitfulness (ever see an apple tree grunt?    Me neither.

Seasons.   Apple trees don’t produce fruit 12 months out of the year.  In fact, they need large blocks of “down time”  in the winter..to get ready for the next season.  They literally need that time, which is why apple trees don’t do well in warmer climates.

Variety.  Already mentioned this one, but it bears repeating.    Apple trees vary widely and differently in the type of fruit they produce.  I think people are created much more varied than culture tries to tell us.   I found an apple tree on an abandoned farmstead a few years ago like nothing I’d ever seen before.  Some heirloom variety I’m sure.  It looked and tasted just like it was designed to taste.  Definitely not some domesticated boring apple.  So why do you and I sometimes think we have to look like everybody else?   Nothing more beautiful than someone being 100% alive just the way they were designed:

Heirloom variety I found at an abandoned orchard near here

As always, thanks for reading my stuff DM

Early history of our farm

Cecilia  in our driveway   1921

Wife  in our driveway last night  2011

 Monday afternoon  Kathy (our  neighbor) dropped off some pictures .  

She said they were old photo’s taken on our property  from  many moons ago.

I can tell you exactly where most of them were taken.

There was a young girl in several of them.  Her name was Cecilia.  

 She was the former owner of our property and lived here, as far as we  know  her whole life.   Her dad built the house we’re living in as well as the 100 yr old red barn we host music festivals in.

 She  passed away in 1994.

Cecilia sitting on our front steps

 

 

 

Giving the  dog a bath

Holding a chicken

Cecilia is buried just about a mile from us  in one of those small  pioneer cemeteries.  

Last night as  I was trying to calculate the date of these pictures, I suggested we jump  in the car and head over to the cemetery. 

 Cecilia was buried next to her brother Henry.

 

Cecilia, her brothers Fred,  Henry, and her mom  1911. 

 Henry is the little guy in front.

Fred and Henry standing on an old Steam engine.   

(One of those old metal tires is still in the barn)

Cecilia and Henry …late 1950′s

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 What do you see when you look at these pictures? 

I see a young girl who loves animals….and her little brother Henry

They lived  in a house that didn’t  have electricity. (see first picture)

Their  mother had a hard life.  You can see it on her face.  

 (see picture of older woman with three kids)

We were told she lost  first husband to a farming accident in the late 1800′s. 

 Eventually she  married the hired man (Cecilia’s and Henry’s  dad)

 Cecilia’s  mother   had 6  daughters by her first husband,  lost two of them  to the flu epidemic in 1918. 

I can’t begin to imagine…

A verse of scripture kept  coming to mind as I looked at these pictures

“Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom”

Listening to the radio this morning as I headed into town I caught the words on a current pop hit by Katy Perry… she sang about  living forever and shacking up for the night.  I thought to myself, what a bunch of lies.  Packaged in a beautiful song. 

The truth is (and there is such a thing as absolute truth)

 We don’t live forever, my days are numbered  and the choices I make do have a way of coming home to roost.

 (both good and bad) 

Put that to music Katie Perry  and keep on  rock’n.  DM

Itsy Bitsy Spider

      I (DM)  came across this cool looking spider  a couple of weeks ago @ work.    We were reroofing an older home and when I peeled off the ridge vent, he came crawling out.  I did two things when I saw him..first I ran back down to my truck and grabbed the camera..It was so unusual I wanted to take a picture.  Second thing, which kind of left me mystified…I didn’t want to kill it.  Now, normally  I would have squashed it without a second thought, but there was something in me that didn’t want to.    Not sure why I reacted that way…although if you take the time to read the  Fulghum story at the end of this post, you’ll see I”m not the only one who has hesitated to kill a bug…

A marbled orb weaver

I (DM)  need your help again   

Anyone care to  translate a  poem by Walt Whitman  for me?  I know you probably think I’m kidding.     I have a  hunch he’s buried a pearl of wisdom in it , I’m just not what it is. 

 I remember  in 7th grade , Miss Burns had us  read Jonathan Livingston Seagull.   For the life of me, I did not  know what to do with that story.  

Here’s that poem:

By Walt Whitman

1819-1892

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A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

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I’ll close with this short meditation by Robert Fulghum .

“Meditation on the Death of a Fly”

         The first warm day of onrushing spring rallied the dormant bug population of my house.  As school locker rooms spill teams of amateur athletes onto practice fields at this season, the egg sacs in the darkest corners of my study burst forth legions of tiny spiders onto the floor and launch waves of minute flying midges onto the wall.  No cause for exterminating action for me.  Experience has taught me patience.  Within hours the baby bugs will be lunch for a small team of freshman lizards.

      On a slightly larger scale, the Dispersal Committee of the Housefly Commune has already assigned one juvenile fly to each room of my house.  These newly licensed pilots move with maniacal speed, zooming erratically here and there, practicing upside-down landings on the ceilings, crashing into the clear window glass, and corkscrewing through the air in acrobatic shows of skill- but seldom landing long enough for me to get a shot at them with my Great Yellow Swatter of Death.

      There are also a few tenacious survivors left over from the end of winter.  For two days now a fat, elderly fly has lived out his last hours on top of my desk.  His airborne adventures seem to have ended.  Slowly he walks from one end of the desk to another, pausing at the edge, and walking back again to the other end and another edge.  He does not bother me.   I do not bother him.  It is in his favor that he has lost the urge , the will, or the ability to launch himself into the air.  As long as he does not enter my No Fly Zone, I am content.

      Once he even heaved himself up onto the Great Yellow Swatter of Death, walked its length, tumbled off the end and walked on.  Fearless.  Dignified. Senile.

     This morning he is still present, though moving ever so slowly, a centimeter or two at a time.  At this moment he rests between me and the computer screen, scratching and patting his head with his two front feet.  Perhaps he is reflecting on the distance to the far away edge of the table.  He sighs and plods on.

     I worry about him.

      What is there for an old fly to eat or drink on the hard brown desert of my desk?  Will he fall off the edge the next time he gets there and break his neck?  Or try his wings one last desperate time before he nose-dived into the tile floor?  Do his children know where he is, or care?  Can he see me, the possible agent of his fate, and is he afraid?  Does he anticipate the coming of the Great Lizard, or is he comforted by knowing that, like mutton, he is too tough and stringy to be eaten now?

     I can’t ignore him-  there he is, creeping back and forth.

      I can’t push him off the table-  too cruel.

     And I can’t quite bring myself to smash him dead too easy.

     So I put a jar over him and peered at him through a magnifying glass.  Unlike other insects I’ve investigated, he did not panic- no mad rushing about or trying to escape.  He looks tired and gray.  Slowly he wrings his hands.  When I removed the jar, he resumed walking toward the edge again with great dignity and purpose.  Just before I turned off the light to go to bed, he was walking in circles, slowly, slowly, slowly….

      This morning I found him lying on his back.  Dead.

      With respect for his dignity and mine, I took him outside for burial.  With a teaspoon I dug a small grave for him beneath a weed that is just coming into bright red bloom.

      A unique event, however trivial.  This first fly funeral I had attended.  I pondered the sense of mercy that stayed my hand from the Great Yellow Swatter of Death.  What kept me from automatically smashing the life out of the vulnerable senior fly?  Soft-hearted folly or seasoned wisdom?

     Being culturally wired to detest flies and kill them at any opportunity, what got into me?  Briefly we were the only two living things in the room.  Struggling on as long as possible.  The spark of life in him and the spark of life in me was the same.  We were connected.  Live and let live.

       Now I understand what it means when people say: “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” 

      That can happen.

The Food Routines Of My life

 The urge to  lay up locally  grown food  has gripped me like a mad squirrel this Fall.

  Dehydrating heirloom  tomatoes…

 blanching fresh green beans:

(those are little potatoes from our garden and onions from the farmers market  I mixed with the beans )

And picking apples….

 bushels and bushels of apples

2010 basket of Cortland

picture of our son helping  pick the Cortland

Ever heard of the term Locavore?   

Me neither…until this year.

 (be sure to check out that link/ lots of great information)

Well, I”m a new convert 

      Quoting now…

“ Locavores  are people who pay attention to where their food comes from and commit to eating local food as much as possible. The great thing about eating local is that it’s not an all-or-nothing venture. Any small step you take helps the environment, protects your family’s health and supports small farmers in your area.”
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I need to back up just a little….

This past March, I realized I was the heaviest I’ve ever been.  I don’t really take too much stock in  those ideal body weight charts.   At my height, if I were to  follow their recommendations, I would look like a stick man. 

   Having said that,  I knew I needed to lose about 35 pounds to get down to what I consider my ideal weight.     I talked with my baby sister who is an RN, and  has managed to stay  fit for several years and is not obsessive about it.  The last thing I wanted to do was go on some fad diet that lasted for a spell, then  wind up fatter than before once the motivation wore off. 

That sort of thing happens all-the-time.

 I was looking for a routine that was long-term and simple.   One that  didn’t have me counting calories, buying expensive foods or taking supplements.   

Well,  I found what I was looking for.

 I am not kidding.  It is so simple a 6 yr old can do it and it works.

  You don’t hear a lot about it because 

A….  it cuts out the middle man who wants to sell you “something”

and B….It’s so simple, you’re tempted to think  you’ve missed something. 

  Why  isn’t everybody doing it????? 

My thought exactly

Here in layman’s terms  are two new routines we’ve been doing with food that has enabled me to keep shedding weight after I lost  the first 10 pounds:
 Suggestion#1 

Cut out  95% of the junk food out of my diet.- biggest help with this was  to  go through our  cupboards and remove the temptations…

    (Like my sister told me,” You don’t have to be anal about it..when we  get together and mom offers you a piece of pecan pie- you don’t have to be rude..eat it. )

Suggestion # 2 

The less processed  the better it is. 

The closer it looks to how God made it when you eat it the better.  This is where becoming a Locavore comes into play as well.

For example,  instead of eating delicious crunchy potato chips for break, I’ve switched to eating english walnuts…right out of the shell.  

Our bodies  crave   fat.  

 Certain foods will satisfy that craving while others don’t. 

 I could eat a whole bag of carrots, still feel hungry, still crave  fat, and say the heck with it, or  eat a small handful of walnuts  that  calms the beast.

Stay away as much as possible from white sugar and white breads.   Those food types  are highly addictive, and  create within us  the craving to eat more of the same.  And sugar morphs   into the fat I’m   trying to shed.

 final story.

     I did a  remodel job for young family recently.   Both of them work like dogs. Later that day, I saw the wife walking  3 miles from home.    She told me she does this just about every day, walks 5 miles  but  is not able to lose  the weight.  She just couldn’t understand it.     The last thing I was going to do was talk to her about loosing weight, but since this is my blog and nobody is forcing you to read this I’m going to tell you what I wished I could have told her…. I know she loves to bake.    Baking for her family is one of the ways she expresses her love …and I am certainly not going to diss that.    But it is a two-pronged effort..physical activity and what we eat.  Until you and I are willing to look @ the foods we eat without getting all defensive we probably won’t experience any significant  changes, unless you get a tape worm   I hear they keep the pounds off.

What I  eat and how much I weigh  is such a personal topic.  It ranks right up there with how I spend my money, sex, and politics.

  I’d love to hear your thoughts….