Why I Love to Farm, Part IV

Making and eating delicious meatballs is deeply satisfying. Delicious meatballs from a carcass I sweated over for many hours, made from a cow who was a real pain in the ass...OMG amazing

I've been weaned for 7 months, but I'm gonna steal milk from this adorable calf even though I can't digest it just to enrage that stupid blonde human

Why I Love to Farm, Part III

Checking in on the meat chickens one morning this summer, I found several drowned in the water hole. At first I assumed it was just a fluke. Perhaps a terminally ill chicken had staggered down to quench his thirst and bought the farm just as he leant over for a sip. One of the other early victims had obviously been put there by the weasel, as he was missing his head but otherwise intact. Admittedly the hole was steep on one side, but the other three sides were gently sloped. And at two or three feet wide, it wasn't exactly the English Channel. A conscious chicken making any effort what-so-ever couldn't possibly manage to drown with outsome stunning stupidity.

But it was not a fluke. Turns out stunning stupidity is an indemic afflication of meat chickens. I'd make a joke here about large breasts sapping energy for brain function, but have some lovely friends with big bosums, so will restrain myself. Soon I was fishing out five or eight a day. I'd approach the watering hole with a few plastic fence posts, drag out the floaters and then poke around the bottom for sinkers. As unplesant as chicken fishing is, you had to be thorough or a chicken would suddenly rot just enough to become boyant, and you'd be explaining to a family of New Jersey suburbanites why the animals' drinking water was full of bobbing corpses. Not great for meat sales.

Once retrieved from the depths, I was supposed to walk the chickens out the the bone yard in the back end of the nature preserve for the wildlife to enjoy. They had a real hoot with the forty chickens killed by that bear, and decorated the surrounding forest with a festive sprinkling of chicken feet. But a long trek to the bone yard with ten to thirty pounds of dripping wet dead bird just sucks on a hot summer day, so I got a lot of practice winging them as far as possible into the downwind patch of willows. I found it's essential to keep the release smooth or you lose all the momentum of your wind up when the leg pops off.

Wait a minute, what does this have to do with loving to farm? I love to farm because I have to solve bizarre problems, which is interesting and challenging and humbling. There is nothing written in any text book about how to prevent chickens from drowning themselves in a puddle, so I was forced to tap into my creative juices. Turns out my creative juices were not flowing very freely after three months of unchecked ranch chaos, so my first idea was to install ramps. I had lots of old boards on hand and thought that maybe if they just had something solid under their poopy little dinosaur feet, they'd be able to walk to safety.

The next morning I was greeted by more carnage, and many of the bodies were actually wedged under the ramps. Apparently, swimming chickens not only can't navigate ramps, but find them particularly deadly. I rearranged the ramps so they were lower in the water and added boards entirely blocking off the side of the puddle with the steep drop. I suppose if my options for the future were limited to death by weasel, bear, coyote, owl, illness and consequent butt pecking from my flock mates, or - at the ripe old age of 10 weeks - a knife through the roof of my mouth, I might also jump into a pond. If it wasn't depression, perhaps aggression was responsible for the drownings. There you are, waddling over for a drink, and that bitchy chicken who pushed you out of the feed tough at breakfast is leaning over the edge, oblivious to your approach. Just one clumsy hip check to bump her over the edge as you casually toddle by and you'll be sitting on as much breakfast as you want to tomorrow! (physically sitting on food while you eat it is the perferred poultry method of gluttony)

The next morning I found the barricades had been ineffective. It wasn't lemur-like suicides or a rash of murders to blame. Evidently, the chickens were strolling in the shallow end for a drink and finding themselves unable to compute an exit strategy beyond ever forward, up and onward.

And... here's where the real creativity came in! I was standing there chicken fishing in a dejected manner when my favorite community service volunteer looked up from feeding birds and asked me why I didn't just cover the hole with chicken wire. Why indeed? Because I was not thinking outside the box, and chicken wire was not inside my box. I landscape stapled some mesh fencing over that puddle, and never lost another bird to drowning. As convinced as I was by that point that they were drowning just to spite me, I was surprised that not a one figured out how to get it's head stuck in the mesh or at the very least break a leg. All this goes to show that a fresh perspective is worth a lot of chickens. Also, never underestimate a sassy highschool delinquent.

Haha, just you try to keep me from throwing myself into the lethal depths, I dare ya

My weird diet

I was slogging along in a very comfortable culinary rut when all this candida nonsense upset my apple cart. Thankfully it happened in stages or I may have really lost my cooking confidence all together. In which case my diet would most likely be 97% comprised of almonds, rather than it's current 55%. Saying goodbye to my cooking and baking flavor crutches like balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, and dried fruit was temporarily paralyzing, but gave me the impetus to actually expand my repertoire and maybe even read a new recipe for a change.

I don't know how long it had been since I had actually followed a (non-baking) recipe and not just picked out the parts that fitted in with my (clearly superior) flavor scheme and preparation methods. The kitchen seems to be a place where hubris affects even the most modest of persons once they get a few good tricks under their belt, and for those of us who aren't the most modest of persons, well, keep your mouth shut and your dish washing gloves on if you find yourself unlucky enough to be trapped in a kitchen with one of us! As a non-confrontational weenie, I've learned to stick with fetching ingredients and professing awe when in the presence of another kitchen ego.

Of course, on those (oh so rare) occasions when the food dragon has taken hold of my sanity, questioning my over garlic-ed, hot pot-dependant, every vegetable in the fridge methods may result in some passive-aggressive wrath. I can't help but smirk every time I remember starting an argument with a boyfriend over the temperature of water he was adding to the pasta (he was wrong! oh yeah, and I was hungry). Ahhh, whole wheat pasta...God knows I'd be delighted to eat it with ice cold top off water these days!

Thankfully there are almonds to keep my caloric intake up and the food dragon at bay, so I can keep a sense of humor even when I have misadventures in pancakes. Below you will see four beautiful, carb free, green chili pancakes! There are four and they are tiny because the rest of the batter was lost in batches of crumb piles as I tweaked the recipe until I came upon the right combo of nut flours and xanthum gum and baking powder. They were slightly gooey in the middle, but very delicious!

I've learned a lot about pig herding over the last six months, and can say that I've made big strides in my sensitivity to their flight zone while in various states of excitement. The Large Blacks are a lot less responsive to pressure than Ruby Mae is, and a lot less bothered by pokes with a stick as well! I've discovered after lots of running around, poking, and butt smacking that the most effective method of pig herding is quite simply dragging along their food trough full of their favorite snack just barely in front of them. You have to let them get a tiny taste every few feet or they get frustrated and break off to find some food on their own (and a foraging pig is a very destructive force on a farm!). Never let them get a whole mouthful and never spill more than a morsal or they'll stop just long enough to realize you're tricking them out of some sweet sweet freedom. Ideally, I keep it so they can have their tongue in the trough all the way to the new pasture to keep them entirely focused on their happy taste buds. Somehow the trough works infinitely better than a bucket of feed. Perhaps the strong association of satisfying meals eaten in the trough are more powerful than the smell and taste of food alone. It's completely silly looking, but low stress and entirely positive for the pigs.

Wilbur is showing himself to be of the "gathering" variety of stock dogs, rather than the "driving" type, which is not a surprise for a Border Collie. He likes to run out in front of the pigs, and gets extra exuberant when a member of the herd darts off in a new direction. He's definitely due for some formal herding training as this isn't entirely helpful, and we're getting closer to a point where stock dog training is a possibility. You can't start them on herding until their obedience is solid. It'd be like skipping counting and going straight to multiplication. Hopefully he has more talent for herding than I do for multiplication!

His recall has gotten a lot better in the past few weeks - something just seemed to click one day while we were practicing, and he was suddenly really excited to show me his come. His stay is finally progressing now that I've added a long stay to his meal time routine. He's much more committed to obedience when there's a whole dinner on the line! One thing we need to figure out is the "stand" command which should freeze him mid-run. Wilbur does not excel at stillness! Perhaps I need to carry around his dinner bowl while we practice :) Wilbur is young and goofy and has quite a rookie for a trainer, but he's got a very solid brain and the sweetest disposition imaginable. How did I get so lucky with the world's best cats and dogs?!

Time's flying by like I can't believe! How is it March? Piglets on their way in only a month, new chicks in only two weeks, and of course LouAnne's still due to kid any day. The poor gal is unbelievably huge and carrying either three kids or two monster ones around on that very infected tibia. I finally gave up expecting her to kid at any moment and put Corona in with her to keep her company in the meantime. They're getting on suprisingly well and seem pretty peacable even when there's grain to fight over. LouAnne is top dog, but isn't rude about it, and God knows she deserves first pick of the food in her condition. Grandma's not burning many calories.

Speaking of which, my grain sprouting experiment is going smoothly, and I've completely transitioned the goats off their commercial diet and onto sprouted whole grains and seeds, bran mash, and brewer's grains. It's certainly more labor intensive than just popping open a feed bag and scooping away, but so far it's very satisfying to feed some healthy green material in the dead of winter. The chickens love it, but I'm only producing enough for them to get a gallon or so a day - just a snack for a hundred busy laying hens!

I've been finally getting down to business with culling and labeling the laying flock, but gave up on the seemingly much more efficient physical exam method. There is a lot of info on the web and in books explaining how to determine if a hen is laying efficiently or is old and ready to retire. The tell tale signs include a darkly pigmented beak and legs, narrow and stiff pelvic bones, small and pale comb, and gross/shrively/dry vent (as opposed to gross/wrinkly/moist vent, ew). Unfortunately, with every breed of chicken under the sun ranging in age from 7 months to 7 yrs, it was comparing apples and oranges. A barred rock is going to have a lot more pigment everywhere than a white leghorn, pelvic bone width is very dependant on the breed's size and shape, and the difference between an egg laying vent and a plain old pooping vent isn't very obvious.

I killed a good ten or twelve chickens, convinced that they were old and useless, only to find a bunch of eggs lining up to be laid. So, feeling much too guilty to continue the guessing game, even though those layers were probably not efficient layers, I've started separating small groups of birds and just waiting to see if they lay. I'm trying to get a white, green, and brown egg layer all in the test group at once to speed things up because I have a good sixty or seventy birds to work through. I tried a large white and small white bird the first time, but ended up with a medium white egg, and both birds sitting on it looking business-like now and then! I'm also banding birds I see in the hen house a lot if I notice them laying an egg. It's not a perfect system, and we're still going to have a few duds in the bunch, but it's progress towards a more efficient farm and a big learning experience as well!

Why I love to farm, Part II

Another incredible benefit of a farm lifestyle is of course the healthy (fresh, unprocessed, organic, local, non-gmo, heritage variety, seasonal...) food!

Though I've never have never had particularly robust health, in the last eight years I've struggled with a variety of stubborn chronic conditions. Horse-related head injuries led to several years of migraines which, despite a staggering assortment of expensive treatments (thank you Mom and Dad for your unflinching generosity), relented to no cure other than time.

After an initial infection in college, I also became susceptible to frequent and frustrating relapses of mono, the virus springing into action any time stress or sickness weakened my system. I was eventually diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a label I was less than excited to assume. As a syndrome with no known causes or cures, and thus a common association with feeble mental health, CFS humbled my lingering optimism with its dark outlook.

This summer I was incredibly lucky to happen upon (google upon?) a specialist with decades of experience and very good news - I simply had a a nasty case of GI candida. With this doctor's help, I've learned to re-balance my body with a completely new diet. No gluten, still no dairy, nothing processed, and - most daunting of all - nothing containing sugar or sweeteners of any kind. The persistent sweet tooth that had led me down a treacherous path of bi-weekly baking made those first few months a fierce battle of wills!

Thankfully, yeast overgrowth creates almost immediate and very noticeable negative feedback, helping me overcome temptations and fight my way into good health! Candida, the nasty bastard, produces and releases into the body (via "leaky gut syndrome" which is caused by the fungal hyphae physically tearing apart the cells of the intestinal walls) at least 75 known toxins, including immune suppressants and neurotoxins. In fact, the neurotoxins released by candida have been linked in some studies to nervous system disorders including seizures, autism, and ADHD. Some of the substances candida employs to weaken it's host immune resistance include: canditoxin (causes unsettled behavior, paralisis, and death), tartaric acid (causes fatigue and cognitive problems), arabinose (hypoglycemia and protein dysfunction), acetaldehyde (damages brain structure and function), ethanol, and opiate mimics.

I've been asked in many different ways and three times by one very skeptical individual, "So is this a real condition? I mean, do other people have it?" Though I do fabricate the majority of my medical complaints (come on - how else am I gonna get any attention around here?), I'm pretty convinced this one is for reals. Candida overgrowth remains weirdly unknown in conventional medicine, although I believe it probably has a widespread and devastating effect on many people eating conventional western diets (sugar and gluten and dairy, oh my!), and probably on society at large as well (health care costs, grumpy and exhausted citizens, and hey, has anyone else noticed the unexplained uptick in autism/depression/attention deficit?). Most women, and certainly most doctors, understand the concept of microbial balance in the female reproductive system, but somehow few are able to translate the idea to the intestinal tract where the same bacteria and fungi are competing for nutrients. And just as is the case with your nether regions, this delicate balancing act might be a great reason not to put strange and unnatural things in there (like processed food, or you know, Listerine douches - shudder).

Anyway, after seven months, I feel pretty darn awesome for the first time in a long time and am so grateful to have my spirits undampened by fungal chemicals! My immune system is still recovering, and the candida is always lurking (the specialist told me a human has enough surface area in the GI tract to cover a foot ball field, so there's lots of space for renegade candida colonies to hide out), so I'm not out of the woods yet. Intense cravings pop up here and there, sometimes for days or weeks at a time, and I try to quiet them with alternative foods that won't feed the candida. I scarfed a few handfuls of uncooked steel cut oats the other day when overcome with a sugar/gluten craving, and it somehow helped just a little. I've started using seltzer water as an oral distraction, and had pretty good luck with that. For some reason I crave peanuts almost all the time, but try to avoid them as they're thought to contain lots of mould. I suppose my candida are trying to trick me into ingesting some fresh troops for their campaign. Acidic foods like corn and coffee are also hard to avoid because they are so damn delicious and not as obviously associated with imbalance as sugar or wheat. I get frustrated and whiny, balanced so precariously between sickness and health, but how lucky am I to have a body that is telling me how to feed it at 25 when most Americans won't hear that message until cancer or diabetes tells them much too late?

And, to cheer you up a bit, a sow in the snow:

Well, as long as you asked...

I was just signing up to join a web community of young farmers and was asked on the survey, Why do you farm? Those four little words really opened up the flood gates, and I thought I might as well share my answer here as well :) Don't worry, I did not include most of this in the survey!

Farming is a natural evolution of my first career in animal welfare. Instead of making life a bit more tolerable for animals in humane societies, I now get to foster partnerships between livestock and the local ecosystem that improve the land's resiliancy while giving the animals fulfilling lives. I love the daily opportunities for creativity and innovation and am so grateful for the strong bonds that quickly form between new and experienced farmers in our local agricultural community. My schedule and duties are never predictable, giving me an incredible freedom to take advantage of perfect afternoon running weather and yet a deep sense of responsibility to meet the needs of the livestock at any hour (and they do like the midnight hour for their urgent needs!). Accomplishments are measured on both a much larger and a much smaller scale than in our mainstream society, continually keeping me both challenged and satisfied. Most importantly, I don't have to leave my dog sitting at home as I trudge off to another day on the job, but open the door each morning to a calling that is hardly a job at all, with coworkers who only wear carhardts and smiles, and many more who sport suits of fur and feathers. This type of farming is a dynamic, frustrating, loving, co-dependant relationship - though I couldn't tell you if the farmer is the parent or the child.