Future Farmers

Last week we delivered our bright orange buckets to the whey lady, cheese maker extraordinaire. We are so lucky to have this connection. I am a serious cheese addict and I am surrounded by enablers! In fact when my Dearest jokes about restricting my cheese inventory to less than 10 in any given week he gets called affectionately....the Cheese Meanie. Heh. 

Cheese season is also known as kidding season. Get it? Actually it really is as baby goats are called kids. Oh they are cute too. Here's my kids with her kids: 

 

It is neat to think that the first time I ever stepped foot on this farm, our own farm dream was so far off that it hurt sometimes to reach for it. Seemed so out of reach. It wasn't though. I could have given up, I could have written off as impossible and made due with where we were in the city, but I didn't want to. I yearned for the open air and rural landscape of my childhood. I wanted that for my daughters. 

Muck boots and all.

Lil'Bug stepped away from the ATV for a minute to load something up and Blueberry slid on over and found the power pedal. Away she went!  It was all sorts of funny and cute. Not quite two yet and she's a pretty good driver!

Meet Wilbur the pig. He's about 4 years old and has been cared for lovingly the entire time. He was a city pig, but as soon as we moved out here she built him a pen, one for winter and one for warm weather. She found an old calf bottle and now Wilbur is really babied. Also in the picture is the snout harness lead, his food, and his medicine. He likes playing pirate and it was his idea to pose for the picture on the poop deck. Oh, and we had to promise not to ever eat him. I kid you not.

Field Day

This is the Western field, where we will be running pigs this year and hopefully grazing cattle in the next few years. We need some fencing done, but I hope that this field is the key to our farm's permaculture. The second picture is of the little seen "frog pond". Funny story, the realty advert said 11 acre pond and the Realtor walked me to this one first. Ha ha. It is a cute little mud hole. Still funny.

Crawfish Boil

We had set a pair of crawfish traps out by the dock last fall and left them over the winter. 

Of course they were full of crawfish once the ice melted! Lil'Bug always checks them when she gets to the dock. Sometimes she's found crawfish or fish or even a turtle trying to bite at the trap (she says).

So Lil'Bug collected them, Dearest threw back the smaller, and these six little mudbugs came home for dinner. Well, snack really. 

I didn't find much as far as recipes go, (and all the recipes called for 45 POUND sacks of crawfish. WOW! Yeah, not exactly what I had here) basically make some stock, boil some vegetables in it, season it well, bring to rolling boil, drop critters (alive!) into boiling water and cover. Boil hard for two minutes, turn off heat and leaved covered for 25 minutes. Done. I didn't want to fill a stock pot full of veggies just for 5 little crawfish (one was almost dead once we got ready to cook, so he got tossed....)....so I used 4 cups of salted water, 4 cups of my chicken bone broth, and a lot of Mama Podkayne's Swamp Fire Cajun Seasoning. Oh, it was good broth on its own, that's for true! 

So in the pot they went, and yes, they screamed a little. That part is freaky and Dearest insists that I was imagining it. Hmph.

Honestly, I boiled hard for 4 minutes. I know it was overkill. Lil'Bug gobbled them up. She was a pro at cracking them open and pulling out the little bit of meat. Dearest said the taste was delicate, not muddy or fishy like at the dinner places we've had them at. I think it was that I used chicken broth instead of fish stock and I kept them in constantly changed out clean water for 2 days.

Baby Blueberry didn't have any. This is her expression as she looked on. I can't quite figure out if she was grossed out or mad that she wasn't getting a taste? She's a hard girl to read sometimes.

Me? I want to like them, I just held back a little. I mean, everything is better with Swamp Fire! Maybe next time?

Poop and Mud Season

I am going to warn those faint of nose, this post is stinky.

Part of farm life is animal poop. It just is. A small farm like ours is really no exception. Most of the time the aggravations it can cause, like slipping in a bog of eternal stench (the pig area near the feeder after a long week of rain), are predictable and avoidable (mostly).

It is cold out right now so we don't really have to deal with smell.....but it is warming up. The unfortunate factor is that the snow cover has not thawed all winter and is now. This means layers and layers of dog, chicken, and horse poop (from visiting neighbors) are revealing themselves one sloppy disgusting strata at a time and mostly in the driveway by the back door.

Gross. There is not a lot to do about it either. Time and rain will wash it down and away. Until then we just have to (HAVE TO) take our boots off by the back door. We muck and mire through it. Today it was a lot better, but we had a lot of rain to get to this point. All that does though is cut the smell, the poop and mud just meld and melt together.

Just like when life is crappy. You can lay down in it, you can attempt to shovel it and move it, you can cover it up and pretend nothing ever poops, or you can just let nature takes it's course. Plant flowers, take off your boots. Life requires a little bit of all of these sometimes.