Celebrations and Infestations

Celebrations:

Matthew and I celebrated our second anniversary last weekend (though our anniversary is actually October 27th) and Neva turned one last Friday!  Matthew's parents came for Neva's birthday (we let her have a small piece of chocolate cake which she loved) and stayed with her for the weekend while Matthew and I went away to Chicago.  I just weaned Neva so it was my first night away from her since she was born.  We had a great time and it was nice to remember how much fun we have when we travel together.  

I can't believe how fast both my marriage and Neva's first year have flown by.  My handsome giant and my little munchkin have both been such tremendous sources of joy in my life and I am so thankful for them.  Marrying Matthew was the easiest choice I ever made and having Neva was the best choice I never had to make.  God's given me two people who keep me on my toes, ward off loneliness, help me not take myself too seriously, and give me love, love, love.

On another celebratory note, my friend Erin had her baby, a little boy named Sebastian.  It's nice to have some other babies around here.  

Infestations:

I guess I shouldn't pluralize this blight, this pestilence, this plague (okay maybe that's a bit dramatic) because it is only one kind of creature that is infesting.  But the the fact is that there are many of them.  

Ladybugs are cute right?  You make kids costumes with cute little black polka dots and a red shell.  Polka dots are always adorable, aren't they?  

No! They are not!

Not when there are thousands upon thousands of these 'ladies' creeping up the outside of your walls and doors, flying into your hair and slipping through the cracks in your house to get inside.

Let's give them a less precious name: Asian beetles.

I am told they are harmless but they harm my sanity.  Isn't that enough?  They drop against the window time and time again until it sounds like there is a heavy rain outside.  I spent 15 minutes vacuuming them off my back door frame.  I could've spent hours and still not got them all.  

I am told I must get used to it.  They will leave the outside of my house at the first freeze.  But they will infiltrate the inside of my house until Spring.  

My only consolation is that they aren't ticks.  That would be bad.

Speaking of which, I got my first tick last week.  That was fun.  Have you ever pulled a tick out of your own body, its little tummy full of your blood?  Again.  It's fun.  Real fun.

Today, Erin and I mucked out the chicken coop.  Yes this is the same Erin who just had her baby two weeks ago.  

We would've been a sight.  

Erin came over just after I had put Neva down for a nap.  Erin put her son in our pack-n-play because he was asleep and we were so excited that we would be able to do this mucking sans babies.  

But it was not to be.  Our dog Jasper burst through Neva's room waking her up.  She started crying which woke up Sebastian.  

So the two of us mothers strapped our babies on our bodies and spent an hour and a half shoveling out chicken poop (the less polite word is WAY more accurate...chicken poo smells really bad) and refilling the coop with straw.  

I got five eggs today. It was all worth it.

My little Amish girl

The multi-purpose room on Blueberry Hill

Matthew and others mulching on Blueberry Hill

Dressing for our first cold snap

I just thought this looked interesting

Attack of the Asian beetles!

No explanation necessary...

Chicken casualties

Yesterday, I accidentally killed a chicken.

Actually, it was nine chickens.

It wasn’t intentional, really, and after it happened I asked God for forgiveness for killing them so inhumanely. 

Before yesterday, I’d never held a chicken, never caught one, certainly never killed one. 

But somehow by the end of the day, there were 17 live chickens and nine dead ones, three of which were hanging from a tree in our backyard ready to be skinned.  

Many of you know that I grew up in big city, Texas.  I’m not too girly but I’m not a naturally outdoorsy, get-your-hands-dirty kind of girl either.  I like being inside most of the day but I’m not averse to working hard in the garden in the cool part of the day a few times a week.  When we moved to Illinois, I didn’t know that potatoes grew under the soil and had to be dug up.  I mean, I think I learned that a long time ago but it’s not something I ever thought about before.  You get the picture. 

So imagine my transformation in less than half a year.  I’m helping a friend Erin (who incidentally grew up on a farm and is currently eight months pregnant) take care of her chickens and she calls me up and asks if I want some of my own. 
            Well, yes, I think I’m ready to take on the task. 

“In order to get our chickens,” Erin says, “we’ll have to catch them.”

So yesterday, an inexperienced city girl and a woman who is eight months pregnant, drove 20 or so miles to another farm to get our chickens.  We had orders from other people to so our total for chickens was 26.  I had no idea what to expect.  When we drove up, Erin groaned a little at the small coop in which the chickens were kept.  She was expecting to have more room to catch them.  The coop was about waist high, and about four feet by seven feet. 

Even though I was completely baffled by my task, I was not going to let pregnant Erin crouch down in there and do the job.  It was my task. 

“What do I do?” I asked climbing into the coop.

“Grab them by their feet and turn them upside down.  It makes the blood rush to their heads and they go limp.”

“Okay, here goes…”

I crouched down into a squatting position—the only way I could get to them without bumping my head on the roof of the coop—and attacked.  The first go sent wings slapping at my face in rage and mockery.    Chickens are fast.  But they are not that smart and I learned how to grab them.  If you can get one foot, then you’ve got them. 

I grabbed chicken after chicken while Erin tied their feet together and put them three at a time into large paper bags.  

It got to be kind of fun once I had a rhythm.  And I basked in the glow of Erin’s praise.  She said she was impressed! 

After about half an hour and having to chase a rooster who twisted out of his rope, we were finished and on our way back home, the 26 (2 roosters and 24 hens) chickens tucked into their bags in the back of the truck.

We were energized. 

We pulled up to our farm and I got out to check on Neva who was being watched by our friend Louise.  I strapped Neva on my back and helped Erin unload the bags of chickens into a wheelbarrow to take them back to our coop. 

Erin had watched another expert farm woman bag roosters in the same manner as we had bagged our chickens.  So she had been confident everything would be find.

But something was wrong.  Some of the chickens weren’t moving. 

We rushed the wheelbarrow back to the coop yelling “Chicken 911!” for our own amusement, even though we were a little distressed. 

We released the chickens bag by bag.  At the bottom of each bag, crushed and suffocated by its friends, was a dead chicken. 

Oh how sad and sorry we were at these lifeless gems, their eyeballs white and their feathers sweaty and still warm.  The poor things had pooped themselves in fear. There were a few that seemed lifeless but were slowly revived with some water. 

But in the end, we couldn’t avoid it.  We had killed 9 chickens…suffocated to death.  We truly felt horrible. 

So, it was time to decide what to do with the dead chickens.  Six of them were to be butchered anyway by some friends.  But three, well, they were now OUR dead chickens and we had to take care of them before rigor mortis set in. 

After dinner, Erin came to our backyard in the dark and we hung the chickens on a tree limb.  She taught me how to skin them and cut off their heads.  Then, we went inside and disemboweled them on our kitchen cabinet.  I felt oddly removed from the whole thing and was only truly bothered by the blood spurting out of the severed neck and the first touch of the intestines inside.   Some of it was even a little fascinating like the forming eggs inside their bellies that could still be eaten.  There were even two very large soft-shell eggs inside that—after washing—would be ready to eat. 

In our fridge and freezer sit two grass-fed fresh and local chickens.  I think I’ll cook one up tonight and see how she tastes. 

  A few cute pictures of my favorite people.

Neva proudly displays our other major project for the week....

30 quarts of grape juice

fresh off the vines on the property.

` The bags of chickens...poor things.  This is before we discovered the horror!

Erin is reviving one of the chickens with a little water.

The three chicken casualties that will become dinner.

Yes, that's me....headlamp chic chicken skinning

Matthew wanted to learn too.

Yes, that is blood on my hands and a gutted chicken behind me

     And Matthew gutting...

Changes

The peaches and pears Matthew canned.

In a few days, Fall will begin but we're already seeing the changes it brings in the produce and the leaves.  Acorn squash and butternut (winter) squash are here.  I love them both and they are welcome changes from the overload of zucchini and yellow squashes.  The leaves are turning in some unusual ways: among a forest of green leaves only a few vines creeping up a select group of trees are bright red.  It's a little bit spectacular.

This season is an appropriate time to seek changes in other ways. Because our community is in need of some structural and other changes, we've started having meetings to talk about issues and concerns.  It can be discouraging to sit through an hour and a half of problems.  I certainly came with my own list of concerns.  But after the meeting I continued to think about Christian community and the body of Christ and what we expect from our churches.  I guess I came to the conclusion that if we are focusing on how these groups have failed us, then we have missed the point entirely.  Jesus tells us pretty explicity to serve each other.  My focus should not be what I can get out of this group but what I can give.  It is so easy not only to look just for what we can learn and glean from the Body of Christ but also to leave when things get difficult.  Certainly there come times or places when we have given too much and it's time to go but that's not often my own problem.  My parents always taught me that there was something we could learn from sticking around that would be missed if we left when the going got tough.  

On another note, I was hoping to get Matthew to do the post this week because he spent last week here by himself.  He had to be the farmer and the farmer's wife and I have to say, it was not pretty.  Don't get me wrong.  He did some beautiful canning and kept the house neat.  But he was worn out when I returned.  You see, the week before I left, I had ordered a bushel of pears and a bushel of peaches.  Guess when they arrived? Yes, that's right, the day after I left.  And most of the peaches were ripe and ready.  There was more than one day that he came home from a full day of work and left again without supper to can pears in the common building for four hours.  Thankfully he had some help one night.  I was disappointed not only that he had to do it all by himself but that he didn't have any time to miss me.  

There is an apple tree in front of one of the houses here and the tree is splitting and bending with the weight of these organic spotty apples.  So we got three buckets of them and our neighbor Louise helped me can 16 jars of applesauce in three hours.  I thought I'd give you a picture diary of the canning process.  

Three buckets of apples (sorry the picture is turned sideways)

Water boiling in the canner.

Washing jars in hot soapy water

The cooked and cut up apples go through this contraption: out of one end comes applesauce and out of the other comes, 'apple poop.'

Neva enjoyed chasing the rolling apples...she proudly caught one.

16 jars of organic and extremely local applesauce

Part of the farm team saying farewell to Nehemiah, one of the interns on the farm.

Odes

I'm away from the farm for 10 days because we've had an exciting new addition to our family. My sister Elena gave birth to a baby boy on Sunday. His name is Samuel and he looks a little like his dad, a little like his maternal grandfather and a bit like his cousin Owen. I know I have an obligation as an aunt to say he's cute but he truly is so yummy and soft and nice-smelling and I've fallen in love with his little upturned nose.

Therefore, in lieu of my usual farm posting, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with you one of my favorite poets. His name is Pablo Neruda and he was a Chilean artist who wrote about politics, books, love and well, vegetables. One of his famous 'odes' is posted below. It's highly appropriate for this growing season. And just for the fun of it, I've also attached one of my very favorite love poems...also by Pablo Neruda. I hope you enjoy!

PS I've also attached a picture of Matthew's big trophy catch on his fishing trip to Canada. He brought back a lot of fish for the winter. We've already fried some up...it's great!

Ode To Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep

Shucking and shocking

One morning last week as the mist was lifting, I strapped Neva onto my back and went down to the farm.  For about an hour, I plunged barefoot through the mud and stinging weeds of a field of sweet corn.  Feeling a bit like Ruth in the Old Testament, I passed alone through a stripped field for the 'seconds,' filling a bucket half full along the way.  Because I enjoyed the experience, I wasn't too frustrated with the end result of shucking, blanching and de-corning (technical term anyone?) the cobs, which yielded only a quart of corn to freeze.  

A community corn project this week will most likely be more satisfying as I won't be picking it and we will have many quarts of corn to share.  

This week, Matthew has taken a much needed fishing vacation to Canada with his father and uncle.  In turn, I have received the help of my wonderful mother-in-law Debbie who has allowed me a mini vacation in my own home.  Thank you!

But a home vacation means that I'm not let off the hook when it comes to food preparation.  I canned 12 quarts of chopped tomatoes with the help of a friend and yesterday, I found myself making much preparation for canning salsa.  I will nevermore fail to appreciate a jar of salsa from the store.  

I started my salsa morning by climbing up a ladder into the corn crib for 15 heads of garlic.  Then, I climbed an even taller ladder to the hay loft where I was holding on for dear life to a rope dangling from the ceiling, just to collect 20 onions.  When I got to the common building kitchen where I'd be canning with another friend, I had to help her lift a huge box and a half of Roma tomatoes from her car.  I tell you that to help you understand how many tomatoes there were.  There were at least 30 quarts of them before they were chopped but I lost count toward the end. Thankfully, we had a food processor for chopping because in addition to the onions, garlic and tomatoes, there were bell peppers and hot peppers.  We began at 9am.  I left at 4:30pm and we had canned together about 20 quarts of salsa (10 each) .  I sure hope Matthew likes his salsa because we've got a lot of it and that is IT for me for the year.  At least for salsa.  

With Matthew gone, I was hoping to pull my weight with the goats.  They need to be moved almost everyday from their pasture so they won't get parasites from eating the same grass and weeds day after day.  That means setting up the movable electric fence near the valley garden and physically moving the goats.  Leap follows Claire's lead so it's usually only necessary to lead Claire.  

I was not successful.  

Firstly, I shouldn't be trusted with an electric fence.  Particularly when I'm trying to turn it on and don't know how.  You can guess what happened....yes, I shocked myself.  It wasn't too bad but it didn't feel good and I was glad that it was Sunday morning and no one was in the valley garden to hear me yelp.  

Secondly, Claire's crush on Matthew obviously doesn't apply to me and I don't particularly like her either at this point.  She allowed me to lead her to the edge of the garden and then she was through with humoring me.  It was no use trying to overpower her.  I'm just thankful she headed right back home and I didn't have to chase her and Leap down the street.  

I sure hope these goats give us some good milk!

P.S. I've decided not to write 'and on this farm there was a' at the beginning of my posts anymore.  It was limiting the creativity of my titles.  So I'm not gonna write it any more...and for all you grammarians, I know this title post is a little off...it bugs me too...

Neva loves her Nana!

The corn crib.

The hay loft...up to the top I went!

The beautiful goat fence that Matthew, Matt and David put up.

All my cans so far.

Neva participates in patty cake.

And on this farm there was a...full shelf of cucumbers.

   Blueberry season dwindles as the weight of those tiny round fruits on their bushes eases.  The bushes are not as

hunched as before and for everyone but the most passionate storers, interest in the blue fruit dwindles as well.  I find myself looking to other foods for pleasure and shutting my eyes and backing away from people who come to my door with plastic sacks that are bursting. No, no more zucchini squash.  No, I can't store anymore cucumbers; they're already filling up the shelves in my fridge.  No more room for kolhrabi (I never thought I'd be tired of something I'd never heard of two months ago)! 

Now is the season of sweet corn and green beans.  Although I'm sick of eating them right now, as we freeze quarts and quarts of them, Matthew assures me that on a cold snowed-in winter's evening, I'll be comforted by warm green beans with bacon and maybe some mashed potatoes.  I'll have to take his word for it and keep preparing for the pleasure our future selves will take in these vegetables.

I've tried my hand at growing things here.  My first attempt has been with two kinds of flowers in outside pots.  One is doing well and the other is not.  I also got a few indoor plants.  One is doing well.  The other is not. I keep reading how some plants need light, some shade, some more water, some less.  Some wilt when they are moved and some thrive no matter what you do.  It sounds very silly because I'm only 31 years old but sometimes I feel too old to learn all that there is to learn around here.  I feel I have too much I'm trying to do well that I already know how to do.  How can I learn to do a good job at the things I still have yet to learn? Sometimes I feel paralyzed by inadequacies.  If I do nothing then I can't fail, can I?  

But then I hear my mother's voice...yes, you're still in there, Mom, up in my brain, that strong graceful voice...and she says that I can't let my fears dictate my life and that there's no growth without discomfort or challenge.  Okay, Mom, you're right.  I'll go back to my plants and my freezing and canning.  But how about just one at a time?

Matthew is on the front page...again!

Neva actually busted him out of this after this picture was taken...seriously.

Finally, a picture of her two bottom teeth.

Her first black eye and the offending blocks that caused it all.

More green beans to freeze!

And on this farm there was a...woman with writer's block.

Sometimes I find myself not knowing what to write.  I guess that is a dilemma a writer often faces but usually I struggle with that when I’m dealing with fiction and the remedy for that is to make something up.  That’s a bit trickier when I’m writing a blog about my own life.  I suppose I could attempt to thrill you with tales of runaway tractors, unusually shaped squash that win contests at fairs, children who have special powers granted to them by abnormally tall corn and strange guests that come to stay at the farm with their own tall tales.  But that wouldn’t be true.  And I think you might catch on.

  The reality of life on a farm in a community is the same reality as in most places in the world.  You get into your routine and life often becomes beautiful and noble and challenging because of its mundane parts.

Right now I sit before a little girl who is enjoying new vocalizations.  In our world, that is mundane and also exciting.  Her father said that this particular noise makes her sound like an eighty-year old who has been smoking all her life.  She is neglecting her store-bought toys for the enjoyment that a laundry basket and a spoon can provide. And she just almost swallowed a penny while I wasn’t watching. 

            Daily life is a little more challenging with a crawling baby it is also more fun in most ways.  I’ve taken to imprisoning her with her toys in her playpen when I’m cooking or trying to accomplish some chore.  It feels a little cruel but also leaves me with a little less anxiety when I can’t watch her every moment.  At least I can better control what she puts in her mouth.

We had our first guest this weekend.  Part of our commitment in living here is to show hospitality to visitors.  We had a lovely woman come a stay the weekend and she graciously endured a few of Neva’s sleepless nights. 

Last week we visited the nearby farm where we will ‘borrow’ a billy goat to impregnate our two females.  I’m not quite sure how you facilitate such a thing but I do know that the billy we will be borrowing is 6 months old and half the size of our Claire and Leap.  I think we might need a stepladder and some really strong wine. Our girls will be more like cougars than goats.

At the nearby farm we were also able to milk some goats. At this point in the blog, I could make a lot of references to nursing but I’ll spare you and just say that I felt a strange kinship to the females with milk squirting out of their udders. 

Blueberries are in their last week but we are enjoying the beginning of cantaloupes.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a cantaloupe fresh from the ground before.  A ripe one is sweet and soft and nearly melts in your mouth. 

We are about to have mounds of tomatoes and corn and the canning season will commence.  I froze my first batch of broccoli this week and my last batch of snap peas. 

Matthew and I have been trying to find ways to get more of our food from local sources.  At one of the farmers markets, Matthew talked to some people that do ‘cow-shares.’  You give a one-time refundable fee to house and board a cow at a farm and then pay $16 a month for four gallons of local, fresh, organic, raw milk.   We’re hoping to start that soon and keep looking for places to get fresh meat.  A few of our neighbors here have some leftover venison.  Let me say that it was not killed by a gun but by a method referred to by many with the word ‘road’ in front of it.  Matthew took it but I think I might pass on that one.

 

The biggest zucchini squash I've ever seen!

It was shocking and hilarious at the same time.

Another laundry picture a friend took.

A video for grandparents and aunties (and uncles).