Big Pink Farm

It has been and still is my intention to get it together enough to write one more post  - this time about the county fair -  before the month is over.  I still have one more day!

I'm nothing if not a procrastinator.

But!  While you're waiting (and you are waiting, aren't you?), please go to this blog and read as much as you can.  It's hilarious, and just the thing to waste time on after a morning of strenuous chores outside.

Finally, I leave you with a photo of the world's most adorable baby frolicking with the world's most camera-shy goat kids.  Yes, it was taken on a camera phone.  But at least I uploaded it right quick to share with you!

What did you do to celebrate the 4th of July?

Despite weather that looked like it didn't want to cooperate with our plans, we spent the afternoon and evening at our friends' house.  They throw a big party every year, and this year there were lots of kids.  We played (or watched everyone else play): volleyball, baseball, water balloon fights, and various board and card games. 

Somehow the water balloon fights degenerated into squirting each other with the hose.  You skip the middle man that way.  Funny thing is, only my kids ended up being soaked from head to toe.  Why is that?  I thought I was raising kids with more sense.  But no, I guess not.  So they shivered their way through the rest of the evening because I neglected to bring dry clothes for them.  Actually, other mothers stepped in and offered towels and clothing for the wet kids, so they didn't suffer all night.  (Note to self: bring dry clothes next year.) 

At dusk we did the requisite sparkler and smoke bomb igniting.  Honestly, I hate that part.  To this  mom it's an accident waiting to happen.  But the kids love it, so I tried to be calm and rational, taking deep breaths the whole time and not shrieking, "STAND BACK!  BE CAREFUL!  ONE AT A TIME!"  Okay, maybe I shrieked once, but I think it was more like a holler which is not as hysterical.

Here's my patriotic baby.  Awww.

In farm news, the kids are gearing up for the county fair which is next week.  I'm not ready.  I know from prior experience that I will not get much sleep that week and it will be too hot to breathe.  But the kids are really excited about the fair, so I am, too.  Ben's turkeys are enormous.  All he has left to do is figure out which one he wants to bring to the fair and then give it a bath. 

Have you ever bathed a turkey?  You should.  It's hilarious.  You will get very wet.

We also picked some surprise blackberries last week and should be able to pick more this week.  They were a surprise to me because I thought all the blackberry bushes had been devoured by the goats last year.  But no!  We have a few surviving bushes!  Hooray! 

The kids are pretty good berry pickers.  The don't eat as much as they put in the buckets, so that's good.  The do complain about the thorns and they do throw the rotten berries at each other and they do paint their faces with the rotten ones and pretend they're warriors, but for the most part they get the job done without too much hassle.

Do you know how long it takes for berry juice to wear off your skin if you take too long before you wash it off?  At least four days.  File that useful tidbit away for future reference.

The first of the meat chickens arrived a few days ago.  It's a real joy to have wee birds in the brooder again.  Speaking of wee birds, Ben's turkeys are growing and growing and growing.  Only a few more weeks and they are ready for the table.  Oh, and the hens are laying eggs like their very lives depended on it (which, you know, is true).  Spring has sprung and summer is new on the farm.

(I won't talk about the havoc that the guinea fowl have been wreaking on our gardens because we will have that under control very soon and thinking of those birds dust-bathing in my pepper plants makes me grouchy.  We keep the guineas because they eat ticks  by the thousands and keep snakes at bay, so it's just a matter of finding an equitable solution.  Equitable in this case means good for us, and because I'm the human, it also means good for the land that God has given us.) 

 

Meanwhile, you must read this.  Rising food prices are only the symptom of a much larger problem.  http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2008/05/roots-of-current-world-food-crisis.html

"My point in relating all of this is to underscore that Big Ag is not Good Ag. And being dependent on Big Ag for food is national folly. I believe it is also personal folly. Powerful, arrogant, self-serving, and foolish forces are at play in the world. We as individuals have little control over them, yet we will all, to one degree or another, eventually pay for the consequences for their wickedness."

Eat local!

Today was the kind of day you daydream about in the middle of January.  The sun was warm, the winds were mostly calm, the mud was drying up, and the pastures were green.  Green is very good.

 

We got a lot of spring cleaning done this afternoon.  Max tended the fire.

Olivia helped clear debris out of the garden.  Note her stylish attire.  She's a very classy little girl.

The duck harrassed Frodo, which was, I suspect, the highlight of his day.  Poor Frodo endured the humiliation with great patience. 

Here's the very next photo in the series, in which Frodo gets his revenge.  Best Friends Forever!

There's no such thing as perfection here on earth,  but today was a really good day.  Roger and I and all the children will go to sleep tonight with pleasantly worn-out muscles and sun-reddened faces and the faint fragrance of pollen and moist dirt...Spring's lullaby for us.

I keep thinking spring will arrive for good.  It will, it just has to!  This morning during chores I convinced myself that the pastures are greening up a little.  They are, I swear!

Yesterday was rainy and dreary, so I stayed inside for most of it and played Queen of the Kitchen.  (Except for the hour or so spent outside chasing baby goats with Max.  Most of them don't like to be caught, and half of them are more agile and wily than football players.  More agile than gazelles, even.)

Last year's garden produced 8 tons of cayenne and habanero peppers, and I'm only slightly exaggerating.  I dutifully dried them out for long-term storage in my handy-dandy food dehydrator, and now I have a lifetime supply of really hot peppers.  What didn't get dehydrated got turned into relish, hot sauces, and even jam.  Good thing Roger and Max both crave really hot condiments.

Yesterday, as Queen of the Kitchen, I made more hot sauce with some of the dried cayennes and a couple of the habaneros.  I was curious if the process would differ any from using fresh peppers.  The good news is that the results taste the same, but because the peppers were dried this time, I didn't have to get all freaked out about the hot oils getting on my skin and wear gloves up to my elbows and try really hard not to rub my eyes absent-mindedly.

I took pictures.  I'm kind of a dork.

 
But wait!  There's more!  Milk production is really starting to take off now that all the dairy does have kidded, so yesterday I made cheese.  Here's the curd just after it has been cut.

Here's Calvin, my little helper, next to my makeshift cheese press after the cooked and drained curds have been loaded into it for the first light pressing.  Before it was done, the cheese got flipped and pressed two more times with increasing weight.  And behold, this is what we have this morning, a little more than 2 pounds of fresh cheese.  I'll let it age for a few weeks before we dig in.  So yummy!

I have other photos of mundane happenings around the farm (like the baby turkeys that arrived two days ago!), but I'll save those for another post on another day.