Big Pink Farm

How did that happen?  Seriously, how?  Just like that, the nights have become chilly.  Autumn is hovering nearby.  I'll tell you, I would like fall a lot more if it didn't lead ultimately to winter.

<clapping hands over ears> La la la la la I'm not listening!!!

So this has been the Summer of the Tomato.  Of the 30 plants we started with this year, 29 survived the guineas.  No, they didn't just survive; they thrived!  Consequently, I have been buried under an avalanche of tomatoes from the abundant harvest.  (The green ones were picked by an overzealous 3 year old boy, but that's okay because we love to eat fried green tomatoes.)

I have either canned or frozen many gallons of salsa and tomato sauce.  I have dehydrated pounds and pounds of tomatoes.  I have canned tomato quarters and even tomatoe puree.  We have eaten dozens of tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches on fresh-baked whole grain bread.

Apparently, we are not the only creatures on the farm that love tomatoes.  Roger discovered a squatter who lives in the tomato garden.

That is the biggest, grossest spider I have ever seen and is the sole reason why I will never set foot in the tomato garden again.  Do you know what kind of spider that is?  I don't know and would like to find out, but that would require a Google search and the potential of looking at dozens of photos of icky spiders and I just don't think I have that kind of fortitude.  So if you know what this spider is and if my children are in imminent danger, please email me.  Ok?  Thanks.

Late, late, late!  I feel like Piglet.  We must keep to the schedule!  We're behind schedule!

The fairs are over.  First up was the county fair, and this past weekend saw us at the Ohio State Fair where Max, Ben, and Sadie Ann all got to compete in their respective non-livestock 4-H projects.  Natalie didn't qualify for the state fair in her project, but she did get an Outstanding of the Day ribbon.  There's always next year!

 

Sadie Ann took this goat to the county fair.  This was her first year in 4-H and she did great!  I did take a photograph of her showing her goat, but it turned out too blurry to share.  Bummer.  But trust me, she was a quick learner in the show ring.

 

Here are my poultry boys.  Max showed meat chickens and Ben showed a really wonderful turkey.  They raised those birds with minimal help from me.  I'm very proud of them.

 

At the end of the week, they all participated in the Small Animal Dress Up Contest.  Maxwell made his chicken the Tooth Fairy, Natalie turned her goat into a Radio Controlled Airplane, Benjamin imagined his turkey was a Snowman, and Sadie Ann was a cowgirl to her goat, which was really a Horse. 

Natalie got Best of Show for her efforts.  She was pleased.  And a photograph of Ben with his turkey even made the New Philadelphia paper.

Next up, photos from the Football Hall of Fame Parade and then the Ohio State Fair.  Before the end of the month, even.  I think.  But don't quote me on that.

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.

You want to know what makes me really irritable?  No?  Oh.  Well I'll tell you anyway. 

I just spent time carefully composing a new post, trying to give you dear readers a glimpse into the activities of the last few weeks.  It's been too long since I last posted and I wanted to do a good job.  I included photos and what I thought was an insightful look into life at Big Pink Farm.

Then Internet Explorer crashed and I lost it all.  I'm sure there's a lesson in there, or perhaps a metaphor about the fleeting and sometimes futile plans that we make.  But right now I'm too frustrated to see it.

In brief:

Ben's turkeys are huge, over two feet tall.  They follow us everywhere like dogs.  It's pretty entertaining, especially early in the morning when I'm easily amused. 

The meat birds have outgrown the brooder and are also getting huge.  That's good eating right there.

The guinea fowl decimated one garden plot, leaving us with just three pepper plants and a great number of bird-sized depressions in the dirt.  We had to cut the size of that plot by two-thirds and start over.  The good news is that the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, lettuce, and spinach were not affected.  The bad news is that everything else was and that this year's garden will not be big enough to supply a market as we had hoped.

Speaking of the farmer's market, soon we will be spending Saturday mornings at the Carrollton Farmer's Market (in the parking lot of the Ponderosa Restaurant on OH-43) selling goat milk soap, goat milk fudge, and whole grain breads.  The timetable is pretty fluid right now because I'm juggling my kids' various 4-H commitments and county fair preparations.  But soon!

Now on to the photos.  Here's a cute kid photo.

 

Oh you thought I meant "kid" of the two-legged variety, didn't you?   Okay, I have pics of those, too.

 

Here's Roger guinea-proofing one of the now much smaller than we originally intended garden plots.  Live and learn.

And just in case you ever wondered, we live on the most beautiful mountain in the entire world.  Here's proof.

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!

Memorial Day and the unofficial start to the American Summer is almost over, but it feels weird this year. 

I hope you were able to thank a veteran today.  We went to the local parade this morning and honored the many vets there and I know that it means a lot to the kids.  But the one soldier that I wish we could have thanked today left this earth a short while ago.  We miss him deeply.

Thank you, Dad.   

I have a secret.  Ok, it's not really a secret now that I'm about to tell you:

Houston, we have a soap page!

I was overly optimistic when I announced my plans for the page way back in January.  I mean, how hard could it be?  Famous last words...  Anyway, we're up and running with it.  Thanks for your patience!

Speaking of soap, I thought I'd share a couple of photos of the soapmaking process.  In this one, you see the warm coconut, palm, and olive oils awaiting the addition of a goat milk/lye mixture.

After adding the goat milk/lye soup in a slow stream and stirring like crazy the whole time, the saponification process begins.  When it's done, it looks like pudding and is ready to be poured into the mold.  Like this:

After that I put it in a warm place until the next day when I carefully unmold it.  Then Roger cuts it into big bars and sets it aside to cure.  A few weeks later, this is what it looks like:

Now you know.  Cool, huh?

The weather as I type this is far too lovely for me to be squandering time in front of the computer, so this will be brief.  But since I am still sitting here with a child on my lap, I might as well show you the turkeys.  They have been here for two weeks already - my how time flies!

That's what a turkey looks like when it's one day old.  Ben is raising them for one of his 4-H projects this year, just like he did last year.  He does a very good job of taking care of them; I only have to look in the brooder once a day to see that he is keeping them in food and water.  In a couple of weeks, they'll be ready to move out of the brooder and onto pasture.  Then, when they're ready for market, they will be almost as big as Ben.

Here he is in the show ring with the turkey he selected to take to the county fair for judging.  He won the trophy for Novice Showmanship.  I'm very proud of him!

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.