Sugar Creek Farm

Matt went to town before 7:00 this morning and met the truck that brings the mail into Osage from Mason City. The chicks survived the trip A-OK. It’s an amazing journey – hatched Friday at McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa. Air mailed on Saturday. Arrived in Mason City, Iowa Sunday morning. Trucked to Osage Monday morning.

There is something hypnotizing about them. I can sit for hours listening to the quiet chirping, watching them, already knowing to “scratch” in the dirt for food, running as fast as their little legs will carry them (which is really fast!).

A group pic

Matt has some kind of power over chicks. They fall asleep in his hands.

Columbian Wyandotte – these will grow up to be white birds with gray/black speckled tail feathers and wingtips.

Bufflaced Polish – one of my roosters. He will turn a golden color. You can already see his “hat”.

White Crested Black Polish – a freebie from McMurray’s. He will be black with a white hat.

Salmon Faverolle – another rooster. He has 5 toes instead of 4, and feathers on his legs.

Golden Polish – another “hatted” breed.

And I’m one proud rock mama 🙂

Things that are simply made, yet their function makes them worth their weight in gold. This is art, this is beauty to me. Yes, I’m in love with my new seed starting rack.

The cabbages, brussels sprouts, and early tomatoes are germinating.

Today started on a sad note. Sarah laid on one of the piglets and killed him. Now we’re down to 7.

After church and lunch, Matt and the girls and the neighbor girl built fence and separated the piglets from Sarah for weaning. I worked on sanitizing chick feeders & waters, and seed starting trays & cell packs. This is an activity I’m going to reevaluate – it took a long time. While it’s nice not to have to spend money on new seed starting supplies each year, there comes a point where your time becomes more valuable than the cost of new supplies. So next winter I’ll research my options.

After that we set the broiler and pullet brooders up. We got a call from the Mason City post office at 8:00 this morning saying the chicks were there. We could come get them if we were there by 10:00, or they’d be at the Osage post office at 7:00 Monday morning. With the price of gas what it is we opted to wait and pick them up here tomorrow morning.

All of this in between taking loads of laundry to dry at my parents’ house because our dryer broke down last week. Hopefully the fix-it guy will be here in the a.m.

I’m so tired I don’t think I’m even typing coherent sentences. Better get off to bed, need to get up early to unpack chicks before the girls go to school and I start my workday.

Expect to see pics of the peeps tomorrow!

We’re heading for The Big City tonight. Need to get stocked up on chick brooding supplies – 200 pounds of “meat maker” feed for the broilers, 50 pounds of chick starter for the pullets. 8 bales of wood chips, 3 red brooder bulbs, and maybe some extra chicken wire. The cardboard brooder guard came in the mail today. That should carry us until we can make another city trip in 4 weeks. The pullets should come in the mail Monday, and I’ll drive down to Hoover’s Hatchery on Thursday to pick up the broilers.

Petey and her Mama – Petey is such a pretty girl!

Happy Weekend!

Dare I say it? A piece fell into place today. I’m afraid of jinxing this little bit of good luck by typing it out loud, but with the run of bad luck we’ve had… Let’s just say I will not be surprised if the minute I submit this post the hounds of hell show up on our doorstep looking for us to throw them a bone. I shouldn’t complain about the bad luck, when we’re surrounded by beauty and life and good fortune. I’ll try to stop. After all, the tornados that went through our county today didn’t smite us.

By now you’re expecting me to share something dramatic, aren’t you? Well here it is: liability insurance. Kind of let down now, aren’t you? But I can’t tell you how happy this makes me and how well I will sleep tonight.

We are working towards being able to sell frozen meat and poultry right here at the farm. The meat and poultry will be state inspected, processed and packaged by our local locker. We simply bring it home and put it in our freezer. This requires an inspection of our freezer, approved labels and a Food Warehouse License. Technically it doesn’t require liability insurance, but if someone gets sick from eating our meat…there goes the farm.

I’ve been trepidatious about venturing into the world of farm product liability insurance, after a good share of horror stories from my classmates. And my experience last week pretty much ranked right up there with theirs. Our current insurance agent came back to me with, “If you insist on pushing it I can probably get you the coverage for about $500 a year. But we really don’t even want to touch it.” Those weren’t his exact words, just my boiled down version.

So I went to see the Farm Bureau agent. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Judging from my classmates’ stories, not all FB agents are created equal. But this one knew exactly what we wanted to do and exactly what insurance we needed – commercial liability, which includes product liability. He assured me this insurance would only cost us a couple hundred dollars a year. Better yet, he later told me we don’t even need the commericial/product liability insurance if our sales are under $20k. Our farm policy will cover us for that small amount of sales. He probably thinks I’m obsessive, because I asked him “are you sure” multiple times over the last couple of days.

So I can proceed with The Plan, with a few less worries. And I got a new customer out of the deal.

Uh-oh…I think I just heard something barking outside.

Another new calf this morning! I was in the bathroom about 7:45 getting ready for work when I heard a strange “moo” outside. Having animals is about like having kids – you can tell more about what’s going on by the tone of their voice than by the words coming out of their mouths. I looked out the window and the cow I had pictured in yesterday’s post was licking her baby. I’d guess I was about 30 seconds behind seeing the actual birth!

By 8:30 he was nursing. By 9:30 he was running about and kicking up his heels. That never ceases to amaze me.

When Matt came home for lunch we walked out to have a look.

Me: His name is Rudy.
Matt: What if it’s a girl?
Me: Rudy still works.
Matt: Only if you’re the Huxtables.

But Rudy it is. This is one of our older cows and she was having none of us walking up to that baby. So this was the best picture I could manage:

We also caught sight of a couple other babies at noon – two little Canada geese swimming on the creek while mom and dad watched from the bank. So sweet! But by the time I walked down there with the camera the babies had disappeared, probably to somewhere safe. Mom and Dad Goose were alarmed by me, however, and got up from their nap to call for the kids.

Reminds me of me “honking” in a store for Olivia when she disappears, as she likes to do.

I spent a lot of time as a kid with my maternal grandmother. At almost 90 years old now, she was a newlywed at the height of The Great Depression. “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is a way of being, not a slogan, for her – saving scraps of fabric and cereal box liner bags, washing and reusing disposable dishes and plastic cutlery. Preparing for the “what-ifs” in life. Over-preparing, usually.

There are times when I am acutely aware of how much this rubbed off on me. Like last night, for example. I finally got to start some seeds. My experiment this year is to see if I can run a hypothetical CSA*. I’m going to plant as if I have a 2-member CSA, plus my own family to feed and freezer to stock. I may even find 2 people willing to be guinea pigs and buy my 2 weekly boxes.

So, plan in hand, I started in with the seeds. I had calculated how many plants I wanted to end up with in the garden, and therefore how many seeds to start. In most cases fewer seeds to start than what came in the seed packet. It about killed me not to plant the extra seeds. There’s no such thing as over-prepared. If The Great Depression II hits this summer, I’ll be sorry.

Just work the plan, I kept telling myself.

I seeded twice as many seeds as I want to transplant out, 2 per cell. That means after they germinate I’ll have to snip off one out of each cell (unless one fails to germinate). This will also about kill me. They’ve only just gotten a start at life and here I come, all Grim Reaper with my scissors, and just like that it’s over for them. These are the beginnings of food we’re talking about here. I’ll be really really sorry when The Great Depression II hits.

Just work the plan.

I did it. I stuck to my plan. I resisted the urge to overdo. No 300 tomato transplants for me this year.

Well, I started 12 cabbage instead of 11 because I don’t like odd numbers. But close enough.

After all, how can I tell what works if I don’t at least start with the plan? I work the plan this year. Analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what adjustments I had to make on-the-fly. Adjust the plan next year and work it again. Penny should be proud. If I learn nothing else in her class, at least I’ve learned to make a plan and work it.

*CSA = Community Supported Agriculture

Each weekday at noon I emerge from the confines of my office and make the rounds outside. Today is (finally!) a beautiful spring day, sunny and in the mid-60’s. Everyone seemed to be a good mood. I had my camera with me and thought I’d show you what I saw on my rounds.

Hen and cat sharing dogfood for lunch

Our mama pig, Sarah, and behind her
the hole she’s digging to China

The piglets to the left, hanging out with the stocker calves. The whiteface looking at me is Beetlejuice, and the whiteface behind him is Casper. I can’t tell the black ones apart just looking at them, but their names are Blackie & Brownie (twins), Jemima and Number Five.

One of our pregnant cows – I feel for
these gals and their big bellies.

Winston following me around
looking for treats

The piglets are getting adventurous! The backside of their pen is just general livestock fencing instead of hog panels and the squares are big enough for them to squeeze through. They run about as a group looking for things to root up with their tiny little noses. Then if we come near they all run back to their pen trying to remember how to get back in.

Dang they’re cute!