It took all of us to flush the stray pig out of the cornfield. Giggles, and shouts of “I found him! Over here!” drifted out from the thick dark green mass of rustling leaves.
Would I miss this, if we stop farming? I know I’d miss telling the story.
So, here we are again. A rather large chunk of time has elapsed since my last post. As I responded to Karen this morning, it’s a combination of life and lack of writing mojo that’s conspired to keep me from this space.
The other thing that’s kept me quiet are discussions Matt & I have been having about the future of this little farm of ours. Or rather, trying to have. Again, life gets in the way and these conversation occur in snippets as we pass by. Like the proverbial ships in the night we only have time to flash signals and convey short messages to each other.
But before I get into all that, here’s August at Sugar Creek Farm in pictures. There are stories behind all these pictures, but I’ll just give you the teasers for now…
Shooting lessons with the BB gun
A new customer meets his future dinner
A tiny kitten was rescued
School started. (Despite her absence from this picture, Madeline started school, too. But she’s a freshman this year, and the freshman volleyball team practices at 6 a.m. I know, right?!? So she was long gone by this time.)
We had some really great family time.
Our road got paved. The furniture may actually stay dust-free for more than 24 hours now.
So! Even though I’ve been quiet in my virtual space, you can see that life’s been anything but quiet this side of the screen. But I really will try to be present here more often in September. One website that I really love is Habit. I’m thinking I may try something like this on my blog – shorter more frequent posts, but sill writing longer posts as I have time. Stay tuned…
1 year ago:
Welcome, Globe Gazette readers!
I mentioned in my last post that the almost-12-year-old middle daughter is the resident worrier around here. She’s also especially helpful when we work cattle.
Her job is to wait for a calf or cow to enter the chute…
with a smile…
and then slide that big, heavy metal bar in behind it, as quickly as possible without getting her fingers pinched, so that they can’t back out.
She also soothes babies…
and mamas alike.
There are some tasks that she doesn’t really care for…like banding the bull calves.
We leave the bull wrangling to Matt & my brother & my dad.
1 year ago:
The hens are getting a little too free-rangey with their free-ranginess & have taken to helping themselves to the brooder chicks’ buffet
It’s good to know my middle daughter is watching out for me. This morning I went out to feed the broiler chicks in the pasture. About the time I got done my cell phone rang.
Me: Hello?
Olivia: Where are you?
Me: I was feeding the broiler chicks. I’m just heading back to the house. Why?
Olivia: It doesn’t usually take you that long to do chores. I thought maybe you got hurt.
Me: How would I get hurt doing chicken chores?!?
Olivia: Um, it’s happened before.
Me: Oh right, good point.
1 year ago:
Lessons in entrepreneurship
This duck just hasn’t got her head on straight!
Installment #8 of “One of these things just doesn’t belong here”
Stock? Get it?
It’s that time of year, time to start thinking about stocking up for winter. Buying “on-the-hoof” is the least expensive way to fill your freezer with delicious naturally-raised meats. Here’s what we still have available for your freezer:
Beef
* Beef quarters will be available in November or December. It usually takes 2 or 3 quarters of beef to get our family of 5 through a year.
Pork
* Our August pork is sold out, but the first of our new genetics will be ready for October. We usually keep 2 whole hogs a year for ourselves.
Chicken
* We have chickens available to reserve for both September and October. That makes 8 chickenless months until the first batch of 2010 is ready. I usually keep at least 2 chickens per month for ourselves (i.e. 16 chickens in the freezer to get us through winter.)
Of course we have only so many animals, many are already spoken for, & we save a certain number for farmers markets. So if you’d like to get on the reserved list just email sugarcreekfarm@osage.net and I’ll get you pricing info.
If you need some help with buying your meat this way, there’s a wonderful new publication from Iowa State University: Beef and Pork Whole Animal Buying Guide It’s available for purchase as a spiral-bound booklet or you can download the PDF file for free!
Another year of fair, over and gone already. It was a fun one! Beautiful weather, and with only pigs there to chore this year (no horse or cattle like last year), it was a lot less tiring. Both girls had projects considered for state, which was nice even though nothing ended up going. Here are just a few highlights:
Our county fair was a couple weeks later this year, which made it fall on Madeline’s birthday. So her friends decorated her pen in the swine barn 🙂
The girls sang a duet for Share-the-Fun this year. I forgot to bring Kleenex and was sorry. They were chosen as 1st Alternate to state.
Blue ribbon cookies
Madeline did pretty well with her pigs this year. It’s always interesting to see how her naturally-raised pigs stack up against the other pigs at fair. Her best placing was 6th in the Pen of 3 class.
And now the start of school is just around the corner. Summer goes by way too fast!
1 year ago:
What can I say about this girl of ours that I didn’t say last year? We still like her pretty well, teenagerhood and all. She seems to still like us, too, most of the time anyway.
She’s dealt with some tough things this past year, and handled them with grace and strength.
She’s never intentionally unkind to anyone, and when she does mess up she steps up and makes amends. And she is quick to forgive & forget, whether asked or not.
She & I can really get each other laughing. Especially at Target.
I’ve already informed her that there will be mandatory daily phone calls home when she goes to college.
Happy One-Four, Maddog.
Love,
Yo Mama
Seriously? 3 weeks since I posted? I have no idea. As Olivia would say, “I know, what?!?” Sorry about that…
So…we managed to find 4.5 days this summer where we could get away in between softball season, volleyball camps and the county fair. We headed for one of our favorite areas, Prairie du Chien, and spent time doing some of our favorite activities:
Campfire cooking, with pork chops & sweetcorn we brought along
Visiting the various beautiful parks along the Mississippi
The traditional picture in Yogi’s basket at the campgrounds where we stay
This week we’re in the midst of our county fair, another busy but fun week! I’ll be back with pictures…promise 🙂
Matt & Rafe reclaiming the brassicas
What with all the ball playing going on around here, the garden was planted late and then left to the weeds. So we’ve spent some time lately trying to rescue it. Just a couple rows of beans, and a row of carrots & greens, and it will all be ours again!
Nothing’s been harvested yet, because we got things planted so late. But the zucchini & kohlrabi are getting close. And the late-planted greens have enjoyed the mostly cool early summer and we should be eating fresh salad this weekend!
1 year ago:
It’s always fun when the piglets are at that age where they’re old enough to be adventurous and small enough to slip through the fences. One evening, as the cows were coming back up from the pasture, they found piglets hanging out on their turf.
Everybody just sort of eyed each other up and down… I was waiting for it to turn into the gang fight scene from West Side Story.
But pretty soon a mama stepped in and put a stop to the shenanigans.
Good thing, or there’s no telling what might have happened.
