Sugar Creek Farm

We have a new boar! And as you can see he’s a Berkshire, not a Large Black. I had so wanted to stick with a LB boar, but the closest one we could find was in Indiana and the cost of gas right now just made it too expensive a venture. I hope one of these years to start a LB breeding program here, but for now we decided to try a Berk.

Then it was time for the all-important name choosing. Since Matt dubbed the gilts “J-Lo & the Posse” (because they have nice hams), we almost thought to go with a rapper name like B Diddy (“B” for bacon). But we decided to keep with something a little more regal, and Madeline came up with “Oliver”.

The gilts sure seem to like Oliver so far! The sad thing is that Winston will be leaving us. He’s become almost a mascot for Sugar Creek Farm. There will be tears shed when the day comes for him to go.

This afternoon was a “fun day” for me. I took a trip down to Grundy Center to see my friend Lisa of Gracious Acres fame. And I bought milk. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

photo copyright BP Photography 🙂

Lisa is one of the most generous and thoughtful people I know. When I arrived at her place she had a little goodie bag waiting for me, with a cute little old-thyme gardening postcard on a plaque and a t-shirt from my very favorite scrapbook artist.

We had a wonderful afternoon of exploring the little shops of Grundy Center, lots of talking and catching up. Lisa and I actually met because of this blog, when she responded to my plea last December for someone to buy beef from us. Such a short time ago, but it feels as if we’ve known each other for ever.

I’m sure I’m repeating myself here, but it’s just one of those friendships that “clicked” right away. We both have a passion for small farms and local agriculture, for saving old buildings, for scrapbooking, for chickens. And today shopping at the Farm & Fleet we discovered that we both utter the same little “hm”.

Yes, we shopped at Farm & Fleet and bought milk. We’re crazy, the two of us.

So one of the shops we stopped in has just started selling organic milk and meat products. (If I remember right it’s called Gems.) We got to talking milk, and when the clerk mentioned the name “Kalona” my head spun around like I was auditioning for a remake of Poltergeist.

“You have Kalona milk?!?” I exclaimed.

This is a milk I have only heard about. Drooled over. But have never been able to get my hot little hands on. It’s beyond organic. It’s vat pasteurized, and non-homogenized. I think it’s about as close as you can get to milk straight out of the bulk tank, without actually taking it straight out of the bulk tank. (Which is illegal in Iowa. ahem.)

So yes, I went to Grundy Center and bought a half-gallon of whole milk and a half-gallon of 1% milk. And a rag rug, and a picture frame. And then Lisa and her DH (and I do mean “dear”) and sweet daughter took me out for a most delicious supper. And I was so full I moaned the whole one-and-a-half hours home.

And I didn’t even get side-tracked by this:

Once again a fine steam engine show was put on by the Mitchell County Historical Society and steam engine aficionados from near and far. The volunteer effort is extremely impressive.

A giant Case. I don’t know anything about it, but the silver eagle on the front of it caught my eye.

The Reeves engine that I showed last year. It’s even bigger than the Case. You can see that the tires are taller than the man standing next to it. Check out the comments on last year’s post for more details on this engine from one of the engineers that runs it.

This is the little steam engine that Rafe was so interested in. I think it burned coal and wood in the fire box in the front part of the engine. The fire looked bright and hot, and Rafe decided he wasn’t going to sit so close to it in order to have a turn at the wheel.

There were also volunteers demonstrating spinning and rug hooking. This one happens to be one of our customers! She’s spinning rabbit fur.

Ever since our county fair, where he saw his first tractor pull, Rafe has been asking to see another one. If you know Rafe, you know he has this dramatic aversion to loud noises that involves covering his ears and screaming. But the tractor pull has become the one thing he will brave loud noise for (with the aid of ear plugs.)

We headed to the 11th Annual Cedar Valley Memories steam engine show on Sunday. Rafe was going to get his tractor pull.

Except that the tractor pull had been held on Saturday. Not Sunday.

(My sister-in-law read the schedule in the paper the same way I did. “Same schedule both days.” Therefore neither one of us is crazy.)

Anyway.

So there was no tractor pull. But there was a pedal tractor pull, and Rafe said he would give that a try.

But you never know about Rafe. He’ll sometimes say he wants to do something, and then chicken out at the last minute. For example there was a little boy driving around a miniature steam engine at the show. Rafe was entranced and wanted to ride it in the worst way. Until he got close enough to see the fire box.

Never. Mind.

Matt always reminds me that it’s good Rafe has a conservative side, considering his love for all things fast on wheels…motorcycles, dirt bikes, race cars, etc.

So I wasn’t holding my breath that he would actually go through with the pedal tractor pull. But when the emcee called his name he couldn’t get down there fast enough. He jumped on that tractor and took off without waiting for the word “Go!”

In the end he took second place in the 4-and-under heat, and earned a really nice trophy for his efforts. Although he thought the bottle of Moutain Dew they gave him was just as great as that trophy.

In this picture he looks like he’s sad about not getting that first place trophy. He didn’t care a lick about that. He’s sad because he really wanted to get back on that tractor. He couldn’t understand why it wasn’t like a carnival ride at the county fair, that you could keep riding as many times as you wanted.

Coming in second qualified him for the state finals. Who knew there were sanctioned pedal tractor pulls with state finals?!? (And who knew that you could compete in the 18-and-over category? Couldn’t talk Matt into it.) They’re being held in September in Marshalltown, so we’ll see if it works out for us to let him have another go at it. Guess all that riding around in the garden he’s done this summer paid off!

Pictures of the actual steam engine show tomorrow!

It’s chick time again! This little guy was so tired he fell asleep standing up.

I usually do 2 batches of 100. I had so many pre-sales this time that I upped my order to 125. With the 3 freebies, I’ve got 128 fluffy yellow balls running around the brooder right now. Love it!

As HHG commented in the last post, Seed Savers Heritage Farm is farmer eye candy. I thought that was a very good way of putting it! Here’s a few more snapshots:

A look back at the barn from the trail

A few of these signs interrupted our trek on the trail. Unfortunately we never did see a bull.

The trail also wound through the woods where we saw this face looking at us.

Today my parents took the kids for an overnight, as they do every August, heading west to Clear Lake. Matt and I decided to take advantage of a kid-free day and take a little daytrip ourselves. We headed east to Decorah.

The main destination for our trip was the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm. The farm is open to visitors, and you can take self-guided tours along the trail system they’ve developed to view their preservation gardens, Ancient White Park cattle, historic orchard, and more. We spent about 3 hours walking around, getting a close look at some the thousands and thousands of varieties of heirloom vegetables they work at preserving, taking notes of what might be good to try next year. I highly recommend a visit – we enjoyed it very much!

Farm cat

Beautiful garden showcasing a mixture of flowers, herbs and vegetables

View of one of the preservation gardens from the second story of the barn

Stay tuned, more tomorrow!

when Matt was home for lunch today.

M: “Olivia, how are your calves today?”

O: “Good! Tommy’s balls fell off!”

Somehow “good” and “balls fell off” don’t seem to belong in the same sentence together. But maybe that’s just me.

Blooms that Madeline started indoors and transplanted into the vegetable garden (much to Matt’s chagrin.) She’d like to try this on a little larger scale and sell cut flowers at the farmers market but, alas, too little tillable land on this farm.