Sugar Creek Farm

When I said the other day that I love the hot, humid weather and bring it on…

What I meant to say was, bring it on after the chickens have been butchered. Since Friday we’ve had hot, humid days with highs in the 90’s. The kind of hot that makes you think your skin is melting right off your bones. The kind of hot that curls the hairs framing Olivia’s face into graceful little spirals. The kind of hot that is the death of 7-week-old broiler chickens.

For us it’s the trickiest thing about raising these birds on pasture. We don’t have electricity out there, so we can’t put fans on them. We don’t have a hydrant out there, so we can’t mist water on them. But after losing half our flock last year in a heat wave the day before they were to be butchered, I guess we’ve learned a few things. We only lost 4 over 4 days of heat this weekend.

We’ve learned to feed them at daybreak, and then take their feed away mid-morning. Eating just causes them to generate more body heat. Wait until late afternoon to feed them again. Kick them out of their shed. There’s no air movement inside the shed, and the heat exacerbates any ammonia present and damages their lungs. Set up adequate shade, with tarps or by other means. Move them to fresh, long grass. Of course have plenty of water, and position it close to or inside the shade area so that they don’t have to move far to get it.

Just one more week to get through until butchering day.

Winston’s posse

Today was gray and wet as spring showers came and went throughout the day. It’s astounding, the difference between a rainy day in March and a rainy day a mere two months later. In early spring the rains and winds still carry a cold punch and the earth may still appear dormant and lifeless. Today’s rain was warm, gentle, nourishing. The fields this time of year are like nurseries of infantile corn plants, only a couple inches tall now, lined up in row after row. I imagine the first experience of rain splashing on their narrow leaves – only 4 leaves at this point – was a bit of a shock.

Today’s rain will bring life to the garden seeds planted last weekend, and the rise in temperatures we’ll see this coming weekend should incent those seeds to germinate and push through from the underworld. Unfortunately, it will do the same for the weeds.

Onion sets

Today was the first day that hinted at summer days to come. Warm air, thick with humidity. The sun battling the clouds for position in the sky. A strong westerly wind blowing sporadic showers across the state and on into Wisconsin and Illinois. That subconcious sense that you should keep one ear cocked, that sense that the air holds the potential to turn wicked and dark and twisting. It is tornado season, after all.

I know I’m one of the few that loves hot Iowa summers. Iowa winters catch me in their gray, cold grip, pushing sadness and depression down my throat and deep into my chest. As the grounds dry out from spring rains, as the chill leaves the wind and it finally feels safe to expose bare limbs, I come back to life. I would rather sweat than shiver. Bring it on.

The garden, May 22nd

Planting garden was our main task for the weekend. And what a gorgeous weekend for it! Sunny, not too windy, highs near 70 and lows in the 50s. There’s just nothing more satisfying than being out there digging in the dirt. And the dirt just gets better every year as it loosens up and gains organic matter. Even the flower beds are hosting more and more earthworms. It’s a good feeling to know that we’re feeding the soil as well as ourselves.

One comical sight around here is the sight of the hens flocking to the garden when they hear Matt fire up the rototiller. They come a-running and follow behind him looking for worms, seeds and other goodies. They also like to eat seeds I’m trying to plant before I can get the row covered. It will be interesting to see how many holes there’ll be in my bean rows. I hope the beans come up quickly so I can replant whatever’s missing! Matt’s got the fence up now, so this shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Another challenge is keeping Rafe out of the already-planted part of the garden. He loves to dig in the dirt, but he doesn’t always watch where he’s digging – or stepping. I think we finally got it through his head this weekend that he can dig in the walkway between the strawberry bed and the ends of the vegetable rows. He isn’t too interested yet in helping put seeds in the ground, but he loves to hammer in the stakes to mark the row ends.

Olivia did help me plant most of the beans, cover the rows and tamp them. I discovered the addiction joys of growing drying beans last year. And I thought heritage tomatoes were fun! Drying beans come in so many beautiful colors and patterns and just like heritage tomatoes, drying beans have such fun names. I planted Bumble Bee, Ireland Creek Annie, Kentucky Wonder Bush, Empress, Shirofuma (an edamame type), and one other one I can’t remember.

I keep telling Matt we’re not going to have enough room in the garden this year, and he keeps trying to tell me we have plenty. We’re going to plant all the melons, squash and pumpkins outside of the main garden this year so I think we will indeed have enough garden space, even for the many rows of cutting flowers that Madeline wants to put in for her 4-H horticulture project. She’s got 4 trays of starts in the basement. But I won’t be convinced until the last thing is planted!

Our grand plan for the aforementioned melons, squash and pumpkins is to plant them along the fence that divides pasture from lawn. It’s going to be a whole-family project. First we’ll lay paper feed sacks down to smother the weeds and grass, wet the sacks so that they decompose a little more quickly, pile well-composted manure on top of the feed sacks, and then plant our vining seeds and starts right into the compost. I hope it works! If it does, it will free up needed space in the main garden plus do away with the unsightly weeds that take over that fenceline.

I’ve been following this month’s Eat Local Challenge with interest. While the ideal is to eat organically, locally, and seasonally…it’s definitely a challenge to put into practice. Especially at certain times of year in northern Iowa. And when you can’t have all three, what priority do you use? Does locally grown trump organically grown, or the other way around? And how does a busy family today find time to grow (or buy locally) and put up enough food so that they can eat year round?

This time of year it becomes easier to eat locally as the farmers market opens up and our own garden swings into production. But at the same time, this is the time of year that I hate to cook. I’d rather head out to the garden after work than head to the kitchen. And if I’m in the midst of canning and freezing, I usually don’t feel like fixing a meal on top of that. So I find myself turning to fastfood and convenience foods more often than in the fall, winter and early spring when I love nothing better than cooking up a big batch of hot comfort food from scratch.

So…what do you, dear readers, cook in the summer that’s healthy, uses fresh local ingredients, and is QUICK! And satisfies the appetite of a hard working, meat-and-potatoes man (who does also love salads and vegetables).

Matt turned Winston and Sara back in together this week. Sara quickly claimed the “good” hut for her sleeping quarters.

The farm population keeps expanding! The latest additions – three purebred Chester White gilts. They’ve been dubbed “The Princess Pack” because they’re so fancy. They’re almost too nice to live on this farm. They have pedigrees. When they came off the trailer they were absolutely pristine and white. As you can see, they’re adapting to the dirty life here.

They came from a confinement setup, so Matt had to teach them how to eat out of old-fashioned feeders. Sometimes confinement pigs will freak out when turned into open spaces but these girls dug right into the dirt and started having a good time.

Length of frame

We felt that we could probably direct market more than the 2 litters a year that we’re doing now. But it’s one of those things – you almost have to have the goods to offer before you can find out how much you can sell. We didn’t want to take too big of a risk, so we signed on as Niman Ranch producers. That way we’ll have a secondary market for what we don’t sell direct. And it will be a market where we’ll actually earn a premium for our meat, whereas if we sold to Tyson we’d get docked.

And what we’ll kindly call “width”

I’m the first to admit I know nothing about genetics and swine breeding. But I’m the one that chose the Chester Whites to cross with a Large Black boar. CW’s are supposed to be good mothers, have large litters, nice temperaments, and easily adaptable to outdoor living. I think the frame length and meat quality of the CW’s will compliment the LB qualities. But at this point it’s just one big experiment! Can’t wait to see how it turns out.

These girls are December/January born, weighing 150-160 pounds. They’ll be ready to breed in the fall to farrow in March. Our Large Black boar is too large to breed these girls. So we have yet to decide whether we’re going to try and buy a young LB boar yet this summer, or have them AI’d. There’s also the matter of figuring out housing for everyone. It’s a constant game of musical animals around here!

This is a terrible picture, but hopefully you can see that our new farm residents are ducks! Muscovey ducks, to be exact. Pattie hooked us up with a breeding trio – a white drake, a white hen and a chocolate hen. The white hen waddled off to the creek right away and I attempted to shoo her back but she got around me and we’ve not seen her since. This weekend I’m going to wander over the property line to our neighbor’s side of the creek and see if she’s hiding over there.

But the other two have been doing exactly what I want – hanging around in the cattle shed and hopefully eating lots of flies. My favorite thing is that if I come outside around 7 or 8 o’clock at night, the two of them are taking a leisurely stroll through the garden together. I know I’ll have to fence them out soon, but right now it’s such a sweet, romantic sight.

My main purpose in getting them is for fly control. But if these two are as prolific as Muscovies have a reputation for being, it will be fun to try some roast duck as well.

Did I not say she’s the most beautiful calf ever? She looks like a sweet little lamb. This is Carmel’s baby. Last year her baby Fudge looked completely different. Different bulls, but both bulls were black. There’s some other genetics coming through here.

She’ll be our last calf now for awhile. We have one more cow that was bred late, so she probably won’t calve until July.

Has anyone figured out our naming scheme this year?

So where were we?

After 6 hours of surgery, Olivia has a brand new eardrum! They also cut the scar tissue out of her ear canal and took a skin graft from under her arm to put there. Now the trick is to keep her at a low activity level while it heals. It’s tough. She’s an active girl. I get sick to my stomach thinking about going for her checkup in 3 weeks, and finding out it didn’t “take”.

In the midst of all that, I got sick. Sicker than I’ve been in…ever? We’re talkng pain just below childbirth. I almost wasn’t able to go to the hospital with Olivia. Ultrasound and CT scan have not shown anything definitive. After much lying on the couch and moaning, I’m feeling almost back to normal now. I think I’ll be over it before they ever figure out what’s wrong with me. It is kind of fun to be able to call myself a medical mystery, though.

Having 2 of our 4.5 team members out of commission is not good. Matt and Madeline recruited the neighbor girl to help move the broiler chickens out to pasture after we got home from Iowa City on Saturday. Madeline stepped up and took over Olivia’s bottle calf feedings, and collected, washed and packaged eggs for me. She also helped Matt feeding the broiler chickens and with all the household stuff – cooking & cleaning, etc. This place is definitely a team effort.

I haven’t yet finished posting baby pictures. Still to come…the most beautiful calf I’ve ever seen, Ava, and baby plants. Also a new (to us) species arrived here last Sunday. Stay tuned!