Sugar Creek Farm

Friday and Saturday I attended the annual Practical Farmers of Iowa conference in Des Moines. We’ve been members for a couple of years now but this was the first time I’d attended the conference. I’m not even sure how I found out about PFI, but I do know I immediately felt like these were “my people”. It is an organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture, education, farmer research, and community. This year’s conference was focused on beginning and transitioning farmers, but there were a variety of workshops over a range of topics. Saturday’s keynote speakers were really inspirational.

I got to connect with old friends, share a car ride and a hotel room with my friend Lisa from Gracious Acres , eat way too much good Iowa food, and make some new connections. I came home with several ideas to think over and have already taken steps to pursue one of them. All in all a successful trip!

For those of you within driving distance, we’ll have our next group of porkers ready January 30th. And within driving distance covers quite an area – we now have customers from the Twin Cities all the way down to the Iowa/Missouri border. So exciting!

Our next batch won’t be ready until the end of summer, so this will be the one to get for summer grilling. Think bratwurst, brat patties, pork chops, ham steaks…yum!

I’m off to the Practical Farmers of Iowa conference for the next two days. Can’t wait to meet up with friends and meet some new people, too. As I told Lisa, these kinds of things are great to counteract those days that you’re standing in your kitchen bawling your eyes out, ready to throw in the towel. (Or is that just me?) So motivational.

Just shoot an email to

themillers92 (at) osage (dot) net

if you’re interested in pork, and I’ll get back to you when I return!

The possum playing “possum”.

The possum has been caught. And my egg numbers have almost doubled.

We used a live trap instead of a traditional trap because we set it right in the coop and didn’t want chickens or cats to get caught. And we baited it with eggs, rather than cat food or scraps, because we didn’t want to catch chickens or cats.

But as Walter pointed out in the previous post’s comments, possums are not an animal that you want to catch and release. They have the ability to find you again from really far distances. Either that, or they’ll just end up being a nuisance to somebody else.

I’ll spare you the gory details of the “disposal”. Nobody wanted to hang around and watch – except Olivia. She likes her nail polish and jewelry and fancy hairdo’s, but still she’s more cowgirl than cheerleader.

We’ll reset the trap just to be sure this guy doesn’t have any friends hanging around.

We got a couple of live traps from a friend on Sunday. Set the trap last night, baited with a couple of eggs. Today, no eggs and no possum. Guess the trap needs an adjustment.

To be continued…

I can’t bear to type this whole story out, so long story short. Abbie got hit by a car, and we had to have her put to sleep. Just telling that much I am bawling once again. There have been a lot of tears shed here today, and more to come I’m sure.

Can anyone out there tell me if it’s even possible to train a Pyrenees to stay on his property, or at least come when called?

Edited to add: Abbie was Madeline’s German Shepherd pup. Ike is our Great Pyrenees, and he will bolt if given the chance and there is no recalling him. He always comes home, but on his time. We try really hard to not give him the chance, but with 3 kids in and out of doors it happens. Abbie was not one to run off herself, only when Ike did.

Madeline really wants to get another Shepherd pup, but if Ike can’t be trained to “stay” or at least “come” then I’m afraid we’ll have the same situation all over again. So it’s either train Ike somehow, find a new home for Ike, wait until he passes on, or at least until all the kids are old enough to watch out for the dogs before we get another one. I don’t think you can train out something that is just so bred into those Pyrenees, and none of the other options is sitting well with anyone. *Big Sigh*

This just makes me want to hit the thrift stores and break out the sewing machine! How cool are this cat and this dog?!? One talented gal.

No real exciting news to report on the possum front. Last night it was about 9:30 p.m. when I discovered it. So this afternoon Matt counted the eggs (13) but left them there and we went back out at 9:00 tonight. Possum had already been there and consumed 3 eggs.

So tomorrow I’ll talk to my brother and see if he has a live trap we can use.

It’s a small young possum, and as far as I can tell it’s only interested in the eggs. I think if it was after chickens Miss Silkie would have gone missing already.

As to Pablo’s question, I assume it walks right in the door 🙂 We have a small door cut into the walk-in door so that the chickens can come and go at will.

To be continued…

I think I’ve whined here before about the less-than-stellar egg laying by my hens. I did suspect at times that something might be taking eggs, but didn’t have any proof.

Until tonight.

On busy evenings like tonight (Abbie started obedience classes tonight), I don’t get out to pick up eggs until after dark. So there I was, gathering up eggs, with several of the cats “helping” me. I leaned down to grab a couple out of the lower nest boxes, noticed something fuzzy sitting underneath them, and thought, “Hmm, we don’t have any cats that color.” Knelt down to get a closer look, and the beady eyes of a possum blinked back at me.

I made a beeline for the house.

Matt asked, “Did you pull it out of there?”

Uh, no, it’s a wild animal.

So I went back out with Abbie to see what she’d do. She sniffed the possum out right away but was more interested in eating chicken poo than flushing out varmints. I got her back on task and she barked fiercely…while wagging her tail. Then all of the hens started to cluck and get excited which I think Abbie liked, because she kept looking over her shoulder at the hens and then barking at the possum ever more fiercely.

But the possum had too good a hiding place and wasn’t going to budge. So eventually we gave up and went back to the house.

Matt asked, “Did you poke at it with a stick?”

Uh, no, once again, it’s a wild animal.

Matt said, “I’m going to tell the blogging world that you’re afraid of a possum.”

I’ll do you one better. I’ll tell them myself.

To be continued…

I love books, especially books about cooking, gardening or farming. I got *four* books for Christmas! Quite the loot.

One of those books was the cookbook Simply In Season from Matt’s brother and his wife. It’s one of three (so far) World Community Cookbooks put out by the Mennonite Central Committee. I also have the More With Less Cookbook, also put out by the MCC.

These are wonderful cookbooks, full of recipes that remind me of lunches at my grandparents’ house growing up. Simple, easy to prepare, with everyday ingredients.

Simply In Season is built around the idea of eating foods in rhythm with the seasons. Asparagus, greens, new potatoes and strawberries in spring. Corn, cucumbers, tomatoes in summer. Broccoli, kale, pears and pumpkin in fall. Storage fruits and vegetables in winter – apples, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes.

It also has wonderful mini-essays from contributors about food issues. My favorite (so far) is this one:

Chrish that sweet potato.

– Jennifer Schrock; Goshen, Ind.

[Editor’s note: Matt is guest blogging today :)]

Hello and Happy New Year to all the customers and friends of SCF. Kelli asked me to write today’s blog entry as we reflect on 2005 and make plans for 2006. So here it goes.

First of all thanks to all of you for your friendship and support. It takes a lot of people to make a farm successful, even one as small as ours. Are we successful? Good question. Let’s see.

Our death loss: 2 feeder pigs, 2 newborn calves, a 550-pound feeder calf to tetanus (ouch!), and a 3-year-old cow (ouch again!). This reviewing the year stuff is somewhat painful 🙂 The unplanned hay purchase of 18 tons, because of the flooding of our 2004 hay crop. Ouch.

[Editor’s note: Let’s not forget the 45-or-so broiler chickens?]

But there were also many bright spots. Our 2005 hay crop was excellent, 116 bales on 19 acres. All of it very good quality. We sold all of our butcher hogs, most of the broilers, and all but 35 pounds of the beef we raised in 2005.

I am sure a financial analyst may say that we had a horrible year, and to him that may be truth. But the truth I know is that every evening when I sit down to supper, I don’t see some meat and vegetables sitting in front of me. I see the beautiful green beans Kelli planted, grew, picked and froze. I see the delicious golden potatoes that Olivia helped debug and Rafe helped dig. I see the roast from the steer Madeline helped raise that won her a blue ribbon at the fair. I see the broccoli Kelli started in the basement in February. I see a thousand memories of my childhood and of my children, and the other kids that came out to SCF for one reason or another. I think of all the friends, old and new, that we may have never met.

Good people leading meaningful lives. Is SCF successful? I sure think so.