The Art of Sheep Herding

My friend Larry just sent me this video, with the comment that this is what Scottish Highlander shepherds do when they get bored. Amazing. Not sure who is more talented here, the shepherds or the dogs.T

Another Crazy Idea?

You just never know what you will find on Craigslist. Yesterday Cadence found a listing for two young water buffalo heifers for sale.

Yes, water buffalo. And she almost has me convinced that a couple of water buffalo would be wonderful livestock for our tiny Minnesota farm. Water buffalo are gentle, hardy and give very rich milk, ideal for making mozarella cheese [In Italy, mozarella cheese traditionally is made made from buffalo milk], which would fit well in our pizza farm venture - but more about that in a future post. These water buffalo were from a petting zoo and the owner said they were extremely tame and friendly. So today, Cadence and I drove three hours to see them. By the third hour of driving we were wondering why we were spending our entire day on what was probably a wild goose chase...
We were expecting a midwest farm-sort-of-petting-zoo - perhaps a pumpkin patch where kids could touch baby goats and sheep. We were taken aback to drive into the farm yard and see a camel. When we met the owner, Kevin, and told him we didn't expect to find a camel he asked if we had seen the giraffe!
He took us into a very high barn that opened out into a large yard where a giraffe was out enjoying the unseasonably mild November day.
When he saw us, the giraffe came over to the the fence and leaned down for a treat. How magical to feed a giraffe a cookie!

I wondered whether the giraffe was full-grown or would get even taller (I estimate he was about 15 feet). The farmer said he expects -and hopes-he grows another foot or more, or he would have saved a lot of expense by not having to build the building so high.
We stopped to meet the camels. There were three, but this one was the friendliest. His nose was velvety soft and he seemed to crave being petted. In the summer Kevin takes the camels to county fairs and gives camel rides. This time of year the camels appear in some nativity pageants.
I asked Kevin how he got started in this business. He said he had a pet raccoon as a kid, then a second raccoon, and it grew into this. He obviously loves animals and they all seem to be extremely well-cared-for, calm and gentle.


He had many other unusual animals, including capybaras, kookooburras, an African eagle owl, Jacob sheep, llamas, an ostrich, the most darling baby bison, and this zedonk (a cross between a zebra and donkey.)
We were totally smitten with the sweet water buffalo heifers and now will have to contemplate whether this crazy idea is the right move for us.

Foggy Friday Morn

The past few mornings have been very foggy and the days have been freakishly balmy for late November --getting up to mid 50's. No complaining here about that- Makes it much more appealing to get up early when it is barely light out and tackle the chores.
Geese browsing by the tire swing.
The big rock in the fog.
It didn't really seem cold enough for frost, but most of the plants in the prairie were glazed.

The Dreaded Day

The thick, gray fog matched our heavy hearts as Cadence and I drove the turkeys to the processor at dawn this morning. Hilltop Poultry is at the crest of this long, steep hill. Everybody is very friendly there, but after delivering our turkeys and the last few roosters today, we will be glad to not have to return for almost a year.
The big challenge was figuring out how to transport these big birds (the toms are about 40 pounds.) We ended up lining the walls of our little 4 x 8 trailer with scrap plywood, stretching plastic garden fencing across the top (covered by a tarp held down by bungees) and closing up the back end by screwing on a wood pallet. It was a Beverly-hillbilly-ish construction, but it did the job. Cadence put in some straw bedding and then she and Rog put the turkeys in the trailer last night.

Turkeys are very sweet, gentle, ungainly birds when they are walking around, but when you try to lift them they panic - they are amazingly strong and a whop in the face with a wing is very painful (speaking from experience!) You could easily wind up with a broken nose, but nobody did.

We had to wait a bit before we could unload the turkeys- here they are in the trailer. They were very calm, just wanting their breakfast, I am sure. It is probably not very professional for a farmer, but we cried a bit.

None if us ever expected to grow so fond of the turkeys. They turned out to be such easy-going, trusting creatures. They are very beautiful in a kind of homely way--and awesome when the toms turn all blue in the face and their wattles and snoods flush bright red. They followed us everywhere. They were curious and funny, but much smarter than everyone says, just easily baffled. When we arrived back home the farmyard looked so empty and quiet.

We are now officially done with all our harvesting of animals and garden veggies--other than gathering a few eggs, we won't have to harvest anything else until the sap starts running in the maple trees next spring. Whew! This has been truly the hardest aspect of farming.

How're we gonna keep 'em "Down" on the farm?

Both of our dogs have been hanging out by the back door, longing to be out. It is deer-hunting season and yesterday a big doe took refuge in our little woods, hiding out by the big rock. Cocoa was beside herself because she could see the deer through the windows and we wouldn't let her out for risk of chasing the deer and/or being mistaken for a deer by a hunter.

This year I found two blaze-orange bandanas for the dogs so they wouldn't have to wear those humiliating orange t-shirts. Cocoa's bandana is getting pretty muddy; Nutmeg managed to lose hers the first day.
Nutmeg is especially morose because she is being forced to rest for a couple weeks. She has had a recurring limp all fall. She is stiff in the morning, heads out on her morning rounds, and returns limping. I was pretty sure it must be arthritis (been there) but over the weekend she was in significant pain and unable to put any weight on her back right leg at all. I took her to the vet this morning.

Sure enough, the vet diagnosed arthritis. Nutmeg is her own worst enemy--she just doesn't know how to pace herself- she thinks she is a young pup or something. The vet said we should try to make her rest and recover for a couple weeks (right!) and give her pain meds as needed (which I worry will just make her feel better enough to run harder) and try giving her glucosamine. The vet pointed out how Nutmeg's spine is out of alignment and her leg muscles are unevenly developed because she has been compensating, probably favoring that leg for a long time. Apparently there is a dog physical therapist nearby who has an underwater treadmill to help dogs with such problems! I'll have see how that fits into our budget. Maybe I can persuade my trigger point therapist (he is a dog lover) to teach me how to work on dear old Nut.

Hen Dilemma

When I head out in the morning to do the chores, my first stop is the chicken coop. The moment I open the door one of my favorite hens, Red Zinger, hops out, bustling off to her favorite laying spot. She has selected the cows' hay server in the loafing shed as the premier laying spot.
Apparently she hasn't figured out that it is not the most reliable site for laying an egg. This metal hay cage is designed to prevent the cows from spilling so much hay on the floor and wasting it. They pull mouthfuls of hay out as they munch and the nesting material is soon devoured from the bottom up. Today I watched for quite a while as Red tried to get settled in and the oblivious cows kept disrupting her nest. Red became all flustered as the hay was pulled out from under her, but she persisted in trying to arrange a new spot.

She must have finally given up or else the cows consumed all of the hay before she accomplished her task. Many mornings I find an egg on the floor beneath the feeder, where it has fallen through the bars and landed safely on the straw bedding, but I didn't find one today.

The Pig Tale

Several people have written wondering how the pig harvest went. We slaughtered our two pigs two weeks ago, and all went according to plan, but I didn't take photos (actually, I tried to stay out of the way) and Sara asked me to wait to write about until we got the pork back from the processor. It took a couple weeks while some of the meat was smoked and cured.

Sara decided to slaughter the pigs on the farm so they wouldn't have to be transported frightened to the processor. Our farmer neighbor, Mark, did the hardest part - shooting the pigs and hanging them from his skidloader, then placed them in the back of the pickup. Sara and Cadence wrapped them up and drove them immediately to the the processor for butchering. The entire slaughter only took about half an hour. Even though these pigs were raised specifically for this purpose, it was an intense and emotional day--I was proud of Sara for maintaining her cool and handling everything so calmly and thoughtfully.

This Wednesday, Sara and Cadence drove back to Dover and picked up the finished meat, all neatly frozen and wrapped. The two pigs provided 330 lbs. of pork chops, bacon, roasts, ham, steaks, ribs, and sausage. Sara had orders for three quarters and we gave meat to the dairy farmers in appreciation for providing us with milk for our pigs and to Mark for helping with the slaughter, so we will end up with about half of that amount for ourselves. That's a lot of bacon!

Last night Sara prepared a fabulous feast of braised pork shoulder, served with walnut-beer bread, spinach and dried cherry salad, and mashed potatoes for our dear friends who were also our first pork customers. We said a little thank you for the pigs. The meal was exquisite.

We have never been so close to our food before moving to the farm. We had grown our own vegetables and eaten fish we caught, but that is not anything like eating chickens you raised from day-old chicks or pork you have raised from young piglets, knowing them as individuals, feeding them, scratching their heads, laughing at their antics and making sure they have a comfortable, happy life. I know could readily be a vegetarian farmer, but then there would be no reason to raise these animals. And since these pigs were destined for the table, they couldn't have dreamed of a more pleasurable life.

Sara, ever philosophical and poetic, remarked as we ate out first pork meal, "It is a cycle - Right now we are consuming everything we fed our pigs this summer--the milk from our neighbors' cows, bushels of tomatoes and squash from our garden, those acorns we raked up from Hal's yard, that powdery pig chow we got from the feedmill, the bones from our organic chicken stock, broken eggs, wild raspberry plants and roots they dug up from the woods, insects they caught, and all of our lovely kitchen scraps." Yes, those pigs feasted like gourmands, and now they are nourishing us very well.

Here is the braised pork recipe Sara used for our dinner. She added beer and wine to the braising liquid:

Braised Pork Shoulder with Chimichurri
Recipe by Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo

ACTIVE: 45 MIN
TOTAL TIME: 3 HRS 15 MIN
SERVINGS: 8

INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
5 pounds pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 5 equal pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
5 garlic cloves
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
3 thyme sprigs
1 bay leaf
2 cups chicken stock

Chimichurri sauce (recipe below)

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 275°. In a large skillet, melt the butter in the oil. Season the pork with salt and pepper and brown over high heat, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Transfer to an enameled cast-iron casserole and add the garlic, onions, thyme, bay leaf, stock and 2 cups of water; bring to a boil. Cover with foil and bake for 2 1/2 hours, until the pork is falling-apart tender. Transfer to a dish; keep warm. Strain the liquid, return to the casserole and reduce by half over moderately high heat. Season with salt and pepper, add to the pork and serve with chimichurri.

Chimichurri sauce: In a mortar, mash 1 chopped garlic clove with 1 seeded jalapeño. Season with 1 teaspoon of salt. Work in 1 bunch each of stemmed curly and flat-leaf parsley and 1/4 cup of chopped oregano. Stir in 3/4 cup of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar and season with 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper.