Works in Progress

Rog and I have played with mud and clay all weekend. We made not one but two attempts at mudding the new bigger and better clay oven. The first attempt, using an innovative, experimental, time-saving construction strategy, failed structurally, so back to  the old tried and true method of using wet sand as the base. Rog found some wonderful clay at a house-construction site that the contractors were only too willing to let him haul away for our oven.
These are my farmer-hands, packing brick-shaped wads of mud to build the inside wall of the oven.

 Rog constructed the opposite side.

It was a sultry, hot weekend to be doing this project. Actually, sultry and hot to be doing anything at all.
Rog built the massive table that supports the oven from old barn beams he found on Craigslist (our go-to source for farm projects.) I hope we sited it in the best spot --this oven is not going anywhere now.

Nutmeg supervised from the shady spot  below the table.

The oven with its  inner coat of  mud complete. A thick insulating layer will be built over this.

Tonight Rog ascertained that the clay was dry and  hard enough to remove the sand from the inside.  Here it is emptied out, ready for the insulating layer. This oven is twice as big as our current wood-fired clay oven - we will be able to bake a dozen loaves of bread at a time.

When not up to my elbows in clay, I finally tackled a project I have been wanting to do ever since I was inspired by a mosaic idea I saw on Pinterest last winter/ This is the first one of a pair of  tall, narrow panels to flank the doors of the granary/farm store.   Old cups and mugs are cut in half and mortared in to become planter pockets.  I sawed large floor tiles and dishes into 1 1/2 inch square tiles.

The guard on the wet saw I was using did not allow enough space for me to cut the cups, so Rog cut them for me with his angle grinder. Happily, he did not  cut off any toes with this procedure.

Tonight we hung the panel along side the  door; tomorrow I will  plant the vessels (maybe with herbs? or succulents? or moss roses?)

Israel and Cadence are making major progress painting the house, even working on these hot, hot days, and doing a fantastic, meticulous job.  I am not sure how we are going to reach the peak, though.

Their band performed at a wedding Saturday, and after dropping off the equipment and the car, they walked home. They definitely add a dash of vibrancy and character to the village of Douglas! 

Udderly Unexpected

Last summer when we  bred Lafonda she did not settle (that's official farmer talk for  a cow becoming pregnant.)  When she went into heat a  couple of months after breeding,I  had the vet do a pregancy check and he confirmed she was open (again, farmer talk for  a cow not being pregnant.)  I decided not to try breeding her again that fall because a) I was trying to reduce my herd size and hadn't yet sold any cows, b) gestation is 9 months and I preferred not to have a calf born in the heat of summer and flies, and c) a summer with no milking sounded kind of nice and laid back.  But all spring and summer I have been looking at her flat, saggy udder, feeling a bit wistful about not having any calves and not having the summer milking routine, not to mention the milk for making ice cream, yogurt and cheese.

Actually, I have counted my blessings that it worked out not having calves this spring. It would have been a cold and muddy time to to be born this spring-- with all the deep mud, the poor babies would have had a miserable and possibly dangerous time getting around.  And milking such a cow would have been horrible this muddy, muddy spring- I would have had to essentially give her a bath before every milking session.

So now I have been agonizing over whether to sell the cows.  Hay  is going to be very costly this winter, if you can even get it.  Although I can't really afford to have 2 "pet" cows if they will cost $15 a day to feed, I could get a part time job to support them (yes, that is the kind of farmer I am!) but I am worried about even being able to obtain the hay.  What if I can't  find enough hay to get through the winter!!?  I  don't want to sell just one cow and have an only cow --they are herd animals.  It will probably be a challenge to sell two cows that are open and not in milk. And it is time to consider breeding them for next spring,  decisions about  semen have to be made in the next week or so so it can be delivered in time for their next heat cycle. Being bred would make them more salable, probably, but if I can't sell them, then I face possibly having 4 animals in the spring!  These are things I have  been weighing  many times a day as I consider the options.

The past couple days looking at LaFonda I have thought, "hmm, funny, her udder looks a bit swollen." I decided it must be due to the hormones of coming into in heat. I hadfigured out that  LaFonda and Jitter must be  cycling  at the same time  (it's kind of hard to tell which cow is in heat sometimes) and that will make it easier for breeding them.
Well,  night before last  when I led them back to the main pasture  LaFonda's back quarters looked very swollen. I have never heard of a cow getting mastitis  when they are not lactating, but I put my hand on her udder to make sure it wasn't feverish or hard. It was soft and full, and with the mildest touch, milk came out! What the heck?!!

So I went online to the Family milk Cow forum and asked what could be going on? The consensus was, either she is pregnant (that she had probably gotten out, found a bull somewhere, had a rendezvous, and  gotten back in without my knowing it, or a bull had surreptitiously visited us) or more likely, that our 2-year-old heifer, Jitterbug was nursing on her and had brought her back into milk. We were pretty certain neither of those things had occurred - there are no bulls in the vicinity to our knowledge, and we have never seen any sign of Jitter nursing on her.

This morning when I gave the cows their little treat of grain, I tried "bumping" LaFonda.  You  push in sharply with the palm of your hand on the right side of the cow at a certain spot. If there is a calf in there, it will bump you back. I have tried this when our cows were pregnant  before and never had any success, but I read up on it and found diagrams to make sure I had the technique  right. When I pushed in the first time, nothing; I did it again and was shocked to see a  bump bulge back out at me!!  There IS a calf in there!

I wish LaFonda could tell me who the father is! I have finally come up with a theory- unlikely, but the most plausible to me.  We harvested our steer, Lindy, LaFonda's 18-month-old calf on November 9th.  I am thinking he maybe wasn't  really a steer, at least not entirely. We had trouble banding him, so a couple months later had our neighbor dairy farmer  use the burdizzo to make sure he was a steer.   I am guessing that  procedure didn't succeed and Lindy bred Lafonda between the time the vet did the pregnancy check and Lindy left for freezer camp. That would mean we might expect a calf by the first week of August.

I can't deny, I am kind of  delighted by this crazy development.  A darling little calf!!  And with these parents, it should be beautiful and have a fantastic, gentle disposition. Yes, kind of weird that it would be the product of an incestuous relationship, but I understand in the world of cattle breeding that  pairing is not unheard of when trying to emphasize certain traits.  And LaFonda herself is a mutt, so  at least she is not  highly inbred.

So, I must get to work!   Because I knew I wasn't having any calves this year, I have transformed the miking parlor into storage for my beekeeping and sculpture supplies.  I have a lot of reorganizing to do!  And rethinking about  how to get hay or whether to sell any cows...

On the road to St. Germain

The elderflowers are blooming!  These are the umbrella-shaped blossoms of the elderberry, which grows  abundantly along country roads around here.

Pretty much every ditch has a patch of tall shrubs that look like this and smell so sweetly fragrant.

It is the leading edge of the brief elderflower season. The umbrels with  little white spheres are just in bud, not  truly flowering yet.  They will be ready in a couple of sunny days. It is interesting that one road will have  elderflowers at peak flower while another nearby will still be barely budded, extending the season.

Today, I  harvested a couple of bags of these flowers to make elderflower liqueur. Easy, snip them off into a grocery bag, However, some of the  other plants in the ditch are not so friendly --I waded through tall wild parsnip (which can cause  horrible blistery burns), prickly thistles, and lush  poison ivy to obtain my prize. I wore long pants and my muck boots. Don't harvest ALL of the flowers--you will also want there to be plenty of elderberries later this summer!

The recipe for making elderflower liqueur is very simple. Wash or shake off the  flowers to remove any insects or dust.  These blossom were so clean- I  harvested from a rural paved road after seeing how dusty the plants along the gravel road were. I only found one very tiny bug.
Remove the blossom from the stems, which purportedly  contain a toxin.  I started out snipping the flowers off with a scissors, but ended up stripping the  blossoms off the stems with my fingers. It takes a lot more umbrels than you expect, once you remove the flowers from the stems. I filled a 2-qt  mason jar with the blossoms, but you could  make any  amount.  The blossoms are then covered with vodka. I purchased  Prairie Vodka because it is sort of local (SW Minnesota) and is organic, plus it was on sale for a reasonable price. When I purchased the vodka, I asked if they sold elderflower liqueur and they do! It is a very pricey liqueur called "St. Germain. "

Steep the blossoms on in a cool dark place for a week up to month, swishing and turning the jar over over daily.  Then strain through fine cloth and add sugar to taste- about  1/4 cup sugar per quart. I am intending to try using honey from my own  bees, which will make it totally local and should add some  lovely subtle notes of raspberry and prairie flowers.

This is my first time making  elderflower liqueur, so I  don't have any more advice or insights yet--but I did find a yummy-sounding recipe for Elderflower Mojitos that i can't wait to try when the liqueur is ready in a few weeks! 

Wordless Wednesday: Flowers after Showers

Event-full Week

Things have been hopping lately!  In addition to  the projects we accomplished last week (see yesterday's post), plus the usual chores and CSA delivery and being open to the public on the weekend, we had a couple of very special events on the farm last week.

On Thursday evening, Teresa Konechne, a documentary filmmaker I met at the Rural Arts and Culture Summit in Morris, MN, last month, came to show preview clips of her  current project and discuss it with a group of film-buff audience members.

Teresa's company is called Working Hands Productions and she is filming a series of stories of peoples' relationships to the land. I loved the clips--hope we can show the final production here when it is complete.

I had worked really hard to clean the barn so we could screen the film inside, but it was such a perfect night, we decided to show it outside on the barn. Even though it wasn't very dark because days are so long now,  it worked out quite well and all of us were happy not to miss a lovely summer evening outside.

Saturday  night we hosted a festive bridal shower for the beloved goddaughter of friends. The evening started with appetizers and dancing and pink champagne on the patio.

Israel, Martial and

Cadence played son jarocho music.

We had planned to feast outside, but because the weather forecast was sketchy, we moved the dining into the house. That meant clearing out nearly all the furniture in order to set up the banquet tables in the living room. Judy (the bride's godmother) lit the candles.

Delicious food - including several traditional Mexican dishes, and a pretty garden salad festooned with pansies and pepitas.

After the guests left, and the dishes and tables and chairs were cleared away, we all collapsed happily in the empty living room.  Maybe we should just keep the room this way--it would make a nice yoga studio and we wouldn't have to haul all that furniture back in from the garage!

Water & Window Wizardry

Time for a little catchup post on a couple of  projects. When I last posted about projects, Rog was high up on a ladder trimming off the edge of the metal barn roof with a Sawzall (shudder) in order to install gutters for a rainwater catchment system. I am happy to report he successfully and safely trimmed the roof and got the gutters hung, even on the west end of the barn where the ground drops off precipitously and the earth was like muddy quicksand from all the rain.

Chris took the two 275-gallon recycled food-grade totes to the car wash to  clean out the remains of very fragrant garlic oil that had been stored in them. Easier said than done!  The totes are the reservoirs for the roof water.

But before the  totes could be hooked up to the gutters, Rog wanted to install windows along the south side of the barn, because once those totes are full of 275 gallons of water they aren't going anywhere. Rog had found five 4' x 8' 1-inch insulated glass windows on Craigslist for a very good deal. Together with the three Craigslist windows we installed a couple years ago, we had enough to glass in most of the south side of our  barn.  They are excruciatingly heavy, however,  and we recruited the Nodding Wild Onions  band members, Chris and some of his friends to assist.

 Rog had removed the metal siding and we replaced it with the glass panels on the outside of the framing.

Securing the glass top and bottom.

We are very thankful for generous, hardworking friends with strong muscles!

The final panel is lifted into place.

 The view from inside the barn--funny expressions.

 Admiring the wall o'glass!

The transformation on the inside of the barn is astounding. What was a dark space is now a bright solarium! I plan to use this as studio space this summer, maybe start seeds in here, host gatherings, and someday it may become a classroom and dining area, if we succeed in getting a commercial kitchen built someday. (The colorful ceiling decor is left over from the Day of the Dead feast last November.)

The next morning, I painted all the outside window trim and after work Rog and Chris set the totes in place and hooked them up to the downspouts.  Not more than an hour later, we were drenched with a heavy 20-minute downpour that conveniently tested the water catchment system.  The totes both filled halfway from that brief rain!  That's 500 gallons of water that would have otherwise drained onto my already extraordinarily muddy cattle yard where the cows have been sinking in past their knees -- I am delighted to divert that water.  Chris is pleased to have warm rainwater to top off the pond and aquaponics system. Cadence will be very happy to have water right there, to water the veggies in the hoop house without having to lug a quarter-mile of hose from the hose bib.

Two giant steps forward!!