Thursday, September 6, 2012

Got Milk?

So I'm at the farmer's market last Saturday selling pears and grapes from this farm.  Three lovely, jovial ladies wander up and exclaim over the 'baby pears'.  (Seckel pears, that's as big as they get.)  We chatted a bit and as lady #1 handed me a quarter and bit into her pear, I rambled on about how they are from an old orchard here, beyond, before, and much deeper than 'organic'.  Organic has lost any meaning in this country.  I'll show you organic.  Come look at this land and these fruit trees and grapevines.
anyway
Lady # 2 steps closer as lady # 1 gets out a dollar to buy 4 more pears "for later".  She watches her friend bag up the beauties and says something about wishing there was a farm around here where she could just get some real milk.  Trying not to get too excited, I asked what around here meant to her and did 17 miles fit her idea?  That's when she noticed my hat.  Remember the old 'Got Milk?' campaign?  Well I scored that hat from a thrift store shortly after coming to work on this dairy farm.  She laughed and asked if we sold milk.  I told her that we milk cows and deal directly with friends and family at the farm.  We can't sell milk, or cheese, or butter at the market.  No one in a white coat with a name tag from a lab and an office has been out to inspect the milking parlor and kitchen.  Obviously we're not safe and clean and the public must be protected from disease spreading characters like us.  (I said that in my head only.)
anywho
Jill ended up telling us that she has survived breast cancer.  Her oncologist told her to avoid soy.  Jill started doing her own research and discovered that milk sold in stores is also dangerous.  Its heat treated, or 'pasteurized' as they like to call it, cooked.   She also discovered, through her own research, that fresh milk, real milk, raw milk, what ever you prefer to call it, can have many health benefits if it is produced by responsible farmers and their healthy cows.
My question is this:  why did her oncologist tell her to avoid soy?  Why didn't her family doctor tell her to avoid soy?  Why have many, many women mentioned to me that their Oncologist told them to avoid soy?  Isn't it a little late by then?  Haven't they already billed the insurance company for the chemo and radiation treatments?  If the family doctor told the women to avoid soy, would the Oncologists miss out on the opportunity to treat the women, then bill for those treatments?
I wonder.  Is it politically incorrect to ask these questions?  yes I guess it is.  But I'm a woman.  and many of my friends are women.  and I am sick at the idea of what's really going here, in our "Health Care System".
I'm not saying that people should drink fresh milk.  What I"m saying is that it should be available to people who want to drink it.  This farm doesn't try to find customers, or supporters, as we call them. We wait until they find us.  Our supporters have done research beyond watching commercials on TV.  They already understand what's important when they come to the farm with their glass jars.  Why do you see so many advertisements for soy and heat treated milk?  Because you need to be convinced to buy it.  We're not going to convince anyone.  The information is out there if you really want to know.  And then when you know, we'll see you at the milk house.


Thursday, August 16, 2012

listen to the wind

     I live on a farm, on a dirt road, 2 miles from pavement.  The house does not have a furnace, clothes dryer, TV, or microwave.  Cell phone is for trips to town only, as there's no reception here.   There is a wood fire cook stove in the large kitchen.  In the winter we gather fire wood from the woods and stack it on the front porch.  We heat the house, cook our food, make coffee, dry clothes, and relax with the wood stove.
    Get up in the morning between 5 and 6 am every day.  Set up the stainless steel cans, strainer, and milk pails.  Let the chickens out.  Miguel brings the cows in from pasture.  We milk them by hand.  Milking 7 right now and I usually get 3 done while he's finishing his 4th.  He washes the stainless while I let the cows out and spray down the cement floor of the milk house.  Then we feed calves.  They mostly eat grass but we have an abundance of skim milk and whey and there's no pigs here yet, so the calves get all they can drink.  The skim comes from butter making and the whey from cheese.
  Give the chickens some old cheese and milk so they'll stay away from the back door while we finish chores.  Stain the kefir grains and give them fresh milk.  Taking care of the kefir grains is important.  We both drink more kefir than we do milk.
      During the day who knows what we'll do.  Check the fences for a good charge.  Look at the dry cows to see who is getting close to calving.  Feel their udders for any hardness indicating a problem.  Work in the garden.  Post an ad to sell calves or bulls.  Let the lambs out and make sure all the gates are closed so they don't go across the road.  Sit and stare at the chickens.  Listen to the wind in the cotton wood trees.  Listen to the birds.  There are so many birds.  Feed the baby chickens and the adolescent chickens.  Make cheese, skim cream, wrap up the butter, take pictures...
     In the evening I collect the eggs from the chicken coop.  And check the one spot in the barn.  Usually there's a blue egg in there.  Close the chicken-sized door on the coop so a hungry fox will go to the neighbor's instead.  Feed the lambs some skim milk, just because we have it.  They are big enough now not to need it.  They will go back in the orchard much easier for a bottle though.  I wash the cans now too.  We fill up four, 5 gallon stainless steel cans every morning.  They're a little heavy and after a few days of this task I made sure to lift with my left arm at least as often as my right.
     Get to bed before 10 pm and read a little, then fall asleep.  Sleeping has been difficult for me off and on during my short life.  Not so much since moving to the farm.  Falling asleep is very easy and sleeping soundly through the night happens more often than not.
      There's no work here.  We just live our lives.  Time rarely matters.  Pace is slow and relaxed.  Cows will teach a person that.  A few years ago my life was totally different.
Now I live on a farm, on a dirt road.

Monday, August 6, 2012

next breath

         I left the farm yesterday.  Had to get away.  What did I do?  Went to visit about 9 other farms.  All my friends live or work on farms or gardens.  And they're usually home.  That's one of the great things about farmer friends.  No need to call, they probably won't be near the phone any way.  Just stop in and wander out to the garden.  Put on a hat, take off your shoes, crouch down in the weed pulling position, and the visit begins.  Talk and pull, talk and nibble, laugh and pull, look up at the sky, listen to that bird, stop and turn your face into the breeze.  Visiting farmer friends is such a joy.  We can talk about chicken behavior, food, poop, range, I'm not even sure, for 25 minutes before a confused look comes over some one's face as they realize they want to continue talking about chickens, but maybe we should just stop, for a bit.  So then we start talking about cows.  What they're eating, are they fat or thin, how's that back right quarter doing, who gave who the horn yesterday, what they saw over the fence... then again we look at each other and wonder, how much can one say about a cow?  But there's so much more to say, we know we could talk for hours, just about the cows.  And who else are you going to talk to about the cows?  Its not like we have a long list of people to call and discuss these things with.  Many of my friends will listen, some will even ask an interesting question from time to time.  But to really talk WITH someone about the cows, now that feels good.
     And the soil.  Oh the soil.  Hours of discussion there too.  And what's different about discussing chickens and soil from discussing say, heart disease or nuclear weapons?  There is truth.  Truth that can be learned through observation, intuition, prayer.  Call it what you will.  It will have a different name tomorrow.  The truth is there though.  And when I meet someone else who has discovered, uncovered that truth, caught a glimpse of it and is actively seeking more, then I've met a friend.  Then the human connection happens and another layer is peeled away to expose more beauty, more wholeness.  There are opinions about heart disease.  There are clinical studies and documented 'facts'.  Points to argue and positions to support.  There are ways to feel that maybe certain people understand these things, and that's their job.  There's no truth in it.
     Truth about soil and plants and animals, that is felt in the gut.  In the heart, in your chest.  You know it like you know the sun will come up.  Truth that feels like your next breath.  Some people learn it from books and then go out and drive it deeper with each seed that sprouts, each carrot they munch, each interaction with an 800 lb being.  Some people just walk out into the green, feet bare, hands outstretched, and they know.  Bit by bit, they know.  Absorbing it through their skin, their eyes, their open heart.  They are not accumulating information about the plants and the soil.  They are peeling back layers from their very own being to reveal the truth that has been there all along.  The universal vibration, unable to be proven wrong, even by a large sample size, double-blind, controlled experiment performed in a lab by experts in white coats.  The truth has no opposite.  It can't be proven wrong, because it is not right.
  It just is.


Monday, July 23, 2012

hatch 'em or crack 'em?


Usually, I eat eggs for breakfast.  Fried up, yolks still soft.  Salt and butter with each bite.  yum.  Or, crack 'em raw, separate and discard the white so just the bright, gold yolk slides into a jar of cold kefir.  Add a little honey or some maple syrup, shake, and mmmmmmmmm, so good.  
      About a month ago I decided to try something I've been itching to do for a bit now.  Hatch 'em, instead of eat 'em.  Would a little baby chicken come out of my breakfast food?  I had to know.
One whole day spent on you-tube taught me enough to build an 'egg-hatcher'.  Incubator just doesn't sound complete.  In order to be optimistic, I spoke to friends and family of the 'egg-hatcher' and its contents.    Breakfast food was kept around 98 to 100 degrees with 30 to 50 % humidity, for 19 days.  My little hopefuls were turned every 8 hours and rotated around the circle.
     Then, one Tuesday afternoon, one of the eggs was an egg shell and there was a wet, scrawny, creepy looking little creature flailing around the egg-hatcher.  A few hours later, there was another one.  I stayed up late into the night to watch the other 4 eggs.  Sleeping on a mattress on the floor, my alarm going off every hour, I watched one of the baby chicks peck its way out.  The 4th chick was already out when I woke up from the last hour nap.
        Amazing.  Just blows my mind.  4 little beings walking around a shoe box now, peeping.  Peeping, peeping, peeping.  Oh its just the sweetest noise.  How did this happen?  Something I usually eat turned into beings, live beings.  Oh the wonder of it!  Life happening right before my eyes.
        That was about 3 weeks ago.  The other 2 eggs never hatched.  4 out of 6 on the first try, I was so very pleased with the whole experiment.  They lived in a card board box for another 19 days.  We went out for 'walks' every day.  They'd get shoved back into that shoe box, lid on, and find themselves at the base of a tree next to the pond.  I watched in wonder as they started scratching and pecking, opening their wings, just walking around like a bunch of chickens.  Who taught them how to do that?  It certainly wasn't me.  I was just sitting there staring in disbelief.  For awhile it seemed each day they displayed a new behavior I see every day from our adult chickens.  (Who knew there were so many different chicken behaviors?)
       All the while I continued to collect eggs from the chicken coop every day and eat them for breakfast.  Really?  These yummy treats could turn into cute, fluffy, peeping creatures.  Or, I could eat them right now, maybe with a little cheese?  yum.  So very strange.
       Well, there's 3 left.  One got snatched by a farm kitty while we were out on a 'walk'.  That was heart breaking.  Ripped a hole in my chest to watch that little nugget being carried away in a cat's mouth.  Oh what a failure I was as a parent...  the kitty has kittens though and she was trying to feed her babies.  I understand.
    Now they live in the 2nd part of the duplex that is our chicken coop.  I hang out with them every day, sometimes twice.  They are a true joy in my life.  Just hours of entertainment really.  Like watching a fish tank.  Constant motion and soothing noises.  The picture above was taken today.  Its the 2nd batch that escaped breakfast.  Arrival date is first day or two of August.   I am very excited to watch the miracle all over again.

 

Thursday, July 19, 2012

teats n honey

       Yesterday after I posted this and sent it to some friends and family, I got to thinking about the word teet.     I realized that it was probably spelled wrong.  In the title of the blog, in the web address, and in the text that I had written.  There is a vague recollection of teet being underlined in red while I was writing.  And I do remember a thought flashing through my mind as I ignored the red.  'I know about teets.  Who ever runs the dictionary on this computer and assigns red to words does not know about teets like I know about teets.  Must be one of those farm words that only farmers really understand.'
         Its true though, right?   How can one truly understand all there is to understand about the teets on a cow's udder, until one has squeezed many of them.  Day after day after day.  There's so much to know. There are short ones and long ones.  Short fat ones and short skinny ones.  Long skinny and long fat.  Many times one udder will have 3 short fat ones and one long one (fat or skinny).  Which direction does the opening point?  When its squeezed does the milk flow directly down into the pail or do I have to make a subtle adjustment in my wrist so the milk doesn't squirt her leg, or my knee?  Sometimes the back two are so close together that my hands don't fit at the same time.  Morgan is like that.  She needs to be milked back in one hand and front in the other.  But the front ones frequently empty out first so then there's a choice to make.  Squish my hands together and rub knuckles in an uncomfortable fashion, or just be patient and milk one teet at a time.  
            Anyway about the word teet.
Eckhart Tolle says somewhere in one of his books, that words are sign posts.  They point to the object or idea they describe, but the word itself is not what it describes.  If a young person learns the word 'honey' before having tasted honey, they do not really know what honey is.  They may spell it correctly on a test in school, but to truly know honey, one must let it drip on their tongue, close their eyes and breathe in as the mouth experiences all there is to experience with honey.  And a guardian of bees may even say that to truly know honey, one must care for a hive all year and then gently, carefully, collect their bounty, filter it, put it in jars, and spread it on some buttered bread. 
 Then, and only then, may one correct the spelling of the word 
teet.  

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

kickers for a high step


This is Gertie.  I milked her this morning, and yesterday.  we don't milk the same cows every morning.
It just depends on who comes in to the milk house next.
She 'high steps' a lot during milking.  Stepping around is annoying, but not a huge problem.  High stepping, not so good.  When I'm sitting there with a pail of warm, delicious milk squeezed between my knees and I see that hoof come over the lip of the pail, its all I can do to get it out of the way.  No reason to cry over spilled milk is true, it happens all the time.   At the same time, it is a lot of work to squeeze those teets and collect the milk.  So I'm trying my hardest not to let her spill the pail containing all my (and her) efforts. I put the 'kickers' on her again this morning.  There is not a good way to describe this.  I have resisted using them on the cows, with general success.  I tolerate way more stepping and moving around than Miguel does.  With not any more spilled milk I might add...
        So its this very unique relationship between the human and the cow.  We ask her to come out of the pasture and into the milk house every morning.  OK, Gertie does that.  Then we ask her to stand still while we squeeze her teets and take all the milk she made in the last 24 hours.  Milk that is meant to go to her calf.  Oh, but we took her calf when it was 3 weeks old.  Why?  So we can have her milk.  When Gertie doesn't stand still, but does the dreaded high step, I could interpret that as resistance.  She doesn't want me to have her milk.  Or maybe its that her udder is very tight & full and it causes discomfort when her teets are squeezed.  (my nails are nice and short, I take care of the ladies that way.)
So then the kickers come out.  That's the human part of the relationship where I'm saying to the cow, "this is what's up.   I'd like you to hold still, but I need you to keep your feet down."  It's a unique relationship.  I'm still working it out in my mind and my heart...
The kickers are two wide, iron 'bracelets' we'll say, connected by a chain.  Slip one bracelet onto her leg, just above the knee.  Then pull tight and slip the other bracelet over her other leg.  She can still lift her legs, but there is no more high stepping.  For Gertie anyway.  She responds well too it.  Each day is a new day.  She gets a fresh go every morning.  Hopefully tomorrow she won't wear the kickers.