Weekend Chores – So Busy!

Posted on April 29, 2011 · Leave a Comment

I’m pretty sure we’re not getting any chores done this weekend. Why? Because we’ve got tons of stuff to do! Saturday morning we’ll be teaching two workshops on Garden Layout at the Vallejo People’s Garden Grand Opening and Gardening Festival. We’ll then be leaving that a bit early to go to a memorial service. We’ll then run home to finish prepping for our urban farmer potluck!

Sunday we’ve got an interview with some Stanford University students who are working on a project on anti-consumerism, DIY, and  growing your own food. After that we’ll be teaching some friends how to care for rabbits. 

Busy busy busy.

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Overwhelmed Much?

Posted on April 28, 2011 · 5 Comments



There is always something to do

 This week I’ve been feeling overwhelmed. I’ll freely admit it. We’ve definitely got a lot on our plate right now, especially compared to just a year ago. Last April at this time we had the garden, 2 goats, and 11 chickens. I was working part-time and didn’t really have anything extra-curricular going on.

Now I’m back to full-time at work and we’ve got more chickens, we’re milking those 2 goats at 5:30am every morning, we’ve got kids (the four legged kind), rabbits, bees, ducks. Turkeys are coming tomorrow. We had a sick doeling to care for and now that she’s gone (sadface) I have to milk her mom out on one side (because Mork is stuck in his ways and refuses to help out) in the afternoon too. We’re helping establish the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance. We’re working with our city to create urban farming friendly laws. We’re meeting about the Temple Arts Loft project in downtown Vallejo. We’re teaching free classes, mentoring people, giving tours, being interviewed. And we have the potluck this Saturday, along with teaching two classes in the morning at the Vallejo People’s Garden Grand Opening and having a memorial service to go to that day. And did I mention we have to create all of our meals from scratch because we’re not shopping at the grocery store? All on top of getting the garden in and fixing/redoing the irrigation system.

I think this week has just taken a huge toll on me. It’s not easy and we’re constantly busy. Now that it’s light out longer we find ourselves working in the yard until 8pm before we even start making dinner. The main issue regarding animals is that we’re in a huge transition period where not everyone is settled in. The chicks are getting big but we still have to go out every night and get them into the coop. Otherwise they sleep with the goats, and that just doesn’t work. We have to lock up the ducklings in their brooder every night because they don’t have a coop built yet. I had to replant all of our squash, melon and cucumber seedlings because of slugs into pots to be transplanted in a couple of weeks.

So after May I’m going to not teach classes for awhile. We won’t have so much work to do in the garden, so that will help and all of our animals should be settled in nicely. At least that’s the plan….

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Little Mindy Moo

Posted on April 27, 2011 · 11 Comments

My Little Mindy Moo. We worked so hard to get her healthy. We wanted to keep her. She was so very sweet just like her mom. She seemed to be improving on Saturday so we thought the antibiotics were helping. She was up and running and playing. Her wheezing was less. Monday morning she was the loudest in the kid stall demanding to come out so she could attack mom after we milked her.

Then she went downhill. Fast. That afternoon when we got home she could barely stand. Her eyes were really wide – bulging. She was head bobbing. She was standing in the corner swaying like she was drunk.

We immediately took her to the vet who then had us take her to UC Davis. We are fortunate to live near the only Veterinary School in California. Because they are a university, and because food animals aren’t commonly brought in, they really can help you out financially because they use your animals to teach students. Not to mention they are up on the newest medications and equipment.

Their concern was that she had brain swelling and some type of infection and possibly a congenital problem. Even though she was on really good antibiotics they weren’t helping her. I’d like to throw out there that we do not use antibiotics unless needed (so far we’ve only used antibiotics once not including this incident) so we don’t run into this very problem with resistant bacteria.

UC Davis performed a CT Scan on her. She did have fluid around her brain but didn’t have any congenital defects. She also had severe pneumonia, something that goats and other ruminants don’t recover well from. Their prognosis was very poor and if she did survive there was a very good chance she’d have to spend the rest of her life on a ventilator.

What kind of life is that? So we made the incredibly tough decision to let her go.

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Flickr of Inspiration – Fresh Food

Posted on April 26, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Nepal 2563, originally uploaded by Poundyroundy.

Stunning agriculture related photos from Nepal taken by Joshua Roundy whose wife, Kristin writes the blog Roundy Rounds.So go over and say hi!

Joshua very kindly sent me links to his photos so stay tuned for more of his beautiful photos from Nepal!

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Monday’s Guests – How to Milk-Stand Train Your Goat

Posted on April 25, 2011 · 3 Comments
We’ve got a great guest post today! Lynda Hopkins of Foggy River Farm, author of The Wisdom of the Radish: And Other Lessons Learned on a Small Farm and a blog of the same name has written a humorous post on milking goats and dating. OK, mostly about milking goats, but a bit about dating.
Stay tuned for a future giveaway of her book – which I’m reading right now and loving.
——————————————————————————–

In honor of Rachel’s working-girl Pygmies, I thought I’d write a guest post on how to milk-stand train a goat.

For those of you who don’t own goats, the fact that they have to be trained to be milked might come as a surprise. So before I get to the training part, here are a couple of mythbusters for you:
  1. Goats don’t instantaneously jump up on a milkstand. In fact, while they will happily jump up on a picnic table, bench, vehicle (or pretty much anything you don’t want them to jump on), when you lead them to the milkstand they will likely look up at you with a face that says “I’m unimpressed,” and then add a little judgmental “meh” for good measure.
  1. If, through much pulling, lifting, and/or cajoling, you do manage to get the goat up onto the milkstand, the goats will not wait patiently while your non-functional newbie milking-fingers fumble around on sensitive areas trying to squeeze milk out of her udder.  In fact, she is very likely to give you the goat version of “don’t touch my junk”—a few well-placed kicks, possibly accompanied by some snorting and stomping. (That phrase “kick the bucket”?  This is where it came from.)

Milkmaids spend a lot of time looking at, evaluating, and touching udders and teats. We talk about “open orifices,” “pliable skin,” and of course udder and teat size.  We are not, in fact, creepy people, but when you’re trying to get milk out of a goat, certain qualities become very important. You want lots of milk, of course, but when you’re hand milking you also want to be able to get that milk out easily, without wrecking your hands in the process.  So you want teats that are like supersoakers—a good-sized refill canister (aka good teat size), with a wide nozzle (aka open orifice). It also helps if the supersoaker is easy to fire (pliable skin).

Anyway, enough with the water gun analogy. This is all a way of saying that us milking types become very intimately acquainted with a goat’s lady parts. And when you’re milk stand training a goat, it’s not a bad thing to think of the goat as a female being, with female parts, and occasionally female PMS.  You are developing a long-term relationship here, not a one night (milk) stand.
So here are a few lessons I’ve learned from the mornings in the milkroom with my ladies:
  1. Would you go up to a woman and grab her boobs without asking? Didn’t think so. Chances are, you’d ask her out to dinner first, and after that, you’d probably make out.  Obviously I’m not suggesting you make out with your goat.  But do give her dinner: get her on the milk stand and give her grain there a few times before you ever try to touch her udder.
  2. Remember that teenage boy who thought your boobs were dough that required kneading?  Yeah.  Thought so.  When you first start touching a goat’s udder, don’t go full speed ahead trying to squeeze the milk out of it.  First of all, if you’re a first-time milker you don’t know what you’re doing, which is likely to irritate her, so you won’t end up “getting any” after all. Secondly, you’ve never even touched her udder before, and now you think you’re going to get away with milking it?  Start off SLOW.  Just rest a hand on the udder.  If she’s comfortable with that, you can try gently milking one side.  If she gets irritated, stop, and gently hang on.
  3. Which brings me to my next point: don’t be that teenage boy who busted out the condom on the first date when the girl was just planning on making out. In other words, don’t try and put the bucket down too early, because you’re likely to be left high and dry for wanting too much too soon.  Just try milking her onto the floor, and clean up the milk afterwards with a rag. (I promise you if you’d had the bucket down, she just would have stepped in it and knocked it over, and then you’d end up with milk in your lap.)
  4. Just like girls, some goats are easy and some play hard to get.  I’ve had goats who did practically jump up on the milk stand and let me milk them all the way out the very first time—but they’re the exception, not the rule. I’ve also had one unbreakable goat who refused to be milked after 2 months of knock-down drag-out fights. Most goats fall somewhere in between, and appreciate being warmed up to milking.
  5. You may occasionally encounter a wonderful, perfectly trained angel goat who will, every three weeks or so, try to kick the living s*** out of you on the milkstand. Yes, some goats do get PMS, and do not like their udders touched when they’re in heat.
Hope this taught you something about milking a goat—and, if you’re the teenage boy who ended up here by googling “orifice skin teat”—maybe something about women, too.  If all the talk of teats and dating made you uncomfortable… well, every time you drink milk or eat cheese, remember that a baby animal had to be born and a female animal had to be milked in order to make that happen. And somewhere, there’s a farmer, like me, who was all-too-intimately acquainted with both of those processes.
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Sourdough Pancakes

Posted on April 24, 2011 · 8 Comments

Working at Ass O’Clock in the Morning (TM) has its good points and its bad points. I work a job that has rather…unconventional business hours, and our shifts are either 5:45am-1:45pm or 1pm-9pm. As a staunch diurnal, I have opted for the former of the two; trading those luscious hours of sleeping-in for the glory of being OFF WORK when most people are barely getting back from their lunch break. Still, sometimes getting up VERY VERY EARLY is tough.

My alarm rings (shrieks, screams, grates, wails, and other such sounds of annoyance) at 4:45am. For those of you unfamiliar with such times, 4:45am is a thoroughly ungodly hour, in which the only appropriate actions are dreaming, drooling, or getting home from pulling an all-nighter somewhere glamorous. Nevertheless, I drag myself out of bed. I don something that I pray will look semi-professional by the light of day, do my makeup by braille, and am out the door by 5:20am. If Rick is not home, I stumble out into the back yard to open the door and let out the chickens and ducks, who cluck/quack in protest at the cold wind and interruption of their sleep.

** Note: it is still very, VERY dark at 5:20am. It kills me to know I am actually up before the chickens (though there is possibly nothing so endearing as a sleepy hen. Really). **


Truth be told, I love my job. I love the freedom afforded to me by working the hours I do. Getting home at 2pm gives me ample time to take care of housework and prepare food and even have some down-time before the boyfriend and roommate get home. I get to work in the garden during daylight hours. I miss commuter traffic completely.

Sadly, though, it really puts a dent in my breakfast-foods consumption. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater, but I do have a major soft-spot in my heart for breakfasty-type foods. So I try to make the breakfasts I *do* have be a little bit special.

I got a sourdough chef from my friend Alanna a few years back, and have somehow managed not to kill it completely. The learning curve (starting as a novice) of keeping a chef alive was steep, and for a time it was very hard to remember to feed it. But it was also kind of fun: sourdough (and other yeast/bacterial cultures) are kind of an underground trade, with people handing off jars and giving “babies” to each other in little bottles and baggies. It’s like being in an elite club, and when you’re in, it’s mighty addictive.


Because my go-to bread recipe does not call for sourdough (though I certainly use it from time to time for added flavor and lift), I’ve had to find creative uses for sourdough start to keep from having to pour it down the drain. Alanna gave me an awesome sourdough cracker recipe that I LOVE. My sourdough cinnamon rolls are to die for. I can now make a pretty decent sourdough-based pate brisee for galettes. But by far the thing that I use my sourdough chef for the most is good old fashioned pancakes: fluffy and light, but with that telltale tang that lets you know this ain’t no boxed batter-mix, these delicious pancakes are perfect with butter and syrup, a pile of fresh fruit and plain yogurt, or (as Rick likes them), a big scoop of organic peanut butter.

However you like to dress them up, these pancakes are a perfect tool in the homesteader arsenal: keeping cultures (sourdough, yogurt, vinegars, kombucha) is a great way to be self-sufficient and produce on-the-cheap many things that can be quite expensive in stores (have you SEEN the prices on kombucha recently? Because *I* have). Taking the time to feed these little buggers will guarantee you a lifetime of delicious, fresh food at the drop of a hat.

These pancakes make a healthy, stick-to-your-ribs meal with very little in the way of mess or tricky ingredients, and are guaranteed to satisfy just about anyone, come breakfast-time. And if you need some starter, well, I know a gal.

Sourdough Pancakes
Note: the night before you are going to make these pancakes, mix about 3/4 c of flour with enough water to make something resembling thick cake batter. Add a large spoon full of sourdough start, and cover it. I use a recycled plastic yogurt container because the lid keeps out the dust without pressurizing the start as it rises. Over night, this should double – or triple – in volume. If your starter has been in the fridge (dormant) for a long time, give it a good 24 hours and another feeding to “wake it up” before you use it.
1 1/2 c sourdough start, stirred down (about 2 1/2 or 3 c if still risen)
2 Tbsp sugar or evaporated cane juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg
4 Tbsp melted butter (I usually use half butter and half oil)
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp water (warm but not hot)
optional: up to 3/4 c fresh fruit, nuts, or chocolate chips


In a large bowl, mix the sourdough start with the salt and sugar. Then whisk in the egg and butter/oil until they are thoroughly combined. I like to keep my sourdough start about the consistency of a thick cake batter, which is perfect for this recipe. If the mixture (with egg and oil added) is still very thick, I sometimes add as much as 1/4 c of milk to thin it out. Otherwise the pancakes can get a little…overwhelmingly doughy.

At this point, I add any berries, chopped fruit, or nuts to the batter. My personal favorite is tossing in a handful of wild huckleberries (which I keep frozen and don’t even bother to thaw before tossing them in. They cook just fine while the batter rises in the skillet).

In a separate small cup, stir the baking soda in the warm water until it dissolves. Add this to the bowl of batter and stir lightly, just until it is homogeneous.

Let the batter rise slightly (no more than about 5 minutes), and then it’s ready to use. Scoop the batter out onto medium-hot greased skillets or a griddle, and cook the first side until the bubbles in the batter pop and don’t immediately close up again. That means it’s time to flip!

The second side shouldn’t take more than about 20 seconds, unless your batter is very thick.

Sourdough pancakes can get pretty rubbery if they sit and get cold, so I’d recommend keeping a towel over the plate of finished pancakes, or sticking them in the oven where the ambient heat will be held in. Of course, usually we have people grabbing them out of the skillet before I can even GET them to a plate, so maybe it’s not such a problem after all.


Serve these pancakes alongside some fresh homemade yogurt, some lemon curd, or just a sprinkling of powdered sugar: heaven.

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Filed Under: Baking, Breakfast, Recipes Tagged With: ,

So What is Really Going on Right Now?

Posted on April 23, 2011 · 4 Comments

There’s lots to share. We’re movin’ and a shakin’ around here. So here’s what we gotten done so far this year.

 
 
We landscaped the front yard with edible perennials. The currants are already getting fruit.
We planted a carpet of strawberries in the front yard. They are now ripening.

Our chard from last year refused to bolt so we transplanted it to the front yard in hopes that it would bolt. Well it finally has so we can save seed from it.
We may even get some blueberries this year. They seem to prefer the front yard over the back yard.
Beets! I transplanted them this year rather than direct seeding them and it seems to have worked.
The chard in the backyard is going gang busters.
We’ve started harvesting artichokes again. I’ve missed them so much. I’m sure by the end of the season I’ll be sick of them just like last year.
We had a meager harvest of asparagus this year. This is just their third spring so we weren’t expecting much. We’re now just letting them grow out so they can build more energy stores.
Our beans are popping up. They are doing well this year and we avoided the seedcorn maggots.
The apples are covered with fruitlets. We’ll be thinning them out soon so the tree can put most of it’s energy into making fewer larger fruits rather than a ton of tiny fruits.

 The tomatoes are in and growing.

The kits opened their eyes today. Apparently breeding an American Blue (gray rabbit) to a Californian (white rabbit with black points) gives you black kits. All of them are black. Lucy’s are black and Kumquat’s are black.

The chicks are getting big. The white ones are outpacing all of the others. I keep wondering if we got Cornish Cross chickens instead of white rocks, but they are too active and too good at foraging to be Cornish Cross. No wonder white rocks are used to make Cornish X chickens.
Mindy is getting big. We’re still trying to get her healthy.
Mork and his little half brother, Mongo are the same size. They like to play together.
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Filed Under: Chickens, Farm Diary, Goats, Livestock Tagged With: , ,

Weekend Chores – All for Naught

Posted on April 22, 2011 · 16 Comments

You know when you do a ton of work only to find out that it was all a waste of time? Yeah, well I just found out that all the planting we did of squash, melons, watermelons, pumpkins and cucumbers was a waste of time. Something ate them. All of them. So this weekend will involve replanting everything, this time as starts in the mini greenhouse so when they go in the ground they have a fighting chance.

My first impression was that it must have been the seedcorn maggots again. Closer inspection ruled that out. The seeds had germinated and were then eaten. Not to mention the soil wasn’t wet enough to harbor the seedcorn maggots and we had dressed with compost in the fall so most of it had been broken down enough to not attract them.

My guess is slugs. We’ve had a bumper crop of the little fuckers this year.

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Want to Learn About Raising Rabbits for Meat?

Posted on April 21, 2011 · 1 Comment
Photo by Lori Eanes

Well, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you’re in luck! Esperanza, of Pluck and Feather Farm, and I will be teaching a class on raising meat rabbits at 18 Reasons in San Francisco on May 16th. Learn more and sign up here.

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Mindy – Our Little Teacher

Posted on April 20, 2011 · 5 Comments
Photo by Lori Eanes

Mindy has taught us a lot about caring for goats.

Bella and Daisy are pretty easy keepers so we’ve never had to really get into too much extra care. We just made sure they got what they needed and everything was a-ok. Now for those that don’t have goats but might be interested in having them I think it’s important to do a lot of research.

Goats have a reputation that they will eat anything. This couldn’t be further from the truth. They are quite picky and some plants are toxic to them. They are not grazers so if you have tall grass they won’t make good lawn mowers. Instead they are browsers. They prefer their food off of the ground ,which is a funny quirk they have. If their food touches the ground they consider it tainted and will refuse to touch it. But they do use their mouth like we use our hands. They want to feel things so they mouth it.  This is where their reputation comes from. Mindy, by the way, has an obsession with untying shoes.

Besides the quirks, they also have very specific dietary needs. Copper, selenium and vitamin E are crucial to keep them healthy. Of course too much of a good thing can also become toxic. Our goats are fed hay that has sufficient selenium so we don’t need to supplement it except when they are pregnant. If it was selenium deficient then we would need to give them a selenium/vitamin E shot (BO-SE) once a year. It’s important to discuss this with your vet to determine your selenium needs.

But this we all understood. And then came Mindy. Obviously we learned a lot about kidding with her and Mork’s birth and then Mongo’s three weeks later. But Mindy has been difficult. She’s runty. She’s been small from the beginning. She’s been a sickly little goat as well. It started with the coccidiosis. We got it under control only to have it come back a week later. She probably would have been fine if the weather hadn’t been so horrid. Wet weather = breeding ground for coccidia.

Then this past Friday I noticed she was off balance a bit. Her brother would knock her down and it would take awhile for her to right herself. If you put her down her front legs would buckle and she’d do a faceplant. She seemed off. She was still eating and she could still jump up on things so I decided to just keep an eye on her. Well, Saturday she seemed worse and had developed a wheeze. I had my suspicions on what was wrong so I gave the vet a call.

Tom took her to the vet and he confirmed my suspicions. She had a thiamine deficiency, aka goat polio – though the vet said he was expecting worse so it was good we caught it early. The cure, of course is to give her thiamine. The unfortunate part was that we had to inject it every 6 hours for 72 hours. Poor thing. Her treatment is over now and she’s definitely improved. However, she’s still wheezing, so back to the vet she will go.
Mindy has taught me the importance of knowing your goats and watching for signs that something might be wrong. I can be a bit overprotective, but in this instance it’s a good thing.

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