strum & cluck anyone?

I have decided to forgo Antlerstock 2009. There were a handful of dedicated folks who wanted to swing by, and if you were one of them don't fret. The Saturday of Columbus Day weekend will still be an open house of sorts, but it will also be the day of the Cluck & Strum. I have decided to plan the first ever future-farm fundraiser for that beautiful weekend. If you are interested in a full day (10AM-4PM) session on beginner mountain dulcimer and keeping chickens: mark your calendars. If you sign up for the fundraiser you'll get a copy of Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens and an Apple Creek Student Dulcimer. So you come to the farm, get a full day of intro-to-chickens tours, animals in your hands, lectures and such and the afternoon will be learning to strum around a campfire at the farm. You leave with a book and a musical instrument. (If you already have a dulcimer and want to attend, the price of the apple creek will be removed from the donation. Roughly $70) Lunch will be provided and I am limiting it to ten people. So if you are interested contact me at jenna@itsafarwalk.com and put "Cluck & Strum" in the subject line to find out the details.

Now, if you wanted to stop by for Antlerstock, but have no interest in a chicken/dulcimer workshop. That is fine and you'll need to email me as well to let me know you may swing by while we're out there pluckin' and cluckin'.

And if you want another reason to come to Vermont for the weekend... Please join me at the Fall Foliage Sheepdog Trial in Westfield Vermont the following two days. I'll be there volunteering, dreaming, and/or spectating. It will be a beautiful event. It has to be—Autumn, mountain music, fresh air, campfires, good food, Finn, Sal, Maude*, chickens, sheepdogs, and leaves leaves leaves....

*not a chance she'll like you

first-place fruits at the schaghticoke fair

photo by nisaa askia

hay lofts and merit badges

The first morning of Nisaa's visit had us driving over to Hebron to pick up hay. You need to understand Nisaa and I too fully appreciate the dicotomay. It's not often folks like us get together to buy dead-bundled grass. Nisaa is my social opposite. A successful freelance businesswoman from Brooklyn. We became good friends in college and then our lives took us in different directions. Every once in a while we catch up with a weekend visit and this long holiday was a wonderful excuse to get together.

The last time Nisaa came to Vermont I was working on planting my first raised-bed garden and had a handful of chickens in the coop. Her return a year later now had sixteen hooves, rabbits, and a gaggle of birds, and thirteen raised-beds now succumbing to weeds and pumpkins (but you could tell there was some glory there earlier in the season).

Anyway, were were off to buy hay. As we rolled through the backroads from Sandgate to Hebron we talked about our weekend. We'd be going to a county fair that afternoon and Sunday morning a couple from the DC-area would be visiting for brunch. IN no time at all we came to the crest that shares the view of sprawling green fields, silos, and red barns. "Isn't that something else" she said to us both. It sure is.

When we got to Nelson's farm, Nelson himself came out to greet us. I shouted if he had any second cut and he said he had plenty but pointed up to the high loft of the barn. I didn't realize his pointing wasn't so much an acknowledgment of the hay's existence as it was directions. If I wanted the good stuff I had to climb up the hay elevator and throw some bales down. Apparently walking up several stories on old farm equipment was as casual an exercise and throwing down chicken scratch around here.

I hesitated. I'm uncomfortable with heights. Nelson saw this and charitably started to grip the elevator to walk up the fifty-foot climb. That was unacceptable. (Nelson's about five decades older than me.) I sucked it up, grabbed the rails, hoped my wellies wouldn't slip, and started to climb up the narrow-metal shaft.

It was fine. I got up in no time and threw down the bales and then slid down slide style back to terra firma. While I was up there on top of Washington County, Nisaa grabbed that photo of me looking for the next thing to chuck out the window. When I got back to my car I handed Nelson the check and we drove off back to our further adventures. But I drove home feeling like I earned a little more street-cred. If there was such a thing as shepherd merit badges I just sewed one on with a hay elevator on it.

a girl and her flock

photo by nisaa askia

the birthday flock is thriving

Remember those chicks I bought as a birthday present in early July? Well, here they are, all grown up just two months later. These youngest members of the flock sleep in a huddle behind the grain bin in the coop. They're either too nervous or too small to fly up into the roosts and join the older birds, so here they sleep. I also think it's a warmth thing. On these chillier nights it must be nice to have a down comforter built in via birth-community. John the rooster is down in font, with his young wives behind him. I like that he watches the door.

let the ghosts die

I originally planned to drive into Manchester tonight. I was going to do laundry, run some errands, pick up some provisions and generally stress myself out for the long weekend ahead. I have only been farming a few years, and that post-work impulse to run into town and spend money in preparation for company still haunts me. However, upon pulling into my driveway all plans died. The setting September sun, the hint of woodsmoke in the air, the cries of my animals, the weather report claims that tonight would drop into the mid-forties... Screw town. I was a homesteader and home I would stead. I'm learning to let the ghosts of town die.

I let the sheep and goat out to graze. I mowed the lawn. I baked bread and pie for the weekend (which would involve a handful of guests, a bonfire, and friends). I ran out of dogfood and instead of running to the store I put some rice on the stove and scrambled half a dozen eggs. It would do for one night. The dogs did not complain, and gobbled their meals down to the lamb biscuits at the bottom of their bowls. Then they chomped into them and came by my feet to be reminded how wonderful they are. Which I did, over and over.

As the evening turned I went out into the pasture with the hoofstock. I grabbed a bottle of hard cider, a book, and a quilt. I sat and read while Finn and the sheep ate around me. The chicks I bought on my birthday scattered around as well. They seem braver (read: stupider) than the large laying hens which were already roosting in their coop. I watched them try to fight the sheep's mineral block. Finn watched with me. He spent most of his time by my side, as a dog would. Like my co-captain he would stand next to me. Together we'd look at the sheep and without looking away from the flock, munch some grass and sigh. "Yeah Lady. We got this place covered..."

I scratched my goat's head while I read. The book in hand was Gene Logsdon's The Contrary Farmer. Inside the front flap was a note from my friend Diana, who had gifted me the book a few years ago back when we were coworkers in Sandpoint. If you read Scratch you may remember our adventures stealing chickens by the cover of night, saving honeybee colonies from the brink of death, and finding fiber rabbits. She wrote this:

Jenna,
My favorite book—May it be the inspiration to you that it's been to me! -Diana 4/10/07

Diana, it most certainly has.

I wanted to share this excerpt from the book. Something I read a few years ago, but did not fully understand until recently. This year taught me a lot. Some of it epic and wonderful—and some of it downright gut-punching awful. You take your lessons as they come. Gene shares this observation:

There is a deep satisfaction in scattering clean yellow straw knee deep for the animals to sleep on and then feeding them in the still of a winter eve. Sheep give the most contented little sighs when they nose into their food. Horses snuffle in their hay, and the soft munching sounds of cows chewing their cuds rise serenely into the hay mow where I sit and listen. The mother ewe with her coaxing grunts encourages the new lamb to nurse and finally the smacking sound of a lamb sucking vigorously reaches my ears. All is well. It is no surprise to me that a god might choose a stable to be born in; only the ignorant think such a birthplace would be below a god's dignity.

today show does segment on backyard chickens!

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the rules

I am often asked how I make time for the farm. My best answer for that is simple: planning. I have a schedule I stick to religiously, and a system of getting chores done that is so fine tuned and efficient by this point it flies by. I plan my evenings to include at least an hour of time outside working. (This hour is the quickest hour of my day.) Every night the animals with hooves are let out to pasture from the confines of their pens and the poultry are fed fresh scratch grains and oyster shell crumbles by the coop. While the livestock eat, I walk around in my big brown wellies and carry fresh drinking water and muck stalls. I make sure bedding is clean and the feed bins are topped off. I putter around the pumpkin patch and apples off the small apple tree in the garden. These I feed to the sheep and Finn. When the animals are once again refueled and content, I leave them to their grasses and go inside the cabin to light a fire and make dinner. I eat, knowing the animals will always eat first, and then before I change into lounge clothes I return outside just before dark to coax the animals back into their pens, close the coop door, and make sure all is well before I do the same.

I probably spend the same amount of time taking care of 25 animals and 13 raised beds as the average person spends commuting to their job: two hours a day. Not bad.

In the AM things go quicker. Since everyone has eaten and been given clean water the night before—my mornings are just a quick routine of dumping hay, scratching ears, and letting the birds out to free range the neighborhood. Sometimes Juno joins me, a neighbors black dog who looks like he's half Labrador and half Border Collie. Juno and I inspect the sunflowers and check on the progress of the younger members of the flock before he runs back to his owners cabin up the way and I go inside to be with my own dogs and a hot cup of coffee. Which by this point is on the stove spitting and bubbling. I can hardly wait to taste it. I would suffer without my coffee.

Keeping a small farm isn't hard—it's constant. You do it out of love and responsibility, not toil. As naive as this sounds from a single woman—I imagine it's not too far off from what keeping a husband or children would be: something others may see as work, but you see as the reason. Love's a funny thing. Sometimes it makes you sign new insurance documents or change diapers and other times it makes you wipe chicken crap off your sleeve cuff. I don't make the rules.

Photo comes from the old kitchen in Idaho. Annie watches the pre-game of an omelet...

angry sheep are kinda great

One this is blatantly clear: Maude does not approve of having her picture taken. There she is—standing around, ears back, foot stomping, hating everyone. The world owes her. I'm not sure what exactly, but it better pay up.

For being such a miserable animal I really have grown to love that sheep. There is a consistency to her spite that has gone from annoying to absolutely endearing. It always shocks me how animals as seemingly anonymous as sheep have such stark contrasts in personality. Maude is nothing like Sal and Sal is nothing like Joseph. All of my sheep have their own levels of tolerance and bravery—habits and vices. You learn them as you go. After my first year being a shepherd, I feel I've got these guys down.

Not sure it'll be as easy when there are 50 in the back pasture....

The forums seem to be really taking off. Last I checked over 60 people signed up for the Locals, and as I write you people are talking about alpacas, chickens, knitting, and what's the best beginner spinning wheel. There are folks swapping recipes and sharing advice—it's a great place to check in with between CAF updates or to make new friends. So if you haven't signed up yet, check it out. It costs nothing but a little time.