Recently in Journals Category

"Round and round, the cut of the plow in the furrowed field. Seasons round, the bushels of corn and the barley meal. Broken ground, open and beckoning to the spring; black dirt live again."
--Grateful Dead, Weather Report Suite Part II: Let It Grow

On The Farm

An incredibly snowy winter, one of the snowiest in Maine's history, finally gave way to a beautiful spring. This transformation, however predictable and measured, always seems to take us by surprise. It's difficult to imaging fields covered with snow and ice springing up into landscapes of pastelled wild flowers and grasses.

One of the never-fail harbingers caught me off guard on a particularly cold and grey early spring morning. That harbinger--the circling flight of a loon over the frozen pond--was a sure sign that either open water had arrived or was soon in the coming. A walk to the beaver dam and a small semi-circle of black water proved the loon an authentic messenger of nature's breaking story: Spring is on its way!

Loons winter on the coast. Superbly engineered bodies that allow them to be so at home in the water are ill equipped for navigation across land or ice. In fact, a loon will have a difficult, if not impossible time walking on solid ground. Throughout the winter, a loon's internal clock ticks with increasing anticipation of "ice out" on Maine's lakes, rivers and ponds. Their much-awaited return to fresh water will produce chicks and a summer filled with loon sightings and late night serenades.

This season another hotly anticipated event took place on the farm: the birth of Emily's Black Clydesdale's foal. Nearly a year in the making, the colt, a Gypsy Drum, seemed impossibly big moments after birth. The event left us shaking our heads wondering, "How did that happen?" It's just another of nature's miracles!

The farmhouse gets new shingles.

Ruby on Dreamer with Emily leading.

A closer look at the cowgirls.

Laddy on Dancer.

Haley on Mandy.

As spring wears on the blueberry fields take on a rust-colored hue.

Laddy on the new Polaris Sportsman 500.

The annual spreading of the compost pile.

It doesn't get any better than this: a steaming compost pile!

Lola's foal about one hour old.

Laddy admiring the newest addition to the farm.

The colt a few days old.

Here he is about one month old.

What a life!

Truely a work of art: the proud mother, Lola.

Laddy's horse acting silly.

Ruby doing her chores.

Three cheese bread

Another day comes to an end on the farm.

Kid Watch

Haley 11 years 9 months

Laddy 10 years 4 months

Max 8 years 2 months

Ruby 3 years 10 months

"Don't cry now. Don't you cry. Don't you cry any more. La da da da. Sleep in the stars. Don't you cry. Dry your eyes on the wind. La da da da da da."
--Grateful Dead, Bird Song

On The Farm

This winter brought with it the passing of our Jersey milking cow Cornelia. Her death was as unexpected as it was sudden. After happily grazing in the morning, Emily found her on the back of the compost pile with her life drained from her.

Confiding in some dairy farmer friends of ours we learned that this type of bovine sudden death is uncommon but not unheard of. Stories were shared with us from experienced farmers that comforted us and served to weave us deeper into the tapestry of the small farming community, stories of cows getting into things they shouldn't have or falling in a particular way and not being able to recover, stories of farm life and of farmer's relationships with their animals and their land.

In adversity, strength is forged and from despair, new hope is born again.

Quiet lessons were learned by our children and ourselves with the realization that some events are out of our control. These lessons nudge us to accept things the way they are not as we would like them to be.

This unfortunate occurrence also brought into high relief the blessings we do share--each other, our love for one another, our fertile earth and precious clean water. The glint in a child's eye, joyful laughter and a supporting embrace are treasures available to us in the here and the now and are to be appreciated with much gratitude.

The fall of a leaf is a whisper to the living. Breathe! You are alive!

The gang with Rosie and Santa.

Max shredding at Hermon Mountain.

Cold enough for ya?

Ruby's igloo

Our friend Mo cutting holes for ice fishing.

These ice fishermen don't fool around!

Kid Watch

Haley 11 years 6 months

Laddy 10 years 1 month

Max 7 years 11 months

Ruby 3 years 7 months

"Down at the well they've got a new machine. The foreman says it cuts man-power about fifteen. 'Yeah but that ain't natural', well so old Clay would say. You see he's a horse-drawn man until his dying day."
--Elton John, Country Comfort

On the Farm

This edition of the Featherfoot Farm Journal is late--very late in fact. This lateness, and the cause of it, are precisely the topic of this season's Journal. There are priorities in this life and then there are priorities. A kid who needs to be driven to a soccer practice falls in the former category; milking a Jersey cow that has just calved falls, unquestionably, in the latter.

The long-anticipated birth was, in itself, fairly uneventful. The most exciting part was leaving a school board meeting (after receiving the fateful call) with the excuse, "I need to leave, my Jersey is having a calf." Minutes after pulling up to the barn with headlights on, it was all over. There she was, cute as a button, wet and wobbly. We dried her off, slid her up to her mother's face and Cornelia took care of the rest. Licking, nuzzling and mooing in a manner we had never heard before. The mother-calf bonding process was underway. Another process was also underway: the first-time-dairy-milking-learning-curve process.

We had received a variety of different opinions from a number of farmers about the best way to go about milking a cow. Old schoolers, like Clay in the lyric above, wouldn't stand for a milking machine in the barn. "We used to milk a hundred head by hand," they would say. I think these are the same folks who walked five miles to school uphill both ways. The modern dairy farmers recommended a vacuum pump, teat cups and a good capacity pail as well as quickly removing the calf from its mother shortly after birth.

One must make one's own mistakes and we were no exception. Giving the old school hand milking method a college try for about four weeks we encountered a host of challenges to use a juicy euphemism. You've heard the term, "kicked the bucket" refering to someone who is no longer with us. Well, after your cow has kicked and spilled a large quantity of milk that you have just painstakingly expressed from her udder over the course of several minutes, your first reaction is often, "I'm going to kill this beast!" Then, after counting backwards from one hundred and with any luck at all you will recall the comforting adage, "Don't cry over spilled milk."

All the while, the new calf is with her mother and increasing her milk intake as the days and weeks go by. One morning one of the teats looked shriveled and dry. From all the books we've read on the subject we immediately thought the worst--mastitis, an inflammation of the udder caused by infection. We called the vet and our dairy farmer friends to get their take on it. Hot packs and compresses didn't seem to help. Then it hit us like a bolt from the blue. "Let's take that calf out for a night and see what happens." Sure enough, after twelve hours away from her calf, Cornelia's udder and the teat in question swelled with milk like balloons. Plenty of milk and no mastitis! Looking back, it seems obvious that the calf was sucking her mom dry but when you're in the thick of it...

After multiple tail lashings, kicks (one that darn near broke my nose), spilled pails, foreign bodies in the milk, and an onset of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, we moved slowly but appreciably towards the modern farmers' recommendation of purchasing a milking machine. We searched and researched and called and e-mailed and finally decided on a rebuilt set-up. And what a beauty she was! A Porta-Vac pump with a pressure gauge and silencer, a DeLaval-style claw with an Italian-made pulsator, a sixty-five pound capacity stainless steel milking pail and ten feet of approved for milk service clear tubing to complete the apparatus.

Assembling the thing and actually getting it on Cornelia's teats without loss of pressure and with correct pulsation frequency did take a while. Eventually, we got the hang of it. And that persistent kicking, especially when going after that back left teat, and while spraying on and wiping off the iodine solution, was cause for concern. Necessity being the mother of invention and before winding up in the hospital from a kick to who knows where, we came up with a low-tech, anti-kick hobbling system, also know as a chain around Cornelia's back legs. Interestingly enough, she actualy seems to like the restricted freedom of movement during the seven minutes it takes the Porta-Vac to void her udder and she stands like a statue. All was in the pink and we were getting a nice two and sometimes three gallons of milk at a whack, until our thousand-dollar Porta-Vac started acting up.

"It sounds like a problem with the rotors," my contact said. "It doesn't happen very often but once in a while the rotors are misaligned and the pump won't come up to pressure." At the same time the pump was giving us trouble we noticed that the pulsator was not seating correctly on the top of the pail. A loud hissing sound was the result. Because this is a pressurized system, any leaks lead to a drop in pressure and less efficient (if any) milking. Now it wasn't the cow I wanted to strangle.

Luckily for us, my contact's positive feedback ratings on the internet were accurate and he sent us a new system pronto. Also lucky was the fact that our friend's goats were on their dry cycle and she had an unused pump laying around her barn. So after a week or so with our friend's pump, and another week or so getting the new system up to speed, we were really in the groove.

So, the next time you are stirring half-and-half into your morning coffee, spreading some butter on a piece of whole wheat toast, sampling some delicate cheese or enjoying an ice cream, remember all the people and animlas who helped bring those products to you. And while you are sipping your piping hot coffee over the newspaper, we hope you'll forgive us for being more than a little late with this season's Journal.

In the Kitchen

Gingerbread Cookies

INGREDIENTS
6 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup shortening, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup molasses
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Sift together the flour, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon; set aside. In a medium bowl, mix together the shortening, molasses, brown sugar, water, egg, and vanilla until smooth. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients, until they are completely absorbed. Divide dough into 3 pieces, pat down to 1 1/2 inch thickness, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. When the cookies are done, they will look dry, but still be soft to the touch. Remove from the baking sheet to cool on wire racks. When cool, the cookies can be frosted with the icing of your choice.

Newborn Jersey calf, Honey

Honey, out in the pasture

Hand milking

A closer look

Here's the milking machine hooked up and doing its thing. Notice the anti-kick system around Cornelia's back legs.

Teat cups on the udder

On top of the milking can is the pulsator, that's what provides the intermittent pressure that pulses the teats and allows the milk to flow.

The power behind it all: the Porta-Vac pump

Some of the latest batch of kittens

Diggin' taters

New Reds

One of the blueberry fields after bushhogging

Haley on Mandy

Laddy splitting wood

Bobbing for apples at the Halloween party

Laddy's new horse: Music Box Dancer (She's a Quarterhorse - Connemara cross.)

The New Idea Manure Spreader in action

Kid Watch

Haley 11 years 4 months

Laddy 9 years 11 months

Max 7 years 9 months

Ruby 3 years 5 months

The bubble-headed bleach blonde comes on at 5:00, she can tell you about the plane crash with a gleem in her eye. It's interesting when people die, gives us dirty laundry.--Don Henley, Dirty Laundry

On The Farm (info from tvturnoff.org)

TV Facts

Americans watch an average of more than four hours of TV a day, or two full months of TV a year.

40% of families always or often watch TV while eating dinner.

Only 14% of 12th-graders who watch TV six hours a dayor more achieve proficiency on reading tests, whereas 52% of students who watch an hour or less do.

By age 18, American children will have seen an average of more than 200,000 acts of violence, including 16,000 murders on TV.

Virtually all 3,500 research studies over 40 years show a link between watching media
violence and committing acts of real violence.

The proportion of overweight children has doubled since 1980 due, in part, to sedentary leisure time activities such as watching TV.

TV Undermines Family Time
Many people feel that they do not have enough time to spend with their families.
In fact, according to a Newsweek poll, even 73 percent of teens would like to spend more time with their parents. Although often overlooked, television plays a crucial role. In the average American household, the TV is on for 7 hours, 40 minutes a day, and 40 percent of Americans report always or often watching television while eating dinner. What's more, most family members watch different programs in separate rooms. Families who watch little or no television, on the other hand, often find that they have more time to spend with one another in more engaging and interactive activities.

TV Harms Reading & Academic Performance
Excessive television-watching harms reading skills both by displacing them from
our daily lives and, according to some experts, by affecting the physical structure of the brain. Researcher Susan B. Neuman of the University of Lowell put it succinctly more than a decade ago, reading scores diminished sharply for those students watching more than four hours a day and today's data continue to support her conclusion. In 1998, 52 percent of 12th-graders who watched an hour or less of TV a day achieved reading proficiency, whereas only 14 percent of those watching more than six hours did. Only 27 percent who watched four to five hours read proficiently.

TV Encourages Violence: The debate is over
The evidence is overwhelming: violence on TV promotes violent behavior in real life. Of more than 3,500 research studies on the effects of media violence over the past 40 years, 99.5 percent have shown a positive correlation between watching violence on TV and committing acts of real-life violence. Watching glorified and consequence-free violence time and time again on television influences behavior, especially among children. Television's lesson is an enduring one. According to Dr. Leonard D. Eron'Äôs 32-year study, watching television violence at age 8 was the strongest predictor of aggression later in life, stronger even than violent behavior as children. The more violent television the subjects watched at age 8, the more serious was their aggressive behavior 22 years later, at age 30.9. In addition to promoting violence, TV also desensitizes viewers to real-life violence and distorts viewers' perceptions of how dangerous the world really is. Television violence dulls the emotional response
to violence and its victims.

In the Kitchen

Your food will taste better without a TV in your kitchen.

Dill pickles

Blueberry Boy Bait, a traditional Maine summer dessert, was Ruby's birthday cake.

The farm in summer.

Flowers and herbs in raised beds.

The garden

"The lower forty" overlooking the pond.

Nice cabbage!

Sue pouring bluberries into the winnower.

A closeup of the blueberries going in.

Dan checking the output.

The finished product: fresh, clean blueberries!

Mustang - Appaloosa cross Sienna.

Back to school.

Kid Watch

Haley 11 years 1 month

Laddy 9 years 8 months

Max 7 years 6 months

Ruby 3 years 2 months

And the idiots still ask why it's come to this, as they lean on their missiles and polish their pistols. Oh, give me one more goodnight kiss.
--Gregg Brown, One More Goodnight Kiss

On The Farm
It's the little things in life that make it so enjoyable, like getting your mozzarella cheese to spin, spreading the garden with home-grown composted manure and pouring that just-bottled maple syrup on a hot waffle.
Five goat kids came this spring. Sugar had triplets and Peanut delivered twins. That means the milk is pouring in again and we're scrambling to figure out what to do with all the stuff. So far the milk has gone to make copious amounts of mozzarella, French Chevre, yogurt, soap and a very happy bunch of cats. We have sold one female kid with four to go.
All it took was our friend Tim to suggest taking a look at the old manure spreader in the barn to see if we couldn't get that thing working. After filling a flat tire and finding the pull bar to tow it off the back of the tractor we were off and running, and what a beauty it is! Using an ingenious ground-driven conveyor system, it throws manure in an impressive rooster tail pattern resulting in perfectly uniform spreading. Putting compost on a garden gives one a sense of closure, a certain come-full-circle feeling. The vegetables we picked last summer, the shells from the eggs we have enjoyed all winter, the grass now manure thanks to the animals and
anything else organic that we've thrown in, all rotting in a curious heap out back of the barn for those many months now completes its journey right back to the earth for another cycle. There is something intrinsically satisfying about witnessing that process.
While we're on the topic of intrinsic satisfaction, having a bowl of oatmeal or a pancake with syrup that we've so painstakingly collected, boiled, watched over and bottled, really does the trick.
So that's it for this season, we're into summer mode full on, no more grain for the animals; they're grazing in the pastures now. Bushhogging, weedwacking and generally keeping the growth back as well as preparing and tending the garden are the orders of the day as well as the occasional swim and fishing expedition. Hope to see you on the farm!

In the Kitchen
Steel Cut Oats
After eating whole or steel cut oats, it's really hard to go back to grocery store rolled oats, there's just no comparison. If you don't have the time to cook whole oats, steel cut oats make a fine substitution. 4 c water, 1c steel cut oats; Boil water and slowly add oats, keep a slow boil and when oats begin to thicken turn heat to low and watch closely to prevent scalding. Top with brown sugar, syrup, honey or whatever!

Laddy and Max admiring a full bucket of sap.

How sweet it is! Homemade maple syrup.

Potatoes!

Tim filling the New Idea Manure Spreader.

Cornelia doing some pond-side browsing.

Ma and Pa Kettle

Kid Watch

Haley 10 years 9 months

Laddy 9 years 4 months

Max 7 years 2 months

Ruby 2 years 10 months

Some things I know. Some things I guess. Some things I wish that I could learn to express, like the way that I feel as I stare at the sky and I remember your voice and the sound of goodbye.
--Nancy Griffith, Southbound Train

On The Farm
Our dairy farmer friend Walter Witcomb recently chortled, "When someone asks me, 'What do you do on a farm in the winter?' I just roll my eyes."

There certainly is plenty to do, and the day to day routine becomes like an old friend. There's a certain groove that occurs on a farm in the winter, less distraction more survival. The numbing cold and dark at 4:30 a.m. quickly brings one's body and mind together. Wandering thoughts cease quickly; you've got jobs to do. Hungry animals are in the barn and the water buckets are frozen solid; get to it! The wood bin is empty and the pre-dawn house is cold; git 'er done! The kettle is cold and there are hungry mouths to feed; you get the picture. In all of these actions we try to nurture a stillness and find the quietude that exists in the noise and haste, in the hustle and bustle.

A farm in winter is one of the best training grounds for a contemplative lifestyle. The ordered and recurrent rituals that make the patterns of our days serve to deepen our interdependence with all that is around us: the earth, the animals and verily, ourselves.

After much anticipation, more like months of anticipation, our Mustang Mandy foaled a beautiful, strong filly. Just as the cold snap was starting one night in January, Mandy broke her water and in less than thirty minutes the whole thing was done. Almost immediately the filly stood up and started nursing, two signs of a healthy animal. In the coming days the temperature dipped to as low as thirteen below zero but with a blanket, straw and an attentive mother she was no worse for the wear. Now a month old she is bucking and romping in the snowy fields, minus the blanket. The strength and resilience of horses is astounding.

Our goats and Jersey cow are bred as well as our miniature horse Sonardor (that's Spanish for Dreamer) so we will (hopefully) be graced with more little ones in 2007. Peace, Love and Understanding to you and yours in this New Year!

In the Kitchen Brown Rice Bread
Rice is an unusual ingredient for bread but it makes a delicious loaf that is moist and flavorful. It's also a great use for last night's rice.
1 c water, 1 egg, 5 c flour, 1 c cooked brown rice, 2T dry milk, 2t salt, 1T sugar, 1 T oil, 2t dry yeast. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, kneed, let rise and kneed again. Cook about 40 minutes at 385.

New foal Sienna at one week old

Mandy and Sienna getting some sun

Out west they're called Aspen; in the east Poplar; in Maine Popple

That's a Bald Eagle from our back porch

Panda

A well-oiled machine: Black Clydesdale Lola

Max on Giles Pond

Ruby trying out her new skates

Kid Watch

Haley 10 years 6 months

Laddy 9 years 1 month

Max 6 years 11 months

Ruby 2 years 7 months

Here we stand, like an Adam and an Eve, waterfalls, Garden of Eden.
Two fools in love, so beautiful and strong.
Birds in the trees smiling upon them.
--Talking Heads, (Nothing But) Flowers

On the Farm We love all the seasons but fall is our favorite, warm days and cold nights with no bugs. It's nature's new year; a time of change and new beginnings.
The garden has just a few hardy vegetables left (collards, kale, carrots and leeks.) We canned jam, dilly beans and pickles and stored squash, pumpkins and rutabagas in the root cellar. As the garden disappears, the animals come in from the pastures after six months of living on grass. They return to the barn for hay, grain and warmth.
The kids like to think about all the things we grow or make on the farm, from yogurt, cheese, milk and eggs to bread, jam, maple candies and soap, and we like to pass by so many items at the grocery store knowing we have it at home. We have had enough extras to put up a sign at the end of our road advertising the sale of our surplus goods and have enjoyed meeting neighbors and friends over these encounters.
This is our two year anniversary at the farm. We have so much to be thankful for. Sharing the farm with family and friends has provided us with great joy. Without you all we would be lonely in this world. We are thankful for the land, the animals, the fruits and the vegetables and the nourishment they provide.
When you grow and make your own food you develop a deeper appreciation for what you are eating. When you light the fire in your own woodstove you develop a deeper appreciation of its warmth. The daily rituals and rhythms of farm life invite us into the present moment.
Some wonderful moments we'd like to share with you are: finding our missing miniature horse after she wandered away for twenty-four hours; one of our chickens, Plum, roosting in a tree apart from the flock in the coop no matter how foul the weather; our female Great Pyrenees Dog, Panda, with two whole, unbroken eggs in her mouth looking at us with a rueful face; four kittens and their mother sleeping on top of one of our dogs for warmth; and recently being without electricity and all its distractions for three days.
Wishing you love and peace now and in the New Year.

In The Kitchen Good Granola
Mix: 2 c oatmeal, 2/3 c wheat germ, 1 c raisins, 1 c sunflower seeds, 1 c powdered milk, 2 t cinnamon.
Add: 4 T honey, 4 T oil, 2 t vanilla.
Spread on cookie sheet.
Bake at 375 for 8-10 min.

Max at the summit of Penobscot Mountain, Acadia National Park

Haley with her award-winning Jersey at the Blue Hill Fair

Dan, Emily and Ruby at Mike DeLuca'Äôs wedding (That's as dressed up as we get!)

Max in full Halloween garb

Laddy chillin'

Kid Watch

Haley 10 years 3 months

Laddy 8 years 10 months

Max 6 years 8 months

Ruby 2 years 4 months