What made David and Rachel do such a silly thing?

If you've read any books by Michael Pollan, you can skip this entry. If not, the NY Times has an excellent article he's written to the next president. It's a long article, but you could consider it a "Reader's Digest" summary of his books. He makes several excellent points, all of which have in part inspired us to start our small farm. Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

This is where we're headed...

This post doesn't have much to do with our farm, but rather is a video clip (there are three, each about 10 minutes long) which I strongly recommend that everyone watch, and share with everyone they know as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z586rnEI6Qo&feature=related

Monster Buck!

Having hunted for the last 12 years in Washington where I went as long as 4 years without getting a deer (and this even when I lived and worked in the woods as a forester), the idea that I could sit in one spot and expect one to walk within 50 yards seems almost laughable. For instance, during last year's season in Washington, I hunted in the foothills above Bellingham, covered over 20 miles in a day (okay -- I didn't plan to go quite that far, but became navigationally challenged) and didn't see so much as a single doe. Hunting in Michigan is different.

This morning was opening day of bow season, so I figured I'd go out and sit in my new treestand and stare at the trees and birds for an hour or two before I had to start work this morning, which is all that would happen if I tried this back in Washington.

About 10 minutes after sunrise, a doe came down the trail I had come in on. She paused about 20 yards away, pretending to eat some leaves while keeping her eyes and ears focused on me, then popping her head up to see if I had moved. She knew something was up, and finally turned around and left.

Another 20 minutes after she left, I heard the sound of a horse. Not sure what you'd call it, but it's the sound a horse makes when they exhale and let their lips flap. Maybe the neighbors were out riding horses, I thought. I turned my head to see three bucks making their way through the woods past me, about 50 yards away (about the maximum effective range of a bow). The first was at least an 8 point, and the two behind him both appeared to be 6 pointers.

I drew my bow on the leader, just as he disapppeared behind some trees. Then buck #2 came into clear sight, so I let the arrow fly, and the deer bolted. It was a long shot, and chances are that I misjudged the distance (arrows have a very curved trajectory compared to a bullet, so guessing the distance wrong by 5 yards is enough to send your arrow into the bushes rather than the intended target). I waited a bit, as you're supposed to do to keep a wounded deer from running rather than bedding down nearby as they grow tired.

Finally I climbed down to see where my arrow ended up. Sitting in the bushes, there it was. It had pink frothy blood on it, indicating that it had passed through the lungs. That's a good sign -- it means the arrow hit the "kill zone", and that the deer won't go far. Now to just find the blood trail...

I could clearly see the soil churned up where the 3 bucks had run off, so started following. And following. The woods here are a latticework of deer trails, but it had just stopped raining, so the old tracks were washed out and relatively easy to tell from the new tracks. As the deer run, however, they might only leave a hoofprint every 10-15 feet, so it's not always easy to know if they've turned on a side trail until you follow it.

I followed the trail as far as I could -- about 1/8th of a mile, where I could no longer find any fresh tracks. Not once did I see a drop of blood, which seemed odd for a lung shot, and made me think that the wounded deer had given me the slip on a side trail somewhere.

I headed back to the house (saw two big turkeys on the way), letting Rachel know about my adventures, and picked up our dog Memphis. She's old and deaf, but she loves deer and still has a good sniffer. In her younger days, she would go nuts seeing one outside our camper, and would chase them through the woods as fast as she could go, letting out yelps of frustration as they easily outran her through the brush.

Memphis and I headed back to the scene of the crime, travelling through a brushy area that I thought the deer may have gone through (but to which I saw no tracks). It wasn't long before
she became "occupied" and stopped following me. I turned around to follow her, and came accross a very well marked blood trail. Memphis had wandered down to the pond, and there, floating about 20 feet out, was a big furry deer back.

I'm not sure why he would've chosen to run into the water. Maybe it makes a good hiding spot (we spooked a fawn hiding in this pond last summer). I've heard of other deer doing the same thing, but never thought it might be a pattern until now. I couldn't see the rack though, until I waded out to pick him up. I phoned Rachel to let her know the good news, and decided to just pull the deer through the water over to where we could load him into the pickup. She met me just as I reached the end of the pond, where she snapped the two photos you'll see in the link for 10/1/08.

Now Taking Reservations

For everyone who is thinking a farm might be a good idea on a day when the dow drops 777 points (clearly a sign that Jesus is coming), we're now taking reservations. The Peeling Wallpaper suite is still available, as is the Scratching Rodent room. Payment may be made in goat milking, cutting firewood (by hand, of course), or hanging drywall.

Here's a bit of a recent Michigan cultural experience I'd like to share...

A week ago we stopped at the "Main Street Pub" in Vicksburg on our way back from visiting the harvest festival at Tiller's International (it's a school that teaches cool stuff like farming with draft animals). I figured any place that called itself a pub in this day and age must have decent beer, which is rare in Michigan. Sure enough, when we got in, the wallpaper was printed with pictures of microbrew bottles like Alaskan, Deschutes, and dozens of others. Definitely a good sign.

The waitress came to take our drink order, and rattled off their beers on tap, "Bud, Bud Light, Bud Dry, Bud Ice... " and kept going with a couple names that I wasn't familiar with (either that or my hearing wasn't good enough to understand what she was saying). I asked if they had any microbrews. Rachel suppressed a giggle. The waitress paused, with a perplexed look, and said "I don't know what that is."

We've found precious few good restaurants (well -- one actually -- but it's not cheap) by Bellingham standards. I think that every single restaurant we've been in had a TV in each corner. Perhaps it keeps the patrons from inspecting their food too closely. It's a good incentive to grow and cook our own food, I guess.

Speaking of TV, guess what's in the waiting room of the local pediatrician's office? That seems to me like putting cigarette vending machines in the lobby of a hospital.

The harvest festival at Tillers was fun. We've been wondering if there are any like-minded folks in Michigan, and this is the first place we found whole hordes of them. It was a bit like the Bellingham farmer's market, full of organic produce vendors. There were seminars on fermented foods, urban farming, and a demonstrations of sorghum pressing (for molasses) and plowing with oxen.

They also had hay rides with draft horses doing the pulling. Henry could barely contain himself as our wagon drew near. Rachel had to remind him not to destroy the eardrums of our fellow passengers as he excitedly pointed out some other animals on the farm. We had to take two rides.

The previous day, I attended an Amish farm auction, where I was checking out some horse drawn farm equipment. The Amish really seem to be into auctions. There were probably 50 buggies there, most of them full. The women set up a lunch counter and sold baked goods. There was a household goods auction inside one of the barns (attended mostly by the women), while the farming goods auction was all outside, attended mostly by men. Most of the kids under 10 were running barefoot. I bought some bits for a bit-brace (basically a hand operated drill), but decided not to stick around to bid on the larger equipment, which the auctioneers save for last. There was a nice buggy in the auction as well. Doesn't look quite as comfortable as a car, but it might work a little better if gas isn't available.

Our woodstove is now fully installed, and just in time. Today has the feel of the first real day of fall. This last week has been dry, with temps in between 50-80. The next few days are supposed to be rainy, with temps from 40-60.

Last Saturday I started in on my project to fill the little holes that invariably start in a 140 year old stone foundation where the mortar has turned to sand. I was thinking I'd just trowel a little mortar into a few holes to keep rodents out. As with most home projects, this one grew a little bigger than I'd planned.

I started with the obvious places, where mortar was missing (many places have been patched over the years and appear to be sound). Realizing that a stone was loose, I pulled it out. And another, and another, and another, until I had a hole big enough to reach my entire arm into, in pretty much all directons. Whoever built the foundation put nice rocks on the exterior, and filled the interior with the smaller chips left over. They didn't use much mortar in the middle either. I guess it's a good thing that earthquakes aren't too common out here.

You can't polish a turd, but you can sure try...

The "you can't polish a turd" thought kept coming to mind today as we painted our living room with the assistance of Rachel's parents.

We had originally planned to just live with it until next year, but it's pretty bad. When it comes to the most "ghetto" part of the house, it gives our bathroom a run for its money. The bathroom had several holes in the partially rotted floor (from old plumbing installations) and a resident cricket (now with a girlfriend cricket). The cricket usually hides under the trim near the toilet and sings for me when I visit, but last night he came out for a stroll while I was cutting my hair.

The living room has 140+ years worth of wallpaper, all of it peeling or peeled to reveal crumbling plaster, and an occasional nest of asian beetles. It's kind of fun to play "name that decade" as you peel off each layer.

The living room is where our sole source of heat (a woodstove) resides, so any major projects here need to be done in the summer months. Realizing that peeling the wallpaper down to a paintable surface is a futile effort at best, we decided that it may be worth it to have a drywall contractor replace the walls for us before the wood stove goes in (we have maybe a couple weeks before things get cold). After getting the contractor's estimate, we decided that the peeling wallpaper really could be painted, at least until next summer when we should have time to drywall it ourselves.

While the new paint does calm down the many competing prints of the different wallpapers, it also serves to highlight every bubble, edge, and hole. The paint rollers have a great ability to wet the wallpaper and make it peel up underneath them as well.

Some of you may have heard me gloat about how Michigan doesn't have the perma-drizzle that Bellingham suffers from 9 months of the year, but I think I would take perma-drizzle over our weather for the last two days. We lost track of exactly how much rain we got after emptying the rain guage several times, but I believe we were between 10 and 11 inches over the last 48 hours, as the remnants of a tropical storm, followed by the remnants of Ike rolled through. Toads liked the weather though, and were out in force.

The sprouts out in our newly planted pasture didn't fare so well as every dip in the terrain turned into a babling brown brook full of our topsoil. I think much of it will recover, but it's tough to see $1100+ dollars of seed and countless hours of tractor work get beat up and washed away.

This morning, Rachel and Henry heard a strange noise through his bedroom window. Rachel asked Henry what he thought it was, and he said "That's a chicken -- that's the sound they make when a raccoon is eating them, or maybe a weasel." Thinking that Henry might be right, I ran outside to investigate. Sure enough, the sound came from the coop. Sitting in the middle of the roost was our solitary rooster (recently named Fergus) surrounded by his harem, trying out his newfound crowing ability.

Random rambling

No major events to report as of late. No new animals, and no particularly important projects. (Once the money runs thin, those sorts of things have a way of petering out)

Rachel has been making goat cheese. Thus far she's made a couple batches of chevre and one of mozzarella. The chevre is a nice spreadable cheese, and is fairly quick to make. The mozzarella was an all-day ordeal that nearly killed Rachel, so I suspect she won't be making a whole lot of that. I noted to her afterwards that not many small cheese producers sell mozzarella, and now we know why. There are about 100 different steps (slight exaggeration), for which you have to keep the milk/cheese at a set temperature for an exact time, and there's a lot of stretching involved, as you need to stretch this kind of cheese like you would taffy. The stretching comes late in the process, starting about the time you're completely exhausted.

I've been working on a tile platform for the wood stove, which is nearly complete. The base and frame are made, the tile is on, and I just need to grout the cracks between the tiles and seal it. I'm up to about 5 cords of firewood now, although the last cord and a half are still out in the woods. At least the trees are down and the wood is starting to season a bit.

Fall is starting to show around the edges out here. The poison ivy is starting to turn red, and I've seen a couple maples start to turn. I'm also starting to turn red, as the two trees I cut down last weekend were wrapped in poison ivy. No matter how careful I am, I always seem to get just a little bit on me.

We've got our first 5 acres of alfalfa/grass hay mix planted, and this morning I noticed the first cotyledons poking up through the soil. Hopefully they're not ragweed sprouts. My earlier ideas of mowing the remaining pasture and interseeding is looking like a non-option after some experimental plots, so I think there's going to be a lot of tractor work in our future.

A couple evenings this week we were over at a friend's house (Karla), whom we met through a local foods group. She's just purchased a neat old farm, where I helped mow some of the weeds down in her fields. It was fun to drive the tractor over to her house (about 6 miles, taking 40 minutes). Like riding a bike, you notice so much more than when you're driving a car.

I don't know why, but her fields were absolutely filled with preying mantises. They were everywhere while I was mowing. They look really strange when flying -- like two dragonflies who became stuck together in a head-on collision. The old farm house is in many ways similar to the one we purchased, so we'll now have someone to co-miserate with.

Speaking of dragonflies... about a week ago Henry and I were out walking through our own fields. I noticed a lot of dragonflies buzzing around me, and stopped to look up. I've never before seen so many dragonflies in one place. It was quite literally a large "flock", of perhaps a couple hundred. Dragonflies eat lots of pesky bugs which they catch in mid-air, so I like them a lot. They're like bats in this regard, except they don't poop on everything in our barn's hayloft the way the bats do. I'm thinking the bats will at least let off in the winter; guess we'll soon find out.

Last weekend Henry and I decided that the ponds weren't just for walking around, but were for wading in. They've shrunk a little bit in the summer heat, reaching the top of my thighs now. We used Henry's butterfly net to catch a few frogs, but no turtles or monster water beetles this time. The ponds even have some small freshwater clams. Saw quite a few ducks, more than we saw earlier in the year. Teal and widgeon, I think.

We've learned how *not* to pick watermelons this year. We've picked about 4 now, waiting about a week between each one. Each of them has been just on the cusp of ripeness, but not quite there. New theory is to wait until the vines wither. We have been eating some of the little melons that our friends Dave and Terry gave us seeds for as a little going away present. They're neat little melons with a skin similar to a cantaloupe, with green insides. A great size to eat for one person without leftovers.

Out tomatoes are big this year, and have been for a few weeks now. They just don't seem to be interested in ripening. Not sure if there's some trick I haven't yet figured out, or if we just need to be more patient. The tomato worms have disappeared, having been around for about a week. Looks like the colorado potato beetle which was plaguing our garden is gone too. They seemed to only last for about 3 weeks in July. The japaneese beetles which covered Henry's "4-o-Clock" flowers, giving eachother "piggy back rides", have gone for the year as well.

The last time I checked our hive about a week ago, the bees hadn't touched the "super" frame, which is where they make the honey comb that we get to keep (the lower two frames are for the bees to live on through the winter, and the upper frames are for us to steal). So I figured this year was a write off, spent in building up the hive strength rather than in getting honey. However, I noticed today that the neighboring property to the west is filled with goldenrod that's just now coming into bloom. Checking the front of the hive, I noticed a lot of good little bees coming back with goldenrod-colored pollen. Maybe they'll fill up the super after all.

Speaking of the beehive, we have a toad who lives on top of the hive, underneath the "roof" board I set on top. I've seen him there for the last month. Last time he had a little friend with him. I always set him down when I open the hive, and last time he stuck around so that I could set him back up on top when I was done. Not sure what sort of bugs he gets up there (I don't think it's bees), but he seems awfully happy.

Dog days of summer

It's hot now, every day. This last week was in the upper 80's or low 90's. Things are really starting to dry out.

Goat milking is becoming routine now. Ashley is the grey goat, and is very mellow. Mary-Kate, on the other hand, is a handful. She typically gives a kick about 1 minute into milking, at which point I put the hobbles on her and she's fine for the remainder of the milking. I'm not sure why she does that. She's also quite fond of our bag of black oilseed, which we throw in with their grain as a special treat. Any time I don't have a hold on her collar, she makes a bee line for the bag and stuffs her head in as fast as she can, in hopes that she'll get a mouthful of the stuff before I catch up with her.

In an average day we get just over 5 quarts of milk now. As good as it is, it's hard to drink that much milk, so Rachel has a bunch of cheesemaking supplies on order. This is what our fridge looks like now

Yesterday evening we went to the St. Joseph valley tractor show, which is held about a mile from our house. Loads of neat old old tractors, including steam tractors. In true midwest style, everyone was driving golf carts or riding mowers around the grounds. That's apparently how midwesterners maintain their ample figures (heaven forbid that anyone should have to walk!) There was also a swap meet, where you could buy lots of junk that people found in the back of their garage. A few of the items for sale were actually tractor related.

One thing which surprised me was the number of restored "antique" lawn tractors. To me, these riding mowers have all the aesthetic appeal of a pair of dirty socks, but then again there's a lot of things I still don't quite understand about the midwest.

After a number of weekends cutting, splitting, hauling, and stacking firewood, I'm up to a grand total of 3 cords. Only 5 more to go! Ugh. I can only imagine how much fun this would be cutting everything by hand (without a chainsaw, that is) like the people who lived in this house for the first 75 years probably did. Maybe we'll just move into our chicken coop if it ever comes to that, so we won't need so much firewood to heat it. The chickens can just move into our house then.

One thing that's pretty neat out here -- there are tons of amphibians around. One morning this week, while picking potato beetle larvae out of the garden, I noticed no less than 6 little frogs (they're the size of your thumbnail) sitting on just the potato plants. It's nice to have help in keeping the bug population down. Every time I go into our basement now, I can find toads and salamanders, who all seem to be quite happy down there. Also helpful on the mosquito front are myriads of dragon flies. Today I was looking at the barbed wire top strand on one of our fences. I noticed about a dozen dragon flies sitting on it, each spaced about 6 feet apart, waiting for a little unsuspecting bug.

Earlier this week, our neighbor Stan invited Henry and I to go fishing with him for bluegills. I seemed to catch only undersize fish (this is normal for me), but everyone caught lots of them, and we ended up with about a dozen keepers. They're quite tasty, but I know it's best not to research what's actually in them. The state of Ohio (which is next door) has come out and said that there's not a single body of water in the entire state where it's completely safe to eat the fish, primarily due to mercury pollution from coal burning power plants.