The Chicken Coop

Our first batch of goat milk ice cream with blackberries from last year's harvest...amazingly delicious!

Mama's Musings

Wow- how time flies! So sitting at the computer this spring has been a challenge due to little boys, chickens galore, and weeds- yes, the bain of my existence right now! As I look out the window I can see green - the trees, the grass, and the garden. We are still adding some plants here and there to the mix but overall have gotten the base of the garden started. We have had rain in spurts which brings many smile from us. It seems like the plants are starting to get the hint and grow...nothing better than watching a tomato plant reach for the sun-I can already taste the basil/tomato sandwiches!

We have a mix of about 300 chicks currently wandering our pasture- some were raised for friends, some are the soon to be chickens in the freezer, and then those left are the long awaited laying hens...Black Ostrolops. It has been amazing watching them scurry around the field eating all bugs in sight and many blades of grass...just seems right. Huxley has been enjoying his new duties of the chicken feeder.

I am still milking our goat, Lumpy. We have become her biggest fans with the creation of new cheeses this year as well as many batches of goat milk ice cream. I have the milking fever and am hoping that more milk goats are in our farm's future.

We have also been setting up a booth at the Bella Vista Farmer's Market on Saturdays. Shitake mushrooms are the most requested item so far but the goat milk and chicken are not far behind.

Spent the evening putting tomato cages in the garden and watching the chicks with Roland...always get a giggle from him when he sees them scurry around. I reread "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver this spring and was reminded once again what an amazing lifestyle this is...when Huxley, Roland, and I went gooseberry picking earlier this week to put in the freezer for Thanksgiving pies I realized how thankful I am to be able to teach my children what it means to truly savor food from the plant to the plate...I hear a cicada..Happy Summer All!

Mama's Musings

Tonight dinner consisted of farm raised eggs, wild poke, and morel mushrooms combined to make a delectable quiche. Yes, the wild edible harvest season is upon us! We have been walking with the boys- looking for mushrooms and examining each berry bush we pass. Things on the farm have also started to blossom. We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the free range chicks in a couple weeks, have been planting in the garden and the greenhouse, and I have been milking our goat, Lumpy. I have come to realize that milking is truly one of my favorite things about the whole farm scene. I love walking to the barn in the morning to be greeted not only by an eager goat but also by the swallows dipping in and out of the barn and the pigeons waking with a flurry as I step over the threshold. Am hoping to learn how to make some new cheeses this year (ones that go great on pizza as Caleb finished the outdoor bread oven this winter and we can't get enough of the goodies that are being created in it). High point of the week other than fireflies and the song of the Whip-Poor-Will would have to be the asparagus from the garden...delicious!

Last weekend started off the 2009 garden season for us as an adventure in the greenhouse with our newest tool- a soil blocker. This amazing little gadget is going to cut down on our plastic use (something we are trying to consciously to cut back on) and will be a lot healthier for the plants and our soil in the long run. We planted all of our early crop including cabbages, kale, leeks, broccoli, shallots, and even some comfrey. We are hoping to use the comfrey as part of our natural worming for the goats this summer. Caleb also started about 18 Sugar Maple seeds. With the warm weather that spurred us into spring like activites Caleb also planted some garlic and comfrey in the ground that our neighbor shared with us.
We are hoping to finalize our chicken order this next week- planning to get more meat chickens and some laying hens. Huxley is still requesting ducks so it looks like we may have a few of those running around this summer too. And Caleb is still daydreaming about a milk cow while I await the arrival of our next batch of goat kids so that I can start milking.
I have been catching up on my reading while laying Roland down for naps and ran across a simple yet amazing idea- think of the difference we all could make if every single person in the US bought 10 dollars worth of local foods a week. Think how much less fuel that would consume as well as the support it would give the local economy. Just a thought...

Mama's Musings

How time flies! I must admit that the majority of my farm time and energy has been going towards the two small humans on the farm this winter but with spring only a couple months away I have begun the garden and livestock daydreams. Feeling the urge to pick up a Gene Logsdon book and really get my wheels turning.
We are due to have goat kids within the next month or so (which means I'll get to start milking- hooray), Caleb is currently building a compost pile to rival the Great Pyramid, and we are gathering ingredients for our latest farm toy- the soil blocker (a great invention that cuts the plastic out of plant starts and gives those seedlings all the extra nutrients to grow well).
Plans for the year ahead...definitely grow more corn as the taste of homegrown hominy is unbelievably delicious, laying hens, more meat chickens, ducks (a special request from Huxley), perhaps a pig or two -which we hope to feed on food grown here on the farm, some indoor citrus trees, hopefully get the greenhouse up, and a garden filled to the brim with food to enjoy fresh as well as to harvest and savor next winter.

Poppy's Perspective

Farming is for the birds.

That may be cliche, but how can you resist it when you have as great a crop of bird feed as we have this year. And it has to be the best kind of bird seed at that; the birds love it, it is free, and I don't even have to fill feeders. Yep, you probably guessed it. We have got weeds, weeds, glorious weeds. Just outside my window is our pig pen a couple summers absent of a pig now and flower beds that have not been put to sleep. They are growing an amazing crop of poke, giant ragweed, wing-stem, brown-eyed-susans, coneflowers, docks, mullein, goldenrod, pigweed and a thousand more grasses and asters and other unknown weeds; and they are all seed laden!

The best thing is the ease with which this crop grows.

I was fortunate enough to work with a man, Tom, who could off the top of his head recite many of Aldo Leopold's writings (and other conservationist / naturalists). He once let loose a passage of Aldo Leopold's extolling the virtues to habitat of a certain type of agricultural slovenliness. This was a passage about fencerows and how his fencerows grew up like the hair of an unkempt hermit; unshaven, unwashed and in all ways unneatened. I know I messed the words up on that one big time(sorry Tom, sorry Aldo), but the point remains the same. He was not the type to keep a well manicured fencerow and he saw value in that.

Anyway, Adam, who I also work with, just returned from an Audobon meeting a couple weeks ago and told me how detrimental the loss of the family farm has been to birds. Urban expansion and ever expanding industrial farms with their erasure of fence lines and overambitious tidying have done away with unkempt fence lines and things such as fallow hog yards. These bird-food producing weeds grow best in edge habitats or disturbed and early succession areas and these areas are disappearing alarmingly fast. He had numbers and stats which blew my mind and then promptly flew right through the hole, but it was staggering how much of this habitat and the estimated accomanying food resource has been lost.

So I used to think I was lazy, but now I'm proud to be in the same company as the great conservationist Aldo Leopold.

And I'm happy that on this second snowy morning of the winter, as I was sitting here writing this, I was able to look out the window and see cardinals, juncos, a crow, white throated sparrows, goldfinches, and a carolina wren all feasting and well fed.

Poppy's Perspective

"They concentrate the flavor of the sea".

I heard a radio show a while back and on old French oyster farmer was speaking of his love of oysters.

Mushrooms are that for me and our Ozark forest. Their taste and smell are the forest. It might make more sense to say that forests concentrate the flavor of mushrooms.
I am in awe of mushrooms. I love their bizarre shapes, beautiful colors, alien textures, and intricate details. I love looking for them, finding them, observing them, and of course eating them.

My buddy Toby (A twenty-somthing fifth grader) tells the joke... "Why was the mushroom the most popular guy at the party?"

Give up?

"Because he was a fun guy"

It is true.

This year was amazing for mushrooms. Our harvest of morels, shitakes, chanterelles, corals, woodears, oysters, sulphur shelfs, and lion's manes has been the culinary force to be reckoned with.

This week I have had just such a couple mushroom forces to reckon with. Raven made a mushroom lasanga of corals, chantererlles, oysters and shitakes that was so.........(well, probably shouldn't use expletives).....good that the king's chef would have been beheaded had his majesty known what the peasants were feasting upon. And then the next day my brother comes up with some pate of fresh chicken liver (we had just butchered) and chanterelle. Chef better hide.

Any way, thanks to Aunt Susan for the Paul Stament CD and DVD. The future is looking brighter as for our ability to cultivate these culinary treasures. And it is also looking brighter as for how we can employ these tasty organisms to minimize nutrient runoff from our farm and better enable our land to take care of itself. We are looking forward to experimenting with many of the techniques and varities he describes. Thanks Susan also for getting Alisen on the boat: once she boards there is no turning back.

There is a decent chance of rain today and tomorrow. Prime weather to excite the wood ears and oysters.

Untill next time----HAPPY SHROOMING!