Welcome 2012! Well 2011 was once again a busy year for us. Josh is still employed as a crane operator and occasional truck driver for Central States Roofing, a commercial roofing company, as well as going about his daily farm chores.
And it looks like his inner Amish came out again this year when he built our 2-story, 4 horse stall and chicken coop included barn practically by himself. Now that we had a livestock shelter, we were finally able to house my horse Blake in addition to 4 Texas Longhorn heifer calves. This fall we also took in an unwanted horse, thinking that Josh might go riding with me, but that has yet to be determined. We are also getting (2) miniature Hereford bulls in January 2012 and are excited to have grass fed beef this year. We’re pretty sure our neighbors must think we are crazy because we rotate our cattle across our property in little half acre electric fence paddocks, instead of just letting them wonder aimlessly about the entire pasture. But hey, its seems to be working since we are not overgrazing our pasture and in a drought year, we still have 15 acres of untouched grass to graze off before this year’s growing season begins, which means we don’t have to spend upwards of $15/bale of hay that we’ve been hearing horror stories about.
This spring, we received a $1,000 grant from our local conservation district, which we used to plant 220 seedling trees: ponderosa pines, rocky mountain juniper, native plum and native cherry. But it was so much more than just planting hundreds of trees; Josh had to fabricate a tractor attachment to lay and bury our weed barrier. Once the weed barrier was installed, we attentively measured and marked where every tree was to be planted (spaced as evenly as possible), a small “x” was cut at each tree location, the soil was dug out, water absorbent polymer was added to the hole, the tree was placed and buried then a rabbit guard was placed over the tree, and gravel was placed around the rabbit guard – quite a process for two people, but we did it, and we’re hoping to have a nice windbreak someday, and every year we plan on planting more trees.
In May, I was finally able to purchase my new Nikon camera and have been thoroughly enjoying taking pictures with it and trying to start my own part-time photography business, Prairie Belle Photography. Also in May, I went with my father to Texas for the annual Spring Creek Cemetery Clean-up. It was a very quick trip, but it was good to get down there and tend to our lost loved one’s last resting spots. In June, my great aunt (my maternal grandmother’s sister) passed away, so both my brother Ben and I went to Texas for her memorial service, where we each read a poem from the book Aunt Marian wrote, Blue Denim.
During the summer, my brother Ben found himself “interning” at Heritage Belle Farms. Having worked as a chef for his entire working career, we’re not sure he knew just what he was getting into when he moved in with us. The first day he was here, we had the task of catching and moving all the poultry (around 400 birds?) into the new barn. It was on this day that Ben learned the bear hugging technique to move 50lb turkeys , as well as learning that geese will just appear out of nowhere; It’s how we coined two sayings on the farm: “Have you hugged your turkey today?” and “Gooses Happen.” During the day while we went to our off farm jobs, Ben would stay home tending to the animals and working in the garden, and preparing incredibly delicious meals.
July 4th, we celebrated our 1 year anniversary at Josh’s parents 4th of July BBQ. We even ate our disgusting 1 year old frozen piece of cake from our wedding cake as tradition tells us to do.
This year, I (and sometimes Ben) attended 2 farmers markets each week and always sold out. Heritage Belle Farms (our farm) couldn’t even put a dent in the demand for farm fresh free range eggs and all natural pork. We didn’t even sell any veggies at the farmers market this year as all of our produce was spoken for and pre-purchased from the local food bank. What little extra produce we had made for good canning practice for me.
I put in 8 grueling months for the local conservation district/Natural Resource Conservation Service, where I was the youngest employee who just couldn’t relate to stories of grandchildren playing sports and before i could no longer handle the oxymoronic “conservation based” government employment and moral disagreements I had with my job, where I was to encourage farmers and ranchers to pursue harmful land practices and programs in exchange for meager payments. Though some aspects of the job were enjoyable and I did make connections with many wonderful agriculturalists, the vast majority of that job just seemed to go against my 6 years of education in sustainable agriculture, so I decided it was time to move onto literally bigger and better. I am now the Education Director of Chico Basin Ranch, an 87,000 acre working cattle ranch just southeast of Colorado Springs. It’s here that I work to educate predominately younger children on land conservation and stewardship, sustainable agriculture and prairie ecology. I finally get paid to teach, handle wild birds, ride horses and drive cattle. It took me a while to figure out where I belong, but I’m quite content being an over-educated, underpaid cowgirl.
This summer, we became more acquainted with a ‘part-time- neighbor who frequently escaped the rush-rush of city life by staying at his “lake house” (a camper set up next to a small catch pond on the property next to ours). For whatever reason, our paths seemed to be destined to cross as we were quickly brought into a waste management project of his. For several months, every spare moment at the farm was consumed with opening cans and packages of dinged, dented or expired food by either our new ‘hired hand’ neighbor and his brother, or ourselves. The amount of food deemed “no longer approved for human consumption” was appalling! Our goal of this tedious project was to see if it were possible to reduce the amount of waste produced by a local food bank. Every last sauce, crumb and sometimes things that we didn’t even know could be called food was meticulously opened, separated and processed into either ‘poultry feed,’ ‘swine feed,’ recyclables, compost and finally trash. Though I don’t have the numbers, we processed, by hand and a nice commercial can opener I have to add, at least 60 pallets, or around 30 tons of food deemed “trash,” and fed it to our hogs and poultry, who eagerly smacked it up every feeding. It was far from glamorous, but it beat feeding grain.
In September, Josh’s beloved black and tan coonhound, Duke, was run over and killed on the same day that we had just gotten the entire small animal fence all the way around our front 10 acres (funded by a second $1,000 grant from the conservation district). It’s always hard to lose a pet, but it seemed more difficult to deal with since it was so unexpected and it was the very thing that we were trying to prevent from happening. We were both guilt stricken for quite some time. Though Duke can never be replaced, we did adopt (2) black and tan/blue tick coonhound puppies, Waylon (left) and Willie (right) from a litter of 10 in the spring that have been quite a hand full. We call them the “land sharks” and they are as naughty as can be right now if not given enough attention, but they are learning.
This fall, we made friends with some wonderful ‘country folk’ who taught us how to butcher our own poultry. Our first run at it, we had 17 people helping and we were able to butcher 100 birds in 8 hours. It’s because of this process that Josh fabricated our Mother Plucker, an electric poultry feather plucker. With the Mother Plucker, during the second round of chicken butchering, we were able to butcher 72 birds in 8 hours with only 4 people helping.
For Christmas, Josh built a pantry in the kitchen for me. What started out as a small project has now turned into a complete home refurbishing project as I am trying to repaint all the interior of the house, de-clutter and make living more simpler and nice looking.
We’ve decided that growing and raising food for other people is just too much work, and not having enough food to put up for ourselves has been frustrating. So I got to thinking about the old Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, and it came to me….teach them how to be a new agrarians or urban homesteaders! Why should we have to grow spinach for someone, when they are perfectly capable of growing a small bunch of it themselves, even without a garden. If someone is that passionate about eating local, organic food, then they should be growing it themselves. Now grant it, we understand that not everyone can raise a pig or a cow in their backyard, but most can have up to 10 laying hens and or at least a 1ft x 1ft space where they can put a pot of herbs or a tomato plant, they just don’t know they can. So that exactly what Katie is going to do – teach people that they too can produce their own food through events and workshops. Our goals for 2012 is to become even more self-reliant, weed out processed foods in our diets, visit other farms doing similar things, and to teach through example. We do hope you all follow us on this blog, and may 2012 bring you good food, good health and positive changes in your life as well.
HAPPY LAUNDRY DAY!
Photo: Permacology Productions
