Baby chicks and CSAs

Making pumpkin bread on a warm fall day. It's a wonderful thing. I appreciate the fresh, organic pumpkin, the free range eggs and the birds singing today.

A few days ago we drove up the the Springs to meet a lady to buy six Red Star chicks. I found her ad on Craigslist. I love Craigslist. Now the chicks are in my office with a heat lamp on them. They are about four weeks old. I didn't want to raise babies in the winter, but I want to be sure we have enough eggs in the spring and summer to add eggs to our CSA program when we start it.

Four week old Red Star chicks

When we were in the city, we ran our errands which included going by a couple of grocery stores we don't have in our little town, including a Mexican or Latino market, which had the greastest prices on produce and carried a few hard to find spices. But, in both of the food stores we went to, and the two we went to last week (all chain stores) I was disappointed by the unavailablity of organic foods, and the few items that one store carried were horribly expensive--four dollars plus change for an average sized zuchini. Crazy. And, me on my newest health kick to only buy organic, couldn't find any organic foods I could afford. I tried to go organic about twelve years ago and ran into the same problem. It seems time has not brought down the prices of organic produce.
 
Well. that realization really made me angry. I should be able to get organic food if that's what I want, right? I have the choice to not be poisoned by pesticide laden, hormone injected vegetables and meats, right? I should have access to these real, safe foods even if I don't have a large bank account, right? Food is a right, like air and water, right? Oh, that's right, not on this planet. We pay for water, while wasting access to millions of gallons of rainwater. We flush our drinking water down the toilet. Crazy. And food is only for those who can afford it, kind of like medical care. The more money you have, the better food or medical care you can get. I'm talking about organic food and natural healing hospitals here--I don't buy into and try not to support big agribusiness or big medical industry.

So how can I get food that is not going to give me cancer if it is not available? I can't afford mail order or even the organic food chains. How can I make a statement that I'm not going to support an agricultural industry that is more worried about profit than about peoples health, when the only places I can shop carry only the foods I wish to avoid. How can I feed my family? Where do we turn?

CSA memberships, that's where. And while I have been struggling with how expensive CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) are, and how we could make our farm CSA doable for more people, I realized that our membership at $325 per season (thirteen weeks) is pretty cheap for organic food, but even better, we are going beyond organic to naturally grown, here at our farm.  And one dozen free range eggs per week included. That breaks down to $25 per week or $3.25 per day for healthy, safe vegetables and eggs. Pretty cool really. And by growing our own food, we can say no to agribusiness and their poisons. We are taking back our food!

This is what tipped me into the home stretch of starting the CSA. We are going to do it. For the summer season of 2011 we will offer a very limited number of memberships into our farm. We are calling it the "One Little CSA" program and will sell five (5) farm shares to the first responders, taking a deposit to hold a spot. This will give us capital now to invest in more seeds, greenhouse and garden supplies. I'm excited. Richard is on board, and we look forward to the opportunity to grow real food for ourselves, sharing the bounty with others who want naturally and locally grown food.

I think everyone should join a local CSA program. Become part of the solution to the craziness of poisoned, unclean agribusiness food. If you can't afford to join a CSA, (like me) then grow your own food. Anyone can do it. I'd like to include some learning experiences here at our farm for those who want to learn how to start a backyard garden. Or a container garden. As Richard likes to say "If you only grow one tomato off of one plant, that's one tomato that's clean and healthy, one tomato you didn't have to buy from big agribusiness."

But if gardening is not for you, let the farmer down the road have a chance to grow your local food. Make sure it's organic. Some CSAs have working shares where you can buy a share at a reduced cost and work so many hours at the farm to make up the difference. I'm thinking about doing that too. I never seem to have enough time to water and weed the gardens...a little help would be nice. And with a CSA, it's kind of like your farm too. It feels good to participate in growing your own food.

"Be the change...."

Digging potatoes, picking tomatoes

Busy days. Today we dug potatoes out of the lower garden, but decided to leave the carrots and onions. the forecast doesn't quite call for freezing temps, but I don't want to lose everything, if it does freeze. We have been preparing all day for the low night time temperatures of the next few days. I'm afraid Fall is here to stay now, sneaking in when we weren't watching.

I pulled all of the tomatoes, even the green ones, and cut all of the pumpkins from their dying vines.

Last night we canned tomatoes to get ready for the tomatoes we brought in today. Richard is thinking of making a green tomato relish, and we will most certainly have enough for another batch of fried green tomatoes.

The squashes and pumpkins have to come in or find a home, so Rrichard built a makeshift root cellar (got the idea out of Mother Earth News---some guy stores carrots in a bucket underground--so we thought we could try that on a bigger scale). Eventually we'd like to build an Earthbag root cellar into the berm behind our house, but for now , a trashcan it is, in a big hole. We will put the squashes in the can, surrounded by straw (recycling the scarecrow). This way the squashes never touch and they are insulated by the straw. After the can is full, the lid goes on and it is covered with a couple of bales of straw layed across the top. Sounds like it might work. We'll give it a try.

We went to pick up Hank the billy goat and his little friend Lily today in our old Lucky horse trailer. Now we have seven goats in a teeny tiny pen that Richard is trying desperately to enlarge, but between trips to town and Co-op meetings and hurt guineas, it is impossible to finish anything, it seems. Now the ladies have a man and hopefully will get the deed done quickly, before anyone notices the billy in our covenanted land.

And the guinea...one of the Pearls from up the hill, in the goat and llama pen, apparently got stepped on by a llama while the two rambunctious young llama boys were in the midst of one of their wrestling matches. So, I had to catch said injured bird (ever try to catch a guinea? It's worse than trying to catch a llama.), without the llamas stepping on him again. I did it with a clothes basket, a large plastic container lid, a long stick and a few cuss words. I got the limping fowl into a small pet carrier and took him into the house for examination, upon which I decided that his foot was either broken or very badly injured. So, with Richard's ingenuity at making a splint out of rolled up cardboard, we taped the leg to the makeshift splint, caught his buddy guinea to keep him company, and settled the two of them into my office in their individual kennels for the night.

While I picked tomatoes this morning, Richard put bird netting over the new chicken pen off the chicken coop. We put the two pearl guineas  together in that yard, hoping the injured guy will heal. Now the guineas, the four lavenders and the one standing pearl, run back and forth along the chicken wire between the two yards, yelling at each other.

Guineas are hilarious. I'm going to miss watching the two guineas with the llamas and goats, but I can't have them getting hurt. They were raised with the goats, and for a while they practiced being goats, the two birds following the goats and eating hay when they did, right out of the big feed dish. Then, the two guinea fowl discovered they could get over the fence into the llama yard and they pretended they were llamas for a while, even charging each other, slamming chests, when the llamas wrestled. They stood on the llama hay and rode on the backs of the goats. Fun days...I'm going to miss.

Billy and Lily and planting strawberries

It sure has felt like not only has Fall arrived, but Winter is well on her way in. I think we got our first light frost last night, which killed the morning glory living under my clothesline, but most of the tomatoes are still hanging in there.

Richard has been crazy busy with the new yard for the chicken coop, the corral in the llama pen, planting some fall crops in the greenhouse and meeting with the Canon Co-op http://www.canonfoodco-op.com/  about their greenhouse. It is a busy Fall indeed. Richard spent Tuesday at the Javernick Family Farm http://javernickfamilyfarms.com/ CSA food pick up, trying to sell goat cheese, and procured the use of Beki's young Billy to breed to our female dairy goats. Wonderful! But with Billy comes Lily, his female goat companion, who he can't mate with because they are too closely related. It will be a fun-filled few weeks with more goats and the bonus of trying to separate one female, and keep the billy out of sight from the neighborhood covenant police (whomever they are). Can't wait.



The battle with the deer continues. Richard and I strung a piece of fence in the biggest opening between the trees to try to keep the cute little guys out of next year's garden space. This is the east side of our property, just north of our llama pasture and south of our driveway. We'd like to build a permanent Earthship style greenhouse in this area, and we have been working on laying out where the garden will sit around the mythical greenhouse. Richard built a wonderfully big raised bed and the deer have been using it as a running takeoff strip to launch themselves over the two strand electric fence we put up to keep them out. It's all part of the intricately designed wildlife obstacle course we are creating to amuse the neighbors.

I planted some strawberry starts in the flower bed in front of the house today. It is on the north side of the house, protected from the harsh desert, summer sun. I think if the strawberries make it, it will be a great place for them, mixed among the lilies, echinaceas, and irises. It's all part of that Permaculture idea of building guilds of plants to support each other. The strawberries will act as a living mulch for the flowers and bushes, but best of all, this planting also incorporates the idea of an edible landscape, where the whole yard becomes part of the farm. Wonderful stuff.

I can't help but believe that our little farm, this one little farm, can be artful and creative, a haven for the enlightened and the wildlife, a meditation garden in its entirety, a food producing and profitable oasis that helps restore and preserve the environment, and an example of how fun and attractive it can be to grow your own vegies along with those heirloom roses. Let's feed ourselves and take back our food!

Fall

I think Fall is here. Today I feel the chill in the air, and want to stay inside where it is cozy and warm, but there are still so many things to be done to get this little farm ready for winter, to put her to bed.


Everyday we pick tomatoes, hoping to get as many as we can before the first frost. But now we have to get them before the deer get them. For several mornings in a row now, I have awakened to find deer standing in our tomato field. Today it was three does, but more than once it has been the young buck I have caught eating my pumpkins too. Sometimes I can chase them off, and my two Chihuahuas are great for this task, and being behind a fence, the dogs never get close enough to get hurt, but the commotion they cause with their barking and tearing back and forth along the fence scare whole herds of deer away.

My usual experience is to run outside waving my arms in the air and shouting, but this guy just looks at me as he munches. I threw a piece of wood mulch at him, but I missed by a mile and he continued to chew.   As I approached him, asking him nicely to please stop eating my pumpkins, I eyed his antlers, and wondered how close he would allow me before he just decided to charge me instead. Would he do that? Was this battle over a green pumpkin, that probably wouldn't even reach maturity before the frost came, worth it? I shouted at him one last time, ready to run and was happy to see him trot away from the pumpkin patch.

The deer left me the top of the jack-o-lantern

The fish wind spinners my Aunt Sylvia let me borrow are not working against the deer either. Two mornings now I have found one of the nylon fish crumpled on the ground, it's fluttery tail several feet away. Is this the work of the deer? Are they trying to eat the fish too? Are they laughing at me in the night as they dismantle my deer obstacle course and chime haunted field?

I'm tired of yelling at deer. Let them have it, I say. Until we get the property fenced adequately, it is a losing battle. And, I can't help but think, when the deer come, the coyotes start coming too.

Fall is here.

Today was cool enough for me to make a chicken soup (mock chicken with broth and no chicken), and as I stood in the kitchen peeling potatoes and making biscuits, I was happily entertained by the birds singing outside the back door. I remember when we moved to this house a little over a year ago, there were no birds. I remember thinking, how odd, how horribly still it seems without birdsong. And Richard told me, "Don't worry, the birds will come." Sure enough, the birds have come to live in the junipers and eat bugs out of our gardens. What a wonderful thing.

Fall is one of my favorite seasons, followed by Spring, and as the leaves turn and the birds sing, we wind down from our hectic harvest and garden schedule to a more relaxed state of mind. There is still urgency--get the greenhouse covered and get the goat barn situated for winter, get the goats bred and start thinking about Christmas.

Welcome to Fall.

A day of farm tours and hay

Wonderfully fun day! We toured A Wren's Nest Farm http://www.awrensnest.com/
in Pueblo, and it was educational and great fun. Thank you Paul and Tammy. We got to see their chickens, turkeys and pigs, sheep and garden spaces, hear about their plans and ideas and two gals showed up to join the CSA while we were there. We had a great time and I think our two little ones had a blast too, pulling the garden cart around the farm. I am inspired!

And then we were in search of hay for our goats and llamas. A deal is not a deal. Found a number on Craigslist for hay out in Pueblo, near where we were, so we agreed to meet a lady there to pick some up. The hay was sitting in a dirt field, barely covered and definitely yellowed and weathered. No thanks. And she was offended. Hmmm. If you want to be in the business of selling hay, then cut it dry and keep it dry. I'm not interested in my animals getting sick off of rotten hay. We have the right to be choosy. As a new farmer, I have gotten into guilt trips about buying hay, but never again. More than once I have gotten home with hay that was moldy in the middle. Now, I'm not to afraid to ask questions, and even break open a bale. I've found that being up front and demanding quality hay, I get it. Otherwise, I'll take my money and walk away.

We did find good quality hay, stored in a barn, from a guy we occasionally buy from in Penrose. I spent several minutes talking to his wife while Richard loaded the hay in the back of the truck. She told me the story of the two little kittens that were running around at her feet, and how they were born in the barn, but orphaned when mama disappeared. I also learned about how they farm the hay they sell, on their own land and farming pastures that others in the community don't have the time or interest to deal with. They also sell seed at their cute little farm...seed to grow pasture crops, like alfalfa or winter wheat. I'm definitely interested in turning our animal "pastures" into graze-able land.

I love visiting farms. I learn something new everyday from people who know how to do it. And the people are so friendly. What a fabulous day it was. Nothing beats this country life.

Now back to fixing the chicken pen, canning tomatoes and researching our own CSA start up.