four things

Not the happiest of days for our little family of three right now, but I'll talk more about that later. For now, there are four things I've learned in the past few weeks:

1.  Hard times bring a family closer together. (and also challenge your sanity.)

2.  Teething is no joke. (seriously. we're talking head spinning, ala Exorcist.)

3.  Babies do not stay lap babies for very long. (and boy, are my arms tired.)

4.  You have not lived until you've spent an entire day processing 73 chickens in 90+ degree heat,  with a baby on your back. (we are ever so grateful for help from friends.)


As we trudge onward into the unknown and try to sort out our future, there is one thing that keeps us grounded, hopeful and full of love.

This face, these eyes, that smile.

photo by the talented Andy Johanson

photo by Andy Johanson

photo by Andy Johanson

There are good things and happier days to come. We're going to be fine.

P.S. Don't worry, this blog wont be all about Zander. Promise. He's just the best thing going right now.

one summer day

We were lucky enough to have a visit from my beautiful cousin and her awesome photographer husband a few weeks ago. He captured part of our day on the farm.

photos by Demian Aspinwall

bookends

The wheels of the big, 3-wheel stroller swish as they glide through the tall grass. Out in the middle of the field, I park the stroller, back facing the sun and front facing me a few feet ahead. Or sometimes, I sit Zander up on a blanket in the shade of the stroller or golf cart. I place a few toys in front of him and maybe a cup of water and set off to do my work.

I step into the broiler pen, the youngest batch first, rinsing out the waterer and then grabbing the two feeders. I set them down outside of the pen, roll the sides up and use the dolly to pull the pen one length to fresh new grass. I refill the feeders, carry them back in, top off the water, adjust the sides depending on the weather, do one last check to see if this batch is well, and move on.

The stroller swishes on to the next pen where I repeat the process and then again until all three batches are watered, fed and well. We make a stop at both eggmobiles to make sure they have what they need and we're on our way to the brooder. The stroller just fits through the doorway and I park Z right in front of the 'teenager' chicks. These guys and girls are 3 weeks old and they're the most entertaining for him to watch.

Again, I place a few toys in front of him and get to work.  I start with the youngest batch who are a week old. Monitoring and adjusting temperature, managing bedding, cleaning and refilling feeders and waterers. I move on to the teenagers and do the same, only on a larger scale. Much more bedding to manage, bigger feeders and waterers.

Z keeps himself occupied most of the time but sometimes, at this point, he begins to fuss. He's been patient for so long and we're nearing nap time. I sing a song, he loves Johnny Cash, and he starts to laugh mid-fuss, every time. That's all it takes. I stop and think about my own mother singing to me. I can hear her voice singing "three little fishies" and it makes me smile.

When all is well in baby chick land, we move on to the sheep and cows. I look to see if all of the automatic waterers are functioning and filling properly. Check to see if everyone has the hay they need, check and manage bedding, maybe do some mucking with the pitchfork. The sheep and cows come into the shed to say hello and see what's going on. This is my chance to look everyone over and see if there are any issues we need to know about. Ella has usually just been milked and is content. I give Lucy a scratch on the head and check her stall. Sometimes I spend a few minutes just being with her. Out of the five sheep, there is one who greets Z daily. She puts her nose close to the stroller and he reaches out and gives her a scratch. Ironically, it's Clarice, one of the bottle-fed lambs from last season.

You might recall that it was my job to manage the three new bottle-fed lambs. I lost the littlest lamb and it broke my heart. I continued to nurse the two. I was very newly pregnant then and in between gagging from the smell of the milk replacer, I used to wonder if the lambs knew of the baby inside me. I was sure they did. I think of that every time Z reaches out for Clarice. How they have known each other longer than Z's been on this earth. Soul mates.

One last quick glance to be sure all is well, looking along the electric fence line to be sure it's intact and checking gates, the stroller wheels swish once again as we make our way back to the house to put Z down for sleep.

Though there is much more work in between, these chores are the bookends of my days. The animals may have changed but it's been the same routine for 5 years. Only now, it's just a little different. Life happens at a different pace these days. An excuse to slow down and really see things. To see the world through a new pair of eyes.

 A quick visit to watch daddy feed the pigs and Zander shows us that he can now stand up in the stroller. Yay for straps!

Oh, and look, I can turn myself around too!

to zander ~ love, mama

Zander,

You're 6 months old (!!!!) and you find a way to amaze me every single day. In just the last week you started sitting up and experimenting with crawling. I'm quite happy with you staying immobile for the time being, just so you know. I'll be chasing after you so very soon!

You helped your daddy and I process our first batch of chickens of the season this week. This was a first for you and I was a little nervous about how that was going to work. It's a long, long day of hard work and though we had some help, I knew your dad really needed me there. I thought I would have to stop working and make several trips back to the house with you. You surprised us both by hanging in there and being such a good boy the entire day. You hung out in your stroller and played with toys or you napped while I wore you in the ergo. The day started at 7am and ended when we had cleaned up and loaded the birds into the freezer at 10:30pm. You were so tired but you kept it together and didn't cry.

I just want to thank you for that. I think that somehow you understood how important that day was for us and that we really needed to work.

Though your life is pretty interesting for a baby, it's not always easy. You come to work with us every day. We  often work long hours and you're forced to occupy yourself a lot of the time. You don't get to go to bed when most babies do. Your mama and daddy work late because a lot of our work with the animals starts at dusk which just gets later and later throughout the season. It's a hard life sometimes and we don't get to spend as much time doing fun stuff with you as we would like.

Zander, thank you for being such an easygoing baby. I hope that someday you'll understand and appreciate this life we have built for you, even if it's not always fun.

I've dreamed about you for so long and you are the reason for all of this. We love you in ways we never knew existed and you are the happiness that we need right now.

 Taking a nap while mama teaches the interns how to process chickens.

 Two of our fantastic interns, Nate (yes, another Nate!) and Sam.

 How Zander occupied himself.

 Helping mama make pizzas to feed the workers last week.

 6 months old and already driving the golf cart!

 Watching daddy mix and grind feed for the chickens.Watch and learn, little one.

a dream...

Nate and I once had a dream.

A few years back, in the midst of our 'between farms depression' we took a road trip to the Midwest. The trip was to research a very special farm with a special oven. We actually visited several farms for the same reason, but one in particular stood out. This farm hosted a weekly pizza night and drew quite a crowd. The farm was run by a beautiful, down-to-earth family and we were truly inspired. By the community aspect, by the opportunity for folks to see and experience where their food comes from, and by the pizza.

We had been kicking around the idea but after experiencing it for ourselves, we decided right then that we wanted to create something like that here, in Western Pennsylvania. We didn't have a farm then. But we had a plan.

Since that trip, Nate has worked to perfect his sourdough bread and pizza dough recipe while researching and learning all he could about wood-fired ovens. He spent a lot of last season building it and the oven grew along with the baby in my belly.

After many, many hours of work, sweat, and love, the day has finally arrived where Nate is baking bread and pizza in his handcrafted oven.

Oh my, is that bread and pizza yummy!

In the very near future we'll be hosting weekly pizza nights here at the farm. Our goal is to eventually grow most of the ingredients for the pizza. We hope to be able to offer fresh bread for sale to our CSA members this season and someday have the oven available for folks to use to bake their own bread. Nate would like to have wood-fired bread baking workshops here as well so people can learn about this lost art. More details to come on all of that very soon.

The oven, while the exterior isn't quite finished, is a thing of beauty. Nate did a great job documenting the project in photos, which can be found here.

This oven really is his best work yet.

best friends

Zander and Evelyn discuss their day on the farm.

two farmers, 350 chickens and a hurricane

Ever heard of Greenhorns?

What follows is an essay I wrote that was just published in the new Greenhorns book. The book is a collection of stories from new farmers and my story is about our first tragic event. It happened 5 years ago, before I even started this blog. 

I cried while writing this story a year ago, and Nate cried yesterday when the book arrived and he read it. There have been many other events that have hurt us since then - some have been worse - but being our first, it was so traumatic for us, that the memory of it is as vivid as that day in 2008. 

They really did a great job on the book. Pick one up here!

Here's the book trailer.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 

Two Farmers, 350 Chickens and a Hurricane

It was eight o’clock in the evening and I was doing my rounds in the brooder, caring for the baby chicks, while Nate was doing his rounds with the older broilers outside. I could hear the wind picking up and remember saying to the little chicks, “Be glad you’re safe and cozy in here, little ones. It sounds wicked out there.” 

Just then, Nate came blowing into the brooder building. “It’s crazy out there!" he said. "We’re going to lose the covers on the broiler pens if we don’t do something.” So we ran out to see what we could do.

I have never experienced weather like this before. An eerie darkness had taken over the farm, painting everything a deep purple. Our broiler pens were made of two cattle panels, bowed over to make a hoop structure and covered with recycled billboard vinyl. The ends of the vinyl were loose so that we could roll up the sides during the day and roll them down at night. The wind was blowing so hard that the ends were flapping, threatening to pull off the vinyl and make it fly away. Every time the wind blew, the chickens, terrified of the flapping noise, would cower in the corner and pile on top of each other. We knew we had to do something fast or they would smother each other to death.

Nate acted quicker than I’ve ever seen him move before. He punched holes in the ends of the vinyl sides and tied them to the pens so they couldn’t move. We had four pens of broilers, so he had to do everything quickly. The wind howled and roared while Nate worked and I tried to weight down the sides with cinder blocks. Running out of blocks, I threw my body across the last one and waited for him to finish. The wind blew so hard that it even moved me. 

We were in a pasture flanked by woods on two sides, and the trees were blowing around so fiercely that they were bending and creaking. I started imagining the worst, and I closed my eyes and said a prayer while Nate worked frantically. He finally finished, and the broilers seemed stable. It was well after 10 o’clock when we accepted that we had done all we could and there was nothing more to do but wait it out. 

I didn’t want to leave our animals - that was our livelihood sitting out in that field - but it was starting to become dangerous for us. Branches and debris were flying everywhere. We barely slept that night, waking with every howl of the wind. It broke my heart to think of the animals being so scared. We didn’t know it yet, but we were being hit by hurricane Ike.

Morning came and we were afraid to walk outside. 

This was our first year farming, and the learning curve was steeper than you can imagine. It was demanding, stressful, frustrating, exhausting, dirty and beautiful all at the same time. When we took the leap into farming, overnight we became responsible for several hundred tiny little lives, and the weight of that responsibility was heavy. No matter what, our days were filled with hard work, and now the thought of anything being damaged and requiring more work was overwhelming. We couldn't afford a setback at this point in the game. 

We hopped on the four-wheeler and drove over to the animals. Our first stop was the layers. We had recently moved our first batch of hens into the Eggmobile that Nate had finished building only a month before. We weren't prepared for what we were about to see.

In all the chaos the night before, trying to save the broiler pens, neither of us thought to secure the Eggmobile. Ninety-mile-per-hour winds had lifted it up off of the trailer it was on, rolled it 360 degrees, and crashed it down, right-side up, with all hundred of our girls inside. Hours and hours of Nate’s work, smashed. 

I thought he would lose it right then and there. Still on the four-wheeler, he turned to look at me, his face white. Tears streamed down my face and I couldn't breathe. This was a huge blow. We jumped off to check on the girls, hoping they were okay. Amazingly, every one of them had survived.

Once we knew they were alright, anger overcame Nate as he began to realize how much work lay ahead. And it wasn’t like the work could wait. Those hens needed their home to be fixed so they could sleep in it that night.

We moved on to the broilers, to find that they too had survived the night, with minimal damage to the pens: a gift, a small bit of mercy, from the hurricane.

Nate and I looked at each other, looked over our battered farm, and breathed deep. There was nothing to do but rebuild.

We gathered our tools and began again.