"Love Coming Home To This Sweet Face"

A friend of mine sent this picture of her favorite goat from her farm.   She included the above quote with her picture.

This is Mr. McHowl.  Even though he won't let me come close to him,  he waits for me in the morning by my door.  I do have to bring the other dogs inside before I drop a bowl of food right out my door.  He is very skittish and he waits until I go back inside before he gets close to the bowl.  He makes me happy when I see him.

You have seen this picture before.  This is what happens when the hogs see you coming - they run to greet you.  And look how we love our dogs!  OK...so it all revolves around food - but who cares what the motivation is.

Animals engage our attention.  They greet us with a snort, a bark, a jump or a meow; and they make us feel welcomed into their world.   And for a moment in time - we forget what worries us.





And now all the baby animals have arrived.  And they all engage our attention and make us happy.

200 Baby Chicks

3 litters of baby rabbitts

7 baby hogletts that are the new hooligans

175 baby ducklings

The garden is booming because it is too cold for the bugs.

Brussel sprouts, lettuce, radish, potatoes, pees, carrots, artichoke, kale.  I learned you just cut the tops off the lettuce and it grows back!  So you don't need a lot of lettuce plants.  You can't see the small tomato and pepper plants in the dirt.



I almost forgot about the bees.   I received them last weekend and they are catching the flow of nectar.   I moved them into the garden that we have fenced off from predators - like those hooligan hoglets which keep trying to get into the garden beds.

Beehive 1

Beehive 2

And speaking of predators... when you live on a farm, you begin to understand life as a food chain.  Even the dirt is a living organism.  If you kill one tiny microbe with pesticide you are using to kill something else; you also kill the things that lives off that microbe.  And maybe the thing that lives off that microbe is important to a small creature that is critical to a plant.  And maybe that plant is critical to making the air that we breath and the food that we eat!  You really begin to see and understand how everything is involved in a web of connectivity.  Even the smallest microbe is as important as a human in the web of life.

The word 'sustainability' is used in a lot of different situations - from the corporate world to organic farming.  But I am beginning to understand this word as - DO NO HARM.  Do no harm to your soil, do no harm to your animals, do no harm to the people around you - everything is connected and needed.   It is a word easily thrown around, but very difficult to live when you have been brought up to just buy whatever you need, kill what you don't want in your yard, and close you door when you don't want people to be involved in your life.

And so, we have had 20 straight days of rain, one day of sun and now it is dark and raining again. But what the heck, the animals are always happy to see us and doesn't that make anyones day!!

How Gangs Get Started

We bought these two sows, with their recently weaned hoglets (3 each), from a small farmer who was selling all his livestock.   The little hogs tried to nurse when we released them into the fenced field, but their mothers pushed them aside.  .  Shunned by their mothers, they had to band together. They were timid little hogs.....Now they are a roaming GANG!

This is the gang yesterday under the rabbit cages staring me down - GIVE US THAT FOOD OR ELSE!  Is this not the cutest thing!  They are too small for the electric fence to cause them any distress, so they just come and go as they please.  You can find them during the day in the field eating grass.  In the afternoon sun, they return to the pen to rest.  They travel as a group and sometimes playfully tease Eva, our chocolate lab.  They 'romp' ( play roughly and energetically) around the farm, free and easy.  But soon, they will grow large enough that the fence becomes a deterrent.

Moving on.... Planting time.  We had trees and seeds to set.  It's too cold to put anything in the ground, so we planted the seeds in the planters below.  We also planted maple, hickory, redbud, fig, and I can't remember all the other saplings we planted.  I will probably be 80 before they look beautiful on our farm!

Planting an olive Tree!! Our memories from a trip to Italy

peas, carrots, beets, fennel, sunflowers, beans, lettuce, basil, and much more

Wild Flowers (note tree saplings)

We are also building more chicken coops for the 200 chicks that are arriving soon.  Eventually, there will be 800 chicks.

Alyce building 2nd of 4 chicken houses

2 down and 2 more to go.  They are on wheels!

So these houses can be pulled across the field and setup in new places every few days.  An original design!!

A funny story about the planted seeds.  We put them in the barn to protect them from a freeze.  When we went to pull them out the next morning, there were these perfectly made little holes in each pod where a mouse had taken it's little paw and dug out the seed!!  I had to reseed almost every pod!  We caught the not-so-little mouse a few days ago - almost the size of a rat!! There is always a predator to watch out for!!

Today, a couple that just moved from Atlanta to build a life on a farm, contacted me.  They are coming to visit this afternoon.  The farm they bought is about 10 minutes from our farm!  They, like us, wanted a change in their lives.  

Here is the label I designed  - from the farm sign I made - for my honey.  Very exciting!  Now I just have to get the bees to live past 1 year!

So begins April....

March Madness - Must all the animals be pregnant at the same time!

We can't keep up eating the number of eggs that are being produced!  The white eggs in the back are duck eggs!  I try every morning to eat my share - I am not making a dent.  Every day there is an entire basket of new eggs.  And this is from only 7 female ducks and 20 chickens.

There is a plan.  We are going to sell duck eggs and chicken and pig meat at the markets.  We are awaiting the arrival of many more ducks and chickens - and the birth of baby pigs from 3 pregnant hogs.

We have been busy building all the new houses and pens for all the newcomers.

building the new chicken house on wheels

New new rabbit home built from cedar trees on property

New Pig houses - or Civil War Camp!

Then there are the gardens - we added 5 new plots.  Talk about busy or crazy!

Oh yeh! I forgot the bees - as it turned out - I lost both hives.  But try and try again.  So newly cleaned and repainted - we are ready for the new bees.  I was able to extract the honey that was left.  Using my father's old honey extractor - which had a few problems I needed to overcome - I extracted 30 lbs of honey.  This is not a pretty picture - but it is the reality of the situation!

As my brother said - Don't loose any weight

Which brings up another topic.  I have not lost a single pound since I moved here - REALLY!! I had such high hopes of getting back to my young-girl weight!! What is a girl suppose to do.

It's all real

The Signs of Spring

Since the chicken and ducks are free range, we are very attuned to their behaviors.  Our first anouncement of spring was the increase of the squawking of the female chickens and ducks being chased by the males.   We did note that it was time to decrease the ratio of female animals to males!

We have been busy getting ready for spring.  We have ordered 200 chickens, and setup 2 new mobile homes for them.

This is one of the 2 new homes that are on wheels.  We have also ordered a huge trailer that we will build a chicken coup on that can be pulled by the tractor around the farm.  We have also ordered more ducks.

Also... we are getting more pigs today!  We built 4 new pens with electric fences and 3 new homes like the one here

The pigs themselves will take the straw we lay down and bring it into their cozy little house.  While we were setting up the new pens, the original (and now quite large) pigs looked on.   I really can't take enough pictures of these guys!!  You will note the chickens hanging around them.

The rabbits have been busy also and are all expecting.  We separated the females and put them in their own cages.  Here is a picture of the males.. you will note that their current cage is on top of our vegetable garden.  We hung all the rabbit cages on top of our vegetable gardens.

The chickens are always eating the other animals food!

The farms first sighting of plants arrived February 23rd.. Chives and saffron Crocus!  The flowers will probably arrive this warm weekend.  

And a special surprise bloomed in my home - an orchid from last year.  I have used only pond water and I think it made a big difference!

The bees made a short appearance 2 weeks ago.  I did loose one hive from this crazy weather.  When the weather fluctuates with extremes, the bees think it is spring and leave the hive looking for food - of which there is none.  The bees will swarm from their hives thinking there is no food and leave too few bees to manage the food intake for the rest of the winter - they starve to death even though there is food in their hives because there are not enough bees to feed the ones keeping the hive warm.  I will check the remaining hive this weekend as the temperature climbs to 60.  Here is a picture from 2 weeks ago - so I have hope that this hive is still alive.

I have been using the winter to learn more about plants, bees, ducks, pigs, permaculture, weeds and most important DIRT!  We are going to make a small fenced area for the pigs to dig up for our new gardens.  That is pretty cool!  As my son said.. "this is starting to look like a farm"!

The pond froze for a short time, but not as long as last year.  The melting ice and snow has been flooding the area and bringing back the 'beastie' - MUD. 

Mud boots - a must!

The new farm sign is almost finished!  I have to put a clear coating on it and then we hang it up!

It was fun learning how to use the new tools to make the letters.  

It takes a village - for sure - to run a farm.I leave you with a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used in the book 'The Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt's New World'

Close you eyes, prick your ears, and from the softest sound to the wildest noise, from the simplest tone to the highest harmony, from the most violent, passionate scream to the gentlest words of sweet reason, it is by Nature who speaks revealing her being, her power, her life, and her relatedness so that a blind person, to whom the infinitely visible world is denied, can grasp an infinite vitality in what can be heard.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Today it's my Birthday

They say it's your birthday

It's my birthday too, yeah

They saw it's your birthday

We're gonna have a good time

I'm glad it's your birthday

Happy birthday to you

I've been up since 5:30 looking up at the beautiful sky this morning hoping to see a shooting star for my birthday.  Seriously...I JUST SAW ONE!!!

Time can be a friend or foe.  I still remember my father-in-law telling me that every morning he woke up, he was still 21 years old in his mind.  But then he would go out to run and his body would betray him.   Time is a double-edged sword - I am 66 years old today(sort of a bummer).  And yet I can only feel excitement for what is to come in the following year.   What has been does not have to be what is, or what will be....

Part of the double-edged sword of moving to a farm is that there is too much to do -  Too much to do and too much you want to do.  I feel I have spent the year spinning around in circles trying to grab all the brass rings.  Just as a grab one, another more beautiful one catches my eye and I let go of the one I had.  Consequently, I have bought a lot of books which are now sitting in a tall pile on my desk.  But now it is time to pick a focus and go!

The sun is just starting to light up the horizon which means it is nearing time to feed those pigs, put out the water for the rabbits and head down to the big house to give the kids a hug before they head out to school.  I bought myself some very shiny red mud boots for my birthday.  What a great way to start the new year...

From Beaver to Sushi!

Yet another high point in dinning at Heartwood Farms with chef Zac!  Sushi - Sable (Black Cod), King Salmon, and Halibut - all from Cold Country Salmon.

This blog was going to be titled, 'The first year Take-Away', until yesterday.  Yesterday, I helped my son prep 13 chickens from live to freezer.  (Notice I didn't use the word KILL)  As I was cutting the heads off of the chickens, after Zac bled them, it crossed my mind that this was a long way from IT at Emory!!  There was no way I could have ever envisioned this life - and certainly not processing chickens and tripping over pigs!  

Randy, a friend from Emory, and his partner Chuck, stopped by for the day.  They were also moving to new lives in California and wanted to know what transitioning process we went through after we left Atlanta.  It is a good thing to have people around you who ask these kinds of questions.  Sometimes we need to stop, focus, and put into words - for ourselves - what we are experiencing and feeling.  I told them that after 11 months, I felt that my mind had caught up with my body.  I felt that I had finally 'centered' myself living on the farm - no longer wondering if I was in a dream.  And I found myself looking forward for what I wanted to do next, rather than turning in circles trying to figure out where I was. 

Which brings me to 'The First Year Take-Away'.  Since Thanksgiving, I had been trying to think about what was the most important thing that I learned from this first year.  I thought about how I learned to cut vegetables more professionally, build electric fences, relearn being patient around small children.... I thought about all the opportunities I was thankful for given to Alyce and I from Rachel and Zac.  But then - as usual - life happened and I got my take-away.  

So Rachel, the kids and I had returned late in the evening from shopping and buying a xmas tree.  It was close to dinner and I had dinner to make and not that much time left to make it.  But as we got out of the car - there were the pigs out in the field.  The electric fence did not have enough juice and they quickly figure it out.  So I ran to chase them into the fenced field where we keep the rabbit cages.   As I led them into the fenced field - I saw that 4 rabbits had escaped out of their cages and were running around.  It was almost 5:00 and it gets dark at 5:08 - so I went into panic mode.  I called 7 year old Charlie to round up the rabbits as I corralled the pigs into the field.  I noticed that the pigs had pulled out the rabbit feeders and they were laying out on the ground which is where the rabbits had escaped from.    I was trying to fix the rabbit feeders back onto the cages and couldn't find the strings.   By this time, I was angry at the disarray and my son pulls up the driveway.  Charlie, by some miracle, got the rabbits into their cages and I sent him to ask his father for some string.  Zac, my son, walks into the field and says - "Mom, it's OK, dinner will be late I will make snacks".  I wanted to be angry, but at that moment I realized I had all the time in the world, there was no big catastrophe happening and what was I doing creating a panic!!  It was a flash of insight - A SENSE OF HUMOR was missing from this situation - and there it was - my take-away for the year.

When you are a controller - it is hard to learn to have a sense of humor when everything isn't in it's right place.  The world isn't going to end!  Look at this family!!

So a merry christmas to all who read this.  With lots of love and laughter....Kim

There is Always a Tomorrow

There is the big picture of the ideal, and then there are the moments which make up the real.   Relationships, included in those moments, are difficult to maneuver.  Why just yesterday, my relationship with those pigs took a downhill path.  Here I have been feeding them and petting them religiously every day.  They are much bigger now, and with that, more insistent in getting to that food drop.  I now have to run through the yard and try to get to their bowl before they do so I can pour the food into the bowl instead of on top of their heads!  Now running across their yard means avoiding all the stumps, vines and pig poop.  So I got to their dish, with the 3 of them close behind, poured the food in the dish and started to back up quickly.  As I did this, I fell over the back of the big female right on my butt - and right into the poopy muck.  I had to use my ungloved hand to get up knowing that it was going in that pig poop!!  But, hey, I woke up this morning and its a new day in our relationship!!

But here is another moment - Rachel and Zac finding alone time on a tractor ride!  You got to take that alone time when you can!!

 Rachel is very small.  In order for her to shift the tractor, she has to lift up out of the seat of the tractor.  Once she does that, the tractor stops.  So her solution was to sit on her son - she later found a weight to put on the seat...

A huge hawk has been hassling the chickens.  I was in the barn and heard the chickens making a lot of noise.  I ran down the path to the house.  As I reached the front porch, a huge hawk flew out from under the bushes where the chickens were!   So they keep themselves together for protection now.

Alyce and I have been busy.  Alyce is working on the tree house and now works for Zac selling fish at the Charlottesville City Market.  I also now work exclusively for Cold Country Salmon.  It is a family business.  We help weigh and label the product, make salmon patties and whatever else is needed.  

Everyday is a new day of new experiences.  Alyce finished my stained glass workspace so I can start my next project.  She has been learning her lathe and making beautiful pens.  We have a pig trough to build so the much larger pigs heads can fit in their feeder.  Zac has a list of wintering projects that have to been done.  Sometimes things don't go smoothly - what a surprise! But it is good to remember that there is always a tomorrow to start over and try again...