Foster calves, chickens and campfires

As Moses, our new foster calf asks, "What's going on???" ahhh...it's been awhile which I will firmly blame on having a cold, but i'm sure that was only one factor. Since the last blog I have helped at Michael's farm on one of their chicken processing days. We started off catching the chickens out of the pens and putting htem in crates. Rich brought the crates down on the tractor while Linda set everything up inside. we got the chickens in just before a huge downpour that lasted the whole morning - Rich said sometimes he couldn't even see the thermometer he was holding in his hand. I was pretty psyched to be spending that morning inside. So they use cones to hold the chickens upside-down while you do the knife work (this keeps them from running around "like a chicken with their head cut off", because they do thrash quite a bit afterwards). then they get scalded (hence the need for the thermometer) for 30 seconds before going into the plucker. Robin took them out of the plucker and gave them to Linda's dad, who takes the heads and feet off and also removesthe scent gland or preening gland from their back. Then it came to me and Sarah to gut them. (I was given the advice: "don't cut the green thing". this is the bile sac and if you cut it the bile will stain the meat, and anything you're wearing). then it goes to Michael and Linda who wash them and tucked the feet under and put them into ice baths to hold. there's lots of time to talk, they played a solid prank on me. when i came in, Linda asked where my hat was, "Michael - you didn't tell her to bring a hat? well go see what you can find in the house then". michael comes back after awhile all apologetic with a hat that looks like I'm a chicken, complete with rooster plume and all. "sorry, it's all i could find". after about 20 minutes Linda says "Michael - you gonna tell that poor girl what's going on?". Michael "oh yeah - we don't have to wear hats". in retribution halfway through the day michael's washing birds and gets one with an extra foot coming out the bottom. "what's this?" Linda: "oh sometimes they grow like that". Michael "you know, for a VERY short second there i thought maybe sometimes they did". I got said foot thrown at me. good times.




Meanwhile at caretaker, last Tuesday was Gabriella's 5th birthday. Geoff made a campfire and roasted "hobo-packs" of potatoes and carrots and onions and cheese wrapped in foil right on the fire, and then we had smores for dessert while Don played Gabriella's favorite song, Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire". she has good musical taste for a five year old!

Last week we got our first frost. it took out our basil and we definitely have frost damage on the husk cherries and the peppers, but they're both still around. we've moved onto doing lots of work cleaning up the farm - cover cropping, pulling out tomato stakes, pulling up the black plastic that was under a lot of the squash plants. It's definitely really strange to look out over the farm and see so much open land now. The leaves here are just starting to turn and I can tell they will be beautiful.

chicken pens & bee stings

Last weekend Michael and I went off on a pretty unsuccessful trip to Home Depot. The idea was to make a chicken pen light enough for one person to move it easily. The plan was to use electric conduit. The question was: should it be welded together at the corners? after talking to some folks about how nasty a material it is in terms of welding and fumes, we decided to see if we could find some joints. We picked up his neighbor Ed, who is always wandering around Cheshire looking for a ride, and heading to Home Depot. 30 minutes later we come back to the car. Ed says "what're you doing back here empty handed? you've been in there forever!" Alas, 30 minutes and two friendly customer service folks later, we discovered that the joints were all threaded although the conduit wasn't, and they were $3 a pop and only had elbows, no T's and no "3 way orthagonal joints" (to use to make the corner of a cube). PVC isn't great, because in the sun it gets really brittle, so maybe the Joel Salatin wooden ones are the best bet. The farm we went to up in Pownal has Joel Salatin pens (so does Homestead, where Michael works). they're challenging to move with one person - at homestead one person rolls the front side with the dolly while the other walks the back side forward.

The whole farm crew just went to visit our next door neighbor who raises chickens and beef. In his set up, he props the pen up on the tire and crate everyday because "about 80% of the chickens i get are roosters, and they're always fighting, so this way if there's a fight they can get outta each other's hair and cool off". He moves the chicken fence every two days, props up the pen in the morning, feeds them so most of them are out of the pen, and then moves it. His cows are the ones that often see our cows across the fence and spend hours mooing at each other. apparently one of our cows jumped over 2 years ago and hung out with his herd for 3 weeks before eventually coming home.



Meanwhile, I went in to harvest plums from the orchard last week and a bee flew right into my hair, starts freaking out, of course I start trying to brush it out of my hair, it stings me on the eyelid, another bee lands on me and stings me on the back of the neck. Another stings katie, we all run out of the orchard. over the course of lunch, my eye swelled more and more. I took some benedryl (and promptly lay down for a quick nap. i woke up and couldn't even open my eye. So Melissa drove me down to the clinic in Pittsfield, where the doctor took one look and sent me to the emergency room. anyway, I ended up walking out with a prescription for an epipen. Just to prove to my mom that I don't only put up flattering pictures of myself on my blog, here's what I look like 10 hours after I get stung by a bee on my eyelid.

darkness, lightness and visitors

Everyday the sun comes up later, and on rainy days now it still seems totally dark when we wake up. this morning when I walked up to start harvesting the light was on in the barn as we got the carts ready to harvest for CSA distribution. After several weeks straight of lots of rain, we had a week of HOT dry weather - until today when we're rained in by Hurricane Hanna. Luckily this dry weather has also coincided with some of our big volunteer groups like Williams "where am I" orientation groups and a group from Kripalu, a nearby meditation and yoga retreat, who are doing a semester-long intensive retreat. So we've been busy doing lots of the BIG harvests - potatoes (red, white and purple!) and winter squash.

Two weeks ago my mom came up to visit for a long weekend. She helped us harvest lots and we cooked up lots of quesadillas for a big friday dinner with the Smiths and Zoati, an exchange student they're hosting from Kenya, and our baker Jenna. Then we drove out Saturday afternoon to meet my Cambridge roommates Liz, Emily and Charlene at Red Fire Farm, where they're members, for the tomato festival. We hung out with the dog, tried 75 different tomatoes, I ran into Amara, one of my old interns from the food project - overall it was a great day. And I got to say goodbye to Beck - he's getting adopted this weekend. Afterwards my mom and I went to dinner up at the People's Pint in Greenfield (always a favorite) and ran into Elise, who used to manage the Food Project farm. So it was a great day for catching up with old friends.

This week Becca and Josh also came to visit! We had a rather unsuccessful campfire (I think the wood was too wet, so we finally resigned ourselves to holding marshmallows over our burning pieces of newspaper until the marshmallow itself caught - not the most farmy experience but the smores were still worth it). and we had lots of ice cream at lunch after working with volunteers.