While we made space for these beds, we pruned our tomato jungle and I have lots of green tomatoes now.  Luckily, I was wanting to try the recipes for canning Green Tomato Soup and Green Tomato Relish, both from the book Putting Up (thanks Mom!).

Have a great Sunday!  Ben will be doing his workshop on growing grains in New England and working with draft power today at Animal Powered Fields Days, and I’ll be canning tomatoes like crazy.

Well, it’s been a while!  We had quite a month.  We went to the beach in Maine for a week.  We all got a nasty cold that turned into an ear infection for me (almost better at last!).  Ella’s Nana came out to the lake for a week and they had a terrific time together, splashing in the water.  I made my first batch of elderflower champagne.  The volunteer sunflowers in our backyard started blooming, the tomatoes in the hoophouse grew enormous, the raspberries ripened, and the first grains got harvested for the CSA. I stopped gagging all day and started cooking again, thank goodness!  Our house turned into complete chaos, and then started to come back again.

(building “a bird castle”)

I also got some knitting mojo back, which is wicked exciting.  More on that soon.  In the meantime, thank you so much for all your good wishes, and I’m glad to be back here in this space.  I hope your summer has been filled with light, warmth, and that the bounty of the season is on your table.

Emmalina asked for advice about finding a draft horse, and as usual, I assume that there is probably someone else who wants to know.  So here is a quick list of tips, based on our experience.

1.  Find a teamster near you. When we first considered the possibility of working with horses, we went to visit the closest farm using horse power that we knew of – the wonderful David Fisher at Natural Roots Farm listened to our questions, told us about his experiences, and showed us around his beautiful farm.  When we started looking for our own horse, we mostly used craigslist, which led us to various horses, and eventually to our own Cole.  Just as important, that search led us to meet fellow teamster and ferrier Roy Nilson, who helped us “test-drive” Cole (Cole’s origin is unknown, so Roy brought out harnessing and worked him with us, to see if he knew any commands etc), and helped us out enormously and in so many ways when we were first getting started.  He is still our ferrier, and our dear friend.

2.   Get schooled. There are some really excellent draft horse books put out by the Small Farmer’s Journal.  The Journal, also, is fantastic.  Ben also owns, and has watched many times over, the Doc Hammil videos, which are great.

3.  Get hands on. Working with horses is intensely physical, not to mention dangerous, even if you know what you’re doing, and while books and videos can help you become familiar with some of the basics, I think Ben and I would agree (And most teamsters would, as well) that you need to learn from a real live person, with a real live horse.  Before we started really looking for our own horse, Ben took a draft horse intensive workshop at Fair Winds Farm.  Find the best workshop that you can get to, and go!

Ok, so that’s my best advice for finding and getting ready for a horse.  Our horse, Cole, is a Belgian (possibly a mix) who weighs about 1600 lbs.  We suspect he was from Amish country, because he got some excellent early basic training from someone, and there are not many draft horse trainers in our area.  He was bought at auction, and living at a farm with someone who liked big horses, but knew he’d be happier working, which is how we came to find him.  One of his back hooves is slightly deformed, which our vet says poses no trouble with the amount we work him (1-2 times a week in the busiest parts of summer), but might have given him early arthritis working 6-10 hour days on an Amish farm, which is probably why he was sent to auction.

Other than that, I would just add that having a draft horse on our farm has been a wonderful, joyful experience.  Even when he decided to come into the living room.

I have been feeling, these days, incredibly be blessed to be here, in our beloved Valley, enjoying the tender new spring.  This time of year, driving past other greening farms, I wonder how anyone could choose to live anywhere else, or live any other kind of life.

In June, sometimes, in the crazy scramble to get everything planted while my child is crying and screaming to inside right now while we’ve only planted a few feet of potatoes, well, sometimes I understand the choice.

But then harvest comes and I forget all over again.  I mean, how could you not want this?  Some days, a new lamb is born, and yes, some days those grown lambs are head-butting your daughter in the back, prompting her to yell, “Ok, take them to the slaughterhouse straight away!”  Some days you get to stuff yourself on sun warmed raspberries, and some days, there is a lot of weeding to do.  Some days a visitor, looking at the horse-drawn, rusty equipment in your yard, says, “It’s kind of like a graveyard,” and some days, your husband comes home triumphant, having perfectly cultivated the whole field with the horse.  Some days the horse lies down on his back and rolls around in the dust like a gigantic dog, and you laugh while the whole house shakes.  Some days the horse breaks a window (accidentally) by rubbing his butt up against it to scratch himself.  Some days the raw trust of the animals in our care nearly breaks my heart.

Every day, it all comes down to us, here, on this small piece of land, so blessed and grateful to be its caretakers, in all its imperfections.  Because I’ll let you in on a secret – we are imperfect too, and we were made for this.

At our house, I’m looking around and seeing a lot of my favorite color – yellow.  We finally finished painting the kitchen (hooray!), boiled our maple syrup (we only put out one tap this year, and just boiled it inside on the woodstove), got some bulbs at the garden center, and our chickens are delightedly scratching at the soil and giving us amazingly orange-yolked eggs.  Wishing some golden color to your days, as well.

We talk about everything from using draft horses, the real cost of food, and how to make your love visible.

Enjoy!

AWEtv from Seed to Scone with Adrie Lester of Wheatberry Cafe from shalini bahl on Vimeo.

Six eggs from six chickens, two days in a row.  I had to make cheesecake (Keller’s, from Ad Hoc.  It was divine, of course.)

A dog who comes in from a night on wandering, reeking of skunk. This is, apparantly, becoming a yearly ritual. (This was very helpful. And doesn’t he look hilariously embarrassed?)

Greens in the hoophouse, planted inside, and transplanted out.  Hooray!

Some color for the kitchen floor, using what I’ve got (lots of scraps) to bring in some sunshine.  (It’s the patchwork mat from Patchwork Style)
Blessings on your weekend, everyone!

Insulating, insulating, insulating. (Yes, that’s wool I’m stuffing into the crack, and we’re covering it with caulk.) Our little helper spent this time playing dress up and pretending to nap (do you see those scrunched up eyes?)  “I’m snoring away!” she declared.

Feeling sick to our stomachs about Monsanto’s new GMO alfalfa being approved for release. If you don’t know, please head here to Food Democracy Now’s petitions, and add your voice to keep this dangerous seed out of our land!  (Alfalfa is open pollinated, which means that if a farmer next door is growing GMO sterile alfalfa, their seed can blow onto your crop and contaminate it.)

Spending a lot of time in the kitchen, enjoying every recipe from last week’s menus with Cooking from Quilt Country (this custard cornbread was so easy and outrageously good!).  Making Oatmeal Bread from the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, making these Butternut Squash Brownies at last.  Ben threshed out our amaranth, and look at these beautiful red grains!

Welcoming February.  I never would have expected it, but this is one of my favorite months of the year.  The intense cold demands that I wake up, pay attention, and start moving.  A certain bearded fellow in our house has a birthday today, and we’ll also be dipping beeswax candles to celebrate Candlemas. It may be cold, but the warmth from the sun is also beginning to touch us.  No matter how many times during the summer I think we must be crazy to farm while, say, trying to plant an endless row of potatoes with an extremely cranky toddler), when January and February come, I get the itch.  We’re starting cold-hardy seeds already to put out into the hoophouse, and I am so excited for the growing season to begin!

Throw Yourself Like Seed

by Miguel de Unamuno (translated by Robert Bly)

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit

sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate

that brushes your heel as it turns going by,

the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain

which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,

but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts

is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,

don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,

and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,

for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;

from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.