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.

Meet Gertrude and Elisabeth.

In other news, we’ve got beet ginger kvass in the fridge (recipe here , but I used homemade yogurt as my “starter”), wheatberry salad on the dinner table,

and beautiful (but very thirsty) plants in the garden.

(garden photos by Ben Lester)

Have a great weekend everyone!  We’ve turned off our internet at home, so if I’m not at the bakery, I won’t be here, either.  For Gratitude Friday, well, I think you can guess some of what I’m grateful for this week.  And you?

her fleece was white as snow (lanolin-covered snow, that is). Meet Clover, our sweet little ewe lamb, born Wednesday.  My dad was in the backyard putting up fence, walked over the hill for less than 10 minutes, and came back to see a little white lump on the ground – Clover!  Curly surprised us all by having her lamb before the enormous Molly, and is doing a great job as a Mama.

Clover is already up and walking around with the rest of the “herd,” and very tolerant of our love.  We’re trying not to hover too much, but it’s hard with this much cuteness!  Ella, remembering the towel in my lambing basket, grabbed a cloth napkin and proceeded to “dry off” day-old Clover, while Curly watched carefully.

It’s incredible how baby animals are born and then . . . walking and skipping along!  Now, with one eye on the full moon, we’re just waiting for Molly’s lamb(s) to arrive.  Blessings on your weekend, everyone!

And have I mentioned that our two ewes are hugely pregnant?  Oh yes, there is that . . .

For now, we’re feeding our girls kale and red raspberry leaves fresh from the garden, and keeping a close eye. I’ve got my Herbal Handbook for Farm & Stable close by, plus Practical Sheep Dairying and Living With Sheep.  (They all have different advice, of course!)  East Friesans are known to twin, triplet, or even quadruplet (usually not their first time!), so we might have a whole lot of sheep really soon.

We’ve got our lambing basket ready, and I’m ordering a cheese press right now – getting ready for all that milk!

I knew that Molly would be way skinnier when we were done of course, but it was so funny to see in person!

As a knitter, it was really amazing to get so close to the raw fleece as it came off the ewe!  Molly’s wool is totally gorgeous, if I do say so myself.  Our girls are East Friesans, a milking breed that’s also known for their wool, and I am so excited now to gently wash it, card it, and learn to spin it!  Today was one of those incredible days when you suddenly accomplish the chores you’ve been wanting to do for months.  We sheared Molly, and we mucked out the chicken coop.  Craziness!

See you tomorrow – I’ve got something fun planned for this week’s menu.  Ok, I’ll give you a hint . . .

This week, I’m grateful for the restorative powers of a calm day at home.

I’m grateful for this yoga sequence, which rescued me from serious back pain.

Grateful for this quote from Ella, as we were on our way to a grain meeting: “. . . and I’m going to talk about emmer!”

Grateful for this reminder from Kyce, on letting go of guilt and starting anew.

Grateful for my kind, sweet family.

Grateful for this family, too – these animals we steward, who remind us of the important rhythms of the day – the movement of the warming winter sun, hay, water, and more hay.  Grateful for these sweet sheep who love Ella, come to her to sniff and nuzzle her, while she giggles in delight.

Wishing you moments of gratitude in your days.

all your wonderful emails and comments.

Grateful that I got to visit my grandmother last winter, and that she got a chance to meet Ella before passing away yesterday.  Grateful for her long life and many blessings.

Tiger Beans – saving seed to plant for next year’s shares

snowy fun at the Granary

Our new houseguest Blizzard.  His mission – make babies with Molly and Curly!

And the other new arrival at our house, a huge, beautiful John Deere 720.  His mission: plant grains.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!  Stop by soon for Step Five: Bring Your Own Bag.

(photo by Jeanine Dargis)

finds Cole eating hay off of Molly’s back.  Molly has turned out to be an amazingly sweet, chill ewe.  Ben has been hard at work building us a new barn door, and while he was using a Sawz-all to cut out some of the wall, she laid there, chewing her cud, the Sawz-all grinding away next to her head.  Amazing.

Is it just me, or does the lovely crisp air bring on crazy preparation urges in anyone else?  We’ve been canning like mad, harvesting, starting seeds for the hoophouse this winter, ordering longjohns, knitting up a storm of sweaters and legwarmers, cutting out flannel pants for Ella . . . I love the fall.  Bring on the delicata squash and the cider, I say!  Bring on the leaf peeping and the Animal Powered Field Days!  Bring on the Garlic and Arts Festival, and the dozen other amazing festivals that all seem to happen at once.  Bring on the delicious cool that calls out for snuggly blankets, scarves, and hot tea.  Love it.  (Ok, I may also be a bit biased, being a fall baby, but really, what’s not to love?)

Oh, and did you see the cover of Time a few weeks ago?  “The Real Cost of Cheap Food”!!!  Yes!  Oh, and hop on over to Hip Mountain Mama, who has an amazing art supplies giveaway going on.  And then hop over to our house on Sunday for the Sewing Bee!  Grain bags galore, yes siree.  We’re going to need them soon – the first beans get harvested this weekend!

And, as I keep reminding myself, don’t forget to breathe.  Enjoy the beautiful days.

I’ve been wanting to share some of our wonderful experiences from the NOFA summer conference, but got swept away by everything else.  So now, take a trip back just a few weeks with me . . . UMass Amherst campus, and lots of wonderful, amazing farming folks.  My dad, brother, Ben, Jeanine (our farm apprentice), and I all attended different workshops – wow!  These oxen from Simple Gifts Farm were there, much to Ella’s delight – they’re in training to be used as draft power at Simple Gifts someday.

My brother and Jeanine took an awesome workshop on cheesemaking with the folks from Boblink Dairy in New Jersey (who brought samples – yum!).  It included some really interesting animal management techniques, including feeding grass and hay exclusively (almost all cattle farms currently supplement with grain – or feed it exclusively, much to the animals detriment), and having two bulls that he keeps with the females all the time.  Usually, farmers will have one bull (if a male at all) and keep him separated from the females except for specific breeding periods.  Jonathan, the farmer, said that if you only have one, they can mistake you (the farmer) for a competing bull, especially if you are keeping them away from their females, but that when you have two they are quite pleasant to work with.  Very interesting . . .

I took two really amazing workshops, one on alternative health practices for livestock with Michael Keilty from UConn, and one on Health for the Family with Tony Llemos from Blazing Star Herbal School in Ashfield, MA.  Both of them ended up mostly talking about herbs, but in very different ways.  I got some great book resources from Michael’s workshop, such as The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable, by Juliette de Bairacli Levy, and Wild Health by Cindy Engel.  The main idea I took from Michael’s workshop, which I am really excited about, is the concept of planting herbs and healing plants in pastures, instead of just grasses and clover.  The animals will graze the herbs and healing plants as needed, and will self-medicate.  Often they know about their health issues before we do (and know better how to treat it!).  I’ll let you know more and I study up, and get started planting.  (As Michael said, “You’re going to have a lot of homework!”

From Tony, I took the wonderful idea of not only using herbs as teas (infusions) and tinctures, but adding them to the food we eat, as nourishing and health-giving supplements.  She talked about drinking infusions of nettles and milky oats daily, over the long term, making herb vinegars (you basically just add fresh herbs to cider vinegar and allow to steep, then use in salad dressing or other uncooked food preparations), and herb honey (again, add herbs to raw local honey, and enjoy!  yum!).  She also talked about adding astragalus (a Chinese herb) to soups and rice in the winter, and adding slippery elm to foods such as oatmeal.  Astragalus is a wonderful, warming and immunity building herb, and slippery elm soothes the body’s membranes (eyes, urinary, respiratory, and digestive).  I got some great ideas for our family, and for the bakery.

Ben took a couple of sheep workshops (just in time!), one with the folks from Winterberry Farm in Leverett, and one with Dale Perkins (pictured above) from Mesa Farm.  He learned how to flip a sheep on its butt (they go totally passive when you do this, and it’s how you shear them, administer medicine, etc), and it’s a good thing because we’re going to need to shear Curly in just a few weeks.

Whew!  Well, that was a long one, but truly only skims the surface of all the wonderful things at the conference.  Hopefully, it will titillate you just enough to join the party next year.

We left in the afternoon, planning to coincide the trip there with Ella’s nap, kill some time walking around the farm and Chatham, and then return with the sheep in the back at night, while Ella slept.  Of course, Ella didn’t sleep on either trip, but she (and I) remained wonderfully calm.  Have I mentioned that Ella previously found the baaing of sheep terrifying?  Um, yes.

Anyhow, we made it there safely, looked around their beautiful farm, met the sweet baby lambs, and then got to met our two ewes, who immediately terrified Ella with their baaing.  When we saw how large the ewes were, and Ella freaked out at the baaing, I think Dad, Laura, and I all thought, “Uh oh, this could go very, very badly.”  (Except my internal thoughts probably included more expletives.)

In any case, we walked around Chatham, had dinner, came back to the farm, and spread out the tarp in the back and laid down hay, as planned.  We had our dog’s leashes and collars, which we did put on the sheep and hook in the back, in case they got scared (or curious) and tried to jump up front onto Ella and I’s heads.

We helped Beth and her husband load the girls in back, and we were off!  When the sheep both baaaed loadly right behind Ella’s head, she curled up into as small a ball as her carseat would allow and clung to my arm for dear life for about ten minutes.

Then she seemed to forget about them for a while.  When they next baaed softly, she announced to us calmly, “The sheep are in the car.”  Yes, yes indeed.

She ended up thinking it was hilarious that we had two sheep in the back and demanding to see them constantly (I was trying to keep the tarp up so they wouldn’t be too interested in trying to come up front).  She named them Molly and Curly (”Molly is biiiiig.”), and we got them home and into the backyard safely.  Whew! We also provided some pretty great entertainment for the folks driving around us, at least one of whom slowed down to take our picture.

This is the sort of thing that makes people tell us that we’re crazy.  And we say, sure.  Crazy like a fox.